Deliberate Thought
This is a very round analog piece with a subtle choir. Keep listening. They’re in there!

Q: What do you call one hundred Persians at the bottom of the ocean?
A: A good start.
I like Frank Miller — he’s been at the forefront of getting comics and graphic novels recognized as serious work, and I’m glad of that — so I was looking forward to this film. And now, though I may be a lone voice crying in the wilderness, I have to say that I didn’t really like it. Sigh.
In 480 B.C., King Xerxes of the Persian Empire attempted to invade Greece. A force gathered from the various Greek city-states of the time went to Thermopylae (literally hot gateway), the only pass through the mountains the Persians could use, and held off the Persian hordes long enough for Athens to prepare for a naval battle. They fell after three days, betrayed by a Greek who lived nearby. Their sacrifice made Thermopylae into a byword for tactics, determination, and courage.
That’s the real story in a nutshell. It sounds grand enough to me — what more could you want, than these few overwhelmed soldiers fighting and dying to defend their homes and families, for their own honor and for the sake of their comrades?
Apparently, you want giants, pseudo-samurai, battle rhinoceri, a frighteningly androgynous god-king that travels around on his own portable staircase, and redundant voice-over narration that made me want to yell for the projectionist to turn the sound off. (Don’t even get me started on the wrinkly ‘priests’ covered with boils who keep control of the young, beautiful oracles and can only be bribed with huge amounts of gold. I think maybe they were early Ferengi. This was more a sci-fi movie than anything else.) You also want faded-out color, grainy film, and a hugely annoying obsession with slow motion.
Honestly, isn’t that done with yet? Ever since The Matrix, every action film that also wants to be considered ‘artistic’ resorts to the slow motion thing, and it’s driving me crazy. This film was just a few minutes shy of two hours, but it would have only been ninety minutes if the action had just gone at normal speed once in a while. Entirely undramatic sequences still got the slow treatment, for no reason I could see except to remind the audience that they’re watching something Grand. Once it almost turned into a music video, and I seriously considered leaving the theatre.

Leonidas shows off his six-pack, and Gorgo laments her unfortunate name (and wardrobe).

Anyway. Gerard Butler plays King Leonidas, leader of the Spartan troops. You can tell he’s king because his beard precedes him by a good half-hour. He’s also the spokesperson for Democracy in Action against the horrible Xerxes, whose troops are all mistreated slaves. Never mind that historically, Sparta had only a few elements of what we would call democracy, being instead more totalitarian, regulating everything down to the length of a man’s hair; and the Persians were enlightened despots who valued truth and justice above all things, and generally won the respect of those they conquered.
There was at least a good female role, in Lena Headey as Leonidas’ queen, Gorgo. Yes, Gorgo. I’d wondered why no one called her by name during the film. But she’s as strong a character as any of the men, fighting a political battle to rally the reluctant Spartans to her husband’s aid. (Maybe she should also try to get some kind of railing around that giant hole in the middle of the town square.) She gets a far better inspirational speech than any of Leonidas’, strangely, but I was just glad to see that women weren’t completely neglected as I feared they might be. Dominic West is playing a bad guy, a career politician and Gorgo’s main opponent. I’m not used to him as a bad guy, so this was kind of strange, but he is a good actor.
I have nothing bad to say about any of the acting, which makes the movie’s faults seem that much more awful. It goes so far over the top striving for glory that it just slides down into the valley of ridiculousness on the other side. Life was brutish and short then, and I didn’t need three slow-motion decapitations to prove that. (There may have been more than three, but I sort of stopped looking.) The rare scenes where the film succeeded in moving me were the small, human scenes. The Spartans discover a burned-out village, and a terrified child passes out in Leonidas’ arms. Two soldiers tease each other and boast in the pauses between combat. That’s what I was hoping for from this movie.
Instead, I got a movie to which I can only give two idols, darn it. It was at least visually stunning, when it wasn’t lapsing into Matrix-land, and those brief moments of simple humanity really do shine, in spite of all the tedious fighting in between. Yes, after the first few minutes of it, I can only say it lapsed into tedium, I’m afraid. The best advice I can give you? Take the money you would have spent here and go buy a copy of Gates of Fire, by Stephen Pressfield. It’s just as blood-spattered, but underneath that blood you’ll find real human beings, and it’ll make you cry for them.

So for this one, I did a little research. There were two things involved in this film that I really didn’t know anything about: the real-life Zodiac killings, and Jake Gyllenhaal. I’d heard of both, but really couldn’t pick either one out of a line-up, so to speak. I wasn’t even born when the killings began, and (like just about everyone else I know), my history class in school barely made it up to World War II, so my knowledge of anything after the Battle of Britain is a little shaky. I’m not sure we would have covered serial killers anyway.
A quick check of Jake’s career revealed that I hadn’t seen him in a movie since his debut in City Slickers at age ten, so I still didn’t know if I’d like seeing him as the star of a major motion picture. (No, I haven’t seen Brokeback Mountain. Yes, I know it won three Oscars.) As it happens, I still don’t quite know what he’s like as the star, because he isn’t, really. He doesn’t start carrying the picture until the last forty minutes or so. The rest is all Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards as the police detectives in charge of the case, and the scene-stealing Robert Downey Jr. playing Paul Avery, a crime reporter who drinks too much, smokes too much, and does all the other bad things you expect from one of Robert’s characters. He also (at least at the beginning) looks like he’s in search of a trendy coffeehouse where he can recite his latest poetry.
For those of you as clueless about the Zodiac killer as I was, here’s the summary: in 1969, three northern California newspapers received letters from a man claiming responsibility for three murders and one near miss in the area. Also included was a cryptogram which supposedly contained his identity, though of course it didn’t or we wouldn’t have this movie now. It was mainly badly-spelled rantings about why he was killing people, but it was scary enough. The media focused its attention, and a new serial killer was born. Read all about it here.

The Chronicle cryptogram, described by a random person in the film as “not looking very Christian”

Jake plays Robert Graysmith, the political cartoonist for the San Fransisco Chronicle when the whole mess began. Graysmith’s 1986 book Zodiac was the basis for this film, and considering how much of this movie shows Graysmith staring wide-eyed, looking like a lost, hopelessly confused puppy, I’m faintly surprised he wrote a book about anything. But he likes cryptograms, and forms a slightly awkward friendship with Avery over this, and slowly, Graysmith’s interest in the Zodiac morphs into obsession.
Being based pretty closely on real life, I was expecting that the film wouldn’t feel polished, but it was still jarring at times. You’re going to get sick to death of captions that say things like, “2 1/2 weeks later, Vallejo, California”, for instance. Leads are discovered, sound promising, and then vanish at breakneck speed without being resolved one way or another. That must be how real investigations go all the time, but I don’t pay to watch them. On the other hand, the film does do a nice job of showing how the case affects all those involved. Graysmith and Avery lose the most — the former a marriage and (I think) a job; the latter quits his job and eventually smokes himself to death. There’s nothing like watching Robert Downey Jr. sitting in a bar, alternating puffs of his cigarette with breaths from his oxygen tank.
All in all it was a fun ride, and I give it three and three-quarter idols. The acting is uniformly top-notch, the story moves along at a good pace and keeps the audience’s interest, and movie fans like myself will have the added bonus of spotting all the classic movie posters around. I’m also always glad to see Brian Cox, here playing flamboyant attorney Melvin Belli and having a great time doing it; and there’s a fun cameo by Clea DuVall, who I really miss seeing on Heroes. One warning, though: the ending is tantalizingly ambigous, so if not knowing drives you crazy, watch out. Just like real life, there’s no pat solution.

Netherworld Shanty
First I must say, I like this one. A lot. Too much. The idea for this piece was “If purgatory had a marching band”. So, there’s a very badly played tin whistle, an accordion, a bassoon, and a bunch of other stuff. I’m pretty sure the melody is catchy – and the fact that it is stuck in my head is not just the result of mixing the piece for hours… Like Great Cthulhu, this piece is wonderful, horrible, and awesome. You mind will forever be marred by it.
Phantasm
I’m not going to lie to you – this piece made me ill. No joke. That being said, the music that causes me the most trouble tends to be the music that everyone loves. If you don’t have a subwoofer – you won’t experience the pain inducing aspect of this piece. All of the bass notes are the same volume. I guarantee it. You can tune your equalizer with this piece if some notes are louder or softer. Careful not to get sick, though. This thing has a power. Be careful with it.
Lasting Hope
This has a sort of similar purpose as the last piece, only it won’t make you sick. This is one of the first things I’ve done with a choir. It has an almost organic synth, and some neat – if sparce – percussion. This was mixed entirely on a Mac. One day, I hope to switch to all-Mac production, but right now – I’ve too much invested in software on the other side… and just enough things aren’t available.
Perigrine Grandeur
This piece started on my dry erase board as the rhythm you hear in the first 2 measures. But that’s all I really had. It shows. The agogo was the next thing that made it into the mix… and then the hammer dulcimer. The who what? Hammer dulcimer. Yes. It is the thing that sounds like a guitar. I put it through a distortion unit and a guitar amp simulator. The result is an odd World-music hybrid that sounds like it belongs in a Cirque show on the strip in Vegas. I gave it an odd name figuring it would be hard for people to find. That’s just me being mean.
This piece used to have so much more in it… but I cut it back to the bare bones. It had bridges and multiple melodies, and just a lot of stuff… but it became difficult to listen to and the coolness of the original 2 measures was lost.

A bit of warning for this first piece. The bass is very heavy. It will punch you in the gut and blow out your speakers if you turn it up too much. You’ll get about 30 seconds before it hits… so don’t say I didn’t warn you. Big Mojo is the kind of piece you’d hear in a very loud action sequence in a very loud action film. There are plenty of cut-outs for dialog and other explosions.
At another edge of the musical spectrum; Mariachi Snooze. This is a nice light fun swing piece in a very very major mode. Nothing to offend here… just light fun.
Also, I received a great little voice-over sounder from S. L. Slaughter. If you like the sound of it and think you have a use for Voice-Overs in your own project, I suggest you contact him. The man can make anything sound exciting. Even a quilting bee. (to my knowledge he has not done voice work for a quilting bee… but he could… if you paid him money.)