MovieBob's Comments

Big Hollywood : Out of Touch Again: How Hollywood Elites Did Their Part to See Prop 8 Overturned

Thu, 9 Feb 2012 21:24:06 +0000

"Did God create marriage or did the state? Just asking.... " Given that historical evidence suggests ritualized relationship-recognitions existed in human societies prior to the Judeo-Christian God having been invented/made Himself known (take your pick); it's probably more like "neither."

Big Hollywood : Out of Touch Again: How Hollywood Elites Did Their Part to See Prop 8 Overturned

Thu, 9 Feb 2012 21:19:27 +0000

Whatever one's stance on gay marriage, the idea that something should be legal or illegal based on what "the majority" of Americans (or anyone else) thinks or believes is not only anti-conservative and anti-Republican (I'm neither, so this is strictly observational on my part); but also anti-American. The whole point of American Democracy being grounded in a Republic - re: representative government - rather than a simple majority-rule "democracy" is to PREVENT majorities from being able to overpower minorities simply by size. American Law is not made by majorities, but by the only two factors that ought matter in a civilized society: Logic and reason. Embracing the idea that "most people want this, therefore it must be so" as some kind of moral truth essentially means embracing a macro version of the Occupy movement's 99% vs. 1% outlook. Me, I find that amusing; but I imagine most posting here would find the association sort of troubling. Or, to put it better than I could: "Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual)." -- Ayn Rand

Big Hollywood : Hollywood Cheers Prop 8 Ruling Via Twitter

Wed, 8 Feb 2012 19:00:13 +0000

"Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual)." -- Ayn Rand

Big Hollywood : Hollywood's Reaction to 9/11 Lacked Unity of World War II-era Films

Wed, 7 Dec 2011 18:12:15 +0000

Just as "liberals" cannot accept that not every war is Vietnam, "conservatives" cannot accept that not every war is WWII. If neither side had the ability to influence actual policy, this would be funny...

Big Hollywood : Fox Business Warns Parents: Beware Left-Wing Messaging In 'The Muppets'

Tue, 6 Dec 2011 19:09:42 +0000

Ye gods... If 21st Century "leftists" are responsible for placing bad men with money into villainous roles in children's stories, the more pressing question to ask is where they got the time machine necessary to insert the trope in the hundreds of thousands of years of myths, legends, fairytales, books, plays and movies before this.

Big Hollywood : Official Synopsis for 'Man of Steel' Released

Sat, 20 Aug 2011 03:56:51 +0000

"That's why Captain America was so refreshing, it was about a guy who wanted to go out and punch bad guys." Um... actually, there was a hugely-important scene right at the beginning of the movie pointing out that this was precisely NOT what Captain America wanted, and that this fact was what got him selected to BE Captain America in the first place.

Big Hollywood : Game On: Lawmaker Seeks to End Use of Taxpayer Funds to Help Bin Laden

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 08:24:04 +0000

Fairly or not, Presidents get credit for what happens when they ARE president - whether they are deserving of it or not. Always have, always will. Reagan got the credit for "defeating" the Soviet Union when the Soviet Union more-accurately merely finished it's decades-long internal collapse while he happened to occupy the White House. Clinton got credit for an economic growth-period largely driven by a booming tech sector, not federal policy pursuits. George W. Bush got the credit for his Ground Zero speech even though, let's face it, ANY president could've said ANYTHING vaugely rousing on that day at that place and it would've been equally effective - we needed enthusiasm, and enthusiasm was the one thing he was competent at. Obama did not kill Bin Laden, nor did his policies directly lead to the killing; BUT he happened to be president when the opportunity to give the order came. He gets the credit, just like his predecessors - those who approach politics pragmatically would tell you to "live with it" and not try to fight a battle against something as implacable as human nature. Osama Bin Laden is dead. Those who would call themselves Americans but refuse to celebrate or even simply HONOR that event because they are worried that it MIGHT be of tangential political benefit to a President who aligns with the "wrong" party are a disgrace to their country and do grave dishonor to those lost on 9/11 and in the subsequent wars. It's the mirror-image of the infamous anti-war protest sign that read "we support our troops when they shoot their officers," and it is every bit as morally repellant.

Big Hollywood : Colbert: 'I Am a SuperPAC'

Sat, 2 Jul 2011 04:56:53 +0000

The fact that news outlets (this one apparently included) are either not getting the fairly-obvious joke behind this. He's almost-certainly going to find a way to use the actual money raised for one of his charities, not for a (real) candidate. The point is letting him make fun of Citizens United, i.e. "isn't it absurd that I, a make-believe pundit, can use nigh-unlimited corporate funding to exert disproportionate influence on the election? Yes! And thus it's ALSO absurd that [insert-GOP-favoring-SuperPAC-here] can do it." Him being able to do this is silly/insane = ANY "corporate" entity being able to do the same is silly/insane = any of the (overwhelmingly conservative) candidates benefiting from them is/are silly-by-association. He's basically asked-for and gotten Federal permission to (attempt to) mock Citizens United and any candidate who benefits from the same into irrelevence. Fairly-elaborate, for satire, but also potentially devastating in exactly the way he wants it to be: ANY conversation about PAC fundraising on the Right now innevitably becomes a conversation about Stephen Colbert's "silly" PAC and thus how "silly" PACs are and how "wrong" Citizens United was. He wins, in other words.

Big Hollywood : Hollywood Celebrates New York Same-Sex Marriage Ruling

Sat, 25 Jun 2011 22:13:53 +0000

Do people who use "Babylon" (or "Rome") in such a way understand that the use of "Babylon" as a shorthand for "world of chaos and evil" in the New Testament and Escatology is primarily symbolic; because the Babylonians had at one point been the chief antagonists of the ancient spiritual/ethnic ancestors of the people the original texts were written for? Or, at the very least, that it was an actual place and not a made-up "bad guy lair" like Mordor (or Sodom and Gomorrah...)? You hear this all the time: "We don't want to become Babylon!" Really? We don't want to be the most dominant military/technological and cultural force in our era and region - light-years ahead of any potential challenger? We don't want to be the source of a legal system that forms the bedrock of EVERY system that follows it? We don't want to be possessed of the highest standard of living in the known world? We don't want to create works of art and culture so astonishing to behold that they are still referred to as "Wonders of The World" centuries after they have vanished from the world by sheer force of reputation? This is a status we're supposed to be AVOIDING!? Call me crazy, but if letting gay people exchange rings and vows in front a judge is the "price" for the 21st Century United States becoming (remaining?) 1/10th what Babylon was in it's day (or ROME was at the height of it's inseperable strength and decadence) I'd say we're getting a BARGAIN.

Big Hollywood : Hollywood Celebrates New York Same-Sex Marriage Ruling

Sat, 25 Jun 2011 21:53:51 +0000

And I would be inclined to say those studies have merit - though the absolute need for dual-sex parenting is of course skewed by a history of laws and customs mandating that it be such. But the argument you're making - that monogamous heterosexual marriage is empirically beneficial to a stable society - is a wholly different matter from the argument in favor of "traditional" marriage for the sake of said tradition and/or religious prohibitions against homosexuality. By all means, argue that the Government should be in the business of promoting one type of lifestyle/family over another because of the "greater good" benefits to society - if nothing else, it's a MUCH better argument than "a handful of quotes taken from an English translation of a Latin translation of a Greek translation of an Aramaic translation of ancient Hebrew oral-traditions from the dawn of recorded history says 'NO'." Though I would be curious as to how said "societal-stability" arguments can be squared with the broader tenets of Conservative limited-government/individual-autonomy philosophy.

Big Hollywood : Hollywood Celebrates New York Same-Sex Marriage Ruling

Sat, 25 Jun 2011 21:42:01 +0000

Communism failed and lies in smouldering ruin, with even Mao's China grasping for the Free(er) Market with both hands. This isn't news - it's been 20 years since the USSR dissolved. To the degree that there ever was a genuine threat of organized world-communist overthrow, it is no longer there. For your own good, you should really get over this - especially since your side WON - and get on with your life. Or, at least, find some new boogeyman to cower from.

Big Hollywood : Hollywood Celebrates New York Same-Sex Marriage Ruling

Sat, 25 Jun 2011 18:45:33 +0000

"For the child, of course. Wasn't that what it was always all about, anyway?" "It" was about keeping land and property within a single bloodline, the most stable manner of holding land and property rights during the eons our species spent before "paper" contract law came into it's own. The notion of a nuclear family as the best or even primary source of child-rearing would've been regarded as absurb if not incomprehensibly alien to many of the earlier societies where the "tradition" of marriage itself came from; i.e. systems where children were raised semi-communally, or by groups of female relations while men fought/hunted, or shifted into trade and/or military training as soon as they could walk, etc. On the timeline of human history, most of the supposedly-sacred traditions cultural-conservatives in America fight so hard to preserve have existed for such a TINY fragment of history that they can scarcely be said to have existed at all. Your version, of course, has the virtue of being more happy and righteous sounding ;)

Big Hollywood : New 'Captain America' Poster Looking Very ... Patriotic

Fri, 24 Jun 2011 03:32:56 +0000

Y'all realize that OTHER movies experience title/key-art changes overseas, yes? It's actually fairly common - "Alien" was called "The 8th Passenger" in most of Europe, that sort of thing. In regions where American stars don't "sell" as well as concept does, you tend to see the "big head" posters replaced with action shots. Bloody hell, people - even if they DO crop out the flag in the background, one imagines they won't be able to do squat about the flag the lead character is wearing as clothing for something like 90% of the movie." I swear, watching this blog TRY to find reasons to hate this movie - because it's very existence doesn't compute with the "Hollywood is out to get us!!!" mission-statement - continues to be an unexpected Summer delight. Hey, look; here's their new trailer - the tagline is "HEROES ARE MADE IN AMERICA": http://movies.yahoo.com/summer-movies/captain-ame... Try and find something wrong with that - I dunno, maybe if you re-arrange the letters it's an anagram for something French-sounding?

Big Hollywood : Tracy Morgan: Hollywood's New Production Code Worse Than the Old One

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 00:39:26 +0000

"Rome was not conquered. It fell." "It fell" AFTER Constantine and a general empire-wide conversion to Christianity. During the times of the unchecked hedonism you describe, Rome was the most powerful empire the world had ever known - with a standard of living and a vibrancy of art, culture and literature unmatched at any other corner of the world. There could be a lesson in that...

Big Hollywood : Tracy Morgan: Hollywood's New Production Code Worse Than the Old One

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 00:32:22 +0000

"It had nothing to do with a nanny state because it didn't originate from the government. Citizen's found Hollywood at times to be shocking. Citzens said that they didn't think some things should be seen in movies." Your history is a bit off. "Citizens" by and large did not object to what "Hollywood" was putting out - rather, the films today remembered as 'shocking' examples of pre-code excess were some of the most consistently high-grossing releases of the era. Yes, there was sporadic protest and localized examples of outcry, but they were DWARFED the sheer amount of money "Citizens" were willing to pay to see lurid/violent films. The Code came about largely as a studio reaction not to public pressure against the films itself, but rather against the mythic "Hollywood as Babylon" image being perpetrated by yellow journalists and gossip rags in the wake of the Fatty Arbuckle debacle.

Big Hollywood : Do Politics Drive Hollywood's Slow Response to Heartland Disasters?

Sat, 4 Jun 2011 22:06:32 +0000

They're objectivists? ;)

Big Hollywood : 'Tree of Life' Review: A Triumph for Brad Pitt

Sat, 28 May 2011 05:12:48 +0000

I am he.

Big Hollywood : 'Tree of Life' Review: A Triumph for Brad Pitt

Fri, 27 May 2011 23:10:30 +0000

"What is more loving? The one who supports you in whatever you do, or the one who guides you to do the right things and not the wrong ones?" You are asking the question that the movie is asking. The answer it arrives at might surprise you.

Big Hollywood : 'Tree of Life' Review: A Triumph for Brad Pitt

Fri, 27 May 2011 23:09:14 +0000

There's nothing contradictory about it in the context of the film. We see an unidentified "force" of glowing energy - not readily perceptible as anything that exists in the known universe - THEN we see the creation of the Universe, set to orchestral music that explicitly calls to mind a church chorus (and later, a church organ even.) Before and after this, the film's characters spend most of the film in the midst of Job-esque mental conversations with God.

Big Hollywood : 'Tree of Life' Review: A Triumph for Brad Pitt

Fri, 27 May 2011 23:04:43 +0000

"I wonder if there is a real scene of the family praying together?" There's at least three or four such scenes, possibly more, plus various characters praying on their own and several scenes set during church services. None of the scenes are played for "irony" (i.e. there's no "they're praying but their bad people so it's funny" element) and only once does a character behave poorly in the context of a prayer-related scene; and in context it's a judgement on said character as opposed to his apparent spirituality. In addition, about 60-70% of the spoken dialogue comes in the form of voice-over narration wherein it becomes clear we are listening to the characters "converse" with God - in effect, the ENTIRE film is a series of prayers. And while the imagery and visual-metaphors have a vaguely inclusive/"new age" bent to them, the central theme described in the movie as the characters' inner conflict at following either "The Way of Nature" (base instincts, self-interest) or "The Way of Grace" (self-control, higher purpose) has an explicitly Christian frame of reference.