Posted on 02/07/2005 3:03:09 PM PST by EveningStar
Medved on O'Reilly tonight to debate Million Dollar Baby.
Fox: 8 Easter / 5 Pacific
No need to emphasize your point was in your opinion, it's a given we're both talking opinions.
We have no reason to believe Eastwood's character found redemption. It would seem the exact opposite that the preist was right. He is no longer able to bear going to the gym. He disappears from the life that he knew Swank in. Why does this lead to redemption. It would seem that the memories are too powerful and he couldn't stand to be reminded.
I have said it before. This is not propaganda. It is a relationship movie. It isn't boxing either, but that is a part of it. So is death. And the Christopher Reeve argument is not a fitting example here. Swank was biting her tongue and trying to bleed to death. Did he ever do that? They are two different people.
RE: "Critics give away the endings to movies all the time. Heck, most trailers tell all the good jokes when advertising a comedy. Ebert himself says that American audiences love to see what they expect to see, which is why most trailers give away the plot of a film before you pay money to see it."
Show me another recent example of a major film critic giving away the intentionally suprising plot developements of a first-run movie, and I will condemn it as I have Medved's spiteful blunder. And I generally don't think much about the sorry state of the American movie trailer nowadays, either. The Man on Fire trailer, as a recent example, was filled with so many blatant plot giveaways that it ruined the desire for me to watch the movie itself.
Trailers treat moviegoing audiences like they were dumb children who need to have the whole story spoonfed to them before they'll bother to watch a new movie, and I hope that's not true.
Really? I haven't been hearing that. That one Salon review is very much in the minority.
RE: "Michael Medved also has a new book out "Right Turns" in which he describes his journey from liberal to conservative views. He and his wife have also authored a book (or more) about raising children in today's media environment."
Are you somehow insinuating that it is "liberal" of me to defend my right to go see a new movie without having some bonehead ruin the film's carefully guarded plot twists because they happened to offend his personal morality? I'll have you know that not everyone has the same views on right-to-die issues as you do, and Medved spoiled the movie for people on all sides of the issue, not just for a boycotter like yourself. Media enviornment has nothing to do with it.
RE: "I respect your passion to defend "art" but if you are introspective at all, you must consider that you are defending your perspective on art and movie-making from the years of experience you have had, versus the years of experience that MM has had."
Doesn't matter in this case. Medved has just chosen to sell his 25+ "years of experience" as a professional film critic up the river for an unwise cheapshot at a movie's political content. What a waste.
RE: "I am trying to say that the world of 1994-2005 is already a world of images that you consider 'normal' but are gross distortions or exaggerations from the world that might be (and has been in the past) healthier to the minds and psyches of children."
Beg your pardon, but this is exactly the kind of rose-tinted wishful thinking that I hope I never engage in when I grow older. Even the most basic search through recorded human history will teach you that there has never really been a time when "it was better". One set of problems, one set of threats, one set of social, sexual, and societal values has replaced another over and over throughout time, with mankind never really gaining or losing much that we can't eventually replace.
For example: Many older conservatives I have spoken to often see the 1950's as a time when it was "better" than it is today. Sure everybody may have liked Ike and a few more towns could keep their doors unlocked at night, but even then all good things came at a cost. People in the '50's were daily challenged by the threat of nuclear annihilation (by the belligerant Soviet empire), exploding racial tension and bigotry, "accepted" sexual ignorance, and a host of other problems which still exist today.
The more things change, the more they stay the same, and I'd rather fight for my personal values right here and now than take a time machine back to some bygone period whose flaws have been fogged over in the minds of those who were there.
RE: "If I see a pile of crap on the sidewalk I don't feel the need to step in it
so, no, I'll not be thanking you."
And how do you know that the Crying Game is a "pile of crap" if you've never seen it? Oh, yeah...you don't.
((that is, unless you happen to be one of FR's vitriolic and unfortunately prolific "homo-haters", who wouldn't be caught dead watching a movie with, God forbid, a homosexual character in it lest somebody they know think them less of a "manly man" for it. In which case, trying to talk you into watching this movie is like trying to talk Osama bin Laden into screening Fiddler on the Roof, and it's better you do avoid it in the first place)
RE: "I didn't see the Passion, I'm barely even Christian"
My mistake, then. You're attitude towards MDB is still revolting, however.
RE: "O'Reilly had seen the movie this past weekend and he liked it. He disagreed with Michael."
Then the impossible has truly occurred, and I actually agree with Bill ("Hollywood id evilz, I tell ya") O'Reilly on a movie. Better open my window, the pigs should be passing by any time now.
Didn't I see you call the Harry Potter books "satanic" on a thread a few years back?
I also understand there is mocking of the Christian concept of the Trinity during a conversation with a priest who is a jerk.
It was a funny line though.
Much in the same way that Cider House Rules is a feel good, quaint, set in rural Maine, movie about abortion.
First of all, the Academy Awards (and most every other critical prize) are not bound to honor a film due solely to it's "financial success". In fact, whether the Passion made 370 Million dollars or 30 Million isn't any kind of legitimate criteria for crowning it the "Best Picture of 2004" at this years ceremony. If Box Office totals were the be all and end all of critical analysis, then hackeyned crud like National Treasure, Christmas with the Kranks, and The Grudge would win multiple Oscars this year, and Adam Sandler would have more acting Oscars than Jack Nicholson.
Oh, and your outrage over the Oscars dismissing the Passion based "solely" upon disagreement with it's religious content is hilarious coming from someone who is obviously supporting the Passion to such a fervent degree SOLELY because of your agreement with the same religious content. Don't you see the latent hypocrisy in that argument.
Oh, and the film was "offered" up for consideration at this years Oscars, where it scored three nominations in technical categories. Unfortunately, the Oscars just happened to think that there were 5 better films and performances in all major categories this past year. I'm a little p***ed myself that Eternal Sunshine (the real Best Picture of the year) was excluded from the BP nominations in favor of the overrated Finding Neverland, but I realize that the oscars are not bound to accept my word as binding truth. Why do you hardcore Passion fans seem to think that the Academy should hold your personal opinions any higher than the rest of ours? Is not the disappointed Eternal Sunshine or Incredibles fans's case for inclusion as compelling as your own?
Isn't it against the law to kill a person like that?
RE: "The entire point to movies is "Entertainment."
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, WRONG!!!
The entire point of SOME movies is simply to provide entertainment, and there's nothing wrong with that (Example: I actually liked Dodgeball, the most idiotic comedy in many a moon). The (equally desirable) point of other movies is to reflect the world around us, the good and the bad; mankind: in all our splendor and misery. Movies that examine human nature and challenge the individual to take a stand on the world outside the darkened theater are not necessarily lighthearted or "entertaining", but they fill a cinematic need that all the funny, thrilling fluff in the world put together couldn't touch. And the emotional power and truth of those dark, grim movies like MDB and Mystic River often linger in the memory long after the Spider-man and Shreck films have faded away.
You will see things differently when you have children.
RE: "Clint is a good artist and he is a good American. His art has enriched the medium while entertaining his audiences."
A thousand times, YES!
RE: "You have a horrible attitude."
Coming from someone so utterly, willfully IGNORANT of the whole subject that they refuse to watch a movie unless it pats you on your little back and conforms to your personal religious and political beliefs (and how fragile those must be if they can't stand up to a challenge)...I take that as a compliment.
RE: "Taking Drugs because your a druggie and you like to get high
is different from
Having a medical condition And taking prescription pain killers- Which you then become dependent on."
That's a lie and you damn well know it. By the time of his 1994 suicide, Kurt Cobain was no less dependant on his heroin addiction than Rush Limbaugh was on his Oxycontin, and it is hypocritical of you to condemn Cobain to a drug-addled death while exalting Rush Limbaugh for the closet addiction he was forced to confess. Is it because Rush is "one of us" and Kurt was a rocker? Does that make the difference between who deserves our sympathy and who deserves to rot in your sick, perverted little mind?
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