NCIS: Homage to Gibbs

I missed my favourite TV show this week (hint: NCIS) but found this fun homage to Gibbs at YouTube:

300: The Movie

I discovered a great action movie coming out this year, based upon the Frank Miller comic of the same name, which is a mythic re-telling of the actions of Leonidas king of Sparta and his 300 strong bodyguard at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC.

Gerard Butler, who stars as King Leonidas, states, “It’s almost like somebody who was there and witnessed the battle went to sleep and dreamed the whole thing again because a lot of it is very representational … a lot of it exists in the imagination, so it allows us to take it so much further. It’s an incredible story, which has been an inspiration to so many people throughout history, but it’s not a documentary. It is a fantastic story full of passion and politics and brutality and so many more things, existing in this hyper-real, beautiful, emotional world.”

It does seem to have lots of gore and a bit of sex, but reports so far seem to indicate that the highly stylised nature of the action scenes makes it acceptable. It always stood out as one of the more interesting moments in history when I was at school - it was the first example I saw of men defining heroism by what they tried to do, rather than what they actually achieved.

Watch the trailer for yourself:

Seeing the style of the art for the movie reminded me of another great poster which Chris Achilleos created for another take on the Battle of Thermopylae:

“Madness? This is Sparta!”