I generally don’t groove on comic books, but I love ancient Greece. Rome, too, for that matter. Caught a documentary on Hannibal and Scipio during my flight on Tuesday – made the afternoon just fly by. But comic books, or whatever they call them these days? Feh. So whether or not to see “300” was pretty much a no-brainer – it would be on cable soon enough.

But then I read this outraged Slate Review of “300” by Dana Stevens (HT Allah). Now, I’m seriously considering camping outside the cinema:

One of the few war movies I've seen in the past two decades that doesn't include at least some nod in the direction of antiwar sentiment, 300 is a mythic ode to righteous bellicosity… King Leonidas is not above playing the tyrant himself. When a messenger from Xerxes arrives bearing news Leonidas doesn't like, he hurls the man, against all protocol, down a convenient bottomless well in the center of town. "This is blasphemy! This is madness!" says the messenger, pleading for his life. "This is Sparta," Leonidas replies. So, if Spartan law is defined by "whatever Leonidas wants," what are the 300 fighting for, anyway? And why does that sound depressingly familiar?

I guess we now have to see “300.” VDH says it’s really good, and it seems like all the right people might wind up hating it.

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