Go Big Or Go Home!

Last night was an epic Bad Night Out At The Movies, or Night Out At the Bad Movies...not only did we go see 300 at the newly-christened Scotiabank Theatre (henceforth to be referred to as the Mount Scotia - catchier, like the Mount Pleasant. All right? Pass it on!) we saw it IN IMAX. And we actually went to the bar at the theatre beforehand.

The last time I went to a movie at the IMAX theatre was the only slightly campier Siegfried and Roy: The Magic Box in 3-D; before the movie that night they hit us with a laser light show of jet engine takeoff simulation and some of 1998's finest corporate-friendly techno with a standard-issue announcer voice pointing out the giant speakers behind the giant screen. I'm happy to report they haven't updated the light show in 7 years except for a bunch of spinning Cineplex logos thrown on right at the end, which of course, set off the laughing jags in my section that continued all the way through the ridiculous 300 - a true spectacle of kitsch, full of Chiclet-teethed slabs of beef screaming at faggy Persians when it's not just a giant Matrix-y, Hero-ey blob of Chav-friendly ultraviolence, as enjoyable as watching someone else play XBox for two hours.



The speech that closes the film is a nasty bit of pro-war propaganda as unsubtle in its way as anything that ever came out of North Korea, aimed at draft-aged American males (and their little brothers) who got to spend their formative years in the shadow of 9/11 - Starship Troopers was at least kidding as it ladled out the fascist eyecandy!