Trash, Art and the Movie Critic by Il Ragno
Eastertime now usually means a graphically gory cinematic blockbuster opening in 3000 theaters, which this year means Sin City: a CGI extravaganza featuring hookers, psychos, bent cops, angelic pole dancers, and cannibal pedophile priests, and full to bursting with multiple lovingly-rendered mutilations, decapitations, castrations and scenes of people being eaten while still alive. The critics are on their knees, hosanna’ing with awe and delight.
By interesting coincidence, last Easter another bloody and violent release captured the public’s fancy. True, it was only based on a historical occurrence that has had wide global significance for the past 2000 years as opposed to a comic book that shows you tits, but what’s interesting is that those exact same critics not only didn’t love it, but they hated it for the very reason they adore Sin City.
Isn’t it funny how much difference one little year makes? Or maybe it’s something else. See if you can tell which blurb refers to which movie, ‘kay?
E! Online
A two-hour bloodbath.
You’re gonna love it.
Tom Long, Detroit News
“The Passion of the Christ” will surely be the feel-awful movie of a lifetime, a filmed bloodletting like no other on record, essentially a terribly graphic two-hour torture sequence. It’s hard to imagine anyone enjoying this film (and please, please, don’t anyone take a child to this movie). Gibson would doubtlessly defend it as realistic, which it may well be. But watching a man have the skin flayed from his bones as his blood sprays the faces of his attackers, and while his mother looks on in horror, isn’t really drama...it is butchery. The question becomes, are we going to linger on horror in the name of accuracy? Is this one case worthy of drastic examination? Myself, I wish I’d never seen it.
“Sin City” is a teenage boy’s dream-nightmare come true, a cauldron of violence, vengeance and sexual sensationalism that revels without pause in its own shameless celebration of twisted fantasies. It’s loud, large, sick and a whole lot of fun. Understand, there’s no way you want to miss this movie. “Sin” is worth any penance you have to pay.
Josh Bell, Las Vegas Weekly
This is crucifixion-as-popcorn-flick, since Gibson gives us a horror-movie-style Satan, hordes of extras, a fight scene and Monica Bellucci as Mary Magdalene, last seen cavorting with a messiah of a different sort in the Matrix sequels. I simply saw a brutal and well-crafted film, the story of a nice guy with some really bad luck. Gibson’s reverence for his source material is like Peter Jackson’s reverence for Tolkien: a good adaptation, nothing more.
A treasure for both cineastes and those looking simply to be dazzled for two hours.
Slant Magazine
A high-art snuff film...an unhealthy, inhuman, pornographic, masochistic torture mechanism.
An exhilarating tapestry of valor, selfishness, deceitfulness, and martyrdom.
David Edelstein, Slate
This is a two-hour-and- six-minute snuff movie—The Jesus Chainsaw Massacre—that thinks it’s an act of faith.
I loved it, I loved it, I loved it. I loved every gorgeous sick disgusting ravishing overbaked blood-spurting artificial frame of it.
Ken Hanke, Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC)
In many ways, in fact, The Passion could qualify as a horror film. Everything you may have heard about the movie’s extremely graphic violence—almost to the point of being sadistic—is true. If this were a horror film instead of an “edifying” religious drama, it would have been sent back for cuts or had an NC-17 slapped on it. In a perfect world, I’d be able to overlook all the baggage that comes with The Passion; however, Gibson’s high-profile, right-wing, homophobic, misogynistic pronouncements, and the movie’s equally high-profile, built-in controversy, make that impossible.
This is the vilest, most disgusting and most violent film I’ve seen in some time. It’s also one of the most entertaining exercises in total stylization and pitch-black humor to ever hit the screens. Early on, I lost track of the number of decapitations and dismemberments, but the film also boasts two castrations, pedophilia and cannibalism as well as attacks on the Catholic Church, the judicial system and government in general. My partner in movie-reviewing crime, Marci Miller, told mutual acquaintances that the movie made her sick, adding, “I’m sure Ken will love it”—thereby proving that she’s an excellent judge of character.
New York Daily News
The movie is a compendium of tortures that would horrify the regulars at an S&M club.
It leaves you breathless as only a movie can.
Jean Lowerison, San Diego Metropolitan
A story of betrayal and vindictiveness leading to a mind-numbing gorefest that provokes exhaustion more than it inspires the “tolerance, love and forgiveness” which is one of Gibson’s stated aims.
The question at hand seems to be this: how many disgusting ways can you make a man die—and how many times? “Sin City” features lots of limb-hacking and sticking of heads in toilets, along with other, less amusing methods. There’s even a cannibal. There’s plenty of style, and some fine direction by Robert Rodriguez. Give “Sin City” a whirl.
Eric Lurio, Greenwich Village Gazette
BLOOD GORE PAIN!!!!!! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Brilliant, but repulsive. It’s like a car wreck. We can’t take our eyes off it. You won’t either.
Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel
Bloody to the point of gruesome, moving without being inspiring.
...over-the-top characters, situations and dialogue, violence that wallows in sadism, remorseless executions, savage beatings and multiple shootings that no human being could survive; human ugliness taken to its lowest level. It is the flat-out coolest looking movie to come along in years.
Bill Muller, Arizona Republic
The basic message of Christianity—love your brother—is obscured under torrents of blood to the point of benumbing the audience.
Every now and then, a movie does more than gamely defend the status quo...but actually advances the art form. So it is with Sin City.
Andrew Sarris, New York Observer
Whereas the words say love, love, love, the sounds and images say hate, hate, hate.
In the end, I liked Sin City in spite of myself.
Gabriel Shanks, Mixed Reviews
As a film—and more importantly, as a document of faith—it is a dismayingly simplistic, obvious, overbearing waste remarkable only for the quantities of blood it spills.
As close to a museum-quality work of visual art as Hollywood as ever seen.
efilmcritic.Com
“The Passion” gives us the bloodiest, goriest, flesh-rippingest film your churchgoing grandma will ever want to see. Gibson focuses on every lashing, every punch, every stumble with the attention of a faithful Catholic. Jesus fell three times? We see all three. The trouble with the film, however, isn’t about the existence or nonexistence of anti-Semitism. It’s about story gaps. As much as I loved the lush production values, it simply does not work plotwise.
Sin City quenched the taste of blood I hadn’t had in a long time. Not a quarter of an hour could tick away on the hands of time before someone was shot, stabbed, electrocuted, exploded, emasculated, decapitated or eaten. It was beautiful. True artists merge their inspirations and bring us out of one hell into a completely different one only to hear us mutter “Thank you.”
Angela Baldassarre, Sympatico.CA
Emotional, violent, extreme and very gory; a difficult and grotesque experience for most viewers.
Violent, filthy, sexist and nasty; mesmerizing, inventive and awe-inspiring; absolutely riveting. Raymond Chandler would’ve been proud.
Jules Brenner (FC), Variagate.Com
If Gibson imagined that this extended detailing of sadism would somehow be inspirational, he needs to be taken off his biblical steroids.
Prepare your own mind to accept extreme super violence as kid’s play, nothing more. If you’re repelled, you’re just not getting the creative intention. Fear of influence on impressionable minds should be the least of your worries.
Ty Burr, Boston Globe
Brutal almost beyond powers of description, yes. More obsessed with capturing every holy drop of martyr’s blood and sacred gobbet of flesh than with any message of Christian love. In the film’s present-tense scenes, Christ has already had his face smashed in, but that’s just an entr’acte. This is scriptural fidelity as fetishism. But how can it be otherwise? To Gibson, each drop is holy, so the more of it the better. Each chunk of flesh dug out by the lash is Christ’s sacrifice in all its beauty, so bring it on. As filmmaking it’s somewhat silly. It’s not your Unitarian grandma’s tea-cosy religion; for one thing, Christian forgiveness seems in short supply...the naked, risen Jesus who strides forth from the tomb in the last shot of the film, to the solemn thrum of martial music, does not seem very interested in love. Why should he be? He’s off to war.
It’s been a long three months, but the dry season is over: “Sin City” is the first great Hollywood joy ride of the year. Hyperstylized and ultra-ultra-violent, this adaptation of Frank Miller’s two-fisted cult comic book series barrels through a black-and-white moral landscape like a runaway bullet train, and it makes no stops for those with delicate constitutions to stagger off. The film is a stunning, visceral piece of work—cheap thrills polished to the level of high art. Rodriguez and Miller’s digital world feels more hyper-real, more urgent, than the mundane one waiting outside the multiplex.
Rick Groen, Toronto Globe And Mail
So obsessively and so graphically bloody-minded that it comes perilously close to the pornography of violence.
Sin City gives sin a great name—it’s never looked so gorgeous.
And...if this were a Letterman top-10 list...the Number 1 idiot-critic. and shining exemplar of the worthlessness of a liberal-arts education...
MaryAnn Johanson, Flick Filosopher
Lisa: “The mound builders worshipped turtles as well as badgers, snakes, and other animals.”
Bart: “Thank God we’ve come to our senses and worship a carpenter who lived 2,000 years ago.”
That bit of snarkiness, courtesy of the always profane The Simpsons, highlights why we cannot talk about Mel Gibson’s piece of cinematic insanity as “just a movie.” We have not, as a culture, come to our senses. There is nothing “just a movie” about this self-flagellating exercise in inciting mass religious frenzy. This isn’t a movie: it’s a theme-park ride for Jesus freaks. “SEE the hunks of flesh ripped from Jesus’ side! EXPERIENCE the stations of the cross like never before!” There’s no reason or logic to it. But I guess once you start talking to an invisible superhero who lives in the sky and can see you all the time—even in the bathroom—reason and logic kinda go out the window. And that’s the worst thing about the circus surrounding this film, and the real reason why it cannot be seen as “just a movie.” The people who in all seriousness buy into this stuff have an influence way out of proportion with the sense they make, which is little, and get a free pass on their fairy stories—I’ve seen not one suggestion anywhere, in all the media’s fawning delirium over this film, that perhaps Jesus never existed or, if he did, was nothing but a crazy guy who roamed the desert, got his brain a little too sunbaked, and merely thought he was God. And there’s been not one scrap of discussion about whether his legacy has been something we could have done without.
This is a vile place, oozing corruption from every orifice, where integrity and honesty in the institutions of authority have long since fled. This is a place where a man or a woman wielding a gun or a knife (and they all do) makes no threats—he or she just proceeds instantly to inflicting the worst. This is a place where there is no time for threats: you hesitate, you die. This is no place you want to be. And yet, when the U.S. attorney general condones and justifies torture, and vigilantes are patrolling the border with Mexico, and neo-Nazi kids are shooting up high schools, is there any doubt that we’re all living in Sin City right now? It’s one of the most disgusting, most sickening things I think I’ve ever seen in a movie. It’s depressing, and it’s miserable. And it’s thoroughly exhilarating to see a film like this one not prettying up the nastiness of the world, just acknowledging it head-on.
Thus far, re: Sin City at least, we have yet to hear from David Denby (“The movie Gibson has made from his personal obsessions is a sickening death trip, a grimly unilluminating procession of treachery, beatings, blood, and agony”), Owen Gleiberman (“Blood-soaked pop theology for a doom-laden time, its effect that of a gripping yet reductive paradox: it lifts us downward”) or the Boston Herald’s James Verniere (“Gibson...seems determined to prove that Jesus suffered more than anyone who has ever lived, a tiresomely literal argument at best, an exercise in sadomasochistic bullying at worst”). Somehow, I think they’re gonna write themselves, don’t you?
March 10, 2012
Dalai Lama Lite
Dalai Lama Lite - My Posting Career
I've always found the lib reverence for the Dalai Lama to be odd. We need to 'Free Tibet', i.e. return it to feudal theocracy. A FB friend of a friend who describes himself as an atheist and "free thinker" likes to post a lot of Dalai Lama quotes, attribution > "His Holiness." What is the appeal? Is it just that the DL is an exotic character in his saffron robes -- which appeals to libs' fascination with anything different or weird? I don't get it.
The Dalai Lama is a SWPL icon. They see Buddhism as a peaceful, meditative religion, so I think they imagine their own navel gazing as a sort of "deep thinking" that goes on with it. It's not religious in the same way that Christianity (ugh Sky Wizard) is, so they create this idea of Buddhism as a philosophy rather than a religion. This is enhanced by the fact that the average SWPL has no real notion about the tenets of Buddhism and they live thousands of miles away from a culture shaped by it. When Buddhism says that sex should only be used for procreation, that's okay because it's, like, a path to enlightenment, man, but when Christianity says that wanton sexual hedonism is spiritually harmful, it's fucking bigots repressing everyone.
In short: typical libfag doublethink. Knew a couple people in college who were like this. One was a feminist and the other was a psyche major. They had pictures of them meditating on Facebook to protest the fire-and-brimstone preachers who had shown up on campus.
On the original SWPL blog, "spirituality" was #2. And it said that SWPLs like any religion that doesn't involve Christ. And:
SWPLs are people who sold their souls for lies, mostly out of a sense of FUCK YOU DAD, and now they are so confused they can't recognize truth anywhere or in anything. So, in addition to other, more serious problems that come out of this, they hilariously misunderstand foreign religions and their leaders.
the Dalai Lama explicitly condemns homosexuality, as well as all oral and anal sex. His stand is close to that of Pope John Paul II, something his Western followers find embarrassing and prefer to ignore.
I've always found the lib reverence for the Dalai Lama to be odd. We need to 'Free Tibet', i.e. return it to feudal theocracy. A FB friend of a friend who describes himself as an atheist and "free thinker" likes to post a lot of Dalai Lama quotes, attribution > "His Holiness." What is the appeal? Is it just that the DL is an exotic character in his saffron robes -- which appeals to libs' fascination with anything different or weird? I don't get it.
The Dalai Lama is a SWPL icon. They see Buddhism as a peaceful, meditative religion, so I think they imagine their own navel gazing as a sort of "deep thinking" that goes on with it. It's not religious in the same way that Christianity (ugh Sky Wizard) is, so they create this idea of Buddhism as a philosophy rather than a religion. This is enhanced by the fact that the average SWPL has no real notion about the tenets of Buddhism and they live thousands of miles away from a culture shaped by it. When Buddhism says that sex should only be used for procreation, that's okay because it's, like, a path to enlightenment, man, but when Christianity says that wanton sexual hedonism is spiritually harmful, it's fucking bigots repressing everyone.
In short: typical libfag doublethink. Knew a couple people in college who were like this. One was a feminist and the other was a psyche major. They had pictures of them meditating on Facebook to protest the fire-and-brimstone preachers who had shown up on campus.
On the original SWPL blog, "spirituality" was #2. And it said that SWPLs like any religion that doesn't involve Christ. And:
Mostly they are into religion that fits really well into their homes or wardrobe and doesn’t require them to do very much.
SWPLs are people who sold their souls for lies, mostly out of a sense of FUCK YOU DAD, and now they are so confused they can't recognize truth anywhere or in anything. So, in addition to other, more serious problems that come out of this, they hilariously misunderstand foreign religions and their leaders.
Ezra Pound: Peaceful Methods From The Byzantine Empire
Ezra Pound On Preventing Zionist Conquest From Within
Peaceful Methods From The Byzantine Empire
From Dick Eastman / 12-30-2009
Before you call the following proposals "undemocratic" let me ask you this:
Is it being "anti-democratic" to oppose billionaire Jews having "the same democratic right" to use their money and position to influence politics as the man I just saw standing on a corner with his daughter in sub-freezing temperatures holding up a large piece of cardboard with this legend: saying :
"I am not a bum.
Unemployed brick layer.
Three kids. Will do any work.
Please help."
Has the "equal freedom" to use his money and position to do the same? The Greeks knew that all such "democracy" is always in reality oligarcy (or, inpopulist lingo, plutocracy.) The Byzantine civilization derived from the Greek, and the Moslems adopted some of their wisdom in building their civilization.
I say Intelligent government for the good of all in a republic cancels such bogus and unegalitarian "equal rights" of the rich and poor to influence politics -- in order to realize the ideals of a democracy. Anti-trust against the rich and not the poor is unfair and undemocratic to some, but to me it is the only way to get justice and an economy we can live with.
After you read the following view the short Mullins clip -- linked below to view on line. --Dick Eastman
Excepted from NEW HISTORY of the JEWS
By Eustace Mullins
In all of recorded history, there was only one civilization which the Jews could not destroy. Because of this, they have given it the silent treatment. Few American college graduates with a Ph.D. degree could tell you what the Byzantine Empire was.
It was the Empire of East Rome, set up by Roman leaders after the Jews had destroyed Rome. This empire functioned in Constantinople for twelve hundred years, the longest duration of any empire in the history of the world.
Throughout the history of Byzantium, as it was known, by imperial edict, no Jew was allowed to hold any post in the Empire, nor was he allowed to educate the young. The Byzantine Empire finally fell to the Turks after twelve centuries of prosperity, and the Jews have attempted to wipe out all traces of its history.
Yet its edicts against the Jews were not cruel; in fact, the Jews lived unmolested and prosperously in the empire throughout its history, but here alone the vicious cycle of host and parasite did not take place.
It was a Christian civilization, and the Jews were not able to exercise any influence. Nor did the Orthodox priests bewilder their congregations with any vicious lies about Christ being a Jew.
No wonder the Jews want to eradicate the memory of such a culture.
It was Ezra Pound who launched upon a study of Byzantine civilization, and who reminded the world of this happily non-Jewish land.
From the Byzantines, Pound derived his no-violent formula for controlling the Jews.
"The answer to the Jewish problem is simple," he said.
"Keep them out of banking, out of education, out of government."
And this is how simple it is.
Peaceful Methods From The Byzantine Empire
From Dick Eastman / 12-30-2009
Before you call the following proposals "undemocratic" let me ask you this:
Is it being "anti-democratic" to oppose billionaire Jews having "the same democratic right" to use their money and position to influence politics as the man I just saw standing on a corner with his daughter in sub-freezing temperatures holding up a large piece of cardboard with this legend: saying :
"I am not a bum.
Unemployed brick layer.
Three kids. Will do any work.
Please help."
Has the "equal freedom" to use his money and position to do the same? The Greeks knew that all such "democracy" is always in reality oligarcy (or, inpopulist lingo, plutocracy.) The Byzantine civilization derived from the Greek, and the Moslems adopted some of their wisdom in building their civilization.
I say Intelligent government for the good of all in a republic cancels such bogus and unegalitarian "equal rights" of the rich and poor to influence politics -- in order to realize the ideals of a democracy. Anti-trust against the rich and not the poor is unfair and undemocratic to some, but to me it is the only way to get justice and an economy we can live with.
After you read the following view the short Mullins clip -- linked below to view on line. --Dick Eastman
Excepted from NEW HISTORY of the JEWS
By Eustace Mullins
In all of recorded history, there was only one civilization which the Jews could not destroy. Because of this, they have given it the silent treatment. Few American college graduates with a Ph.D. degree could tell you what the Byzantine Empire was.
It was the Empire of East Rome, set up by Roman leaders after the Jews had destroyed Rome. This empire functioned in Constantinople for twelve hundred years, the longest duration of any empire in the history of the world.
Throughout the history of Byzantium, as it was known, by imperial edict, no Jew was allowed to hold any post in the Empire, nor was he allowed to educate the young. The Byzantine Empire finally fell to the Turks after twelve centuries of prosperity, and the Jews have attempted to wipe out all traces of its history.
Yet its edicts against the Jews were not cruel; in fact, the Jews lived unmolested and prosperously in the empire throughout its history, but here alone the vicious cycle of host and parasite did not take place.
It was a Christian civilization, and the Jews were not able to exercise any influence. Nor did the Orthodox priests bewilder their congregations with any vicious lies about Christ being a Jew.
No wonder the Jews want to eradicate the memory of such a culture.
It was Ezra Pound who launched upon a study of Byzantine civilization, and who reminded the world of this happily non-Jewish land.
From the Byzantines, Pound derived his no-violent formula for controlling the Jews.
"The answer to the Jewish problem is simple," he said.
"Keep them out of banking, out of education, out of government."
And this is how simple it is.
Quotes & Sayings II
Bumbling American on "TV Show Kitchen Nightmares" / February 2012
This goes back to something I've noticed about the different versions of this show. People here have pointed out that the U.K. original is a lot smarter than the American translation; Ramsay gives more practical, interesting advice, and the restaurant owners are generally sensible. Granted, the American show is dumb because Ramsay is mugging for the Fox cameras, and the producers love tracking down owners with their heads up their asses and a chip on their shoulders. But it seems there's something else at work: Ramsay comes off as genuinely sympathetic to the Brits because of their extended family ties. They speak the same cultural language and relate to him in a way the Americans--even the down-to-Earth ones--simply can't. When Ramsay talks to a British owner, they're immediately mates. In America, he seems to resent the whole setup: Who's this asshole serving dry meatballs in a strip mall?
Nations made up of people with the same blood, history and traditions--how do they work?
http://goo.gl/zUwau
A little backstory on "Why do leftists despise the middle class?" / February 2012
Lots of reasons, some interrelated
Coastal elites/upper middle striver SWPLs hate the solidly unrepentant middle class because they represent everything the SWPL striver has worked to rise above
Church-going, eating at multinational restaurant chains instead of local stylishly obscure dives, caring about football or other earthy pro sports, showing genuine curiosity about one's neighbors, being susceptible to advertising, a lack of managerialist/academic ambitions, solidly pedestrian tastes in decor, music, entertainment, dress... Your average SWPL either came from this background or is one generation away from slipping down into it, and on a visceral level, they know it--this is why the biggest snobs are found among upper middles and striver middle middles, not true uppers; genuinely upper class people usually have nothing to prove and quietly intermarry and socialize within their caste without fanfare or self-congratulatory derision of the lower classes
Another factor would be typical Semitic loathing of the mainstream; as defiantly insular Others, tearing away at the foundations of a healthy host society keeps Jewish cohesion strong while serving to weaken potential group realtalk activities and organization--also most Jews are terribly class insecure, knowing that even the most cultured of them still retain intractably vulgar tastes and customs compared to their white, nominally Christian, Western European betters
The American middle class also tends toward painfully earnest displays of sentiment, something that makes a postmodern smugly detached SWPL cringe; this leads to inevitable mockery of low-hanging fruit like "Hallmark Holidays" and other consumerist displays of predetermined emotional release (Occupy Valentine's Day being a most recent example)
There are surely other causes but these seem to be the most prominent
tl;dr Jews, class insecurity, a deep-seated need to feel better-than/special unlike those UGH VAPID RETHUGLICAN BIGOTS WHO EAT AT OLIVE GARDEN AND BELIEVE IN A VINDICTIVE SKY WIZARD
http://goo.gl/ud6MP
Cinco Jotas explains 'Game' on "Categories of PUA/HB dynamics" / March 2012
The best and most useful game advice is exactly the same advice responsible adults (parents, teachers, coaches) gave to young men back in the day.
Game Talk, 2012: "Practice alpha body language."
Your Junior High Principal, circa 1960: "Stand up straight. Get your hands out of your pockets. Don't slouch. Look people in the eye when you talk to them."
Game Talk, 2012: "Get yourself in shape. Lifting weights builds confidence. HB9s dig fit guys."
Your Football Coach, circa 1950: "Two more laps, ladies! You candyassed pansies need to build some intestinal fortitude. Ain't no cheerleader gonna look at some limp-wrist Poindexter who can't throw a downfield block."
Game Talk, 2012: "Surround yourself with people who help you display higher value."
Your Mom, circa 1965: "You need to choose your friends more wisely, dear. If Timmy jumped off a bridge would you?"
Game Talk, 2012: "Develop your inner game. Nothing attracts the ladies like a self-confident man who acts like he's a catch. Change your attitude, change your game."
Your Dad, circa 1955: "You need to start acting like a man. Take pride in yourself, son. Don't whine about what life's given you. Change it for the better."
All that jargony bullshit about running scripts and opening sets is incidental to the real nugget of truth: act like a man, not an adolescent metrosexual faggot, and you'll have a decent chance of attracting women.
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