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Youngest kid of six with an inferiority and black sheep complex, but determined that God saves not just his soul to heaven but the remainder of his manic-depressive life, so others won't say he became a Christian and remained a jerk.


MAIN THEMES

On identity
i won't be transparent before i'm opaque. and you'll get to know me starting from the small things: who my favourite bands are. what kind of movies i like. who are my heroes.

On Christianity
I’m convinced that when confronted with sincere, real love, the Jesus factor will become obvious. But let’s not plant the cross before we carry it. I’m not trying to con you.

On dreams
Some dreams are meant to be achieved. I know that. But maybe other dreams are meant to drive us, privately. Never known to anyone but ourselves.


OTHER THEMES

On melancholy
It is a sadness that, when choosing between crying and sighing, will choose sighing. I'd almost say that melancholy is being sad about sadness itself.

On memory and nostalgia
It saddens me when life moves forward and people decide that certain things are worth forgetting.

On language
I've learnt that the word irregardless is filed as a non-standard word in the English language. That's a lexicographer's way of saying it's not a real word.

On politics
Crowds are fickle things. So when we stand in the thousands and cry against the present government, do we know who we're actually crying for?

On society
People always want the best for themselves. But I want to sometimes take second or third or fourth best, just so that the loser down the road doesn't always have to come in last. It must feel like shit to always come in last.

On growing old
Leasehold property make me feel sad. It doesn't matter how old the family photos are that you put on your wall. It's your family but it's not really your wall.

On philosophy
I ask you, if God loves everyone, and if God is also incapable of loving evil, how can there be such a thing as an evil man?

On a daily basis
One line quips, like this.


CHAT





Monday, March 12, 2007
300: FATHER OF ALL TITANS

300 has to be the most raw, limb-chomping depiction of historical/mythical epic battles to ever grace the cinema, and get this - it doesn't even try to be epic. gone are the sweeping shots of tens of thousands clashing in some poetic war, 300 has no intentions of serving up that drivel. Instead, what you get is the harsh collission of bodies and steel in a battle for honour so brutal, it makes 2000's Gladiator look like puppies falling over each other on a flower patch.

Gone also are bronze men with sunsilk hair in skirts, engaging in intricately choreographed swordplay while exchanging smartalec jibes. the horribly gay attempts at Greek history - Troy and Alexander - while possibly accurate (300's King Leonidas calls the Athenians boy lovers) just didn't cut it when juxtaposed with brute machoism. 300 solves that by giving you a bunch of blokes so bent on decapitation, there is barely any room nor time to breathe, or speak, much less exude wit and sexuality.

Brute carnage. Carcasses stacked up in walls. Intelligence. Passion. Raw violence and fiery patriotism. And this is just the 300 Spartans. A hero is only as heroic as his villain is villaneous. And what better villain than the self-professed King-God Xerxes himself. Xerxes is the Persian king found in your thrusty bible in narratives circa ezra, and in 300, he is seen in his full opulence, boasting a brilliant throne enamoured with lions and phoenixes, carried by a sea of slaves. Xerxes himself is adorned in the full campness of apparent immorality - there are traces of all sorts of moral vices surrounding this guy, from lurid dancers to witchcraft and animalism - here's a villain so corrupt, so gross, so dirty, it will make anyone, much less a Spartan king, look like a right-wing conservative with a mission to clean up the filth. xerxes' personal bodyguards is a troop of masked leporous monsters and there are a few heroes in their ranks too - most of them semi-human mistakes of nature, these freaks are gathered from the "darkest corners of his Persian empire" to show the Spartans that Xerxes can.

But the Spartans are the Spartans - bred for war, they take anything in their stride - from massive elephants to magicians to a whole sky filled with arrows. These Spartans are almost non-human themselves in their unquenchable zeal to defend their nation's freedom. meanwhile, the movie flits from the battleground to the dirty politicking going on in the background as Leonidas' queen attempts to get the whole might of the Spartan army unleashed by a superstitious and corrupt senate.

300 is the war movie to end all war movies. when i said earlier that it is epic without trying too hard to be it, i meant that it manages to show such a big heart, such a large courage, and so much passion for their cause without resorting to the giant widescreen shots of big battles that have become so common in movies of the genre, it's also become so tame. director zack snyder has opted to keep our eyes in the thick of the carnage, preferring to dish us torn-up limbs rather than seas of soldiers melding. for this, snyder deserves credit - not only for sticking true to the ethos of the frank miller graphic novel that preceded the movie, but also for resisting the urge to play the game on the same terms as larger flicks like LOTR. and by so doing, snyder succeeds in dipping the viewer's eyes into the bloodsoaked grounds and bring the brutality much closer to home.

so if you're tired of epic movies that unneccessarily exaggerate heroism for only a moment's sake, if you're tired of super goodlooking godlike actors with their hair all in place when they fight, if you're tired of wimpy losers pretending to be toughmen, and if you're tired of sensitive caring soldiers who spend equal amounts of time concerned about puppydog emotions as they spend executing enemies, then 300 is that angry, out-and-out feet-stoping, throat-roaring cut-their-heads-off father of all titans movie that will remind you that killers kill, soldiers soldier and bloodthirsty badass heroes give the enemy nothing but take from them everything.

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Genusfrog [ 2:13 pm ]

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