Don’t forget that tonight sees the close of our two most recent giveaways, for The Many Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh and The Best Of Casper Volumes 1 and 2. You have until midnight tonight to zap your entries to us! Good luck!

One of the first big hits of this year, and one I have to admit to missing when it was in theaters, I am very much looking forward to catching the CGI-enhanced epic 300 when it comes to DVD on July 31. As you all know, the movie was based on the stylized graphic novel by Sin City‘s Frank Miller, and used the same technique as that film to bring the action to life, with the leads (including a supposedly terrific over the top performance from The Phantom Of The Opera himself, Gerard Butler) filmed against visual effects screens and composited into the computer animated landscapes. The result looks more like a video game and even creates the illusion that the actors have been airbrushed heavily, but the film went on to secure more than $200m in a usually quiet spot for action titles, and looks like it’s going to be a major hit on home video.

The movie retells, via Miller, the story of the 300 Spartan warriors led by the heroic King Leonidas who challenge Xerxes and his massive Persian army at the ancient Battle of Thermopylae. Facing insurmountable odds, they fought to the death to defend their honor and freedom, inspiring all of Greece to unite against the enemy. The 2-Disc Special Edition that I’ll be nabbing promises to come loaded with “over 90 minutes of thrilling extras, including additional scenes and revealing featurettes on the real-life Spartans”. For those HD-DVD fans, Warners has an exclusive, giving the viewer the chance to experience the entire film with a blue screen picture in picture pre-effects version running throughout the feature with special commentary by director Zack Snyder, plus an exclusive strategy game Vengeance And Valor.

Unfortunately, the Blu-Ray spec isn’t yet up to that little pic-in-pic gimmick, though that’s not going to stop me joining those in the BR camp soon. This edition of the flick will include all the standard DVD features, but in high-definition video, including additional scenes, the featurettes and webisodes that go on set with the cast and crew.

Even better, leading up to these releases of the film, you real hard-core fans can Join The 300 themselves! Warners have launched the site, which features 300-related challenges for “fans to complete and boasting social networking and user-generated content functionality”, with the chance to win two trips to San Diego’s Comic-Con International where the two winners will compete head-to-head for a once in a lifetime trip to visit the set of director Snyder’s upcoming film Watchmen.

So what are you waiting for? Go Join The 300 and see if you’ve got what it takes! For the rest of us, we’ll just wait until the end of July to watch what promises to be an enjoyable, barnstorming action picture of the old-school epic variety dressed up in suitably extravagant visuals!

– Ben.