Will Somebody Slap This Man

[Guest MikeSC]

Well, this just proves my theory that the average republican has bad taste in movies... music... and books

 

Stick to bitching about liberal communist scum... good movies tend to be a little out of your league

Ah, only the left has the sheer ego to dare claim that anybody's taste who is different than theirs is bad taste. Heck, I don't think you're a mindless drone for liking "BFC". I, honestly, don't care if you like it.

 

But, geez, because I don't like things you do, I have "bad" taste.

 

Takes a TON of ego to buy that --- and you clearly do.

-=Mike

...Man, people say I have an ego --- YOU take the cake.

[Guest MikeSC]

You're using box office numbers sold to justify your contempt for the movie, despite the fact that the movie wasn't a nationwide release. There's no way that the movie would make big numbers, because people are not going to go out of their way to see a movie that's playing in maybe two theaters in their entire state.

No, I'm using numbers to indicate that most fans didn't disagree with me.

 

I think the film is shit because I actually WATCHED it once and it was hard to miss how horrendous it was.

 

Yet, I don't claim those who liked it have horrible taste.

 

I swear, the left is full of the most pretentious people on the planet.

-=Mike

[Guest thebigjig]

Hmmm... most of what I said about conservatives having bad taste was simply a sarcastic swipe... but since we're talking about ego, perhaps we can go back a few weeks ago when you and and kkk claimed that all liberals have no sense of humor... it's basically the same thing ya know, both comments full of blustering ego

 

Also, if you can claim that we're arrogant, and conservatives NEVER bash liberals for taste... then why is it that we're constantly classified as cheese eating, wine drinking, art loving hippies? I remember when Dean was the frontrunner... the RNC had a commercial out in the primary states with two old farts calling Dean a latte drinking, barefoot sandel wearing intellectualite hippie, or thereabouts... which in my opinion, just fuels the culture war that follows such statements... the liberals eat good cheese, drink good wine, and watch good movies directed by woody allen... while conservatives eat well done burnt to a crisp steak, drink bad beer, and watch movies starring Steven Segull and Chuck Norris

 

And since you like LA Confidential, a movie I consider to be in the top 5 of my favorites... then I apologize for saying you have no taste what so ever

[NoCalMike 0]

To claim the movie is completely ficticious is absurd. Yes I have read all the so-called "truth" websites that go point by point, but you'd have o be a pretty biased person to just read that and just ASSUME that these "fact finders" are 100% accurate and correct. Who knows their motivation, and unless you are doing the research yourself, who is to say Michael Moore is "making things up" rather then some guy with a website. I am not trying to say that there aren't ANY inaccuracies in BFC, but those "point by point" websites, are a hell of a lot more ficticious and ridiculous then the movie seems to be.

[Guest CommaderK9]

Most documentaries have some sort of spin towards one end of a topic. Michael Moore spun the gun rights issue to the liberal side in his movie. He is like any of the other political extremists out there (Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Franken), in that he is only interested in bringing out his side of an argument. In my opinion the movie should not have won for best documentary, as it was not up to even Moore's previous work. Moore's comments at the Oscars just proves that he is just a big a blowhard as the conservatives he lambasts.

[Guest thebigjig]

I wouldn't classify O'Reilly as an extremist... nor would I classify Franken as an extremist... O'Reilly, while a blowhard, doesnt seem to be completely nonsensical and doesnt make statements that are borderline insane. Same goes for Franken. They're just two very very strong minded partisans

 

EDIT:

 

and even I booed Moore at the Oscars... looking back, I agree with some of what he said, but I didnt and still dont agree with him using the Oscars as a venue, especially considering most were watching the Oscars that year to FORGET about what was going on in the world... an escape

[Guest CommaderK9]

Your point is well taken. I was going a little too far with calling O'Reilly and Franken extremist (a term that should be reserved for people much worse, like Buchanan).

 

I couldn't agree more with your analysis of the Oscar speech. Even if I did agree with some of what he said, that was not the time or place for him to express his feelings on the subject.

[Guest thebigjig]

I KNEW he was going to do it too... and his reaction afterward was priceless "only 4 people booed me" or whatever he said... it was just completely tasteless

[Guest CommaderK9]

Those 4 people must have the biggest lungs on the planet. Even Tim Robbins had the restraint to keep his political views to himself at the Oscars. Truly bad form.

[Guest Cerebus]

Those 4 people must have the biggest lungs on the planet.  Even Tim Robbins had the restraint to keep his political views to himself at the Oscars.  Truly bad form.

You didn't hear about his "play" about neocons? This review from the liberal New Republic pretty much sums it up.

 

One of my colleagues and I have a running bet: Who can find the dumbest reference to "neoconservatism"? Until last week, the honor was Tina Brown's. In a Washington Post piece last year, she recalled "the New Deal for which neocons of the '30s bitterly reviled FDR as 'that man'"--the problem, of course, being that "neocons" did not emerge until 30 years after FDR's death, and the movement's founders vigorously supported the New Deal. But, in a new play, Embedded (opening later this week at New York's Public Theater), film star and director Tim Robbins outdoes even Tina Brown. Embedded, moreover, is not only dumb. It is poisonous, a production-length conspiracy theory guilty of the very sins it attributes to the "cabal" that it claims to expose.

 

Embedded, written and directed by Robbins, tells the story of the war in Iraq ("Gomorrah") from three vantage points. The first belongs to a character named Private Jen-Jen (clearly modeled on Jessica Lynch) and her fellow soldiers on the ground, whom Robbins beatifies as victims of the cabal. The second belongs to the journalists covering the war, whom Robbins depicts, with few exceptions, as a craven bunch deferring to military censors at nearly every turn. The third, and most interesting series of scenes, belongs to the cabal itself--the cynical architects of the Embedded posterwar, who, from behind their Greek masks, plot the invasion of Gomorrah on their calendars. "Woof" (Paul Wolfowitz, presumably), "Pearly White" (Richard Perle, definitely), and the other cabalists reason that a war will distract the public from the crumbling economy. More important, it will prove once and for all the hypotheses of the late University of Chicago professor Leo Strauss, the cabal's hero and the production's villain, whose hapless visage is projected in the background.

 

What exactly are those theories? The cabal, despite its repeated shouts of "hail Leo Strauss!" (this, to a Jewish refugee from Nazism), doesn't give us much insight. Fortunately, the program for Embedded, which contains an essay by someone named Kitty Clark, does. (For the New York production at least, someone in Robbins's orbit had the good sense to expunge from the original essay, which I found on the Internet, several pointed references to the Jewishness of Strauss and his supposed adherents.) In the program's telling, Strauss believed that democracy "was best defended by an ignorant public pumped up on nationalism and religion. Only a militantly nationalist state could deter human aggression." As for Robbins himself, in an NPR interview earlier this week he explained that he could only figure out why the neoconservatives supported war in Iraq by looking to their association with "a philosopher named Leo Strauss that a lot of them studied with, who actually conceptually believes in a noble lie for a greater good, coming from Plato." Bull Durham, meet the New School for Social Research.

 

Leaving aside for a moment Hollywood's reading of Straussian political theory, there is the small matter that the principal architects of the war--Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and the president himself--had in all likelihood barely even heard of Leo Strauss before James Atlas penned a piece in The New York Times last year explaining who he was (the piece clearly made an impression on Robbins, who quotes from it). As for the neoconservatives themselves, despite Robbins's assertion that Irving Kristol studied under Strauss--Robbins appears to be confusing Irving, who is well into his 80's and in any case attended City College, with his son Bill--what, if any, debt they owe him remains questionable at best. Nor, if they do owe such a debt, is it at all clear that it is a pernicious one. Strauss's experience as a Jew who escaped the pogroms of his youth and the Holocaust that engulfed his contemporaries made him uniquely sensitive to the dangers of tyranny. Which, in turn, made him ... a liberal. He believed deeply that, as Atlas points out, "to make the world safe for the Western democracies, one must make the whole globe democratic, each country in itself as well as the society of nations." If this is the stuff of conspiracy, then American presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Bill Clinton clearly couldn't keep a secret.

 

Indeed, when it comes to peddling the noble lie, no one outdoes Robbins himself. About Embedded, Robbins has this to say: "I'm not interested in any polemic. I'm not interested in any lecture." But Embedded is all polemic--a talking political pamphlet that doesn't even aspire to be aesthetic. If it's true that all art is propaganda, but not all propaganda is art, then Robbins has produced a masterpiece of artless propaganda. Nowhere is this truer than in his depiction of the everyday soldiers whose dignity he pretends to champion. Rather than give us human beings, Robbins gives us socialist realism: cardboard cut-outs who, when not being victimized by the cabal, do little but lament the number of welfare mothers in their ranks and the unpaid bills they have left behind. Even in the hands of socialist artists whose adolescent romanticism about their own everymen was considerably more sophisticated than this, the idealization of such characters was always something of a lie; in the much less capable hands of Robbins, the lie has only become more obvious. Embedded's treatment of its soldiers is dilettantism masquerading as solidarity, contempt pretending to be sympathy. Contempt not only for the soldiers themselves, but for the audience, too--which Embedded hectors in precisely the same manner that Robbins accuses the U.S. government of doing.

 

But Robbins knows a conspiracy when he sees one. We know this because his cabalists spend most of their time on stage devising ways to stir up the masses by accusing the leader of "Gomorrah" of "war crimes" and "Geneva Convention violations" (were there any mention of it in the script, Halabja would surely be found between quotation marks). We know this, too, because of Robbins's insistence that the war can only be explained by reference to Strauss (which neatly mirrors the far right's contention that it can only be understood by reference to Leon Trotsky). Finally, we know this because of the news sources on which Robbins purports to rely for his telling of the cabal's story. "Why are our outlets not willing to report things that papers in Europe are?" Robbins wonders in his NPR interview. Perhaps because those papers and the websites he recommends in the program--The Guardian, The Independent, Adbusters magazine (which recently made headlines by publishing a list of neoconservatives, with marks beside every Jewish name)--boast notoriously loose reporting standards? Nonetheless, having gleaned his information from these sources, Robbins intends to make sense of the world for us, to reveal the plans that the powerful few implement at the expense of the powerless many. Embedded amounts to conspiracy as recreation. Is it even necessary to point out that, when conspiracy fantasists gain broad audiences, very bad things tend to follow?

 

"The death of the paranoid style would have little contemporary relevance or historical value if it were applied only to people with profoundly disturbed minds," Richard Hofstadter wrote in his famous essay, The Paranoid Style in American Politics. "It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant." By all accounts--or at least by the accounts one comes across in the supermarket check-out line--Tim Robbins does not have a profoundly disturbed mind. But neither does he qualify as a "more or less normal" person. He is, after all, a hugely successful and wealthy movie star. And while I happen to agree with the conventional wisdom that celebrities, because they tend not to know what they're talking about, have not earned the right to monopolize public discourse, I do not think that Robbins deserves condemnation for his vocal opposition to the war--anymore than I think Britney Spears deserves credit for her vocal support of it.

 

Yet it is precisely Robbins's stardom that compelled him to stage this production. Indeed, to hear him tell it, the cabal's principal victim was not Jessica Lynch, but Tim Robbins. During the war, it seems, the Baseball Hall of Fame stupidly revoked an invitation for him to attend the fifteenth anniversary celebration of Bull Durham. By his own account, this is what led Robbins to write Embedded. It also prompted him to give a speech in which he warned that "a chill wind is blowing in this nation. A message is being sent through the White House and its allies in talk radio and Clear Channel and Cooperstown: If you oppose this administration, there can and will be ramifications." Never mind that New Yorkers have been flocking to the Public Theater to see those ramifications. Never mind, too, that just last week the chill wind delivered Academy Awards to Robbins and his fellow opponent of the war, Sean Penn. Having transcended his persecution, Tim Robbins has staged The Passion of Bull Durham.

 

Ouch.

[Guest MikeSC]

Hmmm... most of what I said about conservatives having bad taste was simply a sarcastic swipe... but since we're talking about ego, perhaps we can go back a few weeks ago when you and and kkk claimed that all liberals have no sense of humor... it's basically the same thing ya know, both comments full of blustering ego

Have you LISTENED to Air America? When liberals aren't trying to make a political point, they can be funny. The moment they try to be political satirists, they tend to tank.

 

As I said, I liked Franken's book --- except when he delved into personal attacks and ceased being humorous.

Also, if you can claim that we're arrogant, and conservatives NEVER bash liberals for taste... then why is it that we're constantly classified as cheese eating, wine drinking, art loving hippies?

Who says that? I don't. I think liberals have a massive tendency to be unbelievably pretentious.

I remember when Dean was the frontrunner... the RNC had a commercial out in the primary states with two old farts calling Dean a latte drinking, barefoot sandel wearing intellectualite hippie, or thereabouts... which in my opinion, just fuels the culture war that follows such statements... the liberals eat good cheese, drink good wine, and watch good movies directed by woody allen... while conservatives eat well done burnt to a crisp steak, drink bad beer, and watch movies starring Steven Segull and Chuck Norris

 

And since you like LA Confidential, a movie I consider to be in the top 5 of my favorites... then I apologize for saying you have no taste what so ever

If it makes you feel better, I think John Wayne sucks and that most westerns are horrible (save "Maverick" --- which I liked)

-=Mike

[NoCalMike 0]

If it makes you feel better, I think John Wayne sucks and that most westerns are horrible (save "Maverick" --- which I liked)

-=Mike

Young Guns

The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly

 

Come on Man.......

[MrRant 0]

Unforgiven owns you.

[Guest Cerebus]

The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly

Ah, one of the finest movies of all time (Though even Sergio Leone outdid himself with Once Upon A Time in the West)

[Guest Brian]

What about "The shakiest Gun in the West"? Or "Blazing Saddles"?

[Cartman 0]

There is a lot of talk amongst Bush's opponents that we should turn this war over to the United Nations. Why should the other countries of this world, countries who tried to talk us out of this folly, now have to clean up our mess? I oppose the U.N. or anyone else risking the lives of their citizens to extract us from our debacle. I'm sorry, but the majority of Americans supported this war once it began and, sadly, that majority must now sacrifice their children until enough blood has been let that maybe -- just maybe -- God and the Iraqi people will forgive us in the end.

 

 

He's got a point here.

[Guest Evolution]

Yeah, this is turning into a bad episode of In Loving Color.

 

"Michael Moore's so fat, when he backs up, he beeps!"

 

EDIT: I missed the second page of the thread. Still, that first page was just a barrage of "Michael Moore is FAT LOL2004" posts.

 

Good to see the topic has been returned to...normal conversation?

 

I don't know, I'm talking gibberish at this point.

[Guest MikeSC]

There is a lot of talk amongst Bush's opponents that we should turn this war over to the United Nations. Why should the other countries of this world, countries who tried to talk us out of this folly, now have to clean up our mess? I oppose the U.N. or anyone else risking the lives of their citizens to extract us from our debacle. I'm sorry, but the majority of Americans supported this war once it began and, sadly, that majority must now sacrifice their children until enough blood has been let that maybe -- just maybe -- God and the Iraqi people will forgive us in the end.

 

 

He's got a point here.

Cartman,

 

Shut up.

 

That is all.

-=Mike

[Cartman 0]

Well way to add to the discussion there Mr. Open Mind.

[Guest MikeSC]

Well way to add to the discussion there Mr. Open Mind.

I feel no need to waste the time with your bilge.

 

So, again, shut up.

-=Mike

[Cartman 0]

Just out of curiousity, is there ANY issue that you would agree with a Liberal Point of View on? Seriously? Because you seem to have a severe case of tunnel vision. Then again, most Lemmings(AKA General Public) are that way so I guess i'm wasting my time asking.

[Guest wrestlingbs]

Why does the left wing seem to have the worst people representing them? You know, we could actually get some support if these Hollywood actors and comedians (like Moore and Robbins) would just shut up for a second. Then again, the Republicans have Bush, a man with a nack for saying the worst things at the worst times, so maybe both parties are on equal footing.

 

This is a little off the subject, but which did you think was better: Canadian Bacon or South Park: BLU? I think South Park was the better film all-around.

[Vyce 0]

Just out of curiousity, is there ANY issue that you would agree with a Liberal Point of View on? Seriously? Because you seem to have a severe case of tunnel vision. Then again, most Lemmings(AKA General Public) are that way so I guess i'm wasting my time asking.

I think he told you, specifically, to shut up, not because you represent the liberal point of view but rather because you have never contributed anything even remotely intellectually stimulating to any thread in which you've posted in this folder.

 

You don't have anything of value to add. Please don't bring your usual brand of nonsense to this thread.

[bobobrazil1984 0]

The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not "insurgents" or "terrorists" or "The Enemy." They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win. Get it, Mr. Bush?

 

This part is particularly moronic (but i'm guessing others have pointed that out already)

[Hogan Made Wrestling 0]

The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not "insurgents" or "terrorists" or "The Enemy." They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win. Get it, Mr. Bush?

 

This part is particularly moronic (but i'm guessing others have pointed that out already)

Following this line of thought, is anyone else positively sick of reading rants on the internet where the "writer" uses questions to make it sound like they are talking to whoever their subject matter is as if they are listening, be it George Bush, Vince McMahon, or whoever? I typically stop reading anything that includes things like "Get it, Mr. Bush? " or "are you listening Vince?!?!?!?".

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

Most cinema fans dissagree with you. You just have a grudge against the guy because he's liberal... your hatred for him clouds your ability to think objectively

Judging by his box office numbers, most movie-watchers DON'T disagree with me at all.

-=Mike

are you taking into account that most documentaries do not make over $15 million at the box office? Are you also taking into account the "limited release" factor?

 

Just because a movie does badly at the box office, doesnt mean its a bad movie... American pop culture movie taste is ridiculous... Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was an amazing movie, and it didnt do amazing numbers

That's what Mike was referring to (in my opinion) during the whole Just-because-a-movie-doesn't-make-$70-million-it's-crap debate. Jig said "most cinema fans disagree with BFC being crap" but yet the film barely made enough to cover Mikey's grocery bill for a week, which means not that many people saw it. ($21 million as of May '03, according to IMDB, which I admit does turn in a nice profit with that film's $4 million budget -- Mikey must have outsourced the labor to India or something, much like does with his Canadian-run Web site.)

 

And when did I say liberals don't have a sense of humor? Was it during that Hot-Air(lol2004) America thread? I'm curious because there are lefties that I laugh with from time to time.

 

Oh, and you want to know what makes me laugh? I heard on the radio yesterday a soundbite from that recent pro-abortion rally from that fat bitch on "The Practice" SCREAMING for the government to stay out of her uterus.

 

Bitch, trust me, no man would want to get within 20 feet of your uterus.

 

Oh, and Mike, after Rant stops beating you with a shovel for your Westerns comment I'm next.

 

Unforgiven ownz j00! (or however the kids these days spell that word...)

[Guest thebigjig]

Well... we may dissagree on most things, at least we can all agree that Michael Moore is fat, and that Unforgiven rules!

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

Hey, can you provide a bit of clarification on a "funny liberal"?

 

Do you mean "funny liberals" as in people that make their living by pushing a leftist agenda, such as Al Franken (or, for the other side, Rush Limbaugh), or comedians/public figures/etc. that are liberal but don't make a living 24/7 pimping how great liberals are (Robin Williams, Margaret Cho, etc.)?

 

For example, in the most recent "Birdcage" movie, I laughed quite a bit, especially when "my" side of the political fence got mocked, which happened a lot. I would also mention that I think Alan Colmes is funny, but he's not a liberal, so he doesn't count. I also thought Roseanne, especially in her older days, was funny as hell. I'll even go so far as to say I thought MIKEY MOORE had a few good bits in his older work, but now he's just insane.

 

These are just some of the more "liberal" people that have made me laugh out loud in the years 1976-2004...

[Anorak 0]

You know, in Roger and Me, he seemed like a fairly normal and stable man.  But now all the attention he got has gone to his head and now he seems to think he's some sort of freedom fighter, this anti-government warrior.  The man has gone crazy.

Back in the TV Nation days he always came across as a very affable and likeable person but in recent years he's fast become the opposite (or maybe just showing his true colours? Who knows?). More often than not he appears irrational, even bitter in his outbursts against Bush, foreign policy etc and his views can be over-simplified or at worst completely misinformed. All of which is a shame because it is important to ask these big questions, to use freedom of speech to criticize what is potentially wrong within American society (no matter how 'unpatriotic' it may seem to some). America's obsessive gun culture (completely alien to me, which probably made it all the more fascinating to watch personally) was an issue which deserved some attention and credit to him for making BFC even though I think his filmmaking methods could do with a revamp. The tired old 'confrontation' tactic is overused in documentary filmmaking (especially Moore's version), getting in the face of a 'target' for all of a few seconds to hurl some accusations always seemed a worthlessly redundant act and has now become very formulaic. I particularly felt sorry for that woman he confronted with the two injured Columbine boys, it was cheap, unfair and added nothing worthwhile to his film or his argument.

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

Hey Ano, I know this may be hard for the both of us to have a civil conversation, but I'm curious to know where you live. I'm guessing England. (This is to know why you feel alien to America's gun culture.)

 

In addition, one thing I don't like about the "Confrontation" tactic is that a lot of times these filmakers will do this to people that are not even close to be prepared for this type of action. For example, in one Moore film, he totally gets on this old security guard because the guy wasn't letting Mikey do what he wanted. At least when a person films a bunch of pseudo-hippies at a "World Peace" march and asks them to identify a country that they're protesting against, and the protestors can't answer, that protestor at least chose to attend the event. The old security guard is just doing his job...