Posted on 07/24/2006 1:16:47 AM PDT by goldstategop
Hollywood director Oliver Stone dropped by Toronto’s Varsity Cinemas this week to premiere his new movie, World Trade Center, about two of the last police officers who were pulled alive from the World Trade Center rubble, post-9/11.
With him was Scott Strauss, one of the real-life police rescuers. Stone says Strauss and the other 9/11 families kept him in check. That’s quite the feat, given that Stone has called the Cold War “irritating”, says nationalism and patriotism are “evil forces”, considers Fidel Castro a personal friend, and mused that if he was George W. Bush he would “shoot himself”.
With this film, Stone has created a historically accurate, riveting human interest piece—a Hollywood rarity nowadays.
Every strong political leader in the movie is Republican. The caption at the bottom of TV newscasts repeatedly reads “Attack on America”—a handy reminder for liberal moviegoers who may have forgotten why we’re still fighting.
One character is a former Marine who leaves his civilian office job to help with rescue efforts, saying to his colleagues, “Don’t know if you guys know it yet, but this country’s at war.” He later says that the U.S.A. will need “a few good men to avenge what happened here”, and we’re told in the epilogue that he reenlisted in the military and served two tours of duty in Iraq—you know, that place where terrorists are being killed every day, even though liberals constantly tell us that it has nothing to do with terrorism or 9/11.
It’s a welcome departure from recent self-indulgent Hollyweird pap. Stone’s movie about Alexander the Great was basically soft gay porn. Apparently, this great warrior got about as much action in the sack as he did on the battlefield. And this was supposed to be a war movie?
Why stop there? How about remaking Patton from the perspective of the general’s “privates”? Or maybe redo Full Metal Jacket, showing why straight soldiers might have really needed one.
Legendary cowboy, John Wayne, would never have put up with Brokeback Mountain’s director telling him, “Okay, John, there’s really no plot or bad guys. You’ll just be riding around the countryside with Tonto, stopping periodically to erect a tent and have a sausage toss, if you get my drift.”
Brokeback wasn’t exactly a box office smash, but was considered “groundbreaking” by Hollyweird standards—perhaps because they took George Bush’s people (cowboys) and had them screw each other. Men making out with men, and people watching it unfold on a big screen—how daring! Haven’t they heard of Pride parades, or World Cup soccer?
Actor/director George Clooney fancies himself a rebel, too. Last year, he made two politically skewed flops, ignored by everyone except in Hollyweird.
In Good Night and Good Luck, Clooney sought to demonstrate how U.S. Senator Joe McCarthy ruined people’s lives by targeting communists in America—but failed to show a single innocent person whose life he actually ruined.
And no wonder the Hollyweird left loved Clooney’s movie, Syriana. It was like a Noam Chomsky lecture: boring, nonsensical, and driven by themes like “America sucks”, “oil companies are evil”, and “terrorists are poor, misunderstood schmucks”.
Maybe studios are just tired of losing money on narcissistic flights of celluloid fantasy that the bore the rest of us “unenlightened” folks? No one wants to watch a feature length PowerPoint presentation by Al Gore about toasty weather and melting ice. The penguins are happy and have lots of ice—I saw that in the March of the Penguins documentary that beat Al Gore’s at the box office.
I must have hit a nerve, otherwise why the need to resort to personal attacks.
I haven't seen Brokeback on TV. Nor has anyone I know seen it on TV. You mustn't be talking about U.S. TV.
That's why I wrote it made all that money BEFORE it got to TV.
Oh, I see! You wouldn't be implying that it actually got to TV! Gee! Wonder why this "blockbuster" never made it to TV! Says a lot.
Um... Actually, this one was directed by Milos Forman.
But you left out two of Stone's best: "Platoon" and "Wall Street."
You're playing games with numbers--comparing Penguins' PRODUCTION budget alone, sans advertising, to BBM's Production AND Advertising budget. Nice try.
Also, Brokeback grossed $83 million in the U.S. and Penguins grossed $78 million. So, yes, Penguins beat out Brokeback because of the higher production costs of Brokeback.
Again, you're playing with numbers--why are you suddenly limiting this to "US only"? The BBM earned $50 million more than MOTP, and it only cost $6 million more (I didn't include ad budgets in either because they are unreliably reported, unavailable for MOTP as far as I can see, but if you have that info, pass it on.).
I compared like-to-like, while your comparison is apples to oranges.
I must have hit a nerve, otherwise why the need to resort to personal attacks.
Ah, the "personal attacks" pose--when did I personally attack you? When I joked "don't go into accounting"? I think you're reaching if that's a "personal attack" to you.
Let's stick to facts and not skew them to make a success look bad just because we don't like that it was a success, shall we?
You wrote:
Brokeback Mountain was also beat out by March of the Penguins. It wasn't exactly a smashing success.
I'd rather make $170+ million on a $14 million investment (minus ad costs, which are a labyrinth of distribution connections) than $122+ on an $8 mil investment minus ad costs. Wouldn't you?
Au contraire, the numbers speak for themselves. Penguins beat out Brokeback in the U.S. Why does that bother you so much? And, yes, you did engage in a personal attack. Trying to now call it a "joke" doesn't pass muster.
Why would it be on cable this soon after it's DVD release? Movie show up usually one year after their theatrical release--in this case, December.
If it HAD been on TV by this time it would be a bomb. But it wasn't.
Hate to break it to you, but the blockbusters hit cable just about the same time they come out on DVD. I've watched many a movie on Showtime, Cinemax, etc. shortly after the DVD release. Again, it doesn't speak well for Brokeback.
But I shall confess to the congregation that I did like Natural Born Killers.
OK, I apologize for saying you shouldn't go into accounting. That's incredibly insensitive and hateful. I certainly hope this horrible personal attack, which obviously wasn't a joke, has hurt you. (Awfully sensitive.)
Why do you keep up with this childish "Why does this bother you so much?" line--it's transparent, and indicates some insecurity on your part.
Interesting how you keep dodging the points and goign off onto tangents.
You wrote:
Penguins beat out Brokeback in the U.S. Why does that bother you so much?
Because you keep dodging the issue--your original point was not that it "beat out BBM in the US."
You wrote "BBM was beaten out by MOTP. It wasn't a smashing success."
You never said "in the US".
YOu're now dodging because you were shown to be completely wrong, and altering your response because you haven't got the facts right, and you posted MOTP budget and compared that to BBM budget AND ad expenditures, which you haven't provided.
It's all there for anyone to see. This is a discussion not about movies i haven't seen but finance, and the numbers are there to see. Your effort to deceive is there for all to see. Wonder why this subject has you so rattled--hiding something?
I've posted facts; sorry you can't deal with them. Maybe some day you can face the truth abotu yourself.
Have a good night.
"Just wondering......... why do you think JFK was killed?"
karma
Meanwhile, looking forward to "WTC."
:)
You're talking abotu pay-per-view, which often doesn't show movies with adult content. You didn't say pay-per-view--you said TV.
The movie cost less than $20 mil and grossed $172 mil. It sold 1.4 million DVDs its FIRST day. One-day retail sales of that at discount was probably over $20 mil--on ONE day, again. Yeah, that's a mega-failutre.
Our view of the subject matter of movies like this shouldn't blind us to the facts, but that seems to happen a lot around here. Have a good night.
Well, I'm off for the night.
P.S. I was talking cable. Don't put words in my mouth.
Brokeback was doing terribly until it got the Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations which it didn't deserve. Otherwise, it would have had a tough time making back the $20 million.
It's release was perfectly done from a business standpoint.If it went wide on day one like an X-Men movie it could have flopped because the articles praising it would have all come out (!) at once, and then dragged on after it was already out there, as opposed to it being something on the way. It seemed like every damned day the stupid movie was on the front page of USA Today. The one that made me say "Oh for ****'s sake, enough already!" was one someone posted here, saying "Heath Ledger makes it cool to be a cowboy again," which was some liberal weenie trying to show he was so open-minded.
This movie and how it was promoted should be Exhibit A for anyone here who wants to see how the MSM works. Instead, some folks around here are oddly afraid of studying the business aspects of how the MSM sells "alternative" lifestyles to the public. This is what we should be looking at, how liberal values are promoted, and why it was a success. Instead, when you try to discuss that here many folks try to lie and say it wasn't a success. It was; we should be studying why it was sp we can fight back.
Yes, the marketing was a success, and the undeserved awards really helped bring in the money, but was the movie any good? Should we say the movie was a success, when it was really the marketing of the movie that was a success?
That's the case with any movie, though--it's a matter of taste. I finally watched the movie last week and almost shut it off. It was one of the biggest borefests I've ever seen. I watched it because Larry McMurtry is one of my favorite writers and I wanted to see what he did with the horrible writing of Annie proulx, and the answer is "Not much." I never read the story that was the basis for this but this sure wasn't much of a McMurtry story. The women are cliches, the men are inexpressive (thankfully there's nothing especially graphic in the movie) and the story was just dull as dirt. This is entirely about the folks who agree with the movie's politics making it a success.
But so many movies have burned their audiences and made tons of money, so who can say? The marketing didn't make this movie, word of mouth among gays and liberals did. One of my students said she loved the movie and I asked why and she mentioned that she thought the lead actor was cute and she loved the mountain scenery, so you can never tell who's going to like something or why. I do think this was one of the best-sold movies ever, because the movie itself is well-crafted nothingness.
Try this for 1 source.. http://www.slate.com/id/2124078/# .. and you admit in later posting that I was indeed correct that the movie was a dud without all of the free media.. Even the media couldn't save this stinker with all of the fawning and propping.. Take a breath, your slip is showing.. :)
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