"biting the Invisible Hand that feeds them"

Peter Foster reviews the latest in "The Hunger Games" movie series and finds:

... [the movie] hasn’t quite produced the flood of anti-capitalist flapdoodle that the first did, but one of its stars, Canadian actor Donald Sutherland, still hopes that it might send U.S. youth to the barricades.

One of the more intriguing aspects of our relatively free Western society is that it allows people such as Mr. Sutherland to become fabulously rich while biting the Invisible Hand that feeds them.

Donald Sutherland, another Hollywood Canuk in the dumb and dumber set.

Greedy Lying Bastards

A movie review by Peter Foster:

According to the documentary Greedy Lying Bastards, action to address the earth’s greatest existential threat is being held up by twin corporate Towers of Evil: Koch Industries and Exxon Mobil. ...

... What this tedious film, and its hysterical title, confirm is the frustration from the left that their climate crusade — which was always rooted in hatred and demonization of industrial society — has inevitably crashed. That frustration is also evident in the frenetic campaign against the Keystone XL pipeline....
 

Dinesh D'Souza's "2016: Obama's America"

"The second highest grossing political documentary of all time ... "

The Iron Lady - Part II

Part I referenced Peter Foster's review of The Iron Lady.  He hated it.

Now that I've seen it, I can say that it was disappointing.  Generally, it was an annoying movie.  The first half hour had Maggie being portrayed mostly in her elderly, shaky mental state - which is completely irrelevant to the life I expected to see portrayed. I felt the urge to walk out but had a large popcorn to finish.  It got better, though there was still too much time spent with Thatcher in her dementia - and those parts of her political career she is best known for were given relatively short shrift.

The screen writer and director deserve low marks.  Meryl Streep does a decent job, but then she always does. Best actress?  I don't think so but maybe that's what they were shooting for.

The professional reviewer I trust most, James Berardinelli, comes closest to what I thought about it:

... The most disappointing aspect of The Iron Lady is that some of the most memorable hallmarks of Thatcher's time in power are glossed over. The Falklands War is covered at warp speed. An IRA attempt on her life gets a couple of minutes. Her relationship with U.S. President Ronald Reagan is confined to a brief scene of them dancing at an official function. By spending so much time with Thatcher in her dotage, the movie becomes limited in its ability to tell the story of her earlier years in a convincing, compelling fashion. One can get a better sense of her importance to recent history by reading her Wikipedia entry.

The pace is dreadfully slow; on those occasions when the flashback scenes generate some forward momentum, we are inevitably yanked back to the "present" so everything can slow down again. This approach can work when a movie features rich dialogue and impeccable performances, but The Iron Lady has neither. The screenplay is pedestrian and the acting, including that of star Meryl Streep, is unmemorable.

[...]

Other reviews - mixed:  from lousy to over-rated.

Update: Two more views - two Barbaras: Amiel and Kay.

“The Iron Lady” - another liberal hit-piece

Peter Foster wasn’t impressed:

... looks an awful lot like revenge on a figure the lefty liberal arts community has not merely never understood, but actively hated. Ms. Streep’s thanking the English for allowing her to come and “trample all over their history” was also telling.

... one can’t help concluding that this movie was at best misconceived and at worst a hatchet job on one of the most significant political figures in the past 50 years.

... In the movie ... her principles are portrayed as the tedious platitudes recalled by a demented old woman. This is not merely mediocre art and bad history, it is shameful.

Damn, I was looking forward to seeing that movie!

Atlas Shrugged, the movie - a plot rewrite

Peter Foster’s review of Atlas Shrugged (Part 1), the movie, criticizes its implausible plot lines and suggests a re-write:

... its slightly off-kilter, futuristic, film noir look does capture - at least to some degree - the wonderful weirdness of the book on which it is based.

... The movie is set in today's not-too-distant future, but has kept Dagny in railroads and Hank in metals by positing a massive oil crisis due to the implosion of the Middle East. The Dow at 4,000 we can believe, but oil at $37.50 a gallon? At that price, a Chevy Volt might actually not be such a bad deal. Domestic oil is once again king (despite being utterly unaffordable) but is being carried by train. Whatever happened to pipelines?

None of this makes much sense. ... it should have been thoroughly reformulated to reflect statism's new threats.

... How's this for a rewrite? Dagny now runs a pipeline company trying to build a huge new system for a form of oil previously uneconomic but now made available by wonderful advances in capitalist technology. Let's say this oil is located in Alberta and her line is to go to the U.S. refineries of the Gulf Coast, to replace imports from dictatorships.

... Hank is still in the steel industry but his new wonder metal is now to be used to build a cheaper, stronger and safer type of pipe. However, he is opposed not by other steel or pipe makers, but by [new villains:] ... a pack of meretricious, politically savvy environmental NGOs ... fronted by naive chanting muddle-heads, who have no idea where their rich lifestyles originate, and backed by capitalist foundations (the irony!) that have been hijacked by socialists, and by CEOs either too cowardly or stupid to say no (or by those who seek to take advantage of government handouts to produce throwback technologies). These NGOs claim that the oil is "dirty" and destroying the climate and that Hank Rearden's new and better steel in unsafe, and threatens aquifers and environmentally sensitive areas. Their hysterical claims are eagerly swallowed by gullible liberal media. Meanwhile politicians, despite high unemployment, are prepared to sacrifice tens of thousands of jobs because they, too, are cowed by the ENGOs, and in any case attracted by the unparalleled power prospects of aspiring to control the weather.

... I know this is all a bit farfetched, but we are talking a movie plot here. ... [:-)]

Works for me!

Atlas Shrugged, the movie

Part I  Trailer



Movie website.

[h/t]

Background, cast, etc. (What, no Jon Voight?)

Apparently it's going to be a trilogy.  Looking forward to it.