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Movies III
February 15, 2009 - 8:15pm
Time for a new movie thread. Has anyone seen this movie? There will be no Oscar Awards for The Reader nor for Kate Winslet's role in it. Kate Winslet's Oscar chances hit by The Reader Nazi accusation
Kate Winslet's chances of Oscar glory are being hit by an orchestrated campaign to dismiss her film The Reader as an apologia for Nazi Germany.
I wore myself out chipping ice out of the box of the truck and hauling four sheets of drywall home. Haven't seen a good movie in a long time. I thought Jude Law was good in, The Incredible Mr Ripley and Enemy at the Gates. That one where he was a vampire was kinda good.
The Reader?
There's a funny/weird movie called La Lectrice starring Miou-Miou. It has some inspiring Beethoven in the soundtrack.
If I recall correctly, Miou-Miou has sex with a client while reading a book to him.
I just watched the 45 minute HBO special The Trials of Ted Haggard (2008). It's an interesting profile of the evangelical USA preacher who succumbs to temptation and has an extramarital affair and buys crystal meth (although Ted says in the film that he never used it - he bought it, and threw it away).
I watched this show out of curiousity - I've heard of these guys - Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker (PTL Club) and others who fall so hard from grace.
Part of my curiousity was likely piqued by having watched the classic film Elmer Gantry many years ago on a somewhat similar topic - the preacher who falls from grace (although I can't remember the specifics of that film - it was a long ago the last time I saw it).
In this case, Haggard was exiled from his 14,000 member megachurch, and was quite badly hounded by the media during his attemps to rehabilitate himself and find another vocation - he is forbidden from ever preaching again in his denomination.
What drives these guys into such self-destructive behavior, which psychologists might call pathological? In Haggard's case, as the film proceeds to its conclusion, we're given some insights. He entered ministry after doing his Bachelor of Arts degree in ministry (that degree is useless in the secular world as he quickly finds out) without ever having done any other kind of work, and at a young age, so maybe he just wasn't mature when he entered the ministry, and he mentions having some problems with sexual identity at a very young age, long before he entered ministry.
So, the clues are there: unresolved issues around sexual identity, and possible lack of maturity exacerbated by entering the ministry of the church in a leadership capacity at a young age without any secular work experience whatsoever. I got the impression Haggard may have been experiencing some form of stress in the ministry that he simply was not equipped to handle, and looked for an outlet to let off steam, with (perhaps) predictable consequences.
He has a supportive wife (married 29 years) and two teenaged boys, and they're all very supportive of Haggard as he tries to find another vocation, and in one year, the only company that would hire him was a company selling medical insurance, and on a commission basis, meaning if he had no sales, he had no income. Consequently, he ended up having to rely on the generosity of friends until his new sales career started to take root.
He and his wife actually decided to work on a volunteer basis at a crisis centre but the media found out and made his life hell, and they had to leave.
My suggestion would be that organizations like the church need to really examine their hiring policies and enforce some kind of rule that says persons applying for leadership positions must have been employed in gainful occupations for a minimum period first. It strikes me as very odd that any church would hire persons for leadership positions without their having to exhibit proficiency in positions of leadership in the secular world first.
I saw it. It was pretty fun, I guess. And about as least offensive as a hollywood movie about poverty in India could be, I suppose. Despite the hype, I don't find it particularly memorable. It's no Trainspotting. It's not even a 28 Days Later.
As for the OP comments about The Reader, such a reaction (Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian had a similar reaction) are simplistic and hysterical. They've been adequately refuted by the screenwriter (great British playwright David Hare) and others. I blogged about it here.
I thought Slumdog Millionaire was very good. A Dickensian tale that got a little schmaltzy at the end, but still good. It will win best picture.
I haven't seen The Reader, but I don't think the controversy will prevent Winslet from winning. She's "due," in Oscar parlance, after being nominated several times for very good performances.
The Selling of "Precious"
http://www.counterpunch.org/reed12042009.html
"...this hate crime as entertainment..."
Anyone seen "Food Inc"? I'm thinking of ordering it on ppv.
Watching Elmer Gantry (1960). Scary how fanatical some preachers can get - and the same is true today.
"...church attendance is falling off everywhere" - and that was 1960!!! Even more true today.
(outraged Protestant preacher): "... and right now a Catholic* is running for President!" Wow. Could they really get away with this stuff back in 1960???
*JFK?
ETA: I didn't catch this reference when I first watched this film many decades ago, but that negative reference to "...a Catholic running for President!" was an obvious shot at JFK. How in the world did the producers get away with this????
Hilarious how Gantry goes after "lewd, dirty, obcene French postcards sold by a 'foreigner' in front of the local high school"
Jeez, Gantry is certifiable. Reminds me of that idiot Pat Robertson, except Gantry is a fictional character, but Robertson is real.
- Gantry is fanatically going after booze (it's set in the 1920s), pornography (French postcards
) and prostitution
- Benny Hinn comes to mind as another Elmer Gantry
Every wanted to be a traffic reporter?
Josh Charles does a superb job with Anne Heche star in this romantic comedy. If your traffic reporter was even half as good as Josh when he got the chance, driving home in traffic could become enjoyable again.
Pie in the Sky
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114131/
This looks like a must-see.
Secret J.D. Salinger Documentary & Book, Now RevealedThose are the nominees for "Best Picture".
http://www.oscars.org/awards/academyawards/82/nominees.html
BP now gets 10 nominees, this was obviously in response to criticism that they're a bunch of snobs with limited tastes, for example both Dark Knight and Wall-E failed to even get nominated.
I'm watching Coming Home (1978) - there's a poignant scene of Bobby Kennedy on the tube being asked how he feels about the death of Dr. Martin Luther King. (I've seen this film several times already)
I watched Catch-22 again the other day. Joseph Heller was rather prescient in how Milo Minderbinder Enterprises sub-plot foretold Halliburton and Blackwater's privitization of warfare. Then again, Heller may simply have been recording what he had seen himself in World War Two, much as Nineteen Eighty-Four was a description of post-war England.
I saw American History X the other day.
I wonder how much justice it did to the post - Rodney King environment in LA?
There's an excellent deleted that I recommend watching involving Seth (the fat white supremacist) and Cameron (their intellectual leader). They go to a burger place together and they start insulting a black man who is seeing an attractive white woman. Later on they're attacked (unrelated) by this black gang, as Cameron "explains" to Seth why those two were dating in his opinion.
The real power of the scene is in their banter at the burger joint. We see Cameron manipulating Seth, making him feel important and useful when he is anything but.
Recommended watching imo, and watch that deleted scene. The other two deleted scenes were pretty useless imo.
Why The Oscars Are a Con by John Pilger
http://www.countercurrents.org/pilger110210.htm
"This year's Oscar nominations are a parade of propaganda, stereotypes and downright dishonesty.."
The Hurt Locker, the Academy Awards and the Rehabilitation of the Iraq War
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/mar2010/hurt-m11.shtml
"This year's Academy Awards ceremony was a spectacle of banality and cowardice. The three films the Academy rewarded most highly, The Hurt Locker, Precious and Inglorious Basterds, collectively embody something retrograde and foul in the film industry, and all fly under false flags.."
I love that the beethoven stands out so clearly but you seem somewhat uncertain about the sex scene.
best thing I saw last year in terms of full length features was j'ai tué ma mère. Took me back to being a teenager, very refreshing, a good reminder of how little age diversity there is in the mass media millieu and aside from that it's just a simple and poignant perspective into a slice of the human condition.
Say, here's one you won't want to miss. They're making Atlas Shrugged into a movie! Well, that'll certainly be a must-see.
I read about this on Daily Kos, and the diarist was pretty funny while running down the list of shocks that American conservatives who idolize Ayn Rand are going to have when they realize their idol was an atheist, advocated adultery, and was an immigrant who mocked "Judeo-Christian traditions". :D
Hahaha!
And now, my deep, dark confession: I actually own a copy of this book. I know, I know! I'm a bad person. I read it in my early 20's when someone I knew told me that The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged were really good books. What can I say, I'm a sucker for book recommendations.
I saw Hurt Locker, An Education, and The Blind Side on a flight from Australia to the United States (and a few other movies).
1) I don't understand why progressives hate The Hurt Locker. It wasn't a pro-imperialism story. It was a story of war from the perspective of the soldiers. Mostly, it was pretty ugly, and the characters were deeply flawed. Reality may be offensive to some. I think a lot of people may have disliked the movie because it didn't have a condescending "here is the moral of the story" scene at the end. It had a minimal didactic component, and just presented a situation as is.
2) The Blind Side. It's a good theatric piece, but majorly condescending to black people... on the other hand so is current socio-economic reality. The whole time that I was watching the movie I found myself thinking "Is this how it really happened" ? There's a scene where we learn Michael Oher did bad on most of his IQ tests, except for the section on "protective instincts" on which he scored in the 98th percentile. I do not know of any IQ tests which tests for protective instincts, and either way it sounds like bullshit.
3) An Education. Alfred Molina's performance was a pleasure to watch, but the main character was too self-absorbed and self-righteous to keep me interested.
*************
I have a few more to watch, in particular I'm looking forward to "Up". Based on those I've seen, I'd say the best thus far of the 2010 best picture nomination list is District 9. It was groundbreaking in its use of special effects, and it had narrative devices that had never been used by Hollywood before - originality is always good.
The claim of the article seems to be that "The Hurt Locker" is a bad war movie because it's not explicitly anti-war.
*sigh*
Recently viewed: Up, Cold Souls. and part of District 9. I liked Up, and thought Paul Giamatti's performance in Cold Souls was the only redeeming feature of an otherwise silly movie. I hated District 9 and switched channels about thirty minutes in.
Sigh. No one says you can't like pro-war propaganda Apples but why would you be surprised that isn't a popular sentiment on this board.
I thought the movie was pretty mediocre and I really didn't like the portrayal of the Iraqis. It seemed a pretty cowardly, shallow take on the whole situation, after a decade of occupation it just reinforced popular stereotypes and prejudices: "scary, ungrateful and untrustworthy arabs vs absurdly brave and unappreciated young American soldiers". The only thing which kept me awake was the question of whether we'd see the megalomaniac officer get fragged or not but that didn't go anywhere either.
You don't speak for babble. You speak for yourself.
That is what you chose to read into the movie. What I saw of the Iraqis were of a fractured people with a diverse range of responses to the Americans. The Iraqis were not the point of this movie, it was the American soldiers participating in Iraq, and their experiences.The Iraqis existed as a set of relationships and interactions with the American soliders. For about 500,000 individuals who have been through "Coalition of the Willing" tours, that's about right.
There's a contradiction in declaring the main character as "brave and unappreciated" in one sentence, and a "megalomaniac" in the next. You're trying to pidgeon-hole him as either a good guy or a bad guy. The problem is that from the film's perspective, he is neither. As such you're flipping back and forth between assuming him as a good guy and then as a bad guy, using both mutually exclusive cases to support your internally contradictory position that the movie is pro-war, because it gives us positive depictions of characters by casting the actors into negative roles.
The notion that a war movie has to be either pro-war or anti-war is puerile. You should evaluate a piece of art based on what it is, not what it's not.
ETA: I am not saying that questions about the cause and immorality of the war are not worth asking. I am rejecting the position that it is important to ask them in every single conversation about the war.