Though Oliver Stone is reviled and sometimes revered for his political opinions, those who love the movies of the last three decades know him (or should) as the screenwriter mostly likely to understand — and bring to life — villains. In Platoon, it was the alcoholic sergeant Wall Street, Sgt. Barnes, played by Tom Berenger,Continue reading “Don Blankenship: A coal-black villain worthy of Oliver Stone”
Category Archives: culture
Alice in Wonderland, the movie, the beta
According to the ever-sensible Ken Turan of the Los Angeles Times, middling. According to the ever-brilliant David Edelstain of New York, delightfully garish. According to Metacritic, the critical consensus comes in at 55 on a scale of 100, mixed or average. This puzzles your truly. Tim Burton's movies aren't always great, but they're never "average."Continue reading “Alice in Wonderland, the movie, the beta”
The Pantheism of Avatar: Good? Bad? A Simple Truth?
The reviews for Avatar have been overwhelmingly good, except from conservatives such as columnist Ross Douthut, who complains bitterly that: “Avatar” is Cameron’s long apologia for pantheism — a faith that equates God with Nature, and calls humanity into religious communion with the natural world… If this narrative arc sounds familiar, that’s because pantheism hasContinue reading “The Pantheism of Avatar: Good? Bad? A Simple Truth?”
The Aughts: the decade that sucked
Most everyone polled by Pew agrees: the Aughts sucked. Really. If this decade was a guy in high school, he'd be one lonely fella. If this decade was an athlete, he'd be the last picked for the team. (Seriously — every other decade on which a poll has been taken has been well liked byContinue reading “The Aughts: the decade that sucked”
Enviro Song of the Year 2009: a new “This Land is Your Land”
The columnist George Will recently wrote about the new movie Up in the Air. While breezily discoursing on the emotional pain of the worst unemployment record in decades, Will happened to mention that the "opening soundtrack" to the movie, featuring a new version of Woody Guthrie's classic This Land is Your Land, was (and IContinue reading “Enviro Song of the Year 2009: a new “This Land is Your Land””
Positive Thinking and Calvinism: American Twins
"If one of the best things you can say about positive thinking is that it articulated an alternative to Calvinism, one of the worst is that it ended up preserving some of Calvinism's more toxic features — a harsh judgementalism, echoing the old religions's condemnation of sin, and an insistence on the constant interior laborContinue reading “Positive Thinking and Calvinism: American Twins”
Feminism Messes with Blanche DuBois
On Double X, Slate's relentlessly smart site for women's issues, Margaret Wheeler Johnson alleges that feminism has screwed with Blanche DuBois. Forget about the irony of the alleged perpetrator for a second, and think of the victim. Is there a greater crime possible against a character in American theater? The greatest of all American tragediesContinue reading “Feminism Messes with Blanche DuBois”
Global Warming: Top Phrase of the Decade
So alleges The Language Monitor, which claims results based on a "proprietary algorithm that tracks words and phrases in the media and on the Internet, now including blogs and social media (such as Twitter). The words are tracked in relation to frequency, contextual usage and appearance in global media outlets, factoring in long-term trends, short-termContinue reading “Global Warming: Top Phrase of the Decade”
Tom Friedman, Cut to Shreds
Matt Taibbi is the writer as slasher. When you finish with one of his pieces you feel a little light-headed, as you might feel if you were a tough guy, and had just rolled some local thug. But the thing is, in Taibbi's case, the thug (be it Bush, Palin, or Erica Jong) always seemsContinue reading “Tom Friedman, Cut to Shreds”
Why “W” Went to Baghdad: Oliver Stone Tells All
A new movie blogger on the scene is Patrick Goldstein, who writes "The
Big Picture" for the LA Times (here). For some reason, nobody in the
blogosphere seems to like Goldstein at all. Near as I can tell, it’s
became he writes for a real newspaper and they don’t. But be that as it
may, his opening post last week was a scene from the screenplay for the movie biography of George W. Bush that Stone is directing, called "W." It’s the movie that everyone
in Hollywood wants to see, but no one in Hollywood wanted to fund (as
Goldstein put it).
Oliver Stone is a living mess, but when he’s on, no film writer alive
puts better bad guys down on paper. (Takes one to know one?) Remember Gordon Gekko? Platoon?
Nixon? I question Stone’s ability to direct — he can’t seem to settle on a single film stock, far less a single POV — but not his ability to write. Maybe this story will focus him. If so — and the cast is promising — could be something to remember.
The scene is below the fold. You won’t regret reading it, I promise.
Kit Stolz 