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My favorite reviews are ones that spend the vast majority of their space shitting on unrelated works

Why would "the Left" want to suppress one of the most outspokenly anti-racist films ever made?

MichaelB wrote:Why would "the Left" want to suppress one of the most outspokenly anti-racist films ever made?

You'd have to be familiar with the complexities of American conservative delusions. There are actually two points here. First, within contemporary right wing ideological bubbles, it's trendy to claim that only liberals are racists: the whites want to keep Africa Americans "enslaved" and beholden to government, and the African Americans just straight out hate whitey (their claim, not mine!). They base their claim on the very real fact that the Confederates in the Civil War and the founders of the Ku Klux Klan were all Democrats, while Abraham Lincoln and the leaders of the reconstruction after the Civil War were Republicans. Of course, this completely ignores the fact that by the mid-20th century, there was a bizarre coalition in the Democratic party between northern liberals and the southern conservatives who inherited the ideology of their Democratic forebearers. The southerners were pretty much nominal Democrats, far to the right of President John Kennedy, and actively opposing him whenever they could. This coalition broke under Johnson in the 1960s with the passage of The Great Society with the racist southern Democrats undergoing a mass exodus to the Republican party (e.g. George Wallace, Jesse Helms, Strom Thurman, etc.). This formed the basis for Nixon's explicitly racist southern strategy which has been used with waning effectiveness by the Republican party ever since. But, you know, no matter how many Cliven Bundys or Donald Trumps you trot out, the Democrats are the racists because Fox News found a few African Americans willing to say that for a pay check.

Second, there's also the fear (and I suspect that this is what Nolte was aiming at) that liberals want to ban anything that they find distasteful. Admittedly, political correctness (on both the right and left) has an absurd tendency to run this direction, but it's simply ridiculous to claim that the government will be out to censor a Mel Brooks comedy. If anything, Nolte should look in a mirror. He was calling for Stephen Colbert to be fired for his "Ching Chong Ding Dong" joke that was aimed at racists, not Asians.

And now the man who looks like Chris Elliot (and strangely fetishizes Dirty Harry and Al Bundy) has responded with his top ten reasons why leftists will ban Blazing Saddles. No, it makes no sense, and is littered with falsehoods and misunderstandings, but you know that's modern political discourse for you, especially on a website created by Andrew Breitbart.

I like the delusional idea that Nora Dunn was responsible for Andrew Dice Clay's waning popularity in the early 90s. Oh, and claiming Ebert would support a ban, apparently unaware that he also said "Political correctness is the new fascism"

You would think somebody would have the good sense to ban Dracula: Dead and Loving It already. Now theres a party line I can get behind.

zedz wrote:Not a review, but nevertheless rediculous. For that price I could buy the real Maggie Smith.

Just for the night though. And you have to provide the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie school marm outfit yourself.

Don't forget the extortionate (or far too little for such a valuable item - take your pick!) £1.26 for post and packaging!

colinr0380 wrote:

zedz wrote:Not a review, but nevertheless rediculous. For that price I could buy the real Maggie Smith.

Just for the night though. And you have to provide the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie school marm outfit yourself.

Fortunately I already have one of those, but I don't think she's my size.

Hmmm.

Nolte strikes again with a paranoid take on Godzilla:

P.S. If you're intent on looking for a political message, here in America, only Barack Obama's Hawaii, Harry Reid's Nevada, and Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco are destroyed. Some kind of sub-conscious hostility towards the destructive leadership of the Democrat Party…? Why not.

This was published the same day as his piece claiming that cable bundling is a leftist plot to boost MSNBC's revenue.

Now I absolutely must see the movie that he wrote and directed!

I think if he'd seen Monsters he'd know better than to go looking for conservative ideology in this one

I couldn't track down Nolte's film itself, but here's a trailer that's mercifully free of Fox News talking points. It actually looks like it's worst crime maybe being maudlin pap, but you, at least it does have Keith David. I'm willing to bet it's the sort of film you can't remember a week after seeing it.

As a representative of the Left, I'd like to announce our attempt to ban it for the dangerous truths it contains, which we simply cannot face.

Speaking of Godzilla, from LeastHelpful.com:

"Scalies"? Yet another "fandom" thing I probably don't want to know any more about...

Why are there people who find Godzilla? There's beauty on the inside and then there's...that. And I'm a big fan of Godzilla, WTF?

Classic Gary Tooze in the review of Warner's upcoming BD of Tightrope:

BOTTOM LINE:
I was expecting a run-in-the-mill Eastwood murder mystery. It was, surprisingly, better than that... and has quite a lot of nudity. This is a 30-year younger Clint - and he is half the film. I find these very easy to watch - a serial killer story, competently written (solid integration with the protagonist's family life) and well supported. The Blu-ray is predictably as competent and reasonably priced. Enjoy!!

And yet no screencaps of nudity, psh

A Hulu commenter says of Poto and Cabengo,

"This is possibly the worst documentary I've ever watched... The editing is horrible, with tons of voice overs on a PITCH BLACK screen. I thought there was a video problem at first. The documentarian has no idea what he's doing. Don't waste your time."

I always think it's pretty bold when a casual viewer claims a filmmaker had no idea what he/she was doing. Just because he doesn't adhere to the Ken Burns PBS style of documentary filmmaking doesn't mean that his stylistic choices are stupid and wrong. Jeez, just open your eyes and allow yourself to be open to other ways of doing things.

I clicked on one of those stupid click-bait sites for "Which Movies Have the Most Terrible Endings?"

The Birds

After the heroes of the story battled away vicious birds for the length of the movie, getting pecked and bloodied in the process, the story ends with them slowly driving through a crowd of calm birdies, without consequence. Why don't the birds attack now? Did they stop pecking away at the roof for any particular reason? Had they quenched their thirst for human blood? At least give us something!

The main characters were basically serving themselves up on a silver platter, and the birds just sat there and watched it happen. Talk about a lackluster ending. It's almost as if Alfred Hitchcock decided he was bored and wanted to get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible so he could move on to bigger and better things. Who knows? Maybe that's exactly what happened!

I'm going to start flooding Facebook with my own baits: "Domino clicks on a link in hopes of finding a well written article, but you WON'T BELIEVE what he finds!"

Ambiguity, what's that?

A 1-star "review" of the BFI Herzog Collection posted yesterday on Amazon UK (not Facebook). One person has already voted it helpful.

I don't have this set as it has not been released yet... I don't know how good is the quality of image and sound, I don't know details about the set , I don't know if the set will be faulty or not ( It happened many times that faulty sets were sold or had their release postponed because of technical problems with the discs : David Lynch set, The Fugitive set, Hitchcock set and more).

"Basically", I can't give any concrete information about this set as I don't have it but I am writing a "review" anyway and I am rating the product anyway and I am not recommending the purchase of this box set, this box set that I never even saw. Who cares?

Incidentally, as my Amazon ratings are paramount in my life, I wrote this "review" as soon as I could so I would collect lots of positive votes. I am sure that I going to get lots of positive votes despite my one star "review" because this space here, Facebook, is very democratic and people are very open minded. Besides, they will realise that my "review" is perfect and answers the main question a review should answer: What would I like to know before buying or not this set?

So, I will tell you: I am in doubt about this set. Should I order it or not? Decisions, decisions...
There...Did I help you ? I am sure I did.

Maybe I am wrong and I will not get positive votes. Never mind that. I will delete this review and will publish it again as I please. This is one of the reasons why it is so good being here on Facebook: You can be irresponsible/inconsiderate and write a review about a product that you don't have and never even saw because there will be very intelligent people ( the opposite of idiots ) who will agree that the complete lack of information in my "review" about Herzog's new set is very helpful.

I think it's meant to be a "wry commentary" on the other, 5-star "review" that someone posted for the set.

Zizek approves.

I thought it may have been some kind of protest against Amazon's practice of allowing reviews on preorders, but now having read the other review I see it's pointed at that one in particular, as Werewolf points out.
But given all the talk about Facebook, I was unsure what he was trying to do -- not to mention all the rambling (brevity is the soul of wit).
And I guess I wouldn't agree that "non-review" reviews posted before a release are always pointless. I've seen some that supply info about what will be included, and here the 5-star review brings up the issue of the two overlapping sets for those for those that may not have been aware already or have thoughts on which to buy.

Gregory wrote:And I guess I wouldn't agree that "non-review" reviews posted before a release are always pointless. I've seen some that supply info about what will be included, and here the 5-star review brings up the issue of the two overlapping sets for those for those that may not have been aware already or have thoughts on which to buy.

I've posted "reviews" designed purely to offer more information - particularly about things like the BFI's short-film compilations where the Amazon listing doesn't specify individual titles. But I make it clear that that's what I'm doing, and also add a note of protest about the compulsory star-rating system.