A pack of tourists and a museum docent fanned out in front of "Leonidas at Thermopylae" in the Louvre a few months ago. Spotting Jacques-Louis David's 1814 oil painting of a buff, naked warrior king preparing to lead 300 Spartan troops into battle, a cheerful young American said: "Awesome. I just made a movie of this."
"Really?" said the docent. "... what does it look like?"
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday March 07, 2007 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 2 inches; 59 words Type of Material: Correction
Sistine Chapel: An article in Sunday's Calendar section about the movie "300" quoted cinematographer Larry Fong as saying, "I'm sure when Leonardo was laying around on his back working on the Sistine Chapel his patrons weren't like, 'We're paying you a lot of money here, pal. What do you mean 'heavenly and angelic'?" The Sistine Chapel's artist was Michelangelo.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday March 11, 2007 Home Edition Sunday Calendar Part E Page 2 Calendar Desk 1 inches; 36 words Type of Material: Correction
Sistine Chapel: An article last Sunday about the movie "300" quoted cinematographer Larry Fong as saying, "I'm sure when Leonardo was laying around on his back working on the Sistine Chapel.... " The artist was Michelangelo.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday March 11, 2007 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 61 words Type of Material: Correction
Sistine Chapel: An article in the March 4 Calendar section about the movie "300" quoted cinematographer Larry Fong as saying, "I'm sure when Leonardo was laying around on his back working on the Sistine Chapel his patrons weren't like, 'We're paying you a lot of money here, pal. What do you mean 'heavenly and angelic'?" The Sistine Chapel's artist was Michelangelo.
The young man shrugged and smiled. "It basically looks like this."
"Well, those men are all naked," the docent said after a long pause.
"Yeah," the man replied. "That's kind of what the Spartans were all about."
Zack Snyder is something of an expert after spending years creating his own audaciously loud, fast-paced cinematic painting of the Spartans' tale, "300," a $60-million live-action adaptation of Frank Miller and Lynn Varley's 1999 graphic novel.
Snyder has visualized thousands of permutations of the overmatched Greek force that held off hoards of advancing Persians in 480 BC, fighting to the death for their freedom and inspiring the resistance of their countrymen. And for "300," he's developed an inventive visual vocabulary, shooting on film and using a bevy of fancy camera, lighting and sonic tricks drawn from his work in commercials to bring his actors, filmed against neutral bluescreen, to bold life in a moody CGI world.
In his second at-bat directing a big studio picture, Snyder, 40, could have tossed off a clanking sword-and-sandals epic, its comic book heroes encased in an impenetrable wall of visual effects. At worst, as far as the studio was concerned, Snyder, whose first film was "Dawn of the Dead," might have pulled off a passable hybrid of "Troy" and "Sin City," which both performed solidly at the box office.
But "300," which opens Friday in regular theaters and in Imax, seems to defy the conventions of stiff and airless bluescreen movies in which muted performances belie pretend environments. The rule on Snyder's sets was that anything the actors touched had to be real -- the stone paths they walked on, the elaborate litter that carries Xerxes, the Persian king. Instead of playing strictly to imaginary foils, they had more tangible environments to ground their performances. Battles were staged with swords and shields.
