“I saw 300 tonight,” a manager-producer friend wrote last week. “Empty and shallow but still cool. I did enjoy seeing as I love the Thermopylae story. More entertaining than I thought it would be, but nowhere near the film it could have been. Gladiator Lite, as in very. And it ain’t Spartacus. Greek mythology done MTV-style. The blood looked more like Jackson Pollock than Goya. No emotional content. Lotsa splashing.

“The semi-naked men, rather than any real plot, kept me amused. Did men in Sparta always parade around half naked? A bit of fiction here. I’ve also never seen such a washboard stomach competition! Some trainers made a lot of dough on weight-lifting this year.

“The stylized comic book look was intriguing, but an exercise. Frankly it made it less sensual and subtle and clearly more graphic”and superficial. The dialogue is redundant. Music felt like a Gladiator rip-off, and a couple of scenes felt totally lifted from Ridley Scott. I hope Ridley, not Frank Miller, is the future of filmmaking.”