First art from Frank Miller's XERXES (it's a prequel to 300)

Frank Miller is one of the most frustrating comic book artists that one can watch the career of. There's his classic stuff like The Dark Knight Returns and Sin City. And then there's his work like All-star Batman and Robin (particularly issue #2, you know what I'm talking about if you've read it). So when I heard that he was going to do a prequel/follow-up to 300 what most crossed my mind was "Oh Lord, he's going to attempt another The Dark Knight Strikes Again..."

Well, here's our first look at Xerxes from, well, Xerxes...

Here's the official title description from Dark Horse Comics:

Xerxes rose to power in fifth-century-BC Persia and became known as 'The King of Kings,' eventually raising and leading a massive army intent on ruthlessly destroying the hated Greeks who killed his father. Xerxes seeks nothing less than to become a god himself -- and achieves his wish!

Hey, if this means more of that freakish Persian army that we saw in 300, I'm totally stoked for this dudes!!

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Review of 300 Two-Disc Special Edition DVD

300 easily ties along with Transformers as my favorite movie so far of 2007. I've seen it twice now (click here for my thoughts when I first caught it) and it's sort of taking hold with me just as The Matrix did some years ago. So I've been looking forward to the release of 300 on DVD this week. It also came out on both HD-DVD and Blu-ray but since I'm still waiting to see which way the market tilts before investing in a player for either of those formats, I'm still using standard DVD. Besides, we've got a nifty lil' "upscaling" DVD player that does a great job outputting regular DVD to our high-def set, and we're probably going to be more than happy with that for awhile to come. As I've said before, when it comes to new technology I'm very much like the Amish: I have to completely trust it before adopting it.

I've actually watched the 2-disc DVD set once now, but this is such an awesome movie that I've had it playing about twice more while I've been working on some things (George Lucas writes to music, and I often write and do video editing with movies playing in the room behind me :-). As a consequence some of the more memorable lines have been stuck in my head for the past day or so. Lisa can tell you that I'm already doing a terrific impersonation of that Persian emissary dude when he rasps out "A THOUSAND nations of the Persian Empire descend upon you! Our arrows will blot out the sun!"

Okay, 'bout the DVD ...

I like it a lot! The one problem - that may or may not even be a real issue - is that even for standard DVD upscaled for high-def output, the image quality looks pretty grainy. But then, 300 on the theater's screen it's rather grainy anyway: all part of the unique look of this film. But in comparison to most other standard DVDs lately, 300 still appears to have less-than-ideal image quality. A few times I wondered if Warner Bros. is encoding its regular DVDs as well as they could: I thought that the DVD of Superman Returns likewise could have used better encoding of the video. But having seen 300 twice in theaters, I'll still say that for this particular movie, if you're getting it already knowing what to expect, it should still satisfy well. The audio is also very good.

Disc 1 is the movie, in widescreen format (you can also buy this as a single disc or in full-screen, if that's what you prefer). You can watch the movie "bare-bones" or with audio commentary from director Zack Snyder. Disc 2 is the special bonus features, including 3 deleted scenes. Two of those feature the traitorous Ephialtes and the other is of this huge (we're talking bigger than Goliath) Persian warrior with this midget archer riding on his back and shooting arrow at the Spartans. There is also a terrific documentary about the historical background of 300: what we know of the real-life Leonidas and his stand at Thermopylae against Xerxes's Persian army. Other features on Disc 2 include a look at 300's creator: comic book legend Frank Miller. A few more are various takes on 300's revolutionary production, which involved using bluescreen on a massive scale and the lengths that Zack Snyder and his crew went to in order to faithfully adapt the 300 graphic novel for the big screen.

300 is an amazing movie, and one that I think is going to have quite an inspirational impact over the long run. It gets a great treatment on DVD and I'll definitely recommend it for your personal collection.

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300 a'la The Simpsons

Audio from the 300 trailer mashed-up with footage from The Simpsons TV show and movie trailers ...

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Comparisons between Ron Paul and 300

So Saturday night I saw 300 again, this time in Raleigh with my friend Chad. And I think that of all the movies that I have seen so far this year, 300 is easily my favorite, and the best overall in my opinion. I just found out that it's coming out on DVD next month, too!

If you haven't seen 300 yet, remember how riled-up a lot of us got when Braveheart came out? 300 is that kind of blood-stirring good. This is exactly the kind of story we need for the time we live in. And YouTube user BoruJudasDedrich feels the same way, too...

Here's the video that he put together, comparing what's going on regarding presidential candidate Ron Paul with Leonidas and the Spartans in 300. I found myself thinking much the same on Saturday night when we were watching this... but I really doubt that I could have done anything as beautiful and passionate as what BoruJudasDedrich has done here. Just one thing I want to know: where did he get all that 300 footage?!? :-)

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Finally saw 300

Dad and I went to see 300 at the Carousel Grande in Greensboro this afternoon. I've been wanting to catch this ever since it came out a few weeks ago. It's adapted from Frank Miller's graphic novel 300, which is about the Battle of Thermopylae that took place in 480 B.C. between the Spartans and the invading Persians. Gerard Butler plays King Leonidas of the Spartans and that's Rodrigo Santoro - who has been playing Paulo on Lost and I had no idea that it was him in this role - as Xerxes.

300 is brutal! It may be the most vicious movie that I've ever seen. It's definitely the most violent historical-based film that I've watched... and I've seen plenty. The thing that keeps standing out in my mind is Xerxes' army: if all you know about the Greco-Persian Wars is from watching 300, then you would believe that the Persians were the biggest collection of freaks in the history of anything. I'm not kidding: if the Orcs in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings made you sick to your stomach, you will have weeks of nightmares after seeing the... things... that Xerxes sends out against the Spartans. I mean... holy crow this one guy has knives for both of his forearms!

As for Xerxes himself: he may be one of the most evil and despicable and plain-out ugly villains in movie history. I'm gonna have a very hard time forgetting this guy.

Some people are claiming that there's some kind of subtle commentary about current politics in 300. I really didn't see that, or even know how that's possible: 300 the graphic novel came out in 1998, almost ten years ago now. And 300 the film, from what I hear, is literally a scene-for-scene adaptation of the book and it's dialogue. I think there are a lot of timeless themes in this movie though, for all the violence throughout it.

Anyway, I thought 300 was really good. Better than I was expecting, even. And Dad said that he liked it. I'll definitely be getting this one when it comes out on DVD.

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CONFIRMED: Rorschach is REALLY gazing back in new 300 trailer!

It's probably gonna be the biggest geek story of the week and Ain't It Cool News is verifying it this morning: 1 minute and 52 seconds into this extended trailer for 300, the following image appears VERY briefly (this pic is from a cap I took and it took a bit to nail it down)...

After all these years of saying it couldn't be done... and even that it shouldn't be done...

I guess nothing is impossible: there really is going to be a Watchmen movie. There's the proof staring right back at us: Rorschach. In the flesh. Looking exactly as he does in the graphic novel. Not only that but click-on this high-res still (which also came from Ain't It Cool News)...

Rorschach is holding the Comedian's blood-stained smiley-face button, just as he's depicted doing in the first few pages of Watchmen.

This is really... well, quite astonishing. I really don't know what else to say. I wasn't quite 16 years old when I first read Watchmen and it completely blew me away. Watchmen is easily on my personal top ten list of favorite books of all time (with Number One being the Holy Bible and Number Two being The Lord of the Rings, Watchmen probably ranks ninth or tenth... but that's still good). I've probably read that book at least 20 or 30 times over the years. And from the very beginning, I have always wondered, more than anything else from this book: "what would Rorschach look like in a live-action movie?"

Well, there he is: "the abyss gazes also..." Now I just have to wonder about who in the world is going to play this psycho.

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