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Theatrical movies are a declining art form, but, clearly, Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood is a rare get-out-of-the-house-and-go-see-it movie for grown-ups.
So, here’s a question: how much worse would the movie have been if Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt had switched roles: Could Pitt have played the needy, insecure leading man, while DiCaprio played his laconic, iconic stunt double?
DiCaprio is consistently a really good leading man, second only to Daniel Day-Lewis.He doesn’t make many movies, but when he does they are very good.
Pitt’s career is much more erratic. On the other hand … when he feels like it, he’s Brad Pitt.
Pitt’s frequent miscues seem to stem in part because he doesn’t often want to play this kind of laconic iconic Eastwoodian hero he is in Once, even though he’s really good at it.
Is this the greatest trailer since Mad Max: Fury Road? Tarantino isn’t a superb director of action footage like David Fincher is, but he’s wonderful at the establishing shot. He’s great at putting his camera in exactly the right spot for the most glamorous establishing shot possible.
In Once Tarantino uses a lot of Family Guy-style callout flashbacks, at which he’s superb because he can convey so much information in a single shot. For example, early in Once, the narrator (Kurt Russell) explains that Brad Pitt’s character has to drive his boss, DiCaprio’s character, around because Leo has racked up so many drunk driving infractions that even the 1969 LAPD has yanked his license. Tarantino then inserts a 2-second shot of a very drunk DiCaprio crumpled over his steering wheel shot through a broken windshield with the marquee of the Whisky-a-Go-Go on Sunset Blvd. in the background. Or something like that.
DiCaprio is the all-time great at DUI scenes (this with Margot Robbie on the phone):
The reason Scorsese and DiCaprio could afford to destroy a vintage Lamborghini in this scene in Wolf of Wall Street is because Leo had convinced Malaysian giga-embezzler Jho Low that he was his Best Friend Forever.
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Steve, at the end of the movie, Rick is asked two different times if everyone is okay, and both times he says yes and does not mention the serious injuries to Cliff. Do you think that was intentional? One of the things that I like about Tarantino’s movies are the fantastic individual performances of some of the actors (like Margaret Qualley in this one, or Mélanie Laurent and Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds). But his off the wall and over the top filler takes some getting used to.
of course they “could have” but thankfully didn’t. Too often actors choose themselves against type, relishing the challenge but screwing the project. In Once Upon a Time, Brad plays to his strength (the cool dude) and Leo to his (the stressed out guy). You’re question reminds me of the terrible decision to cast Tommy Lee Jones as the taciturn, never-smiling cowboy vs Robert Duvall’s good-timin’ never-do-well in the LONESOME DOVE mini-series. I’m sure the actors had fun, but the results were half of what it should have been – Duvall just ain’t a fun guy, and Tommy Lee just looked constipated.
I think that's way the scene in "Departed" in which Di Cabrio shows his calm hand to some women to show how strong-nerved he is somehow unfitting.
I though Duvall's portrayal of Gus McCrae was his finest work, and Jones was superb as Call.
Duvall's range IMO is as good as anyone's, and Jones seems to me to play the stoic role (LD, The Park is Mine, The Fugitive) much better than he does the wacky role (Under Siege,Replies: @Marty
I think a Leonardo DiCaprio movie in which Brad Pitt could have easily played the role just as well as DiCaprio did is Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can.
I think Pitt could have also substituted effectively in the other roles DiCaprio has played that are broad and slightly humorous, such as Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street or Howard Hughes in The Aviator.
I don’t think Brad Pitt could have done the DiCaprio characters who were younger, slightly more earnest men—men with an air of desperation about them. For example, the DiCaprio roles in The Departed or Gangs of New York. As an aside, I can see Matt Damon doing fine as those characters.
By the same token, Brad Pitt’s best performance, imho, was when he played, brilliantly, the doomed, slightly mystical and premonitional Jesse James in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. He owned the part. Somehow, I can’t see DiCaprio pulling that particular performance off.
Even if I couldn't understand a word he said.Replies: @Neoconned
The classic example of actors destroying movies by playing against their natural types is the inept movie version of the great musical “Guys and Dolls,” in which Brando insisted upon playing the leading man who does most of the singing, which relegated Sinatra to playing the leading man who does most of the acting.
Sinatra and Brando supposedly had a nasty feud during the movie.
Too bad, because it has two of the greatest bits in Broadway history, the opener "Fugue for Tinhorns" and "Sit Down, You're Rocking the Boat", both Stubby Kaye set pieces.
You think it was a real Countach? People have gotten very good at reproductions these days.
The answer is no. But you answered your own question. DiCaprio is a better leading man. Pitt is not a good leading man, the exception being Moneyball. As a lead he has had some legit stinkers: Troy, Interview w/ a Vampire, Legends, and WWZ.
Pitt is better when he plays second man like in Ocean’s 11 and Sleepers. Frankly I think the studios know this because a lot of movies where it seems he is the lead he is actually second man, like Fight Club, Seven, and Spy Game.
He’s best when he plays smaller, quirky roles as in 12 Monkeys, True Romance, and Snatch.
A good example is Meet Joe Black, where he plays essentially two different characters. His role in the coffee shop scene is very good, but as Death in the rest of the movie he just dull.
I also get the impression that DiCaprio is kind of a next gen Jack Nicholson, and Pitt is a next gen Robert Redford. Both of the letter seem to me to present a lot of the mannerisms of their related former.
I think one thing that has the Megaphone upset is that Tarantino shows that the guys who punched Nazis–DiCaprio (in the movies) and Pitt (in reality)–also punched hippies.
I thought that could have been the title, It’s OK to Punch Hippies.
I know Margot Robbie was in that film, but who are those other guys?
You really like this film, eh?
Both of them are better now that they’re older. They have more gravitas. Too many leading men in recent years have been boyish.
Casting them the other way would not be as good, though. Pitt is more the kid of the two.
So when the end of the world rolls around, do you suppose Mr. Sailer will put as much effort into commenting about it as he has another horseshit Quentin Tarantino film?
That’s easy: Di Caprio is an actor who can act; Pitt is just a man who can show up & play one single role- Brad Pitt.
Is that bad southern accent consistent throughout the whole movie? Stuff like that is annoying to me. That dispels the myth oh him being a great actor. Or is he making fun of southerners with a cartoonish accent? Is that the point. Those two wouldn’t be able to switch roles. Pitt is just as bad at accents as Leo is. I would put Leo’s bad accent in the same genre as Pitt’s War Machine grunt talk. He wasn’t making fun of anything. The accident was unpolished and obviously fake. It was funny because it was so bad.
If Hillary Clinton had sung Jho Low, Sweet Chariot in her best Barbara Jordan singing voice she might have got the extra urban votes that she needed to win the swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida. Maybe not, could be that grabbing and maximizing your take of those White votes is the best way to win for both the Democrat Party and the Republican Party.
That Italian car is a sweet chariot.
Say what you want about Italians, say that Italians aren’t as handsome a people or as vigourously relentless as the Germans, but the Italians can keep up with the Krauts on cars — maybe some cars and maybe some times.
Saw it last night. Age group of audience was 50 plus. Enjoyed it more than my buddy s audience which was younger who said reaction was muted.
Two movie ideas that, I suspect, Tarantino wanted to do separately. Washed up 50s actor in industry passing him by and homage to spaghetti westerns and Italian ripoff genres and late 60s nostalgia trip revenge fantasy. So he cobbled them together making movie too long.
Also..why not have Manson himself getting thrashed in climax ? I mean if it’s a revenge fantasy against the folks who destroyed the Boomer -sacred peace and love boondoggle why not go all the way?
I thought that could have been the title, It's OK to Punch Hippies.Replies: @SFG, @anonymous
There’s also the fact that charismatic actors make even villains look cool. Gordon Gekko was supposed to be the bad guy, but lots of Wall Street guys got inspired by him. The narrator’s fight club is supposed to be a stupid idea, but if dumb manliness is the only manliness on offer, well…fight clubs actually started forming.
(That and the movie’s ending, while logically suggesting the cops will arrest them all eventually, kind of implies he gets to walk into a post-apocalyptic society as the leader of a band of armed men with a goth chick who looks like Helena Bonham Carter as a girlfriend, which doesn’t sound too bad to most guys.)
“The reason Scorsese and DiCaprio could afford to destroy a vintage Lamborghini in this scene in Wolf of Wall Street is because Leo had convinced Malaysian giga-embezzler Jho Low that he was his Best Friend Forever.”
Destroyed, as in put an end to its existence? No. Most of the damage was on the front of the vehicle and n0n-structural–a new front bumper, headlight, hood and front quarter panel. No doubt it will be restored back to original and sold off as a prop to the film.
https://thegearshift.blogspot.com/2014/01/real-25th-anniversary-lamborghini.html
“Could DiCaprio and Pitt Have Played Each Other’s Roles?”
Absolutely.
Quentin Tarantino directed produced? amusingly counter intuitive here. You would expect the younger more physically fit man to be the stunt double in this movie. My opinion….even if there was consideration of reversing the roles…. No way was Pitt going to sign on for sucking down so many cigarettes for so called authenticity. Pitt is on a health kick. DeCaprio is on an enduring young pu^^y kick.
Theatrical movies are a declining art form, but, clearly, Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood is a rare get-out-of-the-house-and-go-see-it movie for grown-ups.
Got me into an actual physical theater.
Did you orgasm in your pants as you wrote about Dicaprio and Pitt?
No.
When Pitt is trying, he is great. Switching roles would have resulted in a weaker movie.
I have considered the switching roles things for other movies. Heat, with Pacino and de Niro, could have had them in opposite roles. Bobby D could have played the frantic on the edge detective and Al could have played the cool criminal mastermind, but both played there to their strengths. Pacino is such a force of nature when he lets his emotions loose and powerfully conveys them on screen.
I think of a line from some comedian: "I saw that movie with Al Pacino in it. I forget the title, but he plays a short guy from the Bronx who yells a lot."
DiCaprio is a great, great actor. That scene where he collapsed at the pay phone and rolled down the steps to the car was the greatest ever.
Also, the minor characters -- muscled Jewish dealer, Asian guy, Swiss banker, etc -- were more memorable in that movie.
https://youtu.be/Zspzm01_Q20?t=45
Ya got that one wrong.Duvall was fine as Augustus McCrae, but Tommy Lee Jones was simply outstanding as Woodrow F. Call.
Agreed. Reading the four novels in Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series -- fantastic books, especially if one has Texas lineage or is interested in the bloody history of the Lone Star state -- I never once pictured anybody else as Call and McCrae. Duvall and Jones fit those roles to a T (exas).
His character was supposed to be a severely repressed man, devoting himself to work (sometimes in the form of a dangerous adventure, like the cattle-rustling in Mexico) while at the same time unable to acknowledge and nurture his only child, and unable to admit that he made a mistake in rejecting the boy's mother long ago.
Thus the "constipated" look.
Guys and Dolls was just awful. Well, anything with Brando in it I don’t like. I never, never saw any thing appealing about him.
I can see Pitt playing Rick Dalton….But Dicaprio just wouldn’t be right as uber-cool Cliff Booth. Physically, he’s a tad too soft and he just doesn’t have the same degree of magnetism/charisma.
Tommy Lee Jones perfected his constipation act in “No Country For Old Men”. Looked like he spent the whole movie sitting in a diner drinking coffee and reading the newspaper.
In an alternate movie universe, Rick Dalton tries to revive his acting career by joining EST.
Off topic: Seems a disproportionate percentage of these healthcare worker-rapes senior/disabled/vegetative patient stories involve black immigrants.
https://www.cbs17.com/news/national-news/hidden-camera-captures-disabled-woman-being-raped-in-nursing-home-court-docs-say/
You know they could, you just want to talk further about this movie, which is fine by me. Haven’t seen it yet but your review of it has really whet my appetite. As a native Californian (who went to a rival high school in close proximity to and at the same time as Steve Jobs), it’s evident in the clips from Once Upon A Time in Hollywood that Tarantino once again nailed the physical culture and vibe as he does so well.
So yeah, both are stellar actors, and as each of their respective oeuvre shows in such works as, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, A River Runs Through It, The Aviator and Burn After Reading show, they make it look so damn easy.
Dammit, I’m gonna have to go see this movie. I hate you, Sailer.
Tarantino’s Most Transgressive Filmhttps://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/tarantinos-most-transgressive-film/595309/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=shareReplies: @Buzz Mohawk, @Hypnotoad666, @Palerider1861
“Leo to his (the stressed out guy)”
I think that’s way the scene in “Departed” in which Di Cabrio shows his calm hand to some women to show how strong-nerved he is somehow unfitting.
OT, Breaking news from the NYT:
How a Brutal Race Riot Shaped Modern Chicago
A century later, the city, and America, are still dealing with the consequences.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/03/opinion/how-a-brutal-race-riot-shaped-modern-chicago.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
DiCaprio is too slight in build and high-strung in comportement to effectively play most of Pitt’s roles.
Christina Hoff Sommers really likes it:
“Theatrical movies are a declining art form, but, clearly, Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood is a rare get-out-of-the-house-and-go-see-it movie for grown-ups.”
No. It’s quite clearly an aids ridden boomerfest.
Just because you think it is doesn’t make it so
It wasn't the worst of Tarantino.
I presented it as a gift to my brother who hates my guts.
We once had a dispute over Inglourious Basterds.
Safe to say we don't see eye to eye and will never speak again.
Led Zep is the only thing we have in binding common. (I hate Kiss)
The movie was overlong but like Mickey Rourke's The Wrestler I knew where it was going emotionally till the dramatic end
(self worshipping gen boomer fuck him)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu94mWlgzMY
Caitlin Flanagan also really likes it:
Tarantino’s Most Transgressive Film
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/tarantinos-most-transgressive-film/595309/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
The flashback (if that's even the right term for one of those "cutout" sequences), has Cliff and his wife on a boat where they have presumably been vacationing. Cliff has just come in from spearfishing. He is looking tired and beat down. He is sitting drinking a beer (he's probably had a few), and holding a speargun while his wife stands there berating him, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe"-style, in what is presumably a routine occurrence for them. Cliff says nothing.
That's it. You have to imagine what happens next.
You could make another movie about that one alluded incident.
P.S., A very good and insightful review in the Atlantic. I think they let some of their writers off the SJW leash for "cultural" issues that aren't so directly connected to politics. For example, I remember someone there did a good, generally positive treatment of Jordan Peterson.
Case in point:
Several years ago Pitt's mother was quoted in the press as being against homo marriage, after which his mother was routinely savaged in public by many of the usual suspects.
Now what would a real red-blooded grounded American male do in such a circumstance? Good old Brad Spit didn't even have the balls to defend his own mother.
But he sure is good at acting the part, eh?!!
Fav reviews for Love and Mercy, Lala Land, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
California Nostalgia or Calistalgia.
Ultimate California movies: The Graduate and Harold & Maude and To Live and Die in LA. Some would say Shampoo but I don’t care for it.
The Graduate (1967), another wonderful film. Mike Nichols really captured California's paradisiacal qualities. Another (mostly) California-based film that centers on the lead character's alienation: Bob Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces (1970).
Tarantino’s Most Transgressive Filmhttps://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/tarantinos-most-transgressive-film/595309/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=shareReplies: @Buzz Mohawk, @Hypnotoad666, @Palerider1861
Wow. I mean it. Thank you. There is light in some (surprising) places. My wife should thank you and Steve; She gets a movie night out with me.
Funny,
I though Duvall’s portrayal of Gus McCrae was his finest work, and Jones was superb as Call.
Duvall’s range IMO is as good as anyone’s, and Jones seems to me to play the stoic role (LD, The Park is Mine, The Fugitive) much better than he does the wacky role (Under Siege,
I think Pitt could have also substituted effectively in the other roles DiCaprio has played that are broad and slightly humorous, such as Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street or Howard Hughes in The Aviator.
I don't think Brad Pitt could have done the DiCaprio characters who were younger, slightly more earnest men—men with an air of desperation about them. For example, the DiCaprio roles in The Departed or Gangs of New York. As an aside, I can see Matt Damon doing fine as those characters.
By the same token, Brad Pitt's best performance, imho, was when he played, brilliantly, the doomed, slightly mystical and premonitional Jesse James in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. He owned the part. Somehow, I can't see DiCaprio pulling that particular performance off.Replies: @Logan, @ricpic
I enjoyed the hell out of his pikey in Snatch.
Even if I couldn’t understand a word he said.
I actually walked out of Reservoir Dogs due to its gratuitous violence, and Inglorious Bastards was too much of a silly spoof to be taken seriously–but this looks worth the price of a theatre ticket.
Pitt is great actor within his comparatively narrow range. But DiCaprio is much better at portraying emotional depth.
I can’t really imagine Pitt pulling off the movie-within a movie acting scenes or shedding tears of frustration like DiCaprio. In fact, I can’t think of any movie where Pitt has cried. Not exactly his usual character “type” anyway.
Agreed. Although I wouldn't classify Pitt as a "great actor." Like Tom Cruise his skill set is minimal, but like Cruise he's a great movie star. Pitt is able to convey decency and solidity. I had a conversation with someone who worked with him for a while and confirmed he's one of the few good ones at that level. Although Pitt did produce progeny with a crazy witch. Which means he's human.Replies: @syonredux, @foulkes
Agreed on the trailer for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood being incredible.
It is striking how much better trailers are now, compared to pre-1990’s, with the shift coming around 95 or so. Maybe it is better, cheaper editing tools? Maybe more editors had cut their teeth on music videos? Audiences had different expectations? The same thing seemed to happen with commercials, albeit a few years earlier.
There were occasional high points, like Alien or Vertigo, but most of the trailers were dreadful. Compare the trailer for Altman’s Nashville, a similar style story to Hollywood, but a terrible trailer.
Also, wonder why there is not an Academy Award for best trailer, when every other aspect of film is covered.
Best end credits
Best gaffer
Best grip
Best stuntmanReplies: @MEH 0910
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLnoLmCqT30
One of the worst trailers is of THE GODFATHER. Gives all the game away.
One of the best is for MARNIE.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV_2-v_dsAU
Trailer for THE FOUNTAINHEAD is ridiculous but effective.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipJDP_B3iEE
I remember this. Made me wanna see it so bad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRf_sULD1HM
FANDANGO, one of Tarantula's favs. I love it too. Reynolds also did remarkable work with WATERWORLD, MONTE CRISTO, TRISTAN, and RISEN.
https://www.tampabay.com/30-years-later-which-movie-would-you-watch-fandango-or-falcon-and-the/2215146
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY5bKAHWHHQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axSnW-ygU5g
Here is another one, where the elderly are put on trial by future generations for the crushing national debt. Of course, Ridley Scott, a pre-Boomer, could not anticipate the selfishness and full-blown narcism of Boomers, so his omen of 2 TRILLION DOLLARS, seems like more of a Dr. Evil punchline in hindsight, sadly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiBCRQL58_k
Tarantino’s Most Transgressive Filmhttps://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/tarantinos-most-transgressive-film/595309/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=shareReplies: @Buzz Mohawk, @Hypnotoad666, @Palerider1861
That was, indeed, a brilliant piece of character development by Tarentino. It gives Cliff an edge and an ambiguity that is infinitely more interesting than a one-dimensional loyal, hero sidekick would have been. (Another touch was a one-time, off-handed reference to Cliff being a “war hero” but nothing more is said about that).
The flashback (if that’s even the right term for one of those “cutout” sequences), has Cliff and his wife on a boat where they have presumably been vacationing. Cliff has just come in from spearfishing. He is looking tired and beat down. He is sitting drinking a beer (he’s probably had a few), and holding a speargun while his wife stands there berating him, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe”-style, in what is presumably a routine occurrence for them. Cliff says nothing.
That’s it. You have to imagine what happens next.
You could make another movie about that one alluded incident.
P.S., A very good and insightful review in the Atlantic. I think they let some of their writers off the SJW leash for “cultural” issues that aren’t so directly connected to politics. For example, I remember someone there did a good, generally positive treatment of Jordan Peterson.
Only saw Lonesome Dove once, when it was new – loved it!
Destroyed, as in put an end to its existence? No. Most of the damage was on the front of the vehicle and n0n-structural--a new front bumper, headlight, hood and front quarter panel. No doubt it will be restored back to original and sold off as a prop to the film.
https://thegearshift.blogspot.com/2014/01/real-25th-anniversary-lamborghini.html
"Could DiCaprio and Pitt Have Played Each Other's Roles?"
Absolutely.Replies: @Lurker
Good point, it’s value has actually been enhanced.
“Ya got that one wrong.”
Agreed. Reading the four novels in Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove series — fantastic books, especially if one has Texas lineage or is interested in the bloody history of the Lone Star state — I never once pictured anybody else as Call and McCrae. Duvall and Jones fit those roles to a T (exas).
I can't really imagine Pitt pulling off the movie-within a movie acting scenes or shedding tears of frustration like DiCaprio. In fact, I can't think of any movie where Pitt has cried. Not exactly his usual character "type" anyway.Replies: @SunBakedSuburb
“Pitt is [a] great actor within his comparatively narrow range. But DiCaprio is much better at portraying emotional depth.”
Agreed. Although I wouldn’t classify Pitt as a “great actor.” Like Tom Cruise his skill set is minimal, but like Cruise he’s a great movie star. Pitt is able to convey decency and solidity. I had a conversation with someone who worked with him for a while and confirmed he’s one of the few good ones at that level. Although Pitt did produce progeny with a crazy witch. Which means he’s human.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWtoR5_-EbU
I 've always felt the same about Tom Cruise. A good-looking, weak actor with narrow range surrounded by a good script and a well-funded production . Odd how these guys are mega stars.
Perhaps these guys can attract a male audience because they are good-looking, but not overly so?
I feel the opposite about Pitt. He is a very good ( though not great) actor who chooses great roles .
He would be much more respected for his acting if he wasn't so handsome
I think Pitt could have also substituted effectively in the other roles DiCaprio has played that are broad and slightly humorous, such as Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street or Howard Hughes in The Aviator.
I don't think Brad Pitt could have done the DiCaprio characters who were younger, slightly more earnest men—men with an air of desperation about them. For example, the DiCaprio roles in The Departed or Gangs of New York. As an aside, I can see Matt Damon doing fine as those characters.
By the same token, Brad Pitt's best performance, imho, was when he played, brilliantly, the doomed, slightly mystical and premonitional Jesse James in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. He owned the part. Somehow, I can't see DiCaprio pulling that particular performance off.Replies: @Logan, @ricpic
I didn’t see DeCaprio do any acting in The Departed, unless one note tight jaw clenching qualifies as acting.
Personally I’d want my classic lambo not to be wrecked as a movie prop.
“My LeBaron once belonged to Jon Voight”
I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels that way about Lonesome Dove. I read the book before watching the show and thought Jones and Duvall would be in the opposite roles!
When I was much younger I watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s. By then the movie had already been out many, many years… viewed as iconic, discussed to death etc… and Audrey Hepburn seen as the epitome of class and elegance and sophistication. Years later, I read the book. Even more years later, I read where Capote talks about how he envisioned someone more like Marilyn Monroe in that iconic role – young, carefree, unconventional, wild, gregarious, fragile, perfomative, and oozing sex with every step, look and gesture.
I have never been able to get out of my head how Holly Golightly might have been if it were played by Marilyn and not Audbrey. (Or how I might have envisioned Holly had I read the book first and never seen the movie or been exposed to any of its references in culture). I’m guessing a Holly played by Marylin would have still been iconic… but very, very different.
Nobody has mentioned that Pitt and DiCaprio had early acting roles playing a dirty carny and a dirty orphan, respectively, on Growing Pains.
I just saw it and would highly recommend it. I gave up on Tarantino around the time of his Kill Bill 2 but this film felt like it was made by a human being, not a nerd.
As for the roles played by Pitt and DiCaprio, I think they were the best men for the parts they played. DiCaprio was the best to play the insecure character.
I thought that could have been the title, It's OK to Punch Hippies.Replies: @SFG, @anonymous
Are you saying that Pitt actually punched a Nazi?
Re Lonesome Dove, I strongly disagree. I thought Tommy Lee Jones did a fine job.
His character was supposed to be a severely repressed man, devoting himself to work (sometimes in the form of a dangerous adventure, like the cattle-rustling in Mexico) while at the same time unable to acknowledge and nurture his only child, and unable to admit that he made a mistake in rejecting the boy’s mother long ago.
Thus the “constipated” look.
He’s one the greatest actors in the history of Hollywood. Let’s see … The Godfather, A Streetcar Named Desire, Julius Caesar, On the Waterfront, The Freshman … At least three of those films will be watched as long as people care about movies. And those are just among the Brando films I’ve seen.
The only film I’ve seen Brando where his acting detracted significantly from the movie was The Missouri Breaks.
No one could have played that role except him.Replies: @Pincher Martin, @Buzz Mohawk, @Reg Cæsar
That was a compelling trailer, but check this one out. It is by far the most compelling, well made movie I’ve ever seen. It should have won Oscars for actor (Coster-Waldau), screenwriter and director (Ric Waugh), and score. Made for ~$3 mill and box office of ~$3 mill, so it appears this got buried by the powers that be for the same reasons they buried Idiocracy. Also, it should have been called The Human Animal, but presumably the money people demanded a low-brow title.
Apocalypse Now
No one could have played that role except him.
However, Bob Crane disagreed-- he wanted the role.
Don’t watch Lonesome Dove again. Don’t think about it again and don’t ever comment upon it again.
I gather Sinatra wanted the parts switched. He was right.
Sinatra and Brando supposedly had a nasty feud during the movie.
Okay, so should the Academy start handing out Oscars for Best Trailer?
I mean, there are awards for TV commercials, right?
They can make time at the ceremony by skipping all speeches.Replies: @Steve Sailer
I love Broadway musicals up through the late 60s, but I’ve never made it all the way through “Guys and Dolls” probably because of Brando. I have a copy on CD, but I can’t make it all the way through.
Too bad, because it has two of the greatest bits in Broadway history, the opener “Fugue for Tinhorns” and “Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat”, both Stubby Kaye set pieces.
I read that DeNiro was offered role of Max or Noodles in ONCE/AMERICA and he took the role of Noodles. I think he did the right thing, but it would have been interesting with him as Max.
For RIDE HIGH COUNTRY, Scott was originally given the role of ex-marshal, but he switched roles with McCrea. It worked, but it would have worked in a different way had the roles been other way around. I’d say the same would have been the case with BUTCH/SUNDANCE. Result would have been different but interesting just the same.
Is DiCaprio and Pitt like king and knight or like knight and squire? In EXCALIBUR, Arthur and Lancelot(and then Arthur and Perceval) are more crucial than Arthur and Guinevere.
As Tarantino surely spent a lot of time gabbing and bonding with guys, esp before he became famous — he was probably not a ladies’ man before fame — , he probably knows something about male bonding and Men Without Women thing of Hemingway. (He also seems to be informed by Mailer’s White Negro, and his diarrhea mindset seems to reflect Kerouac. But he lacks the gravitas of Kesey who could be quite thoughtful.)
Maybe there is something to Platonic Love idea. While a man may fall in deep love with a woman, it sort of negates his manhood because he can’t treat her like a man. Man and man is like dealing with a tree. Man and woman is dealing with a flower. Gotta be more careful. Granted, Plato was really thinking about meeting-of-the-minds but for most guys it’s meeting of soul and body(non-sexually of course). WILD BUNCH is more satisfying than BONNIE & CLYDE because all the guys carry the load whereas Clyde has to carry Bonnie at times. The woman slow things down. Even though the guy in HIGH FIDELITY is hung up about a woman, it seems what is really missing in his life is a great male friend. The two guys who work for him just don’t cut it. In contrast, Jason London and McConaughy really click and hit it off in DAZED AND CONFUSED. Women have their own thing in so-called chick flicks, MYSTIC PIZZA being one of the best.
Despite the love for Debra, the primary relationship in ONCE/AMERICA is between Max and Noodles. Despite the Jewish moll, the real feeling in MILLER’S CROSSING is between Finney and Byrne.
DiCaprio is a capable actor but not very memorable. He’s really like a Brat Packer who could act better. Or he’s like Tom Cruise had Cruise been in more serious roles(than intermittently). DiCaprio is attractive but not drop dead gorgeous. He’s talented but not special. He’s sort of like Matt Damon. Also has the perpetual youth thing that I don’t like. He doesn’t really have star quality. Also, he’s always most DiCaprio in movie after movie. I didn’t see Belfort in WOLF. I saw DiCaprio in that role. In contrast, consider Deniro as Corleone, as Bickle, as LaMotta, as Pupkin. Even with heavy makeup as in J. EDGAR, he’s always more DiCaprio than anyone else… just like Mont Clift was always Clift. Dicap has a lot of energy and devotion, but not much in the way of personality that really sets him apart. ‘DiCaprio’ doesn’t ring a bell like ‘Coburn’, ‘Heston’, ‘Lancaster’, ‘Glenn Ford’, ‘Stewart’, ‘Connery’, ‘Brando’, ‘Newman’, ‘Nicholson’, ‘Nolte’, ‘Pacino’, and etc. Or even Gere, Harrison Ford, Cusack, etc.
He may be as good or better than them in technique, but there is too much of the Kid about him, the perpetual youngster trying so hard to be a star and artist at once. There’s something thin; same with Ryan Gosling.
His roles with Scorsese are not memorable like Deniro’s. I thought he was overwhelmed by GANGS and AVIATOR. He was one-dimensional in SHUTTER, a role virtually similar to the one in INCEPTION. He was fun in WOLF but any good actor could have done just as well. I think Day-Lewis is a far more intelligent and deft actor, able to really become the characters he’s playing.
As for Pitt, his role as stuntman isn’t convincing(though I haven’t seen the movie). With looks like that, he should be a star in Hollywood, not just a body who takes the blows. Usually, duos in movies are about mind and muscle. In BUTCH/SUNDANCE, Butch is mind, Sundance is muscle(or at least the gun). In MIDNIGHT COWBOY, Joe is the meat, Ratso is the mind. In ONCE HOLLYWOOD, DiCaprio is supposed to be the Face and Pitt is supposed to be the Body. Stars have good faces but generally not the body to do daredevil stuff. But the problem is Pitt has a more attractive face than DiCaprio. For that reason, while Pitt may be good in this role, it would have more senses with a less attractive actor. That way, we could understand why the body serves the face of another man. But in this case, the body has the better face. He should be star material in Hollywood.
A man who had star power but never became a star is Powers Boothe. He was magnificent as Haig in NIXON. A very talented guy who should have been bigger is Will Patton. Look at his very divergent roles as psycho-homo elitist in NO WAY OUT and his role as small town blue-collar guy in MOTHMAN. Bull’s eye. Something to marvel at.
Thanks for the mention of Powers Boothe. There was always a dark shade to Boothe, maybe that's why he was never quite leading man material. He was very authoritative as deep state Al Haig in Oliver Stone's Shakespearean Nixon (1995). A couple films in which Boothe played second to the lead you might want to see: Frailty (2001) wherein Boothe plays an murderous FBI agent. And Walter Hill's homage to Sam Peckinpah, Extreme Prejudice (1987). Boothe plays a cocaine lord based in a Mexican hellhole right across the border from the Texas town where his high school buddy, played by Nick Nolte, serves as a Ranger. Nolte and Boothe in the same film -- that's a deal.Replies: @The Wild Geese Howard
It’s not like Pitt is built like a linebacker. Wiry, yes, athletic, perhaps, but not particularly a strong man.
Two movie ideas that, I suspect, Tarantino wanted to do separately. Washed up 50s actor in industry passing him by and homage to spaghetti westerns and Italian ripoff genres and late 60s nostalgia trip revenge fantasy. So he cobbled them together making movie too long.
Also..why not have Manson himself getting thrashed in climax ? I mean if it's a revenge fantasy against the folks who destroyed the Boomer -sacred peace and love boondoggle why not go all the way?Replies: @J.Ross
Because it’s a fine line between depiction and lionizing. Tarentino got this detail right. Manson appears, but as a nobody, potentially unnoticed by the audience. Making him a victim would play into his automythologizing.
For RIDE HIGH COUNTRY, Scott was originally given the role of ex-marshal, but he switched roles with McCrea. It worked, but it would have worked in a different way had the roles been other way around. I'd say the same would have been the case with BUTCH/SUNDANCE. Result would have been different but interesting just the same.
Is DiCaprio and Pitt like king and knight or like knight and squire? In EXCALIBUR, Arthur and Lancelot(and then Arthur and Perceval) are more crucial than Arthur and Guinevere.
As Tarantino surely spent a lot of time gabbing and bonding with guys, esp before he became famous -- he was probably not a ladies' man before fame -- , he probably knows something about male bonding and Men Without Women thing of Hemingway. (He also seems to be informed by Mailer's White Negro, and his diarrhea mindset seems to reflect Kerouac. But he lacks the gravitas of Kesey who could be quite thoughtful.)
Maybe there is something to Platonic Love idea. While a man may fall in deep love with a woman, it sort of negates his manhood because he can't treat her like a man. Man and man is like dealing with a tree. Man and woman is dealing with a flower. Gotta be more careful. Granted, Plato was really thinking about meeting-of-the-minds but for most guys it's meeting of soul and body(non-sexually of course). WILD BUNCH is more satisfying than BONNIE & CLYDE because all the guys carry the load whereas Clyde has to carry Bonnie at times. The woman slow things down. Even though the guy in HIGH FIDELITY is hung up about a woman, it seems what is really missing in his life is a great male friend. The two guys who work for him just don't cut it. In contrast, Jason London and McConaughy really click and hit it off in DAZED AND CONFUSED. Women have their own thing in so-called chick flicks, MYSTIC PIZZA being one of the best.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCkFXyVRhBY
Despite the love for Debra, the primary relationship in ONCE/AMERICA is between Max and Noodles. Despite the Jewish moll, the real feeling in MILLER'S CROSSING is between Finney and Byrne.
DiCaprio is a capable actor but not very memorable. He's really like a Brat Packer who could act better. Or he's like Tom Cruise had Cruise been in more serious roles(than intermittently). DiCaprio is attractive but not drop dead gorgeous. He's talented but not special. He's sort of like Matt Damon. Also has the perpetual youth thing that I don't like. He doesn't really have star quality. Also, he's always most DiCaprio in movie after movie. I didn't see Belfort in WOLF. I saw DiCaprio in that role. In contrast, consider Deniro as Corleone, as Bickle, as LaMotta, as Pupkin. Even with heavy makeup as in J. EDGAR, he's always more DiCaprio than anyone else... just like Mont Clift was always Clift. Dicap has a lot of energy and devotion, but not much in the way of personality that really sets him apart. 'DiCaprio' doesn't ring a bell like 'Coburn', 'Heston', 'Lancaster', 'Glenn Ford', 'Stewart', 'Connery', 'Brando', 'Newman', 'Nicholson', 'Nolte', 'Pacino', and etc. Or even Gere, Harrison Ford, Cusack, etc.
He may be as good or better than them in technique, but there is too much of the Kid about him, the perpetual youngster trying so hard to be a star and artist at once. There's something thin; same with Ryan Gosling.
His roles with Scorsese are not memorable like Deniro's. I thought he was overwhelmed by GANGS and AVIATOR. He was one-dimensional in SHUTTER, a role virtually similar to the one in INCEPTION. He was fun in WOLF but any good actor could have done just as well. I think Day-Lewis is a far more intelligent and deft actor, able to really become the characters he's playing.
As for Pitt, his role as stuntman isn't convincing(though I haven't seen the movie). With looks like that, he should be a star in Hollywood, not just a body who takes the blows. Usually, duos in movies are about mind and muscle. In BUTCH/SUNDANCE, Butch is mind, Sundance is muscle(or at least the gun). In MIDNIGHT COWBOY, Joe is the meat, Ratso is the mind. In ONCE HOLLYWOOD, DiCaprio is supposed to be the Face and Pitt is supposed to be the Body. Stars have good faces but generally not the body to do daredevil stuff. But the problem is Pitt has a more attractive face than DiCaprio. For that reason, while Pitt may be good in this role, it would have more senses with a less attractive actor. That way, we could understand why the body serves the face of another man. But in this case, the body has the better face. He should be star material in Hollywood.
A man who had star power but never became a star is Powers Boothe. He was magnificent as Haig in NIXON. A very talented guy who should have been bigger is Will Patton. Look at his very divergent roles as psycho-homo elitist in NO WAY OUT and his role as small town blue-collar guy in MOTHMAN. Bull's eye. Something to marvel at.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @SunBakedSuburb
As for Pitt, his role as stuntman isn’t convincing(though I haven’t seen the movie). With looks like that, he should be a star in Hollywood, not just a body who takes the blows.
Tarantino should have inserted a flashback callout of Pitt’s character trying to act. I love scenes of good actors pretending to be bad actors.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ_T2iXZWa8
In Inglorious Basterds, Brad Pitt's character, Aldo Raine, does a terrible job of playing an Italian stuntman who cannot speak Italian. Pitt's character calls himself "Enzo Gorlom" which is the birth name of Enzo G. Castellari, the actual director of the original The Inglorious Bastards. Eli Roth, one of the other American impersonators, called himself Antonio Margheriti who was an Italian director of horror/giallo and spaghetti western films.
Rick Dawson would go on to star in some Antonio Margheriti spaghetti westerns in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQxjyRr9k2EReplies: @BB753
Had they cast Denzel Washington as a black victim of the legal and prison system, it would have been a contender for the Oscars and a blockbuster. But who’s interested in a story about a white guy turning into a gang member in prison? Not Hollywood executives. Not the NYT.
This has been known forever (I think 20/20 did a story in the 1990s) and whenever it comes up it’s hushed because of who it’s about.
A well made trailer is a beautiful thing drawing upon all the cinematic arts. One of the great things about music videos (back when they made music videos) was that you’re getting a movie that doesn’t take up the whole evening. There’s definitely an art to selling a film without giving everything away or being canny.
They can make time at the ceremony by skipping all speeches.
Agreed. Although I wouldn't classify Pitt as a "great actor." Like Tom Cruise his skill set is minimal, but like Cruise he's a great movie star. Pitt is able to convey decency and solidity. I had a conversation with someone who worked with him for a while and confirmed he's one of the few good ones at that level. Although Pitt did produce progeny with a crazy witch. Which means he's human.Replies: @syonredux, @foulkes
Gwyneth Paltrow describes how Brad Pitt reacted when Harvey Weinstein tried his sleazy schtick on her:
I have never been able to get out of my head how Holly Golightly might have been if it were played by Marilyn and not Audbrey. (Or how I might have envisioned Holly had I read the book first and never seen the movie or been exposed to any of its references in culture). I’m guessing a Holly played by Marylin would have still been iconic... but very, very different.Replies: @Anonymous
Lulu May? She played a phony but a real phony. Best thing she ever did.
Bruce Lee has a line in the film about Pitt being too pretty to be a stuntman.
QT did an extended version of Hateful Eight for NETFLIX (Admittedly, a bad idea; the film was already too long in the theatrical cut). Rumor has it that he might do something similar with Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. Apparently, there’s a lot of good stuff that never made into the theatrical cut: another scene with the little girl, James Marsden as Burt Reynolds, stuff from Dalton’s acting career, a scene with Tim Roth, etc. Maybe there’s also a scene showing that Cliff Booth couldn’t act to save his life….
It is striking how much better trailers are now, compared to pre-1990's, with the shift coming around 95 or so. Maybe it is better, cheaper editing tools? Maybe more editors had cut their teeth on music videos? Audiences had different expectations? The same thing seemed to happen with commercials, albeit a few years earlier.
There were occasional high points, like Alien or Vertigo, but most of the trailers were dreadful. Compare the trailer for Altman's Nashville, a similar style story to Hollywood, but a terrible trailer.
Also, wonder why there is not an Academy Award for best trailer, when every other aspect of film is covered.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nk25HB9JkLwReplies: @Anonymous, @Anonymous, @anon
Best opening credits
Best end credits
Best gaffer
Best grip
Best stuntman
Alright, this may look like trolling, but- movies, all of them, are overrated, either as an entertainment or as anything else.
Arnold Hauser had said, I think: Film is a picture book of life for the illiterate.
As a former cinephile, I tend to agree.
No hard feelings, moviegoers….
There was a longer version of ALMOST LAMOUS. Interminable.
How a Brutal Race Riot Shaped Modern Chicago
A century later, the city, and America, are still dealing with the consequences.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/03/opinion/how-a-brutal-race-riot-shaped-modern-chicago.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=HomepageReplies: @Anonymous
But why are black areas same in St Louis, Milwaukee, New Orleans, etc.
RedLetterMedia on Leonardo DiCaprio’s (and Natalie Portman’s) bad acting:
Mr. Plinkett’s Titanic Review
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHiceVim9Wg&feature=youtu.be&t=1545
Half in the Bag Episode 102: The Revenant
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwJTnUkyvVg&feature=youtu.be&t=492
To be fair, RLM’s Mike and Jay did like Leo in Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.
Jonah Hill stole the show in that movie.
Also, the minor characters — muscled Jewish dealer, Asian guy, Swiss banker, etc — were more memorable in that movie.
They can make time at the ceremony by skipping all speeches.Replies: @Steve Sailer
An alternative way of making a good trailer is just to show the movie’s best scene and then leave the audience hanging, wanting to know what happens next, as Clint Eastwood did in “American Sniper.” I’d recommend that strategy for low-budget movies with good acting rather than expensive special effects: write a great self-contained scene that can be used as most of the trailer. That works better than imitating a high budget movie’s typical trailer of shots of all the various cool stuff in the movie.
This is a great idea. I might steal it. I knew reading your column would payoff. Of course, this means extra work for the lazy and whiny writer.Replies: @Steve Sailer
Best end credits
Best gaffer
Best grip
Best stuntmanReplies: @MEH 0910
Best best boy
Roger Corman allegedly once said that every film would be improved if it were reduced in length by 20 minutes….and had an exploding helicopter scene….
Elder Statesman Corman is correct. Although there are some films I just want to inhabit, so their length doesn't matter. Apocalypse Now (1979), There Will Be Blood (2007), and De Palma's glorious Scarface (1983) immediately come to mind.
Just got back from my second viewing of the film, only this time I saw it with people from my conservative study group. Group demographics (excluding me):
Age Range: 18-30
Size: 7
Sex: 4 men, 3 women
Race: White
Occupation: Students (undergrad and graduate)
Their thoughts:
Pitt and Dicaprio swapping roles: Universally held to be a bad idea. Pitt and Dicaprio are perfectly cast.
Distaff Reaction: Pitt is unbearable sexy….And Robbie is stunningly beautiful (girls are keen observers of feminine beauty, always quick to spot flaws that besotted males overlook)
Is it a conservative film: Yes (one girl said that it was almost good enough to make up for anti-White Django and anti-Becky Hateful Eight)
Stuff observed the second time around: The director that Dalton and Booth are praising during their farewell drunk is William Whitney, a studio journeyman known for his work on serials.QT has sung his praises in several interviews.Cliff has an issue of Sgt Fury and his Howling Commandos in his trailer (Dalton’s eyepatch in the WW2-set The Fourteen Fists of McCluskey is a callback to Fury).
Buchanan and others mistook FORREST DUMP as conservative, but it was really just nostalgic.
Tarantino is too much in love with late 60s culture(that was NOT conservative) to have made a con-flick.Replies: @syonredux, @syonredux
I’m missing whatever’s exceptional, in a good or bad way, about that trailer. It doesn’t move the needle for my ticket-buying decision. I guess it reasonably wouldn’t be expected to when I’m leaning about 2:1 against seeing it at present. For someone on the fence, maybe any burst of exposure helps.
Zak Snyder’s big blockbuster trailers were usually compelling while the films were unbelievably terrible. It is a real rookie mistake to associate the strength of a trailer with the movie’s. They’re not the same type of product, usually not edited by the same staff.
Praising the trailer for something you’ve already watched (and given a positive review to) is a bit odd, so I dunno how to use that.
Agreed. Although I wouldn't classify Pitt as a "great actor." Like Tom Cruise his skill set is minimal, but like Cruise he's a great movie star. Pitt is able to convey decency and solidity. I had a conversation with someone who worked with him for a while and confirmed he's one of the few good ones at that level. Although Pitt did produce progeny with a crazy witch. Which means he's human.Replies: @syonredux, @foulkes
“
I’ve never been impressed with DiCaprio’s acting. He did a good job in this movie but in most of his movies I walk out of the theatre thinking the movie was fine but would have better if someone else did DiCaprio’s role . I thought he was weak in Titantic, Inception, Shutter Island, Revenant , and very weak in Gangs of New York. His strongest performance was Catch Me if You Can
I ‘ve always felt the same about Tom Cruise. A good-looking, weak actor with narrow range surrounded by a good script and a well-funded production . Odd how these guys are mega stars.
Perhaps these guys can attract a male audience because they are good-looking, but not overly so?
I feel the opposite about Pitt. He is a very good ( though not great) actor who chooses great roles .
He would be much more respected for his acting if he wasn’t so handsome
OT:
Mass shooter in El Paso Walmart, possibly with an anti-immigrant manifesto (?). White shooter now in custody.
So much for the BS theory that whites tend toward “suicide shooting.” Maybe in the past, but not anymore. The trend now is for the white race realist/anti-immigrant shooters to very much stay alive.
Anders Breivik wanted to be taken alive, so - as he explained in his voluminous manifesto- to spread his ideas. Maybe he is a inspiration.
This may sound utterly trivial, but…
I don’t especially like DiCaprio, and have barely seen him in anything (I think Gangs of New York is the only one). He alwasy seems too young to be taken seriously.
However (and, again, this is trivial): in the trailer, when the DeCaprio character is dancing and grinning (presumably on some dating game type show), that scene is so utterly pitch perfect-his awkward yet cool dancing, the music, his grinning. I found it the most compelling 1 1/2 seconds of the trailer-that one second scene looks so completely ‘on’ for the time period. A few hours after I watched the trailer: it is the only thing I distinctly remember.
joe
So yeah, both are stellar actors, and as each of their respective oeuvre shows in such works as, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, A River Runs Through It, The Aviator and Burn After Reading show, they make it look so damn easy.Replies: @Clifford Brown
Tarantino perfectly captured nondescript, kind of dumpy Los Angeles in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. Jackie Brown is a pitch perfect depiction of the South Bay, Los Angeles. Once Upon A Time in Hollywood is his glamour depiction of 60’s Hollywood.
As long as you don’t get the feeling when you go see the movie that they put the best parts in the trailer. That happens sometimes.
The trailer which most stunned me was for a Norwegian film “Pathfinder” (1987) – commitments made me miss its showing a week later. Grrr!
Here’s a great one: faithful to the film and featuring a megastar in an unlikely setting…
No one could have played that role except him.Replies: @Pincher Martin, @Buzz Mohawk, @Reg Cæsar
I agree. That’s one I missed.
His character in the movie is identified a couple of times as a war hero.
I guess I misunderstood...Pitt (the man, not the character the man plays in some movie) actually hasn't punched any Nazis.
OKReplies: @Percy Gryce
Like this?
This year’s two Movies for Adults (the other being the unreleased The Irishman) exemplify the East Coast/ West Coast dilemma in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. Scorsese makes Serious movies set on the East Coast that are about crime and take place mostly or entirely at night. Tarantino makes Fun movies that, while featuring crime, tend to have happy, even fantastical endings, at least for our hero(in)es. There’s more there I think.
Yes I am aware of the many exceptions in both filmmakers’ oeuvres.
Lets get real here on the submersed female desires here
For RIDE HIGH COUNTRY, Scott was originally given the role of ex-marshal, but he switched roles with McCrea. It worked, but it would have worked in a different way had the roles been other way around. I'd say the same would have been the case with BUTCH/SUNDANCE. Result would have been different but interesting just the same.
Is DiCaprio and Pitt like king and knight or like knight and squire? In EXCALIBUR, Arthur and Lancelot(and then Arthur and Perceval) are more crucial than Arthur and Guinevere.
As Tarantino surely spent a lot of time gabbing and bonding with guys, esp before he became famous -- he was probably not a ladies' man before fame -- , he probably knows something about male bonding and Men Without Women thing of Hemingway. (He also seems to be informed by Mailer's White Negro, and his diarrhea mindset seems to reflect Kerouac. But he lacks the gravitas of Kesey who could be quite thoughtful.)
Maybe there is something to Platonic Love idea. While a man may fall in deep love with a woman, it sort of negates his manhood because he can't treat her like a man. Man and man is like dealing with a tree. Man and woman is dealing with a flower. Gotta be more careful. Granted, Plato was really thinking about meeting-of-the-minds but for most guys it's meeting of soul and body(non-sexually of course). WILD BUNCH is more satisfying than BONNIE & CLYDE because all the guys carry the load whereas Clyde has to carry Bonnie at times. The woman slow things down. Even though the guy in HIGH FIDELITY is hung up about a woman, it seems what is really missing in his life is a great male friend. The two guys who work for him just don't cut it. In contrast, Jason London and McConaughy really click and hit it off in DAZED AND CONFUSED. Women have their own thing in so-called chick flicks, MYSTIC PIZZA being one of the best.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCkFXyVRhBY
Despite the love for Debra, the primary relationship in ONCE/AMERICA is between Max and Noodles. Despite the Jewish moll, the real feeling in MILLER'S CROSSING is between Finney and Byrne.
DiCaprio is a capable actor but not very memorable. He's really like a Brat Packer who could act better. Or he's like Tom Cruise had Cruise been in more serious roles(than intermittently). DiCaprio is attractive but not drop dead gorgeous. He's talented but not special. He's sort of like Matt Damon. Also has the perpetual youth thing that I don't like. He doesn't really have star quality. Also, he's always most DiCaprio in movie after movie. I didn't see Belfort in WOLF. I saw DiCaprio in that role. In contrast, consider Deniro as Corleone, as Bickle, as LaMotta, as Pupkin. Even with heavy makeup as in J. EDGAR, he's always more DiCaprio than anyone else... just like Mont Clift was always Clift. Dicap has a lot of energy and devotion, but not much in the way of personality that really sets him apart. 'DiCaprio' doesn't ring a bell like 'Coburn', 'Heston', 'Lancaster', 'Glenn Ford', 'Stewart', 'Connery', 'Brando', 'Newman', 'Nicholson', 'Nolte', 'Pacino', and etc. Or even Gere, Harrison Ford, Cusack, etc.
He may be as good or better than them in technique, but there is too much of the Kid about him, the perpetual youngster trying so hard to be a star and artist at once. There's something thin; same with Ryan Gosling.
His roles with Scorsese are not memorable like Deniro's. I thought he was overwhelmed by GANGS and AVIATOR. He was one-dimensional in SHUTTER, a role virtually similar to the one in INCEPTION. He was fun in WOLF but any good actor could have done just as well. I think Day-Lewis is a far more intelligent and deft actor, able to really become the characters he's playing.
As for Pitt, his role as stuntman isn't convincing(though I haven't seen the movie). With looks like that, he should be a star in Hollywood, not just a body who takes the blows. Usually, duos in movies are about mind and muscle. In BUTCH/SUNDANCE, Butch is mind, Sundance is muscle(or at least the gun). In MIDNIGHT COWBOY, Joe is the meat, Ratso is the mind. In ONCE HOLLYWOOD, DiCaprio is supposed to be the Face and Pitt is supposed to be the Body. Stars have good faces but generally not the body to do daredevil stuff. But the problem is Pitt has a more attractive face than DiCaprio. For that reason, while Pitt may be good in this role, it would have more senses with a less attractive actor. That way, we could understand why the body serves the face of another man. But in this case, the body has the better face. He should be star material in Hollywood.
A man who had star power but never became a star is Powers Boothe. He was magnificent as Haig in NIXON. A very talented guy who should have been bigger is Will Patton. Look at his very divergent roles as psycho-homo elitist in NO WAY OUT and his role as small town blue-collar guy in MOTHMAN. Bull's eye. Something to marvel at.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @SunBakedSuburb
“A man who had star power but never became a star is Powers Boothe.
Thanks for the mention of Powers Boothe. There was always a dark shade to Boothe, maybe that’s why he was never quite leading man material. He was very authoritative as deep state Al Haig in Oliver Stone’s Shakespearean Nixon (1995). A couple films in which Boothe played second to the lead you might want to see: Frailty (2001) wherein Boothe plays an murderous FBI agent. And Walter Hill’s homage to Sam Peckinpah, Extreme Prejudice (1987). Boothe plays a cocaine lord based in a Mexican hellhole right across the border from the Texas town where his high school buddy, played by Nick Nolte, serves as a Ranger. Nolte and Boothe in the same film — that’s a deal.
“… write a great self-contained scene that can be used as most of the trailer.”
This is a great idea. I might steal it. I knew reading your column would payoff. Of course, this means extra work for the lazy and whiny writer.
I though Duvall's portrayal of Gus McCrae was his finest work, and Jones was superb as Call.
Duvall's range IMO is as good as anyone's, and Jones seems to me to play the stoic role (LD, The Park is Mine, The Fugitive) much better than he does the wacky role (Under Siege,Replies: @Marty
What was stoic about Jones’s role in The Fugitive?
It doesn't really get any more stoic than that.Replies: @Autochthon, @Marty
With all due respect,Dear Leader,at a time like this you should jump on and discuss the El Paso shooting. You’re thoughts are welcome and needed. Just my 2 cents. Just got home,trying to follow this story.
He did however in his manifesto point out 2 things albeit in a VERY CONFUSED way that are going to hit us like a freight train in the coming 15 to 25 yrs: depending on who you ask automation will kill between 10% and 47% OF ALL JOBS BY 2035...if we won't have the jobs to employ our own citizens then why bring in
Immigrants of any legal variety?
How we feed and house them? I read of all places the Dallas area paper that said a shortage of undocumented construction workers was costing each house being built to go up by about 10k usd....in cost!
So if they're on welfare and/or soaking up 10k$+ per year in public school expenditures why are they here? There's a reason they bitch about school funding...it's not so much white taxpayers being greedy as them aging out. My mom is going to get homestead exemption for her property taxes in about 2 years.....she pays 2k per yr now in the deep south. Adjusted for cost of living that's like paying 5-6k in the DC area....
Lastly his idea of splitting the country up....even some alt right folks have considered the possibility of any giving black Americans their own ethnic state in the American south and say giving portions of the SW and Florida to Hispanics to run as democratic facto separate states.
The rest of the country would be white with I guess spritzes of Native Americans, few asians and higher earner Latinos and white ethnics.Replies: @Corn
DiCaprio is a far superior actor–never saw anything Pitt do that was extraordinary
“Roger Corman allegedly once said that every film would be improved if it were reduced in length by 20 minutes … ”
Elder Statesman Corman is correct. Although there are some films I just want to inhabit, so their length doesn’t matter. Apocalypse Now (1979), There Will Be Blood (2007), and De Palma’s glorious Scarface (1983) immediately come to mind.
No one could have played that role except him.Replies: @Pincher Martin, @Buzz Mohawk, @Reg Cæsar
Marlon Brando was actually a near-disaster in that project, which itself was almost a disaster.
From Paul Edwards, “Hell on Earth: The Making of Apocalypse Now”, Death by Films .com, November 28, 2013:
The success of Brando in Apocalypse Now is as much a testiment to the flexibility and creativeness-on-the-fly of the director as it is to that actor’s talents. The shadowy shots were really done to hide how fat Marlon had become. Whatever lines he has were the best that Coppola could salvage from endless rambling.
For viewing enjoyment, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse is the documentary of the making of the film.
Do you think his methods are unsound?Replies: @Buzz Mohawk
The knife in the tire scene is interesting. I took it to be the stock "arrow in the side of a wooden wagon." It is difficult to puncture a tire with a knife, and if you did you wouldn't leave your knife in it. It is an order of magnitude easier to cut the valve stem. I think you could likely cut a valve stem with a good pair of nail clippers. The messenger to Tex, and Tex himself, ride all out to the rescue, but when he gets to the scene the hero is riding off into the sunset in a cloud of dust. (The tire change only took a little longer than a NASCAR crew operation. He couldn't have gotten more than a couple of lug nuts off in the actual elapsed time.) Anyway, the primitives (hippies) and their technology (horses) are no match for our hero's automobile. Case closed.
The criticism by the SJWs about Sharon Tate's portrayal are because of the sex goddess routine (extended scenes of walking and dancing), and the air-headed, narcissistic self adulation she demonstrated while watching herself onscreen. (Which was a boring part of the movie and could have been done with 1/10th of the screen time.) And what's this with being shown that sexy women actually sleep and sometimes snore?
In the car at the murder scene, Sadie (I believe this is the character) delivers this epiphanic monologue explaining how they will be killing the people who taught them through TV and movies that violence is the solution. Yet thoughout the movie in different scenes, it is repeatedly shown that "everybody" was watching the very same TV shows. This tends to negate the premise that TV violence causes Manson type violence.
At the very end of the movie, are we meant to ponder whether Rick is so shallow that when he is "noticed" by the Tate and Polanski crowd, and invited into their circle, he completely forgets about Cliff who has been taken away by ambulance with life-threatening injuries?Replies: @Buzz Mohawk
Actually this movie is better than I first thought. I think it does speak to the end of an age which seems to bring Tarantino some sadness.
It’s also interesting that California culture may have had more cowboy influence than I realized. Anybody know? The more I think of it, the old Californians seemed like Texans without the Bible Belt.
But in the 60s hordes of freeloaders showed up. And of course, today it is swamped with people from South of the Border.
Tarantino’s Most Transgressive Filmhttps://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/tarantinos-most-transgressive-film/595309/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=shareReplies: @Buzz Mohawk, @Hypnotoad666, @Palerider1861
Yes, Pitt acting ‘manly’ with ‘manly values’ in a Hollywood fantasy movie hardly compares with Pitt’s behavior in real life.
Case in point:
Several years ago Pitt’s mother was quoted in the press as being against homo marriage, after which his mother was routinely savaged in public by many of the usual suspects.
Now what would a real red-blooded grounded American male do in such a circumstance? Good old Brad Spit didn’t even have the balls to defend his own mother.
But he sure is good at acting the part, eh?!!
Pitt needs a good director to coax out a good performance (QT almost allowed him to fall back to his bland, flat line delivery) but DiCaprio really stinks. Why Scorsese is infatuated with him I’ll never know. I can’t take credit for it, but his acting style has been described as a “constipated lizard face” which pretty much nails it.
So basically no, they couldn’t swap roles in this. DiCaprio would be laughable as a bare knuckle brawling veteran.
I have considered the switching roles things for other movies. Heat, with Pacino and de Niro, could have had them in opposite roles. Bobby D could have played the frantic on the edge detective and Al could have played the cool criminal mastermind, but both played there to their strengths. Pacino is such a force of nature when he lets his emotions loose and powerfully conveys them on screen.Replies: @Harry Baldwin, @Sam Haysom
“Pacino is such a force of nature when he lets his emotions loose and powerfully conveys them on screen.”
I think of a line from some comedian: “I saw that movie with Al Pacino in it. I forget the title, but he plays a short guy from the Bronx who yells a lot.”
There’s speculation that “Rick Dalton” is based on Burt Reynolds, with a little bit of Clint Eastwood thrown in.
http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2019/07/tarantino-on-dalton-burt-who/
“Ultimate California movies …”
The Graduate (1967), another wonderful film. Mike Nichols really captured California’s paradisiacal qualities. Another (mostly) California-based film that centers on the lead character’s alienation: Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces (1970).
That just makes his performance all the better.
Do you think his methods are unsound?
I haven’t seen the movie.
Pitt has the athletic physique of a boxer. Can you imagine the skinny fat DiCaprio playing Pitt’s role in Fight Club or the boxer in Snatch? I can’t. Pitt is this much better suited to the more physical role of a fighting stunt man. (A young Kurt Russell would have been a good fit for that role, too). Pitt is better looking that DiCaprio both facially and in terms of build (like an improved Robert Redford (I’m not homosexual btw)) and when he talks to much, he draws magnetism away from himself, away from his competitive advantage. He’s not a bad talker, but my actor standards he is not phenomenal.
Julian Moore’s porn star character’s flashback scene in Boogie Nights is a stellar example of what you’re talking about.
“Tarantino shows that the guys who punched Nazis–DiCaprio (in the movies) and Pitt (in reality)…”
I guess I misunderstood…Pitt (the man, not the character the man plays in some movie) actually hasn’t punched any Nazis.
OK
Duvall said he was offered the other role, but said he wouldn’t do the mini-series if he couldn’t play McCrae. History was made. I just can’t see Jones as happy-go-lucky McCrae.
I once read someone call Pitt “a character actor in a leading mans body”….& I strongly agree….
Even if I couldn't understand a word he said.Replies: @Neoconned
Snatch was my favorite film of my college years besides Fight Club. Watched an online interview today with Pitt, DiCaprio and QT and Pitt listed True Romance, FC and Snatch as his 3 personal favorite performances
Proof of your point is the critical reception American History X received (where the white racist is prison raped by his own gang, but his black friend in the laundry room gets the other blacks to treat him respectfully…). It’s all very obvious, so much so that it’s undeniable.
In Inglorious Basterds, Brad Pitt’s character, Aldo Raine, does a terrible job of playing an Italian stuntman who cannot speak Italian. Pitt’s character calls himself “Enzo Gorlom” which is the birth name of Enzo G. Castellari, the actual director of the original The Inglorious Bastards. Eli Roth, one of the other American impersonators, called himself Antonio Margheriti who was an Italian director of horror/giallo and spaghetti western films.
Rick Dawson would go on to star in some Antonio Margheriti spaghetti westerns in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood.
Main problem wasn’t Brando. It was that no one knew how to end the story.
Gotta disagree. I love this movie and I thought the casting was perfect. Granted, Brando isn’t in the same league as Sinatra as a singer, but i thought he was credible. Can you imagine Brando as the nebbish Nathan Detroit who couldn’t commit to marrying Miss Adelaide despite 14 trips to Niagra? Or puny Sinatra as the high roller Sky Masterson who took on Harry the Horse and swept Sister Sarah off her feet?
If it were a silent movie. Mankie was a fine director, and the movie looks good.
But Brando's singing really kills it. It's his Susan Alexander moment -- CITIZEN KANE. He should have had someone else sing for him like the bimbo in SINGING IN THE RAIN had her voice dubbed. But his ego was too much. Same with Streisand. She could sing but she was no looker but decided to play romantic leads(which were as silly as Woody Allen in romantic leads).
Still, the worst musical idea has to be Eastwood in PAINT YOUR WAGON. And no Tuco to help him by singing along. Marvin was even worse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn8YubD01sk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El9eCRisbDoReplies: @Cortes, @education realist
The play was stuck with a problem: Sam Levene, who played Nathan Detroit, couldn't sing. By rights they should have turned around and cast it with someone who could, but instead they stripped all his songs away except "Adelaide's Lament" and gave them to Nicely Nicely. As a result, Nicely Nicely had very little plot to play but lots of songs: Tin Horn Fugue, Oldest Established, Guys and Dolls, Sit Down You're Rocking the Boat. Nathan had lots of plot but no songs.
Sky Masterson is a typical leading Broadway role, which is usually played by someone bland and goodlooking (Alan Alda's dad Bob originally). He only has three songs: I'll Know, I've Never Been in Love Before, and Luck Be a Lady.
In the movie, Harry Cohn was insistent that Nathan not be "too Jewish", and wanted Marlon Brando for Sky Masterson. So they cast Sinatra as Nathan and then--properly, I'd argue gave back most of Nicely Nicely's songs to Nathan, leaving only "Rocking the Boat" (which was originally written for the Nicely Nicely character, unlike the others). Luck Be a Lady, while ideally suited for Frank, is not suited for Nathan.
So the movie is better put together than the play, but has a terrible lead. Someone like Bonnie Raitt's dad John would have been great.
And I do not know what the heck you're suggesting. No way could the two men have switched leads. Many actors could have played Di Caprio's character, although not as well. But not even Clooney could have played Cliff.
Pitt and Dicaprio swapping roles: Universally held to be a bad idea. Pitt and Dicaprio are perfectly cast.Distaff Reaction: Pitt is unbearable sexy....And Robbie is stunningly beautiful (girls are keen observers of feminine beauty, always quick to spot flaws that besotted males overlook)
Is it a conservative film: Yes (one girl said that it was almost good enough to make up for anti-White Django and anti-Becky Hateful Eight)
Stuff observed the second time around: The director that Dalton and Booth are praising during their farewell drunk is William Whitney, a studio journeyman known for his work on serials.QT has sung his praises in several interviews.Cliff has an issue of Sgt Fury and his Howling Commandos in his trailer (Dalton's eyepatch in the WW2-set The Fourteen Fists of McCluskey is a callback to Fury).Replies: @Anonymous
I haven’t seen it but it sounds more nostalgic than conservative. Even non-cons can be nostalgic for the past. Even as they bash the past, they also wax romantic about how things were simpler and more dignified back then. Movies like HELP, BUTLER, GREEN BOOK, and HIDDEN FIGURES tap into nostalgia even as they are anti-con.
Buchanan and others mistook FORREST DUMP as conservative, but it was really just nostalgic.
Tarantino is too much in love with late 60s culture(that was NOT conservative) to have made a con-flick.
No one could have played that role except him.Replies: @Pincher Martin, @Buzz Mohawk, @Reg Cæsar
The same could be said of Last Tango in Paris, which, oddly, nobody has mentioned yet.
However, Bob Crane disagreed– he wanted the role.
This is a great idea. I might steal it. I knew reading your column would payoff. Of course, this means extra work for the lazy and whiny writer.Replies: @Steve Sailer
Here’s the trailer from “American Sniper,” which enjoyed a gigantic opening weekend in Red State America:
It helps if your star is Bradley Cooper, who is kind of annoying doing his natural Philadelphia suburban accent, but is a STAR doing his Chris Kyle accent (he redid the same accent in his “A Star Is Born”).
It is striking how much better trailers are now, compared to pre-1990's, with the shift coming around 95 or so. Maybe it is better, cheaper editing tools? Maybe more editors had cut their teeth on music videos? Audiences had different expectations? The same thing seemed to happen with commercials, albeit a few years earlier.
There were occasional high points, like Alien or Vertigo, but most of the trailers were dreadful. Compare the trailer for Altman's Nashville, a similar style story to Hollywood, but a terrible trailer.
Also, wonder why there is not an Academy Award for best trailer, when every other aspect of film is covered.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nk25HB9JkLwReplies: @Anonymous, @Anonymous, @anon
Maybe so technically, but so many trailers are over-the-top, hysterical, pounding-thundering, and too sensational. Mr. Show did a parody of it.
One of the worst trailers is of THE GODFATHER. Gives all the game away.
One of the best is for MARNIE.
Trailer for THE FOUNTAINHEAD is ridiculous but effective.
I remember this. Made me wanna see it so bad.
FANDANGO, one of Tarantula’s favs. I love it too. Reynolds also did remarkable work with WATERWORLD, MONTE CRISTO, TRISTAN, and RISEN.
https://www.tampabay.com/30-years-later-which-movie-would-you-watch-fandango-or-falcon-and-the/2215146
If it were a silent movie. Mankie was a fine director, and the movie looks good.
But Brando’s singing really kills it. It’s his Susan Alexander moment — CITIZEN KANE. He should have had someone else sing for him like the bimbo in SINGING IN THE RAIN had her voice dubbed. But his ego was too much. Same with Streisand. She could sing but she was no looker but decided to play romantic leads(which were as silly as Woody Allen in romantic leads).
Still, the worst musical idea has to be Eastwood in PAINT YOUR WAGON. And no Tuco to help him by singing along. Marvin was even worse.
(My daughter is an enthusiastic if limited wannabe thespian)
Irony alert: the voice dubbed in for the bimbo was the bimbo's.
Jean Hagen, who was Lina Lamont, had a much more appropriate voice for the dubbing than 19 year old Debbie Reynolds. So it's her voice that you hear in the dubbing.
Debbie also wasn't up to the demanding dancing that Gene wanted for the Broadway Melody number, so he "dubbed in" Cyd Charisse.
Kelly hadn't wanted Reynolds at all, although she was quite good in the rest of the film.
I love Texas so I consider what the sh*t stain did a blemish on the state I love.
He did however in his manifesto point out 2 things albeit in a VERY CONFUSED way that are going to hit us like a freight train in the coming 15 to 25 yrs: depending on who you ask automation will kill between 10% and 47% OF ALL JOBS BY 2035…if we won’t have the jobs to employ our own citizens then why bring in
Immigrants of any legal variety?
How we feed and house them? I read of all places the Dallas area paper that said a shortage of undocumented construction workers was costing each house being built to go up by about 10k usd….in cost!
So if they’re on welfare and/or soaking up 10k$+ per year in public school expenditures why are they here? There’s a reason they bitch about school funding…it’s not so much white taxpayers being greedy as them aging out. My mom is going to get homestead exemption for her property taxes in about 2 years…..she pays 2k per yr now in the deep south. Adjusted for cost of living that’s like paying 5-6k in the DC area….
Lastly his idea of splitting the country up….even some alt right folks have considered the possibility of any giving black Americans their own ethnic state in the American south and say giving portions of the SW and Florida to Hispanics to run as democratic facto separate states.
The rest of the country would be white with I guess spritzes of Native Americans, few asians and higher earner Latinos and white ethnics.
Immigrants of any legal variety?”
The immigrants will vote Democrat.
Seriously though, the whole immigration vs automation conundrum shows that we are governed by unserious, frivolous and often just malicious people.
Do you think his methods are unsound?Replies: @Buzz Mohawk
Was that his method, or was that just him being fat and lazy? Who am I to judge the method of a method actor? I had read about the problem in advance, so I was spring-loaded to see an overweight Brando mumbling in the shadows, and that’s what I saw. Maybe if I had come to method acting class unprepared, like Marlon, I would have seen genius.
Maybe this scene was tongue in cheek commentary by Coppola. Very meta. But a great scene.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=03JXTuFGYWE
The whole movie was building suspense to see Brando, and wow, he did not disappoint.
Kind of like the war itself. Hey! That’s genius!
Kevin MacDonald has argued that Quentin Tarantino was Hollywood’s token goy for over 20 years who they cheered for whenever he created pulp vulgarity for the masses. Until Once Upon a Time in Hollywood came out, I would consider Mr. MacDonald’s thesis largely to be true. The release of this current movie may change things however.
Let’s watch and see.
This was a politically correct revisionist movie. Nazis being burned as usual. Pit did a stupid thing by going into the room to see the old man. In real life one of those people at the Ranch would have shot him in the back. The ending was another political correct farce.
Why don’t you say something specific or useful poet boy.
When an actor plays a role and you can’t tell that he is an actor playing a role, that delivers perfection.
Lots of folk disagree with me, but I stand by my statement. LD was good, but would have been twice as good had it featured Tommy Lee’s megawatt smile. Duvall won his Oscar by playing a guy who couldn’t be happy. That’s his strength, and I just never bought into his portrayal of a guy who didn’t give a darn.
You seem to be knowledgeable with regard to movies. I have some observations that I would like input on.
The knife in the tire scene is interesting. I took it to be the stock “arrow in the side of a wooden wagon.” It is difficult to puncture a tire with a knife, and if you did you wouldn’t leave your knife in it. It is an order of magnitude easier to cut the valve stem. I think you could likely cut a valve stem with a good pair of nail clippers. The messenger to Tex, and Tex himself, ride all out to the rescue, but when he gets to the scene the hero is riding off into the sunset in a cloud of dust. (The tire change only took a little longer than a NASCAR crew operation. He couldn’t have gotten more than a couple of lug nuts off in the actual elapsed time.) Anyway, the primitives (hippies) and their technology (horses) are no match for our hero’s automobile. Case closed.
The criticism by the SJWs about Sharon Tate’s portrayal are because of the sex goddess routine (extended scenes of walking and dancing), and the air-headed, narcissistic self adulation she demonstrated while watching herself onscreen. (Which was a boring part of the movie and could have been done with 1/10th of the screen time.) And what’s this with being shown that sexy women actually sleep and sometimes snore?
In the car at the murder scene, Sadie (I believe this is the character) delivers this epiphanic monologue explaining how they will be killing the people who taught them through TV and movies that violence is the solution. Yet thoughout the movie in different scenes, it is repeatedly shown that “everybody” was watching the very same TV shows. This tends to negate the premise that TV violence causes Manson type violence.
At the very end of the movie, are we meant to ponder whether Rick is so shallow that when he is “noticed” by the Tate and Polanski crowd, and invited into their circle, he completely forgets about Cliff who has been taken away by ambulance with life-threatening injuries?
Brad Pitt was great in this movie. I saw it days ago (after reading your review) and I am still thinking about it and talking about it. I have watched the trailer many times.
Thanks for the mention of Powers Boothe. There was always a dark shade to Boothe, maybe that's why he was never quite leading man material. He was very authoritative as deep state Al Haig in Oliver Stone's Shakespearean Nixon (1995). A couple films in which Boothe played second to the lead you might want to see: Frailty (2001) wherein Boothe plays an murderous FBI agent. And Walter Hill's homage to Sam Peckinpah, Extreme Prejudice (1987). Boothe plays a cocaine lord based in a Mexican hellhole right across the border from the Texas town where his high school buddy, played by Nick Nolte, serves as a Ranger. Nolte and Boothe in the same film -- that's a deal.Replies: @The Wild Geese Howard
Boothe was perfectly cast in his role on the HBO series “Deadwood” because of the darkness he carried with him.
“A Star Is Born” is great because it’s something real in an age of CGI movie garbage.
Cooper spent 3 or 4 years learning to sing, play guitar, and play piano specifically for that project. He and Lady Gaga are electric when they perform together. I hope they have many happy years as a couple.
In Troy, Pitt played Achilles as fast and quick rather than big and powerful. He kills the opposing army’s champion, who is a giant, in the first sequence.
Here’s a great one: faithful to the film and featuring a megastar in an unlikely setting...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HYT8GiD1sa4Replies: @Percy Gryce
Glad to see Pathfinder (1987) mentioned. A lovely film, almost lost to history. It’s very difficult to find on DVD, particularly a Region 1 version. I saw it in the theater and should have grabbed the DVD when it was available. Undoubtedly there’s some issue with the rights–the same reason that St. Elsewhere and Malcolm in the Middle aren’t streaming anywhere.
Indeed a wonderful film.
But my favourite Northern epic remains Hagbard & Signe, which was unobtainable, but I was lucky enough to download a version from Youtube about a year ago. It was very quickly removed, so I got it just in time. However I see now that a copy uploaded in November of last year is still available.
Anybody else here know the film?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZuWDiyddMQReplies: @Percy Gryce
I guess I misunderstood...Pitt (the man, not the character the man plays in some movie) actually hasn't punched any Nazis.
OKReplies: @Percy Gryce
I didn’t think their character names would be meaningful.
If it were a silent movie. Mankie was a fine director, and the movie looks good.
But Brando's singing really kills it. It's his Susan Alexander moment -- CITIZEN KANE. He should have had someone else sing for him like the bimbo in SINGING IN THE RAIN had her voice dubbed. But his ego was too much. Same with Streisand. She could sing but she was no looker but decided to play romantic leads(which were as silly as Woody Allen in romantic leads).
Still, the worst musical idea has to be Eastwood in PAINT YOUR WAGON. And no Tuco to help him by singing along. Marvin was even worse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn8YubD01sk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El9eCRisbDoReplies: @Cortes, @education realist
Isn’t part of the charm of films like Paint Your Wagon that they’re reminiscent of the local acting clubs which put on town hall shows a couple of times a year and you go to see notables making an arse of themselves for entertainment and maybe raising some money for a good cause? Who really cares if “tough guy” Lee Marvin or “man with no name” Clint Eastwood can’t sing? And who, really, cares about the singing and dancing talent of the local bank manager up there hoofing through a small town production of “Oklahoma”?
(My daughter is an enthusiastic if limited wannabe thespian)
Marlon Brando had no business whatsoever being anywhere near Guys and Dolls. He polluted the movie. (I am not a Brando fan.)
The play was stuck with a problem: Sam Levene, who played Nathan Detroit, couldn’t sing. By rights they should have turned around and cast it with someone who could, but instead they stripped all his songs away except “Adelaide’s Lament” and gave them to Nicely Nicely. As a result, Nicely Nicely had very little plot to play but lots of songs: Tin Horn Fugue, Oldest Established, Guys and Dolls, Sit Down You’re Rocking the Boat. Nathan had lots of plot but no songs.
Sky Masterson is a typical leading Broadway role, which is usually played by someone bland and goodlooking (Alan Alda’s dad Bob originally). He only has three songs: I’ll Know, I’ve Never Been in Love Before, and Luck Be a Lady.
In the movie, Harry Cohn was insistent that Nathan not be “too Jewish”, and wanted Marlon Brando for Sky Masterson. So they cast Sinatra as Nathan and then–properly, I’d argue gave back most of Nicely Nicely’s songs to Nathan, leaving only “Rocking the Boat” (which was originally written for the Nicely Nicely character, unlike the others). Luck Be a Lady, while ideally suited for Frank, is not suited for Nathan.
So the movie is better put together than the play, but has a terrible lead. Someone like Bonnie Raitt’s dad John would have been great.
And I do not know what the heck you’re suggesting. No way could the two men have switched leads. Many actors could have played Di Caprio’s character, although not as well. But not even Clooney could have played Cliff.
If it were a silent movie. Mankie was a fine director, and the movie looks good.
But Brando's singing really kills it. It's his Susan Alexander moment -- CITIZEN KANE. He should have had someone else sing for him like the bimbo in SINGING IN THE RAIN had her voice dubbed. But his ego was too much. Same with Streisand. She could sing but she was no looker but decided to play romantic leads(which were as silly as Woody Allen in romantic leads).
Still, the worst musical idea has to be Eastwood in PAINT YOUR WAGON. And no Tuco to help him by singing along. Marvin was even worse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn8YubD01sk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El9eCRisbDoReplies: @Cortes, @education realist
“He should have had someone else sing for him like the bimbo in SINGING IN THE RAIN had her voice dubbed. ”
Irony alert: the voice dubbed in for the bimbo was the bimbo’s.
Jean Hagen, who was Lina Lamont, had a much more appropriate voice for the dubbing than 19 year old Debbie Reynolds. So it’s her voice that you hear in the dubbing.
Debbie also wasn’t up to the demanding dancing that Gene wanted for the Broadway Melody number, so he “dubbed in” Cyd Charisse.
Kelly hadn’t wanted Reynolds at all, although she was quite good in the rest of the film.
That’s why they protested the war, and why people criticized the movie.
He did however in his manifesto point out 2 things albeit in a VERY CONFUSED way that are going to hit us like a freight train in the coming 15 to 25 yrs: depending on who you ask automation will kill between 10% and 47% OF ALL JOBS BY 2035...if we won't have the jobs to employ our own citizens then why bring in
Immigrants of any legal variety?
How we feed and house them? I read of all places the Dallas area paper that said a shortage of undocumented construction workers was costing each house being built to go up by about 10k usd....in cost!
So if they're on welfare and/or soaking up 10k$+ per year in public school expenditures why are they here? There's a reason they bitch about school funding...it's not so much white taxpayers being greedy as them aging out. My mom is going to get homestead exemption for her property taxes in about 2 years.....she pays 2k per yr now in the deep south. Adjusted for cost of living that's like paying 5-6k in the DC area....
Lastly his idea of splitting the country up....even some alt right folks have considered the possibility of any giving black Americans their own ethnic state in the American south and say giving portions of the SW and Florida to Hispanics to run as democratic facto separate states.
The rest of the country would be white with I guess spritzes of Native Americans, few asians and higher earner Latinos and white ethnics.Replies: @Corn
“if we won’t have the jobs to employ our own citizens then why bring in
Immigrants of any legal variety?”
The immigrants will vote Democrat.
Seriously though, the whole immigration vs automation conundrum shows that we are governed by unserious, frivolous and often just malicious people.
Buchanan and others mistook FORREST DUMP as conservative, but it was really just nostalgic.
Tarantino is too much in love with late 60s culture(that was NOT conservative) to have made a con-flick.Replies: @syonredux, @syonredux
The WOKE hate Green Book, The Help, and The Butler….
Quite a bit of overlap between those two….After all, if one is nostalgic for something that is anti-WOKE….
Mixture of impulses. Only doctrinaire hacks are ideologically pure.
Not quite the same. Cooper’s voice in Star was meant to evoke Sam Elliott.
It is striking how much better trailers are now, compared to pre-1990's, with the shift coming around 95 or so. Maybe it is better, cheaper editing tools? Maybe more editors had cut their teeth on music videos? Audiences had different expectations? The same thing seemed to happen with commercials, albeit a few years earlier.
There were occasional high points, like Alien or Vertigo, but most of the trailers were dreadful. Compare the trailer for Altman's Nashville, a similar style story to Hollywood, but a terrible trailer.
Also, wonder why there is not an Academy Award for best trailer, when every other aspect of film is covered.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nk25HB9JkLwReplies: @Anonymous, @Anonymous, @anon
Probably not a coincidence that Alien, which had a groundbreaking trailer, was made by Ridley Scott, who has been known to make a good commercial or two.
Here is another one, where the elderly are put on trial by future generations for the crushing national debt. Of course, Ridley Scott, a pre-Boomer, could not anticipate the selfishness and full-blown narcism of Boomers, so his omen of 2 TRILLION DOLLARS, seems like more of a Dr. Evil punchline in hindsight, sadly.
Buchanan and others mistook FORREST DUMP as conservative, but it was really just nostalgic.
Tarantino is too much in love with late 60s culture(that was NOT conservative) to have made a con-flick.Replies: @syonredux, @syonredux
….And then there’s the situational nature of conservatism. Black Panther (A racialist fantasy about a Black-separatist utopia) counts as Leftist because it is pro-Black. Do a White version (White Panther?), and it counts as conservative.
And he also loves ’50s-early ’60s culture…..
(Note, i havent' seen the movie so this is entirely a flyer based on the commentary i've read.)
I think what made Black Panther leftist was that it's root message was blacks are super-capable and competent in their own world so their problems here ... must be whitey's fault! Discrimination! Structural racism! In other in the current Western milieu with minoritarianism dominant, the messaging comes off as another blamey whitey attack on the West and white people.
I think it is perfectly possible to make a conservative pro-black movie that shows blacks taking care of their own business, their own families, by resisting the siren song of minoritarian blame-whiteyism and all the associated pathologies--welfare dependency, illegitimacy, drugs and especially toleration of crime. Actually you could make a pretty good--sexy, violent, manly--conservative pro-black picture by having a guy, with some brothers joining him, who doesn't put up with that crap and starts "cleaning up the town" to set his community on a better path. (Extra point if he punches out some whiny snot-nose woke social worker type.)
Actually there's a ton of ripe targets that hero and his group could deal with while creating a small patch of functional community, within typical US urban mess:
-- black thugs; dispatched in numerous ways
-- Jewish DA or judge who lets thugs off; hero starts dumping black thugs into judges leafy neighborhood, where, of course, the guy panics and police actually respond
-- nice white lady school counselor full of racial pieties and incoherent discipline; "your job is making white babies, go do that and stop screwing up our black babies"
-- Jewish feminist harpie school teacher or admin prattling about "structural racism" and preaching "feminism"; set straight and chased out with rape threat
-- BLM homo; mocked and abused in all sorts of ways
-- light-skinned black braided lesbian politician; "you ain't black and your ain't a woman"
-- white and black cops in the donut shop; "get off your fat ass and do your fucking job and get these assholes off our streets, before you collect your fat pension"
-- Asian convenience or liquour store owner; "told to go back where you came from" and chased out of town
-- Mexicans; complaint about Mexicans taking jobs, confronted "this is our nation, not yours--go back to Mexico!" and chased out of town.
-- Mexican drug cartel connection; dispatched
-- sassy black ladies; de-sassed and put in their place
-- welfare baby momas put in their place; "you didn't have a man? but you're having a baby ... know what that makes you ..."
-- Emmett Till doing the "hey baby" thing; Whack. "Do you have a job? Can you support a child? You 'hey baby' my baby again and i'm going cut that snake off and jam it down your throat. No Jew's going to make you into Emmett Till when its a black man killing your sorry ass."
This could be a very fun, potentially very successful movie and very good for our nation. Which is why Hollyweird would never make it.Replies: @syonredux, @Corn, @Neil Templeton, @Ian M.
I’m pretty sure that it is. After all, the film opens with Rick Dalton explaining that the stunt double’s injuries don’t count. Cliff did the real work (killing two of the three Manson acolytes and severely wounding the third), but Rick will get the glory.
Whoever could have imagined that putting immigrant black men in charge of vulnerable women could turn out poorly.
I would say that the scene where Jones’ and Fords’ characters first meet in the dam spillway makes it pretty clear. Ford proclaims he didn’t kill his wife, to which Jones responds “I don’t care.”
It doesn’t really get any more stoic than that.
He does not allow himself to be swayed by the possibility of the protagonist's innocence nor dismayed by the (seemingly) endless and insurmountable challenges of retrieving him; he is not even affected by what other men would deem the almost certain death of the man – his unwavering purpose is to deliver the guy to the courts: guilty or innocent, dead or alive.
The character's emotions are completely sublimated by his relentless dedication to his mission, the one thing he can control; he is a human version of the Cyberdyne Systems Model 101.Replies: @Ian M.
Mind you, where QT is concerned, one always gets the impression that there is no there there.With the truly great directors (John Ford, Kubrick, Lynch, etc), there is always a sense of a mind at work, of an underlying philosophy. QT, in contrast, just seems to be interested in whatever strikes him as being cool….
Well, I'm not up on film, but I think that you are wrong here. There are only a few themes and when an artist comments on or tries to add to those themes, we should take notice of and evaluate the effort. What I can't understand about his films are the flashing LED billboards stating that "this is a movie" that are interspersed with scenes that have no equal elsewhere when we are supposed to be in a suspension of disbelief mode.Replies: @syonredux
Just saw Once Upon A Time and I was pleasantly surprised, very pleasantly surprised. Just a very watchable pleasure filled film. The film may not be about much but the not much is told with real style, and that’s all that counts. Plus, as most of you know, it’s completely un-PC. What a relief that is!
I think it’s more complicated on the conservative side than this black\white who\whom.
(Note, i havent’ seen the movie so this is entirely a flyer based on the commentary i’ve read.)
I think what made Black Panther leftist was that it’s root message was blacks are super-capable and competent in their own world so their problems here … must be whitey’s fault! Discrimination! Structural racism! In other in the current Western milieu with minoritarianism dominant, the messaging comes off as another blamey whitey attack on the West and white people.
I think it is perfectly possible to make a conservative pro-black movie that shows blacks taking care of their own business, their own families, by resisting the siren song of minoritarian blame-whiteyism and all the associated pathologies–welfare dependency, illegitimacy, drugs and especially toleration of crime. Actually you could make a pretty good–sexy, violent, manly–conservative pro-black picture by having a guy, with some brothers joining him, who doesn’t put up with that crap and starts “cleaning up the town” to set his community on a better path. (Extra point if he punches out some whiny snot-nose woke social worker type.)
Actually there’s a ton of ripe targets that hero and his group could deal with while creating a small patch of functional community, within typical US urban mess:
— black thugs; dispatched in numerous ways
— Jewish DA or judge who lets thugs off; hero starts dumping black thugs into judges leafy neighborhood, where, of course, the guy panics and police actually respond
— nice white lady school counselor full of racial pieties and incoherent discipline; “your job is making white babies, go do that and stop screwing up our black babies”
— Jewish feminist harpie school teacher or admin prattling about “structural racism” and preaching “feminism”; set straight and chased out with rape threat
— BLM homo; mocked and abused in all sorts of ways
— light-skinned black braided lesbian politician; “you ain’t black and your ain’t a woman”
— white and black cops in the donut shop; “get off your fat ass and do your fucking job and get these assholes off our streets, before you collect your fat pension”
— Asian convenience or liquour store owner; “told to go back where you came from” and chased out of town
— Mexicans; complaint about Mexicans taking jobs, confronted “this is our nation, not yours–go back to Mexico!” and chased out of town.
— Mexican drug cartel connection; dispatched
— sassy black ladies; de-sassed and put in their place
— welfare baby momas put in their place; “you didn’t have a man? but you’re having a baby … know what that makes you …”
— Emmett Till doing the “hey baby” thing; Whack. “Do you have a job? Can you support a child? You ‘hey baby’ my baby again and i’m going cut that snake off and jam it down your throat. No Jew’s going to make you into Emmett Till when its a black man killing your sorry ass.”
This could be a very fun, potentially very successful movie and very good for our nation. Which is why Hollyweird would never make it.
(Note, i havent' seen the movie so this is entirely a flyer based on the commentary i've read.)
I think what made Black Panther leftist was that it's root message was blacks are super-capable and competent in their own world so their problems here ... must be whitey's fault! Discrimination! Structural racism! In other in the current Western milieu with minoritarianism dominant, the messaging comes off as another blamey whitey attack on the West and white people.
I think it is perfectly possible to make a conservative pro-black movie that shows blacks taking care of their own business, their own families, by resisting the siren song of minoritarian blame-whiteyism and all the associated pathologies--welfare dependency, illegitimacy, drugs and especially toleration of crime. Actually you could make a pretty good--sexy, violent, manly--conservative pro-black picture by having a guy, with some brothers joining him, who doesn't put up with that crap and starts "cleaning up the town" to set his community on a better path. (Extra point if he punches out some whiny snot-nose woke social worker type.)
Actually there's a ton of ripe targets that hero and his group could deal with while creating a small patch of functional community, within typical US urban mess:
-- black thugs; dispatched in numerous ways
-- Jewish DA or judge who lets thugs off; hero starts dumping black thugs into judges leafy neighborhood, where, of course, the guy panics and police actually respond
-- nice white lady school counselor full of racial pieties and incoherent discipline; "your job is making white babies, go do that and stop screwing up our black babies"
-- Jewish feminist harpie school teacher or admin prattling about "structural racism" and preaching "feminism"; set straight and chased out with rape threat
-- BLM homo; mocked and abused in all sorts of ways
-- light-skinned black braided lesbian politician; "you ain't black and your ain't a woman"
-- white and black cops in the donut shop; "get off your fat ass and do your fucking job and get these assholes off our streets, before you collect your fat pension"
-- Asian convenience or liquour store owner; "told to go back where you came from" and chased out of town
-- Mexicans; complaint about Mexicans taking jobs, confronted "this is our nation, not yours--go back to Mexico!" and chased out of town.
-- Mexican drug cartel connection; dispatched
-- sassy black ladies; de-sassed and put in their place
-- welfare baby momas put in their place; "you didn't have a man? but you're having a baby ... know what that makes you ..."
-- Emmett Till doing the "hey baby" thing; Whack. "Do you have a job? Can you support a child? You 'hey baby' my baby again and i'm going cut that snake off and jam it down your throat. No Jew's going to make you into Emmett Till when its a black man killing your sorry ass."
This could be a very fun, potentially very successful movie and very good for our nation. Which is why Hollyweird would never make it.Replies: @syonredux, @Corn, @Neil Templeton, @Ian M.
For Black Conservatism to thrive, there must be Black Separatism…..Except that Blacks can’t forget the White Devil…..
People do better when they are in charge of and responsible for themselves.
Instilling this ethic of responsibility is what child raising--done properly--is all about. (Ground those helicopters!)
Responsibility--collective--is what republican governance and the American Revolution are all about. It is what nationalism is all about. It is what manliness is all about. "We'll make our own decisions, run our lives ourselves and be responsible for the results."
And, of course, this is precisely what minoritarianism seeks to--and has destroyed--the right of the nation's people to freely organize themselves as they wish and govern themselves. Basically parasitic elites demand we associate and behave according to their dictat. No more freedom of association--you *must* be diverse. (Not them, of course, just us.) And no more of that silly self-government nonsense. We'll tell you what to do.
But rather obviously, blacks don't actually behave that well nor do that well when they aren't forced to be responsible for themselves, but live off of various blame-whitey rents and sinecures and have progs excusing their irresponsibility and misbehavior at every turn.
And that’s a critical problem for Blacktopians: They can’t forget YT. Whites, in contrast, can easily conceive of a world without Blacks. Blacks, for the overwhelming bulk of European history, have been, at best, peripheral figures, exotics at the edge of the map. Even Anglo-America is not a real exception, as Blacks were tiny minorities in so many vital areas (New England, etc).
one always gets the impression that there is no there there.
Well, I’m not up on film, but I think that you are wrong here. There are only a few themes and when an artist comments on or tries to add to those themes, we should take notice of and evaluate the effort. What I can’t understand about his films are the flashing LED billboards stating that “this is a movie” that are interspersed with scenes that have no equal elsewhere when we are supposed to be in a suspension of disbelief mode.
Mass shooter in El Paso Walmart, possibly with an anti-immigrant manifesto (?). White shooter now in custody.
So much for the BS theory that whites tend toward "suicide shooting." Maybe in the past, but not anymore. The trend now is for the white race realist/anti-immigrant shooters to very much stay alive.Replies: @Yngvar
The shooter at the Charleston church, whats-his-name, never explained why he did it. There was a short explanation he had given, but that was all.
Anders Breivik wanted to be taken alive, so – as he explained in his voluminous manifesto– to spread his ideas. Maybe he is a inspiration.
I took a copy off German TV about ten years after it was made.
Indeed a wonderful film.
But my favourite Northern epic remains Hagbard & Signe, which was unobtainable, but I was lucky enough to download a version from Youtube about a year ago. It was very quickly removed, so I got it just in time. However I see now that a copy uploaded in November of last year is still available.
Anybody else here know the film?
This review is quite good:
Well, I'm not up on film, but I think that you are wrong here. There are only a few themes and when an artist comments on or tries to add to those themes, we should take notice of and evaluate the effort. What I can't understand about his films are the flashing LED billboards stating that "this is a movie" that are interspersed with scenes that have no equal elsewhere when we are supposed to be in a suspension of disbelief mode.Replies: @syonredux
Dunno. When I compare QT to Ford (simple but profound and deeply felt) and Kubrick (complex and thoughtful), he seems…..shallow….
Where QT is concerned,l you are supposed to be aware that you watching a film. Suspension of disbelief is never an issue.
Where QT is concerned,l you are supposed to be aware that you watching a film. Suspension of disbelief is never an issue.
It’s a movie. Care to justify or explain your opinion?
Forget about all the name dropping and just deal with his movie.
(Note, i havent' seen the movie so this is entirely a flyer based on the commentary i've read.)
I think what made Black Panther leftist was that it's root message was blacks are super-capable and competent in their own world so their problems here ... must be whitey's fault! Discrimination! Structural racism! In other in the current Western milieu with minoritarianism dominant, the messaging comes off as another blamey whitey attack on the West and white people.
I think it is perfectly possible to make a conservative pro-black movie that shows blacks taking care of their own business, their own families, by resisting the siren song of minoritarian blame-whiteyism and all the associated pathologies--welfare dependency, illegitimacy, drugs and especially toleration of crime. Actually you could make a pretty good--sexy, violent, manly--conservative pro-black picture by having a guy, with some brothers joining him, who doesn't put up with that crap and starts "cleaning up the town" to set his community on a better path. (Extra point if he punches out some whiny snot-nose woke social worker type.)
Actually there's a ton of ripe targets that hero and his group could deal with while creating a small patch of functional community, within typical US urban mess:
-- black thugs; dispatched in numerous ways
-- Jewish DA or judge who lets thugs off; hero starts dumping black thugs into judges leafy neighborhood, where, of course, the guy panics and police actually respond
-- nice white lady school counselor full of racial pieties and incoherent discipline; "your job is making white babies, go do that and stop screwing up our black babies"
-- Jewish feminist harpie school teacher or admin prattling about "structural racism" and preaching "feminism"; set straight and chased out with rape threat
-- BLM homo; mocked and abused in all sorts of ways
-- light-skinned black braided lesbian politician; "you ain't black and your ain't a woman"
-- white and black cops in the donut shop; "get off your fat ass and do your fucking job and get these assholes off our streets, before you collect your fat pension"
-- Asian convenience or liquour store owner; "told to go back where you came from" and chased out of town
-- Mexicans; complaint about Mexicans taking jobs, confronted "this is our nation, not yours--go back to Mexico!" and chased out of town.
-- Mexican drug cartel connection; dispatched
-- sassy black ladies; de-sassed and put in their place
-- welfare baby momas put in their place; "you didn't have a man? but you're having a baby ... know what that makes you ..."
-- Emmett Till doing the "hey baby" thing; Whack. "Do you have a job? Can you support a child? You 'hey baby' my baby again and i'm going cut that snake off and jam it down your throat. No Jew's going to make you into Emmett Till when its a black man killing your sorry ass."
This could be a very fun, potentially very successful movie and very good for our nation. Which is why Hollyweird would never make it.Replies: @syonredux, @Corn, @Neil Templeton, @Ian M.
Walking Tall…… in the hood
That QT wants his audiences to be aware that they are watching a film? Practically every single frame in his films is meant to evoke/suggest another film. It’s film-as-hypertext.
QT isn’t Jan Troell. He’s not making The Emigrants and The New Land. His films immerse you in cinema, not in life itself.
Ford and Hawks were great film-makers but not artists. They more or less stuck to formula, though expanding its perimeters and digging a bit deeper. Even with their sometimes wild lifestyles(with drink esp with Ford, but then he was Irish to whom whisky is like water), they had long careers because they didn't have to worry too much about being personal, deep, or finding the truth. Ford and Hawks knew what was expected of them and stuck with it. Same was true of Hitchcock though he reach 'artist' levels with VERTIGO, but that probably took a lot out of him.
Genre people are far less stressed out, anxious, or obsessive than artists. Ford and Hawks were content to make their kind of movies, year after year. But Welles was different. His ego, talent, and vision made him want to do something personal, original, and groundbreaking every time out(even with genres). Whom the gods don't destroy, they drive mad. Being an artist is like that. It's the difference between being a very good genre painter doing what he's good at and being like Van Gogh or Gauguin, go the extra mile and do what no one has done before. Dylan's BLONDE ON BLONDE took a lot of years out of him, and in some ways, he never recovered despite later peaks. Fellini conveyed the artist conundrum in 8 1/2. Prior to LA DOLCE VITA, Fellini was highly regarded as a sensitive story-teller of nobodies and outcasts. He was respected but not considered a heavyweight. He was too sentimental. But then, he made DOLCE VITA that came out in the same year as Antonioni's L'AVVENTURA, and this was also the beginning of the French New Wave. Because DOLCE was a big production set in the city and touching on 'important' themes such as ennui, alienation, and meaning of life, Fellini was elevated to the status of not just humble artist but a great modern artist. But in fact, Fellini's main mode in DOLCE was sensationalism, and he didn't have much to say. The movie is really about a series of diversions and evasions. But all eyes were on him, and the world was expecting his next film to be even more 'important'. And Fellini's ego wanted to make that movie. Problem was he was at best a sentimentalist and sensationalist. He was no thinker. He was not a serious artist of depth and meaning. Yet, he wanted the adulation, and the world demanded so much of him. But he didn't know how to be one, and so he made 8 1/2 about that very problem. It turned out to be the greatest ironic masterpiece of the 20th century. A guy admits he's not really an artist, but his confession is really a work of art. A miracle, but for only one time as it was all downhill artistically for Fellini afterwards. 8 1/2, as a confession, should have defused his overblown artistic ego, but its great success made Fellini even hungrier to make Important Movies, resulting in overblown and inflated movies that got lamer and staler.
One reason why Peckinpah burned out so fast was he wasn't content to just make a movie. John Huston had a wild side, but like Ford and Hawks, was very much into studio mentality. He had more artistic ambition that most but accepted his role as hollywood movie-maker. In contrast, Peckinpah has to push it to the limit every time. But this is super-stressful, as the muse, like cupid, has her own whims. Ford and Hawks were content to catch the usual fish, but for Peckinpah, it had to be a marlin every time, turning every production into Old Man and the Sea struggle of will and wits.
Someone working in mode of artist will burn fast if he wants to do too much. Kubrick and Troell lasted as long as they did because they took off for long periods between feature films. In contrast, Peckinpah wanted to make movie year after year as an artist, which is almost too much to bear. Tarkovsky, another artist, spent many years on his projects. Of course, another factor is it's much more difficult for an artist to get his project into production, esp if they're sufficiently big and expensive. This is why longevity favors artists with smaller visions like Woody Allen or Eric Rohmer who were content to make small-budgeted movies about human relations and mostly dialogue.
The later boomers and Gen X-er directors seem to be healthier and longer-lasting. Maybe hipsterism has health benefits. Its sense of irony and distance creates resting room for mind and emotions. Linklater seems like a healthy guy with many good yrs ahead of him. As crazy as Tarantino's movies can be, it seems he doesn't become obsessed like Leone or Peckinpah. Tarantino's obsessiveness is more that of a geek than seeker. More like compulsive excitement than obsessive commitment.
Also, he admires hard/tough men but isn't really hung about being one himself. In his creative space, he's really dealing with memes than with men. Hemingway's code was real to the extent that he really wanted to prove himself in life as in fiction(taken even further by Mishima). They created fiction that was directly related to matters of the real world. In contrast, Tarantino always preferred the fantasy world to the real world, so his fiction is about fiction.
Also, as he's always half-kidding about everything, he has a fun and good time with his material than soul-laboring over them as Peckinpah did with Wild Bunch. Dennis Hopper was like method-director with THE LAST MOVIE. He would be as crazy as the movie he's making. Coppola became Kurtz in the making of APOCALYPSE NOW. In the role of artist, he threw himself body and soul into the project. He never regained his footing as great director. He lost and left something of himself in Philippines. Cimino went crazy with HEAVEN'S GATE.
Apart from RESERVOIR, I don't think Tarantula did anything really great(though he did lots of ingenious stuff even in bad movies), but he has kept his 'sanity'(relatively speaking) by avoiding the artistic concept of Truth. Contrast Kurtz in APOCALYPSE NOW and Jackson in PULP FICTION. Coppola struggled so hard to find the meaning of Kurtz, and he dug and dug but it just drove him crazy. In contrast, we know Tarantino has no concern for the truth(though he found some in RESERVOIR). The substance of what Jackson says doesn't matter as long as the style is right. It's less vexing to be a tailor than a surgeon, esp a brain/heart surgeon, which is what Artists try to be. The greatness of Scorsese is he managed to a surgeon with the reliability of a tailor.
Granted, a real artist can attain longevity by resting on his laurels and turning his name into a brand. In this, Picasso did the Warhol thing before Warhol, living to a ripe old age and raking in lots of dough. Difference was Warhol did it without ever having been a real artist... which, I suppose, is more remarkable in a (bad) way.
Pitt is better when he plays second man like in Ocean's 11 and Sleepers. Frankly I think the studios know this because a lot of movies where it seems he is the lead he is actually second man, like Fight Club, Seven, and Spy Game.
He's best when he plays smaller, quirky roles as in 12 Monkeys, True Romance, and Snatch.
A good example is Meet Joe Black, where he plays essentially two different characters. His role in the coffee shop scene is very good, but as Death in the rest of the movie he just dull.
I also get the impression that DiCaprio is kind of a next gen Jack Nicholson, and Pitt is a next gen Robert Redford. Both of the letter seem to me to present a lot of the mannerisms of their related former.Replies: @Sam Haysom
Damn I was just saying how great an actor brad Pitt is while playing poker but you are right it’s basically just money ball. He was terrible in WWZ and probably killed the red hair lady from the killing’s movie career with how bad there chemistry was.
Yea it’s kind of lame how much Steve geeks about movies but boomers grew up with Pauline Kael and others elevating film criticism to a soi disant level of art so they love to talk about movies. And Steve isn’t a sucker Hollywood is the company town and he’s not gonna let his real estate values decline no matter how much degeneracy Hollywood pumps out.
I have considered the switching roles things for other movies. Heat, with Pacino and de Niro, could have had them in opposite roles. Bobby D could have played the frantic on the edge detective and Al could have played the cool criminal mastermind, but both played there to their strengths. Pacino is such a force of nature when he lets his emotions loose and powerfully conveys them on screen.Replies: @Harry Baldwin, @Sam Haysom
Would deniro have snorted down the copious coke that Pacino was doing on set?
(Note, i havent' seen the movie so this is entirely a flyer based on the commentary i've read.)
I think what made Black Panther leftist was that it's root message was blacks are super-capable and competent in their own world so their problems here ... must be whitey's fault! Discrimination! Structural racism! In other in the current Western milieu with minoritarianism dominant, the messaging comes off as another blamey whitey attack on the West and white people.
I think it is perfectly possible to make a conservative pro-black movie that shows blacks taking care of their own business, their own families, by resisting the siren song of minoritarian blame-whiteyism and all the associated pathologies--welfare dependency, illegitimacy, drugs and especially toleration of crime. Actually you could make a pretty good--sexy, violent, manly--conservative pro-black picture by having a guy, with some brothers joining him, who doesn't put up with that crap and starts "cleaning up the town" to set his community on a better path. (Extra point if he punches out some whiny snot-nose woke social worker type.)
Actually there's a ton of ripe targets that hero and his group could deal with while creating a small patch of functional community, within typical US urban mess:
-- black thugs; dispatched in numerous ways
-- Jewish DA or judge who lets thugs off; hero starts dumping black thugs into judges leafy neighborhood, where, of course, the guy panics and police actually respond
-- nice white lady school counselor full of racial pieties and incoherent discipline; "your job is making white babies, go do that and stop screwing up our black babies"
-- Jewish feminist harpie school teacher or admin prattling about "structural racism" and preaching "feminism"; set straight and chased out with rape threat
-- BLM homo; mocked and abused in all sorts of ways
-- light-skinned black braided lesbian politician; "you ain't black and your ain't a woman"
-- white and black cops in the donut shop; "get off your fat ass and do your fucking job and get these assholes off our streets, before you collect your fat pension"
-- Asian convenience or liquour store owner; "told to go back where you came from" and chased out of town
-- Mexicans; complaint about Mexicans taking jobs, confronted "this is our nation, not yours--go back to Mexico!" and chased out of town.
-- Mexican drug cartel connection; dispatched
-- sassy black ladies; de-sassed and put in their place
-- welfare baby momas put in their place; "you didn't have a man? but you're having a baby ... know what that makes you ..."
-- Emmett Till doing the "hey baby" thing; Whack. "Do you have a job? Can you support a child? You 'hey baby' my baby again and i'm going cut that snake off and jam it down your throat. No Jew's going to make you into Emmett Till when its a black man killing your sorry ass."
This could be a very fun, potentially very successful movie and very good for our nation. Which is why Hollyweird would never make it.Replies: @syonredux, @Corn, @Neil Templeton, @Ian M.
For the underclass, Truth is generally subordinate to fantasy, ’cause the road of Truth is hard and not well supported.
It doesn't really get any more stoic than that.Replies: @Autochthon, @Marty
Right. That character – stating that line! – is a poster-child for ἀπάθεια (whence modern “apathy,” but better translated “without passion”): “I don’t care.”
He does not allow himself to be swayed by the possibility of the protagonist’s innocence nor dismayed by the (seemingly) endless and insurmountable challenges of retrieving him; he is not even affected by what other men would deem the almost certain death of the man – his unwavering purpose is to deliver the guy to the courts: guilty or innocent, dead or alive.
The character’s emotions are completely sublimated by his relentless dedication to his mission, the one thing he can control; he is a human version of the Cyberdyne Systems Model 101.
Maybe that’s Tarentino’s point, virtue has a style of its own.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WMBs--ZX0ioReplies: @Neil Templeton
Haven’t seen the movie yet, but my takeaway on that review is that QT is giving modern lefty H’wood the finger. Agree, but maybe the finger range extends to the drift in culture. It’s easy for a man to be a pussy, and easy for a woman to be a shrike. The tails of the distribution, manliness and femininity, when combined with the feathering muse of nuance, are the nurturing grounds for style. Tarantino values style.
Was that his method, or was that just him being fat and lazy? Who am I to judge the method of a method actor?
Maybe this scene was tongue in cheek commentary by Coppola. Very meta. But a great scene.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=03JXTuFGYWE
The whole movie was building suspense to see Brando, and wow, he did not disappoint.
You are claiming that he makes documentaries instead of movies.
Pathfinder, the whole movie, is available on YouTube, dubbed into English! And very well done, I can attest. Watch it now, it’s magical.
I wanted to think about several comments before responding.
In considering whether Mr. Brad Pitt is but an excellent character actor — nonsense. The gentleman is stellar actor with enormous depth, range and sensitivity.
I would also add this rather unique quality among actors in general — generosity. His ability to play down so as to enhance the overall power of a project by allowing his fellow performances to have space to be – is a rare and unique gift. Whether it comes from a genuine shyness or genuine capacity of understanding that his mere presence can over power a scene or a film — makes no difference.
Here’s in an actor that probably could command a role he desires in films for which he is considered. And it is entirely possible that I wrong, and my comments take away nothing from Leonardo Di Caprio, but a peek at the scope of films I think make a very good case that Mr. Pitt is as any of the best actors in the business and not merely because of his good looks.
In fact in this film the physical manifestations told the story that he was indeed a stunt man and it did so without re-enacting his twenty thousand stunts. Though he could have a just a few more aches and pains.
Note: that for both stunt man and character actor the TV work of the fifties would not have made them old in the 1960’s except in the eyes of the young. Mr. Eastwood, Mr. Connery, and a host of others hit their stride in the 1970’s.
To the comment, that film was for the illiterate . . .or some such tact.
That is what still and moving pictures revolutionized communication and the world. Mock them if you want, but failing to see their value in persuasion, and moving mind and heart is to be bankrupt of the meaning behind the phrase,
“a picture is worth a thousand words”
And it explains why the images of Rodney King would herald a social shift in coming to grips with the power of the state.
Ok ok ok . . .
It’s true my conservative leanings still hope for a reconciliation between both Ms. Angelina Jolie and Mr Brad Pitt.
Excuse me for having some old fashion fairy tale notions of the value of marriage.
I’m single.
The knife in the tire scene is interesting. I took it to be the stock "arrow in the side of a wooden wagon." It is difficult to puncture a tire with a knife, and if you did you wouldn't leave your knife in it. It is an order of magnitude easier to cut the valve stem. I think you could likely cut a valve stem with a good pair of nail clippers. The messenger to Tex, and Tex himself, ride all out to the rescue, but when he gets to the scene the hero is riding off into the sunset in a cloud of dust. (The tire change only took a little longer than a NASCAR crew operation. He couldn't have gotten more than a couple of lug nuts off in the actual elapsed time.) Anyway, the primitives (hippies) and their technology (horses) are no match for our hero's automobile. Case closed.
The criticism by the SJWs about Sharon Tate's portrayal are because of the sex goddess routine (extended scenes of walking and dancing), and the air-headed, narcissistic self adulation she demonstrated while watching herself onscreen. (Which was a boring part of the movie and could have been done with 1/10th of the screen time.) And what's this with being shown that sexy women actually sleep and sometimes snore?
In the car at the murder scene, Sadie (I believe this is the character) delivers this epiphanic monologue explaining how they will be killing the people who taught them through TV and movies that violence is the solution. Yet thoughout the movie in different scenes, it is repeatedly shown that "everybody" was watching the very same TV shows. This tends to negate the premise that TV violence causes Manson type violence.
At the very end of the movie, are we meant to ponder whether Rick is so shallow that when he is "noticed" by the Tate and Polanski crowd, and invited into their circle, he completely forgets about Cliff who has been taken away by ambulance with life-threatening injuries?Replies: @Buzz Mohawk
Thank you. I don’t think I know that much about movies, and I have to see this one first. Next weekend looks like the earliest opportunity. You have described interesting things and raised interesting questions. Roger Ebert used to spend a week every year at my college, stop and start a great film all week long while having discussions like this with the audience. Anyone could shout out something and Roger would stop the projector. That was fun.
That was fun.
Sounds great!
When Pussycat gets into Cliff’s car notice whether her bare feet are clean or not. I can’t be certain, because I wasn’t looking for it, but I think they may have been clean. Bare feet, especially dirty bare feet, was a quintessential feature of being a hippie. Margaret Qualley nailed the hippie chick. I don’t know how these actors are able to go back and get a total feel for something that they didn’t experience first hand. Sharon Tate has dirty hippie feet in spite of the fact that she is a Playboy air-brushed sex goddess with no hair out of place. I won’t say which hair because Steve doesn’t like coarse and crude laguage. (Which is likely a good thing.)
There are all kinds of weird stuff to think about. Cliff is the only one that is shown using acid, not the drug crazed hippies. Reminds me that it was the aging strait-laced boomers that fueled Harley Davidson and Gold Wing, not aging hippies. (Did they regret “missing out” on the 60’s?)
As anyone with cats know, they love to bring a trophy back and place it on the hearth. Pussycat’s biggest disappointment is that the trophy she brought back to Charlie is a failed effort.
Being an artist is unhealthy. True of both actors and directors.
Ford and Hawks were great film-makers but not artists. They more or less stuck to formula, though expanding its perimeters and digging a bit deeper. Even with their sometimes wild lifestyles(with drink esp with Ford, but then he was Irish to whom whisky is like water), they had long careers because they didn’t have to worry too much about being personal, deep, or finding the truth. Ford and Hawks knew what was expected of them and stuck with it. Same was true of Hitchcock though he reach ‘artist’ levels with VERTIGO, but that probably took a lot out of him.
Genre people are far less stressed out, anxious, or obsessive than artists. Ford and Hawks were content to make their kind of movies, year after year. But Welles was different. His ego, talent, and vision made him want to do something personal, original, and groundbreaking every time out(even with genres). Whom the gods don’t destroy, they drive mad. Being an artist is like that. It’s the difference between being a very good genre painter doing what he’s good at and being like Van Gogh or Gauguin, go the extra mile and do what no one has done before. Dylan’s BLONDE ON BLONDE took a lot of years out of him, and in some ways, he never recovered despite later peaks. Fellini conveyed the artist conundrum in 8 1/2. Prior to LA DOLCE VITA, Fellini was highly regarded as a sensitive story-teller of nobodies and outcasts. He was respected but not considered a heavyweight. He was too sentimental. But then, he made DOLCE VITA that came out in the same year as Antonioni’s L’AVVENTURA, and this was also the beginning of the French New Wave. Because DOLCE was a big production set in the city and touching on ‘important’ themes such as ennui, alienation, and meaning of life, Fellini was elevated to the status of not just humble artist but a great modern artist. But in fact, Fellini’s main mode in DOLCE was sensationalism, and he didn’t have much to say. The movie is really about a series of diversions and evasions. But all eyes were on him, and the world was expecting his next film to be even more ‘important’. And Fellini’s ego wanted to make that movie. Problem was he was at best a sentimentalist and sensationalist. He was no thinker. He was not a serious artist of depth and meaning. Yet, he wanted the adulation, and the world demanded so much of him. But he didn’t know how to be one, and so he made 8 1/2 about that very problem. It turned out to be the greatest ironic masterpiece of the 20th century. A guy admits he’s not really an artist, but his confession is really a work of art. A miracle, but for only one time as it was all downhill artistically for Fellini afterwards. 8 1/2, as a confession, should have defused his overblown artistic ego, but its great success made Fellini even hungrier to make Important Movies, resulting in overblown and inflated movies that got lamer and staler.
One reason why Peckinpah burned out so fast was he wasn’t content to just make a movie. John Huston had a wild side, but like Ford and Hawks, was very much into studio mentality. He had more artistic ambition that most but accepted his role as hollywood movie-maker. In contrast, Peckinpah has to push it to the limit every time. But this is super-stressful, as the muse, like cupid, has her own whims. Ford and Hawks were content to catch the usual fish, but for Peckinpah, it had to be a marlin every time, turning every production into Old Man and the Sea struggle of will and wits.
Someone working in mode of artist will burn fast if he wants to do too much. Kubrick and Troell lasted as long as they did because they took off for long periods between feature films. In contrast, Peckinpah wanted to make movie year after year as an artist, which is almost too much to bear. Tarkovsky, another artist, spent many years on his projects. Of course, another factor is it’s much more difficult for an artist to get his project into production, esp if they’re sufficiently big and expensive. This is why longevity favors artists with smaller visions like Woody Allen or Eric Rohmer who were content to make small-budgeted movies about human relations and mostly dialogue.
The later boomers and Gen X-er directors seem to be healthier and longer-lasting. Maybe hipsterism has health benefits. Its sense of irony and distance creates resting room for mind and emotions. Linklater seems like a healthy guy with many good yrs ahead of him. As crazy as Tarantino’s movies can be, it seems he doesn’t become obsessed like Leone or Peckinpah. Tarantino’s obsessiveness is more that of a geek than seeker. More like compulsive excitement than obsessive commitment.
Also, he admires hard/tough men but isn’t really hung about being one himself. In his creative space, he’s really dealing with memes than with men. Hemingway’s code was real to the extent that he really wanted to prove himself in life as in fiction(taken even further by Mishima). They created fiction that was directly related to matters of the real world. In contrast, Tarantino always preferred the fantasy world to the real world, so his fiction is about fiction.
Also, as he’s always half-kidding about everything, he has a fun and good time with his material than soul-laboring over them as Peckinpah did with Wild Bunch. Dennis Hopper was like method-director with THE LAST MOVIE. He would be as crazy as the movie he’s making. Coppola became Kurtz in the making of APOCALYPSE NOW. In the role of artist, he threw himself body and soul into the project. He never regained his footing as great director. He lost and left something of himself in Philippines. Cimino went crazy with HEAVEN’S GATE.
Apart from RESERVOIR, I don’t think Tarantula did anything really great(though he did lots of ingenious stuff even in bad movies), but he has kept his ‘sanity'(relatively speaking) by avoiding the artistic concept of Truth. Contrast Kurtz in APOCALYPSE NOW and Jackson in PULP FICTION. Coppola struggled so hard to find the meaning of Kurtz, and he dug and dug but it just drove him crazy. In contrast, we know Tarantino has no concern for the truth(though he found some in RESERVOIR). The substance of what Jackson says doesn’t matter as long as the style is right. It’s less vexing to be a tailor than a surgeon, esp a brain/heart surgeon, which is what Artists try to be. The greatness of Scorsese is he managed to a surgeon with the reliability of a tailor.
Granted, a real artist can attain longevity by resting on his laurels and turning his name into a brand. In this, Picasso did the Warhol thing before Warhol, living to a ripe old age and raking in lots of dough. Difference was Warhol did it without ever having been a real artist… which, I suppose, is more remarkable in a (bad) way.
Exactly. But with all sorts of “woke” bureaucratic targets as well as thug targets.
I think the first part of it is a fundamental truth of societal organization.
People do better when they are in charge of and responsible for themselves.
Instilling this ethic of responsibility is what child raising–done properly–is all about. (Ground those helicopters!)
Responsibility–collective–is what republican governance and the American Revolution are all about. It is what nationalism is all about. It is what manliness is all about. “We’ll make our own decisions, run our lives ourselves and be responsible for the results.”
And, of course, this is precisely what minoritarianism seeks to–and has destroyed–the right of the nation’s people to freely organize themselves as they wish and govern themselves. Basically parasitic elites demand we associate and behave according to their dictat. No more freedom of association–you *must* be diverse. (Not them, of course, just us.) And no more of that silly self-government nonsense. We’ll tell you what to do.
But rather obviously, blacks don’t actually behave that well nor do that well when they aren’t forced to be responsible for themselves, but live off of various blame-whitey rents and sinecures and have progs excusing their irresponsibility and misbehavior at every turn.
No, I’m claiming that he makes movies that are about movies.
It is difficult to make adult movies. Most movies have to be for the woke culture and the characters have to be woke. You have to retcon reality and history to conform to woke culture. Only people with some sort of independence can make adult films. Maybe his films about films is his method of navigating the landscape in order to make the film that he wants.
I should have written movies for adults, I forgot that adult movie was already taken.
No, Pitt is playing the same character he always plays – Brad Pitt – which ironic since DiCaprio’s character is at least partly an amalgam of two other actors who do likewise, Eastwood and Norris.
Thanks for the tip, Steve. First movie I’ve been to in at least a year.
Best acting I’ve ever seen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZuWDiyddMQReplies: @Percy Gryce
Thanks!
(Note, i havent' seen the movie so this is entirely a flyer based on the commentary i've read.)
I think what made Black Panther leftist was that it's root message was blacks are super-capable and competent in their own world so their problems here ... must be whitey's fault! Discrimination! Structural racism! In other in the current Western milieu with minoritarianism dominant, the messaging comes off as another blamey whitey attack on the West and white people.
I think it is perfectly possible to make a conservative pro-black movie that shows blacks taking care of their own business, their own families, by resisting the siren song of minoritarian blame-whiteyism and all the associated pathologies--welfare dependency, illegitimacy, drugs and especially toleration of crime. Actually you could make a pretty good--sexy, violent, manly--conservative pro-black picture by having a guy, with some brothers joining him, who doesn't put up with that crap and starts "cleaning up the town" to set his community on a better path. (Extra point if he punches out some whiny snot-nose woke social worker type.)
Actually there's a ton of ripe targets that hero and his group could deal with while creating a small patch of functional community, within typical US urban mess:
-- black thugs; dispatched in numerous ways
-- Jewish DA or judge who lets thugs off; hero starts dumping black thugs into judges leafy neighborhood, where, of course, the guy panics and police actually respond
-- nice white lady school counselor full of racial pieties and incoherent discipline; "your job is making white babies, go do that and stop screwing up our black babies"
-- Jewish feminist harpie school teacher or admin prattling about "structural racism" and preaching "feminism"; set straight and chased out with rape threat
-- BLM homo; mocked and abused in all sorts of ways
-- light-skinned black braided lesbian politician; "you ain't black and your ain't a woman"
-- white and black cops in the donut shop; "get off your fat ass and do your fucking job and get these assholes off our streets, before you collect your fat pension"
-- Asian convenience or liquour store owner; "told to go back where you came from" and chased out of town
-- Mexicans; complaint about Mexicans taking jobs, confronted "this is our nation, not yours--go back to Mexico!" and chased out of town.
-- Mexican drug cartel connection; dispatched
-- sassy black ladies; de-sassed and put in their place
-- welfare baby momas put in their place; "you didn't have a man? but you're having a baby ... know what that makes you ..."
-- Emmett Till doing the "hey baby" thing; Whack. "Do you have a job? Can you support a child? You 'hey baby' my baby again and i'm going cut that snake off and jam it down your throat. No Jew's going to make you into Emmett Till when its a black man killing your sorry ass."
This could be a very fun, potentially very successful movie and very good for our nation. Which is why Hollyweird would never make it.Replies: @syonredux, @Corn, @Neil Templeton, @Ian M.
The Pursuit of Happyness
He does not allow himself to be swayed by the possibility of the protagonist's innocence nor dismayed by the (seemingly) endless and insurmountable challenges of retrieving him; he is not even affected by what other men would deem the almost certain death of the man – his unwavering purpose is to deliver the guy to the courts: guilty or innocent, dead or alive.
The character's emotions are completely sublimated by his relentless dedication to his mission, the one thing he can control; he is a human version of the Cyberdyne Systems Model 101.Replies: @Ian M.
Like Javert in Les Miserables, upon whom Tommy Lee Jones’s character was partially based.
Ah! I never made that connection. Thank you for the insight. I should probably re-read Les Miserables. Once I got about thirty years old, and began to realise I had forgotten all but the haziest outlines of films, books, and such that I nevertheless knew had profoundly affected me, some even changing the very foundations of my life and how I lived it, a dilemma arose:
– Should I revisit such things, knowing I’ll only be in the same state again at sixty? Shall I read other, new things, on the idea that I can never possibly consume all there is worth consuming as it is, nevermind retain it, and is it not better to have a very hazy memory of one thing than to never benefit at all from another, new thing – which new thing may well be more profound than anything I have yet read (viewed, etc.)?
– This is but one facet of the great tragedy of life: each door we open, each path we chose, forecloses another. We cannot be an astronaut if we’re to be a cardinal. We cannot go to graduate school at the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago. You cannot become an expert at this and that. (Oh, some make a good showing: but in the end Prince was no more Rod Morgenstein at a drum-kit than was Morgenstein a guitar virtuoso…) You cannot be a priest and raise a family. (Shut up, smart-alec Anglicans and Eastern Orthodox folks – you know what I mean!)
– Yet, in the end, the finite choices, like the finite time (i.e., mortality) are what make the whole thing meaningful. The alternative is explored fairly thoughtfully in works like The Vampire Lestat, Tuck Everlasting, and Tolkien’s writings about the Elves’ being bound to Arda: Death is the gift of Ilúvatar.
Then, too, most things revisited disappoint: I wet when I read Les Miserables as a graduate student, and A Take of Two Cities as an undergraduate. I wonder now if I should cynically snicker. And, is that an argument that I ought to, or ought not to, re-read them, anyway…?
It doesn't really get any more stoic than that.Replies: @Autochthon, @Marty
Thanks for the reply. That scene is also the one I most recall, so maybe my conception of stoicism is all wrong. I thought it meant equanimity in the face of personal misfortune, a cop remaining uninterested in his prey’s guilt or innocence seeming too common. An episode of All In The Family involves an attempted rape of Edith. Faced with Archie’s worry that a defense lawyer would twist things to make it look like she asked for it, the investigating cop says, “we just lock ‘em up, we don’t try ‘em.”
No. It's quite clearly an aids ridden boomerfest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Coz0TmK2ZIg
Just because you think it is doesn't make it soReplies: @Pat Hannagan
I finally did see it on dvd.
It wasn’t the worst of Tarantino.
I presented it as a gift to my brother who hates my guts.
We once had a dispute over Inglourious Basterds.
Safe to say we don’t see eye to eye and will never speak again.
Led Zep is the only thing we have in binding common. (I hate Kiss)
The movie was overlong but like Mickey Rourke’s The Wrestler I knew where it was going emotionally till the dramatic end
(self worshipping gen boomer fuck him)