Posted on 12/25/2008 7:20:26 AM PST by AJKauf
Hollywood films rarely even attempt the sweep and heartbreak of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a bewitching, at times overpowering movie that seems likely to win about 50 Oscars. There aren’t actually that many Oscars to hand out, but I wouldn’t put it past the Academy to invent some new categories.
Based on but greatly expanded from an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, the film by Fight Club director David Fincher proves that this gifted director can deploy all of his visual gifts to create a richly satisfying, emotionally engaging, and more than a bit schmaltzy old-time romance with heavy assistance from digital and makeup technology: as the title character, Brad Pitt is born as a feeble old man of about 80 and spends the entire film aging in reverse.
From the outset, the script by Forrest Gump screenwriter Eric Roth makes it ambitions clear...
(Excerpt) Read more at pajamasmedia.com ...
People and critics are all over the place about this movie.
I’ve heard GREAT reviews and TERRIBLE reviews.
As usual, I will probably be somewhere in the middle.
Australia is pretty but awful, BTW. It is a chick flick trying to disguise its self as a rough and tough western. My husband who wouldn't go to a chick flick if I tried to drag his still warm corpse in the theater, is still complaining how awful and lovey dovey kissy kissy it is.
I had no desire to this film when I first heard of it (it seemed like a chick flick) but after I saw the commercials I can’t wait to see it.
Tell me how you feel about Australia.
Looking forward to seeing this. This movie seems to polarize critics which makes me curious.
Going to definitely see this one. It looks awesome.
I would skip the next Batman sequel if Brad Pitt was in it.
He is on my ‘DO NOT PAY TO SEE’ list.
I understand the general feeling, many years ago I forced my then boyfriend-now Husband to see the chick-flick-costume drama: Emma, which I adored but he throughly hated./Just Asking - seoul62......
This flick "updates" the tale by inserting Hurricane Katrina;
and worse, the Hollywood writers fabricated a "kindly African-American" character who serves as this flick's Magic Negro.
Here's a reply I posted on another thread...
[quote from review]...a kindly African-American worker at the home, Queenie (in a marvelous performance by Taraji P. Henson), embraces Benjamin as one of God’s children — even as she observes that Lord has done something very “strange” in this case — and adopts him.This kindly "African-American" is an invention of Pitt's also (in addition to the Hurricane Katrina storyline). She is not F. Scott Fitzgerald's character, at least.
I just read the first five chapters of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button --full text free online-- and there is NO "Queenie" anywhere in those chapters. Nor does Fitzgerald call anyone an "African-American" (now there's an anachronism).
Looks to me like another case of "The Magic Negro" as described by leftist LA Times writer David Ehrenstein. AKA The Numinous Negro, as identified by Rick Brookhiser of NRO earlier.
Does Hollywood make any movies anymore that don't have a "Magic Negro" in the storyline?
I don't know about other FReepers, but when screenwriters turn a story upside down to make it pc (the wretched movie version of Tom Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities" for example), it makes it un-watchable for me!
Forrest Gump was one of the dumbest movies I ever saw so, whatever.....this looks dumb, too.
The delivery scene must be a hoot.
Really? I liked a comment he made “Don’t ask me for my opinion on politics, I’m a grown man who wears make-up and plays pretend.”
Sly and the Family Stone?
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