Favorite film villains: moral dilemma
Critic of the Century
what if the main character is a villain?
take wallstreet.
we end up liking the villain more than anyone else.
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emjon...@aol.com
"Critic of the Century" <gaza...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> usually we have a good guy main character going against the villain but
> what if the main character is a villain?...
> we end up liking the villain more than anyone else.
Or like in Fritz Lang's "M"... you never really like him but you sure
do feel sorry for him. GREAT film!!
--Elisabeth J.
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BillyBond
>> we end up liking the villain more than anyone else.
>
>Or like in Fritz Lang's "M"... you never really like him but you sure
>do feel sorry for him. GREAT film!!
We often end up liking the villain in melodramas more than the hero; villains
are often more colorful, have funnier wisecracks, get to do more daring things,
etc. But that doesn't mean we want to see them triumph.
Alex Crouvier
>
> usually we have a good guy main character going against the villain but
> what if the main character is a villain?
> we end up liking the villain more than anyone else.
Despite the lame anti-capitalistic ending, WALL STREET is really a
celebration of capitalism. Ollie sees the Nietzschean creature in Gordon
Gekko (the way he sees the Nietzschean creature in Woody Harrelson's
gleeful serial killer in NATURAL BORN KILLERS --media is bad, serial
killers are our Nietzschean father figures). WALL STREET and APOCALYPSE
NOW (courtesy of the creepy John Milius) are two films that celebrates
the notion of super-humans, which contradicts the struggling left-wing
sensibility in both films.
Alex Crouvier
> >do feel sorry for him. GREAT film!!
>
> We often end up liking the villain in melodramas more than the hero; villains
> are often more colorful, have funnier wisecracks, get to do more daring things,
> etc. But that doesn't mean we want to see them triumph.
Aren't we nothing but hypocrites then? YEa? Bunch of fucking hypocrites?
Adolf Hitler
>
>
> "Critic of the Century" <gaza...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > usually we have a good guy main character going against the villain but
> > we end up liking the villain more than anyone else.
>
> Or like in Fritz Lang's "M"... you never really like him but you sure
> do feel sorry for him. GREAT film!!
>
but is he really a villain? a bad person isn't necessarily a villain.
a villain arises when he is shown as the antagonist to the main
character's interests. the corleones in the godfather are gangster
criminals but they are villains.
it's perfectly possible to have nazis as heroes and jews as villains
and there were plenty of awful nazi films of that stripe.
Adolf Hitler
007 movies. will someone shoot that stupid bond already instead of
cooking up ridiculously elaborate ways to off him.
godzilla films. go godzilla, destroy tokyo.
spartacus. at least the olivier is believable. sparatacus as a goody
goody simply doesn't pass muster. the real spartacus was not fighting
for the freedom of mankind but for his own. once freed he would have
had slaves of his own.
BillyBond
>Aren't we nothing but hypocrites then? YEa? Bunch of fucking hypocrites?
No.
Helen & Bob
Alex Crouvier wrote:
>
>
> Aren't we nothing but hypocrites then? YEa? Bunch of fucking hypocrites?
You, perhaps, for continuing to live in a nation you obviously hate.
Bob
FRAJM
[deletion]
>spartacus. at least the olivier is believable. sparatacus as a goody
>goody simply doesn't pass muster. the real spartacus was not fighting
>for the freedom of mankind but for his own. once freed he would have
>had slaves of his own.
>
Sorry, Dolph darling, but that doesn't agree with the historical record.
Spartacus called on the slaves of Italy to revolt and soon had 70,000 recruits
joining him and the original 78 escapee gladiators on the slopes of Mt.
Vesuvius.
He organized his army and fought off the Romans for some two years. When his
army reached 120,000 in size, he was forced to turn away further volunteers,
being unable to care for such a horde.
His plan was to march north across the Alps and there disperse his men to go
their own ways. His men had other ideas and revolted against his leadership and
were soon looting and pillaging the towns and villas of northern Italy.
All this and more are in Plutarch's life of Crassus.
As for Olivier's Crassus, I never saw him as a villain, merely as a responsible
leader doing his duty. Compared to film portrayals of certain of the more
decadent emperors and to Messala in _Ben-Hur_, Crassus is quite a different
order of character.
Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney
http://members.aol.com/frajm/
"All over the room throats were being strained and minds broadened."
-- P. G. Wodehouse, Piccadilly Jim
Alex Crouvier
Oooh, don't be like that. I love you naive, swaggering Yanks :-)
emjon...@aol.com
> We often end up liking the villain in melodramas more than the hero; villains
> are often more colorful, have funnier wisecracks, get to do more daring
> things, etc. But that doesn't mean we want to see them triumph.
Don't you, though?
Every once in awhile, in spite of yourself...? ;-)
Heir to KingBeanie
> "Adolf Hitler" <gaza...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> [deletion]
> >spartacus. at least the olivier is believable. sparatacus as a goody
> >goody simply doesn't pass muster. the real spartacus was not fighting
> >for the freedom of mankind but for his own. once freed he would have
> >had slaves of his own.
> >
>
> Sorry, Dolph darling, but that doesn't agree with the historical record.
> Spartacus called on the slaves of Italy to revolt and soon had 70,000 recruits
> joining him and the original 78 escapee gladiators on the slopes of Mt.
> Vesuvius.
>
> He organized his army and fought off the Romans for some two years. When his
> army reached 120,000 in size, he was forced to turn away further volunteers,
> being unable to care for such a horde.
>
> His plan was to march north across the Alps and there disperse his men to go
> their own ways.
so how was i wrong? the fact is spartacus was not fighting the evil of
slavery. only the evil of his and his friends' asses being enslaved.
the movie makes him out to be fighting for the very principle of
freedom. bullshit, as big a pile of manure as 10 commandments making
moses out to be american style democracy advocate when the only freedom
moses cared about the freedom of his own people. whether the jews
themselves owned slaves was immaterial to him.
same with spartacus so read your history again my poor boy.
> As for Olivier's Crassus, I never saw him as a villain, merely as a responsible
> leader doing his duty. Compared to film portrayals of certain of the more
> decadent emperors and to Messala in _Ben-Hur_, Crassus is quite a different
> order of character.
>
crassus is shown as a villain. but because his role was written with
complexity and was performed by the incomparable olivier, his villainy
has shadings, justifications, and even an ounce of dignity.
but a villain he is, esp. since spartacus is made to be such a goody
goody. when crassus tells sparty that sparty's boy's gonna be raised
as a cotton pickin' field boy, you know crassus be one bad massa.
Heir to KingBeanie
<troj...@geocities.com> wrote:
> BillyBond wrote:
> >
> > >From: emjon...@aol.com
> >
> > >
> > >Or like in Fritz Lang's "M"... you never really like him but you sure
> > >do feel sorry for him. GREAT film!!
> >
> > are often more colorful, have funnier wisecracks, get to do more daring things,
> > etc. But that doesn't mean we want to see them triumph.
>
>
i think goodfellas is the greatest movie on this subject. and it is
instructive in contrast to a movie like shane. in shane a boy
heroworships a gunman. unlike the boy's hardworking but dull father,
shane is cool, dashing, and furious with the gun. and all of us
starting from childhood seek excitement and fantasy from figures other
than our humdrum parents. shane understood this longing but being a
traditional western, shane the violent knight bowed out to the forces
of civilization.
now gangsters are interesting because the morality isn't so clear cut
as in a western. but we have the same fascination with gangsters as
the boy did with shane. gangsters seem freer chasing women, taking
money, exulting in violence. but there is no moral way to justify the
violence. no shane in a last heroic duel and riding off into the
mountains. when we love the gangster we have to admit we are to an
extent scum deep within. we want the goodies of a capitalist economy
without working our asses for it.
goodfellas is the greatest statement on this moral dilemma. godfather
sneaked out of moral dilemma by pretending that mafia guys are all into
family, blood, and honor but you know that's alot of hokum.
and i'll bet scorsese found in art the same kind of freeflowing
existence that he envied in a gangster.
Heir to KingBeanie
wrote:
>
>
> Alex Crouvier wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > Aren't we nothing but hypocrites then? YEa? Bunch of fucking hypocrites?
>
> Bob
>
it pains the great gaza to defend alex gravyhead once again but i must.
alex may be a lot of things--moron, nincompoop, imbecile, jerk, and
weirdo--but he is no antiamerican agitator.
he is a redblooded american. a real patriot, a true marine.
if anything he is too critical of the great marxist giants of this
century.
Heir to KingBeanie
<troj...@geocities.com> wrote:
> Critic of the Century wrote:
> >
> > usually we have a good guy main character going against the villain but
> > what if the main character is a villain?
> > we end up liking the villain more than anyone else.
>
>
> celebration of capitalism.
i wouldn't go that far. not really a celebration. but as in
spartacus, the good guys are too goody and unbelievable, boring. the
only man with real balls and real sense of self is gekko. maybe gekko
is an asswipe but he is a credible asswipe. i mean i would rather have
our nation be allied with useful dictators than with the tooth fairy.
and unlike war, wallstreet is a glitzy place. in platoon, the evil
sergeant was ughhhh precisely because his bloody fiefdom was sheer
devastation and wily vietnamese geeks flying out of the bushes with
bayonets. but how can you make a antiwallstreet movie when all you
basically do is sensationalize that glitzy world to the max. less than
zero suffered from the same problem.
>Ollie sees the Nietzschean creature in Gordon
> Gekko (the way he sees the Nietzschean creature in Woody Harrelson's
> gleeful serial killer in NATURAL BORN KILLERS --media is bad, serial
> killers are our Nietzschean father figures).
no, i don't think stone was saying that about the serial killer. i
think stone was perhaps saying the modern serial killer is an amalgam
of every trashy nonsense he swallowed from tv, movies, etc. and stone
was trying to show us how tightly our attention, the media, and hot
subjects like serial killers are fused together in an ugly way. with
o.j. we all lived through this.
but the movie didn't work because no amount of bravura stylistics can
overcome lack of well thought out ideas and intelligent
characterizations.
i see the movie as stone's desperation. once, he was conservative
republican. then he turned leftist but realized over time that leftist
notions of good and evil are just as simpleminded and bigoted. so what
do you turn to next? natural born killers was a cry of pain and agony,
a fuck you finger to all of us, whether apathetic citizenry, brutal
cops, stupid parents, pompous liberals, scandalous talkshow hosts, etc.
and it was also a punch in his own face, facing the fact that stone
too contributed to this hypercrazy vision of reality many of us have.
nixon was stone's serious effort to come to terms with himself, his
smoking the peace pipe with the generation he warred against but who in
retrospect seemed not devoid of many virtues succeeding generations
have lost.
> WALL STREET and APOCALYPSE
> NOW (courtesy of the creepy John Milius) are two films that celebrates
> the notion of super-humans, which contradicts the struggling left-wing
> sensibility in both films.
apocalypse now was ruined by coppola after the stunning first 50 min.
he had to turn it into a preachy la dolce vietnam. milius had a great
fascist vision of man in touch with his primal warrior self--like
geronimo of hill's movie(another milius screenplay), but coppola had to
make it into a statement about vietnam. milius was taking us out of
vietnam and portraying that war as simply one of the many, continuous
and neverending warfare that always rages at the very core of man's
existence.
Kolaga Xiuhtecuhtli
"Adolf Hitler" <gaza...@hotmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
Adolf Hitler in TRIUMPH OF THE WILL -- that is, if you're a
skin head...
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Scott Norwood
Critic of the Century <gaza...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>usually we have a good guy main character going against the villain but
>what if the main character is a villain?
>take wallstreet.
>we end up liking the villain more than anyone else.
How about "Dog Day Afternoon"?
--
Scott Norwood: snor...@nyx.net, snor...@redballoon.net, sen...@mail.wm.edu
Cool Home Page: http://www.redballoon.net/
Lame Quote: Penguins? In Snack Canyon?
Alex Crouvier
>
>
> i wouldn't go that far. not really a celebration.
Coem on, everyone comes out of WALL STREET wanting to be Gekko or
cheering him on. Same thing with Barnes of PLATOON. I think that's
Stone's weakness, he sees something in these characters, reflective of
his grandiose gesture in filmmaking.
> but as in
> spartacus, the good guys are too goody and unbelievable, boring.
I wonder what the film will be like if the guy who topples Gekko is one
of his long-suffering lieutenants. There is this fat degenerate whom I
think Gekko calls as "the Terminator." What if the character's own
boundless ambition comes out and bites him in the ass, as in the more
pointed NIXON, instead of the corrupted idealist and warrior of virtue
like Bud Fox. But I think WALL STREET, released under the care of 20th
Century Fox, needs to have that crowd-pleasing Good vs Evil narrative.
Some note: Bud Fox only turns the table on Gekko when he realizes Gekko
is ripping apart his daddy's airline. But he doesn't seem to mind when
Gekko rips apart Anacott Steel. This makes him a hypocritical idealist.
> the
> only man with real balls and real sense of self is gekko. maybe gekko
> is an asswipe but he is a credible asswipe.
Yea, we should more people like him. OK, credible, any good filmmaker
can make his materials credible, but even-handed, focused, and critical?
WALL STREET wants it both ways, a celebration of this do-or-die
Nietzschean hero and some liberal finger-wagging. I prefer the attitude
of the more single-minded IN THE COMPANY OF MEN (though the film does
celebrate the corporate monster a little too far)
> i mean i would rather have
> our nation be allied with useful dictators than with the tooth fairy.
> and unlike war, wallstreet is a glitzy place.
Rubbish. One is not better than the other. "Useful" dictators. Are you
serious or are you on something?
> in platoon, the evil
> sergeant was ughhhh precisely because his bloody fiefdom was sheer
> devastation and wily vietnamese geeks flying out of the bushes with
> bayonets.
Coherence, Gaza, it's called coherence.
> but how can you make a antiwallstreet movie when all you
> basically do is sensationalize that glitzy world to the max. less than
> zero suffered from the same problem.
You don't have to resort to sensationalism. Take Bunuel's skewering of
the upper-class in EXTERMINATING ANGELS and DISCREET CHARM OF THE
BOURGEOISE. Or Neil laButte's sparse and very focused IN THE COMPANY OF
MEN (though the Chad charcater is a little over the top and
crowd-pleasing)
Alex Crouvier
>
> no, i don't think stone was saying that about the serial killer. i
> think stone was perhaps saying the modern serial killer is an amalgam
> of every trashy nonsense he swallowed from tv, movies, etc.
Serial killer is an amalgam of every trashy media nonsense? I think
serial killer is an amalgam of every instance of maternal fascism. The
more youthink about it the less you are sure what Ollie is really trying
to say here.
> and stone
> was trying to show us how tightly our attention, the media, and hot
> subjects like serial killers are fused together in an ugly way. with
> o.j. we all lived through this.
But do people actually take these media onlsaught seriously. Are our
lives really shaped by it? A new tax law from Washington is infinitely
more influential than a stupid sitcom
> but the movie didn't work because no amount of bravura stylistics can
> overcome lack of well thought out ideas and intelligent
> characterizations.
Exactly.
> i see the movie as stone's desperation. once, he was conservative
> republican. then he turned leftist but realized over time that leftist
> notions of good and evil are just as simpleminded and bigoted. so what
> do you turn to next? natural born killers was a cry of pain and agony,
> a fuck you finger to all of us, whether apathetic citizenry, brutal
> cops, stupid parents, pompous liberals, scandalous talkshow hosts, etc.
> and it was also a punch in his own face, facing the fact that stone
> too contributed to this hypercrazy vision of reality many of us have.
Thematically confused. Is the sitcom-from-Hell gag saying that our
domestic life is shaped by sitcoms (which are mostly wholesome or
juvenile)? Or is it trying to say that the difference between sitcom,
which is slowly becoming an arbitrer of cultural expectations, and real
domestic life in America is that far apart? But look at sitcoms today: a
single girl with gay roommate, sexual promiscuous yuppie-heads who screw
each other and whine and whine etc. People of the sitcom-land seem less
uptight culturally than what Stone thinks. On the other hand, he is
right about the level to which TV journalism has sunk.
> nixon was stone's serious effort to come to terms with himself, his
> smoking the peace pipe with the generation he warred against but who in
> retrospect seemed not devoid of many virtues succeeding generations
> have lost.
NIXON is probably Stone's best film after SALVADOR
emjon...@aol.com
"Heir to KingBeanie" <gaza...@hotmail.com> wrote:
Heir to King Beanie wrote:
> ...sneaked out of moral dilemma by pretending that mafia guys are all into
> family, blood, and honor but you know that's alot of hokum.
Actually it isn't! When this is the only kind of community you have,
you take it very seriously indeed.
Alex Crouvier
>
>
> apocalypse now was ruined by coppola after the stunning first 50 min.
> he had to turn it into a preachy la dolce vietnam. milius had a great
> fascist vision of man in touch with his primal warrior self--like
> geronimo of hill's movie(another milius screenplay), but coppola had to
> make it into a statement about vietnam. milius was taking us out of
> vietnam and portraying that war as simply one of the many, continuous
> and neverending warfare that always rages at the very core of man's
> existence.
The Milius Factor is still there. The helicopter attack on the village
is pure George Lucas. Milius and Lucas were responsible for unfilmed
climactic scene where Kurtz and Willard fought, SIDE BY SIDE, the
Vietcong. I don't know how the film really ends but there is also a
scene where Kurtz orders an airstrike but shoots down the helicopters
themselves. Kurtz says soemthing like he has achieved somekind of
God-like status among the gullible natives (paraphrase: "Do you know
what is it like to call for fire from the sky? To have [native] women
worship the power in our loins? I fought for this land and I love by
this land"). The implication of this is quite repulsive but maybe
truthful. What is America but founded by genocidal Nietzschean
creatures? America is founded not on mere racism but this colonial
arrogance taken to a new height. It is not animalistic instinct either,
animals don't enslave other animals, kill other species, take over
other's territories, and abuse their offsprings.
bubble gumby
> serial killer is an amalgam of every instance of maternal fascism. The
> more youthink about it the less you are sure what Ollie is really trying
> to say here.
maternal fascism? explain.
>
> > and stone
> > was trying to show us how tightly our attention, the media, and hot
> > subjects like serial killers are fused together in an ugly way. with
> > o.j. we all lived through this.
>
> But do people actually take these media onlsaught seriously. Are our
> lives really shaped by it? A new tax law from Washington is infinitely
> more influential than a stupid sitcom
this is not true. actually it depends on the person's cultural level.
most of us might laugh at heavy metal but there are zonkheads who
define their sense of self and philosophy on this crap. same with rap.
or consider stupid neonazi literature. i laugh at this stuff but
there's a kid i've known all my life who was never well educated nor
well-read. and his empty mind swallowed that garbage whole hog.
do movies and music have an impact? ask yourself this question. did
china change since the mao era as a result of the infusion of western
movies and ideas? did america change forever as a result of the new
music and styles of the 60s. yes, yes.
if you broadcast american tv, distribute american music to the youths
of iran for the next ten years, will there be massive change is gender
outlooks, youth identity and culture, etc? yes again.
the sad thing is even though the 60s was a great rocking decade open to
experimentation, its main cultural product, rock music, fostered in
succeeding generations an impatience for cultural products that doesn't
hit you on the head with a zillion decibles going at breakneck speed.
> Thematically confused. Is the sitcom-from-Hell gag saying that our
> domestic life is shaped by sitcoms (which are mostly wholesome or
> juvenile)? Or is it trying to say that the difference between sitcom,
> which is slowly becoming an arbitrer of cultural expectations, and real
> domestic life in America is that far apart?
i think it's saying tv and reality mix together in our psyche.
stone was a heavy tripper and the rodney dangerfield scene is akin to a
typically bad trip. many of us live with the comforting phoniness of
tv and the brutal facts of reality. in our minds the two mix in a
sickly manner. we end up seeing reality like a sitcom and also
watching sitcom as a projection of our real anxieties. because reality
can be so unforgiving while in a sitcom everything ends up so lovey
dovey cute, the result is only confusion. like the taxi driver who
watches tv and finds no meaning in relation to the naked reality he
witnesses every night.
incidentally, married with children is kinda like the rodney
dangerfield sequence. for a healthy kid, it may simply be a series of
funny jokes, but i wonder about a girl who's been abused sexually by
her father. how does she react to such a sitcom? how does she see
herself and her family when her world view has been so dominated by
trashy images on sitcoms, music videos, and talkshows?
bubble gumby
<troj...@geocities.com> wrote:
> Heir to KingBeanie wrote:
> >
> >
> > i wouldn't go that far. not really a celebration.
>
> Coem on, everyone comes out of WALL STREET wanting to be Gekko or
> cheering him on. Same thing with Barnes of PLATOON. I think that's
> Stone's weakness, he sees something in these characters, reflective of
> his grandiose gesture in filmmaking.
i don't so mind people cheering gekko on. gekko's a fascinating sort.
what i detest is, as you have said, stone trying to have it both ways.
have fun with gekko and then give us a capraesque lecture about how
terrible all this greed shit is.
and what is it with stone's postmodernism? on the one hand, he plays
iconoclast and subversive but relies on the hokiest old fashion
capraesque notions of the hero with a heart of gold. jfk was like mr
smith goes after the cia.
>
> I wonder what the film will be like if the guy who topples Gekko is one
> of his long-suffering lieutenants. There is this fat degenerate whom I
> think Gekko calls as "the Terminator."
i love that fat guy. gekko is always feeling him up like a prize hog
and i had a big big grin whenever gekko schmoozed the guy. wasn't he
later on sienfield and jurassic park?
>
> Some note: Bud Fox only turns the table on Gekko when he realizes Gekko
> is ripping apart his daddy's airline. But he doesn't seem to mind when
> Gekko rips apart Anacott Steel. This makes him a hypocritical idealist.
no, not at all. he becomes a realist. ideas and ideals are abstract.
it's only when he sees someone he cares about suffer does bud realize
the real blood and guts involved in what gekko's doing.
but i thought it was so hokey. martin sheen doing a dying father scene
as old as the hills. pure schlock.
>
> > i mean i would rather have
> > our nation be allied with useful dictators than with the tooth fairy.
> > and unlike war, wallstreet is a glitzy place.
>
> Rubbish. One is not better than the other. "Useful" dictators. Are you
> serious or are you on something?
come come, my dear boy. it was nixon's stroke of genius to get the fat
chinaman on his side against the russians. it was necessary to support
the heroic pinochet against the castroite allende that sumfabitch.
now, are you saying american presidents who played realpolitik were on
something. ha, i wish they had been... they would been more
enlightened on a lot of matters.
>
> > in platoon, the evil
> > sergeant was ughhhh precisely because his bloody fiefdom was sheer
> > devastation and wily vietnamese geeks flying out of the bushes with
> > bayonets.
>
> Coherence, Gaza, it's called coherence.
what's called coherence. i must be on something. i don't get it.
>
> > but how can you make a antiwallstreet movie when all you
> > basically do is sensationalize that glitzy world to the max. less than
> > zero suffered from the same problem.
>
> You don't have to resort to sensationalism. Take Bunuel's skewering of
> the upper-class in EXTERMINATING ANGELS and DISCREET CHARM OF THE
> BOURGEOISE. Or Neil laButte's sparse and very focused IN THE COMPANY OF
> MEN (though the Chad charcater is a little over the top and
> crowd-pleasing)
bunuel was at times a sensationalist and a simplifier. simon of the
desert was pointed, sardonic, devastating.. but said nothing original.
belle de jour was... what? and discreet and exterminating angels are
even more confused than wallstreet albeit in a more honest way. stone
was giving us a moral lecture but like bertolucci got so lost with the
razzle dazzle the lesson no longer mattered. we got caught up with
gekko and treated the whole movie like lifestyles of the rich and
infamous.
but bunuel was of a far more searching character. and what did he
discover about himself? ideologically he hated the bourgeoisie but in
some crazy way, he adored them too. kael was so right about discreet.
by the time he made that, the old man bunuel was no longer throwing
knives. he was admitting that he loved these bourgeois coots. bunuel
felt the same way about the catholic church but this can be said of
many italian directors as well--their marxism was heavily informed by
catholicism.
bubble gumby
> > he had to turn it into a preachy la dolce vietnam. milius had a great
> > fascist vision of man in touch with his primal warrior self--like
> > geronimo of hill's movie(another milius screenplay), but coppola had to
> > make it into a statement about vietnam. milius was taking us out of
> > vietnam and portraying that war as simply one of the many, continuous
> > and neverending warfare that always rages at the very core of man's
> > existence.
>
> The Milius Factor is still there. The helicopter attack on the village
> is pure George Lucas.
lucas? you gotta be kidding.
> Milius and Lucas were responsible for unfilmed
> climactic scene where Kurtz and Willard fought, SIDE BY SIDE, the
> Vietcong. I don't know how the film really ends but there is also a
> scene where Kurtz orders an airstrike but shoots down the helicopters
> themselves. Kurtz says soemthing like he has achieved somekind of
> God-like status among the gullible natives (paraphrase: "Do you know
> what is it like to call for fire from the sky? To have [native] women
> worship the power in our loins? I fought for this land and I love by
> this land").
well coppola ruined milius's vision by not adding this great scene.
just reading about it makes my blood boil. it's some great shit.
> The implication of this is quite repulsive but maybe
> truthful. What is America but founded by genocidal Nietzschean
> creatures?
it's got nothing to do with america. america is about progress, about
the white man turning the wilderness into cornfields and towns with
churches. milius was saying that americans were taking this linear and
progressive understanding of history and transplanting it to vietnam
but failing miserably because americans no longer understood war as
something more than politics and cowboy myths of easy victory.
kurtz is a great man because he leaves this linear sense of history and
becomes a timeless man. he is no longer white nor is he even one of
the natives. he is the primordial warrior. the man who does not limit
his essence by defining himself simply as a farmer, a doctor, a
captain, a whatever. he is a man for whom love and brutality coexist
as it does in nature. kurtz saw the vietcong commit great acts of
cruelty yet go on as decent family men. in contrast americans
psychologically divided america and vietnam. america as peace and
prosperity and vietnam as a few years stint in the jungle. americans
lacked a savage wholeness, an harmony amidst chaos.
>America is founded not on mere racism but this colonial
> arrogance taken to a new height.
americans are scum. but americans had anglo democracy,
anglocapitalism, anglo law, ango philosophy of empiricism. and these
factors led americans to greater and greater freedom and countless
reforms and experimentation.
look around the world and the places colonized by anglos are prosperous
and stable--usa, canada, new zealand, australia. but look at places
colonized by the backward, agricultural, reactionary, feudalistic
spaniards or the portuguese and oh boy, it's shitsville.
hurrah for the anglos. imagine america as having been conquered by any
other people--japanese, zulus, iranians, turks, russians, and i
shudder. what the fuck did the russians and the chinese do with their
vast territory? nothing. but a handful of anglos with their law and
economic system turned this great land into gazaville. yes, gaza is
the ultimate prize of the american progress.
who can ask for anything more?
> It is not animalistic instinct either,
> animals don't enslave other animals, kill other species, take over
> other's territories, and abuse their offsprings.
yes they do and i know you are kidding. jane goodall thought chimps
were peaceful buggers but extensive research has shown tribes of chimps
annihilating other tribes.
throughout evolutionary history many species have died out as a result
of being annihilated by some other species. the introduction of the
rat to hawaii has already led to the destruction of native species.
and kurtz wasn't saying let's be like animals. he was saying we are a
part of nature. americans in their safe and antiseptic suburban homes
can't understand that humans are part of life and life is about
struggle, about the cycle of devouring and being devoured. like ruth
gordon, kurtz's soulmate, said in harold and maude. kurtz finds peace
with this notion and willard should have joined kurtz and gaza, beat on
his chest and run off into the jungle with some voluptuous women slung
over his shoulder. alas, coppola had to screw things up by playing mr
Profound.
Dragan Antulov
FRAJM wrote in message <19990215141103...@ng-fs1.aol.com>...
>As for Olivier's Crassus, I never saw him as a villain, merely as a
responsible
>leader doing his duty. Compared to film portrayals of certain of the more
>decadent emperors and to Messala in _Ben-Hur_, Crassus is quite a different
>order of character.
Actually, Kubrick portrays Crassus with much more sympathy than the real man
deserves. In real history Crassus organised one of the first protection
rackets (with his infamous private fire brigade) in Rome. He also was
involved in First Triumvirate with Caesar and Pompeius, obviously having
some second thoughts about Roman Constiution. His insatiable material greed
was the main motivation for his action. His reputation even reached the
faraway Partian Empire, and Parts chose rather symbollic way to execute him
after the disastrous campaign in Karrhae, 59 BC.
(Of course, we have to take into consideration that the historical accounts
might be as historically accurate as Howard Fast's novel).
Dragan Antulov a.k.a. Drax
Fido: 2:381/100
E-mail: dragan....@st.tel.hr
dragan....@altbbs.fido.hr
Helen & Bob
Heir to KingBeanie wrote:
> On Mon, 15 Feb 1999 09:15:20 -0800 Helen & Bob <chil...@ix.netcom.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Alex Crouvier wrote:
> >
> > >
> > >
> > > Aren't we nothing but hypocrites then? YEa? Bunch of fucking hypocrites?
> >
> > You, perhaps, for continuing to live in a nation you obviously hate.
> > Bob
> >
>
> it pains the great gaza to defend alex gravyhead once again but i must.
> alex may be a lot of things--moron, nincompoop, imbecile, jerk, and
> weirdo--but he is no antiamerican agitator.
> he is a redblooded american. a real patriot, a true marine.
> if anything he is too critical of the great marxist giants of this
> century.
> --
>
If the above is true, and I have misread him, them my sincerest apologies to
him. But that is not the way I have read his msg.
Bob
BillyBond
>i think goodfellas is the greatest movie on this subject. and it is
>instructive in contrast to a movie like shane.
Shane, the character, is a moral man in an immoral business. The boy is not
wrong to worship him; he is wrong not to ALSO admire his father, and wrong in
wanting to do what Shane does.
> godfather
>sneaked out of moral dilemma by pretending that mafia guys are all into
>family, blood, and honor but you know that's alot of hokum.
THE GODFATHER is, essentially, an opera, with similar forms of exaggeration.
The Mafia really did like to pretend that despite what they did for a living,
they were all full of honor and stuff -- omerta. But as Richard Condon points
out, it's really always all about the money. No wonder the Mafia love THE
GODFATHER, and get all weepy over it, while PRIZZI'S HONOR and GOODFELLAS
disturb them.
BillyBond
>> ...sneaked out of moral dilemma by pretending that mafia guys are all into
>> family, blood, and honor but you know that's alot of hokum.
>
>Actually it isn't! When this is the only kind of community you have,
>you take it very seriously indeed.
So? It's still bullpuckey. The code of "omerta" existed to keep the
underlings loyal to the capos, on up the ladder. It was intended to keep the
capos from getting arrested, and to make sure the money kept flowing their way.
Semi-feudal organizations like the Mafia usually have a "code of honor" of
this nature; it reached its fullest flowering in the Samurai class in Japan.
BillyBond
>> We often end up liking the villain in melodramas more than the hero;
>villains
>> are often more colorful, have funnier wisecracks, get to do more daring
>> things, etc. But that doesn't mean we want to see them triumph.
>
>
>Don't you, though?
>Every once in awhile, in spite of yourself...?
Not really, no -- at least not at the end of the movie. There are exceptions,
but those are usually the great >rascals< (jewel thieves, Long John Silver,
etc.) rather than the great villains.
Alex Crouvier
>
> On Tue, 16 Feb 1999 01:45:31 -0800 Alex Crouvier
> <troj...@geocities.com> wrote:
>
> lucas? you gotta be kidding.
>
> > Milius and Lucas were responsible for unfilmed
> > climactic scene where Kurtz and Willard fought, SIDE BY SIDE, the
> > Vietcong. I don't know how the film really ends but there is also a
> > scene where Kurtz orders an airstrike but shoots down the helicopters
> > themselves. Kurtz says soemthing like he has achieved somekind of
> > God-like status among the gullible natives (paraphrase: "Do you know
> > what is it like to call for fire from the sky? To have [native] women
> > worship the power in our loins? I fought for this land and I love by
> > this land").
>
> well coppola ruined milius's vision by not adding this great scene.
> just reading about it makes my blood boil. it's some great shit.
Watch HEART OF DARKNESS: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, the documentary on
APOCALYPSE NOW which is one of the most stunning, jaw-dropping expose
ever on a film. The words of Lucas, Milius, Coppola and crew still haunt
me. The thing about that Lucas/Milius ending is that it is too gung-ho
and Rambo-esque according to Coppola which I agree. Then the film adopts
that "easy victory" crap you chirped earlier on. Hopper's character says
at one point that "it will end with a whimper, not a bang." Coppola
achieves a more mature closing. Milius-scripted "power in our loins"
dialogue is a jaw-dropper but it shouldn't be accompanied with some GI
JOE-style all-out action finale. The docu shows how the action scene was
already storyboarded! I am pretty sure this is Boy George's doing.
> > The implication of this is quite repulsive but maybe
> > truthful. What is America but founded by genocidal Nietzschean
> > creatures?
>
> americans no longer understood war as
> something more than politics and cowboy myths of easy victory.
> captain, a whatever. he is a man for whom love and brutality coexist
> as it does in nature. kurtz saw the vietcong commit great acts of
> cruelty yet go on as decent family men. in contrast americans
> psychologically divided america and vietnam. america as peace and
> prosperity and vietnam as a few years stint in the jungle. americans
> lacked a savage wholeness, an harmony amidst chaos.
Gaza, you could gather a few thoughts and make something out of them.
This is a keen observation of the film.
> americans are scum. but americans had anglo democracy,
> anglocapitalism, anglo law, ango philosophy of empiricism. and these
> factors led americans to greater and greater freedom and countless
> reforms and experimentation.
I understand that. America is of course become the sacrificial
experimental melting pot. The world watches as America dares another
silly or profound social experimentation. When the experiment fails, the
world laughs their asses off; when it succeeds, everybody begrudgingly
agrees America is --sometimes-- the greatest country in the world. But
with dumb kids dominating the buying power and therefore dictates
popular culture, I think America is going to the dumps sooner or later.
> look around the world and the places colonized by anglos are prosperous
> and stable--usa, canada, new zealand, australia. but look at places
> colonized by the backward, agricultural, reactionary, feudalistic
> spaniards or the portuguese and oh boy, it's shitsville.
Come on Gaza, the Spaniards never replace or systematically wipe out the
original inhabitants. Well, they just humped a hell lot of Indians and
black slaves that gave birth to a new race called the Hispanics.
> hurrah for the anglos. imagine america as having been conquered by any
> other people--japanese, zulus, iranians, turks, russians, and i
> shudder. what the fuck did the russians and the chinese do with their
> vast territory? nothing.
Yea, but the Chinese and Russians have their peak. At the peak of
Chinese civilizations, the Anglos were nothing but a growling brutes.
And no college student will be proud (superficially of course) without
the likes of BROTHER KARAMAZOV or CRIME AND PUNISHMENT under their
armpits as they head to Latte Centers. What does America have?
Hemingway? Joan Collins? C'mooon...
Japanese, Zulus, and Turks in one sweeping sentence? Tell me you stumble
with this one, Gaza. Japanese is a bunch of tight-assed, freak control
perverts but can the Zulus or Turks build economy car with efficient mpg
and dominate that market? Can the Zulus examine their savage ways and
churn out something as even-handed as SEVEN SAMURAI?
> but a handful of anglos with their law and
> economic system turned this great land into gazaville. yes, gaza is
> the ultimate prize of the american progress.
> who can ask for anything more?
Sure, everybody has his moment. But civilization has its peaks and
valleys. America is only 200 years old (an adolescent civilization
compared to Egyptians and Roman, a whining baby compared to Chinese), it
is showing signs of burnt-out already.
> yes they do and i know you are kidding. jane goodall thought chimps
> were peaceful buggers but extensive research has shown tribes of chimps
> annihilating other tribes.
Systematic slavery? Screwing the Indians for their lands to eventually
build malls for their children to sink into Gap-Express-Victoria-Secret
zombi existence?
Here's hope to mankind yet.
Alex Crouvier
>
> and what is it with stone's postmodernism? on the one hand, he plays
> iconoclast and subversive but relies on the hokiest old fashion
> capraesque notions of the hero with a heart of gold. jfk was like mr
> smith goes after the cia.
Told you: simple economics. The studio is Fox, probably the dopiest
studio there is.
Pun intended.
> i love that fat guy. gekko is always feeling him up like a prize hog
> and i had a big big grin whenever gekko schmoozed the guy. wasn't he
> later on sienfield and jurassic park?
No, not Wayne
> no, not at all. he becomes a realist. ideas and ideals are abstract.
> it's only when he sees someone he cares about suffer does bud realize
> the real blood and guts involved in what gekko's doing.
This si the hokey part. I prefer him to see the err of his ways in some
other more ...uuh--hmm, transcendental way. Coppola is reportedly doing
a film project where he parallels the decadent days of Roman Empire with
the yuppie excess of two Wall Street guys. I think this might be
Coppola's comeback. IN the menatime, he just needs to swallow his pride
and do more John Grisham and Akiva Goldman screenplays.
> but i thought it was so hokey. martin sheen doing a dying father scene
> as old as the hills. pure schlock.
Again, melodrama as selling point. Gekko's villainy is confirmed: he
drives daddies with weak hearts to hospital beds. They are still doing
it today on TV, with all these silly, hysterical hospital (melo)dramas.
> come come, my dear boy. it was nixon's stroke of genius to get the fat
> chinaman on his side against the russians. it was necessary to support
> the heroic pinochet against the castroite allende that sumfabitch.
> now, are you saying american presidents who played realpolitik were on
> something. ha, i wish they had been... they would been more
> enlightened on a lot of matters.
Clinton is a non-event, and he is one of the few who is getting it. BAck
to relaity gaza, America needs a sober, visionary President. Nixon
could've been the greatest, Ollie is right.
> > > in platoon, the evil
> > > sergeant was ughhhh precisely because his bloody fiefdom was sheer
> > > devastation and wily vietnamese geeks flying out of the bushes with
> > > bayonets.
> >
> > Coherence, Gaza, it's called coherence.
>
> what's called coherence. i must be on something. i don't get it.
What's with "Vietnamese geeks?" Evil sergeatnt --> go insane --> flying
geeks?
> > You don't have to resort to sensationalism. Take Bunuel's skewering of
> > the upper-class in EXTERMINATING ANGELS and DISCREET CHARM OF THE
> > BOURGEOISE. Or Neil laButte's sparse and very focused IN THE COMPANY OF
> > MEN (though the Chad charcater is a little over the top and
> > crowd-pleasing)
>
> bunuel was at times a sensationalist and a simplifier.
Yea, but Buneul is not a sentimentalist. Well, again Stone is working in
Hollywood. Couldn't ask for too much. Ollie could make a truly great
film, he just needs to be sober and abstain from sex for a few hours
while writing his screenplay.
> simon of the
> desert was pointed, sardonic, devastating.. but said nothing original.
> belle de jour was... what?
BELLE has somekind of peverse beauty only Bunuel would do. An
upper-class chick with a hooker career? Damn, only Bunuel can.
> and discreet and exterminating angels are
> even more confused than wallstreet albeit in a more honest way.
DISCREET and ANGELS are confused? How?
> stone
> was giving us a moral lecture but like bertolucci got so lost with the
> razzle dazzle the lesson no longer mattered. we got caught up with
> gekko and treated the whole movie like lifestyles of the rich and
> infamous.
Bertolucci got lost in mythic land in 1900 and in the desert in
SHELTERING SKY. But LAST EMPEROR and THE CONFORMIST show him at his most
focused. And you raved about the Godard-wannabe BEFORE REVOLUTION? Well,
it did lay down the foundation for his thematic obsession but these only
materialize and treated with incisive intelligence in those two great
films I mentioned.
emjon...@aol.com
Interesting: what's the difference between a rascal
and a villain? What makes a villain a "great" one? Specifics..?
emjon...@aol.com
> >> ...sneaked out of moral dilemma by pretending that mafia guys are all into
> >> family, blood, and honor but you know that's alot of hokum.
> >Actually it isn't! When this is the only kind of community you have,
> >you take it very seriously indeed.
> So? It's still bullpuckey. The code of "omerta" existed to keep the
> underlings loyal to the capos, on up the ladder. It was intended to keep the
> capos from getting arrested, and to make sure the money kept flowing their way.
Why don't you explain how honor is dead to G. Gordon Liddy, after he spent
*years* in jail for keeping his mouth shut rather than betray Nixon?
Artist Formerly Known as Critic of the Century
> >From:<gaza...@hotmail.com>> >i think goodfellas is the greatest movie on this subject. and it is
> >instructive in contrast to a movie like shane.
>
>
>
> Shane, the character, is a moral man in an immoral business. The boy is not
> wrong to worship him; he is wrong not to ALSO admire his father, and wrong in
> wanting to do what Shane does.
>
no, shane is not simply a moral man in an immoral business. he is a
mystery. it's possible that he may have done some evil and is therefore
trying redeem himself by helping joe.
and it is wrong to worship any man.
Artist Formerly Known as Critic of the Century
> In article <1M4y2.2577$po....@c01read02.service.talkway.com>,
> "Heir to KingBeanie" <gaza...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > ...sneaked out of moral dilemma by pretending that mafia guys are all into
> > family, blood, and honor but you know that's alot of hokum.
>
> Actually it isn't! When this is the only kind of community you have,
> you take it very seriously indeed.
>
>
but more out of fear than out of loyalty. in casino, pesci's henchmen
easily turn on him when the time is ripe. loyalties exist but is
ultimately based on fear and greed.
BillyBond
>no, shane is not simply a moral man in an immoral business.
Yes, Shane is a moral man in an immoral business. I said nothing about
"simply," so don't add it. The movie >demonstrates< that he is a moral man in
an immoral business.
He has a dark past; the movie also demonstrates that.
BillyBond
>Why don't you explain how honor is dead to G. Gordon Liddy, after he spent
>*years* in jail for keeping his mouth shut rather than betray Nixon?
??? (a) I think G. Gordon Liddy is a jerk. (b) Unless you're trying to
suggest that Liddy was in the Mafia and Nixon his don, your comment has
absolutely nothing to do with what we're talking about -- which is,
specifically, the Mafia, the code of "omerta" and other semi-feudal
organizations.
Howard Brazee
> deserves. In real history Crassus organised one of the first protection
> rackets (with his infamous private fire brigade) in Rome. He also was
> involved in First Triumvirate with Caesar and Pompeius, obviously having
> some second thoughts about Roman Constiution. His insatiable material greed
> was the main motivation for his action. His reputation even reached the
> faraway Partian Empire, and Parts chose rather symbollic way to execute him
> after the disastrous campaign in Karrhae, 59 BC.
>
> (Of course, we have to take into consideration that the historical accounts
> might be as historically accurate as Howard Fast's novel).
While history suffers, the movie is a better story for making Crassus
sympathetic.
I always thought the short story was Howard Fast's forte.
Artist Formerly Known as Critic of the Century
<troj...@geocities.com> wrote:
> bubble gumby wrote:
> >
> > and what is it with stone's postmodernism? on the one hand, he plays
> > iconoclast and subversive but relies on the hokiest old fashion
> > capraesque notions of the hero with a heart of gold. jfk was like mr
> > smith goes after the cia.
>
> studio there is.
> Pun intended.
this is a tad too cynical. i think stone's movies wouldn't a bit
different under a different studio. i mean, does my changing names
produce different results?
>
> > come come, my dear boy. it was nixon's stroke of genius to get the fat
> > chinaman on his side against the russians. it was necessary to support
> > the heroic pinochet against the castroite allende that sumfabitch.
> > now, are you saying american presidents who played realpolitik were on
> > something. ha, i wish they had been... they would been more
> > enlightened on a lot of matters.
>
> Clinton is a non-event, and he is one of the few who is getting it. BAck
clinton is not a nonevent. i hate the guy for his assault gun ban. i
really really do. but he has worked constructively with the
republicans to reform welfare and balance the budget. and while he is
not responsible for the great economy, he didn't mess it up either.
he may seem like a nonevent because there is no world conflict or
crisis. no cold or hot war, no impending doom of any kind. but the
world is facing some big troubles. will asia come out of the economic
crisis and develop into meaningful democracies? will russia revert
back to authoritarisn rule--anything is better than what they have
now--, will latin america finally shed its shameful history of
rightwing thuggishness and leftwing looniness and find a meaningful
middle ground? will jews and pals get together? clinton is no foreign
policy expert but he hasnt' failed in any foreign policy field.
you gotta give the guy credit for tirelessly doing his job. and while
his cards are not exciting, they are very constructive in terms of the
coming hightech capitalist culture.
> to relaity gaza, America needs a sober, visionary President. Nixon
> could've been the greatest, Ollie is right.
but rosenbaum raised one important issue in his review of nixon. he
said it was a patriarchal vision of history. nixon is made larger than
life, a giant worthy of special respect(personally i think stone played
with this notion and finally brought it down by stripping away the
various masks of power until there was nothing left but a pitiful
weeping man still haunted by memories of his mother and rejection by
the eastern establishment). it is perhaps wrong to expect a president
to be "great", a father figure of the nation. in politicians we need
honesty and decency, not exactly exciting, but more democratic and more
accountable to the needs of a healthy republic.
>
> > > > in platoon, the evil
> > > > sergeant was ughhhh precisely because his bloody fiefdom was sheer
> > > > devastation and wily vietnamese geeks flying out of the bushes with
> > > > bayonets.
> > >
> > > Coherence, Gaza, it's called coherence.
> >
> > what's called coherence. i must be on something. i don't get it.
>
> What's with "Vietnamese geeks?" Evil sergeatnt --> go insane --> flying
> geeks?
>
i meant the sergeant is most at home when killing gookgeeks flying out
of the bushes.
>
>
> > and discreet and exterminating angels are
> > even more confused than wallstreet albeit in a more honest way.
>
> DISCREET and ANGELS are confused? How?
explain what exterminating angels is supposed to be about. i thought
bunuel was saying the bourgeoisie live in denial, shutting off the real
world while residing with bullshit civility in their cozy little
drawing rooms. and so bunuel locked them up within their little world
to point out how much the wellbeing of these people are dependent on
sucking the lifeblood of the outerworld which they shut off from their
daily lives. it's like rubbing their faces in their own feces, a
highbrow twilight zone. but i am not sure really.
>
> > stone
> > was giving us a moral lecture but like bertolucci got so lost with the
> > razzle dazzle the lesson no longer mattered. we got caught up with
> > gekko and treated the whole movie like lifestyles of the rich and
> > infamous.
>
> Bertolucci got lost in mythic land in 1900 and in the desert in
> SHELTERING SKY. But LAST EMPEROR and THE CONFORMIST show him at his most
> focused.
last emperor is hokum. pure hokum. an idiot's tale told in big
panoromic brushstrokes. the pathetic and pitiful aspect of puyi's life
never registers because bertolucci stylizes everything to death. i
mean the opening title sequence was remarkable but what does it have to
do with the embarassing sordid life of piyu?
it should have been treated as a dark historical comedy. like europa
europa by agnieska holland.
conformist is another cinematic fashion magazine. it's got some
outstanding camer work but it is hollow. people are not acting in that
movie. just posing. and bertolucci takes what is a psychological story
and deals only with the surface.
>
> And you raved about the Godard-wannabe BEFORE REVOLUTION? Well,
> it did lay down the foundation for his thematic obsession but these only
> materialize and treated with incisive intelligence in those two great
> films I mentioned.
no, before the revolution is berto's best. honesty matters and that is
an honest movie. the hero is a marxist who is too enamoured of the
good life. bertolucci should have built his future works from there.
instead we get perfumed and airbrushed sanctimonious gobbledygook.
Artist Formerly Known as Critic of the Century
> Watch HEART OF DARKNESS: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, the documentary on
> APOCALYPSE NOW which is one of the most stunning, jaw-dropping expose
> ever on a film.
hardly. i saw that film and was bored out of my skull. mrs coppola
struck me as a real flake and we constantly saw coppola rant and whine
on and on ... about what? what a gasbag, that guy.
> The words of Lucas, Milius, Coppola and crew still haunt
> me. The thing about that Lucas/Milius ending is that it is too gung-ho
> and Rambo-esque according to Coppola which I agree. Then the film adopts
> that "easy victory" crap you chirped earlier on. Hopper's character says
> at one point that "it will end with a whimper, not a bang." Coppola
> achieves a more mature closing. Milius-scripted "power in our loins"
> dialogue is a jaw-dropper but it shouldn't be accompanied with some GI
> JOE-style all-out action finale. The docu shows how the action scene was
> already storyboarded! I am pretty sure this is Boy George's doing.
as the film now stands the milius ending would be crazy. it would be
ridiculous esp with kurtz and willard as played by the zonked out
brando and sheen. but suppose the whole movie had been directed
differently. not with those layers of moody atmosphere that coppola
never seems capable of resisting, whether godfatgher, a now, or
dracula.
suppose willard wasn't written as such a moral zombie. suppose kurtz
hadn't been made into such a psycho symbol of human insanity. suppose
we followed milius's vision from the very beginning. then we can have
the original ending.
if the wild bunch had been directed by coppola, the last shootout would
have never taken place because the pompous coppola would have changed
the entire thrust and mood of the movie.
yup, apocalypse now should have been directed by peckinaph or boorman.
coppola's intentions were ambitious but it really required a genius to
pull it off. coppola wasn't that. on his own--as opposed to a ready
made script by someone like puzo--coppola fell on his face because he
was essentially a craftsman and not an artist.
>
> > > The implication of this is quite repulsive but maybe
> > > truthful. What is America but founded by genocidal Nietzschean
> > > creatures?
> >
> > americans no longer understood war as
> > something more than politics and cowboy myths of easy victory.
> > captain, a whatever. he is a man for whom love and brutality coexist
> > as it does in nature. kurtz saw the vietcong commit great acts of
> > cruelty yet go on as decent family men. in contrast americans
> > psychologically divided america and vietnam. america as peace and
> > prosperity and vietnam as a few years stint in the jungle. americans
> > lacked a savage wholeness, an harmony amidst chaos.
>
> Gaza, you could gather a few thoughts and make something out of them.
> This is a keen observation of the film.
>
>
> I understand that. America is of course become the sacrificial
> experimental melting pot. The world watches as America dares another
> silly or profound social experimentation. When the experiment fails, the
> world laughs their asses off; when it succeeds, everybody begrudgingly
> agrees America is --sometimes-- the greatest country in the world. But
> with dumb kids dominating the buying power and therefore dictates
> popular culture, I think America is going to the dumps sooner or later.
and those dumb kids will grow up and face reality. and what kids
around the world are not dumb?
>
> > look around the world and the places colonized by anglos are prosperous
> > and stable--usa, canada, new zealand, australia. but look at places
> > colonized by the backward, agricultural, reactionary, feudalistic
> > spaniards or the portuguese and oh boy, it's shitsville.
>
> Come on Gaza, the Spaniards never replace or systematically wipe out the
> original inhabitants.
this is untrue. in north america the entire injun pop was anywhere
from 900,000 to 9 million. most died of diseases even before they met
the first white man. this continent was essentially an empty lot for
white guys to take. like australia. if america had been as populated
as india or china or even as much as africa, anglos would not have been
able to build a new civilization.
in south america, there were 60 million injuns and these guys were
civilized. but spaniards came and sneezed on them and soon 55 million
died of european diseases(similarly the mongols gave the europeans the
black plague which wiped out anywhere from 50% to 1/3 of european
population.
the spaniards used the injuns as slaves and treated them like shit and
even to this day, whites rule in latin nations while indians get shit.
you see, this is what happens when we don't have a dominant race in one
country. imagine germany as 1/3 german 1/3 indian and 1/3 mexican and
we have mutual distrust and suspicion and etc. etc.
north america thankfully had a dominant racial group--the honkeys-- and
thankfully these honkeys were the greatest innovators in the area of
science, economics, politics, arts, which is why the nonwhite race
followed the superior white--esp anglo--model and spoke english and
learned accounting and law and bought houses and had nice little dogs
and cats in the backyard.
and americans only brought 300,000 blacks here and increased slave
labor by breeding the bros. brazil however brought 3 million black
slaves and finally stopped bringing the brothers only when the
anglobritish forcibly ended the slave trade.
>Well, they just humped a hell lot of Indians and
> black slaves that gave birth to a new race called the Hispanics.
there is no single race called hispanics. in fact some hispanic
countries have no blacks. and some have little indian blood. most
puertos are either blakc, white or mixed. they have very little injun
blood. mexicans are mostly spanish-injun. which is why mexican music
sucks--jalapeno polka--because they had no brother to add some afro
beat to their beaner melodies.
argentina is mostly white with a very big dago presence.
>
> > hurrah for the anglos. imagine america as having been conquered by any
> > other people--japanese, zulus, iranians, turks, russians, and i
> > shudder. what the fuck did the russians and the chinese do with their
> > vast territory? nothing.
>
> Yea, but the Chinese and Russians have their peak. At the peak of
> Chinese civilizations, the Anglos were nothing but a growling brutes.
chinese had their peak long ago and it wasn't much. russians never had
a peak. russia always was lightyears behind the rest of europe.
> And no college student will be proud (superficially of course) without
> the likes of BROTHER KARAMAZOV or CRIME AND PUNISHMENT under their
> armpits as they head to Latte Centers. What does America have?
> Hemingway? Joan Collins? C'mooon...
american fiction is the best in the world. in a mere 200 years of
history, americans have created music, literature, paintings, and
architecture to rival the best ever.
ever read don delillo? philip roth's portnoy's complaint or when she
was good? saul bellow? faulkner? twain?
sure, the russians had(!!!!!!) great literature. but there is
something so morose and onedimensional about russkies. this applies to
tarkovsky too. something grandiose and magnificent but kinda dim.
over the years i have rather forgotten war and peace and crime and
punishment. i much prefer john hersey's the call.
>
> Japanese, Zulus, and Turks in one sweeping sentence? Tell me you stumble
> with this one, Gaza. Japanese is a bunch of tight-assed, freak control
> perverts but can the Zulus or Turks build economy car with efficient mpg
> and dominate that market?
well, the japanese are nothing now. their cars don't sell, their auto
industry is going under. detroit is back kicking everyone's ass.
> Can the Zulus examine their savage ways and
> churn out something as even-handed as SEVEN SAMURAI?
but there have been great black directors. like ousmene sembene and
the dude who made brightness. and given the chance why wouldn't a
brother be capable of making a seven zulurai?
>
> > but a handful of anglos with their law and
> > economic system turned this great land into gazaville. yes, gaza is
> > the ultimate prize of the american progress.
> > who can ask for anything more?
>
> Sure, everybody has his moment. But civilization has its peaks and
> valleys. America is only 200 years old (an adolescent civilization
> compared to Egyptians and Roman, a whining baby compared to Chinese), it
> is showing signs of burnt-out already.
america is not burnt out. europe with 15% unemployment is burnt out.
japan with a race of submissive robots and corrupt bureaucrats is burnt
out. chinese with their petty autocratic ways will never reach the
top. latin america with their corruption and spaniard stupidity will
never reconcile the divide between haves and havenots, between whites,
meztizos and injuns. they are burnt out. russia is finished. it is a
gangsta's paradise. and the populace is boorish and lazy.
but america keeps churning out guys like bill gates. real cowboys,
innovators, free and principled, reaching for the top but with a great
concern for fairness and the wellbeing of the general populace. we
have guys like ross perot. we have guys who say it like it is, guys
with real balls.
if america goes under it will be due to multiculturalist antiamerican
assholes who indoctrinate new generations to hate this country. yes,
american history is about shitty stuff too. oppression, war, bigotry,
but this is also the story of other peoples. but these other peoples
have only that stupid side of history. like the koreans. stupid
peasants if western capitalist democracy hadn't been introduced to
their stupid selves.
but americans have not only the negative but the great positives. at
every point in its history america was at the forefront of progress.
when the founding fathers wrote the constipation, the chinese were a
bunch of pigtailed idiots screwing the bound feet of their stupid
docile women. muslims were a bunch of turban head swinging swords and
acting allaround stupid.
>
>
> > yes they do and i know you are kidding. jane goodall thought chimps
> > were peaceful buggers but extensive research has shown tribes of chimps
> > annihilating other tribes.
>
> Systematic slavery? Screwing the Indians for their lands to eventually
> build malls for their children to sink into Gap-Express-Victoria-Secret
> zombi existence?
yeah, build malls. is it better to build aztec pyramids on which to
sacrifice thousands? is it better to build egyptian pyramid where the
populace toiled away their lives to satisfy the vanity of some
phathead? is it better to build the great wall where countless
chinsese slaves were worked to death? is it better to build palaces
for kings and cathedrals for the corrupt bloodsucking clergy?
malls are empty cultural wastelands to idiot mallrats. but to consumers
it is a place that serves their needs. it creates jobs, boosts up the
economy.
i never go to malls but if that's what people want, it is freedom and
democracy in action. bravo.
Alex Crouvier
>
> this is a tad too cynical. i think stone's movies wouldn't a bit
> different under a different studio. i mean, does my changing names
> produce different results?
What I meant was Ollie needs to pander to the lowest common denominator
by giving WALL STREET that Western shoot-out structure when Bud Fox
turns the tables on Gekko. It is High Noon on wall St. as Kael aptly put
it.
> and while
> his cards are not exciting, they are very constructive in terms of the
> coming hightech capitalist culture.
Maybe. Clinton is no saint, but he is no Dr. Evil either. His political
fate would be different if the economy is in deep shit. (Lucky bastard).
I wonder if the American people can be this detached and forgiving in
that situation.
> it is perhaps wrong to expect a president
> to be "great", a father figure of the nation.
That's why some aspect of America wants to burn Clinton at the stake.
> i meant the sergeant is most at home when killing gookgeeks flying out
> of the bushes.
O joy and thrill!
> > DISCREET and ANGELS are confused? How?
>
> explain what exterminating angels is supposed to be about. i thought
> bunuel was saying the bourgeoisie live in denial, shutting off the real
> world while residing with bullshit civility in their cozy little
> drawing rooms. and so bunuel locked them up within their little world
> to point out how much the wellbeing of these people are dependent on
> sucking the lifeblood of the outerworld which they shut off from their
> daily lives. it's like rubbing their faces in their own feces, a
> highbrow twilight zone. but i am not sure really.
You just put it so clearheadedly. How is that confused?
> > Bertolucci got lost in mythic land in 1900 and in the desert in
> > SHELTERING SKY. But LAST EMPEROR and THE CONFORMIST show him at his most
> > focused.
>
> last emperor is hokum. pure hokum. an idiot's tale told in big
> panoromic brushstrokes. the pathetic and pitiful aspect of puyi's life
> never registers because bertolucci stylizes everything to death.
Stylise what?
> i
> mean the opening title sequence was remarkable but what does it have to
> do with the embarassing sordid life of piyu?
It's only one tiny aspect of the film. If you observe carefully, the
title sequence beautiful as it is, uses images of wooden screen that
closes and raises on the object in the foreground, hinting of the themes
of imprisonment and liberation. And Bertolucci, tough on Chinese ancient
feudal and imperial system, see something beautiful, endearing,
grotesque, touching, cruel, staggering, lyrical about it without
resorting to travelogue like American director would. There isn't any
extravagantly wasteful shots or sequences like in his 1900.
> it should have been treated as a dark historical comedy. like europa
> europa by agnieska holland.
There some stark, dark, oppressive images in the film. It veers from
tragedy to comedy back and forth. Look at the way the eunuchs are
committed to serve this guy, one who examines his feces, one who tastes
his food for poison, one who drinks ink at his command. The recurrent
images of closing doors and the ironic image of the free Puyi as a lowly
gardener. Aren't tragedy and comedy only that slightly far apart?
> conformist is another cinematic fashion magazine. it's got some
> outstanding camer work but it is hollow. people are not acting in that
> movie. just posing. and bertolucci takes what is a psychological story
> and deals only with the surface.
Haven't seen IL CONFORMISTA in a while, but when I first saw it, the
color and texture of images tell you everything, in terms of its
psychological effect on you.
> no, before the revolution is berto's best. honesty matters and that is
> an honest movie. the hero is a marxist who is too enamoured of the
> good life. bertolucci should have built his future works from there.
> instead we get perfumed and airbrushed sanctimonious gobbledygook.
Gobbledegook? I thought cinema transcends words? Come on like many first
time filmmakers, Bertolucci's debut is a minor maspterpiece of sort,
personal but too self-concious. Is Welles' show-off piece, CITIZEN KANE,
better than MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS or TOUCH OF EVIL?
Jeffrey Davis
>
> (BillyBond) wrote:
> emjon...@aol.com wrote:
>
> > >Why don't you explain how honor is dead to G. Gordon Liddy, after he spent
> > >*years* in jail for keeping his mouth shut rather than betray Nixon?
>
>
> Actually there *is* quite a bit of similarity there, and the Nixon
> loyalists *do* have a code of honor, after a fashion. Stronger than
> you would ever believe. I wouldn't have brought it up if it weren't
> relevant.
>
> You're right, Liddy is a jerk: but you have to admit that this
> is as fine an example of a criminal showing loyalty and honor as you
> are ever likely to see. My point is this way of viewing life is by no
> means absent from our age.
Liddy's silence about Nixon seems to be more akin to neurosis than
virtue. Just my take.
--
Jeffrey Davis <da...@ca.uky.edu> Lots Available
BillyBond
> My point is this way of viewing life is by no
>means absent from our age.
I did not say it was.
pala...@mailexcite.com
Have you ever seen this film, greaseball?
Only a blind fool could state that Joey does not admire Joe Starrett.
Cite with specificity, if you can, just >what< leads you to state that the
son does not "admire" his father.
BillyBond
of his many aliases. But it's just one more to be ignored.
Howard Brazee
BillyBond wrote:
>
> Oh, what do you know about that. Good ol' Keith Holder has resorted to another
> of his many aliases. But it's just one more to be ignored.
What's a matter with him? How can somebody be so filled with hate?
emjon...@aol.com
> Liddy's silence about Nixon seems to be more akin to neurosis than
> virtue. Just my take.
Hmmm...I think it may be best described as a virtue *rooted* in neurosis,
but a virtue all the same. That kind of loyalty is a complicated thing.
Another example: there is a brilliant young man in charge of Nixon's
estate (the only person named in Nixon's will who wasn't family or a
lawyer) who, before he met Nixon, was a liberal journalist, of all things.
But now he feels "fate" brought them together, described himself to the
L.A. Times as being "intensely loyal", so much so that he feels guilt
-get this- for being disloyal to Nixon *before* he knew him, which helped
spur him toward a "fierce advocacy". His own mother described him as
"being faithful" to the ex-president.
So what's *that* all about? I don't know: it sounds a little neurotic
but there's something noble in it all the same.
--Elisabeth J.
Jeffrey Davis
>
> da...@ca.uky.edu wrote:
>
> > Liddy's silence about Nixon seems to be more akin to neurosis than
> > virtue. Just my take.
>
> Hmmm...I think it may be best described as a virtue *rooted* in neurosis,
> but a virtue all the same. That kind of loyalty is a complicated thing.
IIRC, Liddy did things as a kid like hold his hand in flame. My take on
it? Being loyal to Nixon wasn't simply loyalty to Nixon: the guy long
ago seemed to have melded integrity, loyalty, and masochism. True to his
self? I suppose. I've never seen that as necessarily a virtue. What if
your self is a vicious, nasty, howling beast who is out for blood? Being
true to one's self seems to me to be akin to that other non-virtue,
sincerity. It's a characteristic, like being right-handed or brown-eyed,
rather than a virtue.
emjon...@aol.com
Being loyal to Nixon wasn't simply loyalty to Nixon...
You're right. There's a philosophy behind it, and no one explained it
better that another "loyalist", a communist named Bukharin who confessed
to crimes everyone knew he didn't commit, ostensibly for the sake of
the party:
"I shall now speak of myself, and of the reasons for my repentance...
For when you ask yourself 'if you must die, what are you dying for?'
an absolutely black nothingness suddenly rises before you with startling
vividness. There was nothing to die for if one wanted to die unrepentant.
This, in the end, disarmed me completely and led me to bend my knees
before the party and the country."
In other words, he constructed meaning out of his "loyalty" from a fear
of emptiness. This is a lot of what binds people together in "communities"...
Something to think about,
Thomas G Corrigan
Ahhhh! The familiar pitter-pat of mutual micturating on eachother's
patent leather shoes. Just a brief tangent to the original poster's foray
into favorite film villains, and another's indicating that too few women
were mentioned: Fay Bainter did a wonderful (an uncharacteristic) turn as
a villainess in the 1940s "Dark Waters."
Thomas G Corrigan
p045...@pb.seflin.org