A North Korean terrorist may be responsible for taking the president hostage, but it’s Bulgarian-made CGI that does the most damage in Antoine Fuqua’s intense, ugly, White-House-under-siege actioner Olympus Has Fallen.

Cut past the pic’s superficial patriotism, and the message is ironically clear: Never outsource your visual effects when a domestic shop will do.
Courageously representing the human element in this mostly digital assault on American soil, Gerard Butler holds his own as a one-man-army. Millennium was wise to push this grim act-of-war movie out three months ahead of Columbia’s like-minded “White House Down.
Olympus Has Fallen” helmer Fuqua, who’s known for bringing an unflinching toughness to inner cities (“Training Day”) and ancient history (“King Arthur”), sticks to the “Die Hard” model here, minus most of the tossed-off one-liners.
In ex-Special Forces pro Mike Banning, Butler presents a gritty but humorless hero who cusses, bleeds and occasionally pauses to remove shards of glass from his wounds.
Olympus Has Fallen

Reviewed at Aidikoff screening room, Los Angeles, March 18, 2013. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 120 MIN.
A Film District release of a Millennium Filmspresentation of a Nu Image/Gerard Butler/Alan Siegel Entertainment production. Produced by Antoine Fuqua, Butler, Siegel, Ed Cathell III, Danny Lerner, Mark Gill. Executive producers, Avi Lerner, Danny Dimbort, Trevor Short, Boaz.
Directed by Antoine Fuqua. Screenplay, Creighton Rothenberger, Katrin Benedikt. Camera (color, widescreen), Conrad W. Hall; editor, John Refoua; music, Trevor Morris; production designer, Derek R. Hill; art director, Karen Steward; set decorator.
Cathy T. Marshall; costume designer, Doug Hall; sound (Datasat/Dolby Digital), Steve C. Aaron; supervising sound editor, Mandell Winter.
re-recording mixers, Chris David, Daniel Leahy; special effects coordinator, Jack Lynch; visual effects producer, Scott Coulter; visual effects, Worldwide FX, Ghost FX, Base FX; stunt coordinator, Keith Woulard; associate producer, Danielle Robinson; second unit director.
Jamie Marshall; second unit camera, Gary Capo; casting, Cathy Sandrich Gelfond, Amanda Mackey, Ryan Glorioso.
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I just finished Eric Adler's The Battle of the Classics, and wanted to say something about Joel Christiansen's review linked below. I am not sure what motivates the review (I speculate a bit below), but it gives a very misleading impression of the book. 1/x


The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x

Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x

The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x

It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x

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