83-year-old Coppola is attempting a comeback with an expensive sci-fi film called Megalopolis, whose financing required him to sell part of his lucrative wine business.

Best of luck to him. Reminds me of Stanley Kubrick, though. Whose reputation would be so much better had he only the foresight to die before making that last fiasco of a film.

likely to be a disaster? yep!

Wiki: Principal photography began at Trilith Studios in Georgia on November 1, 2022,[17] with set photos of LaBeouf and Emmanuel filming in Atlanta being published on November 8.[18] Production is due to finish in March 2023.[19] The film was originally shooting using the same LED virtual production technology used for The Batman (2022) and The Mandalorian (2019–present),[20] but, according to The Hollywood Reporter, “as the challenges and costs of that approach have mounted, the production is attempting to pivot to a less costly, more traditional greenscreen approach”.[21]

By January 2023, the film was halfway into filming when reports indicated the budget ballooned higher than its original $120 million price tag,[21] which multiple journalists compared to the production issues of the 1979 film Apocalypse Now, also written, produced, and directed by Coppola.[21][22][23][24] Due to the reported “unstable filming environment”, several crew members were revealed to have exited the film, including production designer Beth Mickle, art director David Scott, and visual effects supervisor Mark Russell, along with the rest of the visual effects team.[21] Coppola and Driver contested the report, stating that while there was some turnover in crew, the production was on schedule and on budget and moving along smoothly.[25] At the same time, Mike Figgis directed a behind-the-scenes documentary on the production of Megalopolis.[26] Later that month, Giancarlo Esposito was added to the cast.[27]

Some other considerations for Michael Corleone: Robert DeNiro (blah), Martin Sheen (there is a screen test out there), Robert Redford (give me an effen break), Ryan O’Neal (give a biggerer effen break), Jack Nicholson (interesting, but he would have fallen way short).

Al Pacino was the ONLY suitable candidate for Michael in the entire friggin world. Al Pacino is such a stunning actor, he is actually able to act 40 iq points above his native measure. Not a mean achievement.

Coppola and Evans do not exactly agree on what happened in the making of The Godfather. Fun stories regardless.

I came to see The Godfather as a well-done propagandistic response to the mainstream revelation of mafia activity, like Soviet propaganda intended for foreign audiences. Whatever you see is always in the best possible light for the mobsters. Like a good piece of government propaganda, it grudgingly hangs out its limited hangouts, being careful to first humanize (or lionize) the people involved, and to explain like a defense attorney why such unpleasantness was necessary. Where simple humanization is difficult, a subject can instead be portrayed as ruthless and powerful, because audiences will admire that too. The smarter in their confusion will imagine that this was some criticism of the subject. No, it was appeal to baser emotion. This has really taken off lately (Dragged Across Concrete).
I recently saw The Valachi Papers. Big contrast. It has none of the artistry or legend (or budget, or talent) of The Godfather. As a movie, it’s categorically inferior. Dino DiLaurentiis couldn’t even be bothered to shoot a proper driving background film, so if you look carefully, you can see Charles Bronson’s model A type jalopy cruise past what are clearly late-60s type cars. That’s what I like about it. Even the cheapness, wooden performances, and too-quick pacing recalls its truer cousins, movies like The FBI story (James Stewart narrates non-emotional government propaganda, something like federal Dragnet) or Take The High Ground (Steve McQueen in a similar role, but for the Korea-era army infantry), which served as a different kind of propaganda. Straight-shooting to the point of boring normies rather than artistically cloying like a music video. Of course, the best mafia movie, and almost the only honest one, is Gomorra, which is both factually searing and artistically satisfying.
——-
OT — Company reclaims 95,000 work hours, by ditching meetings. MEETINGS SUCK. THE WALL STREET JOURNAL SAYS SO.
https://archive.ph/Liz13

EWS is brilliant, although we likely did not see his complete vision due to his death.

Aren’t 70,80 and 90 year olds supposed to retire.
After making millions,upon millions,awards and
prestige,fame,superstar dumb and influence why
won’t they graciously stop helping us?

What’s going on here?Fighting for our rights?

Our so called “elders” continuously create this reality,
knowing damned well it’s not working.Movie
should have been called THE FATHER GOD.
Then these immensely experienced artists could all be
ordained to the saintly status of a universal legend.

Let’s go Brandon definitely needs a large statue.
In fact,we’ll all need epic financial participation awards
soon enough,so keep the faith and vote more harder.

She offered her honor.
I honored her offer.
All night long, it was honor and offer.

At present, 83-year-old Coppola is attempting a comeback with an expensive sci-fi film called Megalopolis, whose financing required him to sell part of his lucrative wine business.

To this chap?

That sounds pretty dramatic (i.e., likely to be a disaster).

Or not. Back in the Aughts, Elon Musk funded Tesla with his personal credit card. You do what you have to do.

Not that Coppola will be around at 105 to collect…

The root cause of the conflict in Ukraine is linked to Washington’s belief that the US is exceptional and the contention that this supposedly justifies its dominance, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

American officials believe the US is “an exceptional nation, unlike any other in the world,” and that it has a duty to lead, because otherwise “there will be chaos.”

Lavrov cited an opinion piece by Jake Sullivan, national security adviser to President Joe Biden, which was published in The Atlantic magazine in 2019.

“No vision of American exceptionalism can succeed if the United States does not defeat the emerging vision that emphasizes ethnic and cultural identity,” he wrote at the time.

Lavrov called the remark “terrible” because it denies other peoples “the right to remember their history.” The US government applies this principle globally, he suggested.

“Just like they melted in a pot everyone who arrived in America, they now want to melt everyone else, so they essentially become Americans,” the minister said.

“This exceptionalism, this absolute conviction of their infallibility and superiority – I am certain that it is the main reason why we are now confronting the nations that wage a proxy war against us through the Kiev regime.”

So, that explains specimens like DJake, physicist and few others.

Poor Valachi Papers. Came out the same year as The Godfather. A much better mafia film was The Brotherhood, starring Kirk Douglas and Alex Cord.

Back in the Aughts, Elon Musk funded Tesla with his personal credit card. You do what you have to do.

Not that Coppola will be around at 105 to collect…

Young men can take chances. But an 83-year-old who has a vineyard? Call me risk-averse, but, if God were to bless me to that age, I’d like to think that I’d be relaxing, not take on a massive new project that imperils my legacy to the children and the grandchildren.

Adam West had a mafia movie (The Girl Who Knew Too Much). There was a period, when the story broke and even normies learned terms like “kiss of death,” when it was everywhere, and it showed in the quality: for example, the completely pointless mafia sequence in Diamonds Are Forever.
The reason the story broke, besides Joe Valachi giving Peter Maas a book, was a series of congressional hearings set up to enable maximum popular takeup of the material. Prime time TV, no unexplained jargon. Even if a mafioso couldn’t be convicted, their secrecy could be made a joke. Recently there was an attempt to sell the January Sixth nonsense using prime time television and really bad acting. It failed, but it probably failed because there was no way to make it work, and its executors were morons. There’s a new committee on China — we’re going to start to deal with China, we think, for the first time since we installed Mao — and Hugh Hewitt has suggested that it be set up like the organized crime committee, prime time TV spots and no unexplained jargon or acronyms. China ought to sell as well as the mafia.

Smartest move the Godfather production team made was in getting Diane Keaton, who couldn’t really act, to be the cardboard rabbit that kept all the male greyhounds running at top speed.

I visited Coppola’s winery a few years ago when I lived in the Bay Area. He has the actual desk from Don Corleone’s office on display, along with some other interesting memorabilia.

“ And yet, most of the big things in a culture (e.g., The Godfather in American film history) weren’t really that tragic, they’re more examples of those unusual passages when everything happened to go right.”

That’s a very 20th-century American perspective. 😉 Most cultures have some major history of defeat, whether it be the fall of Rome in Italy, the loss of empire for France, England, and Spain, the century of humiliation for China (not to mention the fall of all the dynasties), Japan losing WW2 and pivoting from tanks and guns to cars and cartoons, most of the history of Latin America…

It’s evening in America. I’m a bit jealous you lived your life in the early afternoon, but the kids these days will see the night.

[Spoiler Alert]

Too late I read it 🙁

“The Offer is a miniseries on the Paramount streaming service about the behind-the-scenes story of the making of Paramount’s classic film The Godfather in 1972. ”

This appears to be the latest example of creatively bankrupt Hollywood identifying yet another sacred movie franchise and destroying it. That has been the bread and butter of 21st century movie making. How many classic franchises have been utterly ruined with these remakes and sequels?

Star Wars
Alien
Indiana Jones
Predator
Star Trek
MCU – She Hulk, where the Asian director fully admitted that her intention was to antagonize the fanbase by inserting mindless woke dreck into the story.
Ghostbusters
Terminator
Willow – yes, even the forgotten Willow needed to be exhumed so audiences could see negro homosexual dwarfs lecture audiences about diversity
Lord of the Rings – 20 years later, Peter Jackson’s trilogy turns out to be a poorly edited, homoerotic mess.
Game of Thrones

I’m sure I’m forgetting some but we should expect to see more classics violated with current year docu-trash interpretations and or prequels.

Terrific book

In cold type – When Truman Capote set out to profile Marlon Brando for The New Yorker in 1957, he knew just how to set his traps

https://archives.cjr.org/cover_story/in_cold_type.php

Alternatively they wanted the Godfather to be played someone without any mafia connections. Brando also gave Italians a nod by changing his name from Brandau to gloss over WWII and the Kaiser, but before the internet who could have figured that out. Being from Nebraska he might have had insights into what the generic white movie goer wanted to see. Some might recall former NYC mayor Warren Wilhelm used the name Bill de Blasio. Sinatra was born in 1915 vs Brando in 1924, so it is not surprising that they went with youth. As far as I can tell Sinatra did not have any really good roles solely as an actor, so he was probably not prepared to be the namesake character. The rumor about Sinatra playing the Godfather might mean Sinatra was offered a lesser role but demanded he play the Godfather, Frankie you know we love you but …. Brando was probably better suited to play an elderly fat guy cannoli eating businessman.

Diane Keaton was wonderful. In addition to being a skilled comic actress, she was quite beautiful in her younger years (and then aged well too).

Little known fact: our very own “Germ Theory” was a very athletic life guard at her club, and taught her to swim, and then became her lover. She’d phone him every night and beg him to come over and teach her new bedroom tricks.

“You’re the greatest lover I ever had,” she exclaimed. He responded, “Well, I practice a lot when I’m alone.” Then she dumped him for Woody Allen, but GT always leaves that part out.

Man who didn’t like The Godfather.

https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/movies/godfather-decline-marlon-brando-review-stanley-kauffmann/

“The one thing that struck me about it is that it’s unusual for a drama (although perhaps not for a documentary) in that it’s the story of bright, talented people like director Francis Ford Coppola and studio boss Bob Evans repeatedly clashing vociferously over what to do and then … agreeing upon a really good decision.”

Excellent observation.

Hollywood Trump

Coppola calls out Robert Towne who wrote the Brando-Pacino scene:

The baby is Sofia.

Al Pacino was the ONLY suitable candidate for Michael in the entire friggin world.

Disagree. John Cazale and John Cassavetes would also have been great in the role.

Well, it depends on what you’re looking for in your art. I’m more of a fan of Shakespeare’s Henry V than I am of documentaries about the real life Henry V. I really love Gomorra, but would rank Sopranos higher, in terms of quality drama. I’m going to check out Take The High Ground, thanks–but it looks like the star is actually Richard Widmark?

I agree that Eyes Wide Shut is a great film. Others here, including our host, consider it a flop. I guess it’s no use in arguing taste. Many here consider Once Upon a Time in Hollywood a masterpiece, while I considered it a meandering mess.

And then real oddballs like me loved both films.

Meta-cinema. Hollywood is dead.

It’d be better still if he’d died after Clockwork Orange. He was one of those people whose career has a very clear best-before date.

Robert Evans may have been a bad businessman and a worse cocaine-dealer, but his restaurants sure do serve a nice breakfast.

Is Hollywood now so bereft of ideas that it has to mine its own squalid history for ideas?

I guess so.

The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre was a not bad organized crime movie, despite being miscast in many ways (Jason Robards as Al Capone?). Done on the cheap, as all Roger Corman’s movies were, it was still pretty impressive. It was probably one of Corman’s few movies that didn’t premier at a drive-in.

before making that last fiasco of a film

HJ, what didn’t you like about it?

It’s really mind-boggling reading about casting decisions that almost were made or not made. The most famous I guess would be Ronald Reagan and Ann Sheridan being slotted at one point for Casablanca.

There must be an alternate universe where all the wrong choices were made. Jack Lord and Martin Landau were considered for Kirk and Spock, which would possibly have left Gregory Peck as 5-0’s McGarrett. God knows who then would have played Rollin Hand on Mission Impossible, plus Landau and Barbara Bain might never have met, wed and run off to Space 1999!

Warner Bros did actually try a blatant re-do of Casablanca just after WWII, set in Europe and starring the bland Dennis Morgan and Vivica Lindfors. And yes, he even ran a club and had a piano-playing sidekick.

Here’s a short movie that needs a viewing.
I love the heading.

No honestly, what would the world do without Toxic Masculinity? 🤔 pic.twitter.com/efyAditB6l

— TXDeplorable (@Texas_Made956) February 2, 2023

Reminds me of Stanley Kubrick, though. Whose reputation would be so much better had he only the foresight to die before making that last fiasco of a film.

EWS, like Barry Lyndon and The Shining, is being re-evaluated favorably.

Though both liked to work big, the key difference is Kubrick liked to work slowly and meticulously, going over every possibility and bug. In contrast, Coppola tended to follow his passion and dive headlong into ambitious projects without thinking ahead, which is why the second half of Apocalypse Now meander and unravels.

Also, as masterly as Kubrick was, he knew his limits and worked in close collaboration with others. He talked a lot but also listened a lot. Coppola, far more cantankerous personality, tended to fly off in pursuit of his creative whims. I’m sure he felt great about One From the Heart and Rumblefish as he got to do everything he wanted, but someone should have told him and he should have listened: a movie can’t be all style and no substance.

imperils my legacy to the children and the grandchildren

From Rich Dad to Ancestor Cry: Tales From the Super Zip

Martin Scorsese cast a 78-year old, 5’9″ Robert De Niro to play 6’4″ Irish hitman Frank Sheeran in his 30s and 40s. The scene where De Niro, as Sheeran, stiffly moves thru the scene where he beats up the shopkeeper is embarassing. I was thinking, Martin Scorsese doesn’t know who Vince Vaughn is? He can’t find a single tall guy in his 40s to play Frank Sheeran?

likely to be a disaster? yep!

On the other hand, why not go for broke?

A vineyard is just a vineyard but art is forever. Coppola didn’t start out as a winemaker(no more than Orson Welles intended to sell wine not before its time) but as an film artist. He got lost after Apocalypse Now though he made some decent movies along the way, especially Peggy Sue and Tucker.

How much longer does he have to live? He should go for broke, and even if he goes broke, he got social security.

And his daughter established her own reputation.

Commercial disaster or not, it’s good that Coppola is giving everything in his twilight years and doing what he set out to accomplish.

I am a fan of both. EWS was a commercial flop that is unappealing and flat on first viewing. Like many Kubrick films, it improves on repeat viewing as the viewer has to become accustomed to its stylized cryptic nature.

I wouldn’t label Eyes Wide Shut a fiasco, but it is a film where it’s more fun to read/listen to analysis of it than actually watch it.

Like all gangster films, the Godfather, is a gay romance. I am surprised that anyone remembers this film. The greatest movie ever made, The Street of a thousand Pleasures,came out in the same year. I would love to see a behind the scenes look at that movie, especially the casting calls.

let’s get serious: Kubrick was a genius, Coppola merely talented

Redford, O’Neal, Nicholson. That’s a lotta Irish. They would’ve had to recast Kay. The lovely, willowy, and tall Diane Keaton paired up with one of those three gents in a sea of Sicilians? A visual anomaly that would’ve marred the film. Besides, as you point out, Pacino is a stunning actor. In the scenes Diane and Pacino share, Coppola does not hide the fact that Diane stands a few inches taller than Pacino. Which says a lot about Pacino’s and Coppola’s confidence in the character and story.

Pacino fans may not have caught his turn as an ambitious NYPD patrolman looking for a pathway to the gold shield through an undercover assignment wherein he prowls the rough trade homersexual bars and nightclubs looking for a knife wielding killer in William Friedkin’s Cruising. Throughout the second act Friedkin rubs your eyeballs in sweaty and unsanitary homo-orgies because he’s a provocateur. It’s completely unsettling and sets the viewer up for the enigmatic third act that leads one to believe there is more than one killer, a contagion chain, and Paino’s character is caught up in it. I can’t recommend this thriller to the average iSteve commenter. But it is one of the creepiest films in American cinema. And it’s one of Pacino’s most compelling roles.

“He got lost after Apocalypse Now …”

Coppola’s Eighties output is interesting but inconsistent. But he did make the dreamy and romantic The Outsiders and Rumble Fish. Both of which were based on novels by S.E. Hinton and visually splendid. If Coppola didn’t turn out a film after Apocalypse Now he could’ve rested on his laurels from his string of 1970s films, all of which were celluloid masterpieces.

I assume every male I encounter — if they’re literate and cultured — is as enthusiastic about Apocalypse Now as I am. So I recommend a book titled Dispatches by Michael Herr. Herr had a hand in polishing John Milius’s script which was based on the Conrad story. Herr’s Dispatches relates his time as a gonzo journalist in the thick of it in Vietnam. At times the passages in the book are mesmerizing, and you see where Coppola picked up his hallucinatory themes in the film.

They are cannibalizing established IP without generating new IP. In the supposedly post Covid/gene therapy drug/BLM environment a lot of industry people still can’t find a way forward. Quotas for “representation” for trannies and homogenizing homosexual relationships are the latest road blocks to quality and interesting work. The Sabbateans have been in Hollywood since its inception. But they played it smart by checking their appetites and churning out content that sells tickets. The new generation of these loathsome creatures have no work or business ethic; they simply wallow in the filth and degradation that their god demands. Tinsel Town is dying a slow, painful death. Somebody should write a book about it.

It’s really mind-boggling reading about casting decisions that almost were made or not made.

Screenwriter William Goldman famously said about Hollywood, “Nobody knows anything”.

A leading scholar of the mafia told me that Goodfellas is the most accurate portrayal.

I watched it three times anyway.

Also I was addicted to Casino, especially to watch Nicky Santoro get it in the end. I’ve known a few in my past on whom I’ve wished the identical fate, but I don’t care enough about them to wish it anymore.

#19

“I’m sure I’m forgetting some but we should expect to see more classics violated with current year docu-trash interpretations and or prequels. ”

I’m looking forward to the prequels, sequels and remakes of all those great Woody Allen classics. I certainly hope those get violated.

Eyes Wide Shut is a masterpiece. Plus it exposes the Epstein-elite world twenty-five years before Epstein. Kubrick tried to warn us all.

I suggest you watch Rob Ager’s many, many videos on this film. Here’s a great one merely on the newspaper article props in the background of the movie to show how absolutely insane Kubrick was with detail.

The overwhelming majority of people don’t notice what metaphorical time of day it is.

They live miserable, hard-scrabble lives whether it is morning, noon, or night.

All this poetic theorizing about the falls of empires is for dumb rich people.

Just about every Kubrick film opened with mixed reviews, with no contemporaneous viewer finding it brilliant, only for later viewers/critics to laud the films as perfection on screen. Kubrick’s movies are like fine wines, they get better with age, because Kubrick realized he was making films for the future, not merely his present.

OMG. Please tell me you’re trolling. The Shining, Eyes Wide Shut, and Full Metal Jacket are, quite simply, astounding.

Kubrick’s worst movie was Full Metal Jacket. And that’s with the first act being home to one of the greatest performances in cinematic history. R. Lee Ermey may as well been given a screenwriting credit for FMJ, as he created most of his own dialog.

While the boot camp act has some very vivid aspects of realism to it, there is the poor attempt to manipulate the viewer into hating the drill instructor simply because he is mean, instead of appreciating his cold hard practicality in giving undisciplined teenagers the very best chance to survive in combat. FFC was utterly aghast at the cult legend status Gunny Hartman almost instantly received, because it was the exact opposite of what he intended. There are plenty of ways to promote an antiwar narrative, but FFC decided to demonize the troops (associating former disgraced Marines Lee Harvey Oswald and Charles Whitman as heros), or attempt to, without actually touching on the ultimate powers that put those young men in that position to begin with. The murder/suicide at the end of act 1 is as cheap as it is dishonest. Has there ever been a murder suicide in Marine Corps Recruit Training? I was in the Marine Corps and I never heard of one. I will say that it is practically impossible to get live rounds back to the squad bay (everyone is shaken down after a live fire exercise, and plenty of other times as well), and that a midwit like Pvt. Pile, who couldn’t even hide a doughnut, would be able to pull it off.

The second act is so bad it makes Chuck Norris’ Missing in Action movies look like non fiction accounts of the war.

While I wouldn’t characterize OUATIH as meandering, it was entertaining in a generic sense, though I am not nearly as enthusiastic about the film as Steve is. Works as a period piece, and since Steve was there at the time, I understand why he enjoys it. Growing up around Chicagoland, I have a special fondness for Blues Brothers and Ferris Beuller, though they are not anything special.

2001 was popular with acidheads at the Cinerama Dome.

Only Kubrick could make a film where a dark, cavernous room full of beautiful naked ladies is the least sexy thing you’ve ever seen. Tom Cruise is not believable as a rich doctor in NYC, the mysteries are not mysterious, the urbanism isn’t urban, the surrealism isn’t surreal, and the orgy in the mansion is just silly. I liked the guy who played the piano player, though. Was that Edward Norton, or just somebody who looks like him?

It might have been good if it had been made by David Lynch. Or the Repo Man guy.

On the other hand, that’s not as inherently dramatic as, say, Coppola going bankrupt making his 1980s flop One from the Heart

Steve, I know you are Hollyweird adjacent, but this idea that the acting business itself is great drama is just more of these folks’ incredible self-absorption.

Making movies is hardly as dramatic as war and peace, or cops and robbers, not even good old boy meets girl–leading to babies subtext–romance. I.e. life.

Hollyweird’s successes and flops may be more “dramatic” than say P&G succeeding or failing with a new brand of soap. But that’s about the level of it.

Cruising is a metaphysical precognition of the rise of AIDs. To Friedkin’s credit, the descent into the cruising subculture plays as a horror film. When Pacino appears to possibly be gay and even a serial killer himself, the film seeds fear in the minds of the audience as to whether watching the film itself will cause the audience to become sexually perverse and violent.

Something to think about as our culture seems obsessed with exposing young school children to homosexual themes and graphic pornography. This is being done for a reason and it ain’t tolerance.

The root cause of the conflict in Ukraine is linked to Washington’s belief that the US is exceptional and the contention that this supposedly justifies its dominance, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

No. You’re just letting Lavrov con you, because you want to be conned.

Sullivan’s remark

“No vision of American exceptionalism can succeed if the United States does not defeat the emerging vision that emphasizes ethnic and cultural identity,” he wrote at the time.

is, of course, utterly hideous, as one would expect from some super-smarty, all-the-right-schools “Biden” Administration fellow-traveler. If the American nation recovers anytime soon, he–along with thousands of other traitors–should be chucked out.

But the cause of Putin’s War is Putin’s good old fashioned Russian imperialism. I grew up with Russian Empire at its fullest extent … and it was grinding, tedious, depressing, deadly and expensive exercise for us, Europe and the entire world. But to Putin … the good old days!

Lavrov called the remark “terrible” because it denies other peoples “the right to remember their history.”

And he’s right.

Except for Lavrov, that apparently means “once in the Russian Empire” always in the Russian empire.” Ukrainians remembering their history, valuing their culture and ethnic identity, not wanting to be bossed around by the annoying neighbor and charting their own nation’s path–no good! That’s the origin of your conflict.

The world saw enough of this shitty imperialism–Russian, British, German, Japanese, French, American, Belgian, Italian, Dutch–in the 20th century killing 100 millionish.

It ought to be long dead and buried. It’s disgusting to see Putin giving it another go. And pathetic to see people shilling for and excuse making for it still.

Guys and Dolls is still a wonderful movie, and Sinatra is excellent in his acting role…We are picky, and we have watched it several times…

Cruising is a metaphysical precognition of the rise of AIDs. To Friedkin’s credit, the descent into the cruising subculture plays as a horror film.

From what I’ve heard–exactly that.

The problem is homosexual behavior is so deeply unpleasant, who the heck wants to watch such a horror movie? It’s enough to know this was/is going on and this is why we had AIDS and monkeypox and no doubt some more things in the future–as modern medicine (which we pay for) keeps queers alive to keep it up … until the blessed time this is figured out and eradicated.

At his peak, Coppola was almost second to none. The Godfather was no fluke as The Godfather II(in which he had greater input) was even greater. And the first third of Apocalypse Now was astounding.
With The Godfather, the rich tapestry was already laid out by Puzo. Milius came up with an exciting idea for Apocalypse Now but Coppola wanted a serious statement about war, not some macho fantasy. Having rejected Milius’ vision and ending, Coppola was simply lost.

Coppola could certainly direct and could touch up on other people’s ideas, but he was far less good with coming up with original material. The Conversation won much praise, but it pales next to other paranoid thrillers of the period like Parallax View. It’s too academic, an exercise more than a story.

With movies like The Cotton Club and Dracula he got so worked up with style and effects that he lost the story, if there was one.

Only Kubrick could make a film where a dark, cavernous room full of beautiful naked ladies is the least sexy thing you’ve ever seen.

They are like mannequins.

Only Kubrick could make a film where a dark, cavernous room full of beautiful naked ladies is the least sexy thing you’ve ever seen. Tom Cruise is not believable as a rich doctor in NYC, the mysteries are not mysterious, the urbanism isn’t urban, the surrealism isn’t surreal, and the orgy in the mansion is just silly.

I have a theory that Kubrick really wanted to make an arty porno film and he chickened out. And I agree with you re the Cruise casting: Daniel Day-Lewis would have been so much better

Probably a lot of the analysis is subject to survivor bias.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

The worst offenders are sportswriters. But business writers are not far behind.

Kubrick’s films from Barry Lyndon onward aren’t bad, but they are minor works compared to his earlier films.

I apologize for missing your name in the reference at the end of the comment.

Ukrainians are not a nation, they never existed, they had no state, no history, no language, no literature, no religion. What does Crimea have to do with Ukraine except that a drunken Khrushchev said one morning that it would belong to Soviet Ukraine or that Lenin also decided that Donbass would be Ukraine. The Serbs who in 1753 founded Slaveno Serbia with the capital Bakhmut and also a New Serbia province did not come to Ukraine but to Russia.

Ukrainians are an artificial category created by the Vatican and the US with the aim of being cannon fodder in the campaign against the Russians and the creation of new Khazaria. Anyone who really doesn’t see that must be a total idiot. Ukrainians don’t even have a name because the current means Borderland. Whose borderland? Russian borderland!

But he did make the dreamy and romantic The Outsiders and Rumble Fish

Beginning with The Outsiders, Coppola became a bit tone-deaf.

The Godfather has perfect tone, and tone is not the problem of Apocalypse Now — it’s the story arc and conclusion. Even The Conversation, for what it is, has the right kind of tone.

But The Outsiders is just all wrong. It’s supposed to be a rugged story about working class youths, but it’s so overwrought. Worse, it goes for sentimentality on an epic scale, like Gone with the Wind for delinquents.

Whatever romanticism there is in Rumble Fish is undone by the stark b/w and vapid experimentalism.

And what the hell were Puzo and Coppola thinking when they worked on The Godfather 3?
Who wants to see a Nice Michael? And Andy Garcia as the son of Sonny? Garcia is a likable actor but lacks the edge to play someone so bold and aggressive.

Coppola did some amazing things in the first parts of Youth without Youth but got lost somewhere along the way.

The most famous I guess would be Ronald Reagan and Ann Sheridan being slotted at one point for Casablanca.

Casablanca! The Musical would be a different take of cinamatic history!

I think the best bit of Killer’s Kiss is the rooftop chase.

Because the beauty of a woman has an essential mental element and the body is simply there to give it a voice. This is also the point of that one Paul Giamatti scene in Shoot ‘Em Up.

Never heard of it but thanks: Jason Robards is one of those guys I would pretty much always watch, even if “miscast.” In a recent discussion about Jean-Claude Van Damme movies, people, who probably do not know how to skate, initially dismissed Sudden Death, but the decisive argument was Powers Booth absolutely Brian-Blesseding all over the location.

I liked the guy who played the piano player, though. Was that Edward Norton, or just somebody who looks like him?

Your other criticisms are off the mark, but yeah you’re exactly right on this one.

Ed Norton was well known and an Oscar-winner at this point, and so the casting/acting of this guy was definitely done to mimic Ed Norton, right down to Norton’s laugh. Todd Field, the actor who played Nick, is an excellent actor and filmmaker himself, so these choices to directly mimic Nortion were not happenstance by either Kubrick or Field. It was deliberate, so it leaves open the question why: was Norton originally cast, and then fired, and this was Kubrick replacing him with a dig? Was this a reference to Norton behind the scenes in Hollywood in some way? (Norton never appeared in any Kubrick film).

There’s a lot of playing with casting in Eyes Wide Shut. For example, there’s one scene where actor Thomas Gibson appears to console his fiancee (who’s father has just died) in front of Cruise. Unknown to Gibson, the fiancee has just made a pass at Cruise moments before Gibson arrived. Most reviewers focus on Gibson and his fiancee being dowdier doppleganers of Cruise and Kidman (playing Cruise’s wife in the film). However, Gibson had previously been cast by Cruise himself as his romantic rival for Kidman in the flop Far and Away. In other words, Kubrick deliberately chose Gibson to play opposite/love rival for Cruise again, although here in a much different way.

Or take the Mandy/prostitute character who “sacrifices” herself for Cruise. The audience is led to believe that the prostitute that Cruise saves in Ziegler’s bathroom at the beginning is the same woman that sacrifices herself for Cruise in the party scene and ends up on the slab in the coroner’s officer. Yet multiple critics have noticed that the woman on the slab and the actress who played Mandy in the first scene are different actresses, and that the woman who sacrifices herself at the party for Cruise seems different from both. Its jarring when you actually notice it yourself.

All of these playful-deliberate casting decisions bleed into the title: Eyes Wide Shut. Here we’re watching this film and many of us won’t notice these obvious things until multiple viewings. Our eyes are wide open — and yet shut.

I love Francis Coppola, I just wish he hadn’t continuously been a patron for that child molestor who directed Jeepers Creepers.

About an hour into The Cotton Club it hit me “wait a minute this movie is still introducing characters and I haven’t noticed a plotline.”

Boy, did I muck that up. Ann Sheridan singing, NOT Ann Shelton! Sorry!

Remember that the women in question were high end prostitutes who were likely drugged or mind controlled in some manner. They are not viewed as human by the cult, but objects, play things. The sex was not meant to be passionate, but part of a preordained quasi religious ritual. At minimum, one of the film’s themes is that sex without intimacy is not good for the soul or society. It is soulless, sort of like the women at the party. Cruise is tempted to stray despite being married to Nicole Kidman by an empty fantasy of sexual infidelity. Cruise’s cruising (sorry) nearly gets him infected with AIDs or even worse knocked off by some sort of Babylonian-By-Way-Of-Vienna luciferian sex cult. Infidelity leads to a living hell or just straight up hell.

As for the believability of Tom Cruise, as always, Tom Cruise is playing Tom Cruise and he is a natural in that role. Both Cruise and Kidman exude artifice with extremely affected acting. I think this was all extremely intentional by Kubrick in a Brechtian sense. Despite his wealth and status as an accomplished doctor, Cruise is a fraud, both in his relationship with his wife, but also in his standing in Manhattan society. Cruise, like many rich yuppies in fin de siecle (pre-9/11) Manhattan, is in reality nothing more than a well compensated servant to the real power brokers of New York society. Contrast Cruise and Kidman’s tasteful, yet very New York City sized apartment to the grand Manhattan mansions of Zieglar and Cruise’s clients. Despite the trappings of accomplishment, Cruise is a man who knows he is a fraud. Cruise’s lust for other women and the other society above his “stature” leads him on the over the rainbow night journey of the film. So Cruise acts artificial and contrived because the Cruise character and his world is actually completely artificial and contrived. There is also the matter of Cruise and Kidman being superstar celebrities (the biggest at the time of the film’s making) who belong to a certain mind control based and abusive cult which insists on utmost secrecy that begins with the letter “S”.*

I believe the film works even if you treat the sex cult as a dream or fantasy of the Cruise character, a sort of Manhattan yuppie version of A Christmas Carol or It’s A Wonderful Life (the film is set at Christmas time) where one night of terror and fantasy helps a man realize how good he has it in the real world. But as with many Kubrick films, if you are willing to pull on that string, the film is a conspiracy tour de force that arguably involves ritual sex magick, elite human sacrifices and child trafficking. About as crazy as it gets.

While I agree that Lynch could have done the film justice, Lynch was busy working on his fin de siecle magnum opus, Mudholland Drive at the time. In my mind, Mudholland Drive and Eyes Wide Shut delve into some of the same deep and dark waters of the collective zeitgeist. Maybe Lynch and Kubrick might be on to something and use their cryptic films as Straussian coded texts to express somethings that cannot be discussed openly.

Or maybe, Lynch and Kubrick just attract the schizos.

Kubrick’s contrived, flat take in Eyes Wide Shut is so effective exactly because it uses a utterly mundane styling to hint at some outrageous and terrifying things. Kubrick is often accused of being abusive towards his actors because he requires often hundreds of takes. The constant repetition eventually browbeats the actors into delivering the style of performance Kubrick desires. He effectively hypnotizes them. I think Kubrick films do the same to their audiences. The best of cinema can be compared to a form of hypnosis and Kubrick’s obsession with detail and exact tone eventually hypnotizes the viewer who is willing to repeatedly watch his movies. Eventually, you see through the contrivance and see them in completely new ways. The experience can be overwhelming and disturbing, but once you see it, there is no going back.

*Not the Screen Actors Guild.

a certain mind control based and abusive cult which insists on utmost secrecy that begins with the letter “S”.*

*Not the Screen Actors Guild.

Hah! What other trade union allows employers to make their members work naked?

I agree that Eyes Wide Shut is a great film.

I actually haven’t seen it. I have a hard time with Tom Cruise because of Scientology. I’ve read too much about that *cough* religion. I have a hard time watching Jason Lee for the same reason, even though he left.

Others here, including our host, consider it a flop. I guess it’s no use in arguing taste. Many here consider Once Upon a Time in Hollywood a masterpiece, while I considered it a meandering mess.

I really enjoyed Once Upon a Time even though I didn’t grow up during that era. It has some amusing esoteric references for weirdos like myself that have read about the Manson cult. I also thought Pitt did a good job along with DiCaprio.

But a masterpiece? No just much better than his other crap like Kill Bill.

One of the few tarantino movies I would watch more than once. The other would be Jackie Brown.

That’s quite a good reading of the whole thing. Thanks.

What bothers me about it though is the sheer flatness of the movie — there’s not a single moment in it that’s believable or real, but at the same time it isn’t dreamlike or surreal either, just slow and flat and faked. And the thinness of what’s lurking underneath it (let me get this straight, sinfulness is bad, I’ll get my notebook) simply doesn’t justify the length and tedium of the exercise. Oh well.

Funny, but also sort of too easy… kind of like a certain movie star I used to know.

Brando was fine in Guys and Dolls the movie. We don’t expect the protagonist to be a great singer and Guys and Dolls isn’t exactly Carousel.

Are you kidding? There is a reason they had Cazale play the slow brother…

Kubrick’s worst movie was Full Metal Jacket.

I enjoyed Full Metal Jacket but it felt like he couldn’t decide if it should be a boot camp movie or a war movie. Felt like two movies awkwardly meshed into one.

My favorite Kubrick movie is The Killing.

I think no other movie depicts why it is such a bad idea to trust others to remain ethical while committing a crime.

It also explores the dark side of female sexuality which you don’t see in many movies from that period.

I would rate 2001 as the worst. Has some very impressive scenes but most of the movie is filler.

If he had cut it to like 30 minutes it would be the greatest sci-fi short of all time.

The Godfather has perfect tone, and tone is not the problem of Apocalypse Now — it’s the story arc and conclusion.

What did you not like about the conclusion? His trajectory into madness is an allegory for the war and he could only be stopped by violent death.

But The Outsiders is just all wrong. It’s supposed to be a rugged story about working class youths, but it’s so overwrought.

It’s a case of trying to squeeze a book into a 90 minute movie.

It just doesn’t work. Too many characters in too short of a space.

Al Pacino is such a stunning actor, he is actually able to act 40 iq points above his native measure.

While he won his only Academy Award for Scent of a Woman, it was really a makeup for denying him one for …And Justice For All.

I never noticed it until a /tv/ thread focused on it, but Cazale had an amazing career. He was in five giant movies before succumbing to cancer and hit the ball out of the park every time. Granted he was always in a supporting role.

2001 only makes any sense given Manly Hall’s synchretic symbolism. It originally had clarifying narration but Kubrick preferred the ambiguity. Eyes Wide Shut will make absolutely no sense if you’re not into conspiracy theory and aren’t somewhat familiar with certain things. Worse, it will not be interesting at all, it will seem like a better shot Interiors, a film in which there appears to be no plot and in which nothing happens which is really any different from anything else. This is part of its symbolism: the theme is secrets hiding in plain sight, so if you know (or suspect) the secrets, you see one movie, and if you don’t, it looks like nothing is happening.

Apparently there was a TV series of Gomorra as well; did you see that, and if so what did you think?

I did not see it but have heard great things about it.
Gomorra was developed with the Italian police and it’s pretty much the only mafia movie which can not be accused of glamorizing the mafia.

The front page of this morning’s NYT claimed that the Russians are finally getting ready to launch that big offensive that Col. Macgregor has been predicting for the last several months.

You mean the big winter offensive any day now from what 3 months ago?

Everyone has been talking about a Russian spring offensive for weeks now. At this point, Macgregor’s “winter offensive” is a sad example of yet another prediction that has failed to materialize. Or is his plan just to call any new Russian offensive as the massive winter offensive he has predicted since 3 months+ ago?

Seriously, how many do-overs does he get?

And you believe the NYT now? The same newspaper today that estimated that “nearly 200,000 have been killed or wounded in Ukraine, a stark symbol of how badly Vladimir Putin’s invasion has gone”?

he’s been saying that the Russians have been destroying the Ukrainians, inflicting massively lopsided casualties, probably 160,000 Ukrainian KIAs compared with maybe 20,000 on the Russian side.

How has he arrived at those figures?

He seems to think the Ukrainian forces are close to collapse, possibly even taking NATO down with them

This is getting pathetic. He’s been proclaiming the collapse of Ukraine since the beginning of the war. He predicted that Russia would take Odessa at the beginning of the winter, don’t you remember?

I don’t claim to be a military expert, but victory or defeat in a war is a pretty easy thing to see when it happens.

When the Ukraine counter-offensive routed the Russians along the Kharkiv front last year, you couldn’t see “victory or defeat in a war” pretty easily.

I’m curious about whether you’re still sticking to your guns and claiming that the Ukrainians are doing pretty well and the Russians have been forced onto the defensive.

My analysis is on the record – anyone can read it from the archive of the comments. I didn’t talk about either side “winning” or “losing” so much as I estimated the Russian casualty level based on their documented equipment losses and put forth the rather obvious conclusion that their offensive capability was severely damaged and that, yes, the war has been a disaster for the Russian military and the state.* Given that, I considered Macgregor’s wild talk about a Ukrainian collapse or the Russians taking of Odessa fanciful at best and likely delusional. And you seem to share that delusion based on American domestic ideological inclinations.

*For the third time, this should indicate the scale of the disaster for the Russians. The Iraq War was an utter failure for the United States. It was our Sicilian Expedition. Our armed forces lost about 150 armored fighting vehicles (tanks + infantry fighting vehicles + armored personnel carriers) in 8 years of fighting in Iraq. The Russian army has lost 3,000 (!) AFVs in 8 months of fighting in Ukraine. You are right that you don’t understand military affairs, because you don’t realize the scale of the disaster for the Russian military here.

And as I mentioned repeatedly before, I am not some Ukrainian fanboy. I know that a war like this can quickly become a negative-sum game for all parties concerned. That the Russians have suffered a disaster of epic proportions doesn’t mean the Ukrainians are “winning.” Their eastern areas have been devastated, their cities are under incessant rocket and drone attacks (reminiscent of “The War of the Cities” during the Iran-Iraq War**), and they, too, have suffered large casualties in all likelihood (remember that at the beginning of the war, there was a large materiel imbalance against the Ukrainians, so they were essentially men fighting against machines).

**The best account of the Iran-Iraq War, including coverage on “The War of the Cities,” is Anthony Cordesman’s “The Lessons of Modern War Volume II: The Iran-Iraq War.” I read all 647 pages of it cover to cover and cross-referenced it with the hundreds of the citations not long after the book came out for work and study in the early 1990’s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Cities

Do you know this guy named Anatoly Karlin? You know, the same guy who was proclaiming “The gathering of the Russian lands” triumphantly right before the war and had to eat some humble pie since? I’d like to note that his estimate of the Russian casualty level is now near or above mine. Moreover, he believes that, unless Putin directs another round of large-scale manpower mobilization, the war is as good as lost for Russia.

Pacino WAS a great actor, but now he’s a ham, playing the role of Al Pacino. He was great in the roles he played back in the 70s and 80s, but then went downhill to cringe territory.

It’s rare for American actors to stay sharp into their later careers. The culture of celebrity and access, and a press more interested in selling tickets and streaming than in honest, serious criticism is part of the problem, as is probably the drug culture in Hollywierd. Paul Newman kept his game to the end because he lived in Connecticut in a long marriage, had a real business, and worked hard to develop his talent as a racing driver enough to win four national SCCA championships. He had more than acting and it kept things real.

British actors tend to age well. It’s because they work live theatre much more, because the theatre press in Britain does serious and honest criticism, because they do more demanding work (not just Shakespeare) more frequently than the dumbed-down pap over here, and because if they want a knighthood, they can’t coast on their laurels. They work harder in an environment that demands more of them.

Pacino WAS a great actor, but now he’s a ham, playing the role of Al Pacino. He was great in the roles he played back in the 70s and 80s, but then went downhill to cringe territory.

It’s rare for American actors to stay sharp into their later careers. The culture of celebrity and access, and a press more interested in selling tickets and streaming than in honest, serious criticism is part of the problem, as is probably the drug culture in Hollywierd. Paul Newman kept his game to the end because he lived in Connecticut in a long marriage, had a real business, and worked hard to develop his talent as a racing driver enough to win four national SCCA championships. He had more than acting and it kept things real.

British actors tend to age well. It’s because they work live theatre much more, because the theatre press in Britain does serious and honest criticism, because they do more demanding work (not just Shakespeare) more frequently than the dumbed-down pap over here, and because if they want a knighthood, they can’t coast on their laurels. They work harder in an environment that demands more of them.

Ah yes, I hadn’t seen it in years, of course you’re right. Speaking of which, it also stars Karl Malden, Acquanetta, and none other than Dr “Tom Thumb” Jacoby.

I thought of the Iran-Iraq War briefly too (I hadn’t seen that book, but suffered through Dilip Hiro’s), but the War of the Cities was pretty symmetrical. There was a lot of crazy stuff in that war, like electrifying a swamp to stop an infantry advance, releasing flammable gas as a skinless bomb (and hoping it blows the right way), and using kids as minesweepers. The main thing though was that each side was winning as long as they were defending, but would get arrogant after a success and overreach. Russia may have gotten that out of its system after the disastrous first phase, where Putin may have thought (1) he would get a friendlier popular reception given the facts of the post-2014 Kiev regime’s treatment of the average Ukrainian and (2) that a little intimidation would enable negotiation (which it actually did, until Blinken and Boris told the Ukrainians to not stop the killing).
The other thing of course is that the Islamic Republic of Iran is still ruling in Tehran, despite truly horrifying wartime casualties, and that the United States, as it always does, eventually got bored with its toy.

lol. Is that the official government line, fed?

Ray Epps called, he says he completely agrees with your assessment.

Cazale was considered the best actor of his generation by those around him. Pacino and De Niro deferred to him. For example, the more you watch his performances in The Godfather and The Godfather II movies the more you realize amidst the violence and intrigue he holds much of the movie’s plot together while also showing where Michael got his sad-eyed face from. Michael is a mixture of Sonny’s ruthless aggression and Fredo’s sad-eyed reluctance.

Jack Nicholson and Paul Muni are largely considered the top two contenders for greatest male movie actors of all time, but if Cazale had lived he would have been among them.

She was so heart broken at his passing that she got married six months later.

An understandable slip-up. BTW Ann Sheridan did her own singing in many films, rather than the common practice of dubbing in a better singer.

I’ve always liked her, especially as a plucky Norwegian battling German occupiers in Errol Flynn’s Edge of Darkness — (where top Nazi Helmut Dantine reassures his outnumbered soldiers that “Ve haf guns, und zey are afraid to die!”). But Ingrid Bergman she is not

I don’t claim to be a military expert, but victory or defeat in a war is a pretty easy thing to see when it happens.

Absolutely right, so let’s see it happen. The pro-Russian “experts” have been predicting that the Ukrainian Army was about to collapse any day now for a year and it never seems to actually happen. But somehow THIS TIME they will be right. Charlie Brown was not a football expert either but by about the 10th time that Lucy pulled the football away, he should have figured out that it was not wise to depend on her.

Putin has done a pretty good job of emptying the prisons of Russia though. It’s like killing two birds with one stone. OTOH, they have permanently gotten rid of a significant % of their most hardened criminals by using them as cannon meat in WWI style human wave attacks and OTOH they are forcing the Ukrainians to trade valuable seasoned troops for human garbage.

Putting aside whether such a tactic is morally bankrupt or brilliant, it has to be limited in its application because at some point he is going to run out of prisoners. It hasn’t seemed to have happened yet, but at some point the wives and mothers of Russia are not going to want their husbands and sons to be turned into cannon meat for the sake of Putin’s glory, even if they do get a Lada out of it.

Putin has done a pretty good job of emptying the prisons of Russia though.

The Ukrainian defense minister just said there are 500,0000 Russian troops massed on their border. Putin was able to find a lot of guys in Russian prisons!

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ukraine-warns-putin-has-amassed-troops-for-a-major-and-imminent-offensive/ar-AA1720FM?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=982317bf90934368a7efe8b3d92f3792

Putin isn’t really going to win, though. This war will end with neither side ending up better off. The only real winner coming out of this will be U.S. defense contractors with more profits from more weapons sales. The Russians will be worse off, the Ukrainians will be worse off, and the average American taxpayer will be worse off.

Seems to me that, given the success of The Godfather Part II, Jimmy C got the way short end of the stick here. His toll booth death scene was epic, but I think he would have gladly traded that for the payday of GP2 in a heartbeat.

It’d be better still if [Kubrick had] died after Clockwork Orange.

Agree; that would have spared me from sitting through Barry Lyndon a couple of years later. I learned from that snoozefest never to judge a film by its director.

It’s a case of trying to squeeze a book into a 90 minute movie.
It just doesn’t work. Too many characters in too short of a space.

That wasn’t the problem. The essentials of storytelling are all there, and it works as narrative.

The problem is tone, beginning with the sappy Stevie Wonders song and Gone-with-the-Wind color coding. It feels wrong from the start.

And it’s too heavy and overwrought for the material while, at the same time, pandering to the youth market.

Wanderers by Philip Kaufman was the proper way to handle the material.

What other trade union allows employers to make their members work naked?

First, a style note. The question mark should not be italicized. We don’t do that. Fixed it for you in the quote above.

But to your point, it’s illegal to offer a prostitute or I suppose anyone else money for sex. But it’s not illegal to offer someone money for sex in a pornographic movie. Yes, there was a Law and Order about it. I think the dad from Family Ties played the perp. “Yeah, I paid her for sex but it’s on videotape because I was making a porn movie.” That’s how Ed Powers makes his living.

: Hey, aren’t you the guy who wrote Joyspring? Heck of a tune from the 1920s. Surprised you’re still kickin’ around.

But “Mudholland Drive”? If that’s a joke I don’t get it. Share.

You mean the big winter offensive any day now from what 3 months ago?

Everyone has been talking about a Russian spring offensive for weeks now. At this point, Macgregor’s “winter offensive” is a sad example of yet another prediction that has failed to materialize.

This reminds me of a far too often used term during our ill-advised invasion of Afghanistan (Magic 8-Ball says “Good luck with that”): “the fighting season”. Huh, what? This isn’t the NFL, you’re in the Army. Whaddya got hangin’ there, a puss or a peter? In retrospect of the 20 year shitstorm we should have dropped one huge nuke, filed it under “Job Done” and got on with other business, but noooo, we had to get more Americans killed. Afghans were going to get killed and/or screwed either way.

Gulf War I was a practice war. Perhaps Ukraine is too. GWI got a lot of people their CIB and test weapons. My preferences for resolution of the Ukraine goatf*** are a) everyone says f*** it and it just stops or b) Russia wins.

And the characters are all so thin even though it has some good acting(esp Bob Hoskins and his partner).

The gangsters are stock characters of the genre unlike the colorful types in The Godfather.

Gere’s sole reason for being in the movie is to appeal to white audiences.

The black characters seem to be NAACP posterchilds than individuals.

And the final assassination juxtaposing violence and dance is too much a nod to the bloody finale of The Godfather. Apocalypse Now, for all its faults, was something startlingly new in a war film. Cotton Club is fancily packaged cliches and stereotypes, like when a music company sells the same album but with renewed hype. It is dazzling in parts but lacks a core. When Gere and Lane are making love, we pay more attention to shadows of raindrops streaking on the wall than on the two characters. Style, no substance.

But Ebert/Siskel liked it.

We don’t expect the protagonist to be a great singer and Guys and Dolls isn’t exactly Carousel.

But he better at least be a good singer, and Brando wasn’t. His singing is cruddy.

Gene Kelly was a better dancer than singer, but he could sing well enough in Singin’ in the Rain.

Brando sounded like a deflated balloon letting out the few remaining bits of air.

South Koreans are lapdogs of the US empire.

As loyal minions, they butchered countless innocents in Vietnam and joined in the US neocon war on Iraq.

No sense arguing with such mentalities. Whatever US does, SK’s will support like good little doggies that they are.

Does every thread have to osmose into being about the Ukraine?

I would have cast Dabney Coleman for the role.

Brando had great chemistry with Jean Simmons, who could sing magnificently. Their scenes together were great

#79

“The constant repetition eventually browbeats the actors into delivering the style of performance Kubrick desires. He effectively hypnotizes them. ”

Didn’t Werner Herzog literally hypnotize his entire cast (except for one guy for Teutonic-symbolic reasons, naturally) in “Heart of Glass?” That one was another colossal bore.

I will also add that Kubrick had a history of deliberately messing with minor, subtle perceptions of the viewer, designed to make things seem “off”, but too subtle for people to notice without repeat viewings, E.g. in The Shining, Kubrick deliberately inserted many continuity errors in the background from shot to shot, and the physical layout of the hotel is deliberately illogical and spatially impossible, all done to amp up your tension and unease unconsciously.

If you saw Pacino’s Shylock in that film version of The Merchant of Venice, he was marvelous, subtle, controlled, and an expert at handling the verse, so he still has lots of technique at his command.

I don’t what’s going on backstage with him, but it may be that the studios keep telling him, “Just do that loud hambone thing again, it works and it makes money. We don’t want another Sea of Love, we want another Scarface or Scent of a Woman.”

Or, given the quality of the movies he gets offered these days, maybe he’s just phoning it in for the money. As Michael Caine said about the ludicrous Jaws III, “I never even saw the final cut; but I did see the brand new swimming pool in my yard.”

If you read my comment, I emphasized that either Macgregor is correct or he’s gone crazy. Personally, I think it’s the former case, but I might be wrong, and we’ll soon find out.

He’s already been wrong several times over. When are you going to get it through your supposedly super high IQ head?

Well, he claims to have regular private conversations with his high-level Pentagon contacts and other well-informed military sources.

Is this like the super hot Canadian girlfriend I had when I was 13?

There was also that very interesting “gaffe” a few weeks ago in which the head of the EU said that the Ukrainians had lost 100,000 KIAs.

That number is entirely possible. As I wrote before, in the early phase of the war, there was a large imbalance of technological capabilities and materiel against the Ukrainians, so the latter was fighting very infantry-heavy. I would not be surprised if the casualty ratio is 1:1 (or worse for the Ukrainians earlier). It’s a war of national defense and survival, so they were throwing men against machines. Things have changed much in terms of equipment though – the Russians have lost 9,000 vehicles (5700 destroyed) and the Ukrainians are now being supplied by the West.

You’re really not helping your own credibility by citing Karlin as a source.

Unlike Macgrgor pulling numbers out of thin air, Karlin has been estimating Russian military industrial capacity in some ways (estimating Kalibr production rate, etc.). He ate a humble pie on this early on, so he’s been trying hard to be objective and evidence-based in his analysis of late. So his analysis has begun to converge with mine.

By the way, I don’t do predictions (future-telling is the domain of the insane or people selling something), but I will engage in a bit of strategic speculation of low confidence here.

My suspicion is that Putin is aware of the long-term advantage Russia has over Ukraine. Russia has a far greater population size (and thus the available manpower pool), it has much greater military industrial capacity, and so on. Meanwhile Ukraine has to depend on the good will of its allies for much of its military equipment and the whims of patrons can be fickle.

However, Putin is also aware that the Ukrainians currently enjoy a great deal of support in the West and has demonstrated its capability to defeat the Russians in large-scale operations given the right circumstances, tactics and equipment. His own military suffered a near-disaster around Kharkiv, but the Ukrainians couldn’t exploit the collapse of the front and deliver a knockout blow, because it didn’t have a sizable mechanized force to mount follow-on attacks. Putin now knows that the Ukrainians will receive a substantial force of mechanized equipment (tanks are important, but the infantry fighting vehicles as well as all the required logistical support matter more since they will allow the Ukrainian infantry to exploit a breach and sustain the momentum of the offensive). So, the danger period for Russia is in the next six months to year when these Ukrainian capabilities come onboard after the requisite training for the Ukrainians (meanwhile, Russia would not be able to make up its losses in the past year so quickly, as its industrial robots and machine tools are entirely Western in origin and are currently under sanction).

Thus, from Putin’s perspective, next three months are a crucial window. My suspicion is that he will seek to strike first before the new Ukrainian mechanized capabilities are brought online – a spring offensive everyone is expecting. Knocking out Kyiv is unrealistic at this point. Attacking through the south is also unlikely, given that the Russians have retreated across the river and have fortified the area. So the only option here is trying to grab as much of Donbas as possible (which would also allow him to declare “victory” – “we liberated the fellow Russians in Donbas and that was the only goal all along!”) and then fortify the area and defend it against the inevitable Ukrainian counterattack in the summer, and hope that the Ukrainians bleed themselves against the new defenses and fritter away the new mechanized capabilities.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/melinda-dillon-dead-close-encounters-christmas-story-1235317335/

Melinda Dillon, Actress in 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' and 'A Christmas Story,' Dies at 83https://t.co/gXTbftmuIE

— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) February 3, 2023

Pacino WAS a great actor, but now he’s a ham, playing the role of Al Pacino. He was great in the roles he played back in the 70s and 80s, but then went downhill to cringe territory.

IMO Pacino’s acting masterpiece was Donnie Brasco, in 1997.

So my reading is either (A) he’s gone totally insane or (B) he’s correct and he knows he’s correct. Personally, he doesn’t look insane to me, but what do I know:

He doesn’t need to be insane to make outlandish/false statements. He just needs to have an emotional-political attachment, or what Orwell labeled the “nationalist feeling”, to Russia. Every thought his brain formulates will then tilt towards convincing him that Russia is winning, its victory inevitable, and its prestige intact. Happens to lots of people during war; even when they themselves aren’t part of it directly. Once you publicly take sides; the commitment and consistently bias will attempt to justify and reinforce your initial decision. It becomes difficult for your brain to rationally think about the topic. Sometimes it makes the advocates on either side lie flagrantly; and often times subconsciously, without them being conscious of dishonesty. As the old adage goes: “in war the first casualty is truth”.

Orwell wrote an excellent essay on this called Notes On Nationalism: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/notes-on-nationalism/

McGregor is fun to listen to, but he lacks the humility to revisit and learn from the year so far of him being wrong. Very overconfident in his analysis. I can understand the appeal, but it reminds me of the hopium with “tick tock” and the like from the Durham hopers. At a certain point, you need to be willing to reconsider your model if results are different. And he hasn’t been. And the confidence is fun to listen to…but makes me doubt him as an objective and smart analyst.

Forgot to mention that Phil Tetlock’s research into forecasting found that an “expert’s” accuracy of prediction is inversely correlated with the confidence at which he states his views.

Good forecasters tend to assign numerical probabilities to their predictions; and update frequently based on new information. They are also always aware of the difficultly of foreseeing the future.

MacGregor seems to be a binary thinker; his predictions much too confident. About the opposite of a superforcaster.

Click link for Chicago Tribune clipping.

https://img.newspapers.com/img/img?institutionId=0&user=0&id=372610860&clippingId=97865634&width=557&height=652&crop=2235_497_1380_1647&rotation=0

Hyde Park High School Chicago

South Koreans are lapdogs of the US empire.

Snooze. What did the USA do for SK? Organised the UN countries to prevent the North Koreans, who had the okay of their commie neighbors, ChiCom troops and Russkie pilots from overrunning them. Paid for the war against the North, both in financial terms and American blood.

North Korea is the Darkness.

US evacuated 100,000 North Koreans from Hungnam who chose with their feet NOT to be North Koreans in America’s Dunkirk of 1950.

I think everyone here is looking at things one-sidedly. Maybe things should be observed comprehensively. Russian gas and oil revenues in 2022 are 28% higher than in 2021, and in 2023 it is estimated that they will be even higher than in 2022. Therefore, time is working for the Russians, there is no urgency. They are self-sufficient, Ukraine is on the verge of capitulation, the economy of Western Europe will decline, and their companies will move to America, which will not be able to sell those products to a weakened Europe, Russia, or China.

If he wants to further weaken NATO and the West, Putin should probably extend the war at least until the next spring. He could wage war only with artillery without troop movements, without (Russian) human losses, and with airplanes he could destroy western weapon convoys from the Polish and Romanian borders up to the battle line.

McGregor may not be looking at the economic aspects, which may be crucial. NATO will only weaken and will never be able to commit enough soldiers, artillery or tanks. At the same time, Russia can mobilize 25 million trained soldiers (not counting the potential millions of ‘volunteers’ from China, North Korea and Iran). How many soldiers and from which countries can NATO gather? What would be the motivation of those soldiers to leave their Western comfort and embark on an inevitable defeat in Russia, to repeat Stalingrad with a high probability of dying there? Of the one million German soldiers under Stalingrad, only 6,000 returned to Germany.

Yeah. It got low Rotten Tomatoes ratings, which makes me want to see it all the more.

Never heard of it but thanks: Jason Robards is one of those guys I would pretty much always watch, even if “miscast.”

True. He was always interesting. Not like most actors today.

“Kubrick’s worst movie was Full Metal Jacket. And that’s with the first act being home to one of the greatest performances in cinematic history. R. Lee Ermey may as well been given a screenwriting credit for FMJ, as he created most of his own dialog.”

During the rest of your comment, you refer to “FFC,” but I think you meant Stanley Kubrick, who was arguably the most overrated director of all time.

Full Metal Jacket was released just before Kubrick’s 59th birthday, and he only made one more picture after that, Eyes Wide Shut 1999, which I’ve yet to see, and am in no hurry to partake of.

In making FMJ, Kubrick may have been obituary-shopping. (However, the Kubrick genius-cult was secure, thanks to his anti-civilizational masterpiece, Singin’ in the Rain, er, A Clockwork Orange (1971).)

Mike Wayne used to say of his old man, “Movie critics don’t review my father’s movies, they review his politics.” (You won’t find the quotation on google, but with time, that means less and less.)

They didn’t just do that with John Wayne, they do it with everyone. That’s why, when John Ford was at the end of the line, he went obituary-shopping, and made Cheyenne Autumn (1964), which was in part a slap in the face to his surrogate son, Wayne. (That wasn’t the first time he did that, either.)

Martin Scorcese is a critical darling, because he’s pc (ditto for Robert deNiro). Heck, he’s so pathetic that he plagiarizes scholars’ pc attacks on Western masterpieces.

“My favorite Kubrick movie is The Killing.”

The Killing (1956) was a Sterling Hayden movie,* starring Hayden, which was a ripoff of a previous Sterling Hayden picture (also starring Hayden), the John Huston masterpiece, The Asphalt Jungle (1950).

Stanley Kubrick was devoid of humanity. Thus, he had to borrow humanity, whether from Hayden, Kirk Douglas, Dalton Trumbo, Jim Thompson, or Peter Sellers.

(*Sterling Hayden pictures are also known as “heist movies,” but are always better when they star the real McCoy.)

The mastermind behind The Offer was Al Ruddy, the producer of The Godfather (1972), who succeeded at making himself hated all over the Paramount lot, and who was persona non grata, when it came time to shoot TGII (1974).

I’d love to know who his Paramount rabbi had been, and who turned on him after TG.
Ruddy, the ultimate Hollywood survivor, somehow managed to hang on in the picture business (mostly making straight-to-video trash), even to the point of getting a producer’s credit and Oscar for Clint Eastwood and Paul Haggis’ Million Dollar Baby (2004).

Ruddy was behind a fake Godfather documentary in 2006, and after most of the people involved in making TG had died off, found a new best friend at Paramount, who greenlighted The Offer.

https://nicholasstixuncensored.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-ultimate-hollywood-survivor-bimbo.html

I thought of the Iran-Iraq War briefly too (I hadn’t seen that book, but suffered through Dilip Hiro’s), but the War of the Cities was pretty symmetrical.

The ballistic missile exchanges were pretty “symmetrical,” but the air-to-air combat was not. Initially the Iranians had superior equipment and training (all supplied by the U.S. prior to the fall of the Shah), but attrition began to take a big toll and the Iranians couldn’t replace their losses while the Iraqis could.

There was a lot of crazy stuff in that war, like electrifying a swamp to stop an infantry advance, releasing flammable gas as a skinless bomb (and hoping it blows the right way), and using kids as minesweepers.

And don’t forget the human-wave attacks by the Pasdaran (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) conscripts through the marshes – massed-infantry charges that hadn’t been seen since the Korean War (by the PRC forces), which, though incredibly brave and fierce, led to enormous Iranian losses. In the end, the war became something of a contest between Iraqi armored and mechanized forces against the extremely determined Iranian infantry forces, which predictably led to a victory of sorts for the Iraqis in a settlement that was favorable to the latter.

The main thing though was that each side was winning as long as they were defending, but would get arrogant after a success and overreach.

Yup. Because neither side was capable of launching successfully competent armored and mechanized thrusts, the defenders (whichever side they may be) often were highly successful in repelling the attacks. That would inevitably lead to the defenders being ordered to counterattack and “finally” destroy the attacks and… rinse and repeat. Even when chemical weapons were used, the cycle repeated itself after an initial shock.

The other thing of course is that the Islamic Republic of Iran is still ruling in Tehran, despite truly horrifying wartime casualties, and that the United States, as it always does, eventually got bored with its toy.

Imagine a world where Saddam Hussein did not miscalculate and stayed as the client of the U.S. and the KSA (indeed the entire Sunni world) against Iran. I think we’d all be living in a very different world.

I still question your reliance on Ukrainian propaganda-Tweets as the primary basis for estimating Russian casualties.

I don’t want to keep repeating the same thing with you. All you are doing is ad hominem, which is unworthy of a man of your intellect.

It’s crowd-sourced intelligence, which is increasingly becoming important in the intelligence community. And Oryx’s previous work on North Korea and Syria has been top-notch. Instead of dismissing this aggregation as “propaganda,” do you have any evidence or support for falsifying the analysis? Can you quote someone else who does?

So the head of the EU says 100,000 Ukrainian KIAs and you say that’s probably correct.

I really think you lost your head on this. I never wrote that this number was “probably correct” or any such thing. What’s wrong with you, really? This is what I wrote: “That number is entirely possible.” Possible is not “probably correct” and it’s not “likely.” Get it? Stop putting words in my mouth and twisting what I wrote, so you can “win the internet.”

I am in agreement with Anatoly Karlin that casualty estimates of the Ukrainian side is much more nebulous than that for the Russian side, because the ID of destroyed, damaged, captured, and abandoned Russian equipment is on a somewhat firmer footing.

Many combinations of casualty numbers are possible: 100K KIA vs. 100K KIA, 100K vs. 50K, 50K vs. 100K, etc.

But when Macgregor says 130,000 KIA (plus another 30K missing and presumed dead), you ridicule him.

What I think is fantastical about Macgregor’s claim isn’t so much the Ukrainian losses per se, but the “exchange ratio” – 100K KIA among Ukrainians vs. 20K KIA among Russians. That’s what I think is highly dubious, to say the least.

And I didn’t ridicule Macgregor – the man is doing a fine job of that by himself with all these outlandish predictions, none of which has come to pass.

Since I don’t trust my own expertise in doing military analysis, I’m instead relying upon source-analysis. It seems to me that if over the last few months Macgregor had started to think there was any chance he might be mistaken, he’d have dropped out of sight, hoping that everyone would gradually forget his totally erroneous predictions of a complete Russian victory. Instead, he’s doubled-down and pushed all his chips to the center of the table. And in all his numerous interviews, he comes across as extremely confident in his very bold claims.

So my reading is either (A) he’s gone totally insane or (B) he’s correct and he knows he’s correct. Personally, he doesn’t look insane to me, but what do I know.

That makes you highly naive.

One easy question you can answer: Macgregor has made a series of claims over the past year, including the assertion that the Russians would capture Odessa (months ago), all of which turned out to be false. What explanation does he give to this inconvenient fact? Or does he just extremely confidently ignore all his past false predictions and keeps on making new ones?

Second question: I am EXTREMELY CONFIDENT that I can triple your money in three months. I have zero track record of doing this, but I KNOW I can do it. Will you forward me $10 million?*

*If, for some reason, I cannot triple your money in 3 months, it just means the weather hasn’t been cooperative. Send me another $10 million and I will double-triple your total investment in the following 3 months.

Hey, hey, hey, are you saying Meryl Streep is some kind of person who is good at faking her emotions?

There is a certain kind of a contrarian personality – very common among rightists these days, for obvious reasons – that just would love to be able to tell the mainstream “I told you so! You’ve been ALL wrong, I have been ALL right this whole time!”

For people like this, there is no point in revising and updating the priors or making course-corrections even if their view is at odds with how reality actually turned out. Because, for them, there is no cost to being “further” wrong (wrong about one thing or ten things doesn’t matter), but there is a cost to admitting that they were wrong and that they have changed their views.

It’s like a gambler who is down $1 million dollars he doesn’t have. It doesn’t matter if he loses another $1 million, because he can’t pay back either figure. But if he can just roll the dice “one more time,” he might be able to make up his losses and make another million and end up the winner.

This is fine for “winning the internet” once I suppose. But it is unwise to pay heed to this kind of a personality long-term. If he were right about one little thing, he’s going to make big deal of it and try to leverage that to make it seem like he was right about everything. You end up with a disaster when you give credence to someone like this over the long haul.

Alex, what is a false dichotomy?

Jean Simmons, who could sing magnificently

This is why KISS is so popular

The naivety and absence of any logic among some commentators when it comes to the victims of the Ukrainian war is incredible. This can only be explained by their frustrated Russophobia. One claim that waves of Russian conscripts are attacking Ukrainians is just idiotic. The conscripts are not engaged in the war, but mostly Wagner, the Donbas army and the Chechens. The ‘real’ Russian troops are still very little engaged. The Russians have no need to charge like the American Indians in western movies.

They have a huge advance in artillery and aviation that completely destroy some points before the infantry starts to clear the field. Putin makes sure that there are not many victims on his side, while Zelensky does not care about this. That’s why they make senseless raids because of propaganda in order to move a few kilometers in the plain. At the same time, they leave their well-established positions and expose themselves to the Russian artillery. McGregor compared it to moving a few kilometers in Kansas, where nothing of strategic importance is won, but it is done because of the Western media announcing that the Ukrainians are winning.

The numerous victims do not affect Zelenskiy at all, since he is not Ukrainian, and it suits his superiors that as many Slavs as possible disappear and an empty area remains for a potential Khazarian state. So, the McGregor’s ratio of killed in the war 8:1 is pretty realistic.

“Cazale was considered the best actor of his generation by those around him.”

Cazale was amazing. I was rewatching The Conversation the other day and as good as Gene Hackman is, Cazale is better. He’s so completely natural, completely believable.

“Jack Nicholson and Paul Muni are largely considered the top two contenders for greatest male movie actors of all time, but if Cazale had lived he would have been among them.”

I like Muni very much but like Pacino, he could be kind of hammy. Nicholson got lazy and coasted on his onscreen magnetism and menace. But late in his career in The Pledge, he gave one of the greatest performances I’ve ever seen. He’s pared down, worn out and utterly compelling and heartbreaking. I definitely consider him on a par with Cazale.

“During the rest of your comment, you refer to “FFC,” but I think you meant Stanley Kubrick, who was arguably the most overrated director of all time.”

Yes, thank you. Wow that’s a terrible mix up on my part.

Robert Duval is easily one of the greatest screen actors of all time. From Tom Hagen, LtCol. Killgore, to the epic role of Gus McCrea, and dozens of other roles, not sure any lead actor ever had as much range as he did.

Later in his career, a 64-year-old Nicholson convincingly played a put-upon actuary in About Schmidt.

Of course, Nicholson is the most nominated actor in the history of the Academy Awards with 12, winning 3. Meryl Streep, who was mentioned in this thread because she was almost Mrs. John Cazale, is the most nominated actress with 21, also winning 3.

Robards, William Windom, and Craig T. Nelson all played the same role in the various incarnations of Ron Howard’s Parenthood. Nelson got his big break playing the prosecutor in the above-mentioned …And Justice For All.

“Later in his career, a 64-year-old Nicholson convincingly played a put-upon actuary in About Schmidt.”

Yes, when Nicholson wasn’t coasting on his reputation, there was no one better. Remember him in The King of Marvin Gardens? He played the type of character Cazale played and was absolutely riveting.

Never cared for Streep as a dramatic actress. Her accolades are due in large part to the feminization of our culture. Women liked her because she was good-looking enough they could identify with her but not so good looking as to be intimidating or alienating. Also she played dress-up in a lot of roles, used different accents, had cool wardrobes. She reminded me of a star drama student in high school, not a mature actress onscreen.

That said, she’s a marvelous comedic actress. She was brilliant in Marvin’s Room and Doubt.

He could wage war only with artillery without troop movements, without (Russian) human losses, and with airplanes he could destroy western weapon convoys from the Polish and Romanian borders up to the battle line.

Russia can mobilize 25 million trained soldiers

Astounding if true.

Yep. More shtick. Lacks new analysis. Lacks new content. Lacks doubt or uncertainty.

It’s entirely possible that Russia wins. But so far, the story has been underperformance by Russia. Who thought we’d be at this stage, now, when the war started then?

And not going all out in the beginning was a huge mistake by the Russians. It gave the Ukrainians the time to gather themselves, bring in equipment, etc. Even if Russia wins in the end, they’ll have had more casualties (on both sides) than if they had just wiped Ukraine out fast and hanged Z.

I don’t know who will win. But I do know that this style of “you go girl” video is not thoughtful. You are supposed to be a smart guy. Show it. Don’t just be some dude posting rah rah videos.

My Bayesian has shifted a bit more to Russia, versus Ukraine. But it’s from Michael Koffman having concern or at least uncertainty. (And Koffman has always had lots of humility and uncertainty rather than bluster. And has a great record on predictsions and observations so far (e.g. the lack of an early air campaign, the U kicking R out of Kherson well befoore others predicted it). Unlike this VMI and Woop (general engineering, not a rocket scientist) doofus who was wrong over and over and HASN’T admitted it, learned from it.

Remember what Feynman said about bias and how the easiest person to mislead is yourself and that you should watch out for it. This old O-6 has zero thoughtfulness.

I’m also disappointed that you didn’t give an analytical response. Just another fucking video. That makes my point (!) about how McGregor is high bluster and low content. And low thoughtfullness. Heck, where or when does he EVER discuss factors that go against his thesis (and the situation is muddled, so there are likely factors in both directions…a good analyst would note that. Not just do the Fox News lickspittle.

Bull Meechum

https://gointothestory.blcklst.com/great-characters-lt-col-wilbur-bull-meechum-the-great-santini-1520378a262d

“Hasn’t America and NATO supplied Ukraine with an extraordinary amount of military support, more than anyone ever would have expected? I believe that the total dollars we’ve provided over the last twelve months is larger than Russia’s entire annual defense budget. Plus the additional value of intelligence, communications, command and control, and possibly even carried out some of the high-profile sabotage/special forces/missile attacks. It’s hardly surprising that such massive assistance might have impacted various predictions.”

Maybe. But why hasn’t Macgregor made this observation? “I was wrong because I underestimated X.” There’s no shame in it. Not for a thoughtful analyst who admits doubt and uncertainty to start with. Rather than blustering like some sort of Fox News nitwit. (And I am WELL TO THE RIGHT of most of Fox News speakers and watchers…I just don’t like intellectual laziness…it crowds out thoughtful discussions.)

And FWIW, the lack of a more gloves off Russian advance in the beginning enabled this aid to come in. And he’s even still defending that! It’s not even consistent.

Yes, it’s a “crowd-sourced” analysis of aggregated Ukrainian propaganda-Tweets. And I still strongly question whether that’s a valid method of determining Russian casualties.

More unintelligent ad hominem. Falsify the “propaganda-Tweets,” then. Sure beats people conjuring up random numbers out of thin air. You remind me of the anti-vaxxers who claim that the vaccine has or will kill millions and millions of people, and the all the stats to the contrary are just mainstream propaganda and lies.

My apologies. You said “possibly” correct while I’d casually misremembered that as “probably” correct. Informal comments on a website may sometimes lack absolute precision.

I never said anything about it being “correct.” I merely wrote that it was within the range of possibilities (unlike, say, “Ukrainians lost 1 million KIA” or “Russians only lost 1,000 KIA”).

Hasn’t America and NATO supplied Ukraine with an extraordinary amount of military support, more than anyone ever would have expected?

The Ukrainians were able to receive this assistance, because they fought skillfully and courageously and survived the initial Russian onslaught. Remember that all the Western embassies evacuated Kyiv and the USG was offering the Kyiv government a safe exile. If you fight well to defend your country, somebody will supply with you with arms, something that’s happened world over throughout history.

I believe that the total dollars we’ve provided over the last twelve months is larger than Russia’s entire annual defense budget.

Nominal dollar figures on depreciating stock of equipment means very little in the real world. The Saudis and Kuwaitis were lavishly and expensively equipped prior to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. That didn’t stop their forces from breaking on contact with the Iraqis.

The Western assistance is a cope/excuse for what transpired in the initial phase of the war, when the Russians botched the attempt to topple the government in Kyiv while the Ukrainians fought well despite being outgunned.

It’s hardly surprising that such massive assistance might have impacted various predictions.

Shouldn’t Macgregor’s “inside sources” have told him all this? You know, the same sources that supposedly told him that Ukraine has suffered 150K KIA (to Russia’s 20K KIA) and is about to fold?

As I’ve been telling people, back in 2005 or so, lots of very sensible people said that the housing/mortgage markets were ridiculous and would probably crash. But that didn’t happen in 2005 or 2006 or 2007, until it finally did occur in 2008, nearly taking down the entire economy with it. Given that history, I don’t think the people warning of that calamity a little too early were ever ridiculed for having been so totally wrong for years. Predictions of timing are especially difficult to get right.

Lots of people predict crashes all the time when the market is overheated. But for predictions to be “actionable,” the timing has to right or at least close enough. Look, I can predict that there is going to be a housing market crash in the future. I can’t tell you when, but I know there will be one. How useful is that to you or anybody?

If Ukraine holds its own or goes on the offensive as you believe, Macgregor will justifiability look ridiculous.

Macgregor is already looking ridiculous. You want examples?

Three days after the Russian invasion began in February of 2022, he asserted: “The battle in eastern Ukraine is really almost over,” and “If [Ukraine] don’t surrender in the next 24 hours, I suspect Russia will ultimately annihilate them.” WRONG.

Then a few days later, he asserted: “The first five days Russian forces I think frankly were too gentle. They’ve now corrected that. So, I would say another 10 days this should be completely over.” WRONG.

Then in early March, he asserted that a ceasefire was close as Ukrainian forces had been “grounded to bits. There’s no question about that despite what we report on our mainstream media.” WRONG.

In July, he asserted: “The war, with the exception of Kharkiv and Odessa, as far as the Russians are concerned is largely over.” WRONG.

In September, just as the Ukrainians crumbled the Russian front around Kharkiv, he asserted: “This war may be over soon” and that “the Ukrainian army is bled white, tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops have been killed or wounded, Ukraine is really on the ropes”. WRONG.

In November, just as the Ukrainians reclaimed Kherson, he asserted that the Russians would take Odessa and end the war. WRONG.

In December, he asserted that Russia would launch a massive attack once the ground froze and destroy the Ukrainian army. WRONG.

At the beginning of the new year, he asserted that the Russians were about to launch a massive winter offensive that would turn Ukraine into rubble. WRONG.

These are just some of his “extremely confident” predictions, none of which has come to pass. There are likely dozens of other claims big and small that have been borne out to be false.

And you put your trust on this man?

Meanwhile, to toot my own horn a little, I estimated significant Russian casualties based on the equipment loss figures (I extrapolated a crude multiple based on our own losses in the Iraq War) and stated that the Russians seemed to have suffered a serious reduction in offensive capabilities (which means the loss of initiative)… and then the Ukrainians counterattacked and demolished the Kharkov front in the east and then re-captured Kherson in the south.

I also prudently cautioned the Ukrainian fanboys (e.g. Jack D) that this didn’t mean the war was over and that there would be many more months of hard fighting, which has been borne out in places such as Bakhmut.

Stanley Kubrick, who was arguably the most overrated director of all time.

LOL. Kubrick created seven–seven–masterpieces: 1. The Shining 2. Dr Strangelove. 3. 2001 4. Barry Lyndon 5. Paths of Glory 6. Lolita 7. A Clockwork Orange

For overrated directors of all time, there is Spielberg, Coppola, and Scorsese.

The Killing (1956) was a Sterling Hayden movie,* starring Hayden, which was a ripoff of a previous Sterling Hayden picture (also starring Hayden), the John Huston masterpiece, The Asphalt Jungle (1950).

Stanley Kubrick was devoid of humanity. Thus, he had to borrow humanity, whether from Hayden, Kirk Douglas, Dalton Trumbo, Jim Thompson, or Peter Sellers.

Kubrick helped write the screenplay for Lolita with Nabokov–it was brilliant, and human.

While The Killing and The Asphalt Jungle shared plot points, TAJ was much darker and concerned itself more intimately with human frailty. The similarities were therefore superficial.

The mastermind behind The Offer was Al Ruddy, the producer of The Godfather (1972), who succeeded at making himself hated all over the Paramount lot, and who was persona non grata, when it came time to shoot TGII (1974).

Ruddy was just a figurehead–the real producer of TG was Robert Evans.

Remember him in The King of Marvin Gardens? He played the type of character Cazale played and was absolutely riveting.

Ironically Jack was supposed to play the Bruce Dern part, but the director asked them to switch and he felt it worked much better that way. Also, I didn’t realize that the movie took the typo from Monopoly and ran with it, because the actual development near Atlantic City is Marven Gardens.

Women liked her because she was good-looking enough they could identify with her but not so good looking as to be intimidating or alienating. She reminded me of a star drama student in high school, not a mature actress onscreen.

The pride of Bernards [NJ] High School (1967)!

That said, she’s a marvelous comedic actress. She was brilliant in Marvin’s Room and Doubt.

And Defending Your Life, where she convincingly played

So, if we had spent a year+ on the Iraq invasion, instead of a few months, would it have turned it into a good move? Do you really think the inherent issues in taking over Iraq would be different? This is the typical neocon Just So Story. It wasn’t an issue of HOW we did it, but of the decision to do it. (And once having decided TO do it, a fast takeover was better than a slow one. But the decision itself was moronic.)

The other thing that you don’t address is why McGregor doesn’t discuss his own misses. It’s not even “neener, neener…he was wrong” (several times). But that he lacks the analytical interest/honesty t discuss his misses, why made, and what he’s learned/changed. Heck, YOU had to make an excuse for his misses. But he hasn’t.

How can you listen to an analyst like that? You’re supposed to be all smart and all. And heck, I LOVE contrarians. That’s not my issue. It’s that the guy is a bottom feeder, blathering on YT. Not someone with the intellectual honesty to evaluate his own misses.

We already know he is insane. He has been completely wrong with every prediction for a year.

The problem is that you, and he, doubled down after all of those, so are clearly incapable of learning.

As for your ridiculous stats. It says that Russia has destroyed 7,600 Ukrainian Howitzers, which seems unlikely given that, even with all foreign donations included, Ukraine has only possessed 1,600 total.

🤣

We both agree that your methodology of estimating Russian casualties is based upon aggregating and analyzing Ukrainian propaganda-Tweets.

Who’s “we” here? You are the only one in the conversation who is characterizing Oryx’s data source as “Ukrainian propaganda-Tweets.”

If you keep ascribing to me that which I never wrote, I am going to have to assume that you are a dishonest interlocutor who is only interested in “winning the Internet.” This series of arguments with you has completely demolished in my mind any shred of respect I had for you.

I can’t see how what I’m saying can be called an “ad hominem” argument

It’s ad hominem, because you are dismissing it with name-calling. Not once have you falsified the data source or have quoted anyone who has.

My only suspicion is that until I pointed it out, you hadn’t realized that’s what you were actually doing.

Now you are completely delusional. I was crystal clear about the level of confidence I had on the aggregation, because I was well-aware of the issues with the methodology (crowd-sourcing intel), beginning with selection-bias. But my initial low confidence has risen due to anaysis jiving with the actual, real-life outcomes. And modest confidence always beats zero confidence (on delusional predictions and assertions by the likes of Macgregor).

He can’t imagine that there’s any problem with his data just like you can’t imagine any problem with relying upon Ukrainian propaganda-Tweets.

The thing about data is that, if the source is made transparent, it is eminently falsifiable. I don’t know this Kirsch character, but I imagine his data source can be falsified. So can Oryx’s. The only thing that can’t be falsified here are Macgregor’s numbers, because he provides no source data. However, his series of “bold predictions” has been utterly, completely falsified by reality, something you repeatedly fail to acknowledge, which, given your continuing lies about what I supposedly wrote, strikes me now, not as an error of omission, but pathetic attempts at deception and obduracy of not wanting to be wrong.

As far as I can tell, your entire focus on the Russia-Ukraine war has been tactical and operational, and the Ukrainians have done much better than anyone had reasonably expected at the beginning. But I’ve been much more interested on the geostrategic level, and here Russia has already won a huge victory and America suffered a gigantic defeat. And given Russia’s ongoing victory, there’s really no pressure on them to rush things operationally. Why should they bother? So they’re taking their time.

This is diversion, yet again. We began this conversation with “the tactical and operational” matters. When the legs of your hobby horse turned out to be utterly ridiculous and repeatedly wrong, you have attempted to switch the discussion to a more nebulous and far less evidence-based realm of “global strategy.”

Guess what? Battles have consequences. Winners and losers of battles and operations matter. Casualties matter. Losses matter. When Russia loses 9,000 vehicles in a year of war and its elite units are shredded to pieces, and its capacity to project force is highly degraded, there are strategic consequences for the Russian state. Only in a delusional, Internet-focused mind such as yours (and other equally deluded figures such as Macgregor) would consider this a “big win” for Russia.

I don’t want to get sucked into yet another conversation with you about an even more nebulous realm (because you clearly are someone who can’t admit that he’s wrong about something), but the strategic picture right now is not what you think it is. American-dominated, NATO, the purpose of which was being questioned post-Cold War until the Russian invasion, is now rejuvenated. Countries such as Poland and Romania are clutching ever more dearly to the bosom of the U.S., with Poland massively increasing its military. Hitherto neutral Sweden and Finland are joining the alliance. France, which had always been thorn on the U.S. side in NATO throughout the Cold War is now firmly aligned with it. Germany, which had been inching toward a far more integrated relationship with Russia (back to Mitteleuropa), has been forced to send tanks against Russia (with its former prime minister, Gerhard Schroeder, a dear friend of Putin and who is on the Russian payroll, now deprived of his post-prime ministerial privileges and made a pariah). Japan has pledged to increase its military dramatically against China. South Korea has indicated it will set aside its enmity with Japan and cooperate with the latter in balancing China in East Asia, as has been the American wish for years.

And China has been exceptionally careful about its relationship with Russia. It has been unable or unwilling to supply the industrial items that Russia needs now that it is under Western sanctions. It has neither endorsed nor condemned the invasion (and this is particularly awkward for China, because one of its cherished diplomatic principles is “territorial integrity” of sovereign states). In short, far from diving deeply into the heart of its supposed Russian ally, it’s walked a careful tightrope of a balancing act in order not to antagonize the West or Russia… which is, of course, quite prudent from the Chinese point of view.

The numbers seem pretty close to what Macgregor has been claiming, with 18,000 Russian KIAs and 157,000 Ukrainian dead, plus another 8,000 foreign mercenaries and NATO soldiers.

If this were true, the war would be already over (as Macgregor repeatedly predicted). Is there a face-plant button I can use?

With regard to hardware, the Russians have allegedly lost 900 tanks and armored vehicles and the Ukrainians 6,300.

Do you know how many AFVs Ukraine had before the war?

You are becoming a parody, along with Macgregor.

some Turkish publication claims to report Mossad’s assessment

By the way, I spent time in Israel for CT work. I am acquainted with several former Mossad personnel, including one of the former directors. You are beyond delusional if you think “some Turkish publication” would have access to Mossad’s assessment on anything. That’s even stupider than some Mexican newspaper claiming to have a line on CIA’s secret analysis.

Wars and military victories have an objective reality that can’t permanently be hidden by dishonest media and plentiful propaganda-Tweets

What about the “bold predictions” Macgregor already made and turned out to be completely false? Let me re-list them since you utterly failed to even look in the direction of the list:

Three days after the Russian invasion began in February of 2022, he asserted: “The battle in eastern Ukraine is really almost over,” and “If [Ukraine] don’t surrender in the next 24 hours, I suspect Russia will ultimately annihilate them.” WRONG.

Then a few days later, he asserted: “The first five days Russian forces I think frankly were too gentle. They’ve now corrected that. So, I would say another 10 days this should be completely over.” WRONG.

Then in early March, he asserted that a ceasefire was close as Ukrainian forces had been “grounded to bits. There’s no question about that despite what we report on our mainstream media.” WRONG.

In July, he asserted: “The war, with the exception of Kharkiv and Odessa, as far as the Russians are concerned is largely over.” WRONG.

In September, just as the Ukrainians crumbled the Russian front around Kharkiv, he asserted: “This war may be over soon” and that “the Ukrainian army is bled white, tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops have been killed or wounded, Ukraine is really on the ropes”. WRONG.

In November, just as the Ukrainians reclaimed Kherson, he asserted that the Russians would take Odessa and end the war. WRONG.

In December, he asserted that Russia would launch a massive attack once the ground froze and destroy the Ukrainian army. WRONG.

At the beginning of the new year, he asserted that the Russians were about to launch a massive winter offensive that would turn Ukraine into rubble. WRONG.

As for your ridiculous stats. It says that Russia has destroyed 7,600 Ukrainian Howitzers, which seems unlikely given that, even with all foreign donations included, Ukraine has only possessed 1,600 total.

It likely means all artillery pieces, not just howitzers, but, yes, these numbers are comically off.

At one point in the war, the Ukrainians actually had more tanks in stock than when they began the war, because they captured a large number of Russian ones – the former captured over 500 Russian tanks intact out of a total of 2,700 vehicles captured).

Sometimes propaganda is truthful

LOL. When information is truthful, it’s not propaganda.

sometimes it’s not

And when it’s not and the source data is plainly available, someone can falsify it. So instead of stupidly engaging in ad hominem, falsify it or quote someone who has.

Sure, at present most Europeans—and especially European leaders—are totally brainwashed by American MSM.

More LOL. Yes, when others do what you don’t like, of course, they have been “brainwashed.” I have news for you. Whatever reluctance or antagonism toward the U.S. many Europeans and East Asians have had, they are – for the moment – far more concerned about the naked aggression of Russia. One of the major foundations of the post-World War II order is that major states cannot engage in acts of aggression to enlarge territory at the expense of weaker nations. Yes, yes, Israel has enlarged itself through conflict – look what that’s wrought – endless conflict with the Palestinians and constantly having to worry about rocket attacks, pizzerias and markets being shot up, bus stations blowing up, and being knifed randomly on the street.

In many ways, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been a HUGE blunder for Putin. Setting aside the fact that he has incurred substantial casualties and burnt through an enormous quantity of equipment (per Edward Luttwak, the use of power often begets more power, but the use of force consumes it), this conflict has buttressed American dominance among its clients far more than any American effort could have and restored leadership legitimacy that had been lost during the Global War on Terror.

The rough rule-of-thumb seems to be that most countries in the world that officially declare that men can get pregnant and give birth are exactly the same countries that believe Putin launched an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and must be defeated, and both those beliefs are products of the same Western MSM mind-control.

First of all, that’s not even true. Countries such as Poland, Romania, Japan, and South Korea are firmly allied to the U.S. cause and either directly or indirectly support Ukraine (South Korea, for example, has sent only non-military aid to Ukraine, but does provide military equipment indirectly by supplying arms to Poland and the U.S., which, in turn, have supplied Ukraine). And they are far more “based” culturally than Western Europe and Anglophone countries.

Second, this is clearest demonstration of why you are fixated with pro-Russian rhetoric and others who espouse it – viewing this conflict through the lens of American Kulturkampf. This is a distortion field where military conflicts in other regions are concerned.

Look, I am a paleo-conservative and a faithful Catholic. I am likely far more socially conservative and natalist than you are. I have been married to my college sweetheart for 30 years and have lots of children with her. But there are issues in this world – especially far from my home and country – that has little, if any, to do with the culture war in the U.S. and the larger Western world. If you aren’t able to separate unrelated issues and see things largely through that lens, you are going to see distorted images, which is amply demonstrated by your shared delusions with Macgregor.

But they have taken the dramatic step of holding joint military exercises with the Russians.

You are joking, right? What “dramatic step”? The PRC has been holding joint military exercises with Russia for two decades. That’s right, the two countries began holding joint military exercises since 2003.

But according to Wikipedia, “the Armed Forces of Ukraine included about 780,000 personnel, 6,500 tanks, about 7,000 combat armored vehicles.”

This is probably the entire stock of the equipment Ukraine inherited during the breakup of the Soviet Union with very few new equipment added since. Perhaps you might not understand this, but it’s doubtful any more than 25-30% of this equipment was operational (the actual equipment with high readiness might have been as low as 10%). If Ukraine had 13,500 operational AFVs at the beginning of the war, we’d have seen far more footages of mechanized combat between the two countries. The idea of Russia destroying 9,000 Ukrainian AFVs is almost comically wrong. This reminds me of the way fleeing Kuwaiti pilots claimed to have destroyed hundreds of Iraqi aircraft – far more than the Iraqis actually had available – during debriefing with U.S. personnel.

But for decades, Turkey did have close security relations with Israel, so its not entirely impossible that a Mossad loss-assessment would have somehow been leaked to a Turkish source.

Do you have any clue what the Israeli-Turkish relations are like today? You clearly don’t. And even in the “good old days” when there was cooperation, the idea of the Mossad leaking intel – with attribution to itself, mind you – to a Turkish newspaper would have been laughable. Don’t make a laughing stock of yourself with a stupid idea like this.

I think the key point you’re ignoring is that the important issue is how severe Ukraine’s losses have actually been

I don’t ignore the issue of Ukrainian losses, but remember what I told you before? I don’t comment on things unless I have some evidence or support for the assertion. For reasons that are obvious (the war is being waged on Ukrainian soil), Ukrainian losses are harder to estimate than the Russian ones.

I have my suspicions – I think Ukrainian losses have been quite substantial, especially since, when the war began, the materiel disparity was substantially stacked against Ukraine and they were throwing men against machines. Both sides have experienced significant losses, but it appears to me that the Ukrainians continue to enjoy high morale and cohesion since they are fighting a war of national preservation while Russian morale seems severely shaken (as forces tend to do when taking large losses in a war of choice).

If Ukraine has suffered massive, one-sided losses, their military will soon collapse, and Macgregor and others will be proven correct. But if as you believe, they’ve been doing very well and it’s actually the Russians who’ve suffered very heavy losses, then Macgregor will look like an idiot and lose his credibility.

But that’s already happened. Were you napping when, while Macgregor was crowing about the destruction of Ukrainian armed forces and the soon-will-happen capture of Odessa last summer/fall, Ukrainians actually counterattacked, demolished the Russian forces around Kharkiv, sending them in a panicked retreat and then forced the Russians relinquish Kherson (the only regional capital Russians forces had captured and strategically crucial for controlling the mouth of the Dnieper River)?

If you were an honest interlocutor, address the fact that Macgregor has been repeatedly and comically wrong in his predictions:

Three days after the Russian invasion began in February of 2022, he asserted: “The battle in eastern Ukraine is really almost over,” and “If [Ukraine] don’t surrender in the next 24 hours, I suspect Russia will ultimately annihilate them.” WRONG.

Then a few days later, he asserted: “The first five days Russian forces I think frankly were too gentle. They’ve now corrected that. So, I would say another 10 days this should be completely over.” WRONG.

Then in early March, he asserted that a ceasefire was close as Ukrainian forces had been “grounded to bits. There’s no question about that despite what we report on our mainstream media.” WRONG.

In July, he asserted: “The war, with the exception of Kharkiv and Odessa, as far as the Russians are concerned is largely over.” WRONG.

In September, just as the Ukrainians crumbled the Russian front around Kharkiv, he asserted: “This war may be over soon” and that “the Ukrainian army is bled white, tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops have been killed or wounded, Ukraine is really on the ropes”. WRONG.

In November, just as the Ukrainians reclaimed Kherson, he asserted that the Russians would take Odessa and end the war. WRONG.

In December, he asserted that Russia would launch a massive attack once the ground froze and destroy the Ukrainian army. WRONG.

At the beginning of the new year, he asserted that the Russians were about to launch a massive winter offensive that would turn Ukraine into rubble. WRONG.

Your “we’ll soon find out the truth” routine is, frankly, pathetic. You said the exact same thing, what, ten months ago? Then six months ago again? Rinse and repeat.

We have found out. Macgregor has been wrong. Repeatedly. You just parroting him makes you look buffoonish.