I was debating whether or not to see the movie “300″ because it looked so overproduced and like a comic book. You can see what I mean by the photos. Well I saw it and I was really impressed and amazed by the film’s powerful visuals and remarkable story. I love this movie and I have thought about it all week. Only later did I find out that it was in fact based on a comic book by Frank Miller who created the comics Batman, Daredevil and Sin City. You can read an interview with Miller here

The movie is about the city of Sparta in Ancient Greece that was a military state in which all boys were recruited at the age of 7 directly into life long military training. Harsh. If you don’t know much about the history of ancient Greece this is a stunning blog. The film production of this graphic novel stars Gerard Butler as King Leonidas, you can read about the casting. The King leads an epic battle of a group of 300 soldiers against 10s of thousand of Persian invaders. Seems like a tall tale, which was probably exaggerated over the centuries (this was almost 2,000 years ago). Nonetheless this makes for inspiring movie making and the film grossed over 100 million.

This is a preview for “300″ which is rated R
This clip is not for children

Here is an actual statue of King Leonidas from the Sparta section in wikipedia

You can buy the 300 DVD or a historic account of the story at Amazon