BTTT!
Posted on 01/06/2005 2:54:25 PM PST by gina girl
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/1/6/153719.shtml
Can't expect anything else from them. "The Passion...." is an affront to their view of the world. Of course it also challenged the liberal Catholic view, which is only tolerated because it --as Jacques Maritain--put it, "geneflects," to the world. Many years ago I read in Harper's/The Atlantic Monthly an article by a liberal Jew named Kaufmann, who said he always thought of the Passion in terms of a Hollywood "happy ending." Gibson's portrayal of the Passion, however, is so brutally realistic, however, that one can feel the nails being driven into the flesh. Hard to keep in mind the thought "it's only a movie." That's why liberal Christians hate it. They want to focus on the sermon on the Mount and, maybe, on the Resurrection. The first is about the liberal rabbi that they revere. The Resurrection can be explained away. But a Roman execution? Too real. too real, too real.
The Passion of the Christ obviously moved people on all levels very profoundly. It is useful in that it is beautiful, good, and done without conceit.
Hollywood also ignored, and MSM critics panned, Jim Caviezel's film "Bobby Jones" (2004) and "Paparazzi", the action film Mel produced this summer. The cold shoulder and shunning is in full force.
"I really doubt whether Mel Gibson really cares what Hollywood thinks of him at this point. He didn't make this film so that he could win an Oscar. When the "beautiful" people's time is up, their celebrity won't save them, but Mel's reward will be much greater than a little golden statue."
I wonder what would happen if we started now in our boycott of the Oscars and the movie industry in general.
Pray for W and Our Troops
Do you really think boycotts against people because they don't share your taste in movies is something worthwhile?
Such films reflect the nihilism that seems to be the dominant attitude in Hollywood.
A pedophile, an abortionist, a sicko sex researcher, a communist mass-murderer, euthanasia... Yep, that's hollywood. I have always loved the movies but hoooo, boy. Again it's the height of irony that "The Passion" is getting the silent treatment seeing as biblical epics were some of Tinseltown's most popular moneymakers--especially from "Quo Vadis" in '48 to "Greatest Story Ever Told" in '65. It just goes to show how twisted the cultural elite has become.
I have been reading Michael Medved's autobiography "Right Turn." The man's a real writer and his life and family history are emblematic of the American Dream. He was truly a witness to history in his youthful years. Among many other things, in his Yale days he knew John Kerry (a pompous ass whom no one could stand from the very beginning), Hillary Rodham (she was actually rather nice before she teamed up with Bill--her incoherent Wellesley address notwithstanding, Howie Dean and many others during his salad years of democrat political involvement and campaign work in the Roaring Sixties. In later chapters he goes into detail on the observations and events that soured him on the film industry's output and inspired him to write "Hollywood versus America" as well as bringing him to the conclusion that the movie moguls hate common decency and morality SO much that they would really, truly rather lose money (not their own) making ugly "R"-rated pictures (60% of films in the decade of the nineties) about vengeful ghosts, serial killers, perverts and alien monsters than anything smacking of "family values" and patriotism.
He devotes almost a full chapter to Hollywood's insulting defiance to the unprecedented outrage over the "Last Temptation of Christ" and his own shock and amazement when he saw for himself the unbelievably ugly, pointlessly blasphemous and incredibly boring 2 1/2-hour mess it turned out to be. His dawning realization that Scorsese knew beforehand it would be a despised flop and made it simply to get in with the in crowd was quite a revelation. He goes on in interesting detail as to how he rediscovered his religion, becoming more and more conservative and enduring the resultant slings and arrows he attracted as a conservative movie critic and radio talk show host. There is no better book I know of that explains so well why observant jews should not feel threatened by christianity here in America, the way his Ukranian jewish grandparents lived in dread of their village priest's anti-semitic incitements. Indeed, he makes it plain that evangelical christians are Israel's best friend and ally.
He finishes with a blow-by-blow account of his own involvement in the furore surrounding the "Passion" and the advice and encouragement he gave to Mel as he was doing the final editing. How he tried to counter the Pavlovian knee-jerk respons by liberal jewry. Quite often the very same people who hailed "Temptation" railed against the "Passion" and claimed it would set off a world-wide wave of pogroms. To say the least, this did not happen.
In my opinion the truly ground-breaking thing about "The Passion" was the WAY it was made and marketed. It was the biggest example so far of the growing globalization of the art of moviemaking. More needs to be written about that angle of the story because this is what has the studio suits really trembling. The picture was made completely outside the studio system with none of that bloated overhead to pay for. The work was contracted out on a piecework basis in a half-dozen countries for far, far less money than had it been made the traditional way. I once read a great article in Esquire nearly ten years ago about how Hollywood is really the world's most perfect welfare state with gargantuan amounts of deadwood, ponderous union work rules, creative accounting and people being paid astronomical sums for doing very little. This rice bowl is now directly threatened and not just by broadband piracy.
I thought "The Prince of Egypt" was pretty good too. That of course was Dreamworks. I gather Pixar has had the lock on family-friendly animation for a while now.
The grosses for 2004 actually set a record high. In regards to 'The Last Temptation of Christ', Medved's speculation about why Scorsese made the film is completely wrong. Scorsese had worked on a script as early as the 70s. A time when projects that outre were much more common. Because of financing continually falling through he had to wait till 1987-1988 to get it made. Scorsese considered going into the Priesthood as a young man. That movie had nothing to do with any in-crowd. It was the personal work of a troubled believer. The reason it failed commercially is that non-believers avoid religious themed films altogether. And the believers certainly weren't going to go.
The grosses for 2004 actually set a record high. In regards to 'The Last Temptation of Christ', Medved's speculation about why Scorsese made the film is completely wrong.
Scorsese had worked on a script as early as the 70s. A time when projects that outre were much more common. Because of financing continually falling through he had to wait till 1987-1988 to get it made. Scorsese considered going into the Priesthood as a young man. That movie had nothing to do with any in-crowd. It was the personal work of a troubled believer. The reason it failed commercially is that non-believers avoid religious themed films altogether. And the believers certainly weren't going to go.
Medved did mention Scorsese being a former seminarian. The equally fascinating book "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" did give considerable space to Scorsese's "issues," among them his love-hate relationship with his dad. Particularly when he was first grappling with success in the seventies. But that only goes further to prove the point, i.e. the whole thing was made so an angry ex-catholic could get back at the church [perhaps Father Fuddlebottom fondled him behind the vestry back in the day], indulging in some cinematic primal scream therapy at the expense of the investors.
That's more plausible. Scorsese still claims to be a believer. Don't you think Gibson, with his film had a bit of primal scream therapy himself at how he feels the Church has gone too liberal? Catholic themes are all over Scorsese's films. TLTOC just literalized them. The ironic thing is that the Vatican wouldn't subscribe to either Scorsese's or Gibson's ideas about the faith. As for knowing it wouldn't make money...some things just aren't destined to appeal to a mass audience. It all depends on how many 'consistuencies' of viewers you can appeal to. BTW: That 'Easy Riders' book, while a completely addictive read, has been discredited by just about every director that Biskind quoted...saying he misrepresented them completely.
I'm not the person you asked but I believe in the Foriegn Language film category the country has to submit the film for it to be considered. They instituted that rule during the Cold War to avoid socio-political flaps like the Boris Pasternak Nobel prize thing. Since The Passion is an American production I don't believe it will be submitted for Foriegn Language Film Oscar.
A foreign language film is defined, for Academy Award purposes, as a feature-length motion picture produced outside the United States of America with a predominantly non-English dialogue track.
I thought this might be something that the Academy would have to deal with. I guess not.
BTTT!
We'll see. If Passion gets snubbed for all awards, even technical ones, I think we can chalk it up to bias. I'm sure that the Academy probably tends to want to avoid controversy after having Hollywood hit so hard this past year. We'll see how M. Moore does.
Very predictable.
Interesting, thanks for the ping to your post.
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