Only one person on the face of the earth can say that. George Clooney.
Meanwhile, his new movie "Suburbicon" is a real stinker.
From the Anthony Lane review in The New Yorker:
Suburbicon might as well be populated exclusively by Klansmen; not a voice is raised in the [black family's] favor.... Taking a wild guess, I get the feeling that, in Clooney’s opinion, the United States, in the epoch of Eisenhower, had a problem with racism. Jeez, who knew? The film’s indignation is clearly fuelled by the rancor that has persisted into the epoch of Trump, but there’s a hitch. So repelled is Clooney by the response of white suburbia to African-Americans, and so keen is he to insure that we share his outrage at what they endured, that he quite forgets to be interested in them. We learn next to nothing about Mr. and Mrs. Mayers (their first names are a mystery), nor do we listen to their conversations. The wife is charged twenty dollars for a carton of milk by the manager of a supermarket, and she hangs up her washing outside with a bevy of protesters banging drums and crowing, only feet away, but, while her dignity in the face of such taunts is noble, that’s all we know of her. It’s purely in relation to white contempt, in other words, that she is granted dramatic presence. To say that she and her husband are a backdrop would be going too far, but the black plot and the white plot scarcely touch. Is that what Clooney intended?
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George Clooney is the worm found at the bottom of the bottle of the cesspool called Hollywood.
NYT panned it too.
I thought he was watchable in ER. Not much else since then.
He still has to beat women off with a stick. The honesty is amusing. Very Joe Walsh.
I saw a recent photo that made him look like just another middle-aged man.
I didn't realize that we're the same age.
Hollywood has for a long time not had any idea of what its audience wants or likes. They turn out two kinds of product -- tried & true formulaic blockbusters (Hollywood needs to set up a shrine to Stan Lee & Jack Kirby), & SJW propaganda.
Remember, during the two Bush admins, Hollywood did 13 anti-Iraq war movies, & every single one of them bombed. Some of them, like "Redacted", were big name deals. People say "Well, Hollywood's a business after all". To which I say that there's never been a shortage of businesses run into the ground by their own bad management, & Hollywood's is well down that path.
Left undiscussed in the whole Harvey Weinstein/sexual predator affair is what such widespread abuse of standard business discipline & decorum says about the foundations of the movie business in general.
He's been in several good movies, Burn After Reading was hysterical.
"the foundations of the movie business in general" Using the proceeds from exploiting the mass audience's false consciousness to peddle prog propaganda?
Of course, the Marxists used to complain about Hollywood's pro-American cultural imperialism. Even they might have to change their minds by now.
His politics stink too.
" So repelled is Clooney by the response of white suburbia to African-Americans, and so keen is he to insure that we share his outrage at what they endured, that he quite forgets to be interested in them."
That's how lefty virtue signalling rolls...
I'd be ashamed to admit I ever went to a George Clooney film.
Kinda' like admitting you send weekly tithes to Anitfa.
Burn After Reading is my favorite Coen brothers movie.
I thought he directed a good movie too, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.
He was good in Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?"
"It’s purely in relation to white contempt, in other words, that she is granted dramatic presence."
Isn't that identity politics in a nutshell? What else is "people of color" as a marker of identity, except a negation? The only thing people of color have in common is not being white. It's flattening, identity-erasing. Can't blame Clooney for thinking that not being white is enough to create drama and human interest. Everyone is doing that now.
Clooney is generally pretty great when he's playing a knucklehead in one of the Coen Brothers' movies.
I read everything by Anthony Lane, even if I will never have am interest in seeing the movies being reviewed.so refreshing to have not only am enjoyable writer but a smart one as well.
Are we to assume that George Clooney has a lot of black friends that live in his neighborhood, that he associates with every day?
I think Burn After Reading got panned because people thought it was going to be about WMD or something because of when it came out. Pitt made a great knucklehead in the movie too.
Like Sonia in Crime and Punishment.
He made a few good movies, but his presence in a movie is no guarantee of quality. He's made some real duds, but he's good at being a movie star. He's poised and witty in interviews. Aside from hanging out with serial rapists, he appears to be a good guy........Tom Cruise has a more consistent record of success, but he's not so good at being a movie star. On occasion, he has looked like a real jerk, but the movies he makes, more often than not, are entertaining.
Acting used to be how I paid the rent, but I sold a tequila company for a billion fucking dollars. I don’t need money.
And Hollywood is getting politically toxic. Maybe he'll start distancing himself from it under the pretense that younger guys should be getting the younger women.
No reason to jeopardize his public stature when he's got tequila money.
False modesty has always been part of his schtick. But it is quite rich to complain about the available parts when he is directing a movie and has so much money he could make any part he wants. So why didn’t he make something as good as The Verdict? He certainly can’t complain about the lack of financing, he can underwrite any project he wants. It’s just impossible for him to admit he made the movie he wanted, and it sucks.
Clooney sounds like an asshole.
That would be the Eisenhower that desegregated the schools. And the Eisenhower that sent up civil rights bills to Congress, only to have Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson collaborate with the bills being watered down to nothing or stopped altogether.
Hollywood/democrats and the incessant race whiners have finally gotten me to swear off anything that hints of a race angle. Sorry, decades of being beat over the head by the whiners is enough.
Well, Clooney ruined the Monument Men too. Watch the documentary "The Rape of Europa" - it shows you what a great story this could have been. Maybe he's just not that good at this.
He can easily make a successful film in which he doesn't "get the girl," but in which the slightly overweight, not overly pretty, charming and smart, perhaps, gasp, older girl, gets him, by sheer force of personality and common sense, saving him from his mistakes. Make her multiracial if you have to. There's unfulfilled demand for a true Clooneyesque chick-flick.
Blogger AllenS said...
Are we to assume that George Clooney has a lot of black friends that live in his neighborhood, that he associates with every day?
11/6/17, 4:03 PM
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You can be sure that his neighbors in Lake Como Italy have the about the same melanin
content as Matt Damon.
I think he's right and many would agree; he should eat the worm, and not act, direct or produce anymore.
AllenS said...Are we to assume that George Clooney has a lot of black friends that live in his neighborhood, that he associates with every day?
Funny thing about that: he's only recently moved BACK to the U.S. after deciding that conditions in his idyllic Italian abode were deteriorating. You know, after Italy and a bunch of other enlightened European nations decided to be super Progressive and open their borders to hordes of "hardworking immigrants" of the kind Clooney & Co. say we Americans need millions more of.
Funny, huh?
Confused said: Isn't that identity politics in a nutshell? What else is "people of color" as a marker of identity, except a negation? The only thing people of color have in common is not being white. It's flattening, identity-erasing.
"Flattening" is the perfect word to describe the effect of identity politics. I've often wondered why anyone would want to be defined solely by their sexual behavior, their skin color or their handicaps.
So called "diversity" is the natural outcome of identity politics, where one dimensional creatures churn in anger against the normal people who live multi-dimensional lives filled with work, family, friends, hobbies, social interaction, accomplishments and cherished traditions.
He was good in Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?"
I forgive home an awful lot just for that. Leatherheads was a good one, too.
Someone also noted that he was a great Movie Star. I agree, to a point. He was a great movie star. I kind of thought of him as something of our modern Cary Grant. But then he let his political BS get in the way of being a good Movie Star and started appearing in duds left, right, and center.
This movie sounds like an example of what Shelby Steele was writing about in the WSJ when he said that liberalism is now more about white liberal self-congratulations than it is about reality. Steele noted that there is no outrage about blacks shooting each other in Chicago because there is no way for white liberals to posture and demonstrate their moral superiority. I would add that that is also true of blacks.
I remember hearing the phrase "Fuck you money," in the context of investment bankers being able to say it to their bosses.
Clooney is taking it to a whole different level, with the movie going public. Sad that he's talked the Coen Bros into joining him down that road. The image that comes to mind about Hollywood is Slim Pickens riding the Nuke, whooping n' hollering all the way down.
"Funny thing about that: he's only recently moved BACK to the U.S. after deciding that conditions in his idyllic Italian abode were deteriorating. You know, after Italy and a bunch of other enlightened European nations decided to be super Progressive and open their borders to hordes of "hardworking immigrants" of the kind Clooney & Co. say we Americans need millions more of."
Yeah, it apparently turns out that the kind of place he and his wife are busy turning Europe into is not the kind of place he and his wife want to raise their children in.
I see George donated a million to the SPLC to help fight hate. That's a pittance for a billionaire. Hopefully he'll donate some cash to the families of those murdered Church goers in Texas.
I enjoyed Three Kings. I frankly did not find it an antiwar message.
To say that she and her husband are a backdrop would be going too far, but the black plot and the white plot scarcely touch. Is that what Clooney intended?
Ah, the infamous Eight Deadly Words: "I don't care what happens to these people." It has doomed many a story.
My immediate thoughts are three possible reasons and it could be some combination thereof. The first is the "black plot" was making the story too long, so it got cut. The second is when they got to the editing room the "black plot" was not very good or at least it didn't fit well, so it got cut. The third is Clooney simply assumed that the audience would immediately agree that the black family were sympathetic simply because they were black and therefore they required nothing further as far as the plot went. This can work when the audience is already well familiar with the characters - such as when the movie is based off a TV show with a built-in audience, or everyone knows the character through cultural osmosis like with Jesus or Sherlock Holmes - but it rarely works with a standalone story. Even with stories where the characters are human beings trying to save the species from extinction from horrible monsters, you are supposed to develop the humans a bit. Failure to do so can make for a boring movie or, in some cases, the audience rooting for extinction.
It would not surprise me if Clooney is so in the bubble that he cannot relate to average Americans any more.
Had Clooney fleshed out the black characters to show them as real people, he'd have had to show them with faults. Better to show them as cardboard cut-outs, showing faults only in the villains, a mark of juvenile story telling.
Clononey is good-looking but not very smart. He lent some money and his signature (but not much else) to Casamigos tequila). His business partner did the the rest.
I'm glad his latest political tirade flopped.
To me, the term "cracker" refers to people like George Clooney.
during the two Bush admins, Hollywood did 13 anti-Iraq war movies, & every single one of them bombed.
I developed a theory about that time that the movies were intended to e dubbed in Chinese dialects.
Then we got all the cartoons, which were even easier to dub in other languages.
"I see George donated a million to the SPLC to help fight hate. That's a pittance for a billionaire. Hopefully he'll donate some cash to the families of those murdered Church goers in Texas."
Hopefully, he won't donate some cash to some cause YOU think he should donate to, just to spite you. You have some nerve saying that. He gave a million dollars to some cause that you happen to agree with, and yet you say it's a "pittance." Write him a letter to express your discontent, and spare the rest of us in the future.
@Trumpit Yes, I have some nerve, thank you.
White people are racist.
Get it?
GET IT?
43 was a great movie that made the same points. But you would have had to know some black people to write a movie lije that.
"To say that she and her husband are a backdrop would be going too far, but the black plot and the white plot scarcely touch. Is that what Clooney intended?"
Maybe it was. Maybe it was commentary on the way blacks are a backdrop for moral preening by Hollywood and rich libs in general who don't associate with any blacks in their daily lives and don't really know or care to understand their actual problems.
Maybe the critics don't want to get it.
I haven't seen the movie. Maybe it does just suck.
They including syriana were almost entirely funded by dubai's film development branch,
Michael Clayton suggested a company like Monsanto would murder their former corporate council. In order to cover up a story
Whether it's "what Clooney intended," it fits perfectly with the overall point Glenn Loury and John McWhorter were making in that show Ann linked to a few days ago. The obsession of white liberals and their "militant" black accomplices is with white people. It is white people who are accorded all agency, all responsibility, all power. Sort of like the way the old plantation owners saw things as well. A true irony. The African American militants turn out to be real uncle toms (apologies to the actual Uncle Tom, a far more upstanding guy).
Clooney in "O Brother", "Burn After Reading", "Michael Clayton", all gems that I enjoy watching for the twelfth time - because of him, not in spite of him.
And yeah, his politics sucks out loud. Which is why his self-awareness in taking the role in "The Ides of March" is so subtly cool - Clooney's playing himself wanting to be a Christ-like, hip, with it dem politician who is "going to make a difference". And then showing himself to be the crooked, integrity-free, waste of human skin that he knows, and we know, most politicians end up being.
George, you didn't sell the tequilla. You sold yourself. People don't care about your tequilla.
Good timing, though. Got out before Weinstein hit.
So he's played out then. Hollywood and Weinstein as well. Weiner's gone. Hillary's still getting back up after her falls, but it seems like the end of an era.
"Tom Cruise has a more consistent record of success, but he's not so good at being a movie star. On occasion, he has looked like a real jerk, but the movies he makes, more often than not, are entertaining."
Cruise is a pro compared to these dipshits. Shows up on time, does his own stuntwork, and for the most part of his career, made people around him a ton of money.
"and spare the rest of us in the future."
Likewise, dope.
The high point of the underrated "Hail, Caesar!" comes when the studio head slaps the crap out of George Clooney's character. I could watch George Clooney movies like that forever...
Anthony: Leatherheads was terrific. Clooney got punched in the face many times.
I was planning to write a comment. Then I read Walter (at 3:44) and Confused (at 3:47). All I have to add is this: if you don't agree with left wing liberal orthodoxy, you are a racist. The fact that this kind of argument is "defining racism down" doesn't bother anyone on the left; except when (and if) (in the next few years) they realize that the charge of racism has lost its power, and the electorate is voting for Trump type individuals that have been labeled racist. (Governor election in VA tomorrow -- Republican racist because does not support open borders. Watch.)
Talking about money in such a way used to be considered gauche.
I really just checked the comments to see if rhhardin hacked on Gravity, again.
Ah Clooney; too soon rich (sold a tequila company for a billion dollars or so he says) and
w-a-a-y too late smart. In fact he may not get there. But the camera loves him. And George loves himself.
Michael Clayton is an outstanding movie. That's his finest work as an actor, I think.
I also really like his work with Steven Soderbergh.
Out of Sight
Ocean's Eleven (the sequels not so much)
Solaris
And Clooney as a director is better than average.
The Ides of March (very good)
Good Night and Good Luck
Leatherheads
The Ides of March is political and smart. I enjoyed it.
I think it's race that makes Clooney a dummy.
To say that she and her husband are a backdrop would be going too far
I haven't seen the movie, but it's obvious he is thinking of them as symbols, not as people. Of course liberals do this all the time. But it's so blatant here that even liberals are noticing how stupid it is.
Its from the writer of house of cards fulliver, the first two sodebergh projects were good, Syrians was prentious.
JTE mentioned it- if you want to see Clooney at his best, watch Michael Clayton. A very good movie with very good performances all around.
And though the movie isn't for everyone's taste, he was also very good in the remake of Solaris.
I find it funny that the Coen Bros always cast Clooney as the fool, he called his movies with them 'their Idiot Trilogy"'. Irreconcilable Differences is always near the bottom of Coen favorites but I thought Clooney as a narcissistic high-bucks divorce lawyer was hilarious.
As others have mentioned Michael Clayton is a wonderfully watchable movie with a great cast. The great Tom Wilkerson as a bi-polar lawyer who has an attack of conscience is worth seeing even if you don't like Clooney.
Clooney is a leftwing proggy and probably a socialist or a communist. Except not with his money. He'll keep his money.
He thinks America is bad and racist. Incurably racist and bad. and it's all the "cons" fault because Obama isn't allowed to be president beyond 8 years. Of course a black conservative would be a horror show more Clooney. Because he doens't care about black/white. He cares about Right/left and he's very very left.
If you want to do something good, give up Hillarywood. For good.
I have.
Secret Service: Man who reportedly traveled to DC to kill 'all white police' at White House arrested
Did he see Clooney's movie for inspiration?
Obama set race relations back decades. Hillarywood carries his water. Good going dude.
I might be wrong, but I think the movie is loosely based on the experiences of the first African American family to move into Levittown, PA. We did a fairly large exhibit on Levittown at the State Museum (50th year anniversary I think) and the couple was featured. Ugly stuff, too.
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