Word: butlering
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...original, Leonidas (Phantom of the Opera's Gerald Butler) goes to the swinish holy men, the Ephors, for permission to wage a defense against the million-man army of the Persian monarch Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro, from Lost). The oracle waffles, but Leonidas, saying he's just going out for a stroll with his private guards, leaves his wife Gorgo (The Brothers Grimm's Lena Headey) and leads his loyal band to their desperate and storied destiny. He might have triumphed, if the homunculus Ephialtes (Andrew Tiernan, from British TV) had not betrayed the Greeks and told Xerxes their strategy...
...Miller pictures Leonidas as a hero of Hestonian features (though Butler looks like a sturdier Soupy Sales). He gives a lot of cross-species personality to his villains. He draws the Ephors as pigmen with pigment. And Ephialtes is Miller's Gollum: misshapen in body and mind, eager to please, susceptible to bribes. His battles are grandly realized, with dark splashes of Utrillo. The whole thing is the smartest rendering of a klassics komic book, which the movie basically dupes, down to the last frame. It's a virtual Xerxes Xerox...
...movie is totally gay, a romp in Homer eroticism. Male body worship abounds; the actors, who seem pumped up on Hellenic growth hormones, hardly need shields or swords. Their pecks are their breastplate; their tumorous abs are their body armor. (Thee closing credits list two "personal trainers to Mr. Butler, so I guess the muscles aren't all CGI.) They boast and tease each other about their physiques, which to me sounds like flirting. At times these ancient bodybuilders look like their own statuary, heroic and sometimes headless...
...Butler, I’ve never heard of them,” Shelomi wisely states. “But butlers aren’t good at football, so they won?...
...Intervention,” the fourth song on the album, questions are posed by the group, and most are unanswered. “Who’s gonna throw the very first stone? / Who’s gonna reset the bone?” frontman Win Butler quavers. While the songs occasionally resemble sermons, they rarely feel preachy. One of the greatest improvements in “Neon Bible” is its defined, consistent tone. However, it’s also its greatest flaw. The album as a whole distinctly lacks a balance between lighter fare and the full...