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MOVIES: New Ideas Welcome!

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This only scratches the surface. For the all the talk of racism in America - for which it is all too real and sadly still prevalent - we were far from pioneers of the concept. Of the time I've spent within the the ME and SE Asia there are more combinations of, "They suck" than an American could shake a stick at. My wife - who by all accounts is highly educated and has traversed the entire planet due to her previous work requirements - has to me an extremely unhealthy distaste for all things Korean. Except for the food of all things.

I've met more Euros that "hate" this or that than I could ever hope to navigate nor narrate in a manner that would do it justice. This is not meant to justify nor placate such behavior - but humans can be wonderfully philanthropic and yet dangerously defensive at the same time.
The Brits are pretty bad as well. Look at how they reacted when Bob Bradley (an American manager at an EPL team) said "PK" instead of "penalty".
 
Re: MOVIES: New Ideas Welcome!

This only scratches the surface. For the all the talk of racism in America - for which it is all too real and sadly still prevalent - we were far from pioneers of the concept. Of the time I've spent within the the ME and SE Asia there are more combinations of, "They suck" than an American could shake a stick at. My wife - who by all accounts is highly educated and has traversed the entire planet due to her previous work requirements - has to me an extremely unhealthy distaste for all things Korean. Except for the food of all things.

I've met more Euros that "hate" this or that than I could ever hope to navigate nor narrate in a manner that would do it justice. This is not meant to justify nor placate such behavior - but humans can be wonderfully philanthropic and yet dangerously defensive at the same time.

My wife has a Hyundai. Love the fuel mileage, but the seats sure could be a little more comfortable.
 
Re: MOVIES: New Ideas Welcome!

Well, I think the hate is Korea->Japan. The Japanese look upon the Koreans as cheap labor with normal wastage.

And now think about the Chinese/Japanese relations...those cut a bit deeper from what I've seen.

Cheap Thrills:

Two friends earn money by taking a series of dares, which are sometimes funny, sometimes twisted. Similar to "13 Sins," in the message: What is your price?

Worth a watch, it is rather twisted at times (nothing super-gory or anything). Just kind of messed up.
 
Re: MOVIES: New Ideas Welcome!

Chinese/Japanese and Korean/Japanese relations are very much defined by Japanese actions in World War II. The Japanese did some pretty heinous stuff in China and Korea.
 
Re: MOVIES: New Ideas Welcome!

Chinese/Japanese and Korean/Japanese relations are very much defined by Japanese actions in World War II. The Japanese did some pretty heinous stuff in China and Korea.

The Japanese did some pretty heinous stuff in the centuries leading up to WWII. WWII's atrocities were just the icing on the cake for actions taken by the Empire of Japan.
 
Re: MOVIES: New Ideas Welcome!

The Brits are pretty bad as well.

Funny how the English want to identify as "British" while all of the peoples subjected to involuntary rule by the "British" prefer to be Scotch, Welsh, Irish, Indian, etc.

The "British" nearly exterminated indigenous people in the USA, subjected the Irish to mass starvation, enslaved Africans, ....
 
Re: MOVIES: New Ideas Welcome!

Funny how the English want to identify as "British" while all of the peoples subjected to involuntary rule by the "British" prefer to be Scotch, Welsh, Irish, Indian, etc.

The "British" nearly exterminated indigenous people in the USA, subjected the Irish to mass starvation, enslaved Africans, ....

They also perfected the technique of taking a local minority and elevating them about the rest of the colonials as an Uncle Tom bureaucracy. This creates racial animosity where it hadn't existed before, and when they pulled out either one side or the other would launch a genocide.

But they have nice accents so they must be classy.
 
Re: MOVIES: New Ideas Welcome!

If you have TCM The Killers(based on a Hemingway short story) is on tonight at 10 EST. Burt Lancaster(one of my favorites)made his film debut and Ava Gardner is easy on the eyes.

From Wiki:In 2008, The Killers was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
 
Re: MOVIES: New Ideas Welcome!

If you have TCM The Killers(based on a Hemingway short story) is on tonight at 10 EST. Burt Lancaster(one of my favorites)made his film debut and Ava Gardner is easy on the eyes.

From Wiki:In 2008, The Killers was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

The opening ten minutes are for my money the best opening in movie history.
 
Re: MOVIES: New Ideas Welcome!

The Automatic Hate:

Guy finds out he has an uncle, cousins, etc at a later stage in life. He has no clue why this was not known...until he finds out the reason. Very well done, you are BEGGING for the answer by the time the movie is 2/3rds done. There are hints and foreshadowings, but the movie does very well in keeping the secret until the end. And it's a majorly effed up movie.
 
Re: MOVIES: New Ideas Welcome!

Uncle Nick:

A drunken, lecherous uncle makes the holidays oh-so-pleasant on Christmas Eve. While the first 2/3 of the movie is some pretty good dark comedy, the last 1/3 is just dark and sad, and not in a heartfelt way. I was laughing my arse off for the first part, and then felt really awkward for the finale. I don't know if I should recommend this or not. Overall, I ended up giving it the standard 3 stars (out of 5), but it really could've been a 4 star movie.



Yes, it is. ;)

Cheap Thrills:

Two friends earn money by taking a series of dares, which are sometimes funny, sometimes twisted. Similar to "13 Sins," in the message: What is your price?

Worth a watch, it is rather twisted at times (nothing super-gory or anything). Just kind of messed up.
 
Re: MOVIES: New Ideas Welcome!

Saw Rogue One last week. Very good, I was hooked the whole way through, and I love how it ends. Definitely the best since the original 3.
 
Re: MOVIES: New Ideas Welcome!

Can We Take A Joke?

Documentary on how comedy acts have taken a hit because of the (kittens) who act like little (female dogs) and proclaim free speech but yet get all offended on certain subjects. Starts off with just the comics and their bits, delves into the political and gets a little heavy, then recovers and gets back to the message at hand. Very much worth watching, obviously slanted, and I highly recommend. While I love Lenny Bruce, a little TOO much love is given to him, and not enough love to that next generation who really pushed that envelope, like Pryor, Foxx, Kinison, Hicks, etc.

And if you're offended by this, f* you. :D
 
Can We Take A Joke?

Documentary on how comedy acts have taken a hit because of the (kittens) who act like little (female dogs) and proclaim free speech but yet get all offended on certain subjects. Starts off with just the comics and their bits, delves into the political and gets a little heavy, then recovers and gets back to the message at hand. Very much worth watching, obviously slanted, and I highly recommend. While I love Lenny Bruce, a little TOO much love is given to him, and not enough love to that next generation who really pushed that envelope, like Pryor, Foxx, Kinison, Hicks, etc.

And if you're offended by this, f* you. :D
Despite the presence of Lampanelli, a white female comic in the Don Rickles-Joan Rivers mode whose outrageously cutting persona is carefully modulated, and Foster, an African-American woman who used to contribute to "Imus in the Morning" (a radio show not known for its sympathies to the sorts of activists criticized in this film), most of the major interviewees here are white guys in their forties or fifties who seem peeved that they can't just say anything they want and be acclaimed as brilliant satirists or harmless purveyors of fun. Their situation often seems less a portrait of righteous village truth-tellers being chased by pitchfork-wielding mobs (as suggested in a bit of old-movie footage) than of a sub-group of comedians who haven't quite adapted to a new world where audience members are unwilling to suffer grievances in silence, and can now double as critics, thanks to online platforms.

Their beleaguered attitude may be justified, but despite a few cherry-picked examples of extreme or ridiculous responses—and justifiable astonishment that anyone would come to see an in-you-face standup comic and not expect to be offended here or there—there's not much evidence in the movie to suggest that's an open-and-shut case. And we never get close scrutiny of material that arouses such ire, much less rebuttals by writers such as Roxane Gay and Lindy West, who have written extensively on this subject (and gotten into online feuds with prominent comics like Patton Oswalt) over whether heckling, walkouts, angry editorials and the like are quasi-fascist overreactions or merely an example of answering free speech with more free speech.

There are too many unexamined premises in this film, starting with the idea that heckling, student petitions, calls for apologies and the like are "censorship"—a word that people living in China or who survived life in the former Soviet Union understand, and would use correctly; in the US, private businesses and institutions, from Harvard to Twitter, can deny a platform, but only the government can completely muzzle an individual—or if they're an unruly response to an unruly art form that amounts to a conversation between the comic and his or her audience. Standup is a mostly-one way conversation, granted. But it's one that should allow for the possibility that audiences might not like the material or find it amusing, or that the comedian may in fact be on the wrong side of an issue, or punching down (heaping abuse on groups that are essentially powerless) versus punching up (against authority figures and representatives of a repressing ruling class, Saint Lenny's targets).

The Marx Brothers, who are background figures in this movie, also represented a spirit of anarchy and liberation; they were all about expressing impulses that we're taught to keep under wraps, and they aimed their madness at institutions, the rich, the supposedly cultured, and regular people who had comparatively little power but used it to crush the joy out of life. "Mel Brooks, whose "Blazing Saddles" is often held up as an example of the kind of politically incorrect film They Don't Make Anymore, was just as sophisticated, in his lowbrow way: "Saddles" is filled with crude sex jokes and racial slurs, including the N-word, but it's ultimately a satire on racism and sexism, and it's always on the side of the little guy, and ultimately appeals to kindness and decency no matter how outrageous it gets.

George Carlin, who died in 2009 but is a heavy presence in here via interview clips, is likewise held up as an example of why shocking, contrarian or unpleasant material should be protected. But the movie ignores the content of Carlin's material just as it dances around the gist of Bruce's: Carlin attacked government, institutionalized sexism and racism, TV networks' squeamishness about sex and profanity, the military industrial complex, corporations' contempt for consumers and the environment, and other amorphous but real and oppressive presences. And when he did a routine about how rape jokes could be funny, it still didn't treat it lightly, as several comics casually defending the right to make rape jokes do here. Although he wasn't always exact, much less always hilarious, Carlin never lost sight of who had power and who didn't, an important distinction in standup, as well as other popular art forms, that "Can We Take a Joke?" mostly avoids.
Source.
 
Re: MOVIES: New Ideas Welcome!

The whining about political correctness is worse than political correctness, but I have no problem with a comedian making a joke about anything. If they want to punch down and make fun of powerless people, and if their braindead audience thinks that's hurr hurr funny, so be it. Let the marketplace decide.

But if righties want to pretend PC is a disease of the left, they are deliberately ignoring the screaming outrage that's provoked when somebody challenges their sacred cows. Try suggesting we dump the anthem before sporting events or the prayer before Senate proceedings and you'll hear from some real snowflakes.
 
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