Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall (Post 521252)

Are we comparing these two movies because we're on the topic of movies with black male leads?

I want to see it. It's weird, though. The reactions have been all over the place, like with Vice. That one I don't think I'll watch. I've had enough of Dick Cheney for two lifetimes.

TM

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 521275)

I'm comparing them because I saw them within a couple of days, and I don't see a lot of movies. I walked into both movies not knowing anything about them. Sorry To Bother You felt fresh and unpredictable, and it definitely had a lot to say about race (and capitalism), things that do not often creep into mainstream movies (if it is a mainstream movie -- I saw it at an ordinary movie theater). It reminded me a little of Do The Right Thing in that it felt honest and different and informed by the view about how things play out in a very specific place (Oakland instead of Brooklyn). Obviously there are huge differences between the movies and I'm not sure I would make that comparison if I hadn't seen Spike Lee's movie a few days later, but I did. Sorry To Bother You has some bad actors, but there is no question that the movie is about systemic exploitation on a number of fronts.

BlacKKKlansman, by contrast, felt somewhat stale to me, establishment. What happened to Spike Lee? The message of the movie is that the face of racism is a few back-country hicks, and that if you can get the police department to hire a black and a Jew then they will get the job done. Black activists like the female lead need to just trust the cops. The tidy ending to the internal PD conflict was completely wrong. Do The Right Thing Ends shows you a cop killing Radio Raheem, with no justice. In BlacKKKlansman the racist cop does his thing earlier, and the rest of the cops take care of him in the end -- seriously, a fantasy Hollywood ending. In contrast, Lee doesn't do anything with the mysterious higher-ups who tell the police chief to close the investigation and destroy the files. The movie has no reckoning with systemic racism -- it's view is that racists are a relatively small number of pathological bad guys who the system can get rid of. In that context, the tacked-on documentary footage at the end seems to suggest that there are just more of them now.

If the problem with the Green Book is that it tells a heroic story about racism from a white perspective, the problem with BlacKKKlansman is that it tells a heroic story about racism with a black hero that turns racism into the exception, not the societal rule. If you want a movie that white people can go to confirm their (self-serving) belief that racism is not them, it's a few hicks with guns with hoods, there's your movie. It's an up-to-date feel-good movie about racism.

eta: And seriously, what happened to Spike Lee? I turned on Fresh Air a few weeks ago and Terry Gross was interviewing someone who was telling clicheed, uninteresting stories about visiting his relatives in the South as a kid, and turned out to be Spike Lee.

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski (Post 521276)

He is a full blown Christ figure.

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski (Post 521193)

I was asking about the incorrect facts. The meme seemed to hint it was more than the chicken, which could explain some of the displeasure. The piano player seemed a very odd duck. But if the story bails on the truth anyway, I could see writing him less odd.

I'm in the middle of Blackkklansman which I wanted to like, but man is it plodding. I normally love spike but this one is tough. Not sure which should have won between the two. Probably something else?

I agree DTRT should have gotten something more. FWIW I think Mo Better Blues is his masterpiece.

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall (Post 521200)

I am absolutely floored by this analysis.

If your exposure to the musician is based on watching a movie in which he plays a supporting character, you will necessarily have a limited view of who the fuck he is. Am I in backwards land? Your argument is that the personality traits they chose to show of the supporting character in order to make a movie about his driver are insufficient? I am honestly stumped at why you are taking the movie you saw and saying that they couldn't have made the movie from another perspective based on the evidence you saw in the movie in which they relegated the musician to a supporting role. What?

Again. What? They aren't explained because he's not the focus of the movie. Do you think they may have explained these things--given some backstory--if he were?

I suppose that could be. He also could have been an amazingly interesting person whose idiosyncrasies were based in plot points and character development. What???

This is the strangest conversation I've ever witnessed.

No. The back story is there because the white guy is the lead. What the fuck?

That's quite the read considering his family has been vocal about how inaccurate the film is. Maybe he had a family later in life? Maybe he has no apparent family because the focus of the film is someone else and those characters were eliminated.

You have taken this movie and turned all the choices they have made based on who the lead is into evidence of why they didn't make the movie about someone else. You are not making any sense.

TM

Originally Posted by Icky Thump (Post 521308)

Ali was good playing a deep character. But I wasn’t happy with the absolute spoof of Italians. Still, Hollywood has no problem making complete and total characteratures out of an entire nationality.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 521311)

Re Manafort, am I missing a piece or is it now possible that Trump can pardon Manafort on upcoming Berman sentence and keep Ellis sentence in place, thus blunting all political outcry about a pardon of Manafort?

“I only pardoned Paul in one case. Just one. I made him do time. Very nasty time. Very, very nasty.”

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 521312)

Why would Trump pardon Manafort now?

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 521314)

Trump could leave him to rot for the entire sentence Berman gives him. But then Manafort would have nothing left to lose and start singing.

There's no way Manafort acted as brazenly as he did without some assurance from Trump's people that he'd be pardoned. If Trump screws him and he winds up doing the 10 years Berman is likely to give him, he's lost everything and Trump has no leverage over him.

Whatever the outcome, Manafort does the remainder of the Ellis sentence. The only pardon I see coming her is as to Berman's sentence. This would also send a message to Stone, who is being tried by Berman.

Originally Posted by ferrets_bueller (Post 521315)

The NY Times just published a book review on The Uninhabitable Earth, which is apparently an annotate version of the single most frequently downloaded story in the history of New York Magazine.


Agree with me or not on any issue I've ever posted here, I don't think anyone can accuse me of hyperbole or fear mongering.



The 7,000 word story is positively terrifying.



It is well written, and posits that my 5 and 2 year old granddaughters will be part of a mass extinction event. So much for clean beautiful Kentucky coal.


http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/...or-humans.html


Some of the science indicates that we're already too late to change the outcome. It is a global version of the "tragedy of the commons." I feel helpless in the face of the size of the problem. Damn.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 521314)

Trump could leave him to rot for the entire sentence Berman gives him. But then Manafort would have nothing left to lose and start singing.

There's no way Manafort acted as brazenly as he did without some assurance from Trump's people that he'd be pardoned. If Trump screws him and he winds up doing the 10 years Berman is likely to give him, he's lost everything and Trump has no leverage over him.

Whatever the outcome, Manafort does the remainder of the Ellis sentence. The only pardon I see coming her is as to Berman's sentence. This would also send a message to Stone, who is being tried by Berman.