I do sometimes wonder how old I look -- I had someone recently say (in a professional setting) that I was "so young!" to have the job I do. Well, not really -- I've been doing this ten years, and the job is basically middle management. I didn't ask how old she thought I was.

I kind of loved the NY Times review, though.

Allegory hunters will find some gristly morsels of topicality tossed in their direction, but you can find many of the same themes, conveyed with more nuance and irony, in a Pokémon cartoon.

I have recently started to feel like I look a little old. I really need to figure out how to do something with my skin other than occasional washing (with Ivory soap no less) and even more occasional moisturizing. Because having wrinkles and pimples at the same time is no fair.

The first sentence of the Chicago Sun-Times review of 300

"If you thought "Gladiator" was a bit too stingy with the bloodshed, if you felt "Sin City" could have been more stylized…"

Most of the negative reviews that I've seen involve the "So, the Spartans are all white and their enemies are all black or brown, huh?" or "Wow, look at all the skin, that's effective armor" or "screw the movie, where's the video game that this thing is obviously trying to be?"

flea, stop washing with Ivory! Your face, anyhow. It's fine everywhere else.

I am irrationally delighted for Salma (well, irrationally inasmuch as she is a celebrity whose path will never ever cross mine and whom I "know" only through her movies, shiny magazines, and View Askew commentary tracks, but rationally inasmuch as through those media she seems quite awesome and happiness-deserving).

Ellen BS linked me an awesome review of the 300 from the Village Voice.

I'll be seeing 300 on IMAX this weekend. I'm quite looking forward to it, except perhaps the stylisation. We'll see.

Gladiator doesn't stand out in my mind as particularly grisly--think they chose it because it's "period"?

Look what pregnancy has done to Salma.

I don't know shit about looking old, but I sure do feel it. But really, I just have to make it to the end of the month, and then I can feel 38 and then some. Not too much before.

Gerard Butler, I find you pretty and I would like to enjoy movies that you are in. Why you gotta keep making crap?

Also, there was no gay in Sparta. Nope. No sir. Not at all. In fact, there was no gay in Greece AT ALL EVER.

From the documentary thing The Spartans:

On the final morning, the Spartans followed their usual pre-battle rituals. They stripped naked and exercised. They oiled their bodies and combed out each other's long hair. They wrote their names on small sticks and tied them to their arms – an ancient form of 'dog-tags' that would allow their bodies to be identified later. Persian spies, observing these strange pre-battle rites, reported back to Xerxes, who thought them laughable.