The sinewy Spartans of 300 finally barricaded themselves into our local dollar theater this week, so the 'Fesser and the cinetrix ambled over to see what all the homosocial hot fuss was about. Boy howdy, was the abs airbrusher overtaxed on that set!
Strictly by coincidence, the cinetrix also sat down with another CGI wonder earlier in the weekend, the unwieldily monikered The Chroni--what?--cles of Naria: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and she's gotta say that Tilda Swinton's White Witch beats nine-and-a-half-foot-tall, self-proclaimed deity Xerxes manicured hands down for overall scariness. In a classic case of never sending a pierced, painted brow drag queen to do a real frosty, dreadlocked queen's job, the sublime Ms. Swinton was a hands-on ruler--a regular street fighter, really--and still has the cinetrix quaking in fear. Not to mention she wins the battle of the biers handily. Eunuchs, feh. Whatever.
Of course, there is the matter of superior source material to consider. C.S. Lewis's Christo-leonine children's series is a classic, while Frank Miller's graphic novel aims straight for the fan boys. The stakes just seem higher when you pit four nice pasty British schoolchildren against grotesque giants, dwarves, and wolves than when you set a bunch of Chelsea boys into slo-mo battle with baddies like the Immortals, who, with their gleaming identical steel rictuses, resemble nothing scarier than an army of storm troopers modeled after a scowling Fiddy Cent.
OK, 300 has it all over the lions when it comes to nudity, I'll grant you that. The director's fondness for tiny, pert, natural breasts was refreshing, especially given the flick's graphic comic book orgins and its desired demographic.
Both films share the bottom-line-pleasing cast of [near nude to clothed] mostly unknowns, which is a plus. [The cinetrix couldn't stop marveling at how much Susan Pevensie reminded her of pal Little Ayun.] For real. Just think of how much more CGI those lower salaries bought. Without them, there'd be no hunchbacks or fauns, no charging rhino with pierced nipples or soaring griffons. And who couldn't use more soaring griffons?
I also will concede that 300's green screen horizons were far superior to Lion's occasionally flat depth of field. At times, those stormy Spartan skies seemed culled from Rembrandt's stolen canvas.
But the sad fact remains that 300 pretty much put the cinetrix to sleep. Literally, Granted, it had been a long weekend, capped by an epic 10-hour party, but still. Its near silent-film take on racial purity and tedious voiceover narration lacked the sense of urgency of Lion's similarly preoccupied with pure-bloodedness story.
Screw Leonidas's Sparta. I'll take the Lion's Narnia any day.
[Also, they really should consider a fence around that bottomless well in Sparta. That shit's dangerous.]
