Remember the 300 ...

I have just been to see 300.

In case you have been sitting on a pillar in the desert for the last month, 300 is the movie adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel of the same name, in which a band of 300 Spartans die defending Greece against a Persian grand army.

Over the last month or so, reactions to the movie have been mixed. Some commentators loved the theatricality, the violence and the technology. (The entire movie was filmed in 60 days on blue and green screens in Montreal.) Others have deplored the historical inaccuracies. (There were other Greeks at Thermopylae besides the 300 Spartans, and the Persian Immortals probably weren't samurai-masked ninjas!) On reflection, the verdict of the Rotten Tomatoes web site seems fairly accurate: "a simple-minded but visually exciting experience".

Incidentally, historian Victor Davis Hanson's audio commentary can be found here.