"Some of my colleagues have expressed the fear, not wholly unwarranted, that movies like "300" -- pictures made largely on computers -- are the wave of the future and will eventually supplant conventional filmmaking. I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon: "300" may make money, but I doubt even the least discriminating yobbos on the planet would want every movie to look like this." -- Stephanie Zacharek, 2007-03-09

I betcha Beowulf is gonna make a ton of money from actually discriminating yobbos (whatever they are) like me, probably even more than 300 did. Haven't seen it yet, just the trailers, so maybe the movie itself looks bad when the trailers don't (wouldn't be the first time), but still, epic fantasy is a little different in its visual demands than art-house European/Indie philosophy/human-misery films (which I also enjoy sometimes).

Epic heroic fantasy isn't supposed to look real. It can't. So it shouldn't. It should look like a graphic novel (or comic book, if you want to be snooty). Just like Sin City and 300 did, marvelous films both. It may not be your cup of tea, but you really shouldn't stretch that hard to piss all over them.

From the same 300 review: "We go to the movies to see people who look like us -- they may be better-looking versions of us, but their humanity is still the selling point."

(Somebody should have explained that to Van Gogh and Picasso at the time; no wait, they did.) No we don't all go to all movies to see people who look like us, not in term of epic fantasy anyway. Precisely the point of graphic novels is that you are looking at artistic depictions of selected cruxes of humanity, not well-rounded characters, "just like us." Shakespeare did well rounded characters; Sophocles and even Euripides did what amount to cartoon characters: one dimensional, static, and almost alien. You wanna claim that one is art and the other not?

A good example would be Prospero's Book vs Sin City: one is positively rococo (and fabulously gorgeous) and the other is simplistic in the extreme, and both work marvelously well. There is more than one kind of visual depiction in the world, though insanely artificial different types may be.

This kind of art may not be your cup of tea, and the technology may have failed for all I know, but neither is grounds for in effect accusing the makers of being lazy soul-suckers.

(Oh, and as an aside, Death Becomes Her and Back to the Future are "real movies" by a "wonderful filmmaker?" Huh?)

1) It is not Sharia law per se that does not allow a woman to be in a car with a male non-relative (the Koran & Hadith do not actually mention cars any more than the Bible or Torah do). Otherwise taxis would be unknown throughout the Muslim world, which let me assure you is not the case. It is the Saudi Wahabi/Tribal interpretation of Sharia that says this. Don't blame Sharia, blame Wahabism, and even more, Saudi's bizarre feudal/theocratic/tribal government. Sharia stands to day to day law like the Bill of Rights stands to day to day US court operations: think of Saudi as a country that has been taken over by Montana Militia/Aryan Nations types. And remember this is the only country in the world named after a family, a polygamist tribal one at that.

2) The real determining factor is not so much that she is female, as that she is a member of Saudi's oppressed & feared Shi'ite minority. If she had been say one of the approximately 15,000 princesses related to the al'Saud family (corrupt whiskey-swilling debauched whoring free-spenders that they are), you can bet there would be no question of lashes, and the boys that did it would be in Riyadh's public square getting their heads cut off, PDQ.

3) Arab generally, and Saudi particularly, judicial processes are actually somewhat similar to North American ones: the prosecution (the "Judges" are also prosecutors, similarly to the French/Napoleonic system) goes maximal for the press at the start, but somehow or other the actual punishments imposed after the trial process is done usually work out a good deal more humanely. (Not humanely by Western standards, not by a long shot, humanely in comparison to the maximal charges and punishments laid out at the start.)

4) Which is not to say that this isn't totally vile and revolting. It is a pretty good picture of the US's best friend in the Arab World. Yay!

"As a "tainted" woman, it will be very hard for her to find a husband in a Muslim nation, much less love, respect, and understanding."

Really? Pretty broad statement about Muslim nations. How do you know that? Muslim men (from Indonesia to the US and everything in between including India, Italy, and the UK just for starters) aren't human beings who love their daughters and sisters (and mothers), and indeed their girlfriends? They are automatically programmed to engage in massive misogyny and perform honour killings because they read the Koran?

Muslim men aren't capable of loving a woman who has experienced tragedy? Do you think they are less human than you?

Wait, Christian men have been known to rape women, therefore Christianity is a Religion of Rape, just like Islam is a Religion of Female "Honour" Killings.

"That only justice that would be fitting would be for a Muslim man to find it in his heart to not blame her."

Justice depends on a man loving and not blaming her? How would you do on "finding it in your heart" not to blame a rape victim? Do you really think that you are much different in that respect from an Arab man?

And anyway I have to ask this: what if she is gay? Could not justice involve a woman (Muslim or not) who loved her? What is so redeeming about heterosex? Or sex at all?

You are kind of dangerously starting to think like those Saudi assholes.