But I digress. You didn’t laugh when the young man/ boyfired replied, after Juno comments how he doesn’t try to be cool, “Oh, I try really hard”? Everything about being a teenager, at least for me, was distilled in that phrase.

It was only a movie, but given the rest of the dreck in movie theatres…. At least there was some character development.

And although I was one of the more sarcastic 16-year-olds you’d ever find back in—well, never mind when it was—sarcasm and cynicism was a much softer thing back then. It didn’t go as deep. Just as I think I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, it left me, sarcasm and cynicism have moved into a whole new realm where I really don’t want to follow.

Try these for humor: Passport to Pimlico, The Rage in Lake Placid, Bread and Tulips; these for drama: The Fallen Idol, To Be and To Have, The Lives of Others. The Sorrow and the Pity is a lurid look into collaboration in France during WWII, which explained a lot and prompted a lot of though, much of which can be applied to the present.

Dreck, all of it.

Agree about the kind of weird, over-the-top abuse dished out by the step-mom (which somehow reminded me of the weird, over-the-top abuse spewed by the Bush- or McCain-deranged), but the rest I thought was both fast and funny. Yes, it had a smart-ass, adolescent sort of tone, but in the best sort of way. I mean, adolescents are human too, right? Right?

Summary: they are all about the role of Men, with “Groundhog Day” being especially nasty.

Will wait for the DVD on Juno — and maybe quite a bit after.

I also like most Meg Ryan Romantic Komedies (they spell it with a K in Slovakia), like Kate and Leopold (re-run recently, but I was busy).

True Lies had me gasping for breath after laughing at the machine gun rolling down the stairs and …

I think when the F* word becomes commonplace, the outlet for real anger/ frustration becomes worse.

It’s about the choices he makes as he lives what some of us dream of: What if you could live your life over? (and over)

Paulie Bleeker: Like I’d marry you! You’d be the meanest wife ever, okay? And I know that you weren’t bored that day because there was a lot of stuff on TV, and then ‘The Blair Witch Project’ was coming on Starz and you were like ‘I haven’t seen this since it came out and if so we should watch it’ and ‘but oh, no, we should just make out instead la la la’

He carries this combination of shrewdness, tenderness, cluelessness, geekiness and awkwardness off perfectly.

Juno had too much 20-something writerly glibness to be a convincing character.

I find it monumentally unfair that Juno (and its star, Ellen Page) have received rave reviews and accolades and award nominations for *portraying* a fictional young girl who gets pregnant (typical interview: “Ellen, you were so brave to take on this difficult role,” etc. etc.) while poor Jamie Lynn Spears, who is an actual girl who is actually pregnant with a real live baby (possibly from a Nickolodeon executive!) is getting ridiculed, lambasted, and mocked by the very same folks swooning over Juno and Ms. Page.

The hypocrisy is nauseating.

I think its getting the acclaim it does because it presents liberals with the pro-life argument in a way that speaks to them, and conservatives are so happy they are getting the message they are willing to overlook everything else.

I like Groundhog Day too, but like A Christmas Story, it’s been over-praised to the point of me not wanting to see it anymore.

Could it be that Ms. Spears and her mom were trying to tout themselves as abstinence authorities, and then went got pregnant while Juno does not advertise it’s lead character in that way?

Part of this is because of what I think is the geo-cultural predestination of all the NYC-based critics:if you live in Manhattan, your default setting is irony and low-grade depression, with a side of sick-making self-absorption. The movie reviewers who think this is some kind of bullseye commentary on our failed culture, don’t understand it’s a commentary on culture…and guess what - it’s contained in a few square miles within a mere handful of America’s largest cities.

Regardless of what segment of society the makers of purport to reveal, it actually has very little relevance to the vast majority of America and Americans.

It was actually to see something nice and somewhat life re-affirming (not just the choice to have the baby) for a change.

Anyway, that is my two cents.

1) Avoid chick flicks generally, even if a chick. It’s not possible to add enough car chases, topless chicks, and/or fights to cheer up a chick flick. Once a movie is contaminated, it’s shot for good. In particular, avoid anything with “children” or such like in the title (e.g., “Who Will Love My Children?” RUN!!)

2) Avoid anything critics like. Critics make their living by extolling the virtues of crap that no one is his right mind would ever go see. It’s the way they gain cultural props, kind of like professing a hankering for haggis or menudo. No one actually likes it, but pretending to do so sets one apart from the crowd (kind of like watching the movie in the first place), which in their case is key to keeping their jobs.

No need to thank me now. I do this as a public service. /g

****DoD Property. Do not Duplicate. Last known recording of “Cloverfield” Incident****

A group of vapid, self absorbed 20-something New Yorkers at a stupid, vapid party are thrown into the street when buildings start collapsing only to see the head of the Statue of Libery roll past–thrown by “something alive”.

In the midst of swirling dust, papers and unseen horrors they find an inner resolve and determination to do the hard and right things.

Hud: “I heard the government created this thing and then it turned on them and killed us!”

#1 Guy: “What did you say!? What the f*&^ is wrong with you?!”

Hud: “I dunno, man–I’m just making up crap to keep myself sane!”

The military is uniformly courageous and helpful, but the living thing attacking New York spawns some kind of ‘parasites’ or ‘fellow travelers’–too small for the military to bomb or track–that have to be beaten and defeated by the people.

*wink* *wink* Get it? Good movie….

The Monster is The Monster. Not the Government. Not the Military. They are the good guys.

It was a breath of fresh air in a movie theater. I will get the DVD. I’ll bet it would be double creepy and realistic on the TV!

Oooh… Be careful with that, Seafarious!

After 9 years of posting, I got banned permanently and irrevocably by Free Republic for expressing that very sentiment!

To pour salt, (or sal y limon) in it, the “Secure the Borders for American Culture!” crowd can’t be too squeamish about out of wedlock births if they want to win the demographic/culture war.

I assure you, Hispanics welcome every child in every circumstance; where rich gringos seem terrified having children in every circumstance!

Having created a culture where “The Children” has become a shibboleth to take away your freedoms and money, is there any wonder we are being ‘assimilated’ by a pro-child, pro-life alien culture?!

I think this will be one of those nominations that people will look back on in a year and wonder what the hell they were thinking.

Funny thing is that the radio ads are running nonstop in LA and the trite dialogue that passed for clever in the theater sounds, when heard on the radio, even more like bad sitcom lines.

Pffft.

I recently had an unaccustomed chance to meet and some Hollywood people and I was impressed with their creativity and (this surprised me) their work ethic. I have no idea what stars are like but the many names that scroll as we’re walking out of theaters work their bunions off.

My previous armchair image of them had been, as armchair images usually are, quite unfair.

And yet I liked Juno - a lot. It’s no GhD, but then what is?

If anyone’s gotten to here without having the movie spoiled, you might want to stop.

Here’s what I liked. The boy was allowed to be decent, which is so rare these days. The cool dude rock guy was transformed before our very eyes into the wretch he deserved to be. The uptight Vanessa is shown to be in the throes of normal, human urges, and quite sweet. The parents are basically stable, even on their feet of clay. Especially the father is portrayed with all the failings of PC daddy-hatred, and shown to truly love enough to vastly outweigh the failings.

Everyone was served justly by the movie.

The message of the movie was that men and women still love, as men and women not androgony, even when they’re confused and ill-equipped for the trials of this century. I say in the 60’s we knew what we loved. By the 80’s we’d figured out what we hated. But in the ’00’s, we have no clue any more. We’re taught to cower in the middle, afraid to love or hate anything expect people who confidently love or hate. Juno, and everyone else, loved something or was exposed for failing to do so.

And it didn’t hurt that Juno sounded spot-on exactly like my 20-year old daughter.

I liked Knocked Up, though the drug references were a bit overwhelming. I get it. They like to smoke pot.

I see the differences between the two being mainly the result of the different stages of life the protagonists are in.

This was Knocked Up being played out in the John Hughes (age only) demographic.

(Let’s also face it—-snarky, unpleasant, self-centered teenagers are boring, even though the media does think them the most wonderful human beings on the planet; and teenager-dom is one of the biggest scams ever perpetrated on American society.)

I admit to enjoying Groundhog Day immensely when it was released… but if you think that it is a movie of “recent years,” then you ARE an old fart.

(Agree with you about “Starship Troopers”, by the way—that was godawful, and nothing like the actual Heinlein book. Hollywood actually dislikes science fiction, and can only do it as, supposedly, stupid B movie stuff, or if there’s some cheesy, supposedly deep moral attached to it.)

Now, I use the illustration of Drill Instructor Staff Sergeant Zim, posed the question (I don’t have to book in front of me, so the wording may not be verbatim), “Why do we need to learn how to throw knives when we have atomic weapons?”

The movie’s answer: “Put your hand on that wall! (thunk) The enemy cannot push a button if you disable his hand! MEDIC!!”

As if that had anything to do with the enemy they were training to face.

The book’s answer: “If you do not understand the difference between a situation that requires a knife and a situation that requires a nuclear weapon, then you have no business being a soldier.”

‘Nuff said.

And this is from someone who liked Knocked Up so much I saw it twice.

They also left out much of the real nature of the bugs, (who are intelligent, formidable enemies, not just big, ugly slugs, as in the movie) the humans sometime enemies, eventual allies, “The Skinnies”, the eden-like world they’ve selected to evacuate the human race to, in case the worst comes to worst (anyone who knows its location is given hypnotic commands to kill themselves, if captured by the aliens), and the fact that all human, of all nations, are united—or should be—in this war. I found it quite laughable that “Rico” in the movie is played as this blonde stormtrooper type, when in the book, he’s a Filipino from Argentina, who speaks tagalog and admires Ramon Magsaysay.

Recently saw “Knocked Up’ and “40 year Old Virgin”..some of the same actors…(the chunky curly red head guy is pretty funny) and heard these portrayed actually as a sign of a “conservative” values resurge in H-wood…because they somehow portray two values scourged mercilessly for decades inside the Left Coast bubbleworld - marriage-family and chastity. My thought was that both managed to mock and mangle both values while trying to praise them. Go figure. My conclusion was that hese writers are so disconnected from these values that even their attempts to renew them turn out insipid.

As for comedy, while I love “Groundhog Day,” “What About Bob?” (neo, gotta love that one) or “the Three Amigos,” all I need is to slip in “The Producers” (2005 musical version) in my DVD player to the musical tryouts part or the “Springtime for Hitler” part and will unfailing weep with howls.

Go read a nice Jane Austen novel; you’ll feel much better.

Schnargley, as q2 says, “Starship Troopers” was typical Hollywood spin-a-good-book-into-dreck stuff. It was, I think, a liberal director’s attempt to satirize what he believed was an evil, racist, warmongering book and make everybody hate it. Problem is, the book isn’t evil, isn’t racist, and shows war as hard, brutal, sometimes necessary, but distinctly unenjoyable.

In short, the stupid director was satirizing a book I strongly suspect he never bothered to read. The book itself is not satire. It’s actually a very compelling look at what humans would actually have to do, in order to fight off an alien invasion (as opposed to simply being conquered as in Wells’, “War of the Worlds.”)

As I said, I can’t tell if it’s Sci-Fi, Heinlein, or Hollwyood’s treatment of science fiction in general (a heartbreaking topic, to be sure) that’s making him sad.

As for “Juno”—I didn’t realize an unrealistic, rather silly, snarky teenage movie carried such moral, and ethical weight that disliking it would be cause for such grief! It’s only a movie! Read some Jane Austen, drink plenty of fluids—you’ll feel better in the morning.

(Haven’t seen “Cloverfield” or “Serenity” yet, but will seek them out, based on your recommendation.)

“Just as I think I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, it left me, sarcasm and cynicism have moved into a whole new realm where I really don’t want to follow.”

Is anything in life not a metaphor for politics and how bad the Democrats are?

“The Sorrow and the Pity is a lurid look into collaboration in France during WWII, which explained a lot and prompted a lot of though, much of which can be applied to the present.”

Because America is full of traitors!

“Of all the usual left-leaning, collectivist suspects called it “warm” - they don’t know any better. For them, it a wistfully happy movie about the kinds of people and families and people they know. And that’s sad.”

Do you know any real, actual liberals, or do you just make up cartoons to hate?

“No matter how much you didn’t like Juno. It was a thousand times better than “There Will Be Blood”.”

Now that’s just blasphemous, but not really central to my point.

“…the father is portrayed with all the failings of PC daddy-hatred…”

The dad was portrayed a stern-but-loving, take-no-bullshit awesome dad. Did we see the same movie?

’something with a horrible, progressive moral, i.e., “Ya see, the Emperor represents George Bush, and the evil galactic empire is Amerikkka, while the heroic freedom fighters are the Palestinians, and the evil space Gypsies are Israel. . . “‘

If I recall correctly, a) Lucas started writing a few years before Bush was on the political scene, and b) it’s movement conservatives who can’t watch a movie qua movie, but only qua propaganda.

Meh. Heinlein was overrated, but not bad.

I would love to be able to put on a pair of crazy-glasses and see the world as you do, to know what it’s like to become enraged by everything! And they say liberals are angry all the time! It just must be so depressing not to be able to see a movie and enjoy it for things like plot, acting, etc, because you’re so caught up in the dogma of liberal Hollywood and blah blah blah.

That depends upon how open one is to metaphor.

[i]Because America is full of traitors![/i]

I’m really hoping a clarification will make that a less inflammatory statement…

“If I recall correctly…”

I don’t recall any Space Gypsies in Star Wars. I do believe TalkinKamel was making a generalization. And a valid one, at least since the mid-’80’s.

As for the rest–I believe that it is probably easier to ignore the propaganda quotient of a movie when you agree with it, than when it is demonizing you personally (doubly in my case, being not only not “right-wing,” but in the military).

This is what I’m getting at - this is either meant seriously, which indicates a really messed-up view of people who disagree with you politically, or its a really bad joke that…well, indicates a really messed-up view of people who disagree with you politically.

And aren’t liberals supposed to be the whiny cry-babies who can’t stand criticism? Come on! If you’re in the military, man up! You’re supposed to be made of tougher stuff than that. No? Who cares if Hollywood makes fun of you? (About which I’m a little incredulous, since I can’t really think of any movies I’ve seen that portray the military negatively.)

Ok, here’s a clarification: maybe I was wrong, but I interpreted the above comment about collaboration as being a dig against liberals qua traitors. Considering that Mitt Romney, formerly-serious presidential contender and former governor of Massachusetts, called a vote for Clinton or Obama a vote for surrender to terrorists in his concession speech today, I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume (though perhaps I jumped the gun!) that the liberals-are-traitors meme was what commenter Matthew M was getting at above.

But, I digress from my original point was: try, try, try as hard as you can, readers of Neoneocon, to enjoy a movie as a movie, and not be ready at every moment (as some of you seem to be) to take umbrage with the slightest deviation from ideological purity.

No, I imagine you can’t….

O thank you, wise one. I will do my level best to follow your sage words of… sageness. I will fail, of course, because I am an inexorable moron, but I must thank you for gracing me with your enlightened and attractively mournful presence.

Would that I could live up to your standards! Think of the beautiful vistas that would appear before mine eyes, were I to jettison my perpetual umbrage and instead awaken, to embrace the gentleness and oracular profundity of thine words!

Alas, it will not be so. I try, try, try, yet I fail, fail, fail. Woe unto me, who roams the earth wailing, the ashes of neoconservativism despoiling mine mouth.

And I’m not interested in theatrical releases anymore. I watch tons of “Asia extreme” movies on DVD. Amazing art, some of it. That and “war porn” on YouTube and LiveLeak. When the helicopters come in and fire their high-expolosive cannon shells at the terrorists, and you see the vermin disappear as neatly as if a magician waved a magic wand, well, it just makes your heart sing, I tell ya.

(And as for the space gypsies, yes, I was making a generalization about science fiction movies—in fact, I was making a joke! And please don’t tell me there haven’t been way too many overly-ponderous, faux significant “Use the Force, Grasshopper!” science fiction movies, encouraged by George Lucas, but beginning with the tedious 2001!)

If you don’t want us to think of liberals as whiny crybabies, why not stop the whining and umbrage-taking?

ENCOURAGED BY GEORGE LUCAS??!?!?!? 200!?!?!??! Written by Arthur C. Clark and directed by the mad genius Stanley Kubrick???!?

Now I know I’m dealing with a bunch of rubes.

Some guy:

I’ve hear that same complaint from a couple of my more dimwitted girlfriends after seeing a movie.

I heard that from one real dimwit of a girlfriend after seeing “The Handmaidens Tale” and remarking “Wow, they really crapped on the Christians in that one!”

I heard that same sentiment from another real “mensa-member” of a girlfriend after seeing “The Sum of all Fears” when I remarked “Nazis?! In the book, they were Arabs! Why can’t arabs be bad guys for a change?”

You’re not actaully one of my former stupid, but hot, girlfriends are you?

Now, I thought it was conservatives that had trouble with “seeing the nuance” and abstract thinking….

That’s actually a good point:

how come Hollywood made a couple of true-to-the-source movies of Sir Arthur Clark movies but had to camp up and crap on the book by Robert Heinlein?

Why should I go see a movie with George Clooney or Ben Affleck or any other Hollywood dicks who insult me and my beliefs? Why would I give them money?

Personally, it’s rainbows and upside down triangles that set me off….

I see a big ol’ rainbow in the sky and I just know the rain is pushing the homosexual agenda!

In the same comment thread, we have one commenter expressing his entertainment over a scene in a movie (True Lies) in which Arabs, the villains, are hilariously gunned down by a dropped, spinning weapon. We also have another commenter bemoaning the fact that liberal Hollywood refuses to depict Arabs as villains.

I propose that there exists only one way of settling this: Thunderdome. Two men enter, Gray, yet only one man leaves.

“Why should I go see a movie with George Clooney or Ben Affleck or any other Hollywood dicks who insult me and my beliefs? Why would I give them money?”

Don’t! This has been another round of Simple Answers to Easy Questions.

“how come Hollywood made a couple of true-to-the-source movies of Sir Arthur Clark movies but had to camp up and crap on the book by Robert Heinlein?”

Part of the problem here is the assumption that “Hollywood” is a single, undifferentiated entity, rather than a huge array of writers, producers, directors, etc etc etc, ad infinitum, all working together and competing to get their projects made. Clark lucked out and got to work with Kubrick, et al. Heinlein was dead, and did not luck out. There was no conspiracy. OR WAS THERE?!?!11?

“I see a big ol’ rainbow in the sky and I just know the rain is pushing the homosexual agenda!”

You see this as an exaggeration, but what am I to make when reading a comment thread started by a blogger who can’t seem to stop herself from, in the same breath, comparing her growing disdain for movies to her disdain for Democrats? I feel sorry for people who seem to live in such a grey world that they can’t enjoy movies - movies! - anymore because their politics won’t allow them to. Liberals are frequently accused of having promoted the idea that everything - such as the personal - is now the political, yet it is conservatives I see insisting that art be processed not through the lens of art, but politics - and politics at its crassest, at the level of dull propaganda.

Heckety-whiz! Now all us rube types know we’re dealing with a snob! (Shuckins!)

Kubrick was okay, but let’s face it; 2001 was a big, ponderous bore. Clark was good, but he had his woo-woo new age tendencies, which, sadly, he gave in to, as he aged.

As for myself, I don’t spend my days wandering—I spend them flitting about through the air on my force-powered wonder-cycle, contemplating the whichness of what, outraged by the chattering of Smurfs (who have invaded my neighborhood on roller-skates) and those obnoxious aliens, who camp out in my back yard, and use the barbecue! I’m okay with clouds; I’m even okay with squirrels! I’m tired of the pigeons, though. They poop on everything

Now, now, Gray, don’t you know that actors such as Affleck and Clooney are superior to us mere mortals? Why, you must go watch them! Otherwise, you’d turn into a pro-military,liberal-hating rube, and you’d probably say mean things to squirrels, too! You’re obligated to watch their dumb movies, because it’s going to make you a better person! What’s more, if you don’t like their stuff, you’re going to make you-know-who unhappy! Suck it up, man, for the good of society! (And to make you-know-who smile!)

Seriously, I’m not sure why Heinlein has been treated the way he has, while other Sci-fi/fantasy writers, such as Robert Bloch, and Clark, have been treated relatively well. Bloch was lucky in that Hitchcock liked his work.

Heinlein had a rep for not liking liberals, and sometimes saying mean things about them (and maybe to squirrels and clouds and fluffy-bunnies, too!) so he was disliked by the Left. I suspect the director of Starship Troopers just had in in for him, and didn’t really give a damn about the book.

Clark, as I said, did have his new-agey woo-woo side, so they approved of him. Of course, other sci-fi writers have been treated badly too—among them Zenna (The People) Henderson and Andre (Beastmaster) Norton. And some, like James Schmitz, C.L. Moore or R.A. Lafferty, no one’s even tried adapting any of their stuff!

Yes, Handmaid’s Tale crapped all over Christians; what makes it worse is that Atwood blurted out in some interview that she’d been inspired to write it by Taliban’s oppression of women in Afghanistan. So, basically, her anti-Christian screed is actually about Islam—which she didn’t have the nerve to tackle. No wonder the book’s so skewed, and hard to believe (even as a fantasy.)

Of course, Christians don’t issue fatwas against writers they disapprove of, or order them killed. . .

Could it have been - and I don’t know for sure, because I don’t know Atwood’s motivation, so I’m just guessing - that Atwood was trying to take religious extremism in a foreign country (Islam, Afghanistan) and couch it in such a way that it would be familiar to a different audience (Christians, America)? That is, might the experience of living under religious tyranny strike a little closer to home, make a little more sense, etc etc etc, once familiar, unthreatening aspects of life here were recast in a different way?

Maybe she just wanted to write about the experience of religious extremism and living under tyranny, in a very general sense, non-specific to any time or place. But maybe she hates Jesus! I don’t know. Sometimes authors are tricky like that, using one thing to represent another without saying so in so many words.

It’s stuff like this that leaves me searching for words. Where do I start?

I mean…do you honestly imagine there exists such a (liberal) human being who thinks to himself “the best way to really take a crap on that jerk Heinlein, who expressed some conservative ideas, is to take a book - a book widely considered to be critical of fascism in a subversive, satirical manner - of his and spend months or years of my life immersed in the material, creating a film that’s a really dumb version of the book that’s sure to piss off legions of devoted, nerdly fans”?

Isn’t it possible that, in the long chain from book to script to proposal to filming to studio interference to post-production to release, someone made a bad film because they’re simply a bad writer or director, or if someone decided that Heinlein’s material was too heady to earn lots of money, and dumbed it down to widen its appeal?

Or maybe THE LEFT hates Jesus AND Heinlein. Let me consult my liberal handbook….

…oh, I see that you were right. Yes, we hate Jesus and Heinlein. That solves that one.

Furthermore, Some Guy, I’m going to make an internet assumption based on your use of “rube” that you’re an urbanite living in a huge coastal hive-city. Here’s the assumed problem - you read local newspapers and websites that agree with you. You watch movies and TV shows that agree with you. And finally you associate with people who agree with you. Hence, you’re never exposed to opinions that differ from yours and have no idea what’s going on in the flyover states unless Jon Stewart makes a joke about it.

Your beliefs are never substantially challenged, so when a conflicting idea is presented to you it must instantly be EVIL or DUMB.

Whereas those of us in the sticks, unless we want to watch nothing but FOX News and listed to 1960’s country, are constantly exposed to conflicting viewpoints. I watch Keith Olberman and am told I’m stupid. I watch The Simpsons or Family Guy and am told I’m ignorant. I read a Reuters article and am