sheer potentiality

Well, I finally got around to seeing it. It was probably more impressive in the theater, of course, and I regret not seeing it there. Visually, it was impressive. Unique, even. While I never read the original comic it seems very faithful to what the style of the comic must have been. In terms of the production value, battle sequences, and so forth, it was very good. Of course, there was some disturbing subtext:

• Infanticide is a crucial part of the social order.
• Foreigners are inhuman monsters. People with congenital defects are not to be trusted. Black people are evil. Asians are evil. People from the Middle East are evil. And they aren’t very manly, either.
• Warlike kings are honorable and trustworthy, pacifists are not to be trusted. Any check against the leader’s power to make war is antiquated, and anyone who tries to uphold those laws is actually a traitor.

Sure, you may point out that some (but not all) of these ideas were prevalent in ancient Sparta. That’s not the point. Ancient Sparta was what it was—portraying them as artificially noble and freedom-living while vilifying the Persians turns it from epic to cartoonish. (It’s up to you to decide whether “being cartoonish” is a bad thing for a comic book adaptation.) And yes, it’s disturbing that the primary method of vilifying the Persians was to turn them into non-white queers, in case we ever confused them with the white hetero Spartans. The badass-warrior-culture that goes out and kicks ass is such a great idea that’s pulled off so well in so many other places, but making them sympathetic the way 300 did just blunts that. I want to have some evil in my antiheroes, and 300 bleaches it out, with a lot of implicit bigotry tainting the whole thing.

It was a lot better than I had feared, but I still don’t think it’s nearly as good as people say it was.

“I want these motherfucking snakes off the motherfucking plane!” —Samuel L. Jackson in SNAKES ON A PLANE (in recently shot added scenes).

“Enough is enough. I’ve had it with these snakes!” —Samuel L. Jackson in SNAKES ON A PLANE.

All right. Now that I’m back home for another two weeks in the wonderful town of Port Angeles (to answer your question, Jacqueline), I have a few things to do. Namely, read, and above all rent movies. Port Angeles has a relatively good video store, Star Video, which seems to have everything. Which is why I’m posting an open question:

What movies should I rent?

I ask this because all my friends suggest movies to me to rent, and I tell them that I’m putting their suggestions on my list. Thing is, I don’t have a list. But you can all make one for me, if you post your suggestions in the comments. This will also give me a sense of how many people actually read this thing.

Well, we thought it was all over after the Matrix and Lord of the Rings trilogies were over. There were no other upcoming good, geek-friendly movies coming out. Sure. Star Wars Episode III was coming out, and even though it has a cool title (”Revenge of the Sith”), most of us have written it off after Episodes I and II.

We were wrong.

Check this out. It’s the teaser for the upcoming film version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and it looks great! Let’s hope it turns out as awesome as the teaser, because if it does, 2005 will be a good year for geeks.

Graduation: 23 days

Porn and Smokes (18th Birthday): 75 days

College: 96 days

I guess it’s been a week since I last posted. Well, I’ll try and post daily now. I’ve been out of it since last Wednesday though. Thursday I went to see The Matrix Reloaded, which I’ll talk about below. Friday, I got into a car accident. I’d rather not explain, except to say that my car was totaled. That car meant a lot to me. Over the weekend and on Monday, I just didn’t get around to blogging. I had other things to do. I also had to make up for missing school on Wednesday, Friday, and Monday due to an AP test, the car accident, and a field trip, respectively. And yesterday was scholarship night at the high school. I went and found that I was awarded a $500 scholarship. That might pay for a class.

All right. First things first: The Matrix Reloaded was awesome. I had to see it twice to begin to really understand it, but they did a superb job with it. The action scenes are excellent. There’s a bit of humor, with a couple visual jokes and a performance by Hugo Weaving as an rather funny Smith. (I’m gonna reveal some stuff here mostly unrelated to the ending but still related to the movie, so feel free to skip ahead to the next paragraph.) Smith has the capability to replicate himself by comandeering any other person in the Matrix. Of course, any agent can do this, but Smith can have more than one of himself at a time. In one scene, an agent discovers him, and says something along the lines of, “It’s you!” Smith replies, “Me, me, me,” while replicating himself onto the agent. Then the second Smith says, “Me too.” In another scene, Smith replicates himself and adjusts the tie of the replicated Smith. If this doesn’t seem particularly funny to you, it’s Weaving’s delivery that makes it so funny. And the fight scenes (the Oracle’s bodyguard, the Burly Brawl, and the lobby scene being the most prevalent) and the car chase are extraordinarily good.

At our local theater there’s a sign on the door at the entrance that says, and I quote, “NO OUTSIDE FOO OR BEVERAGES.” I wonder if Mr. T works there. “No outside foo!”

Blog to you all later!