Posted on 01/05/2005 7:26:43 PM PST by Angry Republican
LONDON (AFP) - Oscar-winning writer-director Oliver Stone blamed "raging fundamentalism in morality" for the frosty reception that his new film "Alexander" is getting in his native United States.
In London for its British premiere, Stone, 58, said that after a career full of cage-rattling work, he thought a biopic of Alexander the Great, the 4th century Macedonian-born conquerer, would be "a safe subject".
But he said he was "quite taken aback by the controversy and fierceness of the reviews" which greeted its US release, including outrage at the film's suggestion that Alexander was bisexual.
"Sexuality is a large issue in America right now, but it isn't so much in other countries," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Interesting ongoing discussion here...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1314943/posts
Drat. I was just poking fun at F14 Pilot for posting the same article two seconds after me. D'OH!
lol
pull mine
Admit nothing, deny everything, blame others for everything. /Leftist sodomy promoting perverted hollywood ideology.
You'll have to talk to the Admin Mod.
Other than Anthony Hopkins' and Christopher Plummer's, there wasn't a single likable character in the whole movie. I want to know why Alexander was such a charismatic historic character. I want to know why men would follow him literally to the ends of the Earth. I didn't see that here.
The battle scenes, although full of senseless violence, have no emotional impact. You don't really care who wins. It's not like other big screen movies, such as Braveheart or Gladiator, where you have an emotional stake in who wins or loses.
All of the Macedonians have Irish or Scottish brogues. Are they kidding?
Angelina Jolie has a Russian accent. Are they kidding?
Val Kilmer is wasted as Philip. He's a great actor, and Oliver Stone utterly wastes his performance.
Alexander is portrayed as hysterical throughout the movie, without no charisma. Again, you want to know why men follow him.
I was disappointed in how little you see of the Persians. I wanted to see something of King Xerxes. I wanted to see something of the intrigue in the Persian court. I wanted to see some characterization there. You see a couple of close-ups of Xerxes during the battle scenes, and that's pretty much it.
Everything that happens onscreen needs to move the story forward. There's a lot of extraneous drivel. Stone makes the beginning drama student's mistake. He "tells" us instead of "shows" us. Okay, we get it that Alexander probably had sex with men. So what? It was a common practice then. Everyone who studies Classical history knows that. Who cares? I get it! Don't beat me over the head with it, use it to somehow move the story forward. Instead, Stone is preaching at me, "Alexander was bisexual and probably even gay. Doesn't that just make him a wonderful guy!" I don't care! And don't tell me afterward how I'm some homophobic Red state Neanderthal. Blah, blah, blah. That's too easy.
I wanted to know what made Roxanne so fascinating that Alexander would risk his kingdom to marry her. (Great nude scene with Rosario Dawson, by the way; there can never be enough gorgeous naked women in a blockbuster movie as far as I'm concerned, but it didn't drive the story forward.)
I couldn't help but watch the movie and think, If only someone like David Lean or Mel Gibson had made this movie!
It would have been kind of fun to ask Stone...How he could make a movie about such a world changing figure, someone that he could only scratch the surface of their life...yet, he is all obsessed with his bedroom behavior? I could care less....if it fascinates him so much why didn't he just shoot a gay porn with the title making a cheesy play on the name PETER ?
>"raging fundamentalism in morality"<
Good!
It would be nice if 'raging degenerency and immoraltiy' declined a bit.
Word of mouth from people at work is that this movie stinks.
"Troy" (2004) is available for rental now, and even tho' some have criticized it, the production values are eons above Oliver Stone's flop.
Fundamentalist Hindus? Yeah, its nasty how they always paint the Greeks as evil. ;-D
Typical liberal. It is always somebody else's fault.
It's Bush's fault.
JFK was pretty funny. Tin foil alert up the wazoo!
Maybe Oliver meant myopic?
5.56mm
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