Friday, August 17, 2007

Blue Ray Night - "300"

Mr Frank Miller's 300 was a treat in the theater last year, each time I went. To deconstruct that for ya: I am a Frank Miller Fanboy. Yes, I own original the original of most of the Sin City comics that I bought throughout the nineties.
This adaptation of 300, like Sin City before it, has the blessing of Frank himself, and the attention to detail only a true fan would have included. The good news is that the directors devotion must have been catchy, as all parties involved seem to have gone above and beyond on the presentation of this material.
One does need to separate the source from the movie, particularly this material, at this time. By "this time" I mean while the United States is occupying a foreign country and simultaneously stripping US citizens of rights and privacy. The exultation of Spartan values in 300 rings hollow when my jaw is clenched in shame for what has been done in my name in the Middle East...we are the invading horde, not the tiny group of valiant freedom fighters we cheered for in 300.(end digression)
There is already a review of 300 on this blog, this was a Blue Ray taste test...
I must stress that this is hardly unbiased -- I was A) in the company of good friends, 2) slightly inebriated and C) happy to pour over each scene with the sharpness lens screwed directly into my optic nerve.
Detail, color, contrast all looked superior to conventional DVD. This film is nearly animated with the full blue screen filming technique so I was not at all concerned with the unnatural presentation, and indeed welcomed it. Style over content is not the bad thing in movies that it is in music.
This movie has style. Blue Ray revealed details lost on the huge theater canvas, and let us look into the nooks and crannies of the striking images. I loved the intentional flattening of the screen into nearly 2-D on some of the shots -- in deliberate and warranted homage to Frank Miller's original material.
A good time was had by this reviewer, maybe next months Blue Ray night will be on a film I haven't seen so many times...

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