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In fact, I'd call it one of the truest representations of the ancient Greek epic storytelling style to ever see the big screen. Since I'm guessing that was the whole point, I'm gonna go ahead and call the movie really damn good, not just as an action movie, but as an expression of art.

Disagree? Go look at the fight scenes in the Iliad and watch the movie again with that in mind. The somewhat fantastic animals, the way the heroes were larger-than-life, the fights over a fallen comrade, the caricatured enemy--it is exactly the way you'd expect a somewhat-talented ancient Greek storyteller to handle the tale.

Well that's all true, except the part where that makes it good. I had no problem with the fantastic battles or historical inaccuracies in and of themselves. It's that the result was, while pretty and kinda fun in parts, still mostly boring and pointless. "Done in the style of..." doesn't automatically make something good even if they do accurately ape the style. After all there was crap Greek storytelling too.

Okay, and I'll admit, I just really couldn't get over the way the traitor was handled. The King makes a big point of how he would be happy to have the aid of the deformed man's strong spear arm, but alas, he can't raise his shield arm well and the Spartans always fight in phalanxes, don't you know, where the man next to you depends on your shield, so sorry it just wouldn't work. Then the battle starts and they fight in phalanx formation for maybe five seconds before voluntarily abandoning it to fight bar-brawl style. I can't remember any times where someone's shield was used to protect someone other than the one holding it.

Not that I have a problem with them not fighting in formation; it was a video game beat-em-up (complete with boss fight) on the big screen. I don't care if they fight in phalanxes or not. But they shouldn't mention that piece of unnecessary historical accuracy as part of a pivotal plot point only to ignore it five minutes later. The King should have just said that hey, we'd love to have you, except Spartan warriors represent the pinnacle of the human form who fight using magic spear-fu, and you're a mutant freak. Then at least it would have been consistent.

I'm not confusing anything. Re-read my post. I'm pretty sure the point of 300 wasn't historical accuracy, but to show a story of a real event being told with the embellishments and other characteristics of ancient Greek storytelling. If that was indeed the goal of the film makers, then they did a damn good job IMO.

The fantastic elements and caricatures of the enemy are a fit for this sort of folk-history storytelling, and my reason for bringing up the Iliad is that the battle scenes in 300 are composed of imagery and incidents very similar to those described (again, and again, and again) in the many, many action sequences of that epic.

In fact, I'd call it one of the truest representations of the ancient Greek epic storytelling style to ever see the big screen. Since I'm guessing that was the whole point, I'm gonna go ahead and call the movie really damn good, not just as an action movie, but as an expression of art.

Disagree? Go look at the fight scenes in the Iliad and watch the movie again with that in mind. The somewhat fantastic animals, the way the heroes were larger-than-life, the fights over a fallen comrade, the caricatured enemy--it is exactly the way you'd expect a somewhat-talented ancient Greek storyteller to handle the tale.

Is it Homer? No. The story itself isn't as good. Is it a story about ancient Greece, told with impressive fidelity to the style of dramatic art popular in that time period? Hell yes. If that was the film makers' goal, then I'd say they nailed it.

I'd love to see The Iliad done in a similar style, gods and all. It'd be glorious. The Odyssey's another matter, but then it always read more like a modern novel to me, anyway.

You are caricaturing their position (I agree with them on some things, but I have no opinion on gun ownership, and American conservatives would regard a good many of my opinions as socialist).

Most people, liberal or conservative, would agree that:

1. It is acceptable to kill in self defence if you have no alternative
2. It should be a serious crime to kill someone except in such very limit circumstances.

No one says "its OK to own a gun and to kill people with whenever you think its useful to get rid of them". I known lots of people who have owned guns (for protection, to kill animals, etc.) but I do not know anyone who has killed someone. "Gun's don't kill people, people kill people", is atleast partly true.

Most people opposed to abortion do not describe women who resort to them, especially under difficult circumstances, as murderers - there are too many extenuating circumstances. Even the most hardline opponents of abortion reserve the label for those who carry out abortions.

people have been doing caricatures of automobile "faces" since early 20th century. I mean like 1910. If people did not "see" faces in automobiles, the excellent Pixar movie "Cars" would have had no entertainment value. It would have just been... weird.

And if people are going to see "faces" in automobiles, they are going to see expressions, too.

Did somebody actually get CREDIT for doing this study, which appears to be a phenomenal statement of the obvious?

You might like programming outside of work, but there are people that wrote code just because it'll pay the bills. Those people generally like writing code as much as you liked mowing long grass.

Those people certainly exist, but they are almost by definition not "good" programmers. Programming is a creative job, because there are a nearly infinite number of ways to solve any particular problem, and there's a nearly infinite number of ways to express each of those infinite number of solutions in code. People who choose the job knowing they like coding as much as they like mowing grass are like the "painter" who does caricatures at the mall for 6 hours a day, and goes home to watch TV. Sure, you can show up and put some standard pieces together and get a product that looks like something, but it's never going to stand up next to a work done by someone who actually loves the process of creation. And it won't do you a lot of good, either, when your group is on the hook to deliver the Mona Lisa.

...the main character and story is the lamest of all the GTA by a huge margin. GTA IV is the type of crap you would expect to happen when a company farms out development to another small no name studio to save development expenses.

I found the story had more depth and was more engaging than the others.

It was heavily gimped to fit on the 7 gigabyte 360 DVD format and no standard harddrive and the graphics are shit thanks to being downgraded to run on the weak 360 graphics hardware.

Who said anything about the 360? I have the PS3 version - it's not my fault you bought a sucky console ;)

1) I don't think it's the lamest GTA, but it is a C+ game that got A grades because of expectations and marketing. Oh wow, it's a big quasi-open world. When I realized it was actually almost entirely linear, had very few characters, and many fewer who were more than blunt caricatures, I was done.

2) The 360 and the PS3 version looked pretty much equivalent to me. I played 360 and I saw my friend play on the PS3. If it were a decent game I might have gone for the PC version, considering the improved controls and (still mediocre) graphics that massively outdid either console, but unfortunately it wasn't worth the effort.

3) I thought DRM was only aimed at preventing casual pirates, meaning people who would play a game and give the disk to a friend to play it too. Considering that applying a crack to the most draconian DRM on a torrented version of a game isn't as hard as downloading the torrent in the first place, it certainly has no practical effect on internet piracy. This whole effort is a hoax on the executives at major publishing houses.

That is very true. You have to move away for a while to hear it. I moved to the mid-west for close to eight years and was teased about the 'aboot' until the local accent wore it away. When I moved back to Canada I realized what I was being teased about when I could hear it all around me. I also thought the 'yaw yaw' (yes yes) in the movie 'Fargo' was an over the top caricature of the accent in northern Minnesota until I visited southern Manitoba again a while ago and heard two waitresses in my hotel talking and saying "yaw yaw, I know wot chya mean." Having lived there for a while too, I'm sure I wouldn't have noticed it if I hadn't left. I do have to say that the thing that kind of pissed me off is when Americans found out I'm from Canada they would insist on saying, "so you're from Canada AY!" No-one could say "eh" at the end of the sentence correctly [big grin]. Come on guys, you force it too hard... it has to just roll off at the end matter of factly... you can't force it. Now, if you get to Missouri take a drive down highway Farty Far. ha!

The science of reconstructing what a person looked like from only their skull is a fascinating one and one I admire. I have no doubt they get at least 80% of it right. I have to wonder, though, how much of the Copernicus work is artist's conception, as opposed to scientifically supported by the evidence? There are no bones in the nose and cartilage doesn't last like bone. How did they determine the size and shape of the nose? It looks more like a caricature or a video game nose. I know people with big noses and I've never seen one that odd looking. And what about the ears? Those would be bigger, I imagine, again based on my experience with people who have long heads like our old friend here. Outsized ears, like prince Charles, or Chris Kraft. I bring up Kraft because I just saw him in a NASA documentary and, if anything, his ears today seem to have grown larger if that's humanyly possible.

Anyway, this is a cool development. Copernicus is the first example I use when I hear people telling stereotypical "dumb Polack" jokes. A truly revolutionary genius and one of my favorite historical figures.

These could be considered as a form of echo question.

They could.

Instead, they should be considered a form of rhetoric, hence the term "rhetorical question".

As for those who invoke such intonations in speech uncessarily, the term would be "caricature". Once upon a time it used to be called Valley Girl speech, but that was before it found widespread adoption. That it's accepted as anything other than an indication of immaturity, illiteracy, a propensity to socialising in mall environments, or a behavioural defect generally, is beyond me.

Forget all the babble about neurochemicals.

Forget all that scientific evidence...what, because you say so?

Neuroscience babble is not, and probably never will be, scientific evidence. Most, if not all, neuroscientists are essentially isomorphic to this caricature. They wear white coats, but they are not scientists.

You mean it's actually possible to be more of a socialist for Alaska than Ted Stevens?!

You do know that to be an actual socialist (as opposed to a cable-news caricature of one), you have to do more than just spend bucketloads of money on any random thing, right?

I occasionally receive inquiries from people who have read my previous letters and want to know why I insist that Scott Pakin's automatic complaint-letter generator is eminently incoherent. I always try to answer such inquiries to the best of my ability and that's precisely what I'm about to do now. I assume you already know that I was sincerely appalled when I first learned that Scott Pakin's automatic complaint-letter generator's stooges want to lower this country's moral tone and depreciate its commercial integrity, but I have something more important to tell you.

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it true that Scott Pakin's automatic complaint-letter generator should be in better control of its hormones? Nice try to step on other people's toes, Scott Pakin's automatic complaint-letter generator. I find that stuck-up adulterers are no different from mindless bloodsuckers. Let me explain. People tell me that Scott Pakin's automatic complaint-letter generator's putrid rejoinders do not comport with my policy always to build a world overflowing with compassion and tolerance. And the people who tell me this are correct, of course.

I feel no shame in writing that Scott Pakin's automatic complaint-letter generator is still going around insisting that it's okay to leave the educational and emotional needs of our children in the ghastly hands of contemptuous nebbishes. Jeez, I thought I had made it perfectly clear to it that its spokesmen don't represent an ideology. They don't represent a legitimate political group of people. They're just flat headlong. It is never easy to judge what the most appropriate or effective response to Scott Pakin's automatic complaint-letter generator's backwards sermons is but one unfortunate fact remains clear: Scott Pakin's automatic complaint-letter generator has a natural talent for complaining. It can find any aspect of life and whine about it for hours upon hours.

This moral issue will eventually be rendered academic by the fact that to get even the simplest message into the consciousness of the most insincere tyrants you'll ever see it has to be repeated at least fifty times. Now, I don't want to insult your intelligence by telling you the following fifty times, but Scott Pakin's automatic complaint-letter generator will stop at nothing to understate the negative impact of simplism. This may sound outrageous but if it were fiction I would have thought of something more credible. As it stands, one of the goals of absolutism is to render meaningless the words "best" and "worst". Scott Pakin's automatic complaint-letter generator admires that philosophy because, by annihilating human perceptions of quality, Scott Pakin's automatic complaint-letter generator's own mediocrity can flourish. Scott Pakin's automatic complaint-letter generator's unimaginative half-measures can be quite educational. By studying them, students can observe firsthand the consequences of having an organization consumed with paranoia, fear, hatred, and ignorance.

It's not a question of if but only of when Scott Pakin's automatic complaint-letter generator will steal the fruits of other people's labor, but I won't linger on that. While we all despair over Scott Pakin's automatic complaint-letter generator's polyloquent, muzzy-headed quips, we must also remember the principles that will guide our better behaviors and higher aspirations. This may sound like caricature, but the pen is a powerful tool. Why don't we use that tool to balkanize Scott Pakin's automatic complaint-letter generator's chauvinistic junta into an etiolated and sapless agglomeration? I can't possibly believe Scott Pakin's automatic complaint-letter generator's claim that coercion in the name of liberty is a valid use of state power. If someone can convince me otherwise, I'll eat my hat. Heck, I'll eat a whole closetful of hats. That's a pretty safe bet because anyone who hasn't been living in a cave with his eyes shut and his ears plugged knows that you should never forget the three most important facets of Scott Pakin's automa

I avoided watching this trailer for about a day. Then I got bored and, after avoiding the QT update virus. . .

Thank-you J.J. for living down to my expectations.

Remember when Star Trek was about clever sci-fi, charisma and high story tension? --Oh yeah, and about humans at least trying to be positive and socially advanced?

Compare this fluff to the first Star Trek movie. --Yes, many thought it was boring, the 2001 of ST, but whenever I watch it, I always forget the ending which makes me tingle in that nice sci-fi way. Wrath of Khan was a real blockbuster film; fun and dramatic and smart and NOT about mindless special effects. Sure, the third film was the fanboyish Spock back from the dead thing, but the next one about the whales was great fun; a real crowd pleaser which managed this without being stupid. Remember when Trek didn't suck?

For science fiction, the characters were wonderful. Sure they weren't Shakespeare, and sure, there were dumb episodes of TOS, but they weren't completely two-dimensional. They were human! Abrams, however, has the fantastic ability to suck the soul out of any character, flattening them out, plasticizing them, making them into idiot caricatures of themselves. --One of the things which drove me nuts about "Lost" was the way any character could be expected to do a 180 degree reversal of motivation and intentions for no reason other than the soapy plot needed a twist. Does he have no understanding of what it means to be human? This idiot was put in charge of Star Trek?

Sometimes I think that there's a concerted effort taking place to squash all the life and light out of Star Trek. --After the public rejected the crapfest "Enterprise" (with it's entire second season made dedicated to torture apologia and thinly veiled war-on-terrorism propaganda), it finally started to get both heartfelt and interesting. And that's when they canceled it. Oh really?

And they put Abrams, the freeking antichrist of script-writing, in charge of Star Trek? Bah. Hollywood sucks.

-FL

"Monumental works can't be copied for the simple reason that they risk becoming caricatures," insisted Hatziefthimiou.

I thought becoming a copied caricature was the point. You know, so people say, "I want to see the real deal before I die"?

I imagine most people would agree with you that people who set out to deliberately kill civilians are bad.

The trouble is that the words bad guy conjure up a simple caricature of people doing evil for no reason other than their own intrinsic evilness. This may be expedient in actual combat situations, but it is grossly inadequate when dealing with the underlying causes of the conflicts we're talking about.

A "broader view" about WWII for example, would not necessarily argue we should not have been fighting the fascists - but might say that the causes and justification for the conflict were more nuanced than simply asserting that the Axis countries were bad guys, and we were good guys.

Dismissing people simply as "bad guys", without consideration of the political, historical, economic and religious factors in the motivation and behaviour of those we are in conflict with is just as much a delusion as suggesting they just need a hug.

you've got to be kidding me, modding this 5 insightful.
 

So we throw a bunch of cast members together, make a bunch of stereotyped caricatures out of them so that we can all find at least one to identify with, and then send them off to wreck bloody vengance on the world because we're so sick of feeling powerless that the idea of fighting some righteous battle is very appealing. And of course they'll reward us in this fantasy world with sex, power, and a grand adventure.

So, a recipe for a bad movie will make a good movie?? Have you got any examples?

think of firefly/serenity. The characters are not stereotypical. that's one of the main reasons firefly /serenity is good. walking out of the theater after watching some predictable crap (like you have described as somehow good) is why most people want their $10 back. Same garbage, different day. (though it would be new to children)
 

It's only because we're too afraid to dream of Utopia. We're too afraid to think that our neighbors aren't our enemies but could be our allies, our friends. We're scared of people who are differently colored than us, who think differently than us, and we know deep down inside that the world is not beautiful anymore and we'd better start picking sides now before everything falls apart.

who are you describing? seriously.

really annoying when people use "we" when describing their own baggage. should be "I" keep your silly self deprecation to yourself.
 

And now that he's dead, nobody's got the guts to dream big anymore. So we fall back on what we know... The same old conflicts, the same old prejudices... And it's so much easier to identify with feeling righteous and wanting to be violent than it is to take the high road and endure conflict and tension to create mutually empowering relationships.

You're talking about a terrible hollywood "movie" that's designed to make money, little else.

_lots_ of people have guts and dream big these days. You're talking about garbage like it's the only show in town. (and so dramatic) my god there's sooo many good real movies being made these days. obviously way more than back then. You watch hollywood garbage and think it's a reflection of the people? what planet are you on?

Why? Because need a distraction! We need something mindless to watch that we don't have to think about because we do enough of that when we're out of the theatres. Thinking today is depressing, and we don't want to be depressed. We want to sit back and dream that the world is beautiful when it's not. We want to believe that we're just a few short technological leaps away from salvation, and we want to imagine ourselves in this "better world" -- a better world that doesn't involve us changing who we are, or sacrificing the things we want.

So we throw a bunch of cast members together, make a bunch of stereotyped caricatures out of them so that we can all find at least one to identify with, and then send them off to wreck bloody vengance on the world because we're so sick of feeling powerless that the idea of fighting some righteous battle is very appealing. And of course they'll reward us in this fantasy world with sex, power, and a grand adventure.

Yeah. They raped our childhood. Yeah, it jumped the shark. It's only because we're too afraid to dream of Utopia. We're too afraid to think that our neighbors aren't our enemies but could be our allies, our friends. We're scared of people who are differently colored than us, who think differently than us, and we know deep down inside that the world is not beautiful anymore and we'd better start picking sides now before everything falls apart.

That was the genius of Roddenberry; He made a futuristic utopia that was still populated by people just as flawed, just as human as we were, but we worked together because there were BIGGER differences out there. Aliens bent on world domination. Space probes gone beserk. A new challenge every week that was so much bigger than something as petty as race and sex differences to unite everyone. And now that he's dead, nobody's got the guts to dream big anymore. So we fall back on what we know... The same old conflicts, the same old prejudices... And it's so much easier to identify with feeling righteous and wanting to be violent than it is to take the high road and endure conflict and tension to create mutually empowering relationships.

Hollywood is a mirror... It shows us at our best, and at our worst. You will be missed, Gene.

If by "animate" you mean "crude two dimensional caricature", then I agree with you 100%.

Rather than develop his characters, Jordan seemed more interested in allowing them to slip into a near parody of their former selves and introduce even more sub-characters to personify whatever he felt the current sub-plot required.

you realize that if helping the poor were voluntary rather than mandatory, help would be turned into a small fraction of what it is. does that not expose a rather huge flaw in your opinion?

and then the associated ills that would rise because of that would tax you: disease, crime, etc., far more than the bite out of your take home pay

in this life, on some issues, the choice is not a black and white choice between being free and not being free, but between shades of grey, different levels of impediments to your freedom

when it comes to your assistance to the poor, a mandated government program is actually cheaper, is actually less of an impediment on you, than some sort of volunteer situation that hardly anyone contributes to

"I do not, however, have any compassion for those who are in a permanent, self-made cycle of dependency on others to pay for their poor decisions, their thoughtless actions, or their general laziness."

i'm not saying you should. i'm just asking you to recognize that this stereotype, while real, is not the sum total of what your assistance to the poor is going to fulfill. its not even the majority. its a just a convenient cardboard cut out caricature you trounce out to make you feel better about your selfish attitude

because yes, there are good for nothings who live off the assistance of others. and then there are fools like you, their mirror opposite, who would walk by a man crying help and bleeding in the street, while you mumble out 'freeloaders'

because yes, you bring up the idea of volunteering in your words, but the overarching theme of what you wrote rules out the possibility that some people actually need help in this world for valid reasons. i would bet a year of my salary that you would never volunteer anything in your life, because you have basically rationalized that all assistance to the poor goes to freeloaders. so what are volunteers in your eyes? deluded fools who are duped by fast talking freeloading conmen?

all i see in your words are crocodile tears, not a morally or intellectually coherent opinion. start with the large chink in your armor that supposes volunteer aid to the poor is somehow as adequate as mandated aid, figure otu why you are wrong about that, and then claw your way back to a coherent common sense approach to society and freedom. you don't have it right now