Ancient Greek shirts and skins — round two!

Posted on March 10, 2014 by reelentropy

It took eight years for Frank Miller’s 300 to go from page to screen, but his unpublished (read: unwritten) follow-up has skipped the graphic novel treatment and gone straight to cinema.

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Artemisia (Eva Green) evokes Batman & Robin with her be-nippled breastplate in 300: Rise of an Empire. Despite the fashion feaux pas and a questionable script, Green delivers a sterling performance. Photo courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.

300: Rise of an Empire — what empire? There is no empire doing any rising in this movie — sets up a rivalry between Themistocles (Sullivan Stapleton) and Artemisia (Eva Green). Themistocles fights in the Battle of Marathon and kills King Darius I (Yigal Naor), father of Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) from the first movie. After Marathon, the Persians are driven out of Greece for 10 years. Artemisia commands the Persian navy against Themistocles when they return in the battles of Artemisium and Salamis.

In terms of time, Rise of an Empire is a weird parallelquel to 300 — its three battles take place 10 years before, concurrently with and after the Battle of Thermopylae, depicted in the first movie. In terms of actual cinematic merit, it isn’t really related to 300 at all.

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Liam Neeson’s Non-Stop ride to mediocrity

Posted on March 1, 2014 by reelentropy

Can U.S. Air Marshals be foreign? There’s no way Liam Neeson could pass for American. This movie already doesn’t pass the smell test.

Neeson stars as down-on-his-luck air marshal Bill Marks in Non-Stop. After the plane takes off, Marks is texted a threat to kill one person every 20 minutes via his super-secret members-only phone network unless $150 million is wired to an account that turns out to be in his name. Tension, action, racism and negotiations with terrorists ensue.

Non-Stop, more than its own movie, is a wonderful metaphor for Neeson’s career. He started as an award-winning dramatic actor, but he’s devolved into an action star with swiftly-fading credibility and a gorgeous Irish accent.

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Comedy legend Harold Ramis dead at 69

Posted on February 25, 2014 by reelentropy
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Ramis in Ghostbusters

Comedy legend Harold Ramis died yesterday due to complications arising from inflamed blood vessels. He had been fighting an infection since May 2010. He was 69.

Ramis’ filmography includes several cultural touchstones, including Caddyshack, National Lampoon’s Animal House and Ghostbusters. The films also represent ongoing collaborations with Ivan Reitman and Bill Murray, both of whom were involved in Ghostbusters and Stripes, with Reitman producing Animal House and Murray starring in Caddyshack. Ramis and Murray also collaborated in Groundhog Day, with Ramis directing, co-writing and co-producing the Murray classic. Murray is Godfather to Ramis’ first child.

Ramis had two other children and two grandchildren at the time of his death, along with a wife of 25 years.

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Ken Ham vs Bill Nye- Reely understanding the Lego Movie

Posted on February 19, 2014 by reelentropy

***major spoilers to follow***

Far from just another animated distraction for children, The Lego Movie is a genuine work of commercial art. It not only thoroughly distracts the little buggers and makes them want to buy Legos, it teaches them a valuable lesson.

Religious overtones are obvious in and central to the film. Early, though not early enough to cover all themes, the movie tips the audience off to be looking for religious imagery. Lord Business (Will Ferrell), in his room of relics, keeps the Shroud of Band-Ăd, an obvious surrogate for the legendary Shroud of Turin.

Once the audience is cued to look for it, other religious surrogates fall readily into place. The instructions, which Emmet (Chris Pratt) clings to as he would life itself, represent the Bible. The Octan Corporation’s intense media control1 shows the pervasiveness of biblical themes in American culture.

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Ellen Page comes out at human rights convention

Posted on February 15, 2014 by reelentropy

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Ellen Page is gay.

The actress came out this Valentine’s Day at the Human Rights Campaign’s Time to Thrive conference.

Before now, Page has generally stayed out of the tabloids, with her only recent written love interest being a rumored relationship with Alexander Skarsgård, which is kind of creepy because he’s 11 years older than her. The actress achieved stardom in 2007 as the title character in Juno, a film for which she won several Best Actress awards, including Teen Choice and Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association. Her next film is X-Men: Days of Future Past, which will come out May 23, and she is slated to make her directorial debut with Miss Stevens, currently in development.

Page said she was tired of being in the closet and tired of contritely contributing to an industry that reinforces stereotypes.

“You have ideas planted in your head, thoughts you never had before, that tell you how you have to act, how you have to dress and who you have to be,” she said. “I’m tired of hiding and I’m tired of lying by omission.”

In coming out, Page displayed tremendous courage against a country that still only allows gay marriage in 15 of its 50 states and a world that awards Olympics to countries that ban gay propaganda and murder dogs. Reelentropy applauds Page for her bravery, and wishes that her action of simply admitting a core part of her personality was something she didn’t need to be frightened to do.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” she said. “I love you.”

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