IntenseDebate

14 years ago @ Big Hollywood - 'J. Edgar' - Film's Mo... · 0 replies · +13 points

I think I may have a glimmer of an idea as to why Hollywood types, even the group that writes for this site, must accept completely that J.E. Hoover was homosexual and pivot all of their "complexity" theories around that, regardless of the lack of evidence. Could it be that if he wasn't homosexual it would push his character beyond their capacity to understand. There is virtually nothing complex about homosexuality in and of itself, so is it intellectual laziness or a genuine incapacity to understand? Is this distance from genuine human experience rather than the canned homosexual, racist, bigot, fill-in-the-angst trope the reason that the American film industry churns out ever cruder, less entertaining remake after remake and seems to have forsaken creativity? Why does reviewer after reviewer take away from this movie nothing but the skillfully nuanced treatment of Hoovers's homosexuality (which if you remove the name Hoover has only been done about a thousand times) when it is a complete fabrication? What is up with the mental block?

14 years ago @ Big Hollywood - Why Are Audiences Laug... · 2 replies · +5 points

Neither. If you have also read the U.S. Army handed out small pox tainted blankets to "Persons of Post-Glacial Pre-Columbian Trans-Barent Asiatic Descent" for the purpose of genocide, and believe it, then I have a bridge to sell. Three's the charm.

14 years ago @ Big Hollywood - Why Are Audiences Laug... · 0 replies · +2 points

Riiigggghhhht!

14 years ago @ Big Hollywood - Why Are Audiences Laug... · 0 replies · +9 points

" ...the historical record is just fuzzy enough for them not to fully commit to that narrative."
As in so fuzzy that not a shred of said record exists. When a scene in a biopic is crafted to advance a proposition which is utterly devoid of factual support then the audience is free to twist it to its own purposes. They snickered because they relished the innuendo, like teen-agers hearing a dirty rumor about an unpopular teacher. It sounds like "J. Edgar" hit its target audience.

15 years ago @ Big Hollywood - Today's Open Thread: #... · 0 replies · +2 points

This photo goes a long way towards explaining Clark Gable's grief. Good pick.

15 years ago @ Big Hollywood - Shame on America For C... · 0 replies · +4 points

Gore Vidal? Thong? Chafing?

Didn't know Depends came in a thong model. You'ld think they would come pre-powdered or something.

15 years ago @ Big Hollywood - 'Battle: Los Angeles' ... · 3 replies · +3 points

The civilian conceit of mortality is brought up again when another Marine demands to know if their all "expendable". Real world would not be asked. People in uniform are vastly more aware of their mortality, and its value, than the typical civilian. On military installations virtually every building, tree, shrub, or rock larger than a baseball is named after a dead soldier, airman, sailor, or marine. They all know that ultimately everyone is expendable, they see it every day. The object is to not make it a cheap deal for the other side. The word for someone who thinks they are unexpendable is slave. Horatious knew it at the bridge. Xerxes understood it and that is why he made sure that all the dead, both Greek and Persian, were removed from sight before he let his army march through the pass at Thermopylae, not wanting his troops to contrast the mountain of Persian corpses with the pitiful little pile of Greek bodies. The Marines above all know it.

15 years ago @ Big Hollywood - 'Battle: Los Angeles' ... · 1 reply · +4 points

Only two minor quibbles:
1. The Shakey cam was just too shakey, thought I was going to up-chuck a couple of times due to sensory induced vertigo.

2. The scene where the LCpl (I think) tells the 2ndLt that the squad will ditch the SSgt in a heart beat. Very unrealistic. In the real world the LCpl would know better than to even hint that he has less than complete faith in the Chain-of-Command to an Officer. If he had been so stupid as to express the opinion that he could pick and choose who he will allow the MC to put in charge he would have been doing push-ups 'til he puked and removed a stripe from his uniform on the way to the head to clean up. Unless the MC has changed a very great deal in the last 20 years directly undermining the authority of a superior is about as near to Original Sin as one can come. I understand that it was a script expediency to move the story along, but for me that was stretching the "suspension of disbelief" to just shy of the breaking point.

15 years ago @ Big Hollywood - The L.A. Times ... · 0 replies · +5 points

The article begins, “[I]t’s become an article of faith in Conservative America that Hollywood is a ‘collection of hopeless la-la-land liberals — or worse, an elitist gaggle of heartland-bashing snobs.’”

Unfortunately he is so out of touch that he can't even get his sneering generalization correct. Its not Conservative America: it's virtually all of working America (union company excepted of course), and the correct charcterization is - A droll collection of dysfunctional Marxist tools in monomaniacal pursuit of being honored as Most Useful in a Supporting Role, thereby gaining entry into the Neo-nomencultura.

15 years ago @ Big Hollywood - Top 25 Greatest Christ... · 1 reply · +5 points

Coppola reduces him to be a parody of evil by making his vampirism a mere purgatory, punishment by a petty spiteful God, for a moment of passion rather than a reflection of the very core of his soul. The 1931, Tod Browning, version was much more in tune with the moral of Stoker's work than Coppola can imagine. Remember, in Hollywood evil is merely a construct; background to showcase CGI and FX.

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