Comments on: Paramount Studio Stoned

By: Ripper

Ripper — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 13:57:55 +0000

Considering that Micahel Cimino has never been heard from since the disastrous “Heaven’s Gate,” why is Oliver Stone still working after the mega flop “Alexander”?

By: syn

syn — Wed, 13 Jul 2005 03:10:14 +0000

At this point the only event which can save Hollywood from it’s insane self is complete bankruptcy…faster please.

By: Patrick Tyson

Patrick Tyson — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 05:27:57 +0000

Dmac—

…would you not also agree that American Beauty was really just a derivative take on “The Swimmer,”…

What an interesting way of putting what I do think is the principle weakness of American Beauty, which I still thought one of the better movies of 1999. In my opinion, Lester’s metamorphoses (though a lot of fun) wasn’t really in character. More generally, I think Alan Ball writes more interesting female characters and, in 1999, I would have voted (if like our host I had a vote) for Annette Bening and Russell Crowe (The Insider).

Rick—

Thank you. Had I followed even a tenth of the career advice I’ve received over the years I would be writing about movies in particular and popular culture in general. However, I so dislike my own writing that that was never really an option.

Best.

By: Dmac

Dmac — Sun, 10 Jul 2005 21:47:42 +0000

Patrick -

Agree with you about JFK, but would you not also agree that American Beauty was really just a derivative take on “The Swimmer,” which I believe was released over 30 years ago? Hard to top both John Cheever and Burt Lancaster.

BTW, love Six Feet Under, bummed about its last year.

By: Dmac

Dmac — Sun, 10 Jul 2005 21:31:56 +0000

Stone also made a nauseating little film called “Uncle Fidel” for HBO not too long ago. You can guess what direction that polemic devolved into.

Next up on Stone’s production docket: Natural Born Killers II – The Mao Years.

Dmac

By: Rick Ballard

Rick Ballard — Sun, 10 Jul 2005 18:55:08 +0000

Patrick,

Please start a blog and join PJ Media. I enjoy your comments on movies a great deal and find them very worthwhile. They are well thought, cogent and coherent. My compliments.

By: Kyda Sylvester

Kyda Sylvester — Sun, 10 Jul 2005 15:57:01 +0000

Richard--I wouldn't expect WOTW accountants to be writing in black ink just yet, but with $200 million gross receipts within one week of release it does seems to be headed that way. What does it mean when the studio pulls back its advertising? Good thing? Bad thing? Hollywood bean counters are so creative (just ask anyone whose contract includes a share of the profits), it's hard to know when and if any project makes money. I'm actually willing to give Spielberg the BOTD on his Mossad/Black September epic. This is not the first time I've read that the mission began to weigh heavily on some of its members (here btw is a Marine Corps officer's fascinating Master's thesis, THE ISRAELI RESPONSE TO THE 1972 MUNICH OLYMPIC MASSACRE AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF INDEPENDENT COVERT ACTION TEAMS). The part I'm having trouble with is Tony freaking Kushner. I tried to watch the HBO production of Angels in America to see what all the Pulitzer Prize/Tony Award fuss was about. It was all but unwatchable. In fact it was unwatchable--I bailed after about 20 minutes. exguru--I'm a big Sterling Hayden fan too. His performance as Jack D. Ripper was an absolute gem (he and Peter Sellers were a terrific team) and who can forget his title role in a film that may be in a genre all by itself, the kinky western (There's only two things in this world that a real man needs: a cup of coffee and a good smoke). A grossly underused talent IMO.

By: lump516

lump516 — Sun, 10 Jul 2005 15:51:51 +0000

I’m not boycotting movies because they’re all anti-American, blah, blah. It’s just that very few movies are being made, in this country at least, designed to appeal to adults and those that are, at least by Hollywood standards, are movies about glossy NY-LA nitwits who have so little to do or worry about that they spend most of their time bed-hopping (movies like WHEN HARRY MET SALLY where the characters have jobs but we never see them WORK–they’re too busy faking orgasms in public places).

As for Oliver Stone, relax. America has always had a solid contingent of monied “radicals,” and the country has always survived intact.

By: Catherine

Catherine — Sun, 10 Jul 2005 14:26:51 +0000

I would argue that a mass boycott is occurring today. It is not labeled as such and there is no organizational center to it but the falling numbers are indicative that a significant portion of the popuplation has decided to “Just Say No”.

I’ve wondered about that myself.

OTOH, there’s also the fact that……there’s nothing out there to watch.

I love TV, and I’d like to be watching it at night with my husband and kids, the way my family did.

There’s nothing on.

Christopher (age 10) wants to watch Trump and, now, FULL-TIME WRESTLING 24-HOURS A DAY.

The rest of his screen time is spent playing wrestling games.

The two autistic kids are still watching BARNEY.

Ed and I watch BATTLESTAR GALACTICA.

And that’s IT.

I’m consciously boycotting a lot of movies; I’m tired of the attitude, the implicit insults, the blah-blah-blah.

When the final STAR WARS movie opened with a scroll saying ‘war has broken out between the forces of evil and the forces of good, there are heroes on both sides’ I wanted to scream.

THERE ARE HEROES ON BOTH SIDES?

CAN’T YOU GET OVER YOURSELVES LONG ENOUGH TO SHOOT A NORMAL STAR WARS MOVIE?

BASIC PREMISE OF STAR WARS: THERE ARE NO HEROES ON THE OTHER SIDE.

And then the duel scene, where what’s-his-face, Ewen McGregor, says ‘The bad guys are super-bad, they kill children’ (or whatever) and Darth says, ‘From my point of view the good guys are the bad guys’——-Darth Vader actually uses the words ‘from my point of view’ in the middle of a laser-swordfight—-WHY AM I PAYING MONEY FOR THIS?

Talk about George Bush exploiting 9/11.

On another subject, I loved AMERICAN BEAUTY, every last minute of it.

I had planned to boycott, because I’d read all the reviews saying it showed the ‘dark underside’ of suburban life, and I don’t want to hear one word more about the dark underside of suburban life.

Please.

We ended up going one night when the movie we were trying to get into was sold out.

I can see why people think it’s about the dark underside, but it’s really not.

If I were still in FILM STUDIES I’d be writing about it.

The story is told from the POV of a dead person; all the scenes are drenched in his lighting, his emotion, his loss. He’s the ultimate unreliable narrator–he’s DEAD–and the crazed miltant neighbor & all the rest have to be read through that.

It’s a movie about death.

It’s no accident that the very next project Alan Ball went on to do was….. a TV series about death.

By: Patrick Tyson

Patrick Tyson — Sun, 10 Jul 2005 06:35:05 +0000

JFK is a great movie and the last film of positive note that Oliver Stone directed and, no, it isn't because I think Jim Garrison knew what he was talking about or that Oliver Stone found it credible. It's because it is superbly edited and scored (Stone's strengths,) has a large and varied cast working in top form, and presents a conspiracy theory regarding a major event in all its multi-faceted incoherence without screwing up the internal logic that the best conspiracy theorists bring to the fascinating delusional constructs they produce. But I digress. Thus far this year I've seen one film that I thought worth the price of admission. Cinderella Man will earn domestically, it appears, more than the unbelievably awful Be Cool and a lot less than the even worse Monster-in-Law. In the next couple of weeks we're going to be asked to pay good money to see a new version called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory of a just fine film from three decades ago and to see a remake, without Tatum O'Neal, of another just fine film from three decades ago. We've already, this year, been asked to pay to see a much inferior version of a just fine prison football movie from, yes, three decades ago. And when even the good directors aren't making new versions of old movies and television shows they're probably out making a movie about comic book characters—intentionally. And then there's software piracy. Want to know why movies with possible worldwide box office viability are more and more often being released pretty much simultaneously worldwide? You're looking at it. Want to know a reason why overseas box office is taking on more and more importance? You're looking at it. I was with a group of fairly frequent moviegoers today and two had already seen pirated copies of Batman Begins and War of the Worlds. No doubt last year there were many places worldwide where The Passion of the Christ opened in theaters where, on the same street, a shop or a kiosk was already selling copies under the counter. The ideological always have and always will find the ideology of directors, actors, writers, etc., etc., etc. reason enough to support or to boycott particular movies or movies in general. It's never mattered all that much and it doesn't still. The great mass of moviegoers don't care about the ideology behind the product or even its overall quality. They just want to be entertained and if they can be entertained at little or no cost to themselves, so much the better. I love movies. Perhaps, were I a generation younger, I'd love video games and think movies had had their day...and I would be wrong. On the other hand... The point here is that the protagonists' attempts to revise the "script" of history in "T2" parallel the director's having to muck around with "T2"'s own script in order for Schwarzenegger to be in the movie. Multivalent ironies like this—which require that film audiences know all kinds of behind-the-scenes stuff from watching Entertainment Tonight and reading Premiere magazine—are not commercial postmodernism at it's finest. —David Foster Wallace