Will Smith’s open-handed Code Duello slap of Chris Rock is reminiscent of the pretty good movie directed by the ancient Sir Ridley Scott that was snubbed by the Oscars, The Last Duel.
Based on a true story from France in 1386, Matt Damon plays the dumber knight who accuses the smarter social climber (Adam Driver) of raping his wife. Their liege Monsieur (Ben Affleck) sides with Driver, who is the only man smart enough to make sense of his financial situation.
But the accusation goes to the King and Parlement, who throw up their hands at figuring out the he said-she said and order the two knights to fight to the death and let God sort it out. If Damon loses, by the way, his wife will be burned at the stake for perjury.
The story is told Rashomon style with both men and the wife presenting their narratives. But the movie is wrecked by Driver confessing to Affleck that, yeah, sure, I raped her, rather than lying and thus keeping things ambiguous. I suspect that feminist Nicole Holofcener kept the screenplay kind of lowbrow and moralistic, while Damon and and Affleck tried not fully successfully to liberate it.
The other problem is that Damon’s hair cut and beard style are so moronic looking, a combination of mullet and neck-beard, like a cross-between golfer John Daly and slugger Kyle Schwarber, that it’s hard to take his character seriously.
In contrast, Driver, who is normally a pretty odd looking fellow, would make a fine Cyrano de Bergerac.
In the end, though, Damon’s character proves himself, unstylish and unintelligent as he may be, a devoted husband.
The lack of ambiguity ruins an otherwise good movie’s chance for greatness. The whole point of the Rashomon structure is that people disagree over what happened. But in the #MeToo age nobody is allowed to disagree, so “The Last Duel” is duller than it need be.
Despite these flaws, it’s quite a good film. After all these years, Sir Ridley Scott is quite adept at making movies.
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
English
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Vietnamese
I clearly remember Driver denying the rape right until his death!
…and order the two nights to fight to the death
It’s obviously getting late in your end of the world, Steve. Good(k)night… 😉
Drivers acting: A+
Damon’s acting: B-
Affleck’s acting: D-
“Come on in and take your pants off!” There are some seriously goofy moments in this film.
As you suggest, it would have been a much, much better movie had Driver’s character told a story that implicated Damon’s wife (instead, his version was basically a slightly less violent rape). That story can’t be told today, of course. But having invoked Rashomon so overtly, that flaw was particularly grating.
But, the deeper layer is about the unpredictability of human, especially female sexuality. There is something disturbing about it all- females who may or may not provoke a rape & may or may not enjoy it. Female masochism & ambivalence are so powerful & confusing lineaments of female being that they frequently leave them stunned, perplexed and inexplicable to themselves.
For men, when they are "in love", this surge of emotions makes even the best of them behave like fools & deprives them of inner freedom. But- enough with that ...Replies: @mc23
Any Damon Affleck collaboration is going to be bad.
Haven’t seen The Last Duel, but if it’s based on a true story, that’s a big difference from the Rock-Smith match, which is reducing many midwits to the level of those who think pro wrestling is all-out real.
Right. The lack of ambiguity ruins an otherwise good movie’s chance for greatness. The whole point of the Rashomon structure is that people disagree over what happened. But in the #MeToo age nobody is allowed to disagree over the facts, so “The Last Duel” is duller than it need be.
What would have been interesting (I haven't seen the film) in terms of ambiguity would be one in which Matt Damon's wife didn't think it was rape although her honor compelled her to make the accusation, but Adam Driver's character did. Of course the brain dead cultural commissars would never let such a thing see the light of day.Replies: @Ian M.
In the same vein, they went overboard by making Damon's character such a clod. The one thing we know for certain about his character is that he was willing to risk his name, his wealth, and his life to pursue a long shot claim against a more influential, wealthier, and younger rival. That is about as close to a feminist as you get in that time. If he was as cruel and as riddled with jealousy and insecurity over Driver as the movie portrays, isn't it just as likely that he would have blamed her for seducing Driver and locked her up in the castle (or worse)? I did not believe the clod we saw on screen would ever risk everything for his wife's honor.
I also think they screwed up the portrayal of the wife by having her learn at the last minute that she might be killed as well. I read the book, and there is nothing to support the idea that she was ignorant of risks of asking for the trial by combat (that was Damon's request, not the king's idea, because Damon thought it was his only way to win. It was a he said/she said and Driver had more pull at court and was being accused based solely on the testimony of a woman). That choice infantilizes her by making her an unwitting pawn in the duel. She comes across as someone with a great deal more agency in the book. The more YESQUEEN!!! approach would be a scene where Damon does not want to risk his life and she shames him for being less courageous than her.Replies: @Clyde
All In The Family - s03e21 - Everybody Tells the Truth
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5v0ygcReplies: @JohnnyWalker123
Btw, the musical score has overtones of both Ravel's Bolero, and Victor Young's score from Road to Morocco (1942).
I can't find it, but Trevor Lynch had a review that made this point much better than I'm doing.Replies: @J.Ross
Uh, Steve, I think this is a MeToo apology by powerful men. It pulls the wool over viewer’s eyes, claiming that the woman’s view is “The Truth.” And that’s despite it using Rashomon, which is about how all perspectives are distorted.
For a movie to say “The Truth,” and to have viewers believe it, may mean we are far out of post-modernism into some kind of new moral absolutism. You could call the movie Woke in a sense, though it relishes, seemingly, in those extended rape scenes which are unnecessary. Certainly, at least, the second one is not necessary.
Why do all movie previews have that same “boom,,,,,,,,, boom, boom” soundtrack. The only instrument film composers seem to use anymore is synthetic drum. It’s stupid and childish.
Movie previews used to be as varied as the the movies themselves (the first Star Wars trailer was scored with Vivaldi’s The Seasons and to great effect). Now the previews are all the same, as indeed are the movies ………………… insipid, trite, and boring.
It looks like Oscar-worthy movies in the past 10-15 years fall into one of the following categories:
* biopic
* musical
* SJW movies (disabled, women, blacks, gays…)
* social commentary, generally leftist, on current events
* sometimes, something “mythologically American” (Coen brothers & the like)
* ….
There was a discussion about how the best actor award is increasingly going to biopic actors and that biopic acting is killing method acting. There are still very few musicals these days because they are expensive, do not translate to international box office, and not great box office.
https://www.npr.org/2022/02/09/1079624409/how-the-method-changed-acting
Movie previews used to be as varied as the the movies themselves (the first Star Wars trailer was scored with Vivaldi's The Seasons and to great effect). Now the previews are all the same, as indeed are the movies ..................... insipid, trite, and boring.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @Known Fact
“In a world …”
The film should be remade with Will Smith, Chris Rock and …. The Rock.
http://www.imfdb.org/images/thumb/1/1d/RedDawnStrelnikovJatimatic_02.jpg/400px-RedDawnStrelnikovJatimatic_02.jpg
Driver could not be allowed to play Cyrano nowadays. In the latest iteration a dwarf played Cyrano and a black played Christian, a Jewish fellow plays De Guiche while another black plays Le Bret. Driver is apparently a White Christian without disabilities so would be relegated to playing one of the guards.
“Such excellent reviews we just can’t understand why more viewers didn’t see it. “
How about short armed short legged dwarf as the best swordsman in France? And ugly black guy as actually very handsome Baron Christian de Neuvillette? And a couple other black musketeers?
Every person in the plays and movies was a real White French person living in France in the 1630s.
The best version of Cyrano is on YouTube right now. The 1990 one with Gerard Depardieu and gorgeous Vincent Perez as Christian. No subtitles. But it’s mostly duels and swaggering easy to follow. If you don’t know the story read Wikipedia before you watch it.
This movie didn’t get any nominations because everyone was white. (I didn’t see it but I assume that they didn’t retcon any black people into it.)
Recently I read some reviews of an upcoming miniseries based upon the life of Julia Child that is going air on HBO Max (FINALLY Hollywood tells the Julia Child story!). The series is supposed to be biographical and all of the characters (except one) represent actual people in Child’s life. However, they introduce a completely fictional black person into the story line as a TV producer of her show on PBS and some of the subplots concern this Black Woman’s struggle to be recognized as a Black Person and a Woman, etc. No word on whether anyone attempts to touch her hair. The actual Julia Child spent most of her life in whitopias and AFAIK she didn’t even know any black people. Maybe her cleaning lady.
Apparently in the Current Year it’s obligatory to retcon Black People into all of history, recent or ancient. Next time someone does something about the Pilgrims, I am waiting to see how they introduce Black People onto the Mayflower.
In the UK, they retcon blacks and subcontinentals into everything now, including as members of the 19th Century British aristocracy where they wouldn't have been (Dido Belle being the exception that proves the rule), while insisting that Britain was always a "nation of immigrants."Replies: @Curle
Encountered her once at Trader Joe’s. Years later mi esposa went to her nursing home and she graciously signed a copy of her cookbook.
And lady is a pejorative now days.
It is embarrassingly diverse. Initially, you could put it down to raceblind casting, but with the second season they are insisting that their show is shedding light on the fact that Britain was not all White. So now it's history!Replies: @Wency, @The Germ Theory of Disease
Good enough movie but it wasn’t just the lack of ambiguity that prevented being better. It’s a shame because Scott got a decent performance from everyone.
Adam Driver, who enlisted in the Marines after 9/11, is actually a really good movie star.
For the first two movies listed, the general ineptitude of the movies overwhelms my ability to comment on his acting ability, but he was good in the third (in a supporting role).
As for the last (prominent) American duel, which Steve mentioned a few days ago, please excuse a repeat of a late comment. David Terry’s life is just too juicy to pass up. Biopic, anyone?
Gee, Steve is up early. Or late!
I don’t think Driver admitted to Affleck (or anyone) that he raped her… he admitted to Affleck that they had sex (and Affleck urged him to deny that anything at all had happened), but he didn’t tell Affleck that it was rape (as I recall at least).
I do agree that the film would have been more interesting if there had been more ambiguity (the rape scene in Driver’s portion of the triptych is still… pretty damn rape-y).
It was interesting to me that they left out of the epilogue any mention of the fact that the real-life version of Damon’s character went on to have children with his wife after the events of the movie. Maybe that was an effort to add some ambiguity to the question of the child’s parentage.
You are, right? Or is Hollywood even worse than we imagine?
You can decide which epoch has a more accurate view of women but I would note that the extremes on both political poles have the Middle Ages/Classical view even if expressed differently. Manosphere types tend to view women as subject to their passions who will later rationalize their conduct in conformity with their passions. Feminists erect an elaborate definition of "consent" such that an adult woman having sex after a sip of Chardonnay vitiates her ability to consent (and permits post hoc revocation of "consent" when her emotions about the man or the dalliance are altered). They're ideologically adverse but both saying what is essentially the same thing.Replies: @obwandiyag, @Ian Smith, @mc23, @pirelli
Rashomon is..well…the ambiguity incarnated.
But, the deeper layer is about the unpredictability of human, especially female sexuality. There is something disturbing about it all- females who may or may not provoke a rape & may or may not enjoy it. Female masochism & ambivalence are so powerful & confusing lineaments of female being that they frequently leave them stunned, perplexed and inexplicable to themselves.
For men, when they are “in love”, this surge of emotions makes even the best of them behave like fools & deprives them of inner freedom. But- enough with that …
yes, Scott is a solid director (my faves of his are ‘Alien’ and ‘Blade Runner’). As to well-executed movie slaps, you can’t beat little Henry Gibson whacking hulking Sterling Hayden in Robert Altman’s ‘The Long Goodbye’:
The border is going to be over run like never before in a few days…. the NGO’s that run the immigration system have just done some incredible things. There’s a new Regulation that will give Asylum Officers the ability to grant asylum. There is no appeal from this. Case Over. Alien wins. AND… you are talking about some stupid Hollywood Bullshit in multiple blog posts. Guess You won’t print my comment, will you?
Hey the 2 to 5 million new Americans will at least have Open Border Unz to teach them English!
Couldn’t they have found somebody else for the female lead? Jodie Comer is just not very attractive. She’s weird looking, somehow, and not in a good way.
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/9fce3626983387915ebda4c7e7fe6dbd7979eb66/0_39_4928_2957/master/4928.jpg?width=1200&height=1200&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&s=be4082c76ec17489c816e1972f9ce461Replies: @Jenner Ickham Errican, @Reg Cæsar, @Mr. Anon, @theMann
No doubt this was influenced by METOO, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of DNC, but hasn’t this been a long-standing criticism of American cinema by sophisticates and Europeans/Europhiles? At least the producers of American cinema think that Americans need a good v. bad dichotomy and a clear resolution of the conflict. The exceptions tend to prove that rule by being enduring pieces ranked among the pinnacle of American film, such as The Godfather.
What would have been interesting (I haven’t seen the film) in terms of ambiguity would be one in which Matt Damon’s wife didn’t think it was rape although her honor compelled her to make the accusation, but Adam Driver’s character did. Of course the brain dead cultural commissars would never let such a thing see the light of day.
On the one hand, American movies - or at least a certain subset of American movies - do tend to be excessively Manichean, where the villains are pure evil rather than a mixture of good and evil as all real human beings are. This is lazy storytelling. The apotheosis of this phenomenon is the comic book movie genre.
On the other hand, clear resolution - whether this resolution is a happy or tragic ending - is often a feature of good storytelling. The narrative arc of a story frequently demands a certain resolution to satisfy the internal dramatic 'logic' of the story. When a story refuses the fitting ending, there is a dissonance that is left over that results in the story being less perfect than it could have been. Sometimes Hollywood gets it wrong not by opting for a clear resolution over an ambiguous one, but by opting for the wrong clear resolution: for example, the 1940s film noir Gilda demands a tragic ending, but got a happy one.
That's not to say that an ambiguous resolution can never work (an example of another movie from old Hollywood where I think an ambiguous ending does work: My Cousin Rachel), but what is often the case is that movie directors and critics equate ambiguity or lack of resolution per se with being 'artistic' and 'innovative', when in reality, they are simply undermining the art form. For example, Chinatown is lauded for overturning expectations for its genre by having an 'unhappy' and unexpected ending, but in reality, its ending is just shit. You could have still perhaps had an unhappy ending that worked, but Chinatown doesn't. Another example that doesn't work in my opinion is No Country for Old Men.
I took my girlfriend to see this at the cinema, last autumn.
We both enjoyed it a lot, albeit her a bit more so.
We’re also both unironically excited about Scott’s upcoming Napoleon film, with Joaquin Phoenix.
Amazing. The guy's in his mid 80s and he's going to direct the film that eluded Stanley Kubrick's grasp. I would prefer Ridley make the sequel to Alien Covenant. But I'm pleased he's still putting out movies (in light of the younger and objectively inferior talent pool getting work). One of Ridley's achievements is building RSA Films; one of the best production companies in the history of American and British filmmaking.
Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon in a Ridley Scott film sounds worth seeing.
Bonaparte: 5' 6"https://www.thoughtco.com/was-napoleon-bonaparte-short-1221108">Napoleon's Height RevealedReplies: @Reg Cæsar
We assume you are referring to the characters they portrayed.
You are, right? Or is Hollywood even worse than we imagine?
Did The Last Duel satisfy the new diversity requirements for the Oscars? It has women, but that may have not been enough.
Recently I read some reviews of an upcoming miniseries based upon the life of Julia Child that is going air on HBO Max (FINALLY Hollywood tells the Julia Child story!). The series is supposed to be biographical and all of the characters (except one) represent actual people in Child's life. However, they introduce a completely fictional black person into the story line as a TV producer of her show on PBS and some of the subplots concern this Black Woman's struggle to be recognized as a Black Person and a Woman, etc. No word on whether anyone attempts to touch her hair. The actual Julia Child spent most of her life in whitopias and AFAIK she didn't even know any black people. Maybe her cleaning lady.
Apparently in the Current Year it's obligatory to retcon Black People into all of history, recent or ancient. Next time someone does something about the Pilgrims, I am waiting to see how they introduce Black People onto the Mayflower.Replies: @Alec Leamas (working from home), @Hypnotoad666, @Anon, @Alden, @Romanian
Yes, it is. But at least in things set in the United States blacks actually belonged here and existed in numbers and you would expect to see them in lots of places. I think the need to always have a didactic arc of every film where the wise black character teaches the white character about racism and oppression probably and paradoxically has the effect of keeping blacks cast as characters who would plausibly have been black in the period. They’re so eager to make the black character the erudite, humane conscience despite oppression in everything that they tend to keep casting blacks as slaves or poor folk and whites as masters etc. It’s just annoying when they put a black actor in a place where blacks wouldn’t have been.
In the UK, they retcon blacks and subcontinentals into everything now, including as members of the 19th Century British aristocracy where they wouldn’t have been (Dido Belle being the exception that proves the rule), while insisting that Britain was always a “nation of immigrants.”
For the first 106 years of British America very few blacks were here. Edmund Morgan describes it as a smattering.
Phoenix: 5′ 8″
Bonaparte: 5′ 6″
https://www.thoughtco.com/was-napoleon-bonaparte-short-1221108″>Napoleon’s Height Revealed
Agreed. Bleck! Yuck! Gross!
Seriously, if she doesn't smoke and isnt a bitch, then she is a 10. And I dont even care for that extremely made up Blonde look.
I recall the movie being broken into “Parts” with each perspective getting a label, “Part 1, 2 3”. Except the conclusion of the film which just flowed from the end of Part 3. Really annoying and inconsistent is how I felt about the film. The first 15 minutes were awesome then it got worse all the way to the end.
I think the perception of a man having sex with another man’s wife especially in her own bed chamber at the time depicted would have been indistinguishable from rape as we understand it. Seduction versus violence would not have been as relevant then as it is today, because attitudes and understandings with regard to women’s ability to govern their passions with reason carried over from classical antiquity into the Middle Ages.
You can decide which epoch has a more accurate view of women but I would note that the extremes on both political poles have the Middle Ages/Classical view even if expressed differently. Manosphere types tend to view women as subject to their passions who will later rationalize their conduct in conformity with their passions. Feminists erect an elaborate definition of “consent” such that an adult woman having sex after a sip of Chardonnay vitiates her ability to consent (and permits post hoc revocation of “consent” when her emotions about the man or the dalliance are altered). They’re ideologically adverse but both saying what is essentially the same thing.
I’m not talking about what the prevailing views in the Middle Ages were because I don’t know. I’m saying that in the movie, there’s clearly an important distinction between consensual infidelity and rape, and I don’t recall Driver’s character ever admitting to rape.
Well Steve, you write revews but this 2 Star movie was way too long.
I agree on the Driver confession. All the men have to be bad, so there cannot be a version where Driver might be a victim even if that destroys the friction of the competing narratives.
In the same vein, they went overboard by making Damon’s character such a clod. The one thing we know for certain about his character is that he was willing to risk his name, his wealth, and his life to pursue a long shot claim against a more influential, wealthier, and younger rival. That is about as close to a feminist as you get in that time. If he was as cruel and as riddled with jealousy and insecurity over Driver as the movie portrays, isn’t it just as likely that he would have blamed her for seducing Driver and locked her up in the castle (or worse)? I did not believe the clod we saw on screen would ever risk everything for his wife’s honor.
I also think they screwed up the portrayal of the wife by having her learn at the last minute that she might be killed as well. I read the book, and there is nothing to support the idea that she was ignorant of risks of asking for the trial by combat (that was Damon’s request, not the king’s idea, because Damon thought it was his only way to win. It was a he said/she said and Driver had more pull at court and was being accused based solely on the testimony of a woman). That choice infantilizes her by making her an unwitting pawn in the duel. She comes across as someone with a great deal more agency in the book. The more YESQUEEN!!! approach would be a scene where Damon does not want to risk his life and she shames him for being less courageous than her.
How can you really be sure?
But I don't let myself be paralyzed by uncertainty.Replies: @Jim Don Bob
Bonaparte: 5' 6"https://www.thoughtco.com/was-napoleon-bonaparte-short-1221108">Napoleon's Height RevealedReplies: @Reg Cæsar
Napoleon’s Height Revealed
Steve…..I thought you were going to write about Galois’s Last Duel….
The movie was riveting, and I too remember Driver’s character lying to the bitter end, which made Damon’s character killing him with a sword through the mouth especially satisfying to me and the other lady in the group. On this point (the death-blow), the movie differed from the historical narrative, in which Damon’s knight stabbed the supposed rapist through throat instead, after beheading his horse. Yes, he beheaded his horse. Holy cow. (I went home and read all about the real-life case and was struck by how much hard, sweaty, brutal work went along with being a knight.) Anyway, the movie was plenty Rashomon-ish to me, in a more subtle way, and who said Jodie Comer was funny-looking? She’s quite pretty and feminine and would surely have caught the eye of a young knight-on-the-prowl. Now, Adam Driver has extremely irregular features – sometimes he looks like Keanu Reeves got left out in the sun too long and melted – but he still has plenty of masculine presence onscreen.
That’s the way I remembered it, too. He was denying it right until the knife went into him.
LOL, I’m never sure of anything.
But I don’t let myself be paralyzed by uncertainty.
Holy cow with this black on black slap! Steve has gone (credit Derbyshire 2016 – https://archive.org/details/130305001) Blackety, black!, black, BLACK! 24/7. So have the rest of the non-black citizens in the USA. Trans operations for children are taking a backseat. Russia invading Ukraine? A total bore.
“The other problem is that Damon’s hair cut and beard style are so moronic looking, a combination of mullet and neck-beard, like a cross-between golfer John Daly and slugger Kyle Schwarber, that it’s hard to take his character seriously.”
Disturbingly accurate.
Roger Ebert is gone (“men comb the horizon for a successor, but in this case the search is futile”) but still I always try to imagine what he WOULD HAVE said if alive. (I have all of his books in hard copy and have read them several times.) So I should see the movie, and then have my imaginary conversation with Roger Ebert, extrapolating. But I had trouble just getting through the trailer. Old-guy sensibility. I wish I could be more adaptive. Nah, I don’t.
Steve can take over Ebert's mantle for now. At least we know he is right of center and very bright. He will not shill for fem-nazis, BLM whiggers, and globo-homos in todays movie biz.
“The Last Duel”
I say:
The two best parts of that Scott movie “The Last Duel” were the horses avoiding the rocky outcropping as the French riders and horses charged down an incline to a river to mete out retaliatory justice to the Limey bastards who chopped off or sliced off some heads of French ladies and the other was the scene where Driver and Affleck are on top of the castle roof in France and they look out at a river vista of hills and fields and they hear the wolves howling.
VIVE LA FRANCE!
VIVE LA MARINE LE PEN!
OLD MAN LE PEN WAS INVOLVED IN A DUEL!
“LAST DUEL” MY FOOT! DAMMIT!
Visual imagination and political prediction from June of 2021:
https://www.unz.com/isteve/nyt-many-people-have-a-vivid-minds-eye-while-others-have-none-at-all/#comment-4709935
You can decide which epoch has a more accurate view of women but I would note that the extremes on both political poles have the Middle Ages/Classical view even if expressed differently. Manosphere types tend to view women as subject to their passions who will later rationalize their conduct in conformity with their passions. Feminists erect an elaborate definition of "consent" such that an adult woman having sex after a sip of Chardonnay vitiates her ability to consent (and permits post hoc revocation of "consent" when her emotions about the man or the dalliance are altered). They're ideologically adverse but both saying what is essentially the same thing.Replies: @obwandiyag, @Ian Smith, @mc23, @pirelli
The legal term “raptus” didn’t even necessarily mean what the modern word rape means. Cf: Geoffrey Chaucer.
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/9fce3626983387915ebda4c7e7fe6dbd7979eb66/0_39_4928_2957/master/4928.jpg?width=1200&height=1200&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&s=be4082c76ec17489c816e1972f9ce461Replies: @Jenner Ickham Errican, @Reg Cæsar, @Mr. Anon, @theMann
Noice, but her eyes arrangement is a bit ‘Guernica’. The ocular analog to summer teeth.
Anyhow, Villanelle should have kicked his ass, maybe with a meat cleaver or something.
On a serious note, the interesting point of the movie was not the Rashomon ploy. The Rashomon ploy is a cheap evasion for directors who can’t think of a conclusion. Write out a bunch of stories. Have them all contradict each other. The end. Cheesy. Middlebrows think it brilliant. (Gee, golly, makes ya think, don’t it?!) What was great about Kurosawa’s movie was the acting and production values, not the cheesy plot.
No the interesting point was that it was the anachronism–the last trial by combat in a world far removed from the chivalric feudal medieval (though modern readers can’t distinguish between the 14th century and the 10th.) I wish they’d gone into the legal argumentation.
Yeah. Always have historical figures have hairlips.
The Man Of Destiny Trailer 1973
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjgpvT9gcPI
Haven’t seen The Last Duel, but it makes an interesting bookend to the Scott’s career which began with The Duellists (also true-story-based) in 1977.
I thought The Duellists was really great: an all-time Top Ten. I like Scott, but IMHO since The Duellists, everything has been an attempt to recapture aspects of his original film foray but with bigger budgets and better effects, sometimes more successfully sometimes less so. From the The Last Duel trailer, it looks like he is even still using the same lens filters from 1977.
As an 84-year-old, Scott must be reaching the end of his mortal coil, so returning to the “historical duel” stream he spawned from seems natural. But then he still has a Napoleon film in the can? I’ll see it.
Alien and Blade Runner were great follow up films, all time classics. Alien holds up very well. I re-watched with my oldest children last year and they were amazed it looks so good and is so well done.
He movies more recently are hit-and-miss. This one could have been really good, but was forced into the #metoo versionReplies: @Mr. Anon
Yes, it was a “pretty good” movie. But these days a pretty good Hollywood movies are pretty rare, so pretty good is higher praise than it used to be.
You had me at it sucking because Ben Affleck.
Incidentally, from the clip I saw, Affleck’s ability to sport an English accent hasn’t improved one iota since SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE, over 20 years ago. He basically still sounds like your table host on performance review day at an Indianapolis-area MEDIAEVAL TIMES.
And F!-all those calling Dave Chapelle the GOAT of comedians. Despite the corniness of his try-hard zaniness schtick toward the end of his career, Robin Williams had more talent and accomplishment in his little finger than Dave Chapelle has in his entire black body. Check out, somewhat apropos now, his performance in MOSCOW ON THE HUDSON, where he spends over half the film talking Russian (and with a, from what I’ve heard, basically passable accent).
Autistic cokehead. Manic, unfocused, slobbery. Played to audiences prompted to laugh at Mork wigging out on stage.Replies: @TWS
Who do you think is better among LIVING comedians?Yeah, he was a real barrel of laughs in One Hour Photo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWzILZ6wE9YReplies: @J.Ross, @Harry Baldwin, @Abe
OT: It turns out that if you invert your utility function while using an AI drug discovery system, you can create entirety new and hideous poisons.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42256-022-00465-9
Oaky, this is funny, but the eye thing is just because her head is tilted, no?
There are actresses who seem to be enacting cubism live, though…
https://i2.wp.com/www.usmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/shannondoherty-heathers.jpg?crop=118px%2C0px%2C1564px%2C821px&resize=1200%2C630&ssl=1&quality=86&strip=all
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/43c88750383154ca496569e5c6f3fae8f1ca76c1/0_14_5227_3136/master/5227.jpg?width=1200&height=1200&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&s=958bc905c9a34aba73ab93af33a61f08Replies: @Red Pill Angel
Ridley Scott has made only one good movie since 2007, that being The Martian. Prometheus was middling and Alien Covenant was downright poor. He should have called it a day in 2015. Now he complains nobody watches his movies because of short attention spans. No,it’s because a Ridley Scott movie is more likely than not to be a disappointment.
Ben Affleck ancestry:
Ethnicity: English, Irish, German, Scottish, Scots-Irish/Northern Irish, distant French and Swiss-German, remote Swedish and Welsh
https://ethnicelebs.com/ben-affleck
No wonder Affleck likes booze. Boozers abound in his ancestry.
Tennessee connection for Affleck. I hope his Alexander blood is not connected to that piece of shit Lamar’s.
Incidentally, from the clip I saw, Affleck’s ability to sport an English accent hasn’t improved one iota since SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE, over 20 years ago. He basically still sounds like your table host on performance review day at an Indianapolis-area MEDIAEVAL TIMES.
And F!-all those calling Dave Chapelle the GOAT of comedians. Despite the corniness of his try-hard zaniness schtick toward the end of his career, Robin Williams had more talent and accomplishment in his little finger than Dave Chapelle has in his entire black body. Check out, somewhat apropos now, his performance in MOSCOW ON THE HUDSON, where he spends over half the film talking Russian (and with a, from what I’ve heard, basically passable accent).Replies: @S Johnson, @SunBakedSuburb, @Steve Sailer, @Jack D
The accents aren’t necessarily supposed to be English. As in Ridley Scott’s other movie from last year, House of Gucci, he prefers to have his actors these days adopt the vague cadence of the language (French or Italian) than go for a uniform accent. Sometimes that works well (Jeremy Irons and Lady Gaga were good at getting the Italian rhythm), sometimes not (Jared Leto).
No tilt here, calipers maxed out:
The “slap” was as staged as a Vince McMahon promotion. Straight up Hollywood bullshit.
Jodie Comer stars in Killing Eve. When it was free at Amazon Prime, I could not take more than 30 minutes. I don’t get all the hubbub. All four seasons get 80%+ rating at Amazonk. This series caters to the female brain and tingles aka chick flick. At Wikipedia I see all almost all episodes have women-lady writers and directors, show runners. Watchable w your girlfriend if you are both drinking.
“Scott’s upcoming Napoleon film”
Amazing. The guy’s in his mid 80s and he’s going to direct the film that eluded Stanley Kubrick’s grasp. I would prefer Ridley make the sequel to Alien Covenant. But I’m pleased he’s still putting out movies (in light of the younger and objectively inferior talent pool getting work). One of Ridley’s achievements is building RSA Films; one of the best production companies in the history of American and British filmmaking.
Incidentally, from the clip I saw, Affleck’s ability to sport an English accent hasn’t improved one iota since SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE, over 20 years ago. He basically still sounds like your table host on performance review day at an Indianapolis-area MEDIAEVAL TIMES.
And F!-all those calling Dave Chapelle the GOAT of comedians. Despite the corniness of his try-hard zaniness schtick toward the end of his career, Robin Williams had more talent and accomplishment in his little finger than Dave Chapelle has in his entire black body. Check out, somewhat apropos now, his performance in MOSCOW ON THE HUDSON, where he spends over half the film talking Russian (and with a, from what I’ve heard, basically passable accent).Replies: @S Johnson, @SunBakedSuburb, @Steve Sailer, @Jack D
“Robin Williams had more talent and accomplishment …”
Autistic cokehead. Manic, unfocused, slobbery. Played to audiences prompted to laugh at Mork wigging out on stage.
Film actors tend to be short and big-headed. The lopsided nature of their body is amusing. Makes me feel better about my gorilla body and apple-sized head.
Perhaps the movie should have been made twenty years ago. Then, they might have had a less dumbed-down script.
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/43c88750383154ca496569e5c6f3fae8f1ca76c1/0_14_5227_3136/master/5227.jpg?width=1200&height=1200&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&s=958bc905c9a34aba73ab93af33a61f08Replies: @Red Pill Angel
Ok, I showed Jody Comer’s picture to my husband and he thought her whole face looked crooked but she was still “not bad looking.” Not sure what this says about my husband’s taste in women. Looking at her again online, a few photos are definitely unflattering. That said, a well known portrait painter explained to me that the reason a portrait painted from life is better than a painting copied from a photo is that photos exaggerate such defects which we otherwise don’t notice. Hollywood used to make stars out of people with very symmetrical faces, since the big screen blows up minor defects and even makes them monstrous. I wonder what Adam Driver looks like in person? People with asymmetrical faces supposedly have fewer lifetime sex partners.
https://all-in-the-family-tv-show.fandom.com/wiki/Everybody_Tells_the_Truth
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/AllInTheFamilyS3E20EverybodyTellsTheTruth
All In The Family – s03e21 – Everybody Tells the Truth
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5v0ygc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZOTszoKbE4Replies: @MEH 0910
In the same vein, they went overboard by making Damon's character such a clod. The one thing we know for certain about his character is that he was willing to risk his name, his wealth, and his life to pursue a long shot claim against a more influential, wealthier, and younger rival. That is about as close to a feminist as you get in that time. If he was as cruel and as riddled with jealousy and insecurity over Driver as the movie portrays, isn't it just as likely that he would have blamed her for seducing Driver and locked her up in the castle (or worse)? I did not believe the clod we saw on screen would ever risk everything for his wife's honor.
I also think they screwed up the portrayal of the wife by having her learn at the last minute that she might be killed as well. I read the book, and there is nothing to support the idea that she was ignorant of risks of asking for the trial by combat (that was Damon's request, not the king's idea, because Damon thought it was his only way to win. It was a he said/she said and Driver had more pull at court and was being accused based solely on the testimony of a woman). That choice infantilizes her by making her an unwitting pawn in the duel. She comes across as someone with a great deal more agency in the book. The more YESQUEEN!!! approach would be a scene where Damon does not want to risk his life and she shames him for being less courageous than her.Replies: @Clyde
I have not seen or heard the word “clod” used in years. Well done! In this case, a mullet sporting clod with goatee. The rule for movies these days is, at least one wacky haircut or hairdo, at least one tatted up dude. Piercings optional.
I thoroughly enjoyed this one even if Steve is right that true greatness slightly eluded it. The feminist inserts were annoying but far too brief to ruin it. Also I found the ending shot to be delightfully and surprisingly pro-natal. Lo, children are a heritage of the LORD, and the fruit of the womb is His reward.
(In real life, that baby probably did belong to the Damon character though the movie tries to heavily imply it belongs to Driver and that everyone is a dumb medieval rube for thinking otherwise).
Also, while the feminists will tell you medievals didn’t #believewomen and take rape seriously, I can’t deny that I took pleasure in the (true) part where the rapist was killed and his corpse was hung upside-down and naked and left for the crows. No sex offender registry for him!
Recently I read some reviews of an upcoming miniseries based upon the life of Julia Child that is going air on HBO Max (FINALLY Hollywood tells the Julia Child story!). The series is supposed to be biographical and all of the characters (except one) represent actual people in Child's life. However, they introduce a completely fictional black person into the story line as a TV producer of her show on PBS and some of the subplots concern this Black Woman's struggle to be recognized as a Black Person and a Woman, etc. No word on whether anyone attempts to touch her hair. The actual Julia Child spent most of her life in whitopias and AFAIK she didn't even know any black people. Maybe her cleaning lady.
Apparently in the Current Year it's obligatory to retcon Black People into all of history, recent or ancient. Next time someone does something about the Pilgrims, I am waiting to see how they introduce Black People onto the Mayflower.Replies: @Alec Leamas (working from home), @Hypnotoad666, @Anon, @Alden, @Romanian
There’s a decent historical series on Netflix called The Last Kingdom, which is all about the Danes battling the Saxons in 11th Century England. There literally couldn’t be a more improbable storyline to insert a black character. But sure enough, a black Catholic priest appears as a gratuitous character.
None of the Vikings say what they would have in real life: i.e., some version of “what’s up with that guy’s skin and where is he from.” So I can’t tell if it’s supposed to be “race neutral” casting or if he’s supposed to be an ahistorical African just passing through. Whatever. The show is otherwise just a good old fashioned non-PC gorefest plus political backstabbing and scheming.
Yeah, I don't ask for much.Replies: @Hypnotoad666
Matt Damon in a historical piece, medieval France no less?
Not buying it. Damon’s not the first name audiences think of for historical drama pieces. In a clownish comedic role, sure. In a serious historical drama, no way (excepting Westerns).
Don’t remember seeing it on list of top ten of US box office hits for the year.
Ideal casting: Benedict Cumberbatch in Driver’s role, and Driver in Damon’s role. Now that would have been ideal and far better casting.
OT: Is this a dogwhistle to baddies like me? Maybe he’s not quite the lisping cuck I thought he was. https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/1509628904578772992
Power is a matter of perception; equal height is equal power. So many Hollywood stars are no taller than women. It’s not a coincidence, it’s presenting political fact in picture form.
People mostly know him from the Star Wars trilogy, which was awful. I didn’t really appreciate him until I saw him in “Marriage Story.” The premise of that movie was a bit silly – but then I guess so is the premise of a lot of divorces – but Driver was terrific.
He denies it publicly and to his rival, but to his lord he admits he had sex with Margeurite and she made “the usual protestations”, and they agree that their sophisticated sexual morality will not fly in public so he should deny it happened. What happened in real life was funnier: he insisted he wasn’t there and had an alibi… but the guy who was supposed to vouch for him got arrested for another rape! So I agree with Steve that this change from the historical record made the film worse.
Yes, the film minimizes her history with him by acting like he died shortly later, when the majority of their marriage actually took place after the duel.
That was supposedly the letter of the law (to act like they took perjury very seriously) but in practice they would just whip the woman.
https://slate.com/culture/2021/10/last-duel-movie-historical-accuracy.html
Hey, it’s dark and vibrant! Must be good.
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/9fce3626983387915ebda4c7e7fe6dbd7979eb66/0_39_4928_2957/master/4928.jpg?width=1200&height=1200&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&s=be4082c76ec17489c816e1972f9ce461Replies: @Jenner Ickham Errican, @Reg Cæsar, @Mr. Anon, @theMann
Uncanny Valerie.
I read the book before the movie and while the film isn’t perfect, I enjoyed it.
Does anyone remember Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves? I’m realizing now that it arrived at a very precise historical moment. Late enough in time that, being more a summer blockbuster than a costume drama, it felt it was obligatory to insert an improbable black character into medieval England, but early enough in time that it felt the need to highlight his alienness to that society and create an extraordinary but not quite impossible scenario in which a Muslim African might find himself there.
I got about halfway through this movie and fell asleep. One of Ridley Scott’s best movies is one of his earliest – The Duellists.
But, the deeper layer is about the unpredictability of human, especially female sexuality. There is something disturbing about it all- females who may or may not provoke a rape & may or may not enjoy it. Female masochism & ambivalence are so powerful & confusing lineaments of female being that they frequently leave them stunned, perplexed and inexplicable to themselves.
For men, when they are "in love", this surge of emotions makes even the best of them behave like fools & deprives them of inner freedom. But- enough with that ...Replies: @mc23
I sort of want to reply thanks & lol as well but I’ll just leave it at agree.
All In The Family - s03e21 - Everybody Tells the Truth
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5v0ygcReplies: @JohnnyWalker123
Stifle yourself.
Just Game of Thrones for the big screen- but most people stream their movies now, so what’s the difference? All of the nudity, profanity and “medieval filter” in these films are getting old. It did have some good scenes and could have been edited into something great.
and why not the other Will Smith? He does a great Russian accent too.
She has googly eyes and they appear to be just a bit too far apart.
You can decide which epoch has a more accurate view of women but I would note that the extremes on both political poles have the Middle Ages/Classical view even if expressed differently. Manosphere types tend to view women as subject to their passions who will later rationalize their conduct in conformity with their passions. Feminists erect an elaborate definition of "consent" such that an adult woman having sex after a sip of Chardonnay vitiates her ability to consent (and permits post hoc revocation of "consent" when her emotions about the man or the dalliance are altered). They're ideologically adverse but both saying what is essentially the same thing.Replies: @obwandiyag, @Ian Smith, @mc23, @pirelli
Rape in the Middle Ages was a property crime. Maids were the property of their fathers, married women of their husbands. Rape was more an offense against the men. This is why, for example, marital rape wasn’t seen as a crime until recently.
You can decide which epoch has a more accurate view of women but I would note that the extremes on both political poles have the Middle Ages/Classical view even if expressed differently. Manosphere types tend to view women as subject to their passions who will later rationalize their conduct in conformity with their passions. Feminists erect an elaborate definition of "consent" such that an adult woman having sex after a sip of Chardonnay vitiates her ability to consent (and permits post hoc revocation of "consent" when her emotions about the man or the dalliance are altered). They're ideologically adverse but both saying what is essentially the same thing.Replies: @obwandiyag, @Ian Smith, @mc23, @pirelli
The ancient Greek prophet Tiresias was cursed by Hera to send seven years as woman, even having children.
Later Zeus and Hera argued over who gained more pleasure from sex. Zeus the philander affirmed it was the woman, Hera the man. They called Tiiresias before them to settle the dispute and he replied a woman receives nine times as much pleasure from lovemaking as does a man.” For his answer Hera blinded him.
It’s said this myth explains why Greeks felt it necessary to keep their women secluded, and excluded from public business. Now days we don’t have blind transgender prophets to consult. We can just see what happened since the franchise was expanded.
The finger?
Or the ear?
In the UK, they retcon blacks and subcontinentals into everything now, including as members of the 19th Century British aristocracy where they wouldn't have been (Dido Belle being the exception that proves the rule), while insisting that Britain was always a "nation of immigrants."Replies: @Curle
“ But at least in things set in the United States blacks actually belonged here and existed in numbers”
For the first 106 years of British America very few blacks were here. Edmund Morgan describes it as a smattering.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZOTszoKbE4Replies: @MEH 0910
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0356860/
The Man Of Destiny Trailer 1973
If you use your finger to remove a loose piece of earwax which part of your body has the most agreeable sensation?
The finger?
Or the ear?
I don’t think the “usual protestations” was an admission of rape. I think Jacque’s phrase refers to the morality of the era involving adultery, which has since been defined as “courtly love,” in which a married lady was expected not to give up her virtue so easily during a nobleman’s pursuit of her. That certainly squares with Driver’s interpretation of the bedroom scene. He doesn’t rape her, but she plays coy (i.e., “the usual protestations”) before giving herself up to him.
Movie previews used to be as varied as the the movies themselves (the first Star Wars trailer was scored with Vivaldi's The Seasons and to great effect). Now the previews are all the same, as indeed are the movies ..................... insipid, trite, and boring.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @Known Fact
“In a world where…” — Steve beat me to it! Movie trailers have become so ponderous and predictable. Pre-Covid I had one part-time gig that involved spending the entire day sitting through the same movie four or five times — which meant enduring the same damn trailers over and over again as well.
This by the way is another reason Hawaii 5-0 is one of the best TV shows ever — the next-week be-there-aloha trailers were brilliantly edited 1-minute gems. Much more deft and compelling than what most movie trailers hammer you with
You can decide which epoch has a more accurate view of women but I would note that the extremes on both political poles have the Middle Ages/Classical view even if expressed differently. Manosphere types tend to view women as subject to their passions who will later rationalize their conduct in conformity with their passions. Feminists erect an elaborate definition of "consent" such that an adult woman having sex after a sip of Chardonnay vitiates her ability to consent (and permits post hoc revocation of "consent" when her emotions about the man or the dalliance are altered). They're ideologically adverse but both saying what is essentially the same thing.Replies: @obwandiyag, @Ian Smith, @mc23, @pirelli
Then why all the brouhaha at the trial over whether she had an orgasm? They seemed pretty concerned with whether it had been rape or consensual sex.
I’m not talking about what the prevailing views in the Middle Ages were because I don’t know. I’m saying that in the movie, there’s clearly an important distinction between consensual infidelity and rape, and I don’t recall Driver’s character ever admitting to rape.
The best part about The Last Kingdom, IMHO, is when the location titles spell out the old Saxon or Viking name and then the letters rearrange themselves into the modern name, giving a momentary frisson at the dissonance between the grimy old wood town versus the modern steel and concrete replacements.
Yeah, I don’t ask for much.
And they would have been speaking Old English, which would be totally incomprehensible to us. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NB2Z6pZBNA
Yeah, I don't ask for much.Replies: @Hypnotoad666
Btw, I originally said it was set in the 11th Century, but a quick Google search (which I should have done first), says I was off by a couple hundred years. It’s actually set in the 9th Century. https://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2020/04/a-rough-and-ready-last-kingdom.html
And they would have been speaking Old English, which would be totally incomprehensible to us.
However, a main point of Rashomon, is that primary sources can’t all be wrong …unless they’re all lying. Kurosawa himself tempered the original short story, which was pretty bleak, by having a baby found at the monk’s doorstep. The woodcutter decided to renew his “faith in humanity” by helping to raise the child. Of course, with the monk watching over his shoulder, perhaps the woodcutter wouldn’t have necessarily decided to do the noble thing after all, leading to the point that morality is in the hands of the gatekeepers (e.g. monks, religious leaders), who can help “persuade” ordinary folks to do the right thing. Especially when they’re looking over their shoulders (as the monk is doing by watching over the woodcutters shoulder to make sure he does in fact do what he said he would).
Btw, the musical score has overtones of both Ravel’s Bolero, and Victor Young’s score from Road to Morocco (1942).
Last Duel is somewhere between middlebrow and a genuinely good film, that’s not comparable to Game of Thrones, which was absolute Marvel comics level trash its last 4 seasons.
Also how can the medieval trappings be “getting old” when there are barely any movies set in the period? The heyday of medieval or Renaissance movies seemed to be the 90s and aughts. 15-30 years ago. It’s been awhile.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harakiri_(1962_film)Replies: @J.Ross
https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/2210114-webcomics
Vs the reality:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vC26uHogM8&ab_channel=Tod%27sWorkshop
You are correct that there aren't very many medieval shows but most of them have the medieval filter. Vikangs, The Last Kangdom, Knightfall
Even so, the show clumsily inserted quite a bit of wokeness even before that. Afterward, the show was just stupid, except for a couple of plot arcs that Martin had planned and decided to reveal to the writers .
The Hodar arc was remarkable. I imagine it will be even better if the damn book ever comes out.Replies: @HFR, @Meretricious
I thought The Duellists was really great: an all-time Top Ten. I like Scott, but IMHO since The Duellists, everything has been an attempt to recapture aspects of his original film foray but with bigger budgets and better effects, sometimes more successfully sometimes less so. From the The Last Duel trailer, it looks like he is even still using the same lens filters from 1977.
As an 84-year-old, Scott must be reaching the end of his mortal coil, so returning to the "historical duel" stream he spawned from seems natural. But then he still has a Napoleon film in the can? I'll see it.Replies: @jimmyriddle, @Steve Sailer, @Gaius Gracchus
The Duellists is one of my favourites films. Harvey Keitel put in a hell of a performance – real menace.
Interesting that Ridley Scott was already 40 when he made it.
I saw the movie too and really enjoyed it. One of the things that no one has remarked on is that the Damon character was nothing but a true professional soldier. This character was illiterate and apparently had no interests other than fighting. He would go on various soldiering campaigns in exchange for money. This seems like a very seasoned warrior whom you would never want to be up against in a fight.
The Driver character is a man of letters and quite learned. He is one of the few people depicted in the movie who can actually read. Driver’s character is shown participating in a battle, but do you really think as they were equally matched? If I’m not mistaken from the actual historical account the Damon character dispatched the Driver character rather quickly and easily
Le Gris (Driver) was much bigger than Carrouges and could probably still be called a soldier and a warrior, even if he had less military experience. I think the fight was evenly-enough matched and could have even gone to Le Gris until Carrouges brought it to the ground, which used Le Gris' size and heavy armor against him. In my mind, Le Gris thought he was going into a boxing match, in which he might well have won given his power and reach, but Carrouges turned it into an MMA fight to which Le Gris had no answer.
But I don't let myself be paralyzed by uncertainty.Replies: @Jim Don Bob
Hear, hear!
Incidentally, from the clip I saw, Affleck’s ability to sport an English accent hasn’t improved one iota since SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE, over 20 years ago. He basically still sounds like your table host on performance review day at an Indianapolis-area MEDIAEVAL TIMES.
And F!-all those calling Dave Chapelle the GOAT of comedians. Despite the corniness of his try-hard zaniness schtick toward the end of his career, Robin Williams had more talent and accomplishment in his little finger than Dave Chapelle has in his entire black body. Check out, somewhat apropos now, his performance in MOSCOW ON THE HUDSON, where he spends over half the film talking Russian (and with a, from what I’ve heard, basically passable accent).Replies: @S Johnson, @SunBakedSuburb, @Steve Sailer, @Jack D
On Johnny Carson’s last show with guests, his choice of comedian was Robin Williams.
He was the funniest talk show guest of his generation.
I thought The Duellists was really great: an all-time Top Ten. I like Scott, but IMHO since The Duellists, everything has been an attempt to recapture aspects of his original film foray but with bigger budgets and better effects, sometimes more successfully sometimes less so. From the The Last Duel trailer, it looks like he is even still using the same lens filters from 1977.
As an 84-year-old, Scott must be reaching the end of his mortal coil, so returning to the "historical duel" stream he spawned from seems natural. But then he still has a Napoleon film in the can? I'll see it.Replies: @jimmyriddle, @Steve Sailer, @Gaius Gracchus
Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon? Yeah, I’ll go.
Incidentally, from the clip I saw, Affleck’s ability to sport an English accent hasn’t improved one iota since SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE, over 20 years ago. He basically still sounds like your table host on performance review day at an Indianapolis-area MEDIAEVAL TIMES.
And F!-all those calling Dave Chapelle the GOAT of comedians. Despite the corniness of his try-hard zaniness schtick toward the end of his career, Robin Williams had more talent and accomplishment in his little finger than Dave Chapelle has in his entire black body. Check out, somewhat apropos now, his performance in MOSCOW ON THE HUDSON, where he spends over half the film talking Russian (and with a, from what I’ve heard, basically passable accent).Replies: @S Johnson, @SunBakedSuburb, @Steve Sailer, @Jack D
Williams has a slight problem, in that he is dead. If you are looking for GOATS, Pryor, Carlin, Lenny Bruce, etc. were probably better but they are dead too.
Who do you think is better among LIVING comedians?
Yeah, he was a real barrel of laughs in One Hour Photo
In terms of living comedians, the younger ones are simply MUCH less talented and multi-faceted so it would have to be one of the oldies. Here I’d have to say it’d come down to Bill Murray (for his extremely long and productive acting career), Steve Martin (acting, plus he’s supposedly a decent novelist), but the winner would have to be Billy Crystal for his good stand-up in the day, his pretty solid movie career, and last but not least his status of undisputed GOAT of all Oscar hosts.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_C1Nyak9qTwReplies: @Curle
Or put another way—a flattering portrait painter will minimize/eliminate plain-as-day distortions. No doubt good for business! 🙂
Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, and Whoopi Goldberg used to do those Comic Relief specials to raise money for the homeless. I’ve never seen such wide gap between comics performing on the stage. You could frequently see the frustration on Crystal and Goldberg’s faces as Williams went on one of his improvisations. They simply could not keep up. Williams even had to back off just to allow his fellow comedians the chance to catch up.
One could argue that Goldberg was never funny as a stand-up comedian. I wouldn’t disagree. But Crystal was certainly gifted doing comedy on the stage, even if it usually wasn’t his main gig. Neither, however, was anything other than part of the scenery when Williams was at his best, and both of them knew it.
Who do you think is better among LIVING comedians?Yeah, he was a real barrel of laughs in One Hour Photo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWzILZ6wE9YReplies: @J.Ross, @Harry Baldwin, @Abe
Is this the most wierdly angry of wrongheaded Jack D comments?
Recently I read some reviews of an upcoming miniseries based upon the life of Julia Child that is going air on HBO Max (FINALLY Hollywood tells the Julia Child story!). The series is supposed to be biographical and all of the characters (except one) represent actual people in Child's life. However, they introduce a completely fictional black person into the story line as a TV producer of her show on PBS and some of the subplots concern this Black Woman's struggle to be recognized as a Black Person and a Woman, etc. No word on whether anyone attempts to touch her hair. The actual Julia Child spent most of her life in whitopias and AFAIK she didn't even know any black people. Maybe her cleaning lady.
Apparently in the Current Year it's obligatory to retcon Black People into all of history, recent or ancient. Next time someone does something about the Pilgrims, I am waiting to see how they introduce Black People onto the Mayflower.Replies: @Alec Leamas (working from home), @Hypnotoad666, @Anon, @Alden, @Romanian
C’mon! She lived in Montecito. Her cleaning lady was Latinx.
Encountered her once at Trader Joe’s. Years later mi esposa went to her nursing home and she graciously signed a copy of her cookbook.
Penalty for perjury in 1836 France burning at the stake. Right.
Who do you think is better among LIVING comedians?Yeah, he was a real barrel of laughs in One Hour Photo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWzILZ6wE9YReplies: @J.Ross, @Harry Baldwin, @Abe
Robin Williams was amazing in One Hour Photo–it harnessed the creepiness he always exuded. Another film in which he played a creepy bad guy was Insomnia.
there were plenty of great Japanese films treating the Middle Ages and Renaissance. A film I recently screened, Harakiri, directed by the brilliant Masaki Kobayashi, I cannot recommend more. A major masterpiece that deals with the late Edo period in Japan. Available at Amazon (also check if you can screen it for free on YouTube)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harakiri_(1962_film)
By the way, Japan had a Renaissance?
Recently I read some reviews of an upcoming miniseries based upon the life of Julia Child that is going air on HBO Max (FINALLY Hollywood tells the Julia Child story!). The series is supposed to be biographical and all of the characters (except one) represent actual people in Child's life. However, they introduce a completely fictional black person into the story line as a TV producer of her show on PBS and some of the subplots concern this Black Woman's struggle to be recognized as a Black Person and a Woman, etc. No word on whether anyone attempts to touch her hair. The actual Julia Child spent most of her life in whitopias and AFAIK she didn't even know any black people. Maybe her cleaning lady.
Apparently in the Current Year it's obligatory to retcon Black People into all of history, recent or ancient. Next time someone does something about the Pilgrims, I am waiting to see how they introduce Black People onto the Mayflower.Replies: @Alec Leamas (working from home), @Hypnotoad666, @Anon, @Alden, @Romanian
Cleaning lady Jack? The correct term is now housekeeper. As if the maid has a crew of 8 to supervise cleaning an average size 3 or 4 bedroom house. In the UK the correct term is cleaner which is more accurate.,
And lady is a pejorative now days.
The best pairing of talk show host and Robin Williams was, hands down, Craig Ferguson.
Craig was the only host who could “run with the wolves” regarding Robin.
He participated instead of just becoming an audience member, like every other talk show host at the time had to because they didn’t have the comedic chops Craig had. Ferguson is probably the brightest talk show host that’s ever been, so of course they couldn’t give him the tonight show. He finally left the entire talk show biz, with not a lot of ceremony, and now all we have in the talk show host world is lowbrow half-wit riff raff.
Here’s all their appearances together. Absolutely enjoyable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuDUEy369uY
I checked the latest box office receipts for black &dwarf Cyrano. Not good. Only about 10 million world wide. 30 million budget to make it. Couldn’t find if it’s still being shown in theaters.
“Such excellent reviews we just can’t understand why more viewers didn’t see it. “
How about short armed short legged dwarf as the best swordsman in France? And ugly black guy as actually very handsome Baron Christian de Neuvillette? And a couple other black musketeers?
Every person in the plays and movies was a real White French person living in France in the 1630s.
The best version of Cyrano is on YouTube right now. The 1990 one with Gerard Depardieu and gorgeous Vincent Perez as Christian. No subtitles. But it’s mostly duels and swaggering easy to follow. If you don’t know the story read Wikipedia before you watch it.
Yeah Jack, I’m also a fan of the “Last Kingdom“ but the absurd casting of a black guy in it is problematic. The black guy would’ve likely have been the first black person many of these people would’ve seen, but yet we get no commentary on that. It is as if everybody back in that era had had their diversity and inclusion training, and knew how to be appropriate hosts for their swarthy visitors.
Similarly in the other series on Netflix called Vikings Valhalla, there are even more black characters which is completely laughable. And again no one even comments on the weirdness of so many black females running Viking strongholds. It’s almost as if Oprah had been transported back in time.
Another documentary claims that the original Irish, before Ireland separated from England and Scotland and England separated from the continent the very first Irish humans had black skin and blue eyes.
Now the myth that ancient Egyptians and Cleopatra, her parents siblings and ancestors were black Africans instead of Macedonian Greek Europeans has been completely disproved I guess the liars have to create more anti White lies.Replies: @TGGP
https://www.amazon.com/Duellists-Keith-Carradine/dp/B0039ZGHNCReplies: @Alden
I remember The Duelists. Great movie.
I was surprised to learn that gorgeous Veronica Lake was only 4’11”. One of the reasons she was often paired with Alan Ladd was that he was only 5’6″, so he didn’t have to stand on an apple crate when they shot scenes together. When he was filmed walking beside the 5’9″ Sophia Loren in <Boy On a Dolphin, she had to walk in a trench.
I’m just a dumb rock and oil expert but I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. The twist about what happened at the river crossing really took me by surprise, although I’m not the world’s most sophisticated audience. This and Dune both outperformed for me, and since they were the only movies I was looking forward to, it was great year at the movies for me.
It is obviously a post-me too movie—while each character’s version is presented as “the truth” according to so and so, for her version the word “truth” lingers on the screen after the other words fade. And the film ends with a scene after Damon’s death with her contently tending to her child. That’s the happy ending, not Damon’s gladiatorial triumph.
That said, the story is not really about the rape, but about the conflict/falling-out between Damon’s and Driver’s characters. And that story arch does make skillful use the Rashomon technique. The disputed rape is simply the McGuffin (if I’m using that word right) that brings their conflict to a climax. That story too should probably be read as a feminist critique of destructive masculine pride, but bring more to the table than that.
"Let's you and him go fight"
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/9fce3626983387915ebda4c7e7fe6dbd7979eb66/0_39_4928_2957/master/4928.jpg?width=1200&height=1200&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&s=be4082c76ec17489c816e1972f9ce461Replies: @Jenner Ickham Errican, @Reg Cæsar, @Mr. Anon, @theMann
Exactly. There’s something off about her. I don’t like her. I could think of any number of other British actresses who are more attractive who could have been cast .
Who do you think is better among LIVING comedians?Yeah, he was a real barrel of laughs in One Hour Photo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWzILZ6wE9YReplies: @J.Ross, @Harry Baldwin, @Abe
Below is basically my opinion of Williams for the last third of his career. But in terms of talent and significant body of work in stand-up, comedic acting, his physical comedy, and then serious acting he is untouchable by any of the names on your list (Pryor is the closest, but I would say is a 70% strength Williams at best).
In terms of living comedians, the younger ones are simply MUCH less talented and multi-faceted so it would have to be one of the oldies. Here I’d have to say it’d come down to Bill Murray (for his extremely long and productive acting career), Steve Martin (acting, plus he’s supposedly a decent novelist), but the winner would have to be Billy Crystal for his good stand-up in the day, his pretty solid movie career, and last but not least his status of undisputed GOAT of all Oscar hosts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harakiri_(1962_film)Replies: @J.Ross
Strongly agree, the original version of Harakiri is the best jedaigeki. The remake adds nothing and lacks the nihilistic severity of the first iteration. Extreme rejection of authority, and from Asians. It is the movie that the ridiculous And Justice For All was trying to be.
By the way, Japan had a Renaissance?
“If you are looking for GOATs, Pryor, Carlin, Lenny Bruce, etc. were probably better but they are dead too.”
I love Lenny Bruce but he only had about 4 decent routines (Google Roger Ebert on Bruce; and I agree with Ebert: Mort Sahl was more talented). Pryor is a 1-trick pony, and all his films sucked, except Lost Highway and Blue Collar, which were directed by A-list directors and were not really carried by Pryor. Robin Williams makes my skin crawl (his idol, Jonathan Winters, was 10 times funnier).
That leaves the great George Carlin, who was definitely the greatest comedian of his generation–and, in my opinion, no one could touch him. Here’s Carlin at his best:
There’s a YouTube documentary titled Who Were the Vikings? The documentary claims they weren’t big tall Caucasian blue eyed blondes. No, they were multi racial and all races. Asians . Mongols At which point I turned it off before they claimed some Vikings were blacks. Scandinavian university professors narrating this documentary.
Another documentary claims that the original Irish, before Ireland separated from England and Scotland and England separated from the continent the very first Irish humans had black skin and blue eyes.
Now the myth that ancient Egyptians and Cleopatra, her parents siblings and ancestors were black Africans instead of Macedonian Greek Europeans has been completely disproved I guess the liars have to create more anti White lies.
You are in good company. At Rotten Tomatoes the audience scores go, 81% for Last Duel and 90% for Dune (2021)
A femmy critique set off by her false rape accusations. Cause the problem, then lounge back to “critique” the problem. Women liking to see men contending and jousting over them.
“Let’s you and him go fight”
Recently I read some reviews of an upcoming miniseries based upon the life of Julia Child that is going air on HBO Max (FINALLY Hollywood tells the Julia Child story!). The series is supposed to be biographical and all of the characters (except one) represent actual people in Child's life. However, they introduce a completely fictional black person into the story line as a TV producer of her show on PBS and some of the subplots concern this Black Woman's struggle to be recognized as a Black Person and a Woman, etc. No word on whether anyone attempts to touch her hair. The actual Julia Child spent most of her life in whitopias and AFAIK she didn't even know any black people. Maybe her cleaning lady.
Apparently in the Current Year it's obligatory to retcon Black People into all of history, recent or ancient. Next time someone does something about the Pilgrims, I am waiting to see how they introduce Black People onto the Mayflower.Replies: @Alec Leamas (working from home), @Hypnotoad666, @Anon, @Alden, @Romanian
Have you seen Bridgerton on Netflix?
It is embarrassingly diverse. Initially, you could put it down to raceblind casting, but with the second season they are insisting that their show is shedding light on the fact that Britain was not all White. So now it’s history!
"Skin" is possibly THE Whitest, whitey-whitenheimer play in the American canon, with the possible exception of "Long Day's Journey into Night." Black audiences are not going to go see it, (even with a black cast it simply has nothing to do with them and would make no sense to them) so the only explanation is yet another deliberate poke in the eye to the white and fellow-white actual audience.
Maybe they'll just re-write the text, so famous lines like "Burn everything except Shakespeare" will turn into "Burn everything except Ibram X. Genius."Replies: @Meretricious
I thought initially it was going to go in that direction with how she was acting towards him, but she never actually “gives herself up to him”.
Another documentary claims that the original Irish, before Ireland separated from England and Scotland and England separated from the continent the very first Irish humans had black skin and blue eyes.
Now the myth that ancient Egyptians and Cleopatra, her parents siblings and ancestors were black Africans instead of Macedonian Greek Europeans has been completely disproved I guess the liars have to create more anti White lies.Replies: @TGGP
That stuff about Vikings sounds like nonsense, but if you’ve been reading Razib Khan for a long time you’d know that very ancient Europeans did have dark skin (not necessarily black) and blue eyes. White skin emerged more recently than the earliest pyramids.
It is embarrassingly diverse. Initially, you could put it down to raceblind casting, but with the second season they are insisting that their show is shedding light on the fact that Britain was not all White. So now it's history!Replies: @Wency, @The Germ Theory of Disease
Didn’t watch it but I recall reading that they offered a contrived alternate-history explanation for it, with a black Queen of England integrating her family into the nobility.
* biopic
* musical
* SJW movies (disabled, women, blacks, gays...)
* social commentary, generally leftist, on current events
* sometimes, something "mythologically American" (Coen brothers & the like)
* ....Replies: @Guest007
In the new book about method acting that has been in the news recently,
There was a discussion about how the best actor award is increasingly going to biopic actors and that biopic acting is killing method acting. There are still very few musicals these days because they are expensive, do not translate to international box office, and not great box office.
https://www.npr.org/2022/02/09/1079624409/how-the-method-changed-acting
I still need to read the book the movie is based on, but I did read some history on this event even before the movie was announced.
Le Gris (Driver) was much bigger than Carrouges and could probably still be called a soldier and a warrior, even if he had less military experience. I think the fight was evenly-enough matched and could have even gone to Le Gris until Carrouges brought it to the ground, which used Le Gris’ size and heavy armor against him. In my mind, Le Gris thought he was going into a boxing match, in which he might well have won given his power and reach, but Carrouges turned it into an MMA fight to which Le Gris had no answer.
Why, pray tell?
Ferguson was very good, especially with the good looking ladies. He had them eating out of his hand within minutes.
Perhaps rapists are less choosy?
The penalty for a woman bearing false witness against a man ought indeed to be burned alive. Maybe we’d get that sh*t under control
Bearing false witness is in the 10 Commandments.
The Bible provides its penalty as bein the same one that the false witness attempted to have done to the accused.
Today we #believewomen, the single grou that every civilization throughout history has agreed is most apt to fib. Second only to children.
I finally saw Rashomon for myself, and it’s pretty obvious that what the woodcutter saw was what really happened, and the samurai, his wife, and the bandit all deluded themselves in keeping with their characters and, even more, their roles (e.g. the bandit pretended to be much more ruthless than he really was).
I can’t find it, but Trevor Lynch had a review that made this point much better than I’m doing.
https://counter-currents.com/2017/10/rashomon-and-realism/Replies: @keypusher
I recall back in the old VHS tape rental trips – TWO THUMBS UP was golden. Most of the time. Of course they whiffed a few times – both Siskel and Ebert gushed over My Dinner with Andre – a real boring turkey of a flick.
Steve can take over Ebert’s mantle for now. At least we know he is right of center and very bright. He will not shill for fem-nazis, BLM whiggers, and globo-homos in todays movie biz.
I thought The Duellists was really great: an all-time Top Ten. I like Scott, but IMHO since The Duellists, everything has been an attempt to recapture aspects of his original film foray but with bigger budgets and better effects, sometimes more successfully sometimes less so. From the The Last Duel trailer, it looks like he is even still using the same lens filters from 1977.
As an 84-year-old, Scott must be reaching the end of his mortal coil, so returning to the "historical duel" stream he spawned from seems natural. But then he still has a Napoleon film in the can? I'll see it.Replies: @jimmyriddle, @Steve Sailer, @Gaius Gracchus
The Duelists is great. It showed Scott’s talents well. It is a beautiful film and well acted.
Alien and Blade Runner were great follow up films, all time classics. Alien holds up very well. I re-watched with my oldest children last year and they were amazed it looks so good and is so well done.
He movies more recently are hit-and-miss. This one could have been really good, but was forced into the #metoo version
That is so not true. Marvel movies are Billy Wagstaff*-level art compared to what GoT became. I hope Marin finishes the series so I can clear my palette.
* You probably know him as “William Shakespeare”
Random, spontaneous violence
Sex, sex and more sex
Rapes, rape and more rape
Power plays to determine top dog
etc etc etc
I saw GoT as a chronicle of life in the hood with white actors and lavish costumes.
Autistic cokehead. Manic, unfocused, slobbery. Played to audiences prompted to laugh at Mork wigging out on stage.Replies: @TWS
He was remarkably normal and human to people in the small town he visited. We tended to give celebrities their privacy when they visited, we figured they were there to hunt and fish. Williams was one of the best behaved and courteous. He didn’t come off as coked out or autistic.
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/9fce3626983387915ebda4c7e7fe6dbd7979eb66/0_39_4928_2957/master/4928.jpg?width=1200&height=1200&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&s=be4082c76ec17489c816e1972f9ce461Replies: @Jenner Ickham Errican, @Reg Cæsar, @Mr. Anon, @theMann
It is one thing to be an idiot, another to commit it to print.
Seriously, if she doesn’t smoke and isnt a bitch, then she is a 10. And I dont even care for that extremely made up Blonde look.
This is what I mean by medieval filter:
https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/2210114-webcomics
Vs the reality:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vC26uHogM8&ab_channel=Tod%27sWorkshop
You are correct that there aren’t very many medieval shows but most of them have the medieval filter. Vikangs, The Last Kangdom, Knightfall
“ancient Europeans” meaning the Viking-era or some other prehistoric people group? A huge distinction. It is very difficult for me to believe that the Vikings that we think of in modern history were other than (mostly) blonde-haired and blue-eyed, white northern Scandinavians.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-25885519#:~:text=Scientists%20have%20shed%20light%20on,inhabitants%20of%20Europe%20were%20fair.
They would have looked like a white guy with a deep tan, not like Negroes.
Game of Thrones went bad because the two homosexual jewish writers ran out of source material from the books as GRRM has still only written 5 of the 7 books in the series.
Even so, the show clumsily inserted quite a bit of wokeness even before that. Afterward, the show was just stupid, except for a couple of plot arcs that Martin had planned and decided to reveal to the writers .
The Hodar arc was remarkable. I imagine it will be even better if the damn book ever comes out.
7,000 years ago:
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-25885519#:~:text=Scientists%20have%20shed%20light%20on,inhabitants%20of%20Europe%20were%20fair.
They would have looked like a white guy with a deep tan, not like Negroes.
I assume he was manic depressive – when he was manic and coked up he was “Mork” and funny. When he was depressed he was dark and suicidal. In between he was the normal guy that you saw.
So that you and Sun Baked could both be right, depending on what day you saw him.
Movie studios do not trust movie theaters. So they hire people to keep an eye on the daily take and quality control. Sometimes you tell the manager you’re going to be there all day and want to see their numbers, and sometimes you do it surreptitiously.
It can pay pretty well and hopefully the movie you’re monitoring is worth seeing several times in a row. But Covid shut this gig down.
Steve, you should read the book. It is really good and short for a history.
The movie is decent but waaaaay too long. And the biggest problem with it is that it takes liberties with the actual story as far as what can be known from the history. The rape itself was brutal and makes A Clockwork Orange look tame. The movie makes it look like the situation may have been interpreted differently from 21st century woke attitudes. 14th Century France was a different planet.
https://slate.com/culture/2021/10/last-duel-movie-historical-accuracy.htmlReplies: @Curle
“The Last Duel, which is out this weekend and stars Matt Damon, Adam Driver, and Jodie Comer, offers a gorgeous, vibrant, and devastatingly dark rendering”
Hey, it’s dark and vibrant! Must be good.
In terms of living comedians, the younger ones are simply MUCH less talented and multi-faceted so it would have to be one of the oldies. Here I’d have to say it’d come down to Bill Murray (for his extremely long and productive acting career), Steve Martin (acting, plus he’s supposedly a decent novelist), but the winner would have to be Billy Crystal for his good stand-up in the day, his pretty solid movie career, and last but not least his status of undisputed GOAT of all Oscar hosts.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_C1Nyak9qTwReplies: @Curle
Norm MacDonald had them all beat by a country mile. So did Rodney Dangerfield.
Norm MacDonald was great except at being funny. As much I appreciate a standup comic dissing on, say, Hillary or SNL’s corporate leaders, it would have been much better if he had been funny while doing it.
He just wasn’t anywhere near the class of Robin Williams as a comic. Not even in the same galaxy.
It is embarrassingly diverse. Initially, you could put it down to raceblind casting, but with the second season they are insisting that their show is shedding light on the fact that Britain was not all White. So now it's history!Replies: @Wency, @The Germ Theory of Disease
It gets worse. Lincoln Center is now staging a revival of Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth” with…. wait for it…. blackety-blackety-black-black-black.
“Skin” is possibly THE Whitest, whitey-whitenheimer play in the American canon, with the possible exception of “Long Day’s Journey into Night.” Black audiences are not going to go see it, (even with a black cast it simply has nothing to do with them and would make no sense to them) so the only explanation is yet another deliberate poke in the eye to the white and fellow-white actual audience.
Maybe they’ll just re-write the text, so famous lines like “Burn everything except Shakespeare” will turn into “Burn everything except Ibram X. Genius.”
https://www.lct.org/shows/skin-our-teeth/
Let’s review:
Random, spontaneous violence
Sex, sex and more sex
Rapes, rape and more rape
Power plays to determine top dog
etc etc etc
I saw GoT as a chronicle of life in the hood with white actors and lavish costumes.
"Skin" is possibly THE Whitest, whitey-whitenheimer play in the American canon, with the possible exception of "Long Day's Journey into Night." Black audiences are not going to go see it, (even with a black cast it simply has nothing to do with them and would make no sense to them) so the only explanation is yet another deliberate poke in the eye to the white and fellow-white actual audience.
Maybe they'll just re-write the text, so famous lines like "Burn everything except Shakespeare" will turn into "Burn everything except Ibram X. Genius."Replies: @Meretricious
I attached a brief interview with the incredibly stupid resident director (pure affirmative action) of the Lincoln Center Theater who directed the play. This idiot went to Princeton and Yale:
https://www.lct.org/shows/skin-our-teeth/
Even so, the show clumsily inserted quite a bit of wokeness even before that. Afterward, the show was just stupid, except for a couple of plot arcs that Martin had planned and decided to reveal to the writers .
The Hodar arc was remarkable. I imagine it will be even better if the damn book ever comes out.Replies: @HFR, @Meretricious
The “two homosexual jewish writers” who wrote the Game of Thrones TV scripts are indeed Jewish, but with a wife each and 5 children between them, David Benioff and DB Weiss are unlikely to be homosexual. It’s not impossible, of course, but quite unlikely.
Williams doing the Mork routine over and over again, which is what he did, isn’t funny. An one act pony and usually a bore if you didn’t equate hyper-kinetic energy with humor. That Vietnam movie of his was two hours of torture. MacDonald, on the other hand, could tell a joke.
Even so, the show clumsily inserted quite a bit of wokeness even before that. Afterward, the show was just stupid, except for a couple of plot arcs that Martin had planned and decided to reveal to the writers .
The Hodar arc was remarkable. I imagine it will be even better if the damn book ever comes out.Replies: @HFR, @Meretricious
Mike, while GoT was no Breaking Bad or Mad Men it was still pretty damn good–often brilliant. It was a fantasy sex drama that didn’t take itself too seriously, and, like most series, including BB and MM, it just ran out of steam. To blame the 2 highly talented showrunners is low-hanging fruit, never mind gratuitously reminding iSteve’s readers of their Ashkenazi origin. That’s just wrong
I could go on for 5000 more words about how the writers showed almost no loyalty to the themes and characters of the books so they could tell their 2015 version of woke medieval mythology, so spare me your pearl clutching about what is and isn't wrong. The show writers were beneficiaries of ethnic nepotism as is almost exclusively the case - one of them is the son of a former Goldman Sachs CEO. Their resumes before GoT are a list of unknown or unmemorable trash. All of the dialog and character development are a credit to GRR Martin's genius and any midwit could transfer the book material into a screenplay. The difference in the show's writing from when the books stop is night and day and even all the biggest fan boys on youtube recognize that. With the loss of Martin's source material the writers had absolutely no idea how to finish the arcs for all the characters or write a plot. It was a disaster on a Star Wars prequel level.
And mentioning that they are jewish is certainly not gratuitous as jewish run hollywood, media, music, education, finance and government is proving to be a flaming sword right through the heart of the US and in relation to GoT, its culture (homo and negro worship). On a blog about recognizing patterns, yeah I'm just supposed to pretend like it doesn't exist.Replies: @HFR, @TGGP
Maybe through Margaret of Anjou, Queen of England, by way of Sophie Okonedo through the Hollow Crown Season 2.
I lost interest in GOT when they killed this character off in horrible fashion.
https://imgs.search.brave.com/aX0OpQBny00gTtNIS3b1v0WJU301wm_eN040NK_ZdWQ/rs:fit:770:433:1/g:ce/aHR0cHM6Ly9ha20t/aW1nLWEtaW4udG9z/c2h1Yi5jb20vaW5k/aWF0b2RheS9pbWFn/ZXMvc3RvcnkvMjAx/OTAzL1VudGl0bGVk/LTFfNzcwX18yXy5q/cGVnP1d1M0txUGRL/SzNROXEuaEVuYXp0/SzNVZ0dscG1aa3Bp/JnNpemU9NzcwOjQz/Mw
https://imgs.search.brave.com/WVRx-GW9SEprnJO4ECl_NK5SrRYbWGJ3f6rqEwhRzZM/rs:fit:960:1200:1/g:ce/aHR0cHM6Ly9pMC53/cC5jb20vaS5yZWRk/Lml0L3ByeG1jaHhv/OGkyeC5qcGc_c3Ns/PTE
I’m guessing you didn’t read the books. The sex in the books is not gratuitous and pornographic the way it is in the show. In fact the sex in the books is meant to develop in identity of the characters, not to appeal to some form of eroticism. While Martin does uses his very unique style of writing to imply the sexual orientation of a few characters, there is never any first hand buggery. For example, it is suggested that the character of Loras Tyrell is a homosexual in the books, but there is never anything close to even circumstantial evidence provided for that. His character plot goes in a completely different direction than the show. In the show he is an unchecked anal sex machine. The show’s writers inserted all of the pro homosexual imagery along with the magic negro canards, that are absolutely nowhere to be found in the books. All of the scenes in Littlefinger’s brothels are created for the show and don’t happen in the books, and that goes back to season 1.
I could go on for 5000 more words about how the writers showed almost no loyalty to the themes and characters of the books so they could tell their 2015 version of woke medieval mythology, so spare me your pearl clutching about what is and isn’t wrong. The show writers were beneficiaries of ethnic nepotism as is almost exclusively the case – one of them is the son of a former Goldman Sachs CEO. Their resumes before GoT are a list of unknown or unmemorable trash. All of the dialog and character development are a credit to GRR Martin’s genius and any midwit could transfer the book material into a screenplay. The difference in the show’s writing from when the books stop is night and day and even all the biggest fan boys on youtube recognize that. With the loss of Martin’s source material the writers had absolutely no idea how to finish the arcs for all the characters or write a plot. It was a disaster on a Star Wars prequel level.
And mentioning that they are jewish is certainly not gratuitous as jewish run hollywood, media, music, education, finance and government is proving to be a flaming sword right through the heart of the US and in relation to GoT, its culture (homo and negro worship). On a blog about recognizing patterns, yeah I’m just supposed to pretend like it doesn’t exist.
The show did emphasize sex constantly. The nudity must have caused a problem: finding that many young Hollywood actresses with natural breasts probably took some doing.
One of the things that made a strong impression on me in the books is how young all the characters are. The books cover only 3 years, so at the end of book 5: Sansa Stark is 13; Arya is 11; Bran is 9; Jon Snow is 16; and Daenerys Targaryen is 15. No matter how long George Martin took to write his books, he didn't have to worry that his characters would age in real time. The problems for the showrunners were that no child could be in sex scenes and that no one's aging can slow down to accommodate a film schedule.
I'm still waiting for the 2 books that George Martin has been promising us. But given his age and his not-very-healthy appearance, I'm not optimistic.
For two straight guys they certainly revealed a unusual fetish for homosexuality through GoT. And homosexuals marry women and have kids. Look at Obama and Will smith, just off the top of my head.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RashomonStyle
We wait with bated breath for a white man to play the role of Haile Selassie or Jomo Kenyatta.
- Amateur Grammar Nazi
I can't find it, but Trevor Lynch had a review that made this point much better than I'm doing.Replies: @J.Ross
Is this it?
https://counter-currents.com/2017/10/rashomon-and-realism/
Alien and Blade Runner were great follow up films, all time classics. Alien holds up very well. I re-watched with my oldest children last year and they were amazed it looks so good and is so well done.
He movies more recently are hit-and-miss. This one could have been really good, but was forced into the #metoo versionReplies: @Mr. Anon
Agreed. It was Scott’s best movie. It’s a shame that movies like that can’t hardly get made nowadays.
Scott’s second best was Black Hawk Down.
The Mork routine got old very early in the series; Williams’ standup, however, was golden to his dying days.
Tell me another comic who was so great at standup that for four decades young people continued to make up a large portion of his audience.
Williams was more than frenetic energy. He could do excellent impersonations, character sketches, physical comedy, accents. He would not have lasted several decades with just energy. He was a brilliant comic.
Only because it was such a sappy stupid story. When Williams was doing his comic routine as a DJ, it was great. Unfortunately, that made up less than one-quarter of the movie. The other three-quarters of the film was crap about how war is hell, army officers are stupid, and some unrequited and unbelievable love story because of cultural distance.
Williams was an amazing comic; he also was a sappy man addicted to schmaltz when picking his movie projects, which led to some unfortunate choices. Patch Adams, for example. But Good Morning Vietnam was fun to watch when Williams was essentially doing his comedy routine on it.
No one laughed until later – and even then they weren’t completely sure they had got it.
Here’s an example of Norm Macdonald humor which is so unfunny that I felt embarrassed for him. I’m not cherry-picking here, either. Macdonald’s own fans use this clip to show what a great comic he was.
What lazy standup. I kept hoping his routine would end long before it actually did. Macdonald is like a small cult film that when you watch it you immediately understand why it stayed a cult film and never developed a wider audience.
Props to you for the correct spelling and usage of bated.
– Amateur Grammar Nazi
I could go on for 5000 more words about how the writers showed almost no loyalty to the themes and characters of the books so they could tell their 2015 version of woke medieval mythology, so spare me your pearl clutching about what is and isn't wrong. The show writers were beneficiaries of ethnic nepotism as is almost exclusively the case - one of them is the son of a former Goldman Sachs CEO. Their resumes before GoT are a list of unknown or unmemorable trash. All of the dialog and character development are a credit to GRR Martin's genius and any midwit could transfer the book material into a screenplay. The difference in the show's writing from when the books stop is night and day and even all the biggest fan boys on youtube recognize that. With the loss of Martin's source material the writers had absolutely no idea how to finish the arcs for all the characters or write a plot. It was a disaster on a Star Wars prequel level.
And mentioning that they are jewish is certainly not gratuitous as jewish run hollywood, media, music, education, finance and government is proving to be a flaming sword right through the heart of the US and in relation to GoT, its culture (homo and negro worship). On a blog about recognizing patterns, yeah I'm just supposed to pretend like it doesn't exist.Replies: @HFR, @TGGP
Like you, I read all 5 books of Game of Thrones, but I watched only the first 2 seasons of the show, and stopped for many of the same reasons that you bring up here. I came very late to the party and raced through the first 4 books just before the fifth one came out. (Someone very close to me was completely falling apart, and burying myself in these books got me through the experience. “Damn,” I thought, “these characters’ problems are even worse that mine.”)
The show did emphasize sex constantly. The nudity must have caused a problem: finding that many young Hollywood actresses with natural breasts probably took some doing.
One of the things that made a strong impression on me in the books is how young all the characters are. The books cover only 3 years, so at the end of book 5: Sansa Stark is 13; Arya is 11; Bran is 9; Jon Snow is 16; and Daenerys Targaryen is 15. No matter how long George Martin took to write his books, he didn’t have to worry that his characters would age in real time. The problems for the showrunners were that no child could be in sex scenes and that no one’s aging can slow down to accommodate a film schedule.
I’m still waiting for the 2 books that George Martin has been promising us. But given his age and his not-very-healthy appearance, I’m not optimistic.
Here is a link to the Joseph Conrad story that is the basis for the film.
http://www.online-literature.com/conrad/3123/
I could go on for 5000 more words about how the writers showed almost no loyalty to the themes and characters of the books so they could tell their 2015 version of woke medieval mythology, so spare me your pearl clutching about what is and isn't wrong. The show writers were beneficiaries of ethnic nepotism as is almost exclusively the case - one of them is the son of a former Goldman Sachs CEO. Their resumes before GoT are a list of unknown or unmemorable trash. All of the dialog and character development are a credit to GRR Martin's genius and any midwit could transfer the book material into a screenplay. The difference in the show's writing from when the books stop is night and day and even all the biggest fan boys on youtube recognize that. With the loss of Martin's source material the writers had absolutely no idea how to finish the arcs for all the characters or write a plot. It was a disaster on a Star Wars prequel level.
And mentioning that they are jewish is certainly not gratuitous as jewish run hollywood, media, music, education, finance and government is proving to be a flaming sword right through the heart of the US and in relation to GoT, its culture (homo and negro worship). On a blog about recognizing patterns, yeah I'm just supposed to pretend like it doesn't exist.Replies: @HFR, @TGGP
GRRM has confirmed that Renly & Loras were a gay couple, but neither was a POV character so readers didn’t see it directly. Jaime, however, upbraids Loras at one point with reference to Renly’s history of sodomizing him. Oberyn less directly alludes’ to Loras’ former status as Renly’s catamite, and other people talk about Oberyn being a bisexual. Some gay characters in the books who didn’t make into the show include Jon Connington (also not directly stated but confirmed by GRRM), Whoresbane Umber, Lyn Corbray and Septon Utt (a villainous pedophile, perhaps making him un-PC even if he’s also a clergyman). The new House of the Dragon prequel series based on Fire & Blood will contain Laenor Velaryon, who is clearly gay in GRRM’s book. The show differed by making Yara (Asha in the books) a lesbian rather than straight. Arguably, their approach to sexuality was closer in line to gendered stereotypes than Martin’s: if a woman acts in a more masculine manner she seems like a butch lesbian to D&D (Arya & Brienne are exceptions because the former is a child and the latter being in love with Renly is central to her character, although in the show she says she was aware of his sexuality), whereas Renly is made less like Robert and Loras’ warrior prowess is de-emphasized due to them being gay men.
I watched this movie on a flight a few weeks ago, which is perhaps not ideal, but I was unimpressed and nearly turned it off halfway through. I found the Rashomon style annoying: it felt as though I was just watching the same movie three times and so it felt unnecessarily long. Had there been more ambiguity in the different perspectives as Steve suggests, this format could have made sense and could have made the movie more interesting.
As it was, the wife was made sufficiently sympathetic and Driver’s character too odious to begin with that you were rooting for the wife almost from the beginning and didn’t want to think her guilty. And even in the part of the story that is viewed from Driver’s character’s perspective, he still came off as an extremely unlikeable character.
One thing among several that required an excessive suspension of disbelief was the idea that someone who looked like Driver would be regarded as very attractive by women. It’s hard for me to think of a leading man who is more odd-looking.
Also, the debauchery scenes were stupid, ridiculous, and unnecessary. They should have just made Driver’s character a garden-variety womanizer rather than this Ron Jeremy ‘70s porno flick lothario. Not only were these scenes disgusting and unbelievable, but it made it impossible to believe that Driver’s character had actually fallen in love with Damon’s character’s wife (which is what his perspective aimed to convey).
It seemed to me that on balance, the movie portrayed Damon’s character in a moderately negative light and as ultimately selfish: caring more about his own honor than his wife’s victimization. This seems also to fit with the irritating ‘the patriarchy oppresses women’ theme I got from the movie.
I’ve only seen him in three movies: the first Star Wars movie he was in – the name of which I forget, and about which the less said the better – The Last Duel, and Silence.
For the first two movies listed, the general ineptitude of the movies overwhelms my ability to comment on his acting ability, but he was good in the third (in a supporting role).
What would have been interesting (I haven't seen the film) in terms of ambiguity would be one in which Matt Damon's wife didn't think it was rape although her honor compelled her to make the accusation, but Adam Driver's character did. Of course the brain dead cultural commissars would never let such a thing see the light of day.Replies: @Ian M.
I think it depends.
On the one hand, American movies – or at least a certain subset of American movies – do tend to be excessively Manichean, where the villains are pure evil rather than a mixture of good and evil as all real human beings are. This is lazy storytelling. The apotheosis of this phenomenon is the comic book movie genre.
On the other hand, clear resolution – whether this resolution is a happy or tragic ending – is often a feature of good storytelling. The narrative arc of a story frequently demands a certain resolution to satisfy the internal dramatic ‘logic’ of the story. When a story refuses the fitting ending, there is a dissonance that is left over that results in the story being less perfect than it could have been. Sometimes Hollywood gets it wrong not by opting for a clear resolution over an ambiguous one, but by opting for the wrong clear resolution: for example, the 1940s film noir Gilda demands a tragic ending, but got a happy one.
That’s not to say that an ambiguous resolution can never work (an example of another movie from old Hollywood where I think an ambiguous ending does work: My Cousin Rachel), but what is often the case is that movie directors and critics equate ambiguity or lack of resolution per se with being ‘artistic’ and ‘innovative’, when in reality, they are simply undermining the art form. For example, Chinatown is lauded for overturning expectations for its genre by having an ‘unhappy’ and unexpected ending, but in reality, its ending is just shit. You could have still perhaps had an unhappy ending that worked, but Chinatown doesn’t. Another example that doesn’t work in my opinion is No Country for Old Men.
I don’t disagree with most of this. But context matters. We’re talking about 5000 pages of fiction, more if you count Fire and Blood, and easily over 100 characters that GRRM spends time developing to some degree. Every one of your examples is 1) a minor character, 2) who’s orientation is mostly the product of hearsay that’s discussed among the POV characters, and 3) has no bearing on any of the plot lines, at least that I recall. Renly is made much gayer in the show. Loras basically walks around in a cloud a fairy dust and his character is given much more prominence in the show, which is pretty much so the writers can throw even more homosexual sex scenes in. Both characters are much more masculine in the books. They take a similar line with Oberyn. In the books Oberyn’s bisexuality is also of no consequence; he’s a very dangerous man who has spent almost two decades plotting his revenge, but the show reduces him to a lackadaisical drunken man slut. (You have to admit, even up to the end of the books, the writers so completely fucked up the entire Dorne plot line to the point where it makes absolutely no sense , that they may as well not have even put it in the show. But I have theories on why they kept it but excluded the Young Grif and Quentyn Martell plot lines.)
As for the rest of your examples, the only only who gets a POV chapter IIRC is Jon Connington (who I didn’t remember being homosexual [or Umber] but not that it matters) and he gets 2-3. He’s another very serious character who has spent almost 2 decades plotting and is singularly minded in purpose; the show would have had him running around in chains and leather with his nipples pierced and talking in falsetto.
Part of Martin’s genius is using subtlety to add depth to his characters, and that is as far as the homosexual stuff is supposed to go. It’s not meant to be a distraction or even proselytizing. Some are good men, some are bad. In the show, all negroes and all homos are good, simply because they are negroes and homos. The homo promotion is obscene. such as this scene that is not in the book which is basically just the writers of the show attempting to pass of homosexual exploration among young boys as normal and natural. it’s pure homo propaganda disguised as storytelling.
Sweet, I had been hoping someone would make a sequel to Napoleon Dynamite. Though a bit hard to imagine Joaquin Phoenix in the role.
Agree, I thought Damon was miscast. There is one scene where his character gets really angry and starts screaming at Driver’s and Affleck’s characters in front of a whole bunch of people. I didn’t think it came off as genuine at all and thought it made Damon look incompetent in this sort of role.
From what I’ve seen of it, it’s just the typical modern, degenerate, nihilist “entertainment” that media outlets now like to push: violent, “edgy” (i.e. relentlessly left-wing), etc. In a word …………. crap.
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2Foriginals%2F93%2F83%2F5c%2F93835c8f723a4bdcf110b382fcbf2038.jpg&f=1&nofb=1
I had to find the most recent movie post to try to be moderately on topic, but a nice (if not technical) article about Kodak film, Licorice Pizza, and of course Once Upon a Time in Hollywood gets mentioned:
https://www.kodak.com/en/motion/blog-post/licorice-pizza
And while on Kodak, I have only watched the first of three recent videos on how film is made. Amazing behind the scenes of the Kodak facility, which shows its age but still cranking out real film for real directors. Serious science and manufacturing at play here. Note: there is at least one black tech visible (decent odds he isn’t from downtown Rochester), for all the woke idiots who want to denegrate George Eastman and Kodak because he allegedly only hired one black employee….as a janitor.
And I surprised myself and enjoyed The Last Duel. I hope I am as productive as Ridley Scott when I am his age.
https://counter-currents.com/2017/10/rashomon-and-realism/Replies: @keypusher
That’s it! Thanks!