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From GQ:
Why Are So Many Guys Obsessed With Master and Commander?
20 years after its release, the mildly successful historical nautical drama has become an inescapable hit with a certain type of movie fan.
BY GABRIELLA PAIELLA
March 8, 2023
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is a cult movie for the kind of middle-aged 3-digit IQ guys with demanding jobs who are usually too busy to have a cult movie. As I wrote in 2003:
“Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World” tries to lure literate middle-aged men back to the movie theatre by delivering an action blockbuster of rare intelligence and authenticity. Esteemed Australian director Peter Weir spent a whopping $150 million crafting a splendid film out of the late Patrick O’Brian’s cult novels about the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars.
… Indeed, O’Brian’s novels appeal primarily to men who are little too old for science fiction and fantasy, whose interests have matured from the future to the past, from the imaginary to the intensely real.
While O’Brian’s admirers, such as George Will and David Mamet, are extremely articulate, they are a small elite compared to the legions who read “The Lord of the Rings” or “Harry Potter.” …
Weir preserved much of that uncompromising archaism in his film’s sometimes unfathomable dialogue. Fortunately, the director of “Gallipoli” and “Witness” is expert at showing while telling, so I never lost the thread for long. Still, “Master and Commander” requires more mental effort than is common in films with a “Pearl Harbor”-sized budget.
It would be heartening if this movie proved hugely profitable, but I’m not counting on it. Its demographic appeal seems quite narrow.
Indeed, while it did okay at the box office, sea movies, at least before CGI, cost a fortune and so it didn’t launch a franchise.
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Vietnamese
As I recall, one of the criticisms about “Master and Commander” is that there were really no women in it all, no love story nor romantic angle, thus limiting the box office to just “middle-aged 3-digit IQ guys.” That’s a fair criticism. This movie was not exactly a date-night selection for most men when it was released.
I never really see the absence of women in a movie as a drawback. In fact, I find it refreshing. Lawrence of Arabia, The Beast, The Lost Patrol and Das Boot all had few if any women, and were very good.
I recall a discussion on a movie message board about how much better Red River would have been without poor Joanne Dru's annoying character, Tess Millay. One guy even wondered if there was a way to edit her out of the movie.Replies: @Diversity Heretic, @Prester John, @bob sykes, @james wilson, @John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan, @AndrewR
I would say it's particularly bold for a horror movie to not have any female victims, two that come to mind mind are:
Phantasm (1979), which interestingly seems to heavily focus on males grieving the loss of male family members and friends.
The Thing (1982), in which the dynamics between the male characters would have been spoiled with the inclusion of a woman.Replies: @Dragoslav, @Bill Jones
It was even more surprising to me since I was just coming to realize the futility of extolling to young women the merits of Lawrence of Arabia, another movie without young women, or any women, or romantic relationships—unless you count that Turkish rapist homosexual. Which reminds me, will Lawrence be cancelled as homophobic for reveling in the artillery bombardment of the Turks after being sodomized or are #MeToo revenge fantasies permitted against homosexual men as well as against heterosexual men? I mean, Lawrence didn't consent, which we used to hear was so important for "sex positivity", so that seems like it should put Lawrence in the right, but then the children being tendered to groomer clowns at drag queen shows by their gormless mothers didn't consent either, and we're told it's hateful and wrong to oppose that. And it's also wrong and hateful to worry about, or even notice, the British girls raped by Paki grooming gangs, so maybe consent isn't that important after all. This wokisme is so confusing. It's good that we have the wise heads in the prestige press to explain to us peasants what the Current Morality is.
But anyway, yeah, some women, even very feminine women, like Master & Commander. Maybe they like masculine men. After all, masculine men enjoy feminine women. Almost as if opposites attract or something. There's a phrase you probably haven't heard in while. Particularly not from the likes of Gabriella Paiella. (Stereotypically, Paiella's prestige journalism seems to be an outgrowth of her dating frustrations. "Sailer's Second Law of Female Journalism: The second most heartfelt articles by a female journalist will be demands that cultural tastes be revised in order to simplify her dating life."?)
https://pics.wikifeet.com/Gabriella-Paiella-Feet-4485110.jpg
---------As a peasant, I can tell you that whatever else Witness was, it wasn't very authentic.Replies: @LadyTheo, @Wilkey
But the books are brilliant for men. Helps if you know a little history.
Crowe was a poor choice for LA Confidential; he was way too stiff and looked out of place. But the movie had moments of both terrible and brilliance in it so it's not all his fault.
I am one of the few people that I know who think Gladiator was just awful. Crowe was ok, but the dialog was garbage and Wah-keen Phoenix's performance was more fitting for a guest appearance on a Sponge Bob episode. 3 hours of a mostly boring story complete with a really annoying little kid.
Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock is also a cult classic.
It requires more mental effort than is usual in period dramas. I’ve read the novel, which is good but nowhere near as hauntingly beautiful as the movie.
I think Weir’s The Year of Living Dangerously could also be considered a cult classic. Again, I think the movie is better than the source material.
It’s not only his images but in these two films, anyway, his use of music that makes these films so memorable to their fans.
Witness, interestingly, had a line in when it first came out that has since vanished.
After the Kelly McGillis character witnesses John Book's sister yelling at her boyfriend, she remarks that an Amish woman would never raise her voice to a man. 'We just wouldn't do that.'
I know that line was there. But it's vanished. Nacht und Nebel...
Anyway, while I've certainly enjoyed watching Master and Commander, I don't think it's as good as the other films mentioned -- too much of a grab bag. All the good bits from his favorite Patrick O'Brian novels or something.
And in the 20 years since, for differing reasons, the zeitgeist has come for both the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter.
I'm amazed the films even got made.Replies: @Wilkey
You lost get over itReplies: @TWS, @jsm, @fish, @Oh, Yeah Yeah
“As I recall, one of the criticisms about ‘Master and Commander’ is that there were really no women in it all, no love story nor romantic angle, thus limiting the box office to just ‘middle-aged 3-digit IQ guys.’”
I never really see the absence of women in a movie as a drawback. In fact, I find it refreshing. Lawrence of Arabia, The Beast, The Lost Patrol and Das Boot all had few if any women, and were very good.
I recall a discussion on a movie message board about how much better Red River would have been without poor Joanne Dru’s annoying character, Tess Millay. One guy even wondered if there was a way to edit her out of the movie.
As to RR, the Dru' character was there "for ballast" (as Robert Shaw's Quint said about Richard Dreyfuss' Hooper).
I don't know what I would have done differently, but that ending is horrible. I guess they just couldn't kill off the Duke or Clift.Replies: @Kylie
Peter Weir’s last big movie was The Way Back which was almost ignored on release and has no cultural profile whatsoever. I thought it was a good film and I can’t help wondering whether the reason it was shunned is because the first section takes place inside a soviet gulag prison camp. Depictions of the gulag are not something we ever see depicted in mainstream movies for some reason. Funny that.
Sea movies/sailing movies/boat movies are always difficult because 95% of the audience doesn’t sail/have a boat and practically no one today understands that the sea was once a wild, untamed, unknown place and not just a pond to hop across on a long flight.
Indeed, when Cutthroat Island and Waterworld failed in the 1990s Hollywood got fearful from big-budget ocean flicks. But the intrepid James Cameron hit it out of the park with Titanic, and then Disney figured out Pirates of the Caribbean, and so Master & Commander got in.
We can’t also forget that Russell Crowe was (even then) a throwback masculine-caveman leading man when the Brad Pitt-Leonardo DiCaprio-Johnny Depp-Orlando Bloom-RDJ pretty boy leading man was fully taking over. Russell Crowe appealed to male audiences by playing great roles where he was acted like a aggressive, physical, non-pretty boy dude who wanted a woman who acted like a woman, and to heck with equality. Lots of Dad types could identify with that over some Justin Bieber look alikes who minced, flitted, and flirted their way into a chick’s bed.
One could easily imagine Crowe playing one of the leads in The Man Who Would Be King or some kind of WW2 grunt action lead. The success of Master & Commander is also due to his lead presence; had he been Brad Pitt-type, it wouldn’t have registered.
It was an old fashioned “men coalescing to complete a mission” type of war movie. Those films dominated the post-WW2 era, much like westerns, and the audiences for both were largely older dudes.
Because it’s about guy stuff, only.
The two officers (including the master and commander) play a fiddle and a cello in perfect harmony as they realize they’ve been scammed by the French captain — who their ship pursues as they play a merry tune. THE END — Roll titles.
THAT’S why the sun never set on the Empire back then. They didn’t sweat it. They were right.
Crowe had an incredible streak as a leading man from 2000 to 2005.
The downside of his masculinity, though, is that he didn’t take good care of his looks.
It's an affirmation of his heterosexuality.
I suppose that someone like Netflix could make series from all the 26 books, but I fear they would ruin them for the usual reasons.
Peter Weir did a good job of making the movie without alienating those who had already read the books, it stands in its own right.
How often do you see a movie squarely aimed at people like me? Hardly ever.
I first heard about the Patrick O’Brien series of historical novels from the blog of Tim Bray, the developer of one of the first internet search engines, Open Text, the coinventor of XML, the markup format behind HTML, and a former “senior engineer/VP”- level employee of Sun Microsystems, Google, and Amazon. And he’s also a super-woke Canadian who quit Amazon in a huff when a leaked internal memo called Amazon warehouse employee and union organizer Chris Smalls “not smart or articulate,” a simple statement of fact.
He really liked the film adaptation:
https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/01/17/MasterAndCommander
B. That last piece, where the doctor strums the cello, is anachronistic rock 'n' rolly stuff. They always got to wreck it. It's in the contract. Thou shalt wreck it.
I never really see the absence of women in a movie as a drawback. In fact, I find it refreshing. Lawrence of Arabia, The Beast, The Lost Patrol and Das Boot all had few if any women, and were very good.
I recall a discussion on a movie message board about how much better Red River would have been without poor Joanne Dru's annoying character, Tess Millay. One guy even wondered if there was a way to edit her out of the movie.Replies: @Diversity Heretic, @Prester John, @bob sykes, @james wilson, @John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan, @AndrewR
Another good movie with almost no female characters was Twelve O’Clock High.
Lord of the Rings was always against the zeitgeist.
I’m amazed the films even got made.
The zeitgeist has absolutely ruined Amazon’s Middle Earth series, which is a complete and total piece of shit, with an appallingly illogical plot and a horrifically bad cast. Watch the Critical Drinker’s take on the series if you really want a good cry.Replies: @Ron Mexico
Over at Maggies farm they look at Napoleon era British seafaring.
http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/38452-Going-to-sea,-age-13,-c.-1800.html
http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/38450-Heart-of-Oak.html
http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/38457-Royal-Naval-Dinner-Call.html
And the real deal: Thomas Cochrane.
http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/38454-Thomas-Cochrane-The-Sea-Wolf.html
The cliche is, “write what you know”. And some guys don’t know (or perhaps, don’t understand) women that well. There have been some bad, seemingly token female characters in movie history and one could easily argue that these movies would have benefited from the excision of the female character.
I would say it’s particularly bold for a horror movie to not have any female victims, two that come to mind mind are:
Phantasm (1979), which interestingly seems to heavily focus on males grieving the loss of male family members and friends.
The Thing (1982), in which the dynamics between the male characters would have been spoiled with the inclusion of a woman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JfR_edlEfM
True, and yet the most outspoken Master & Commander fans I’ve met in real life were an attractive divorced woman and her eldest daughter (both quite feminine—sorry that must be specified nowadays).
It was even more surprising to me since I was just coming to realize the futility of extolling to young women the merits of Lawrence of Arabia, another movie without young women, or any women, or romantic relationships—unless you count that Turkish rapist homosexual. Which reminds me, will Lawrence be cancelled as homophobic for reveling in the artillery bombardment of the Turks after being sodomized or are #MeToo revenge fantasies permitted against homosexual men as well as against heterosexual men? I mean, Lawrence didn’t consent, which we used to hear was so important for “sex positivity”, so that seems like it should put Lawrence in the right, but then the children being tendered to groomer clowns at drag queen shows by their gormless mothers didn’t consent either, and we’re told it’s hateful and wrong to oppose that. And it’s also wrong and hateful to worry about, or even notice, the British girls raped by Paki grooming gangs, so maybe consent isn’t that important after all. This wokisme is so confusing. It’s good that we have the wise heads in the prestige press to explain to us peasants what the Current Morality is.
But anyway, yeah, some women, even very feminine women, like Master & Commander. Maybe they like masculine men. After all, masculine men enjoy feminine women. Almost as if opposites attract or something. There’s a phrase you probably haven’t heard in while. Particularly not from the likes of Gabriella Paiella. (Stereotypically, Paiella’s prestige journalism seems to be an outgrowth of her dating frustrations. “Sailer’s Second Law of Female Journalism: The second most heartfelt articles by a female journalist will be demands that cultural tastes be revised in order to simplify her dating life.”?)
———
As a peasant, I can tell you that whatever else Witness was, it wasn’t very authentic.
I think you are on to something with noting that feminine women enjoy watching masculine men. For me, that is part of the attraction of M&C, Lawrence, Gladiator, LOTR, etc. I could so without the love angles, when present, and in rewatching, fast-forward through them.
3:10 to Yuma is another one to love for the male part of it.
Cult movie? I didn’t know that.
So, this guy was a hero in a cult movie?
His cousins, Jeff and Martin Crowe, were stalwarts, and the best players, of New Zealand Test Cricket in the 80's/90's. Not an inch of fat on them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Crowe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Crowe
To lose weight, Steve's sensible advice to women, "Talk to your cousin who's slim and eat her diet/recipes."
Martin Crowe RIP but Jeff Crowe, International Cricket Umpire could give tips.Replies: @David Jones
M&C is my fave movie of the 21st Century.
Good.
I didn’t read the books, but I quite liked the movie.The only thing that bothered me was all these kiddies in uniforms, their ridiculous participation in the final battle, is it historically accurate, is it the same in the novels ?
What I liked the most was the pursuit of the French ship, the Acheron (I even remember the name), it was aesthetically superb.
And I regret, but there is a female presence in the movie : a mulatto or some other mystery meat prostitute in a white dress…
There is also a beautiful parrot carried by the natives in the same scene, but to my great dismay Russel Crowe looks more interested in the dark skinned whore …what a lack of taste, I would have love to see this beautiful bird on board…
It's very historically accurate. I also liked the bit where the (aristocratic) thirteen-something casually asserts his authority over the (plebian) grown seamen (just before boarding the French ship, if I recall aright). That was convincingly done -- and I suspect it's also very accurate.
Different world.
The Boy Scouts recommended Master & Commander as movie to watch with scouts specifically due the middies. I showed the movie to several of my sons when they turned 12. It's still the favorite of one, now an adult. His younger brother picked out Bridge Over the River Kwai but then he was terrified when he took a sailing class.
I would say it's particularly bold for a horror movie to not have any female victims, two that come to mind mind are:
Phantasm (1979), which interestingly seems to heavily focus on males grieving the loss of male family members and friends.
The Thing (1982), in which the dynamics between the male characters would have been spoiled with the inclusion of a woman.Replies: @Dragoslav, @Bill Jones
The Thing is one of my favorites… And no ” strong woman ” in sight , what a breath of fresh air…
Agreed.
I will say that although John Ford often has strong women in his films, they are not the "butt-kicking babes" we have all come to know and loathe. Instead, they are often plain, middle-aged women who do not compete with men, they complement them (e.g., Jane Darwell, Mildred Natwick, Sara Allgood). Their strength is in the support they give to their men and families. I don't much mind that.
But yeah, generally, the absence of women is in a movie is a real breath of fresh air. This is one point in favor of submarine films.Replies: @Corpse Tooth, @prosa123
Even Kurt Russel, the nominal protagonist, is shown to be impulsive and irritable from the beginning. It's largely based on sheer luck as to how long a character survived in the movie. Part of what makes the movie work is it's sense of unpredictability, both in terms of what the monster does but also in terms of character behavior and motivation. You can mostly understand and empathize* with these characters and their reactions to an increasingly grim situation, rather than the lazy horror movie trope of giving the audience dull characters who the audience wants dead.
What would the movie be like with a woman character added? Ever seen Day of the Dead? That movie has an equally grim atmosphere as The Thing, but due to a woman scientist character, Day of the Dead has male characters descending to even greater depths of hysteria and rage then we see in the The Thing. Plus there's also jealousy and predatory threats made to the woman.
*Note that I didn't say "like" the characters. You don't need likable characters for a movie to work, as long as their behavior makes sense in the context of the setting and the story.Replies: @Harry Baldwin, @Vinnyvette
We will remake with more diversity
You lost get over it
Dude you're whiter than rice.
Pretending to be black doesn't make you black.
Den dey gunna take teh boat an go shoot up a two year olds birfday party!
Remember….U keep it reel!
Its a very good film. I saw it in the cinema on release and I’ve re-watched it a few times.
Read the books, which are truly great.
In the second novel Post Captain the characters spend most of their time on shore leave in England attending various social engagements and wooing women. Its a tribute to Jane Austen’s work and the least action-and-adventure’y book in the series. By the third book HMS Surprise they are back out to sea for the most part. The romantic entanglements continue as a sub-plot (often by writing letters home to England). There wouldn’t time or room for this in the film.
When O’Brian was older he moved to Ireland and told everyone he met that he had been born there, because he wanted to be an Irishman. (He was German-English and had grown up in England as Patrick Russ.) When it was discovered he was lying about his national origin he felt deeply humilated. It seems to have upset him badly as he thought people were laughing at him. But nobody in Ireland really cared that much, as he so well-liked and respected. For instance he had an honourary degree from Trinity College Dublin where he did research and all the women there loved him.
A real gentlement it seems, from what people say.
I was surprised that a Lefty like Ed Harris appeared in The Way Back. The implosion of the USSR caused the Left to figuratively stagger around like someone who has just found out that a beloved aunt had suddenly died. Fortunately for the Left, today’s nationalistic Russia and its tough-guy leader have given them something in which to channel their “passions.”
Master and Commander is an excellent film. It’s partly about the whole ship’s company – officers, hands, marines, and boys – thousands of miles from home and with decent odds they’ll never get back again. It’s partly about how the skipper is to govern his vessel, it’s partly about the skipper and surgeon as friends and colleagues, it’s partly about how life differed back then, and it’s partly about using skill, cunning, seamanship, and luck to defeat a superior French ship. Is it fair to say it’s mainly about character?
I discovered it on the telly a few years ago and have since watched it twice more. Lovely stuff, superb cast, and no longeurs; the action and the plot press on. Hell’s bells, even the music enhances it.
As Mr iSteve says it’s a film for intelligent adults.
Lucky Jack, remembering the unlucky officer: “We don’t always become the man we wished to be.” Oof. That is the love every boy craves. And the rejection they dread the most, most men will just have to quietly kill that part of themselves.
Boys let loose on Galapagos. Like a museum of natural history, but it’s the original thing. A ridge, the Pacific. Just the old Pacific. Anticipation of discovery, maybe there are frogs in the… Hey, it’s the jerks from the other suburb again! Run! We have to tell others, get the gang together!
Summer is over, the fun is in the past. Your cousin is returning home or your friend is moving out or dead. Might as well get working on that assignment. Anything but this feeling!
OT
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/03/07/russias-war-ukraine-advancing-lgbtq-rights-00085841
I think we saw this “you must be wrong if *nominated bad guy* agrees with you!” tactic just a few days ago, when Nicholas Wade was effectively invited to reject the values our host espouses.
What a wasted opportunity — it should have been Star Trek at sea; with better casting (Russell Crowe is SO wrong) and a bit more swagger (“Here’s a buckle. Swash it.”), they could have replicated the Kirk/Spock relationship, which is basically a wooden simulacrum of camaraderie for nerds and autists, about as much of friendship and masculinity as they can stand. But, NOOOO!! They had to make it as a classy art film. I can’t even remember who played the other guy, the Spock guy.
Like Tim Burton’s ghastly bore of a “Planet of the Apes” remake, it was a potential billion-dollar franchise flushed straight down the toilet.
What I liked the most was the pursuit of the French ship, the Acheron (I even remember the name), it was aesthetically superb.
And I regret, but there is a female presence in the movie : a mulatto or some other mystery meat prostitute in a white dress…
There is also a beautiful parrot carried by the natives in the same scene, but to my great dismay Russel Crowe looks more interested in the dark skinned whore …what a lack of taste, I would have love to see this beautiful bird on board…Replies: @kaganovitch, @TWS, @Colin Wright, @mc23
Midshipmen in the British navy of the Napoleonic era were commonly 14-15 years old. They joined as 11-12 year olds.
A good companion book to any nautical movie set in age of sail is N.A.M Rodger. It dispels a lot of myths. A modern sea series that became popular was Deadliest Catch. Not many women there either.
The movie makes you feel euphoric, but in a quiet way.
In other words, the only people who were able to read and comprehend the books.
Example: `At present two Highlanders were talking slowly to an Irishman in Gaelic … as he lay there on his stomach to ease his flayed back. ‘I follow them best when I do not attend at all,’ observed Stephen, ‘it is the child in long clothes that understands, myself in Cahirciveen.”‘ [see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahersiveen#Mentions_in_literature%5D
Cultist here. I’ve watched the movie at least a half dozen times end to end, and pro-tip: use the closed captions to pick up lots of “bits” – not dialogue per se, but the shouted instructions by the boatswain to the men in the rigging and other commands, bleats of pain, etc. Also helps with the sometimes thick accents.
The movie also led me to read the entire series (thank you public library). Truly great.
Dragoslav: Yes. The mid-shipmen are just just kids; they are tutored by the Captain and become Lieutenants in their early teens.
Almost Missouri: In one of the books Jack rescues a beautiful looking youngster, with rosy cheeks and ringlets in his hair and the son of some old family friend or some-such, from being assigned to a ship captained by a notorious buggerer.
And although a few rude remarks are passed about homosexuality, the other main character – the doctor – takes a “catamount” when at leave in foreign ports. Part of what makes these books so terrific is the characters are not one-dimensional and there is a great deal of nuance to what is happening, even if the men are all essentially bluff and bluster with each other.
His best acting, though, was in The Insider (1999).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3LODyZSXT8
Great Escape.
Maybe the movie inspired those plucky Ukrainians to rent a yacht and bomb the Nord Stream pipelines.
I would say it's particularly bold for a horror movie to not have any female victims, two that come to mind mind are:
Phantasm (1979), which interestingly seems to heavily focus on males grieving the loss of male family members and friends.
The Thing (1982), in which the dynamics between the male characters would have been spoiled with the inclusion of a woman.Replies: @Dragoslav, @Bill Jones
And then there’s Jack Nicholson.
It’s a piece of historical fiction that doesn’t insult the viewer with any nods to modern sensibilities, like a Yaasss Kweeen heroine who is as smart and tough as the men, or a wise black character who helps guide the white captain. My wife loves the movie too, so as others have noted there are many women out there that appreciate the film for what it is.
I was fortunately introduced to O’Brien a couple years before the film came out and had read several books (I have now read them all multiple times over the years) prior to its release. I happened to be a young Hill staffer at the time and was somehow invited to the DC premier at the MPAA headquarters, which has a small theater in it and for the occasion the entire interior was dressed up in period decor, and naturally dinner was fish.
Master and Commander is one of the greatest movies ever made, period…No flaws whatsoever, and the dialogue was perfectly intelligible to anyone who had read the novels, or had some knowledge of the Age of Fighting Sail…Russel Crowe even got to adlib some parts…
It is strange that anyone could take M & C as a “cult movie”. It is an enjoyable adventure story- and nothing more.
Cult movies are actually good movies that possess some bizarre quality that makes them suitable for “cult following”. For instance- Psycho, Melville’s “Le Samourai”, Coen’s “Fargo”, Leone’s “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”, … Cult movies frequently result in spoofs, parodies, visual references and quotes in other films etc.
Truly great films- for instance de Sica’s “Umberto D.”, Bergman’s “Cries and Whispers” or Malick’s “Thin Red Line” are too complex & rich to be imitated or parodied or exalted as “iconic cultural reference”.
That said, I don’t get how a very good entertainment like M & C could have “cult following”. M & C doesn’t possess that bizarre magic of reducible/simplistic “symbols for dummies” & remarkable, quotable mannerisms that make a movie a “cult classic”.
There is a fair amount of women in the books (well the first 8 of 20, it takes time you know).
But the books are brilliant for men. Helps if you know a little history.
Yeah like that boring, ”The Wild Bunch’, ‘The Great Escape,’ ‘Treasure of the Sierra Madre’.
You lost get over itReplies: @TWS, @jsm, @fish, @Oh, Yeah Yeah
We? What’s this, ‘we’ bit?
Dude you’re whiter than rice.
Pretending to be black doesn’t make you black.
You lost get over itReplies: @TWS, @jsm, @fish, @Oh, Yeah Yeah
Why should we get over it?
Saw it when it came out and really liked it.
Since it’s been a while, time to see it again.
I never really see the absence of women in a movie as a drawback. In fact, I find it refreshing. Lawrence of Arabia, The Beast, The Lost Patrol and Das Boot all had few if any women, and were very good.
I recall a discussion on a movie message board about how much better Red River would have been without poor Joanne Dru's annoying character, Tess Millay. One guy even wondered if there was a way to edit her out of the movie.Replies: @Diversity Heretic, @Prester John, @bob sykes, @james wilson, @John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan, @AndrewR
I would also add John Boorman’s superb (and brutal) “Deliverance.”
As to RR, the Dru’ character was there “for ballast” (as Robert Shaw’s Quint said about Richard Dreyfuss’ Hooper).
Now-famous tweet — “The three movies your boyfriend wants to watch:
An Idiot Saves The President [starring that guy who was in both 300 and Phantom of the Opera. Go ponder the commonality there, or rather, don’t].
Silent Hero Journey Boy [she is clearly talking about the Gooseman here, the balancer of Cokes].
Boats [starring either Jurgen Prochnow or Russel Crowe].”
It’s pretty simple why Boats. Boats are an inherently masculine place of clear rules, necessary discipline, and immediate, impersonal feedback if you doubt the first two for all of a second. That’s masculinity in a nutshell. Did you remember to close the door?
Wasn’t this the favorite movie of that autogynepheliac man in women’s clothing who was on Jeopardy a few years back? A nerdy, male autist movie just proving that no “female brain” is present in a lot of these weirdos.
I liked the movie, but sometimes I felt that the actors had a hard slog of it emoting whilst pretending as if they were yelling above loud noises. Battle, crashing waves, etc. It has a very “Movie set” like feeling.
The ship itself was also a favorite. Seeing and hearing the action on deck could allow a theater-goer practically to feel the rolling motion, the salt spray and wind. Billowing sails, creaking masts and spars, seeing land again after days or weeks in the weather out on the water.
Many boys and young men dreamed of life at sea as a passage to a different and potentially better world. The ship provided a means to support that.
Middle-aged men may look back on such dreams with nostalgia, wistfulness, regret and fond memories all together as they contemplate how their own voyages are going. Are they masters and commanders of their lives or playing out some other role(s)?
My grandfather (and all his male forebears) was a Newfoundland commercial fisherman who sailed the North Atlantic (off the south Iceland coast, stuff like that). My father and all his brothers were Navy men: my father served aboard a carrier, all his brothers on destroyers.
When I was a teenager I sometimes mused aloud about joining the USN. My father would give me a hard look and say in a flat voice: "Don't do that."Replies: @Steve Sailer, @shale boi, @Reg Cæsar, @Coemgen
Peter Weir did a good job of making the movie without alienating those who had already read the books, it stands in its own right.
How often do you see a movie squarely aimed at people like me? Hardly ever.Replies: @J.Ross
[ashes cheroot] Bad luck, old man: were that allowed by our supposed Betters, we’d already have a series for Flashie, with some comic action type like Charlto Copley or Timothee Chalamet.
I as a young film buff never really got why Knife in the Water was a big deal beyond the typical Polanski high standards and the paradoxical class commentary in a commie context, until I saw an interview going into how completely impossible for almost all filmmakers is continuity on a boat on a lake. Polanski demonstrated his technical proficiency with this film. The weather on a lake changes constantly and sometimes drastically, and so changes the light, let alone the clouds. Polanski defeated this circumstance solely through attention to detail and discipline.
https://www.slashfilm.com/928722/the-best-pirate-movies-ranked/
I have always liked Sea Hawk and Captain Blood a lot.
Pirates of the Caribbean is like the most popular movie in the world ever.
Master and Commander is one of my favorite movies. I remember watching it in my twenties and believing it’s one of those rare, perfect, movies that comes around once in a while. I have a slight problem. Stephen Maturin, the physician and naturalist, is supposed to be half-Spanish. This fact doesn’t make it in the movie, outside a nod by the director in his choice of using Boccherini’s, La Musica Nortunna, as the Master and Commander’s duet.
How he’s described in the book (taken from Wiki): Stephen Maturin is described as short, slight, and dark-haired, with “curious” pale blue eyes and pale skin if not exposed to the sun. He does become fairly dark-skinned when he travels to tropical climes, a result of his Hiberno-Spanish heritage and predilection for naked sun-bathing.
The actor doesn’t quite look it it, but it’s just a small thing.
I’ve read several of the books. I love them. In fact, this post reminds me that I should look for them in my next trip to the library.
“…middle-aged 3-digit IQ guys with demanding jobs…”
You noticed who else isn’t in the movie, but let’s keep this about the women, since that was what Gabriella was driving at.
Here, I would like to add something about a genre most readers are not aware exists at all.
Tolkien, Rowling… are writing fantasy. They know that what happens in their novels is not empirically real. And their readers know this (if they’re not nuts or stoned).
But, there exists a small sub-genre I’d call occult or esoteric fiction. Sometimes these fictions are more, let’s call it, “spiritual”. The authors themselves are occultists or members of some esoteric groups, and they write about paranormal stuff (telepathy, teleportation, astral projection, reincarnation, psychic energy transfer, levitation, miraculous healing, ghosts, communication with the dead,..) as real in the sense they literally believe these things exist & they have, at least some of them, experienced them.
To that category belong fictions by Austrian author Gustav Meyrink, Castaneda (ethno-occult existential thrillers), novels authored by Jane Roberts of the Seth fame, many novels by a scholar of genius Mircea Eliade (in Romanian, some of them translated), fictions by Ouspensky & Elisabeth Haich,…
So, while fantasy authors (Rowling, probably Ann Rice,…) don’t believe what they’re writing about is “real”, occultists, on the other hand, if they turn to fiction writing- adamantly do.
Master and Commander was great because of the attention to period detail and the fact that the film-makers did not cave to modern sensibilities. Also, the use of CGI – I assume there must have been some in it – was brilliant. They didn’t try to make it look photo-realistic, which wouldn’t have been possible, so they made it 19th-century painter-realistic. There were scenes of the tall ships that look like they came right from a painting. It was a really clever thing to do.
Another good movie set during that same general era, which came out a year before, was The Count of Monte Cristo, with Jim Caviezel and Guy Pearce. Check it out.
They did a remake with a woman in the lead. It bombed.
That movie was made in 1949 when there were lots of movies with almost no men. Today, movies like Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers fill the same role.
What I liked the most was the pursuit of the French ship, the Acheron (I even remember the name), it was aesthetically superb.
And I regret, but there is a female presence in the movie : a mulatto or some other mystery meat prostitute in a white dress…
There is also a beautiful parrot carried by the natives in the same scene, but to my great dismay Russel Crowe looks more interested in the dark skinned whore …what a lack of taste, I would have love to see this beautiful bird on board…Replies: @kaganovitch, @TWS, @Colin Wright, @mc23
Yes the kids were historically accurate. My grandfather went to work as a cowboy when he was 13. And he was a little guy.
Tolkien, Rowling... are writing fantasy. They know that what happens in their novels is not empirically real. And their readers know this (if they're not nuts or stoned).
But, there exists a small sub-genre I'd call occult or esoteric fiction. Sometimes these fictions are more, let's call it, "spiritual". The authors themselves are occultists or members of some esoteric groups, and they write about paranormal stuff (telepathy, teleportation, astral projection, reincarnation, psychic energy transfer, levitation, miraculous healing, ghosts, communication with the dead,..) as real in the sense they literally believe these things exist & they have, at least some of them, experienced them.
To that category belong fictions by Austrian author Gustav Meyrink, Castaneda (ethno-occult existential thrillers), novels authored by Jane Roberts of the Seth fame, many novels by a scholar of genius Mircea Eliade (in Romanian, some of them translated), fictions by Ouspensky & Elisabeth Haich,...
So, while fantasy authors (Rowling, probably Ann Rice,...) don't believe what they're writing about is "real", occultists, on the other hand, if they turn to fiction writing- adamantly do.Replies: @Bardon Kaldian
And yes, I forgot Dion Fortune: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dion_Fortune
Jane Roberts: https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-oversoul-seven-trilogy-the-education-of-oversoul-seven-the-further-education-of-oversoul-seven-oversoul-seven-and-the-museum-of-time-roberts-jane_jane-roberts/269768/#edition=1934404&idiq=4217727
More “spiritually oriented” (less powers, more muddy spirituality) is Paulo Coelho, a watered down version of Kahlil Gibran.
Well no one should be obsessed with a movie, period. Except the people making it, when they are making it. If you are going to be obsessed, be obsessed with something real–physics, or woodworking, or playing the guitar, or building your business, or … building your family.
That said, I enjoyed the movie and along with all the good stuff about it–the setting, the characters, the execution … this is a big part of it:
It’s a good story about something actual real.
It’s not some “superhero” shooting lightening out of his ass. It’s not some fantasy with magic and wizards sorting it all out. It’s not some girl power nonsense where women figure everything out and kick 240 lb guys across the room. And it’s not yet another tedious deal on good whites struggling heroically against the Nazis.
Master and Commander certainly should have been the most successful sea movie of its era. But it was utterly dwarfed by this Pirates of Carribean deal with supernatural curses, dead pirates coming back to life, butt kicking girl pirates and general suspension of the laws of physics.
One of the fundamental things that happened is that we thingy-mathy guys were so incredible successful on the physical/male side in building the modern world–the tap runs, the toilet flushes, the lights come on, the car starts, the
computerphone boots up … –that the women and the word fantasists are even more unmoored from reality and “freed” to their feelings and fantasies.We are now subjected to world of sheer fantasy. Racist roads. Saint George was murdered (or martyred). There was a “coup attempt” or “violent insurrection” on Jan 6. “Diversity is our greatest strength”. “Structural racism” pervades every nook and cranny of America. “Immigration is who we are.” Men
AnotherMom and I started watching some show about three identical sisters apparently separated at birth. Mystery/thriller expected. But sure ‘nuf the sisters are having these visions because of some sort of psychic “connection”–or something. Just writing a story within the normal laws of meatspace is too much.
I watched some of this “Vikings” thing a couple years back. Raiding some English village the lead viking explicitly asks a village woman for her consent before
rapinghaving carnal relations with her. What? He’s landed at Oberlin? Landing and whacking down the hapless local militia, looting the church and slaughtering the unarmed priests, looting and burning the village … peachy. But can’t have vikings actually enjoying women without their consent. Then vikings would be bad.A world of ridiculous fantasy.
Thanks, no thanks, thingy-mathy guys.
And in 1997 he made L.A. Confidential
I remember watching a documentary about Lord Mountbatten, the last viceroy of India and the uncle of the late Duke of Edinburgh, in which he spoke of his early days in the Royal Navy. I was surprised hear him pronounce “midshipmen” as “mitchmen.”
I never really see the absence of women in a movie as a drawback. In fact, I find it refreshing. Lawrence of Arabia, The Beast, The Lost Patrol and Das Boot all had few if any women, and were very good.
I recall a discussion on a movie message board about how much better Red River would have been without poor Joanne Dru's annoying character, Tess Millay. One guy even wondered if there was a way to edit her out of the movie.Replies: @Diversity Heretic, @Prester John, @bob sykes, @james wilson, @John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan, @AndrewR
Twelve O’Clock High, Saving Private Ryan (almost), The Hunt for Red October, Fury, …
Also, Run Silent, Run Deep and The Enemy Below and as I noted earlier, Das Boot.
Thank God for submarine films, though I suppose some asinine wokester is planning a sub film with females in the cast.Replies: @shale boi, @tomv
Love to have a transcript of Russell Crowe’s pep speech before his men swing onto the French vessel – insulting the French nation, their customs, and especially that little frog Napoleon they so favor. It’s unapologetically Anglo-militant. Love it.
So, this guy was a hero in a cult movie?
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/FiCAUL4xU1o/maxresdefault.jpgReplies: @Harry Baldwin, @Studley
I can understand why regular guys let themselves go in middle age. They feel, “My wife’s fat, my life sucks, so why care about my health? Why not just stuff my face?” I don’t approve, but it’s their choice. But why does an A-list movie star let himself get that fat? He’s throwing it all away.
Well, perhaps it is good that Master and Commander did not spawn a franchise, because had it done so, by 2018-2019 there would have been Master and Commander V: Attack the Poopdeck with compulsory casting of a woman Admiral and gay romances (not the sort of respectable and traditional British Naval Sodomy which ceases immediately at the littoral zone but the mushy stuff with mouth kissing). Allow it to be forever frozen in 2003’s cultural amber of Toby Keith Party Country songs, Jon Stewart’s dumb mugging for the camera, and Digital Desert Camo Everything.
One neat trick of period Naval films to goose broader audience interest is to set them in the South Pacific a la Mutiny on the Bounty wherein the filmmaker can serve a brisk intermezzo of topless half Asian and half Caucasian actresses cast as curious, sexually naive native island girls to break up the monotony of scenes set in dimly lit Captain’s quarters.
For those of you devoted to Master and Commander, allow me to recommend 2000’s British television series Longitude. It’s Master and Commander for more rarefied triple digit IQ guys with demanding jobs. These guys are thick on the ground at the twin Boat Shows in the Fall in Annapolis, Maryland, where you will find Master and Commander adjacent British Naval themed memorabilia, including the flagship U.S. Pusser’s Caribbean Grille (Annapolis is a traditional port of departure for yachtsmen from the Northeast who attempt the popular voyage by sail from the U.S. to Bermuda). Up Spirits!
I gobbled up the first books in the series, waited impatiently for the new ones, tead them all at least twice, and still had no desire for more movies after Master and Commander.
O’Brien’s written world is more vast and complex by far.
Paul Bettany is miscast as Maturin, who is small, dark, unkempt and unwashed.
As to books: The Golden Ocean and The Unknown Shore have teen age protagonists and no romance, and are a delight to read aloud to your children, probably sons, aged nine and up to when they won’t let you. Unfortunately, I remain the only O’Brien fan in the family, never converting husbands, sons, daughters, sailing brothers. I have some hopes for son in law and grandson, as the first loves reading aloud.
There are excellent audiobooks, marvelously read, perfect for long car trips.
The local library system no longer carries most of O’Brien’s books. Either inability to recognize classics, or ability to recognize the “problematic.”
Master & Commander is a great film, for sure.
Despite “modern trends” there are still a decent amount of similar movies, almost all are period pieces, because that’s the only way you can get away with a lack of diversity, and “the message” (for you Critical Drinker fans).
If the woke retards would leave well enough alone, there could be more, but they’re not interested in great cinema, frankly they’re too stupid to know what great cinema is. They just want their queer, homo-woke femi-nazis values reinforced, so they can convince themselves they are “right” for another day, despite reality screaming that they are most assuredly wrong, but I digress…
In the Heart of the Sea was also quite good, as was the remake of of All Quiet on the Western Front. 1917 has real merit. Dunkirk is another. Das Boot is arguably the best submarine movie ever made.
There’s an obvious theme here- seafaring, WWI, WWII, etc. Period pieces from a different time and culture; That’s how you can make a movie without modern schtick.
Even Tarantino movies buck the trend of woke garbage.
As David Cole has remarked, this super-woke, super-diverse trend in Hollywood won’t last for long.
A- the Jews that built Hollywood are now on the outs, since they aren’t angry black women, or some other modern hero of the moment.
B- it’s costing those same Jews a lot of money, and losing money isn’t a Jewish hobby.
C- the products suck, and just getting green haired SJW trannies and malcontents to attend your film, won’t cut it. You need normal people to buy tickets and make a profit.
Part of the obvious appeal of these period pieces, with male dominated story lines, and characters, is that they offer pure adventure. Challenges, often life or death, but pure. Not muddled with a bunch of horse shit moral ambiguity… we get another of that garbage in real life. Another factor is that the almost purely binary struggle of life and death, harkens back to when life itself was more pure.
Being on a ship, fighting the enemy, and the sea, knowing that death is waiting, underneath you, at every second, and that one single mistake will hasten your arrival… that’s REAL.
It’s also a base human, and specifically masculine, genetic imperative. It’s an internal voice that has been sounding in our heads for the entire length of human existence.
Lastly, there is just so much majesty with sailing the open seas. A purely masculine affair, uncompromised by any of the modern bullshit. It was real, gritty, brave, dangerous, and heralded. There was an honored dignity in being a sailor, recognized for their guts and toughness. You can’t “cheat” in that world, you can’t fake it until you make it. You either learn your trade, and apply it well, or you end up dead, or lost, or starving, or eaten by cannibals, or worse, sharks. It was a magical time of exploration and free market capitalism.
Alas, better days indeed.
A. Hollywood is not run by Jews, but by Hedge Funds. Who are mostly Jews but not the Jews of Hollywood (there is a big difference) and are super woke. Example, Disney is really run by Larry Fink of Blackrock as Blackrock is the majority shareholder. The guy running Vanguard which is the #2 shareholder is also super woke and wants super woke stuff.
B. The Hedge funds don't care how much money Hollywood loses. Its not a market economy but a palace one. Big money, not mom-pop laundries and diners, depends on access to the powerful in Washington to get bigger money. Example: Super Woke Blackrock got the exclusive franchise from super-woke Biden people to "reconstruct" Ukraine managing about 3.5 trillion in "reconstruction funds." Wokeness and losses at Disney are just a rounding error in the cost of doing business.
C. The people running Hedge Funds really, REALLY hate ordinary Americans and want them DEAD DEAD DEAD. So Woke suits them just fine.
D. So no one shows up for the super-woke, super diverse bs that Hollywood craps out? Who cares? Agents, stars, directors, producers, executives all get paid. Big time. With all the money that the Palace hands out to Hedge Funds, they can keep Hollywood going at losses forever. Bonus, they call fans racists, or tranny phobes for not seeing their garbage.
E. Hollywood can't produce anything but woke if it wanted to. Bad Robot is about the pinnacle of modern Hollywood, and Rian Johnson and JJ Abrams are both super, super woke. All the execs are black lesbians with not so secret gay agendas, and super woke. All the writers are super lesbian fat icky Asian/Indian/black women with not so secret agendas. The showrunners and producers all come from the CW (no, not kidding, that's who is writing the Daredevil series, the person who ran CW's Batwoman).
All the people who used to produce non woke stuff that was occasionally good have been pushed out in the last 15 years, and are too old and non-connected now outside of Tom Cruise and Keanu Reeves. Tarantino himself is older, John Carpenter is retired, Michael Mann is retired, Weir is retired ("The Last Wave" was his best movie), Peter Jackson is mostly retired (just lending his name to the latest efforts on LoTR), others are dead, or out of favor.
Like constant derailments, lack of meat, chicken, eggs, milk etc. this is just another element of the systemic collapse of the West. We can't even make movies and TV any more, that is not woke lectures. That is collapse for you. The Romans could not do anything at the end, either.Replies: @Feryl, @Vinnyvette, @Prester John, @Wilkey
I read the O’Brien novels and they were excellent. Another naval series I like are the Alan Lewrie books by Dewey Lambdin about a British officer set from 1780 to 1811. Lambdin was American and I’m sure he doesn’t get the dialogue of the period fully right, but the books are entertaining to read. Unfortunately, the author died nearly two years ago with the character’s career unfinished.
The 5.1 surround sound is amazing.
That is why I like it.
I read all the Aubrey/Maturin novels and I like the movie a lot. The movie even throws a few bones to the minority of guys who know about sailing boats when it talks about getting the wind gauge, being upwind of one’s opponent in the beginning. I would have hoped they made a scene about why it was so hard to get through the Drake Passage, but they cut it because expositionary dialogue is boring.
Apart from that, as a guy movie, no actual guy would need an explanation as to why it’s good, though individual guys might have a bit of trouble articulating it.
So if that article were in Cosmo or some other woman’s mag, not surprising. Even less given the authoress might be a feminist, and feminists are generally utterly clueless about men as a rule.
Since this article is in GQ, who reads GQ? Not men.
As David Lynch once told us “You have an image of my dog in your mind though I have not yet begun to describe him to you.”
Now imagine Lynch’s (actually Agent Gordon Cole’s) dog making the “drinky-drinky” gesture.
I will see your Russell Crowe and raise you one William Shatner and one Val Kilmer.
Raymond Burr had to lose weight to get the Perry Mason role and William Conrad couldn’t transition from playing Matt Dillon on radio to the TV version because he was too fat.
Victor Buono.
Marlon Brando.
It’s not rocket science.
Boys let loose on Galapagos. Like a museum of natural history, but it's the original thing. A ridge, the Pacific. Just the old Pacific. Anticipation of discovery, maybe there are frogs in the... Hey, it's the jerks from the other suburb again! Run! We have to tell others, get the gang together!
Summer is over, the fun is in the past. Your cousin is returning home or your friend is moving out or dead. Might as well get working on that assignment. Anything but this feeling!Replies: @Christopher Paul
ChatGPT, is that you?
Watching films and reading books is kind of gay in the sense that you let someone else tell you stories and lead you on. But still we unwittingly think "Alexander the Great – he's just like me!" while we stare at the screen.
Weir pretty effectively removes this conceit by giving us a claustrophobic first-person view of the crew rejecting the lieutenant's leadership and vetting him out with superstitious bullying. The median viewer, a nerdy six figure senior software architect who would rather not have any subordinates gets it and thanks Weir for the gentle narrative vehicle of superstition. In Band of Brothers the vetting is much more raw, even if humor is involved.
Weir is much like Lucky Jack: humbly follows conventions and formalities, but does not shelter himself with them. Crowe seems like a good guy who has concern for the wellbeing of the crew and always looks dapper, able to handle any situation. It is always impressive when an actor manages to be a likable leader, and Crowe is better in this regard than Jürgen Prochnow in Das Boot. To see a typical result, watch the submarine movie with Matthew McConakee in it.
Leaders who put burning matchsticks in their hair and strive to be a "legend" and generate anecdotes of themselves are pretty often assholes in my experience, they are always busy performing their act. Maybe there are movies that act like this.
M&C is not really a cult movie, but is to cult movies as good leaders are to cult leaders. The enthusiasts are not going to wear high heels for this movie, but they would follow it through fire and battle.
Jack relents from his hunt when he risks losing his best friend, the ship's surgeon. Having lost the chase he gives slack to his crew and their scientific endeavours. They are on Galapagos islands, so there is the insight of evolution hiding there. We know of course that it is going to be denied from them, like Aristotle's book of comedy in The Name of the Rose. Evolution is a real idea, but pretty abstract as McGuffins go. The nerd who got on Weir's ship and suspended his disbelief gets his spoils here: the feeling of being on the edge of a monumental discovery.
The island bughunting scene is religious in the sense that childhood and learning and basic research are sacred. It is just a small reprieve in the fight for things like southern blubber resources, afforded out of love for a friend. What other movie has this? Ultimately they lose nothing from their daydreaming on the island, but gain the jump on their enemy. God or evolution loves those who would become like children.
When the young officer mourns his fallen friend, he follows the surgeon's suggestion and drowns his sorrows in scientific work. So yeah, people who find this relatable are going to be an upscale audience.
The ending in medias res is perfect: the ship is like a planet from the past that came to impart rejuvenating kinetic energy to the viewer and then continued on its way.
It requires more mental effort than is usual in period dramas. I've read the novel, which is good but nowhere near as hauntingly beautiful as the movie.
I think Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously could also be considered a cult classic. Again, I think the movie is better than the source material.
It's not only his images but in these two films, anyway, his use of music that makes these films so memorable to their fans.Replies: @Colin Wright, @Corpse Tooth
Add Gallipoli and Witness.
Witness, interestingly, had a line in when it first came out that has since vanished.
After the Kelly McGillis character witnesses John Book’s sister yelling at her boyfriend, she remarks that an Amish woman would never raise her voice to a man. ‘We just wouldn’t do that.’
I know that line was there. But it’s vanished. Nacht und Nebel…
Anyway, while I’ve certainly enjoyed watching Master and Commander, I don’t think it’s as good as the other films mentioned — too much of a grab bag. All the good bits from his favorite Patrick O’Brian novels or something.
What I liked the most was the pursuit of the French ship, the Acheron (I even remember the name), it was aesthetically superb.
And I regret, but there is a female presence in the movie : a mulatto or some other mystery meat prostitute in a white dress…
There is also a beautiful parrot carried by the natives in the same scene, but to my great dismay Russel Crowe looks more interested in the dark skinned whore …what a lack of taste, I would have love to see this beautiful bird on board…Replies: @kaganovitch, @TWS, @Colin Wright, @mc23
‘I didn’t read the books, but I quite liked the movie.The only thing that bothered me was all these kiddies in uniforms, their ridiculous participation in the final battle, is it historically accurate, is it the same in the novels ?’
It’s very historically accurate. I also liked the bit where the (aristocratic) thirteen-something casually asserts his authority over the (plebian) grown seamen (just before boarding the French ship, if I recall aright). That was convincingly done — and I suspect it’s also very accurate.
Different world.
Sir, I am a urinator.
Wooden splinters. Splinters caused by cannon balls fragmenting the gunwales and rails. The worst part, in the books anyway, was to be skewered by a wood splinter–well, maybe splinter is an inappropriate word for something that could be a foot long and a couple inches thick–and then having the surgeon have to remove the damn thing sans anesthetics. Like withdrawing something armed with hundreds of little fish hooks that grab onto your flesh. Horrible to contemplate.
I picked one up in my foot, from walking barefoot on a beach boardwalk in which the planks were laid lengthways. I pulled part out myself, the surgeon pulled another chunk out and I finally extracted the third about a month later after soaking it in epsom salts for a couple days. It was about two inches long in total, right in the soft arch of my foot. Other splinters I’d picked up in my hands from boatbuilding, long enough for the surgeon to save the relic in a plastic vial for me to show off to my friends, were not nearly so painful as the one that broke up in my foot. (In extracting one splinter from my hands, the doctor was in there with forceps and when he grabbed and pulled, my finger flexed. He was pulling a ligament or tendon or whatever. Anyway, it was funny.)
I don’t even want to imagine how painful it must have been to have a bigger one in one’s vitals.
Did they mention how fond Lord Mountbatten was of young boys?
No women. Like, none at all.
The closest you get is a glimpse of what might be a woman riding in a rowboat as the natives row out to sell provisions to the warship as it skirts the Brazilian coast.
Doesn’t even reach the starting line for the Bechdel Test. Which makes it a good movie — but with limited audience appeal.
How much you watch to rewatch this movie depends on if you can be stuck on a boat with Russel Crowe for 2 hours.
Me not so much. Too many of his lines are a bit flat.
But the attack effects are good enough for a single viewing.
For a captain led adventure I’d rather watch Star Trek II or the Black Hole.
My only complaint with Master and Commander was the meandering plot. Action moves from place to place without an overarching narrative and then the movie ends, which makes it a more visceral experience than a memorable one.
Leading man Russel Crowe was great. I recently bought a 4k movie set up at home and put on a back to back of Gladiator and Braveheart. While Braveheart shows it’s age, Gladiator is still an incredible film. Hard to believe Ridley Scott did Alien, Blade Runner and Gladiator, not to mention his great but not classic films along the way. All of the above mentioned movies look great in 4k btw. For non-technical nerds, 4k is a great way to achieve movie theater quality in the home. Worth checking out an affordable set up if you, like me, don’t go out much these days. Re-visiting old movies has been a fun past time.
Tim Roth's antagonist is one of the main ones, an all-time great villain performance that is somehow underappreciated.
Braveheart's treatment of Robert the Bruce is execrable, and its Jim Horner score that is mostly pilfered from superior versions in The Wrath of Khan, and Aliens certainly doesn't help.
I really enjoyed the movie–and I am a woman of a certain age. I have watched it several times. My autistic son (IQ *not* three digits) also loved it. I think it appeals to spectrum people.
The dialogue was fabulous–kept it from feeling like cosplay. (As I recall, the remake of True Grit employed period dialogue; I enjoyed that immensely.)
Thanks for all the reminders of fabulous Weir films. I just made a list…
Perhaps, but it’s the lesser of two weevils.
It was even more surprising to me since I was just coming to realize the futility of extolling to young women the merits of Lawrence of Arabia, another movie without young women, or any women, or romantic relationships—unless you count that Turkish rapist homosexual. Which reminds me, will Lawrence be cancelled as homophobic for reveling in the artillery bombardment of the Turks after being sodomized or are #MeToo revenge fantasies permitted against homosexual men as well as against heterosexual men? I mean, Lawrence didn't consent, which we used to hear was so important for "sex positivity", so that seems like it should put Lawrence in the right, but then the children being tendered to groomer clowns at drag queen shows by their gormless mothers didn't consent either, and we're told it's hateful and wrong to oppose that. And it's also wrong and hateful to worry about, or even notice, the British girls raped by Paki grooming gangs, so maybe consent isn't that important after all. This wokisme is so confusing. It's good that we have the wise heads in the prestige press to explain to us peasants what the Current Morality is.
But anyway, yeah, some women, even very feminine women, like Master & Commander. Maybe they like masculine men. After all, masculine men enjoy feminine women. Almost as if opposites attract or something. There's a phrase you probably haven't heard in while. Particularly not from the likes of Gabriella Paiella. (Stereotypically, Paiella's prestige journalism seems to be an outgrowth of her dating frustrations. "Sailer's Second Law of Female Journalism: The second most heartfelt articles by a female journalist will be demands that cultural tastes be revised in order to simplify her dating life."?)
https://pics.wikifeet.com/Gabriella-Paiella-Feet-4485110.jpg
---------As a peasant, I can tell you that whatever else Witness was, it wasn't very authentic.Replies: @LadyTheo, @Wilkey
Ah, Lawrence of Arabia. One of my all-time faves. Except I get too sad watching it.
I think you are on to something with noting that feminine women enjoy watching masculine men. For me, that is part of the attraction of M&C, Lawrence, Gladiator, LOTR, etc. I could so without the love angles, when present, and in rewatching, fast-forward through them.
3:10 to Yuma is another one to love for the male part of it.
“The Thing is one of my favorites… And no ‘strong woman’ in sight , what a breath of fresh air…”
Agreed.
I will say that although John Ford often has strong women in his films, they are not the “butt-kicking babes” we have all come to know and loathe. Instead, they are often plain, middle-aged women who do not compete with men, they complement them (e.g., Jane Darwell, Mildred Natwick, Sara Allgood). Their strength is in the support they give to their men and families. I don’t much mind that.
But yeah, generally, the absence of women is in a movie is a real breath of fresh air. This is one point in favor of submarine films.
The Thing remake by John Carpenter. Adrienne Barbeau has a fine set of knockers but she would have spoilt the doomsday invasive alien parasite v. ex-military guys and government scientists at the Antarctic base scenario. I'm glad John told her no.
Here’s an idea for what could be a great movie, make a ton of money, and be insanely popular! (which is also, all of the reasons it can never be made)
Setting: Modern Day America
Introduction:
We start with a brief introduction to a day in the life of a modern American white male- married, a parent, a blue color worker, drives a pick-up truck, etc. It’s the typical shit- Insolent children, some mouthy fat ass wife, purple haired freaks every where, idiot school teacher & administrators, affirmative action fellow employees and supervisors, homeless drug addict beggars on every street corner, illegal aliens in every Home Depot parking lot and trying to steal tools from the back of his truck, stupid faggot freaks working at the 7-11’s and big box stores, his kids watching garbage on TV and their phones, being slowly turned into whores and queers by modern media, dead end job, struggling to survive, maybe a veteran of our many foreign wars, with a modest supply of guns and ammo, some survival supplies, etc.
Act I-
A huge solar storm causes a world crippling EMP that destroys every electronic device on the planet. We see the usual post-catastrophe collapse, anarchy, rampant looting, crime, essentially the complete and utter breakdown of society into complete chaos, etc.
As things quickly fall apart, groups of neighborhood men, begin to band together to secure their areas, protect their families, and just survive.
Naturally, this works initially, with the usual challenges- Different opinions on how to handle things, an occasional dissenter, sporadic infiltrations by nearby criminals, blah blah blah.
However, as things continue to get worse, the methods employed by this group, gets more and more extreme. people that refuse to “get with the program” are first shunned, then outcast, and later, killed, if their transgressions threaten the health of the group.
The people that were of marginal value to begin with; social conscious liberals, foreigners, the “thinker” parasites that don’t “do” anything, the greedy and selfish, the odd ducks, freaks, perverts, anti-socials, malcontents… suddenly are given the choice, leave or die. There isn’t enough food to feed those that threaten the safety, security, and harmony of this new community. The worthless, untrustworthy, the unscrupulous.
Some leave, some don’t, and are summarily killed.
As things continue to degrade, universally and everywhere, this group begins to find a routine, and finds survival less daunting, and tolerable.
The kids and wives are doing better, faced with hard work, purpose, and discipline.
Act II-
Our group finds out that there are other, similar groups, also doing well, although spread out, and separated by swaths of “no mans lands” populated by bandits, criminals, thieves, and other undesirables.
It’s decided that these areas must be traversed, so that the healthy, functioning, micro-communities can trade, work together, share resources, etc. The only way, is to move through, killing all those that present themselves.
It works. Search & destroy missions, armed patrols, eradication and elimination.
The groups really start to prosper, finding their new life, much more real, and meaningful, than their old lives. A New Life discovered.
Act III-
Suddenly, things begin to return to normal. Society starts to come back online, as infrastructure is slowly restored. Most of the dregs have died off through attrition, and those that remain are shown no mercy. The healthy, strong, just micro-communities are better than ever. Fully complemented with honest, hard working, moral people, that work together, and live in a harmonious unity of purpose and vision.
As normalcy returns, communications reveal that many areas survived, and many did not. Enclaves are discovered that took very similar paths, and most have thrived.
However, with the returning normalcy, the survivors realize that many of the same parasites, traitors, and anti-social activists, government stooges survived as well.
Intent on going back to the horrible lives they knew before the collapse, our new groups assert themselves, and purge society of every plague that corrupted before. Eradication of the undesirables. No more tolerance, mercy, or acceptance. No more queers, trannies, commies, malcontents, racial grievance victimhood grifters, deep state stooges, or worthless administrative state bureaucrats.
You are either a productive member of this neo-European collective community, or you are in a grave.
A perfect paradise.
Act IV-
We see more time elapse, and are witness to a gleaming, functional, decent moral society where hard work and education are valued, and immorality destroyed. A Renaissance of wholesome life, good values, and hard work, yielding beautiful results.
Gone are all the parasites, the others, the trouble-makers.
A real paradise!
"The Road Warrior" was a very male film, with Mad Max the extremely competent survivor in the wasteland. I couldn't enjoy "Fury Road" because it reduced Max to a sort of hapless loser, dominated by Furiosa.
One of the earliest and best post-apocalyptic film is the low budget "Panic in Year Zero!" (1962), starring Ray Milland as a married man and father of a teenaged son and daughter. After the bombs fall, he becomes an extremely competent, sometimes ruthless survivalist. It's almost a textbook of how to behave in such a situation. The dialog is great. The whole film is available on YouTube.
He really liked the film adaptation:
https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/01/17/MasterAndCommanderReplies: @obwandiyag, @Fhjhfddghds
A. You will find that, if you just play any piece of classical music over any piece of film, it inevitably “times right.” Directors get a lot of kudos for just stealing classical composers’ work wholesale.
B. That last piece, where the doctor strums the cello, is anachronistic rock ‘n’ rolly stuff. They always got to wreck it. It’s in the contract. Thou shalt wreck it.
That said, I enjoyed the movie and along with all the good stuff about it--the setting, the characters, the execution ... this is a big part of it:It's a good story about something actual real.
It's not some "superhero" shooting lightening out of his ass. It's not some fantasy with magic and wizards sorting it all out. It's not some girl power nonsense where women figure everything out and kick 240 lb guys across the room. And it's not yet another tedious deal on good whites struggling heroically against the Nazis.
Master and Commander certainly should have been the most successful sea movie of its era. But it was utterly dwarfed by this Pirates of Carribean deal with supernatural curses, dead pirates coming back to life, butt kicking girl pirates and general suspension of the laws of physics.
One of the fundamental things that happened is that we thingy-mathy guys were so incredible successful on the physical/male side in building the modern world--the tap runs, the toilet flushes, the lights come on, the car starts, the
computerphone boots up ... --that the women and the word fantasists are even more unmoored from reality and "freed" to their feelings and fantasies.We are now subjected to world of sheer fantasy. Racist roads. Saint George was murdered (or martyred). There was a "coup attempt" or "violent insurrection" on Jan 6. "Diversity is our greatest strength". "Structural racism" pervades every nook and cranny of America. "Immigration is who we are." Men
AnotherMom and I started watching some show about three identical sisters apparently separated at birth. Mystery/thriller expected. But sure 'nuf the sisters are having these visions because of some sort of psychic "connection"--or something. Just writing a story within the normal laws of meatspace is too much.
I watched some of this "Vikings" thing a couple years back. Raiding some English village the lead viking explicitly asks a village woman for her consent before
rapinghaving carnal relations with her. What? He's landed at Oberlin? Landing and whacking down the hapless local militia, looting the church and slaughtering the unarmed priests, looting and burning the village ... peachy. But can't have vikings actually enjoying women without their consent. Then vikings would be bad.A world of ridiculous fantasy.Replies: @obwandiyag, @Twinkie, @Karl.der.Hammer
The tap tastes like chemicals, the toilet clogs and wastes water, the light bill keeps going up whether you turn them on or off, the car doesn’t start and the thingy-mathy guy who “fixes” it robs you because he can, and the computer phone wifi just went off again all night in the middle of crucial work.
Thanks, no thanks, thingy-mathy guys.
It requires more mental effort than is usual in period dramas. I've read the novel, which is good but nowhere near as hauntingly beautiful as the movie.
I think Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously could also be considered a cult classic. Again, I think the movie is better than the source material.
It's not only his images but in these two films, anyway, his use of music that makes these films so memorable to their fans.Replies: @Colin Wright, @Corpse Tooth
“Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock is also a cult classic.”
Folk-horrorists try to claim Hanging Rock as an early entry into their sub-genre. Weir’s film is beyond genre: there is definitely mystery afoot but it transcends mystery. It’s a film the stays with one for a week or two, then begins to evaporate but never truly vanishes.
The film does an excellent job of conveying the extraordinary violence of sailing ship battles. The complexity of these vessels and the strength and intelligence needed to operate them and to fight as a team is awe inspiring.
For a good non-fiction take on this, Seize the Fire by Adam Nicolson is a great book about the Battle of Trafalgar and about the warships and navies of the time. Yes, the English navy WAS better than the competition. Indeed, the entire English nation of the 18th and 19th centuries was about the most amazing flowering of human development ever seen. It’s extraordinary how quickly they plummeted from peak humanity to the cucked, invaded, hapless nation of failure that they are today.
Agreed.
I will say that although John Ford often has strong women in his films, they are not the "butt-kicking babes" we have all come to know and loathe. Instead, they are often plain, middle-aged women who do not compete with men, they complement them (e.g., Jane Darwell, Mildred Natwick, Sara Allgood). Their strength is in the support they give to their men and families. I don't much mind that.
But yeah, generally, the absence of women is in a movie is a real breath of fresh air. This is one point in favor of submarine films.Replies: @Corpse Tooth, @prosa123
“… generally, the absence of women in a movie is a real breath of fresh air.”
The Thing remake by John Carpenter. Adrienne Barbeau has a fine set of knockers but she would have spoilt the doomsday invasive alien parasite v. ex-military guys and government scientists at the Antarctic base scenario. I’m glad John told her no.
“The downside of his masculinity, though, is that he didn’t take care of his looks.”
It’s an affirmation of his heterosexuality.
American English used to have the word “broad” that could be used to describe women who were generally “strong” (not bitchy) like that one Aunt or Grandmother we all had who didn’t tolerate fools or nonsense.
Alas, kids today are taught (and apparently believe) that the Before Times consisted entirely of Male Troglodytes and Oppressed Women.
It is just a great film. Full stop. I have watched it 3 times beginning to end, and will always stop to watch large portions of it if I am surfing the channels and stumble across it.
I was fortunately introduced to O'Brien a couple years before the film came out and had read several books (I have now read them all multiple times over the years) prior to its release. I happened to be a young Hill staffer at the time and was somehow invited to the DC premier at the MPAA headquarters, which has a small theater in it and for the occasion the entire interior was dressed up in period decor, and naturally dinner was fish.Replies: @David Jones
The dinner should have been salt beef, accompanied by ship’s biscuit with weevils in.
Like a lot of other straight, macho, Anglo-with-accent actors — e.g. Olver Reed, who appeared as Crowe’s slaveonwer/gladiator trainer in Gladiator — Crowe’s success went to his head and he drank heavily and he started acting outrageously, getting into drunken brawls and such.
South Park got him good in their early parody.
Agreed.
I will say that although John Ford often has strong women in his films, they are not the "butt-kicking babes" we have all come to know and loathe. Instead, they are often plain, middle-aged women who do not compete with men, they complement them (e.g., Jane Darwell, Mildred Natwick, Sara Allgood). Their strength is in the support they give to their men and families. I don't much mind that.
But yeah, generally, the absence of women is in a movie is a real breath of fresh air. This is one point in favor of submarine films.Replies: @Corpse Tooth, @prosa123
I’ve never figured out whether the butt kicking babe stereotype appeals mostly to men or to women.
That said, I enjoyed the movie and along with all the good stuff about it--the setting, the characters, the execution ... this is a big part of it:It's a good story about something actual real.
It's not some "superhero" shooting lightening out of his ass. It's not some fantasy with magic and wizards sorting it all out. It's not some girl power nonsense where women figure everything out and kick 240 lb guys across the room. And it's not yet another tedious deal on good whites struggling heroically against the Nazis.
Master and Commander certainly should have been the most successful sea movie of its era. But it was utterly dwarfed by this Pirates of Carribean deal with supernatural curses, dead pirates coming back to life, butt kicking girl pirates and general suspension of the laws of physics.
One of the fundamental things that happened is that we thingy-mathy guys were so incredible successful on the physical/male side in building the modern world--the tap runs, the toilet flushes, the lights come on, the car starts, the
computerphone boots up ... --that the women and the word fantasists are even more unmoored from reality and "freed" to their feelings and fantasies.We are now subjected to world of sheer fantasy. Racist roads. Saint George was murdered (or martyred). There was a "coup attempt" or "violent insurrection" on Jan 6. "Diversity is our greatest strength". "Structural racism" pervades every nook and cranny of America. "Immigration is who we are." Men
AnotherMom and I started watching some show about three identical sisters apparently separated at birth. Mystery/thriller expected. But sure 'nuf the sisters are having these visions because of some sort of psychic "connection"--or something. Just writing a story within the normal laws of meatspace is too much.
I watched some of this "Vikings" thing a couple years back. Raiding some English village the lead viking explicitly asks a village woman for her consent before
rapinghaving carnal relations with her. What? He's landed at Oberlin? Landing and whacking down the hapless local militia, looting the church and slaughtering the unarmed priests, looting and burning the village ... peachy. But can't have vikings actually enjoying women without their consent. Then vikings would be bad.A world of ridiculous fantasy.Replies: @obwandiyag, @Twinkie, @Karl.der.Hammer
I think it was far worse than that. A male Viking tried to rape a Saxon woman and Lagertha, a “shield maiden” killed him – a warrior on her own side – for “we don’t do that.” I stopped watching right there.
M & C was by far Crowe’s best performance, and the entire movie is superb. One of the best of the last 30 years.
Crowe was a poor choice for LA Confidential; he was way too stiff and looked out of place. But the movie had moments of both terrible and brilliance in it so it’s not all his fault.
I am one of the few people that I know who think Gladiator was just awful. Crowe was ok, but the dialog was garbage and Wah-keen Phoenix’s performance was more fitting for a guest appearance on a Sponge Bob episode. 3 hours of a mostly boring story complete with a really annoying little kid.
I never really see the absence of women in a movie as a drawback. In fact, I find it refreshing. Lawrence of Arabia, The Beast, The Lost Patrol and Das Boot all had few if any women, and were very good.
I recall a discussion on a movie message board about how much better Red River would have been without poor Joanne Dru's annoying character, Tess Millay. One guy even wondered if there was a way to edit her out of the movie.Replies: @Diversity Heretic, @Prester John, @bob sykes, @james wilson, @John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan, @AndrewR
Twelve Angry Men. Much better than twelve angry women anytime.
Omg, yes!
In fairness, Caesar himself says that when he invaded Gaul, he was more afraid of the Gaulish/Celtic women than the men: the women were just as large as, and more hard-minded than, the men.
O’Brian is the master, both of dialogue and action (the written action scenes are straight out of naval reports). Master and COmmander, the movie, is very late in the sequence of novels. Too bad they couldn’t have started with Heath Ledger while Jack was young and pretty, and moved on to Crowe after he had put on some years. A tall good-looking Maturin may have helped box office, but the real Maturin would have been Antonio Gades (flamenco dancer and actor in movies by Saura)
The 20 novels can be reread with great enjoyment every 3 or 4 years.
You lost get over itReplies: @TWS, @jsm, @fish, @Oh, Yeah Yeah
Yeah…..the final battle will occur after the ship equipped with 21 inch rims roll up on the French ship, lay all the cannon on their sides then blasting a furious fusillade while hitting nothing ….at all!
Den dey gunna take teh boat an go shoot up a two year olds birfday party!
Remember….U keep it reel!
“Twelve O’Clock High, Saving Private Ryan (almost), The Hunt for Red October, Fury, …”
Also, Run Silent, Run Deep and The Enemy Below and as I noted earlier, Das Boot.
Thank God for submarine films, though I suppose some asinine wokester is planning a sub film with females in the cast.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09pm77q
He’s wearing a fatsuit for a movie
Never seen Master and Commander, but the other day I happened to watch John Frankenheimer’s Seconds and ended up being very struck by it, and thinking what a masculine film it is. It’s very much a portrayal of mid-20th century, middle-aged, intelligent but not “intellectual” male anxieties – with a solution that’s totally of that era and age group: to be turned into Rock Hudson and live in a beach house, and “paint” without actually needing to think about art.
It’s one of those movies that you should try to see in a cinema, with a massive screen and a genuinely theater-quality sound system. It’s hard to fully appreciate the cinematography otherwise, especially of the battle scenes.
Many boys and young men dreamed of life at sea as a passage to a different and potentially better world. The ship provided a means to support that.
Middle-aged men may look back on such dreams with nostalgia, wistfulness, regret and fond memories all together as they contemplate how their own voyages are going. Are they masters and commanders of their lives or playing out some other role(s)?Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease
“Many boys and young men dreamed of life at sea as a passage to a different and potentially better world.”
My grandfather (and all his male forebears) was a Newfoundland commercial fisherman who sailed the North Atlantic (off the south Iceland coast, stuff like that). My father and all his brothers were Navy men: my father served aboard a carrier, all his brothers on destroyers.
When I was a teenager I sometimes mused aloud about joining the USN. My father would give me a hard look and say in a flat voice: “Don’t do that.”
test
“Twelve Angry Men. Much better than twelve angry women anytime.”
Omg, yes!
Also, Run Silent, Run Deep and The Enemy Below and as I noted earlier, Das Boot.
Thank God for submarine films, though I suppose some asinine wokester is planning a sub film with females in the cast.Replies: @shale boi, @tomv
I always felt like we were more disconnected than anyone (even astronauts in space) on a sub. No outbound messages. Could die and they would find out two months later. Very limited inbound traffic. Not even the sight of the sun. All male crew. Etc. Not a big deal when you do “weekly ops” (M-F in SOCAL, weekend in Point Loma). Just feels like a camping trip. In your basement. With all male crew. But a specop (two months) when you are the only US ship in a strange part of the world. Just a very disassociated thing. Heck, at least the diesel boats in WW2 (our WESTPAC heritage) got to spend a lot of surfaced time.
You have a casualty (e.g. a dropped rod on station) and it’s just an interesting thing dealing with it yourself. For hours. With no comms. 140F between the mains. ERUL being switched out every 10 minutes. And boy…did the crew move fast with fires or hydraulic ruptures. Just night and day from how skimmers (I did two weeks on the Nimitz once) treated casualties.
P.s. If you liked Twelve O’Clock High, check out Command Decision. (The star, Mr. frankly Scarlet, I don’t give a damn, had actually been a B-17 gunner.)
Very interesting perspective, thank you. It always seemed to me that tensions could run very high indeed in a sub when you're in such a close, closed setting with no way to escape your environment or communicate with those outside it.
I don't know how the interior of a sub compares with that of a minesweeper but I toured one of the latter and found it claustrophobic.
My grandfather (and all his male forebears) was a Newfoundland commercial fisherman who sailed the North Atlantic (off the south Iceland coast, stuff like that). My father and all his brothers were Navy men: my father served aboard a carrier, all his brothers on destroyers.
When I was a teenager I sometimes mused aloud about joining the USN. My father would give me a hard look and say in a flat voice: "Don't do that."Replies: @Steve Sailer, @shale boi, @Reg Cæsar, @Coemgen
Tough life.
I expect it's even cushier today.
Samuel Johnson
Things evolve. My grandfather used to gently kid my dad, “You didn’t sail aboard a ship, you sailed aboard a floating Macy’s.”
I expect it’s even cushier today.
My grandfather (and all his male forebears) was a Newfoundland commercial fisherman who sailed the North Atlantic (off the south Iceland coast, stuff like that). My father and all his brothers were Navy men: my father served aboard a carrier, all his brothers on destroyers.
When I was a teenager I sometimes mused aloud about joining the USN. My father would give me a hard look and say in a flat voice: "Don't do that."Replies: @Steve Sailer, @shale boi, @Reg Cæsar, @Coemgen
Just to do the “Connections” thing. Newfoundland has a butt-kicking time zone. It’s an hour and a HALF later than Eastern time. And when you are on that fucking rock, you realize how isolated you are. Yes even in pretty St. Johns. It’s faster to get to Ireland than to DC. And the stores are all out of food for a few weeks in June as the ice cracks up. (It’s OK before, since there’s a broken channel in the winter…but it gets all fucked up in June as things move around…and the ships can’t come in.) We even had a polar bear wander down (in the water) and visit one of the Hibernia oil platforms!
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/polar-bear-pays-visit-to-hibernia-oil-platform-1.3005966
I had a friend who was on subs. He had the most equanimity of anyone I’ve ever known. He said they test guys for that, resistance to claustrophobia or panic–is that true or did I misunderstand him? I never would have qualified. Your description brought him to mind.
I think they screen some enlisted out with the shrink, but very few officers are (especially if you've already eaten shit plebe year).
I bet that guy was just a calm dude. I wouldn't say that's a general trait. Maybe being able to put up with some shit. But even that, was more of an experience based learning than a precondition.
The one cool thing is that I have a lot of chi-chi stuff in my resume. But it's the sub time that really interests people, especially in Middle America, but even with the creative class. They all ask about claustrophobia and I just say it's like camping in your basement...or maybe your crawl space. It's not a big deal. You're usually working too hard to worry about it and just trying to get your sack time in between the demands of watch, divisional work, drills, training and bullshit from the XO.
Nothing like being on the scope, looking through the crosshairs. That part is really like a WW2 movie.
And being surfaced OOD. Just you and an 18 year old lookout on top. That's amazing. My nav thought that I didn't deserve my fish (skipper thought otherwise) so "for corrective punishment" he made me drive every departure and return to port. It was like having steak and champagne shoved down my throat and I got really good at conning the damn thing. Gotta love that bait barge in San Diego. Use it to guide your turn. Did a one bell landing with my second boat and amazed my second skipper (and I was nothing special as a JO, but you do tricky ops over and over for weeks...and you just remember them). Always remember 359 is the best course in the Navy. (It's the heading up the channel in Sand Dog. Means you are coming home.)
No shots fired in anger...but a lot of them psychically shot. Skimmers freak out when they (very rarely) find us. But we look at them all the time. Heck, I'd take a 637 (if we had any left!) against an entire US battle group. It really is a stealthy weapon and they can't find us. The joke is that their best sub detection system is a green flare sighting (i.e. when we signal that we shot them). They actually make a big deal of the infrequent times they see us like it is a big story. And we see them all the time, no big deal to us.
I always felt like the best part was as a JO though. And they have a lot of studies showing the guys who leave after that point are higher quality than those who remain. I think the security and achievement means more to the left half of the curve.
P.s. "Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea. " -Samuel Johnson (Boswell, 1778)
My grandfather (and all his male forebears) was a Newfoundland commercial fisherman who sailed the North Atlantic (off the south Iceland coast, stuff like that). My father and all his brothers were Navy men: my father served aboard a carrier, all his brothers on destroyers.
When I was a teenager I sometimes mused aloud about joining the USN. My father would give me a hard look and say in a flat voice: "Don't do that."Replies: @Steve Sailer, @shale boi, @Reg Cæsar, @Coemgen
Chuck Connors was born in Brooklyn to Newfie immigrants. This was long before N&L was swallowed up by Canada.
I read as many of O’Brian’s, Jack Aubrey as were available at the local library–I believe all of them– and the Horatio Hornblower series as well. Anyone else read the Hornblowers? I enjoyed them both but it was so long ago I can’t remember which was better.
‘I always felt like we were more disconnected than anyone (even astronauts in space) on a sub. No outbound messages. Could die and they would find out two months later. Very limited inbound traffic. Not even the sight of the sun. All male crew. Etc.”
Very interesting perspective, thank you. It always seemed to me that tensions could run very high indeed in a sub when you’re in such a close, closed setting with no way to escape your environment or communicate with those outside it.
I don’t know how the interior of a sub compares with that of a minesweeper but I toured one of the latter and found it claustrophobic.
Chuck Connors was my grandfather’s cousin. Never met him though.
I also count among my ancestors Lord Dunsany and Saint Oliver Plunkett, but not on my father’s side. Weird family.
Heck, he did great chewing scenery versus Denzel’s humorless cop as a low-rent version of the T-1000 called SID 6.7 in Virtuousity (1995):
He actually is fat, though.
This, a million times.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_(TV_series)
It’s a series about the quest to make a reliable marine chronometer, and it is unbelievably watchable. The production, sets, cinematography, score, casting, and performances are excellent across the board.
Michael Gambon is at his finest portraying the long-suffering working class clockmaker, John Harrison.
The book by Dava Sobel is quite good as well.
Finally, one has to wonder, if Harrison’s lifespan had been shifted by a few years, if he could have been attracted to the Colonial cause and have begun production of his chronometers for the US Navy.
Yeah, for some reason…
Boys aboard – WKPD: “In 1794, … a new class of volunteers called ‘volunteer class I’ was created for boys between the ages of 11 and 13 who were considered future midshipmen and lived in the gunroom on a ship-of-the-line or with the midshipmen on a frigate or smaller vessel.”
Consider Edward Pellew, born 1757. WKPD: ‘He ran away to sea at the age of 14 … Pellew described himself as “pock-marked, ugly, uninteresting and uneducated”; a naval historian adds that he was “tough, brave, skilful, lucky, and unscrupulous”.’
He ended up an admiral and was appointed 1st Viscount Exmouth, sitting in the House of Lords.
There’s an old New Yorker cartoon of two sailors in the top rigging of a tempest-tossed sailing ship, one saying to the other, ” You know what I’d like to try someday? Landlubbing.”
Leading man Russel Crowe was great. I recently bought a 4k movie set up at home and put on a back to back of Gladiator and Braveheart. While Braveheart shows it's age, Gladiator is still an incredible film. Hard to believe Ridley Scott did Alien, Blade Runner and Gladiator, not to mention his great but not classic films along the way. All of the above mentioned movies look great in 4k btw. For non-technical nerds, 4k is a great way to achieve movie theater quality in the home. Worth checking out an affordable set up if you, like me, don't go out much these days. Re-visiting old movies has been a fun past time.Replies: @The Wild Geese Howard
At this point, I think Rob Roy is a far more watchable film than Braveheart for a variety of reasons.
Tim Roth’s antagonist is one of the main ones, an all-time great villain performance that is somehow underappreciated.
Braveheart’s treatment of Robert the Bruce is execrable, and its Jim Horner score that is mostly pilfered from superior versions in The Wrath of Khan, and Aliens certainly doesn’t help.
I never really see the absence of women in a movie as a drawback. In fact, I find it refreshing. Lawrence of Arabia, The Beast, The Lost Patrol and Das Boot all had few if any women, and were very good.
I recall a discussion on a movie message board about how much better Red River would have been without poor Joanne Dru's annoying character, Tess Millay. One guy even wondered if there was a way to edit her out of the movie.Replies: @Diversity Heretic, @Prester John, @bob sykes, @james wilson, @John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan, @AndrewR
Red River has to have the worst ending, relative to the greatness of the rest of the film, that I’ve ever seen.
I don’t know what I would have done differently, but that ending is horrible. I guess they just couldn’t kill off the Duke or Clift.
Red River definitely has the worst ending of any western I've ever seen. But I can't agree the rest of the film is great. Hawks certainly knew how to direct intense movies (Scarface) but I think he forces the intensity in Red River. Plus, I think Clift was horribly miscast.
The couple of times I've seen it, I keep thinking, "This isn't how Ford would have done it!"
I've never been able to get through Rio Bravo, either. Hawks and westerns just don't work for me.Replies: @John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan
Only a few bookish types care how a novelist describes a character, once it gets to the moviemaking stage. The cast will be selected by a combination of acting skill and popularity. Paul Bettany was perfect for the role
He really liked the film adaptation:
https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/01/17/MasterAndCommanderReplies: @obwandiyag, @Fhjhfddghds
And Maturin could have beaten Darwin and Wallace to th theory of evolution, if he had been on a chiefly scientific, rather than naval, expedition!
It pretty much was Star Trek at sea. Crowe was Kirk, strong, strict, direct, when need be, but charming and gregarious when he could be. Bettany was Bones AND Spock in one. The French were the Klingons/Romulans, there were exotic Pacific islanders who were quite alien to the ship’s crew, which was made up of a few supporting officers and countless redshirts
Setting: Modern Day America
Introduction:
We start with a brief introduction to a day in the life of a modern American white male- married, a parent, a blue color worker, drives a pick-up truck, etc. It's the typical shit- Insolent children, some mouthy fat ass wife, purple haired freaks every where, idiot school teacher & administrators, affirmative action fellow employees and supervisors, homeless drug addict beggars on every street corner, illegal aliens in every Home Depot parking lot and trying to steal tools from the back of his truck, stupid faggot freaks working at the 7-11's and big box stores, his kids watching garbage on TV and their phones, being slowly turned into whores and queers by modern media, dead end job, struggling to survive, maybe a veteran of our many foreign wars, with a modest supply of guns and ammo, some survival supplies, etc.
Act I-
A huge solar storm causes a world crippling EMP that destroys every electronic device on the planet. We see the usual post-catastrophe collapse, anarchy, rampant looting, crime, essentially the complete and utter breakdown of society into complete chaos, etc.
As things quickly fall apart, groups of neighborhood men, begin to band together to secure their areas, protect their families, and just survive.
Naturally, this works initially, with the usual challenges- Different opinions on how to handle things, an occasional dissenter, sporadic infiltrations by nearby criminals, blah blah blah.
However, as things continue to get worse, the methods employed by this group, gets more and more extreme. people that refuse to "get with the program" are first shunned, then outcast, and later, killed, if their transgressions threaten the health of the group.
The people that were of marginal value to begin with; social conscious liberals, foreigners, the "thinker" parasites that don't "do" anything, the greedy and selfish, the odd ducks, freaks, perverts, anti-socials, malcontents... suddenly are given the choice, leave or die. There isn't enough food to feed those that threaten the safety, security, and harmony of this new community. The worthless, untrustworthy, the unscrupulous.
Some leave, some don't, and are summarily killed.
As things continue to degrade, universally and everywhere, this group begins to find a routine, and finds survival less daunting, and tolerable.
The kids and wives are doing better, faced with hard work, purpose, and discipline.
Act II-
Our group finds out that there are other, similar groups, also doing well, although spread out, and separated by swaths of "no mans lands" populated by bandits, criminals, thieves, and other undesirables.
It's decided that these areas must be traversed, so that the healthy, functioning, micro-communities can trade, work together, share resources, etc. The only way, is to move through, killing all those that present themselves.
It works. Search & destroy missions, armed patrols, eradication and elimination.
The groups really start to prosper, finding their new life, much more real, and meaningful, than their old lives. A New Life discovered.
Act III-
Suddenly, things begin to return to normal. Society starts to come back online, as infrastructure is slowly restored. Most of the dregs have died off through attrition, and those that remain are shown no mercy. The healthy, strong, just micro-communities are better than ever. Fully complemented with honest, hard working, moral people, that work together, and live in a harmonious unity of purpose and vision.
As normalcy returns, communications reveal that many areas survived, and many did not. Enclaves are discovered that took very similar paths, and most have thrived.
However, with the returning normalcy, the survivors realize that many of the same parasites, traitors, and anti-social activists, government stooges survived as well.
Intent on going back to the horrible lives they knew before the collapse, our new groups assert themselves, and purge society of every plague that corrupted before. Eradication of the undesirables. No more tolerance, mercy, or acceptance. No more queers, trannies, commies, malcontents, racial grievance victimhood grifters, deep state stooges, or worthless administrative state bureaucrats.
You are either a productive member of this neo-European collective community, or you are in a grave.
A perfect paradise.
Act IV-
We see more time elapse, and are witness to a gleaming, functional, decent moral society where hard work and education are valued, and immorality destroyed. A Renaissance of wholesome life, good values, and hard work, yielding beautiful results.
Gone are all the parasites, the others, the trouble-makers.
A real paradise!Replies: @Harry Baldwin
Great idea, but it sounds like more of a mini series than a single film.
“The Road Warrior” was a very male film, with Mad Max the extremely competent survivor in the wasteland. I couldn’t enjoy “Fury Road” because it reduced Max to a sort of hapless loser, dominated by Furiosa.
One of the earliest and best post-apocalyptic film is the low budget “Panic in Year Zero!” (1962), starring Ray Milland as a married man and father of a teenaged son and daughter. After the bombs fall, he becomes an extremely competent, sometimes ruthless survivalist. It’s almost a textbook of how to behave in such a situation. The dialog is great. The whole film is available on YouTube.
My grandfather (and all his male forebears) was a Newfoundland commercial fisherman who sailed the North Atlantic (off the south Iceland coast, stuff like that). My father and all his brothers were Navy men: my father served aboard a carrier, all his brothers on destroyers.
When I was a teenager I sometimes mused aloud about joining the USN. My father would give me a hard look and say in a flat voice: "Don't do that."Replies: @Steve Sailer, @shale boi, @Reg Cæsar, @Coemgen
Were you able to learn of your grandfather’s experiences fishing out of Newfoundland?
I worked with an old Newfie back in the eighties. He was a fisherman out of Newfoundland in the 40s and 50s. He spoke with a strong brogue in Hiberno-English. Hands like hams (they didn’t wear gloves in the old days). Thought of St Johns as the big-city. Better man than I am by far…
The one story he had about deep Atlantic sailing, the thing that made him quit the whole business and head down first to Boston then to NYC, was a story so weird and improbable that I wasn't sure I believed it myself, so if I repeated it here I bet the skepticism would be tenfold. But then, weird things do in fact happen so who knows.Replies: @Coemgen
What I liked the most was the pursuit of the French ship, the Acheron (I even remember the name), it was aesthetically superb.
And I regret, but there is a female presence in the movie : a mulatto or some other mystery meat prostitute in a white dress…
There is also a beautiful parrot carried by the natives in the same scene, but to my great dismay Russel Crowe looks more interested in the dark skinned whore …what a lack of taste, I would have love to see this beautiful bird on board…Replies: @kaganovitch, @TWS, @Colin Wright, @mc23
The young midshipmen are accurate and the scene of the young blonde haired midshipmen leading grizzled seamen in a boarding action probably has a historical precedent.
The Boy Scouts recommended Master & Commander as movie to watch with scouts specifically due the middies. I showed the movie to several of my sons when they turned 12. It’s still the favorite of one, now an adult. His younger brother picked out Bridge Over the River Kwai but then he was terrified when he took a sailing class.
I think that it was in L.A. Confidential, which should be in everybody’s top 10 films of the last 50 years list.
“No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned… a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.”
Samuel Johnson
Yeah, you have to see a shrink, but it’s not a big deal for “ocifers”. The NR interviews, finishing with the director (used to be Rickover, but his successor), are more of a big deal. Really the pipeline is the big deal, especially nuke school. It’s not intellectually difficult, but it is “drinking from the firehose”. It’s not SEAL school. But there’s probably 33% officer attrition and 50% enlisted. It was pretty intense.
I think they screen some enlisted out with the shrink, but very few officers are (especially if you’ve already eaten shit plebe year).
I bet that guy was just a calm dude. I wouldn’t say that’s a general trait. Maybe being able to put up with some shit. But even that, was more of an experience based learning than a precondition.
The one cool thing is that I have a lot of chi-chi stuff in my resume. But it’s the sub time that really interests people, especially in Middle America, but even with the creative class. They all ask about claustrophobia and I just say it’s like camping in your basement…or maybe your crawl space. It’s not a big deal. You’re usually working too hard to worry about it and just trying to get your sack time in between the demands of watch, divisional work, drills, training and bullshit from the XO.
Nothing like being on the scope, looking through the crosshairs. That part is really like a WW2 movie.
And being surfaced OOD. Just you and an 18 year old lookout on top. That’s amazing. My nav thought that I didn’t deserve my fish (skipper thought otherwise) so “for corrective punishment” he made me drive every departure and return to port. It was like having steak and champagne shoved down my throat and I got really good at conning the damn thing. Gotta love that bait barge in San Diego. Use it to guide your turn. Did a one bell landing with my second boat and amazed my second skipper (and I was nothing special as a JO, but you do tricky ops over and over for weeks…and you just remember them). Always remember 359 is the best course in the Navy. (It’s the heading up the channel in Sand Dog. Means you are coming home.)
No shots fired in anger…but a lot of them psychically shot. Skimmers freak out when they (very rarely) find us. But we look at them all the time. Heck, I’d take a 637 (if we had any left!) against an entire US battle group. It really is a stealthy weapon and they can’t find us. The joke is that their best sub detection system is a green flare sighting (i.e. when we signal that we shot them). They actually make a big deal of the infrequent times they see us like it is a big story. And we see them all the time, no big deal to us.
I always felt like the best part was as a JO though. And they have a lot of studies showing the guys who leave after that point are higher quality than those who remain. I think the security and achievement means more to the left half of the curve.
P.s. “Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea. ” -Samuel Johnson (Boswell, 1778)
All of the men are weak to some degree… Not necessarily in the sense of being timid or incompetent, but in terms of having various faults due in no small part to being in a miserable polar base and then having the stress of the alien imposed on them.
Even Kurt Russel, the nominal protagonist, is shown to be impulsive and irritable from the beginning. It’s largely based on sheer luck as to how long a character survived in the movie. Part of what makes the movie work is it’s sense of unpredictability, both in terms of what the monster does but also in terms of character behavior and motivation. You can mostly understand and empathize* with these characters and their reactions to an increasingly grim situation, rather than the lazy horror movie trope of giving the audience dull characters who the audience wants dead.
What would the movie be like with a woman character added? Ever seen Day of the Dead? That movie has an equally grim atmosphere as The Thing, but due to a woman scientist character, Day of the Dead has male characters descending to even greater depths of hysteria and rage then we see in the The Thing. Plus there’s also jealousy and predatory threats made to the woman.
*Note that I didn’t say “like” the characters. You don’t need likable characters for a movie to work, as long as their behavior makes sense in the context of the setting and the story.
But her role is more or less as a sidekick to the male lead scientist.
Her presence was not as obnoxious as one would expect, but she did provide fodder for the “we must save the woman at all costs trope.”
I like the original as I’m a big black and white sci fi - horror fan, but the Kurt Russell version is considerably more entertaining; all the guys are pretty much alpha, and it’s more about the life and death struggle and not so much “we must capture the creature alive to study it” nerdy or old “Professor types” to be found, and no woman to milk the “save the woman at all costs, we must not hurt the poor creature” tropes.
Kurt Russell is a compelling star in anything, the actors in the original were mostly uncharismatic B listers.
L. A. Confidential was a great movie, underrated when compared to others of its era and genré such as the overpraised The Usual Suspects, IMHO. One of my top 10, to be sure. Crowe was great in it, but L.A.C. had a true ensemble cast, and he didn’t really stand out for me because there were so many other excellent performances.
I thought M&C was his best work; he was perfect for that role. See also, American Gangster.
Even Kurt Russel, the nominal protagonist, is shown to be impulsive and irritable from the beginning. It's largely based on sheer luck as to how long a character survived in the movie. Part of what makes the movie work is it's sense of unpredictability, both in terms of what the monster does but also in terms of character behavior and motivation. You can mostly understand and empathize* with these characters and their reactions to an increasingly grim situation, rather than the lazy horror movie trope of giving the audience dull characters who the audience wants dead.
What would the movie be like with a woman character added? Ever seen Day of the Dead? That movie has an equally grim atmosphere as The Thing, but due to a woman scientist character, Day of the Dead has male characters descending to even greater depths of hysteria and rage then we see in the The Thing. Plus there's also jealousy and predatory threats made to the woman.
*Note that I didn't say "like" the characters. You don't need likable characters for a movie to work, as long as their behavior makes sense in the context of the setting and the story.Replies: @Harry Baldwin, @Vinnyvette
There’s several “Day of the Dead” movies. You’d have to provide a release date to identify the one you’re referring to.
His hosting role in ‘Fightin’ ’round the World’ was unforgettable
I don't know what I would have done differently, but that ending is horrible. I guess they just couldn't kill off the Duke or Clift.Replies: @Kylie
“Red River has to have the worst ending, relative to the greatness of the rest of the film, that I’ve ever seen.”
Red River definitely has the worst ending of any western I’ve ever seen. But I can’t agree the rest of the film is great. Hawks certainly knew how to direct intense movies (Scarface) but I think he forces the intensity in Red River. Plus, I think Clift was horribly miscast.
The couple of times I’ve seen it, I keep thinking, “This isn’t how Ford would have done it!”
I’ve never been able to get through Rio Bravo, either. Hawks and westerns just don’t work for me.
The "intensity" in 'Red River' builds slowly and steadily, tightening the viewer up for a great ending, only to crash into mediocrity.
And Clift was fine.
Love LA Confidential
It was even more surprising to me since I was just coming to realize the futility of extolling to young women the merits of Lawrence of Arabia, another movie without young women, or any women, or romantic relationships—unless you count that Turkish rapist homosexual. Which reminds me, will Lawrence be cancelled as homophobic for reveling in the artillery bombardment of the Turks after being sodomized or are #MeToo revenge fantasies permitted against homosexual men as well as against heterosexual men? I mean, Lawrence didn't consent, which we used to hear was so important for "sex positivity", so that seems like it should put Lawrence in the right, but then the children being tendered to groomer clowns at drag queen shows by their gormless mothers didn't consent either, and we're told it's hateful and wrong to oppose that. And it's also wrong and hateful to worry about, or even notice, the British girls raped by Paki grooming gangs, so maybe consent isn't that important after all. This wokisme is so confusing. It's good that we have the wise heads in the prestige press to explain to us peasants what the Current Morality is.
But anyway, yeah, some women, even very feminine women, like Master & Commander. Maybe they like masculine men. After all, masculine men enjoy feminine women. Almost as if opposites attract or something. There's a phrase you probably haven't heard in while. Particularly not from the likes of Gabriella Paiella. (Stereotypically, Paiella's prestige journalism seems to be an outgrowth of her dating frustrations. "Sailer's Second Law of Female Journalism: The second most heartfelt articles by a female journalist will be demands that cultural tastes be revised in order to simplify her dating life."?)
https://pics.wikifeet.com/Gabriella-Paiella-Feet-4485110.jpg
---------As a peasant, I can tell you that whatever else Witness was, it wasn't very authentic.Replies: @LadyTheo, @Wilkey
The “Master & Commander” series of books (aka the Aubrey/Maturin novels) actually have quite a lot of romance in them, and the author was a huge fan of Jane Austen – which is why his main character has the initials J.A. Though every novel eventually features a sea battle, some are set almost completely on land, and only get to the seagoing stuff in the last few pages.
Weir’s mistake was to start somewhere in the middle of the series, far from land and women. He made a fantastic standalone movie, but it was a terrible way to start a franchise, if that was ever his intent.
The potential of “Master & Commander” remains almost completely untapped. Modern CGI gives Hollywood a chance to make a great M&C series on a reasonable budget. Given the fierce competition among streaming services I would be shocked if one of them doesn’t snap up the rights to it in the next few years. They could easily get at least five seasons or more out of the books.
Agree that Weir made a fantastic standalone movie but I don't think starting a franchise was ever his intent. His filmography has some recurring themes and he's known for great visuals and good use of music. But his films are all over the place as for a storylines go. And I don't think he gives a flip.
I saw an interview with him and while he was very genial, he made it clear he wanted to make the movies he was interested in making. Period.
For a good non-fiction take on this, Seize the Fire by Adam Nicolson is a great book about the Battle of Trafalgar and about the warships and navies of the time. Yes, the English navy WAS better than the competition. Indeed, the entire English nation of the 18th and 19th centuries was about the most amazing flowering of human development ever seen. It's extraordinary how quickly they plummeted from peak humanity to the cucked, invaded, hapless nation of failure that they are today.Replies: @Ben Kurtz
Funny what a couple of World Wars will do to ya…
He was a pretty taciturn guy, it was hard to get much out of him about those days, except about how serious it was out there. But he was also a sometime bootlegger and rum-runner during Prohibition, and he had some very funny stories about that.
The one story he had about deep Atlantic sailing, the thing that made him quit the whole business and head down first to Boston then to NYC, was a story so weird and improbable that I wasn’t sure I believed it myself, so if I repeated it here I bet the skepticism would be tenfold. But then, weird things do in fact happen so who knows.
I'm amazed the films even got made.Replies: @Wilkey
They got made. With an entirely white cast. They managed to win 17 Oscars, including 11 for the final movie. Most importantly, they managed to outgross the intensely PC Star Wars prequels by almost $500 million (not counting toy sales).
The zeitgeist has absolutely ruined Amazon’s Middle Earth series, which is a complete and total piece of shit, with an appallingly illogical plot and a horrifically bad cast. Watch the Critical Drinker’s take on the series if you really want a good cry.
Nothing can touch Star Wars toy and other sales. Disney merchandises everything and don't even need to make anything profitable at the box office. Much like the Dallas Cowboys. Doesn't matter if they never win another title, the star sells itself.
The 1985 one.
The zeitgeist has absolutely ruined Amazon’s Middle Earth series, which is a complete and total piece of shit, with an appallingly illogical plot and a horrifically bad cast. Watch the Critical Drinker’s take on the series if you really want a good cry.Replies: @Ron Mexico
“PC Star Wars prequels by almost $500 million (not counting toy sales).”
Nothing can touch Star Wars toy and other sales. Disney merchandises everything and don’t even need to make anything profitable at the box office. Much like the Dallas Cowboys. Doesn’t matter if they never win another title, the star sells itself.
“Weir’s mistake was to start somewhere in the middle of the series, far from land and women. He made a fantastic standalone movie, but it was a terrible way to start a franchise, if that was ever his intent.”
Agree that Weir made a fantastic standalone movie but I don’t think starting a franchise was ever his intent. His filmography has some recurring themes and he’s known for great visuals and good use of music. But his films are all over the place as for a storylines go. And I don’t think he gives a flip.
I saw an interview with him and while he was very genial, he made it clear he wanted to make the movies he was interested in making. Period.
Despite "modern trends" there are still a decent amount of similar movies, almost all are period pieces, because that's the only way you can get away with a lack of diversity, and "the message" (for you Critical Drinker fans).
If the woke retards would leave well enough alone, there could be more, but they're not interested in great cinema, frankly they're too stupid to know what great cinema is. They just want their queer, homo-woke femi-nazis values reinforced, so they can convince themselves they are "right" for another day, despite reality screaming that they are most assuredly wrong, but I digress...
In the Heart of the Sea was also quite good, as was the remake of of All Quiet on the Western Front. 1917 has real merit. Dunkirk is another. Das Boot is arguably the best submarine movie ever made.
There's an obvious theme here- seafaring, WWI, WWII, etc. Period pieces from a different time and culture; That's how you can make a movie without modern schtick.
Even Tarantino movies buck the trend of woke garbage.
As David Cole has remarked, this super-woke, super-diverse trend in Hollywood won't last for long.
A- the Jews that built Hollywood are now on the outs, since they aren't angry black women, or some other modern hero of the moment.
B- it's costing those same Jews a lot of money, and losing money isn't a Jewish hobby.
C- the products suck, and just getting green haired SJW trannies and malcontents to attend your film, won't cut it. You need normal people to buy tickets and make a profit.
Part of the obvious appeal of these period pieces, with male dominated story lines, and characters, is that they offer pure adventure. Challenges, often life or death, but pure. Not muddled with a bunch of horse shit moral ambiguity... we get another of that garbage in real life. Another factor is that the almost purely binary struggle of life and death, harkens back to when life itself was more pure.
Being on a ship, fighting the enemy, and the sea, knowing that death is waiting, underneath you, at every second, and that one single mistake will hasten your arrival... that's REAL.
It's also a base human, and specifically masculine, genetic imperative. It's an internal voice that has been sounding in our heads for the entire length of human existence.
Lastly, there is just so much majesty with sailing the open seas. A purely masculine affair, uncompromised by any of the modern bullshit. It was real, gritty, brave, dangerous, and heralded. There was an honored dignity in being a sailor, recognized for their guts and toughness. You can't "cheat" in that world, you can't fake it until you make it. You either learn your trade, and apply it well, or you end up dead, or lost, or starving, or eaten by cannibals, or worse, sharks. It was a magical time of exploration and free market capitalism.
Alas, better days indeed.Replies: @Whiskey
Nope, Woke is here to stay.
A. Hollywood is not run by Jews, but by Hedge Funds. Who are mostly Jews but not the Jews of Hollywood (there is a big difference) and are super woke. Example, Disney is really run by Larry Fink of Blackrock as Blackrock is the majority shareholder. The guy running Vanguard which is the #2 shareholder is also super woke and wants super woke stuff.
B. The Hedge funds don’t care how much money Hollywood loses. Its not a market economy but a palace one. Big money, not mom-pop laundries and diners, depends on access to the powerful in Washington to get bigger money. Example: Super Woke Blackrock got the exclusive franchise from super-woke Biden people to “reconstruct” Ukraine managing about 3.5 trillion in “reconstruction funds.” Wokeness and losses at Disney are just a rounding error in the cost of doing business.
C. The people running Hedge Funds really, REALLY hate ordinary Americans and want them DEAD DEAD DEAD. So Woke suits them just fine.
D. So no one shows up for the super-woke, super diverse bs that Hollywood craps out? Who cares? Agents, stars, directors, producers, executives all get paid. Big time. With all the money that the Palace hands out to Hedge Funds, they can keep Hollywood going at losses forever. Bonus, they call fans racists, or tranny phobes for not seeing their garbage.
E. Hollywood can’t produce anything but woke if it wanted to. Bad Robot is about the pinnacle of modern Hollywood, and Rian Johnson and JJ Abrams are both super, super woke. All the execs are black lesbians with not so secret gay agendas, and super woke. All the writers are super lesbian fat icky Asian/Indian/black women with not so secret agendas. The showrunners and producers all come from the CW (no, not kidding, that’s who is writing the Daredevil series, the person who ran CW’s Batwoman).
All the people who used to produce non woke stuff that was occasionally good have been pushed out in the last 15 years, and are too old and non-connected now outside of Tom Cruise and Keanu Reeves. Tarantino himself is older, John Carpenter is retired, Michael Mann is retired, Weir is retired (“The Last Wave” was his best movie), Peter Jackson is mostly retired (just lending his name to the latest efforts on LoTR), others are dead, or out of favor.
Like constant derailments, lack of meat, chicken, eggs, milk etc. this is just another element of the systemic collapse of the West. We can’t even make movies and TV any more, that is not woke lectures. That is collapse for you. The Romans could not do anything at the end, either.
They just shut down a few of the big tech banks in San Francisco, and the depositors were coming in in droves demanding cashiers checks, essentially creating a run on these banks. Next up… Hollywood! You can find the story on Zero Hedge.
The entire financial system is in a state of chaos and on the edge of meltdown. The small hats are going down with the ship like the rest of us.
I’ve read the book, but had no idea there was a TV series. Thanks!
I remember Spielberg going nuts about continuity on Jaws WRT weather, but then again, he grew up in the Southwest. As someone from the Midwest, I’m used to rapidly changing weather conditions so I never got what the big deal is (for the record, the Midwest and Northeast have more unpredictable weather than the rest of the country, and Jaws was shot on and near MA).
A. Hollywood is not run by Jews, but by Hedge Funds. Who are mostly Jews but not the Jews of Hollywood (there is a big difference) and are super woke. Example, Disney is really run by Larry Fink of Blackrock as Blackrock is the majority shareholder. The guy running Vanguard which is the #2 shareholder is also super woke and wants super woke stuff.
B. The Hedge funds don't care how much money Hollywood loses. Its not a market economy but a palace one. Big money, not mom-pop laundries and diners, depends on access to the powerful in Washington to get bigger money. Example: Super Woke Blackrock got the exclusive franchise from super-woke Biden people to "reconstruct" Ukraine managing about 3.5 trillion in "reconstruction funds." Wokeness and losses at Disney are just a rounding error in the cost of doing business.
C. The people running Hedge Funds really, REALLY hate ordinary Americans and want them DEAD DEAD DEAD. So Woke suits them just fine.
D. So no one shows up for the super-woke, super diverse bs that Hollywood craps out? Who cares? Agents, stars, directors, producers, executives all get paid. Big time. With all the money that the Palace hands out to Hedge Funds, they can keep Hollywood going at losses forever. Bonus, they call fans racists, or tranny phobes for not seeing their garbage.
E. Hollywood can't produce anything but woke if it wanted to. Bad Robot is about the pinnacle of modern Hollywood, and Rian Johnson and JJ Abrams are both super, super woke. All the execs are black lesbians with not so secret gay agendas, and super woke. All the writers are super lesbian fat icky Asian/Indian/black women with not so secret agendas. The showrunners and producers all come from the CW (no, not kidding, that's who is writing the Daredevil series, the person who ran CW's Batwoman).
All the people who used to produce non woke stuff that was occasionally good have been pushed out in the last 15 years, and are too old and non-connected now outside of Tom Cruise and Keanu Reeves. Tarantino himself is older, John Carpenter is retired, Michael Mann is retired, Weir is retired ("The Last Wave" was his best movie), Peter Jackson is mostly retired (just lending his name to the latest efforts on LoTR), others are dead, or out of favor.
Like constant derailments, lack of meat, chicken, eggs, milk etc. this is just another element of the systemic collapse of the West. We can't even make movies and TV any more, that is not woke lectures. That is collapse for you. The Romans could not do anything at the end, either.Replies: @Feryl, @Vinnyvette, @Prester John, @Wilkey
I really don’t GAF about Tarantino, he’s a CultMarx propagandist anyway, and has made (imbecilic) claims that the Reagan era was as culturally stifling as the current woke era. For a director who is far more verbose and gregarious than the norm, we’ve had plenty of opportunities to see him confirm that he’s no where near the type to courageously go against the grain. All of his aesthetics and beliefs are totally in line with a culture and soul in an advanced state of decay.
"Death Proof" has the best car chase I've ever seen, even though the rest of the movie is... I can't remember what the rest of it's about, actually. Kill Bill 1&2 is about everything and nothing, it's really just about being great at making movies. That's all that counts with that guy, everything else is just hype and noise.Replies: @Feryl, @John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan
So, this guy was a hero in a cult movie?
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/FiCAUL4xU1o/maxresdefault.jpgReplies: @Harry Baldwin, @Studley
Steve says he’s lost his looks but what if it’s…Crowe wants to be a well-girthed, big-proportioned man to show off his money (like Indians or the Buddha)?
His cousins, Jeff and Martin Crowe, were stalwarts, and the best players, of New Zealand Test Cricket in the 80’s/90’s. Not an inch of fat on them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Crowe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Crowe
To lose weight, Steve’s sensible advice to women, “Talk to your cousin who’s slim and eat her diet/recipes.”
Martin Crowe RIP but Jeff Crowe, International Cricket Umpire could give tips.
I had been meaning to watch Master and Commander for a long time. This post prompted me to finally do it. I just finished it. I was entranced. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen something that made forget everything but what I was watching. Fantastic. Right up there with…
Walter Matthaeu’s Pirates
Charlton Heston’s Treasure Island
Mel Gibson’s The Bounty
Just to pass time, I then turned on Amazon’s Rings of Power series–gag! What a difference!
That was a prequel, not a remake.
I suspect many in this crowd will have seen and love John Boorman’s “Excalibur.” Saw that at age 14 and have always loved it. Made my wife and two teenage daughters watch it with me some years ago and they loved it too. Didn’t have the same result when I got them to watch M&C with me. Highly recommend Excalibur for those who’ve not seen it.
Nobody with any sense really cares at all about Tarantino’s thoughts or opinions about politics or society or culture, or even the thematic content of his actual movies. (“Django” and “Basterds” are politically ludicrous, but damn that is some good film-making.) All one should really care about is that he is really really good at making movies, he loves doing it, and he is a master craftsman in just about every form and style you can think of. It’s like John Lennon once said, “I’m not really a musician or a thinker, I’m an artist — give me a tuba, a pencil and a turnip and I’ll figure out something interesting to do with them.”
“Death Proof” has the best car chase I’ve ever seen, even though the rest of the movie is… I can’t remember what the rest of it’s about, actually. Kill Bill 1&2 is about everything and nothing, it’s really just about being great at making movies. That’s all that counts with that guy, everything else is just hype and noise.
AG and WOTN had a lot of remarkably bad parts but were still entertaining because they respected cinematic fundamentals. When you have Crowe playing off Denzel you can afford to make mistakes.
A. Hollywood is not run by Jews, but by Hedge Funds. Who are mostly Jews but not the Jews of Hollywood (there is a big difference) and are super woke. Example, Disney is really run by Larry Fink of Blackrock as Blackrock is the majority shareholder. The guy running Vanguard which is the #2 shareholder is also super woke and wants super woke stuff.
B. The Hedge funds don't care how much money Hollywood loses. Its not a market economy but a palace one. Big money, not mom-pop laundries and diners, depends on access to the powerful in Washington to get bigger money. Example: Super Woke Blackrock got the exclusive franchise from super-woke Biden people to "reconstruct" Ukraine managing about 3.5 trillion in "reconstruction funds." Wokeness and losses at Disney are just a rounding error in the cost of doing business.
C. The people running Hedge Funds really, REALLY hate ordinary Americans and want them DEAD DEAD DEAD. So Woke suits them just fine.
D. So no one shows up for the super-woke, super diverse bs that Hollywood craps out? Who cares? Agents, stars, directors, producers, executives all get paid. Big time. With all the money that the Palace hands out to Hedge Funds, they can keep Hollywood going at losses forever. Bonus, they call fans racists, or tranny phobes for not seeing their garbage.
E. Hollywood can't produce anything but woke if it wanted to. Bad Robot is about the pinnacle of modern Hollywood, and Rian Johnson and JJ Abrams are both super, super woke. All the execs are black lesbians with not so secret gay agendas, and super woke. All the writers are super lesbian fat icky Asian/Indian/black women with not so secret agendas. The showrunners and producers all come from the CW (no, not kidding, that's who is writing the Daredevil series, the person who ran CW's Batwoman).
All the people who used to produce non woke stuff that was occasionally good have been pushed out in the last 15 years, and are too old and non-connected now outside of Tom Cruise and Keanu Reeves. Tarantino himself is older, John Carpenter is retired, Michael Mann is retired, Weir is retired ("The Last Wave" was his best movie), Peter Jackson is mostly retired (just lending his name to the latest efforts on LoTR), others are dead, or out of favor.
Like constant derailments, lack of meat, chicken, eggs, milk etc. this is just another element of the systemic collapse of the West. We can't even make movies and TV any more, that is not woke lectures. That is collapse for you. The Romans could not do anything at the end, either.Replies: @Feryl, @Vinnyvette, @Prester John, @Wilkey
Although I don’t disagree at all with your assessment, eventually the well will run dry and the Jews won’t be able to keep bleeding money, and playing shell games with the financial system to continue funding woke.
They just shut down a few of the big tech banks in San Francisco, and the depositors were coming in in droves demanding cashiers checks, essentially creating a run on these banks. Next up… Hollywood! You can find the story on Zero Hedge.
The entire financial system is in a state of chaos and on the edge of meltdown. The small hats are going down with the ship like the rest of us.
Can’t use the buttons yet, agree and well said brother!
Even Kurt Russel, the nominal protagonist, is shown to be impulsive and irritable from the beginning. It's largely based on sheer luck as to how long a character survived in the movie. Part of what makes the movie work is it's sense of unpredictability, both in terms of what the monster does but also in terms of character behavior and motivation. You can mostly understand and empathize* with these characters and their reactions to an increasingly grim situation, rather than the lazy horror movie trope of giving the audience dull characters who the audience wants dead.
What would the movie be like with a woman character added? Ever seen Day of the Dead? That movie has an equally grim atmosphere as The Thing, but due to a woman scientist character, Day of the Dead has male characters descending to even greater depths of hysteria and rage then we see in the The Thing. Plus there's also jealousy and predatory threats made to the woman.
*Note that I didn't say "like" the characters. You don't need likable characters for a movie to work, as long as their behavior makes sense in the context of the setting and the story.Replies: @Harry Baldwin, @Vinnyvette
The original the Thing aka the Thing from Outer Space, made in the fifties has Margret Sheridan listed as “the star.”
But her role is more or less as a sidekick to the male lead scientist.
Her presence was not as obnoxious as one would expect, but she did provide fodder for the “we must save the woman at all costs trope.”
I like the original as I’m a big black and white sci fi – horror fan, but the Kurt Russell version is considerably more entertaining; all the guys are pretty much alpha, and it’s more about the life and death struggle and not so much “we must capture the creature alive to study it” nerdy or old “Professor types” to be found, and no woman to milk the “save the woman at all costs, we must not hurt the poor creature” tropes.
Kurt Russell is a compelling star in anything, the actors in the original were mostly uncharismatic B listers.
It was Paul Bettany who had the good fortune to marry Jennifer Connelly who was in the recent Maverick movie.
Ok, let me generate some more text:
Watching films and reading books is kind of gay in the sense that you let someone else tell you stories and lead you on. But still we unwittingly think “Alexander the Great – he’s just like me!” while we stare at the screen.
Weir pretty effectively removes this conceit by giving us a claustrophobic first-person view of the crew rejecting the lieutenant’s leadership and vetting him out with superstitious bullying. The median viewer, a nerdy six figure senior software architect who would rather not have any subordinates gets it and thanks Weir for the gentle narrative vehicle of superstition. In Band of Brothers the vetting is much more raw, even if humor is involved.
Weir is much like Lucky Jack: humbly follows conventions and formalities, but does not shelter himself with them. Crowe seems like a good guy who has concern for the wellbeing of the crew and always looks dapper, able to handle any situation. It is always impressive when an actor manages to be a likable leader, and Crowe is better in this regard than Jürgen Prochnow in Das Boot. To see a typical result, watch the submarine movie with Matthew McConakee in it.
Leaders who put burning matchsticks in their hair and strive to be a “legend” and generate anecdotes of themselves are pretty often assholes in my experience, they are always busy performing their act. Maybe there are movies that act like this.
M&C is not really a cult movie, but is to cult movies as good leaders are to cult leaders. The enthusiasts are not going to wear high heels for this movie, but they would follow it through fire and battle.
Jack relents from his hunt when he risks losing his best friend, the ship’s surgeon. Having lost the chase he gives slack to his crew and their scientific endeavours. They are on Galapagos islands, so there is the insight of evolution hiding there. We know of course that it is going to be denied from them, like Aristotle’s book of comedy in The Name of the Rose. Evolution is a real idea, but pretty abstract as McGuffins go. The nerd who got on Weir’s ship and suspended his disbelief gets his spoils here: the feeling of being on the edge of a monumental discovery.
The island bughunting scene is religious in the sense that childhood and learning and basic research are sacred. It is just a small reprieve in the fight for things like southern blubber resources, afforded out of love for a friend. What other movie has this? Ultimately they lose nothing from their daydreaming on the island, but gain the jump on their enemy. God or evolution loves those who would become like children.
When the young officer mourns his fallen friend, he follows the surgeon’s suggestion and drowns his sorrows in scientific work. So yeah, people who find this relatable are going to be an upscale audience.
The ending in medias res is perfect: the ship is like a planet from the past that came to impart rejuvenating kinetic energy to the viewer and then continued on its way.
When I hit the lottery, I will piss away much of the money by making Flashman movies. I think they would be wildly popular, and horrify all the right people. The books are a hoot.
I never really see the absence of women in a movie as a drawback. In fact, I find it refreshing. Lawrence of Arabia, The Beast, The Lost Patrol and Das Boot all had few if any women, and were very good.
I recall a discussion on a movie message board about how much better Red River would have been without poor Joanne Dru's annoying character, Tess Millay. One guy even wondered if there was a way to edit her out of the movie.Replies: @Diversity Heretic, @Prester John, @bob sykes, @james wilson, @John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan, @AndrewR
You’re what is known in some circles as a “pick-me.” I certainly don’t need romance or even women in a film in order to enjoy it. But many people do like to see themselves represented on screen. I’ve never seen Master and Commander but I imagine it could have been improved by throwing in some sort of romance. When you’re spending that sort of money, you really ought to try to have mass appeal.
In one sense, yes, I am.
I have stereotypically female interests but I also enjoy some things men are more likely to enjoy. And I think the trend I've seen grow in my lifetime where women join in men's interests only to demand feminizing changes is offensive.
Just one example A lot of women love both movie versions of "The Women". I've never seen a woman suggest those movies need male characters onscreen. Yet I've seen women complain about the lack of female characters in the movies we're discussing here.
That's not fair and I don't like it. In that sense, I'm very much a "pick-me". I don't like the many women who expect or demand special treatment or exemptions from fair play once they enter a male province. I'm not like that (and the commenters here who identify as female and whom I respect aren't like that, either).
As to Master and Commander, your statement that "I’ve never seen Master and Commander but I imagine it could have been improved by throwing in some sort of romance " is self-evidently silly. It's something a woman who complains about the absence of substantial female characters in Lawrence of Arabia would say. (There was actually a thread about that on the old IMDb message board.)
And your comment "When you’re spending that sort of money, you really ought to try to have mass appeal" is equally silly. I googled the movie and got this : "Was Master and Commander a flop?
It was a moderate success at the box office, grossing $212 million worldwide. The film was critically well received and garnered Weir the BAFTA Award for Best Direction. At the 76th Academy Awards, the film was nominated for 10 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director."
Finally you say "I certainly don’t need romance or even women in a film in order to enjoy it. But many people do like to see themselves represented on screen. "
Yes, we all got that memo. The constant complaint about the lack of representation women and people of color in movies of every genre vies with white people touching black hair as one of the crises besetting the West. It's beyond tiresome. If a woman can't see someone onscreen different from herself portraying human emotions and identify with those emotions, she should stick to romcoms. Last time I checked, there were plenty of them around.
The movie is based on what Black people did first. Racist European historians White-washed the real story.
The African Empires spread knowledge and goodness globally. But they were too altruistic for their own good … other, lesser people groups took advantage of the inherent generosity of Blacks and brought them down out of jealousy.
Black goodness that is lost to history. And the world suffers.
A. Hollywood is not run by Jews, but by Hedge Funds. Who are mostly Jews but not the Jews of Hollywood (there is a big difference) and are super woke. Example, Disney is really run by Larry Fink of Blackrock as Blackrock is the majority shareholder. The guy running Vanguard which is the #2 shareholder is also super woke and wants super woke stuff.
B. The Hedge funds don't care how much money Hollywood loses. Its not a market economy but a palace one. Big money, not mom-pop laundries and diners, depends on access to the powerful in Washington to get bigger money. Example: Super Woke Blackrock got the exclusive franchise from super-woke Biden people to "reconstruct" Ukraine managing about 3.5 trillion in "reconstruction funds." Wokeness and losses at Disney are just a rounding error in the cost of doing business.
C. The people running Hedge Funds really, REALLY hate ordinary Americans and want them DEAD DEAD DEAD. So Woke suits them just fine.
D. So no one shows up for the super-woke, super diverse bs that Hollywood craps out? Who cares? Agents, stars, directors, producers, executives all get paid. Big time. With all the money that the Palace hands out to Hedge Funds, they can keep Hollywood going at losses forever. Bonus, they call fans racists, or tranny phobes for not seeing their garbage.
E. Hollywood can't produce anything but woke if it wanted to. Bad Robot is about the pinnacle of modern Hollywood, and Rian Johnson and JJ Abrams are both super, super woke. All the execs are black lesbians with not so secret gay agendas, and super woke. All the writers are super lesbian fat icky Asian/Indian/black women with not so secret agendas. The showrunners and producers all come from the CW (no, not kidding, that's who is writing the Daredevil series, the person who ran CW's Batwoman).
All the people who used to produce non woke stuff that was occasionally good have been pushed out in the last 15 years, and are too old and non-connected now outside of Tom Cruise and Keanu Reeves. Tarantino himself is older, John Carpenter is retired, Michael Mann is retired, Weir is retired ("The Last Wave" was his best movie), Peter Jackson is mostly retired (just lending his name to the latest efforts on LoTR), others are dead, or out of favor.
Like constant derailments, lack of meat, chicken, eggs, milk etc. this is just another element of the systemic collapse of the West. We can't even make movies and TV any more, that is not woke lectures. That is collapse for you. The Romans could not do anything at the end, either.Replies: @Feryl, @Vinnyvette, @Prester John, @Wilkey
The Woke phenomenon in and of itself is symptomatic of the decline of what we used to call “Western Civilization.” I think that the late Alistair Cooke had it right all along when he said that an obsession with the weird, the strange and the bizarre is surely a symptom of a society slowly descending into the toilet.
His cousins, Jeff and Martin Crowe, were stalwarts, and the best players, of New Zealand Test Cricket in the 80's/90's. Not an inch of fat on them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Crowe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Crowe
To lose weight, Steve's sensible advice to women, "Talk to your cousin who's slim and eat her diet/recipes."
Martin Crowe RIP but Jeff Crowe, International Cricket Umpire could give tips.Replies: @David Jones
Jeff was a good player, but Martin was a great.
Aleister Crowley also wrote fiction (ex. Moonchild).
I am in the minority when I claim that Castaneda was actually a good novelist in his 4 or 5 novels, before he started writing pseudo-philosophical garbage tutorials (his last 3 or 4 books).
"Death Proof" has the best car chase I've ever seen, even though the rest of the movie is... I can't remember what the rest of it's about, actually. Kill Bill 1&2 is about everything and nothing, it's really just about being great at making movies. That's all that counts with that guy, everything else is just hype and noise.Replies: @Feryl, @John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan
My beef with Tarantino as filmmaker is that his movies tend to be cartoons for adults who should know better. It’s trash with little soul, humanity, or good humor. As is often the case with a lot of the “post-modern”/”alternative” BS which Quentin’s generation popularized in the 90’s (and which almost inexplicably has to varying degrees been celebrated by Boomers). As someone who grew up witnessing the growing distaste for sincerity and aesthetic standards which marked the 90’s, I think a lot of things which came to prominence in the 90’s are best left forgotten as the product of an era in which people became a bit too smug and detached for their own good. By now, most people have forgotten what much 90’s culture was like, it’s just not that appealing or well-done to justify much nostalgia or re-visits.
'80s Nights are a regular occurrence because the '80s were fun and optimistic compared to the '90s.Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease, @Feryl
C’mon now, let’s not forget the beautiful Brazilian gal who catches the eye of Captain Jack Aubrey when the Surprise stops to resupply.
I loved the sort of cool professionalism depicted in this movie. What you also see in 2001, or The Right Stuff, or The Andromeda Strain. It’s something that’s pretty much never seen in movies these days, and has even been purged from eg. NASA (where they now need to whoop and holler and yell expletives whenever their probes succeed in landing or parking in orbit or whatever).
I also love the honest portrayal of a now alien society (14 yr olds in battle?!?). One of things that was also great about the HBO series Rome. And again, something that you won’t ever see again today, when all entertainment must promote The Message.
I understand ‘cult movie’ to simply be one that was a failure at its release, but grew in popularity over time.
Bettany also played Crowe’s imaginary friend in A Beautiful Mind
Yes, but he was better as a fake genuine prophet & occult “instructor”. LRH is unthinkable without Crowley.
I am in the minority when I claim that Castaneda was actually a good novelist in his 4 or 5 novels, before he started writing pseudo-philosophical garbage tutorials (his last 3 or 4 books).
The one story he had about deep Atlantic sailing, the thing that made him quit the whole business and head down first to Boston then to NYC, was a story so weird and improbable that I wasn't sure I believed it myself, so if I repeated it here I bet the skepticism would be tenfold. But then, weird things do in fact happen so who knows.Replies: @Coemgen
Yeah, the old Newfie’s normal day-to-day existence, 30 ft seas, 10 ft snow falls, are beyond comprehension for most of us … especially their dealing with their environment sans gloves.
Red River definitely has the worst ending of any western I've ever seen. But I can't agree the rest of the film is great. Hawks certainly knew how to direct intense movies (Scarface) but I think he forces the intensity in Red River. Plus, I think Clift was horribly miscast.
The couple of times I've seen it, I keep thinking, "This isn't how Ford would have done it!"
I've never been able to get through Rio Bravo, either. Hawks and westerns just don't work for me.Replies: @John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan
We will have to agree to disagree.
The “intensity” in ‘Red River’ builds slowly and steadily, tightening the viewer up for a great ending, only to crash into mediocrity.
And Clift was fine.
Tarantino is terrible, and that movie everyone here seemed to like – Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – is particularly dreck.
I tried watching Once Upon, but got bored after several minutes when nothing was happening. Maybe if I'd seen it in the theater (captive audience, more willing to indulge), I'd have liked it. But I just rented it on Prime and I don't care about losing the $3.99 if something doesn't intrigue me after a few minutes.
Have not tried the Kill Bills or Django. I'm wary and suspecting I wouldn't like them.
I think Steve feels a little more ties to the movie industry and is a little more willing to watch a flick that is not as much a good story or draws you in to think you are the protagonist, because he's going to write about or analyze it. In other words the actual entertainment is slightly less a factor to him than the typical viewer who just wants an immersive experience. Plus, I suspect he watches in theaters, which usually makes it easier to give a movie a chance and is a better viewing experience also.
Few movies that I suspect the Sailersphere would like (many have probably seen them): Predestination, Dredd (NOT Judge Dredd).Replies: @John Johnson, @John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan
"Death Proof" has the best car chase I've ever seen, even though the rest of the movie is... I can't remember what the rest of it's about, actually. Kill Bill 1&2 is about everything and nothing, it's really just about being great at making movies. That's all that counts with that guy, everything else is just hype and noise.Replies: @Feryl, @John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan
Tarantino movies are garbage.
The flipside of this coin are ’80s Nights.
’80s Nights are a regular occurrence because the ’80s were fun and optimistic compared to the ’90s.
The 70's had gaudy and tacky fashion, maudlin soft rock and ditzy disco ruling the charts. Arena rock was better by comparison but didn't dominate the airwaves as "classic rock" radio would have you believe. The R&B stuff was pretty good and actually did get lots of airplay. Going by the charts, not much music of the period was all that edgy or dark, so 70's music was not really accurate to what life was like at the time, except in the sense of people blissfully ignoring just how many awful things were going on in the 70's. But then, a lot of 70's movies were sleazy to bordering on nihilistic.
The 80's did have an uptick in dark and mysterious songs, rising awareness of serial killers, AIDS, and Nuclear Armageddon no doubt playing a role (indeed you might be surprised at the number of mainstream songs and movies which reference those topics and related issues). Slasher movies got big. But also, the impact of the mainstream movies and music was often softened with a glam touch and a degree of slickness; still have to give credit to the 80's culture for often having an intriguing duality of lightness and darkness. 80's graphic design and movie lighting did often make use of chiaroscuro, a big reason it's my favorite decade for aesthetics. The 80's also gave us a massive slew of children's pop culture icons which still persist to this day, due to Reagan de-regulating children's programming and, due to declining creativity, subsequent decades have not been able to match the 80's for pop culture icons period.
The 90's basically threw the nuances of 80's stuff out the window and went all in a particular thing. If it was for kids, stuff was hyper-zany. If it was for teens/young adults, it celebrated "edginess" or detachment. If it was for aging Boomers, well, it was just....There. Shot in Earth tones, people wearing Earth tones, as a defiant rejection of the hi-contrast look that way big in the 80's. Moreso than any particular icons, the 90's are usually remembered as a vibe, often contrasted with how people were in the 80's. But icons are easier to celebrate than moods, so really, what do people have nostalgia for WRT the 90's? Not much, especially when the biggest icon, Kurt Cobain, literally blew his head off smack dab in the middle of the decade.
'80s Nights are a regular occurrence because the '80s were fun and optimistic compared to the '90s.Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease, @Feryl
“’80s Nights are a regular occurrence because the ’80s were fun and optimistic compared to the ’90s.”
Depends which 80s you lived through.
If I went to an 80s Night party dressed as Ron Vawter, or Crack-ho Magee, or an ATM lobby at 4:00 AM with no sleeping room left on the floor, would people think it was fun and optimistic?
If only I had been intelligent enough to realize how lucky I was at the time, but no, I had to be a grump that couldn't wait to be an adult.
A. Hollywood is not run by Jews, but by Hedge Funds. Who are mostly Jews but not the Jews of Hollywood (there is a big difference) and are super woke. Example, Disney is really run by Larry Fink of Blackrock as Blackrock is the majority shareholder. The guy running Vanguard which is the #2 shareholder is also super woke and wants super woke stuff.
B. The Hedge funds don't care how much money Hollywood loses. Its not a market economy but a palace one. Big money, not mom-pop laundries and diners, depends on access to the powerful in Washington to get bigger money. Example: Super Woke Blackrock got the exclusive franchise from super-woke Biden people to "reconstruct" Ukraine managing about 3.5 trillion in "reconstruction funds." Wokeness and losses at Disney are just a rounding error in the cost of doing business.
C. The people running Hedge Funds really, REALLY hate ordinary Americans and want them DEAD DEAD DEAD. So Woke suits them just fine.
D. So no one shows up for the super-woke, super diverse bs that Hollywood craps out? Who cares? Agents, stars, directors, producers, executives all get paid. Big time. With all the money that the Palace hands out to Hedge Funds, they can keep Hollywood going at losses forever. Bonus, they call fans racists, or tranny phobes for not seeing their garbage.
E. Hollywood can't produce anything but woke if it wanted to. Bad Robot is about the pinnacle of modern Hollywood, and Rian Johnson and JJ Abrams are both super, super woke. All the execs are black lesbians with not so secret gay agendas, and super woke. All the writers are super lesbian fat icky Asian/Indian/black women with not so secret agendas. The showrunners and producers all come from the CW (no, not kidding, that's who is writing the Daredevil series, the person who ran CW's Batwoman).
All the people who used to produce non woke stuff that was occasionally good have been pushed out in the last 15 years, and are too old and non-connected now outside of Tom Cruise and Keanu Reeves. Tarantino himself is older, John Carpenter is retired, Michael Mann is retired, Weir is retired ("The Last Wave" was his best movie), Peter Jackson is mostly retired (just lending his name to the latest efforts on LoTR), others are dead, or out of favor.
Like constant derailments, lack of meat, chicken, eggs, milk etc. this is just another element of the systemic collapse of the West. We can't even make movies and TV any more, that is not woke lectures. That is collapse for you. The Romans could not do anything at the end, either.Replies: @Feryl, @Vinnyvette, @Prester John, @Wilkey
Vanguard isn’t a hedge fund. It’s an investment advisor that offers mutual funds, ETFs, etc. It manages a lot of 401(k)’s, including the ones offered by two of my last three employers. If you own individual shares of a company you can vote as a share holder, but if you own mutual funds, etc, the mutual fund manager votes for you – often voting against your own interests.
I started high school just as the 90s were beginning. 90s television was undeniably better than 80s television. Frasier and Friends, two of the best sitcoms ever, were starting just as I transitioned from high school to college. In terms of movies they were roughly equal. But 90s music couldn’t hold a candle to 80s music. There were some good tunes here and there in the 90s, of course, but the 80s had all the great bands. I have a certain bias in that I got most of musical taste from my older siblings (I’m the second youngest of eight kids), but most of my friends felt the same way.
80's music had a lot of blink and you'll miss them bands who could make a couple exciting tunes and then fade away before you got sick of the artist (the record industry really gutted marketing in the 80's due to the excesses of the 70's creative industries, it's not like today where artists get shoved in your face 10 years past the point at which they have any vitality). Most New Wave acts were like that, a couple like The Cure and Depeche Mode did stay afloat into the 90's. Of course there also were legacy arena rock groups for the first head of the decade (who basically fell totally off the radar afterwards) plus the metal of the 2nd half of the decade. Of course we all know the pop juggernauts Micheal Jackson and Madonna, but then again, every era has over-exposed and mentally unwell pop stars. People generally don't mention it, but Springsteen, Mellencamp, Brian Adams, Eddie Money etc. were basically meat and potatoes rockers who weren't New Wave, Arena rock, or metal. Just, uh, rock and roll.
The 90's music summary: the first half of the decade suffered from the emergence of rap almost totally corrupting black musical contributions as well as angsty white Portlandia vibes suddenly giving us music that was downcast at best to hipster ironic doucheyness at worst (e.g. Primus ,Rob Zombie, and excruciating dork novelty hits like Peaches). Plus there was still stuff that sounded 80's but like a sickly terminally ill variant of if (e.g. fourth wave hair metal that makes Ratt sound like Cannibal Corpse). The second half of the decade was an improvement, with energetic pop punk, Nu Metal at least having more balls than early 90's hipster rock, and a good amount of pop songs being carefree and upbeat. A lot of this can be traced to crime declining in the late 90's plus the 90's economic boom. Also, the audience for popular music in the late 90's was late Gen X, who I guess just weren't as pretentious or "edgy" as early Gen X.
'80s Nights are a regular occurrence because the '80s were fun and optimistic compared to the '90s.Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease, @Feryl
The 70’s, 80′, and 90’s all were pretty two-faced decades both in real life and in pop culture. Violent crime and abusively dysfunctional homes were pretty common through all three decades, yet all decades were marked by a widely shared notion about trying to “correct” the chaos set in motion by the 60’s. But the key word is “try”, rarely were there successes.
The 70’s had gaudy and tacky fashion, maudlin soft rock and ditzy disco ruling the charts. Arena rock was better by comparison but didn’t dominate the airwaves as “classic rock” radio would have you believe. The R&B stuff was pretty good and actually did get lots of airplay. Going by the charts, not much music of the period was all that edgy or dark, so 70’s music was not really accurate to what life was like at the time, except in the sense of people blissfully ignoring just how many awful things were going on in the 70’s. But then, a lot of 70’s movies were sleazy to bordering on nihilistic.
The 80’s did have an uptick in dark and mysterious songs, rising awareness of serial killers, AIDS, and Nuclear Armageddon no doubt playing a role (indeed you might be surprised at the number of mainstream songs and movies which reference those topics and related issues). Slasher movies got big. But also, the impact of the mainstream movies and music was often softened with a glam touch and a degree of slickness; still have to give credit to the 80’s culture for often having an intriguing duality of lightness and darkness. 80’s graphic design and movie lighting did often make use of chiaroscuro, a big reason it’s my favorite decade for aesthetics. The 80’s also gave us a massive slew of children’s pop culture icons which still persist to this day, due to Reagan de-regulating children’s programming and, due to declining creativity, subsequent decades have not been able to match the 80’s for pop culture icons period.
The 90’s basically threw the nuances of 80’s stuff out the window and went all in a particular thing. If it was for kids, stuff was hyper-zany. If it was for teens/young adults, it celebrated “edginess” or detachment. If it was for aging Boomers, well, it was just….There. Shot in Earth tones, people wearing Earth tones, as a defiant rejection of the hi-contrast look that way big in the 80’s. Moreso than any particular icons, the 90’s are usually remembered as a vibe, often contrasted with how people were in the 80’s. But icons are easier to celebrate than moods, so really, what do people have nostalgia for WRT the 90’s? Not much, especially when the biggest icon, Kurt Cobain, literally blew his head off smack dab in the middle of the decade.
You read my mind, because yes, TV did do much of the heavy lifting for pop culture in the 90’s. Especially WRT sitcoms/comedy. But as for action/horror/drama, TV is always going to be inferior to feature film. Why? Sustaining drama over hours of content is boring. MTV became huge because music videos are perhaps the most impactful media form ever invented. The excitement of a short song with added visual possibilities of photography/ aesthetics/acting/storytelling? Wonderful. Cultural critics tend to hate them (even though big shot movie directors often tried their hand at them in the 80’s) as shallow and frivolous (or allegedly cheapening the music within them), but who cares what the snobs think.
80’s music had a lot of blink and you’ll miss them bands who could make a couple exciting tunes and then fade away before you got sick of the artist (the record industry really gutted marketing in the 80’s due to the excesses of the 70’s creative industries, it’s not like today where artists get shoved in your face 10 years past the point at which they have any vitality). Most New Wave acts were like that, a couple like The Cure and Depeche Mode did stay afloat into the 90’s. Of course there also were legacy arena rock groups for the first head of the decade (who basically fell totally off the radar afterwards) plus the metal of the 2nd half of the decade. Of course we all know the pop juggernauts Micheal Jackson and Madonna, but then again, every era has over-exposed and mentally unwell pop stars. People generally don’t mention it, but Springsteen, Mellencamp, Brian Adams, Eddie Money etc. were basically meat and potatoes rockers who weren’t New Wave, Arena rock, or metal. Just, uh, rock and roll.
The 90’s music summary: the first half of the decade suffered from the emergence of rap almost totally corrupting black musical contributions as well as angsty white Portlandia vibes suddenly giving us music that was downcast at best to hipster ironic doucheyness at worst (e.g. Primus ,Rob Zombie, and excruciating dork novelty hits like Peaches). Plus there was still stuff that sounded 80’s but like a sickly terminally ill variant of if (e.g. fourth wave hair metal that makes Ratt sound like Cannibal Corpse). The second half of the decade was an improvement, with energetic pop punk, Nu Metal at least having more balls than early 90’s hipster rock, and a good amount of pop songs being carefree and upbeat. A lot of this can be traced to crime declining in the late 90’s plus the 90’s economic boom. Also, the audience for popular music in the late 90’s was late Gen X, who I guess just weren’t as pretentious or “edgy” as early Gen X.
“You’re what is known in some circles as a ‘pick-me.’”
In one sense, yes, I am.
I have stereotypically female interests but I also enjoy some things men are more likely to enjoy. And I think the trend I’ve seen grow in my lifetime where women join in men’s interests only to demand feminizing changes is offensive.
Just one example A lot of women love both movie versions of “The Women”. I’ve never seen a woman suggest those movies need male characters onscreen. Yet I’ve seen women complain about the lack of female characters in the movies we’re discussing here.
That’s not fair and I don’t like it. In that sense, I’m very much a “pick-me”. I don’t like the many women who expect or demand special treatment or exemptions from fair play once they enter a male province. I’m not like that (and the commenters here who identify as female and whom I respect aren’t like that, either).
As to Master and Commander, your statement that “I’ve never seen Master and Commander but I imagine it could have been improved by throwing in some sort of romance ” is self-evidently silly. It’s something a woman who complains about the absence of substantial female characters in Lawrence of Arabia would say. (There was actually a thread about that on the old IMDb message board.)
And your comment “When you’re spending that sort of money, you really ought to try to have mass appeal” is equally silly. I googled the movie and got this : “Was Master and Commander a flop?
It was a moderate success at the box office, grossing $212 million worldwide. The film was critically well received and garnered Weir the BAFTA Award for Best Direction. At the 76th Academy Awards, the film was nominated for 10 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director.”
Finally you say “I certainly don’t need romance or even women in a film in order to enjoy it. But many people do like to see themselves represented on screen. ”
Yes, we all got that memo. The constant complaint about the lack of representation women and people of color in movies of every genre vies with white people touching black hair as one of the crises besetting the West. It’s beyond tiresome. If a woman can’t see someone onscreen different from herself portraying human emotions and identify with those emotions, she should stick to romcoms. Last time I checked, there were plenty of them around.
I thought Jacky Brown was pretty watchable and a good story. The others (Dogs, Basterds, Pulp) generally have parts that are good. Even if they felt a little trashy. Like enjoying McDonald’s, but then that after effect.
I tried watching Once Upon, but got bored after several minutes when nothing was happening. Maybe if I’d seen it in the theater (captive audience, more willing to indulge), I’d have liked it. But I just rented it on Prime and I don’t care about losing the $3.99 if something doesn’t intrigue me after a few minutes.
Have not tried the Kill Bills or Django. I’m wary and suspecting I wouldn’t like them.
I think Steve feels a little more ties to the movie industry and is a little more willing to watch a flick that is not as much a good story or draws you in to think you are the protagonist, because he’s going to write about or analyze it. In other words the actual entertainment is slightly less a factor to him than the typical viewer who just wants an immersive experience. Plus, I suspect he watches in theaters, which usually makes it easier to give a movie a chance and is a better viewing experience also.
Few movies that I suspect the Sailersphere would like (many have probably seen them): Predestination, Dredd (NOT Judge Dredd).
Tarantino being promoted - by boomers, conservatives, and others especially! - is just a disgrace!
C. S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower series was purportedly the inspiration for Patrick O’Brian’s novels, according to Wiki:
The ITV/A&E TV series of 8 TV films of 120 minute length ran from ’98-’03 nd re available on DVD.
My beef with Tarantino as filmmaker is that his movies tend to be cartoons for adults who should know better. It’s trash with little soul, humanity, or good humor.
I enjoyed Jackie Brown and Once Upon a Time but for the most part I agree. Most of his movies are trash and use violence to make up for a lack of a story. The Kill Bill series have as much story depth as the Street Fighter games. I skipped half the second and then just watched the ending of the third. The only fight I enjoyed was the Japanese chick. But the triology is mostly like watching someone play a video game. I saw the commercial for Django and that was enough. We get it Tarantino, you think the reality of race is “not fair” and desire fantasies where Blacks dominate over racist rednecks. Yawn.
Tarantino alone negates the theory that Hollywood would only churn out wholesome movies if not the for the Jews.
Something about movie making attracts degenerates and bitter losers like Tarantino. They hate mainstream society and have misanthropic tendencies. Honest media is uninteresting to them because they hate the world in its purest form. They want fantasy where the deranged are heroes and rebel against an ordered society.
There is a non-Jewish director that I won’t name because he makes such awful trash. Completely debased media that only seeks to undermine what remains of traditional values. Being Jewish is not the pattern. It’s being a bitter outsider and Jews are disproportionately represented relative to their population. One of the worst movie makers is an ex-rocker who is small and looks like a hobo.
My own sense is that athletic guys get into sports and don't get too into creative stuff, while big shots in the entertainment industries, who may have started life as dorks, often end up being insufferable assholes because they finally get to wield power and run their mouths consequence free. Plus, once you get a decent amount of success, everyone kisses your ass which badly warps you.
Granted there are exceptions to the misanthropy and nihilism you describe, like James Cameron, who empathizes with ordinary folks just trying to do their job but who get accosted by some antagonist engineered by human folly and corrupt elites. And especially in the current era, it's interesting that the police are portrayed in a very sympathetic light in the first film and even the sequel has a detective remind the protagonist that a lot of good people died in the police station shootout from part 1.
I tried watching Once Upon, but got bored after several minutes when nothing was happening. Maybe if I'd seen it in the theater (captive audience, more willing to indulge), I'd have liked it. But I just rented it on Prime and I don't care about losing the $3.99 if something doesn't intrigue me after a few minutes.
Have not tried the Kill Bills or Django. I'm wary and suspecting I wouldn't like them.
I think Steve feels a little more ties to the movie industry and is a little more willing to watch a flick that is not as much a good story or draws you in to think you are the protagonist, because he's going to write about or analyze it. In other words the actual entertainment is slightly less a factor to him than the typical viewer who just wants an immersive experience. Plus, I suspect he watches in theaters, which usually makes it easier to give a movie a chance and is a better viewing experience also.
Few movies that I suspect the Sailersphere would like (many have probably seen them): Predestination, Dredd (NOT Judge Dredd).Replies: @John Johnson, @John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan
I tried watching Once Upon, but got bored after several minutes when nothing was happening. Maybe if I’d seen it in the theater (captive audience, more willing to indulge), I’d have liked it. But I just rented it on Prime and I don’t care about losing the $3.99 if something doesn’t intrigue me after a few minutes.
Well you have to give it more time to pick up the story. Most of the beginning is just character introduction.
I really enjoyed the movie but I have also read a lot about the Tate murders and the Manson family. There are some really amusing esoteric references.
The ending alone is worth it if you hate hippies.
It really doesn’t feel like his other movies. I actually never would have guessed it to be a Tarantino movie.
Plus, I suspect he watches in theaters, which usually makes it easier to give a movie a chance and is a better viewing experience also.
I actually have a harder time with a bad movie in the theater. You can’t turn it off and watch the second half the next day. I feel trapped and I’ve walked a couple times. I also resent how you either buy a giant tub of popcorn or pay $1 less for a handful of kernels.
I’m amazed that so many people still go to the movies when 60″ screens are $500 at Costco. I go maybe once or twice a year at the most and usually when on vacation. Our beach spot has a little theater with decent prices.
Well, growing up where I did in the 80s and the 90s I was lucky, maybe even blessed, enough to have lived in what was essentially the real life version of an 18 year long John Hughes movie.
If only I had been intelligent enough to realize how lucky I was at the time, but no, I had to be a grump that couldn’t wait to be an adult.
Isn’t Tarantino at least sort of Southern? Rob Zombie, who I thought of before reading your whole comment, is a Northeastern WASP (birth surname; Cummings), and an angsty weirdo who also makes abrasive cartoon movies.
My own sense is that athletic guys get into sports and don’t get too into creative stuff, while big shots in the entertainment industries, who may have started life as dorks, often end up being insufferable assholes because they finally get to wield power and run their mouths consequence free. Plus, once you get a decent amount of success, everyone kisses your ass which badly warps you.
Granted there are exceptions to the misanthropy and nihilism you describe, like James Cameron, who empathizes with ordinary folks just trying to do their job but who get accosted by some antagonist engineered by human folly and corrupt elites. And especially in the current era, it’s interesting that the police are portrayed in a very sympathetic light in the first film and even the sequel has a detective remind the protagonist that a lot of good people died in the police station shootout from part 1.
Thanks for that
Dunno why this is a cult movie, but I can say this–it’s one of the very best movies for testing or demonstrating your home theater audio system, and in particular, your subwoofer during the sea fight scenes.
Which, of course, is another largely male pastime.
That said, I enjoyed the movie and along with all the good stuff about it--the setting, the characters, the execution ... this is a big part of it:It's a good story about something actual real.
It's not some "superhero" shooting lightening out of his ass. It's not some fantasy with magic and wizards sorting it all out. It's not some girl power nonsense where women figure everything out and kick 240 lb guys across the room. And it's not yet another tedious deal on good whites struggling heroically against the Nazis.
Master and Commander certainly should have been the most successful sea movie of its era. But it was utterly dwarfed by this Pirates of Carribean deal with supernatural curses, dead pirates coming back to life, butt kicking girl pirates and general suspension of the laws of physics.
One of the fundamental things that happened is that we thingy-mathy guys were so incredible successful on the physical/male side in building the modern world--the tap runs, the toilet flushes, the lights come on, the car starts, the
computerphone boots up ... --that the women and the word fantasists are even more unmoored from reality and "freed" to their feelings and fantasies.We are now subjected to world of sheer fantasy. Racist roads. Saint George was murdered (or martyred). There was a "coup attempt" or "violent insurrection" on Jan 6. "Diversity is our greatest strength". "Structural racism" pervades every nook and cranny of America. "Immigration is who we are." Men
AnotherMom and I started watching some show about three identical sisters apparently separated at birth. Mystery/thriller expected. But sure 'nuf the sisters are having these visions because of some sort of psychic "connection"--or something. Just writing a story within the normal laws of meatspace is too much.
I watched some of this "Vikings" thing a couple years back. Raiding some English village the lead viking explicitly asks a village woman for her consent before
rapinghaving carnal relations with her. What? He's landed at Oberlin? Landing and whacking down the hapless local militia, looting the church and slaughtering the unarmed priests, looting and burning the village ... peachy. But can't have vikings actually enjoying women without their consent. Then vikings would be bad.A world of ridiculous fantasy.Replies: @obwandiyag, @Twinkie, @Karl.der.Hammer
Check out the 1958 Vikings movie with Kirk Douglas and Ernest Borgnine.
A real man’s movie–especially the great scene with the Vikings swilling down vast quantities of mead while a suspicious and drunken husband tests the fidelity of his wife, Kirk Douglas’s paramour, by throwing axes at her head!
Hit movie = 100 people watch it once.
Cult movie = 10 people watch it 10 times.
Another cult idea would be Fountaineraserhead, Ayn Rand adapted by Lynch.
Cult movie = 10 people watch it 10 times.Replies: @Anonymous
‘Cult movie’ carries connotations of weirdness and eccentricity, e.g. Harold and Maude and Eraserhead at high end and Eating Raoul and John Waters movies at the lower end.
I can’t think of another movie as straight and square as Master and Commander, but maybe that is precisely why it’s a kind of neo-cult. When the New Normal has embraced the culture of Rocky Horror Picture Show, the square is the new cult or new punk.
In the current culture, woke mobs(with blessing of the elites) would love to tear down any monument to the kind of men portrayed in Master and Commander.
Still, ‘cult movie’ sounds wrong for works like Master and Commander. It’s more like a Club Movie or a Hobby Movie. Or Craft Movie.
Most cult movies indulge in strangeness whereas Master and Commander is about alertness to action and duty. It’s like Top Gun for adults.
On the other hand, if they turn Master and Commander into a tranny musical, that would be culty indeed.
Another cult idea would be Fountaineraserhead, Ayn Rand adapted by Lynch.
Also, Run Silent, Run Deep and The Enemy Below and as I noted earlier, Das Boot.
Thank God for submarine films, though I suppose some asinine wokester is planning a sub film with females in the cast.Replies: @shale boi, @tomv
The BBC One series, Vigil, which my sister likes to watch , puts a lot of women in a submarine, commanded by a black captain of course.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09pm77q
Terrible movie.
Take the scene where Pitt is at the Spahn Ranch. They all want Pitt to leave, so they ruin his tire? Gee, that makes sense. I don’t have the energy at the end of my day to sit here and think about every glaring plot hole or thematic absurdity in this dreck, but anyone with cinematic class can see them.
The movie sucks!
And the final “battle” scene is simply retarded gore-porn. Absolutely embarrassing that people here in SailerStan promote it!
Pitt’s natural, incredible likability is really the only thing that holds that piece of turd movie even slightly together.
I tried watching Once Upon, but got bored after several minutes when nothing was happening. Maybe if I'd seen it in the theater (captive audience, more willing to indulge), I'd have liked it. But I just rented it on Prime and I don't care about losing the $3.99 if something doesn't intrigue me after a few minutes.
Have not tried the Kill Bills or Django. I'm wary and suspecting I wouldn't like them.
I think Steve feels a little more ties to the movie industry and is a little more willing to watch a flick that is not as much a good story or draws you in to think you are the protagonist, because he's going to write about or analyze it. In other words the actual entertainment is slightly less a factor to him than the typical viewer who just wants an immersive experience. Plus, I suspect he watches in theaters, which usually makes it easier to give a movie a chance and is a better viewing experience also.
Few movies that I suspect the Sailersphere would like (many have probably seen them): Predestination, Dredd (NOT Judge Dredd).Replies: @John Johnson, @John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan
Jackie Brown is better, partly because every actor is great in it, partly because the plot is WAY tighter than most of Tarantino’s vomit-inducing, self-aggrandizing, sprawling movies. Jackie Brown is the only one worth a damn. The rest are total crap.
Tarantino being promoted – by boomers, conservatives, and others especially! – is just a disgrace!
You lost get over itReplies: @TWS, @jsm, @fish, @Oh, Yeah Yeah
Why do you keep coming here just to get angry and post poorly-written paragraphs? Is it masochism?