January 8, 2013
"Do you think it makes me a bad American to confess that I have no desire to see the movie Lincoln?"
A comic strip at The Soxaholix, which — I'm amused to see — has a link to my blog in the 4th frame. Plus, it goes on to explain why one ought to prefer watching sports.
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43 comments:
Looks like DBQ got a shout out in that strip, too.
By the second panel I was hearing the one character's words (in my head) in a Boston accent. Or is that Bahston?
I agree, in that I find actors pretending to be other people mostly boring, if not laughable.
The kid actors seem almost uniformly awful to me. They seem to have absorbed a library of cliched poses and responses that they insert as required.
I especially loathe bio pics with imaginery dialogue pasted onto historic figures. Whenever I watch that crap, I think... "How in the hell could they possibly know what [X] said?"
Hence, I'll probably ignore Lincoln until it hits Netflix, which might be 2020.
Exactly. Regardless of how well they perform all they are doing is repeating memorized lines that someone else wrote and faking emotions to it. And they get as many do overs as needed. No thanx. I prefer the stage and the acting one finds there.... No safety net.
I confess I have no particular desire to see Lincoln either, but it's not because I don't like movies -- it's because I only want to see fun or amusing movies and Lincoln seems dreadfully serious. I have books for that. (After it's on DVD, though, I will certainly look on Youtube for clips of highlights of Daniel Day Lewis playacting as Lincoln, as I am told he does a good job).
I already saw the one about how he killed vampires that came out a couple of months before.
Cute, though someone with a wicked Bostahn accent would never use words like 'externalities' or 'integration'. It can only be an affectation...
I'VE GROWN INCREASINGLY LESS INTERESTED IN SEEING HUMAN BEINGS PRETEND TO BE CHARACTERS, AND AT SOME POINT, I STARTED TO FIND IT ACTIVELY ANNOYING.
I used to love the movies but have stopped going now the majority of actors are also vocal political activists, and movies often contain, nay require, some demonstration of political fealty. It's difficult to accept an actor as a character when you're expecting the Republican zinger at any moment.
In all seriousness, I too have no desire to see the movie nor do I think anyone who doesn’t see the movie has to provide any sort of justification for their decision. Just because someone makes a film, doesn’t obligate you or anyone else to spend your money and/or time in watching it.
I thought it would be worth breaking a long-standing practice to go to the cineplex to see Skyfall and then later The Hobbit.
I was wrong.
Looks like it'll be the Criterion Collection, at home, from now on.
I find it amusing that we have all these liberals today professing their love for Lincoln when its obvious to me that none of these liberals would have had the courage to vote for him in 1864 given the high cost in terms of human lives of the civil war. Its easy with the benefit of hindsight but I wonder how many people today would have voted for him in 1864.
The Blonde and I used to go to the movies all the time, but when they became vehicles for comic books, old TV shows, or computer games, we bailed.
I also dread historical pictures. Most of them are so hideously ignorant, it's almost funny.
"Personally, I couldn't give a rat's ass, but your Tea Baggah buddies may stop inviting you to Chick-Fil-A Day."
Liberals, no civility, no respect even as they pretend to be more compassionate and caring of their fellow man.
As to the movie, I'll wait till I can watch it on TV.
I don't mind the F word in movies but it really bothers me when the movie is based on a modern historical story and they have the characters using the f word when it is highly unlikely the real life characters would have used those words, at least to that extent. Hollywood.
ST - I agree most acting is laughably bad, but when it's good it's really good. F.e., "The Lion in Winter" from 1968. Check that out.
I wanted to see Abraham Lincoln Vampire Slayer... but somehow missed it.
So I bought the blu-ray and now there's no urgency because it's there whenever I get around to it and I haven't quite.
Oh wait... there was a different Abraham Lincoln movie?
(Is there actually anyone alive that doesn't have a subconscious animosity for the man on account of having to spell his name in grade school? I'm serious!)
Wow. Tough (non-movie-going) crowd.
I don't see the point of making a movie about real-life person everyone is already familiar with.
At least with "Ray" we got good tunes.
I just don't trust the movies to do history right. Stick to fiction.
I just don't trust the movies to do history right. Stick to fiction.
It's all fiction. It always has been.
Boring actors.
Boring actors playing themselves (ie., movie stars).
Political ambushes.
Real life fiction.
Historical fiction.
Unfunny comedies.
Special effects that are neither special nor effective.
Sex that is not sexy.
Padding classic novels in order to create trilogies. Peter Jackson I'm looking at you. You wore green so you could hide. I don't blame you, you're a TRAMP.
However,
January is prime horror movie season. There's some good ones coming up.
I saw Lincoln. Daniel Day Lewis did great work with poor material.
Though it is said that laws are like sausages, for it is better not to see them being made.
Not true, because sausages are tasty, and laws are shit.
The making of laws is far more horrible than sausage-making, and Lincoln magnified that awfulness a hundred-fold.
Plus, there was Spielberg, doing his usual blacks-with-halos and evil-white-guys stereotypes. What a colossal bore.
Like a modern sanitized high school textbook brought to life, boring footnotes and all.
Cable TV has replaced movies as the superior art form. If a show is bad, it's most likely the writing because "method" acting really works and acting is the most competitive field in the world.
I was waiting for a Spielberg multiple choice quiz at the end.
1. Are all white people evil?
(a) Yes
(b) No
(c) All except Abraham Lincoln.
(d) Kwanzaa.
How wonderful that we live in a country where we are all free to see these movies or not. While I refuse to see movies with an explicit political message that I don't support (Matt Damon's anti-fracking propaganda flick, for instance), I do find a lot of movies entertaining, even if I don't agree with the politics of all of the actors. And unlike some of the folks here, I don't think that every film made in recent years is garbage. If you do, don't watch them.
And really, it's the same thing with sports (and many other group endeavors as well). How many of those athletes on your favorite team share your views? Some probably do, some probably don't. Same with the people who cook your food in the restaurant, sell you your clothes, etc. Unless someone is explicitly pushing a message that I find objectionable, I'm not going to boycott them. If they are, then I'll find an alterative to them.
This is 40 was disappointing drivel.
Except for the short bit with Melissa McCarthy, from 'Bridesmaids'.
Don't know why, but she does make me laugh.
Spielberg's answered the "Are all white people evil?" question by not even posing it, in his execrable Lincoln. Why? Because that's a given in beautiful people land.
As I get older, I'm finding it harder to enjoy movies, because I know the actors too well. It began with Dicaprio in Titanic, because I could by all the other characters being in the period except for Dicaprio and Winslet. I didn't know Winslet, so she was less annoying, but I kept being put off with Dicaprio ruining my experience of Titanic. After all, the whole story of the actual Titanic is a mythical utopia (the unsinkable liner of luxury and speed) losing its innocence when struck by reality. This annoyance was confirmed with The Aviator, and later expanded with other actors and actresses. For example in a more similar movie, I can't help but see Antonio Banderas as himself in Evita, although Madonna worked for me as Eva Peron. She didn't seem to have to act much to be like Eva.
Actually I'm finding it more and more difficult to watch sports, especially football.
I am so tired of seeing, for example, a defensive lineman strutting and mugging to the camera after sacking the quarterback on 2nd down, like he's just won the superbowl single-handed. And invariably the just-sacked quarterback completes a pass on 3rd down to pick up the 1st down. So what the hell was the good of that sack and all that strutting?
When I see a movie I prefer ones with unknown actors. I easily spot faces and then I start trying to remember where I've seen that actor before. I just watched The Hobbit and it took me about 5 minutes to remember seeing Martin Freeman as Dr. Watson in the recent Sherlock BBC series.
I saw Lincoln and enjoyed it.
Have not seen it. Do not plan to.
Plus, there was Spielberg, doing his usual blacks-with-halos and evil-white-guys stereotypes. What a colossal bore.
I dunno, I got a laugh out of learning that the slave heroes of "Amistad" were from a culture which practiced slavery.
I've gone Galt on Hollywood.
I don't like vampire movies.
I am currently reading a nice little novel called "Just Deceits" which is a historical novel about some interesting people. It seems two of Randolphs of Virgina were tried for infanticide and were defended by John Marshall and Patrick Henry!
Yes future Chief Justice John Marshall.
It only cost 99cents on Kindle and it is pretty entertaining. Just sayn'
I liked Lincoln but did think it too reverential.
Lincoln was a humble man who was determined to be a winner at whatever he set his hand to do as a lawyer and later a politician. He was the Bill Belichick of the War of Northern Aggression. That came through well in Spielberg's movie.
The man guided by abolition principles was not Lincoln. It was Thaddeus Stevens.
The 15th Amendment was quite a victory celebration for the GOP.
Another face -- the yuppie husband in that Idiocracy clip was in Atlas Shrugged.
Not only do I have no desire to rush out to see Lincoln I don't have a desire to rush out and see the hobbit either.
Or zero dark thirty.
Just bored by Hollywood at the moment. Will I catch them on cable or iTunes? Absolutely. But I can wait.
The sad thing is I even have a gift card for the local theater that I haven't used since two Christmases ago. I just really don't have an interest in watching movies in theaters.
One turning point for me in losing my desire to see people pretending to be real people (at least of recent historical vintage) was when Apollo 13 came out. I had just watched a long special on the History Channel (maybe) that featured the real people involved. It was a lot of talking head interviews with some historical footage thrown in but the story was so gripping and the real people, especially Jim Lovell, had such charisma, that it seemed pointless at that point to watch someone's fake version of what happened. Every time I saw the commercial with Tom Hanks and the "Houston, we have a problem" line it seemed like extremely weak tea compared to the real life drama with the real life people.
I haven't seen Lincoln mostly because I go to the movies to see massive explosions and incredible stunts. Don't think Lincoln was involved in either of those. And as far as I'm concerned, everything (true) I should know about Lincoln is in written word that can't be "made into movie." I'd rather read the Lincoln-Douglas debates.
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