Just watched the Descendants, and it isn’t too often I cry at the end of a movie, but I sure did for this one. When they were sitting there on the couch, all three of them, as the credits rolled, I just thought to myself “They’re going to make it.”
Such a good movie.
Mnemosyne
I really liked it, but apparently some people hated the fact that the family was rich. I understand getting pissed off at banksters who are whining because they can’t afford their third vacation home but, really, even for a fiction film you can’t work up any compassion for a guy whose wife is in an irreversible coma just because he’s rich?
Back to the movie itself, Robert Forester can be such a great actor if he’s given the right material. I wish more people knew how to use him.
Bnut
Currently involved in a forum dispute on who the worst US generals of all time were. I need to get out more.
lamh35
Ok, sorry to start on a sour note, but I just read this and all I can say is no fuckin’ way he said this!!
Zimmerman Friend Defends Racial Slur: ‘Coon Asses’ Used Proudly In Parts Of This Country
No this mofo didn’t!!!!
Born and raised in New Orleans, LA and the first time I ever heard this word was from a white person and it wasn’t a “term of endearment”…
If anyone black or white called me a damn “coon ass” I sure as hell will have a god damn problem
Ugh!
baldheadeddork
Agreed, John. I thought the storytelling was just perfect. There wasn’t a false note anywhere in the script and the actors were terrific.
Felonious Wench
Love the comment numbers and the names of the front pagers at the top. Please pass on my thanks to the designer.
burnspbesq
@Bnut:
Offhand, I’d say McClellan, but I’m not a war geek. I’d imagine McChrystal got some support.
Yutsano
@Bnut: No one beats the arrogance and mendancity of Custer. Racism had consequences. Hoocodanoode?
TaMara (BHF)
I loved the book. And I’m so glad the movie didn’t ruin it.
Numbered comments, yay!
Trurl
That movie was as phony as 3 dollar bill.
Or an Obama campaign pledge, if you prefer.
Calming Influence
Haven’t seen it, but I’ll give it a go.
.
Also, I’m glad to see that you’re taking my suggestions for the site upgrade to heart, and not listening to all those other whiny losers.
blueintheface
Um, how about a spoiler alert warning?
Doc Neill
Is it just me, or is the Trayvon martin case driving Instapundit over the edge?
Linnaeus
@Mnemosyne:
I thought he was great in Jackie Brown.
Mnemosyne
@blueintheface:
What spoiler? They used the scene in the trailer.
And since the wife is in a coma within the first 5 minutes of the film, I don’t think that’s much of a spoiler, either.
Just Some Fuckhead
We watched the Descendants two nights ago. I was never moved but Mrs. Fuckhead cried all the way through it.
Now, The Notebook..
Bnut
@burnspbesq: I most def put McClellan at the top. How he was never considered a traitor is beyond me. Next two were Mark Clark and a tie between Burnside and Tommy Franks.
@Yutsano: Yeah, but Custer was pretty decent in the Civil War.
Calming Influence
Also, John, I told you that I don’t like the fake “Play” buttons in the right-side lists, so don’t forget to get rid of them. No rush, just a gentle reminder.
.
Oh yea, and the comment “Preview” button. Don’t forget to add that.
Misha
Agreed about The Descendants. And then we kind of wrecked it (the next night) by watching David Fincher’s remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Oh, well.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@lamh35: I saw this guy and his weak shit on TV. The whole “goon” thing is weak sauce, too. Apparently somebody in his camp thinks reasonable doubt can be established by any kind of dumb ass spiel like on a David E Kelly court room drama.
amk
cole, nice to see you cleaning up your own mess.
test line break.
ETA: nope, not working. Still stuck in edit-land.
Southern Beale
Don’t hate me for saying this but, I read the book first and thought it was far, far superior to the movie. Maybe it was just me.
David Koch
Oh NO!
Gloria Steinem cuts endorsement commercial for barry.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKq0MwnMGcU
I feel so betrayed. I didn’t know Steinem was such a corporatist.
Just Some Fuckhead
I had a hard time with the concept of someone cheating on George Clooney with Shaggy.
Daaling
Ok this is funny. Yesterday, Sutherlands character as the Prez in the Hunger Games was the wingnuts hero because he said we give them “hope” in the movie. If you haven’t seen it, he was referring to the way the gov’t controls people.
The wingnuts interpreted that as the evil gov’t in Hunger Games being Democrats. So yesterday Sutherland was their hero. Today all their fantasies have been destroyed when Sutherland gave an interview explaing to them that no, what he and the gov’t in the movie represented was Republicans and the 1%. Now suddenly Sutherland is a poopyface….lol!
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2012/03/26/Sutherland-Compares-Hunger-Games-Govt
Bnut
@Just Some Fuckhead: All I know is that it wasn’t me.
arguingwithsignposts
@lamh35: I grew up in southeast Texas, and coonasses were cajuns. (not even sure how that would be spelled). Usually folks with names like Boudreaux, Melancon and the like) I never heard it used to refer to black folks, and i never used the term myself. And yes, they did wear it as a badge of pride, sort of like some were proud to be called rednecks.
ETA: racists in that particular part of the country would have used coon or the N word if they were letting their racist flag fly.
curiousleo
The campaign against the anti-gay marriage amendment in NC has a real chance IF the message gets out. They’re doing an Act Blue moneybomb this week to try push their total amount raised over $1mil. Many national groups (like Freedom to Marry) have abandoned or written of NC. It’s up to the grassroots.
http://www.protectncfamilies.org/press/protect-all-nc-families-launches-weeklong-money-bomb
The money bomb goal is $25k and they’ve gotten $19k in one day. If we beat our goal maybe the big money folks will pay attention. The south isn’t just a bunch of people who hate gays and minorities. We can win in NC. NC went for Obama in 2008.
Multiple NC conservatives (even the head of the NC John Locke Foundation — you know, the folks who’s site had that racist pic w/ the KFC) said they were against the amendment. But the campaign needs ads to get the word out.
John Cole
@Just Some Fuckhead: One of the weirder movies I ever watched had Lillard in it as a punk rocker from Salt Lake City. The whole thing was just weird, and if I remember correctly, bad.
Tommybones
I literally can’t comprehend the positive reviews of such a God-awful movie.
TaMara (BHF)
Sorry, side-tracked by the oven timer going off. Apple crisp. I thought the movie was good and Shailene Woodley was a revelation. We’ll be seeing a lot of her, I’m sure.
David Koch
I just threw-up in my mouth. You must cry over Mary Tyler Moore reruns.
Who can turn the world on with her smile?
Who can take a nothing day, and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile?
Well it’s you girl, and you should know it
With each glance and every little movement you show it
Love is all around, no need to waste it
You can have a town, why don’t you take it
You’re gonna make it after all
lamh35
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I can see some white Cajuns in Louisiana calling each other “coon asses” on occasion, but I sure don’t see them calling each other “coon ass” in the place of “sweety” or “darling” or “dude”…and I sure as hell don’t see any Black person being comfortable having their white/black/hispanic/whatever friends calling them “coon ass” at any time.
Sure ya say “hey dawg”…but “hey coon ass” ..REALLY REALLY!!!
MattR
@John Cole: S.F.W. And yes, it was bad meaning bad, not bad meaning good.
(EDIT: crap. SFW was the crappy movie with Jake Busey from a few years earlier, with stephen Dorff and Reese Witherspoon)
pragmatism
@John Cole: Slc punk. Prolly the finest work lillard has done. Also too, he was a good shaggy.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133189/
lamh35
@Just Some Fuckhead: amen
jenn
I enjoyed it too – and the young actress playing the eldest daughter did a fantastic job. I was really impressed by her.
lamh35
@arguingwithsignposts: yeah I posted an addtion to that comment here:
@lamh35:
Thoughtcrime
Great soundtrack too.
ruemara
I’m a bit odd in that I do not lust after George Cloony or Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise, pretty much don’t care about their movies either, but I went with friends from Hawaii. I was moved by the film. culturally, do white kids really talk to their parent like that? I could be 50 and my mum would have rights to backhand me for all that rude. It just seems odd. And who would ditch George for um…yeah, Shaggy? Does not compute. She’s rich, she has all the time in the world for herself and she’s cheating? Wow.
Comrade Mary
@Just Some Fuckhead:
It wasn’t him.
(Yay! Formatting buttons are back!)
KSE
I keep getting this movie confused with the 2000 football pic “The Replacements”. Hollywood needs to stop naming their films after 80s punk bands already, it is messing with my head.
curiousleo
@Daaling: clearly they didn’t read the books then.
of course, apparently some folks who did read the books are, let’s go w/ surprised, that certain characters weren’t white. *cough*Rue*cough* and there’s now a tumblr pointing out the stupid tweets people put up voicing their opinion about black people being cast in those roles.
gravie
Loved The Descendants. That is all.
Valdivia
I just saw it on Friday and was very moved by it too. My father who is now due to have brain surgery for a tumor hated the movie because I think he saw himself as the woman who was going to be disconnected. I know TMI, but it was interesting to me that he didn’t see the family drama at all just this one aspect.
gogol's wife
@Comrade Mary:
Okay, I’m glad you did that, because I haven’t seen this movie and I couldn’t believe Shaggy (THAT Shaggy) was in it. I had zero interest in this movie, but this (and Trurl’s comment) made me think maybe I should see it. Glad to know I don’t have to.
Comrade Mary
@KSE: That’s OK, I was briefly thinking that John had never seen The Commitments.
Birthmarker
I am starting to smell the stink of Karl Rove or his minions on the Trayvon situation. It makes me sick.
scav
The White-haired Howler Monkey is really past his sell-by date and isn’t taking it well. Acknowledging the complexities of diplomacy in times of multiple elections means We’re being sold to the Ruskies, HELP I NEED AIRTIME!
__
And FL really does seem to be going for the state motto of If you’re in an argument down here, shoot first and shoot to kill because only the last one standing can claim legitimate defense. Clearly, it will have to be written in really really really small print, but they’d probably want that anyway in the name of their general tourist advertising (specia1ist arvertizing has it in 72 point).
__
what a day. Sorry.
YoohooCthulhu
@John Cole:
I think you’re referring to SLC Punk
TaMara (BHF)
@Just Some Fuckhead: Haaahaaahaaahaa. xo
TX Expat
@lamh35:
WRT to the “coon-ass” comment, that guy obviously has no idea what he’s talking about and is reaching for anything to explain what is on that 911 tape.
I live in Baton Rouge and while I’m no native, I’ve lived here long enough to pick up that coon-ass refers to Cajuns (rural white folks).
The way I’ve heard it used, it’s equivalent to referring to people where I’m from (rural West TX) as rednecks. I’ve never heard it used to describe a black person and I’ve only heard white people, who themselves identified as coon-ass, use it to refer to other white people from places like Thibodeaux or LaPlace.
cbear
So the whole family doesn’t get killed by the volcano?
Thanks for ruining the ending for me, you putz.
Nemo_N
Some people can’t handle hopeful (let alone happy) endings though.
TaMara (BHF)
@Just Some Fuckhead: Haaahaaahaaahaa. xo
Mike D.
I didn’t see what others saw. Just didn’t grab me. I think the Hawaii-ish soundtrack actually detracted – it made the whole thing seem like it wasn’t even trying for any originality of feel. And they left the real story on the cutting room floor, to the extent it was filmed at all – the relationship of the islanders to the land over which Clooney has to preside. If some of that is not going to make it into the movie, then why even make that whole thing part of the plot? Also, the wife is made completely unrelatable, even though her actions are the basis of the plot – and, as pointed out above, the Scream/Scooby actor lends a sense of goofiness to what should be a rather serious affair. Clooney as well is miscast – this is too small a movie for him. I actually think he’d have been hilarious in The Kids Are All Right, while Ruffalo would have been perfectly cast here.
TaMara (BHF)
@Just Some Fuckhead: Haaahaaahaaahaa. xo
Birthmarker
Coon asses are Cajuns. A relative fishes with some Cajuns in Louisiana and he said he found out right quick that it wasn’t acceptable for him to call them coon asses.
Mike in NC
@Bnut:
Bad American generals? For the Civil War, Ambrose Burnside and Judson Kilpatrick are pretty much at the bottom on the Union side. Of course they had lots of competition since so many senior officers were political appointees with zero military background.
gogol's wife
@Bnut:
I thought McClellan was the commander in Afghanistan (see Sarah Palin, 2008 debate).
jnfr
@Felonious Wench:
Ditto, ditto! Many thanks to the designer. Everything looks great.
piratedan
@Bnut: I would have offered up Fighting Joe Hooker, but hey ymmv.
lamh35
@TX Expat: yep. I agree. My grandmother is buried in Thibodeaux thanks to Katrina basically washing away the plot she wanted to be buried in, in New Orleans. And yeah, I saw my share of redneck “coon-asses”. but I may be too young, but in my 35 years as a NOLA native never heard anyone being called “coon ass” or calling anyone else “coon ass”!
TaMara (BHF)
So it posts three times??? Sheesh. Sorry JSF, it wasn’t that funny.
piratedan
@Bnut: I would have offered up Fighting Joe Hooker, but hey ymmv.
lamh35
@TX Expat: yep. I agree. My grandmother is buried in Thibodeaux thanks to Katrina basically washing away the plot she wanted to be buried in, in New Orleans. And yeah, I saw my share of redneck “coon-asses”. but I may be too young, but in my 35 years as a NOLA native never heard anyone being called “coon ass” or calling anyone else “coon ass”!
TaMara (BHF)
So it posts three times??? Sheesh. Sorry JSF, it wasn’t that funny.
Capri
@arguingwithsignposts:
Come to think of it, I know a guy who referred to himself as a coon-ass as in a backwoods native Cajun. He was using the term when I first met him in 1983. He was from Kenner, LA
lamh35
darn it duplicate post.
Anyway ya gotta like this guy. There is no way the other “contenders” would handle an alleged “gaffe” this genuinely.
Obama makes light of open-mic flap with Medvedev
Raven
@lamh35: Yup
Coonass.com
Merp
Clooney’s wife was in looooooove with Shaggy!
Seriously though the wife getting bored/frustrated with Clooney and falling in love w/ Shaggy was the most believable part of the plot. There were plenty of reasons given for her boredom/frustration with Clooney on a personal level; add to that the ennui of unearned money that nevertheless isn’t really spendable, and the problems with the elder daughter, and it’s plausible to say that the wife dumped all her dissatisfactions with her life onto her relationship with Clooney and found the freedom/excitement of Shaggy a relief from that. So, pretty plausible all around.
But the movie has serious, serious flaws. It’s the most pure hit of Oscar bait I’ve seen in awhile that somehow has avoided that label. (How much of the running time isn’t devoted to crying/angry confrontation?) Thematically it’s a mess, which is weird for an Alexander Payne joint, which just re-enforces the idea that they were Oscar gunning. (There’s a non-negligible amount of lifestyle porn, which is really weird because one of the themes that gets bandied around is “even in paradise people got problems”.) Messy thematic development isn’t really a problem if the characters are interesting but Clooney is a black hole, the daughters’ erratic behavior serve the interests of Maximal Emotional Button-pushing and not much else, and the rest barely rise to “one-note” status.
Acting was decent to better-than-good and elevated the writing somewhat. The elder daughter’s boyfriend was out of his depth though.
lamh35
@Birthmarker: @Capri:
what I wanna know is how exactly George Zimmerman via Virginia and Florida comes to be using the term “coon-ass” as a “term of endearment” when as ya’ll have said and I also remember, the term used primarily by Cajuns using deep in da swamps.
Raven
@Birthmarker: There are more than one example of terms that are used by a group that other folks use in reference to that group. This isn’t some new construct.
The prophet Nostradumbass
GOP desperation in California: GOP sues retired astronaut who’s running for congress because his occupation tag says “astronaut”.
hitchhiker
Best part was the teenaged boyfriend of the brat daughter. He got all the good lines.
Raven
@Linnaeus: The DELPHONICS
Raven
@hitchhiker: He got tagged too!
lamh35
@Raven: again I ask how does George Zimmerman via Virgian and Florida come to think using “coon ass” as a term of endearment is cool, when it’s barely heard outside of Louisiana?
dedc79
Nothing you’ve written has ever made me question your judgment more than this post.
Raven
@lamh35: I was in NO WAY relating that to that bullshit story. I’m simply commenting on the use of the term in Cajun Louisiana.
TX Expat
@lamh35:
That’s a shame about your grandmother. Sorry to hear that, however, you have committed a grave sin.
You’ve mashed together two derogatory terms for white people that don’t belong together. Although me and my family are rednecks, we are not coon-asses and vice versa. While we share a lot of cultural similarities, the dialects are radically different. We can understand each other (mostly) but it’s clear if you get two of us together that we’re not from the same place.
And if you talk to my parents, they’ll tell you we’re not rednecks (because we no longer fight each other in the front yard on holidays) and one shouldn’t use such a term at all, in any case, as it is very hurtful. Ha!
Edited for grammar…
EconWatcher
I thought the movie seemed boring and pointless, but tastes vary, i guess.
Embee
@Southern Beale: I nearly always prefer the book to the movie. If I read a book first, I generally fix in my mind the way the characters look and Hollywood rarely casts the characters in my mind’s eye. Also, books tend to be longer and more complex than movies have time for.
lamh35
@Raven: oh no, I wasn’t taking it that way at all. That definition just made my obsevation about Zimmerman more stark.
@TX Expat: I’m sorry, I’m sorry. My bad.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Wow. Zimmerman’s lawyer just left O’Donnell’s remote studio to get out of the interview. LO’D is pissed.
Studly Pantload, the emotionally unavailable unicorn
My Pasta, yes, O’Donnell is breathing fire. Boy-howdy.
TX Expat
@lamh35:
It’s all good. You know, I wonder if Zimmerman’s friend picked up that coon-ass thing from tailgating at LSU/Florida games? Or maybe from watching that show, what is it, Swamp People?
Mnemosyne
@Southern Beale:
I never read the book first, because it always wrecks the movie for me. For instance, I could never understand what the hell people saw in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, because the changes between the book and the film were just too distracting for me.
If I see the film first and then read the book, I can enjoy both, but reading the book first just takes up too much brainspace, I guess.
geg6
I’m with you, John. We watched it Saturday night and loved, loved, loved it.
lamh35
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: @Studly Pantload, the emotionally unavailable unicorn:
Lawerence is gonna all in on ole dude. Damn!
Bnut
@gogol’s wife: Referring to George McClellan, who messed up multiple Civil Ware campaigns, had Southern sympathies, was insubordinate to Lincoln and eventually ran against him for President. You must be referring to McChrystal
@piratedan: Hooker was a bad general, but I don’t think he’s even near the top 10.
@Mike in NC: Totally agree about Burnside.
In the thread I was basically arguing that MacArthur was not really being as bad as all that. Others disagreed.
lamh35
Hmm, hmm. In Secret Documents, Anti-Gay Marriage Group Plotted To Divide Gays, Blacks
James E. Powell
Bad generals? Every imperial country’s history is filled with them. I can’t believe I’m the first one to nominate William Westmoreland.
Calming Influence
This is dirt simple. If you mutter “coon” anything while chasing a black teenager that you just described to the cops thusly:
Then coon anything is not a term of endearment.
.
Q.E. feckin’ D.
Joseph Nobles
Site rebuild comment: Comments are still not available on the mobile site using Android phones. I think I’ve seen other phone software is letting comments through, but on my brand new Android, I don’t see them and don’t have a posting option. I know there’s a long list and it’s being worked on. :D
Steeplejack
@Cole:
Thanks for the incremental improvements to the site rebuild, based on reader feedback.
Still hoping for two things: (1) include the time stamp with the date of the post just after the poster’s byline; and (2) move the date/time stamp for individual comments from the bottom of the comment to just under the commenter’s name. It is useful to have at the top of the comment, for the same reason that the date/time is useful at the top of a front-pager’s post, and to have it at the bottom is especially annoying because clicking on it is used as a way to line up the comment at the top of the browser screen. Currently you have to go down to the end of a (potentially long) comment to click the thing that will line up the message at the top of the screen (and anchor your “most recent position” spot). It makes much more sense to have that near the top of the comment, i.e., under the commenter’s name.
Changes I would love to see but am no longer expecting to see:
(1) “[Commenter] Says” is lame. I think we all get it about what comments are and that the text following commenters’ names is like, you know, stuff that they are “saying.” The capital s is just salt in the wound.
(2) Change from Arial for the text font to something that is a real “reading” text font. Arial is Microsoft’s knockoff of Helvetica, which was developed in the 1950s for highway signs and signage in general. It is not a font for reading large blocks of text. Despite how “cool” it may look at first glance, years of research have shown that serif fonts are subliminally easier for the eye to read. Even going back to the font used before this last rebuild would be an improvement.
Again, thanks for the changes you have made based on feedback received, and I’m sorry if this sounds overly negative. We carp because we care.
darkmatter
@lamh35: doesn’t matter because Sonner bolted like the coward he represents.
lamh35
Obama administration allows health coverage for same-sex spouse
muddy
@Raven: I knew an old guy from Louisiana, he was in his 70’a in the 1970’s, old-style oil guy. He could go on at considerable length telling “coon-ass” jokes. Most of them involved Pierre and Marie. This was the only person I ever heard use the term.
I think Zimmerman’s buds are googling for homonyms without considering underlying meaning.
Violet
I’m late to the thread, but I was unimpressed with “The Descendents.” It was okay, but not Alexander Payne’s best film at all. I reserve that spot for “Election.” I just felt like not much happened and some of the stuff, like….
spoiler alert
the sale of the property just struck a false note. The guy’s wife’s in a coma after a tragic accident. They said at some point that the property had to be dealt with “at some point” but it wasn’t urgent. So why go ahead with the family meeting and so forth? Give the Clooney’s character time to grieve. It just seemed so false.
/spoiler alert
I really liked the older daughter, or at least the actress who played her. I thought she did a great job. And Clooney did a great job. I just thought the film as a whole was kind of a lot of nothing. I felt it could have been so much more.
lacp
I thought The Descendents was awful. The only good thing about it was that it was so bad it made the cast have to work extra hard and in turn we got to see George Clooney display some decent acting chops.
Ripley
Great film, agreed – very moving, and a rare one in which the subtext(s) are there, they matter, and you have to be engaged with story, setting, soundtrack, and characters to access them. Not understanding the viewers who were wishing it was something else the whole time they were watching it. Oy.
And screw the Lillard haters – what’s not to like about the director of Fat Kid Rules the World? Seriously: It’s good.
Steeplejack
@muddy:
Yes, “coon ass” is an old-school (really, really old-school) Cajun term, but, as you note, it has been pretty much out of circulation for decades. For Zimmerman or his supporters to dust it off now is ridiculous. The last guys I can remember hearing it from (in the 1970s) were seriously gnarly Cajuns who made Justin Wilson look like a prep-school poseur.
And it wasn’t a term directed at blacks. It was a term of affection/derision directed at other gnarly Cajuns.
Polar Bear Squares
It’s really a good movie for people who’ve lived in Hawaii. I lived in Honolulu for a while and it really capture the other side of the islands.
I must admit I was a lil aghast at his oldest daughter. I loved her character but the disrespect she showed her father and even late mother made me cringe. But I think that’s the mark of a good movie. Something that makes you uncomfortable.
Polar Bear Squares
@lamh35:
I must quote that great griot Ice Cube.
“Get the hell out. Stop being an Uncle Tom, you little sellout. House n!66@ scum. Give something back to the place where you made it from.” — Be True to the Game
Lojasmo
@Trurl:
I will undoubtedly cry throughout The Decendants.
Also, too, fuck you Trurl.
Mnemosyne
@Violet:
When I tell people about it, I usually compare it to About Schmidt, since they’re pretty similar Payne movies. People expecting something like Election are going to be pretty disappointed. If you didn’t like About Schmidt or Sideways, you won’t like The Descendants.
.
@Polar Bear Squares:
.
I thought they established fairly well that she was angry at both of her parents because of this secret she knew about her mother, which is why she was acting that way. But it may be a suburban white people thing — I know my friends in high school would get into screaming matches with their mothers fairly often.
South of I-10
Coonass has actually been in the news here recently. Link
I can tell you that my Cajun husband would not be pleased if you called him a Coonass. It doesn’t even make sense for Zimmerman to use that term.
Daaling
@curiousleo: All I know is that there were stories in the media that the right wingers liked the movie because they thought it told their side of things where Big Gubmit was intruding on their lives blah blah. The wingnuts on brietbart.com were also raving about it for that.
That was before that Sutherland video came out where he basically said the opposite. So suddenly he was a poopyface but in other threads before that interview came out they were raving about his portrayal as prez of big gubmit.
Besides, everyone knows most of those knuckle draggin neanderthals are very big on the readin and such.
Debbie(aussie)
Help! I can’t find comments when in/on mobile site via itouch. What should I do. Thanks in advance>
Birthmarker
@lamh35: I think the greater propagandists are starting to handle the spin.
I thought the discussion was whether he said effing coons or effing punks. I finally with great difficulty thought I heard punks. I missed where it became goons, then the endearing coon asses. Of course the discussion just obscures the real issue which is why the hell has this crap not gone to a grand jury. Surely the parents deserve that.
This must be the most cynical country on the face of the earth.
Bloix
Truly a terrible movie. High-concept, written by committee, every character a stereotype with a one-line back story. The stock comic relief characters (ifather-in-law, daughter’s boyfriend) had less depth than the characters on Family Guy. No coherence to the plot. Clooney walked through it, no acting at all. And the denouement is ridiculous. He’s not the owner, he’s just the trustee, so he can’t make the final decision. He can just put it off for a while. Eventually, he’ll have to sell.
Oh, and yet another movie about how brutal it is to be a billionaire white man.
Violet
@Mnemosyne:
I liked both Sideways and About Schmit. I liked Sideways more, though. I still think Election is his best work. The Descendents is his weakest film, imho.
lamh35
Heads up …Southwest has a $69 dollar sale on airfare. Check southwest.com for your city.
David Koch
@lamh35: but, but, but… he’s a homophobe
middlewest
@curiousleo: Oh god I just went and found it http://hungergamestweets.tumblr.com
Ugh, people suck.
David Koch
@Bloix:
Exactly. Why are angry economic populists crying over the 1%? Such emotional displays under cuts all their OWS pronouncements.
Joel
John Stewart blew goats tonight on the Daily Show’s Trayvon Martin coverage… Always rough back on breaks but they just died tonight.. Brutal.
lacp
@Bloix: Agree that the movie blew way off the Beaufort scale, but disagree about Clooney. Unbelievable plot, ridiculous scenes, and miserable dialogue, and the dude still gave it the old college try. Even Zombie Larry Olivier couldn’t have brought anything to this turkey.
Mnemosyne
@Violet:
I liked it better than About Schmidt. But, then, my family has been through more than one accidental death (and at least one “turning off the machines” decision after an accident), so I thought that the reactions that everyone had were pretty true to life.
ETA: Without giving any spoilers away (I hope), it was especially the anger at being unable to finish a fight that you were in the middle of having with that person that rang true to me.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
I never understood this primacy of the book thing. The movie version of The Godfather is vastly superior to the novel. The same is true of Jaws. On the other hand, the play The Front Page and the movie versions, including His Girl Friday, are just different. But I can count on the finger of one hand the people I know who have read the novel The 39 Steps, and the recent version which was more faithful to the novel is crap.
And I love both The Magnificent Seven and Seven Samurai (originally The Magnificent Seven). Go figure.
lamh35
Good way to end the night…f’n idiot!
“Heard petition demands my apology to Trayvon’s parents. Save effort: I deeply apologize for any hurt I caused-that is not my goal or intent”
https://twitter.com/#!/GeraldoRivera/status/184477173002940417
Brachiator
Meant to add that I have not yet seen The Descendants, but it is on my list, in part because of John Cole’s reaction.
__
Also, too, if “The Kid With the Bike,” a French film, is playing near you, I highly recommend it. It is a thing of beauty, subtlety, and hope.
.
Joel
I thought the Descendents was pretty good. Not awesome. Payne was at his best in Election, although his short in Paris Je t’Aime was pretty great.
lacp
@Brachiator: If you get a chance to see the comic stage adaptation of The 39 Steps, definitely check it out. It’s hilarious even if you haven’t seen either of the movies or read the book (my GF was in stitches), and even funnier if you’ve seen/read any of them.
Xenos
@ruemara: The sort of dysfunction you see in ‘The Descendents’ is not unusual among the very rich, upper tiers of the 1%. After a couple generations of wealth these people can be utterly compromised by the expectation of a lifetime of dull leisure of ersatz status. You get teens and young adults sucked into larger family disputes, lots of screaming, scheming and alienation, but when these kids try surviving outside the cocoon of paid supporters they can’t function and lack the psychological resources to make it. They then slide neatly into the family fold, take up wingnut philosophies as a means of self-justification, and play out the madness for another generation.
dww44
@Steeplejack: As I’ve been gone for 2 days, this is the first I’ve seen of the site rebuild. While I, too, am not a fan of the Arial font, what I really don’t like is the way the page loads and how, once more, as with the GOS rebuilt, the Salon rebuild, the Think Progress rebuild, I’ve got to expand my viewing screen to fill my monitor if I want to be able to partially read what’s on the right.
It was so easy to read this site in its previous incarnation and perhaps I am an old fogey, but I hate all the glaring white space and the fact I can’t read as much without far more scrolling. It’s simply not reader friendly, imo.
amk
@David Koch: The self-pity of stinking rich is so moving, you stinkie commie.
Mike in NC
Completely missed the recent story where Dick Cheney got a heart transplant, and of course (OF COURSE!) he didn’t get any preferential treatment.
arguingwithsignposts
@Steeplejack: Years of study has shown sans serif is better on a computer screen:
Mnemosyne
@ruemara:
Yep. Being a white suburban kid myself and having (mostly) white suburban kid friends, it’s pretty common, especially between mothers and daughters.
It’s a more extreme case in the movie since (SPOILER!) things had gotten so bad that the daughter was actually sent away to boarding school. So, pretty obviously, this was not a happy family even before the accident. (SPOILER!).
Brachiator
@Daaling:
Stupid liberals and stupid conservatives, people who see SF films solely as allegorical commentary on current events are both claiming The Hunger Games. I encourage you and everyone else to tell their conservative friends to take the whole family, especially the girls, to see this movie.
__
Because there is curiously, no church in the first film, no religion. And I love the scene in which Kat, asserting her reproductive rights, says that she does not want to have children.
__
Yeah, wingnuts, rave on. Stupid mofos.
.
Brachiator
@lacp:
I worship at the shrine of the four headed deity, Hitchcock, Kubrick, Wilder, Truffaut, so it would be tough for me to get into a comic version of the Steps, even though I have heard good things about the production. If it pops up somewhere, I may have to check it out, though. Thanks for the recommendation.
.
Comrade Mary
If you missed Lawrence O’Donnell tonight on the Martin case, including his rant about Zimmerman’s lawyer, the videos are up now.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
If there were any doubt that the election of a KenyanIslamofascist to the White House has unleashed the veiled racism that is winguttia, there is empirical data. It seems they really do not like that Rue is black in The Hunger Games. If you want to get feel like the kettle is about to boil over, read the Jezebel story that’s linked.
Keep in mind that I wouldn’t know Rue from clue if you held a gun to my head, but I know racist hatred when I read it. I’m ashamed to be an American.
Steeplejack
@Brachiator:
There’s an axiom from somewhere that good adaptations come from mediocre novels and that good novels rarely end up as good movies. Jaws and The Godfather were pure commercial cheese as novels. Ditto The Thirty-Nine Steps and B. Traven’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Probably an exception could/should be made for Dickens.
Nutella
@Mnemosyne:
I once observed a loud 10-12 year old girl speaking very insolently to her mother (just out of sight) and was puzzled since the girl looked to be South Asian. When the mother came around the corner and I saw that she was white I realized that the girl was being raised in a white family with white behavior.
__
(Note: Not saying that all white Americans are like this, just that I have never seen this behavior in a non-white family.)
Brachiator
@Steeplejack:
This is largely nonsense. There are so many novels and plays that people rarely know the source material or it’s value. Different genres and art forms. Sometimes you can compare. Sometimes there is no point. Is Verdi’s opera Otello less than the play Othello? Are Ran and Throne of Blood less than King Lear and Macbeth? Hell, no.
__
The film version of The Maltese Falcon is is strong as the novel. Ultimately, it is about the talent and audacity of the artist, not the source material. As always, your mileage may vary.
.
Bnut
Sometimes my faith in humanity gets hurt a little bit.
Michael
Definetly worth seeing. The slow realization that Clooney’s character has regarding his long disconnection from his wife and kids is the best part.
Brachiator
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
This is quite sad. I had been following some of the stupid attempts to disparage the film because it has a female hero, but I missed some of the yearning that it be a “whites only” film. This is doubly sad and odd since I have seen some deep (or obsessive) readers of the novels assert that the protagonist, Kat, is not necessarily totally white bread white. Even in the film, although Kat’s mother and sister are blonde, Kat very definitely is not. On the other hand, some of the most vicious kids going after Kat are full Aryan dipshits.
__
It is good to see, at least, that many other HG fans are having none of this.
.
Steeplejack
@arguingwithsignposts:
This argument holds water mainly at the tiny font size used on that Adobe page you linked to (and now on Balloon Juice). At reasonable font sizes, serif fonts are quite readable on computer monitors.
This is similar to the reason newspapers used a sanserif “agate” font for classified ads, legal notices, stock listings, statistical data, etc. At the extremely small size (typically 5.5-6 points) used to cram in as much data as possible, agate jettisoned all typographical niceties to remain legible at such low resolution. That’s not something we should seek to emulate.
Steeplejack
@Brachiator:
Ran and Throne of Blood are so far from their source material that it’s hard to consider them adaptations. “Inspired by” is more like it.
I might grant you The Maltese Falcon as an exception to the rule, but I don’t remember the novel very well. It has been years since I read it.
Calming Influence
@Steeplejack: FONT WARS!
Nutella
@Steeplejack:
A quick review of my open tabs shows 13 out of the 15 sites with sans serif fonts. The two with serif are both news magazines with print versions – not a coincidence.
__
I hate serif font on screens but prefer it on paper. There’s not 100% agreement on this but I do seem to represent the majority.
__
I was amused to stumble upon this article on the issue that says the original research supporting serif was by the infamous Sir Cyril Burt whose primary claim to fame is faking data in many twin studies to prove what he wanted to prove about the inheritance of intelligence. That may not be related to his claims about typography, of course, but anything from Burt is suspicious.
Yutsano
@Bnut: Hopefully this helps a bit.
Nutella
@Calming Influence:
There is something off about the typography of the comments. Maybe the line height/leading is too small?
Bnut
@Yutsano: Wow, that actually did help. So does this. Well, me at least.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
if you aren’t down with slc punk, you just aren’t down.
moderateindy
Cole you wuss, as a guy you are only allowed to cry during Brian’s Song, Rudy, Field of Dreams, and Old Yeller. Of course you can also cry during Idiocracy, as you slowly realize that it may be more prophecy than satire.
Yutsano
@Bnut: Oh sure. Appeal to my Gallic soul. I just like cool animation in a rather unique style that’s a homage to the foundings of cinema.
Joey Maloney
I really enjoyed The Descendants, but less for the story than because I’m a part-time resident of the Big Island. I recognized some of the locations, and the portrayal of certain types of island people and the historical background was dead-on.
And of course, I could stare at George Clooney in closeup all day. He acts the same way that Michael Caine does – there’s an essential stillness about him that’s so deep and solid that the smallest physical acts carry incredible weight.
WaterGirl
My sister called in a panic. She’s a writer, and she had a 300-page Microsoft Word document and suddenly it has only 50-pages. She closed the file and re-opened it a few times before calling me, so there’s no “undo”.
__
She sees only one file under autosave or auto recover, and it is not this one.
I had her search for the filename in spotlight, and 2 50-page copies came up.
__
She backed up her laptop a few weeks ago, she thinks, but much work lost.
__
I googled with no success, but I’m hoping that someone here will know some trick that i don’t.
__
Mac OS X (but not Lion)
Microsoft Word 2004
__
ll suggestions welcome!
__
I fell asleep waiting for an open thread, and am now headed for bed, butI will be back first thing in the morning, hoping for a miracle. thanks
Comrade Mary
@Nutella: From what I can see in the CSS, the line-height set for the entire entry (140%) isn’t being inherited by the comment text. The post text entered by John or one of the other authors is showing the designated line-height.
__
The comment text did look good up until late Sunday afternoon, when both line-height and paragraph spacing went kerblooie. (I’m faking enough space between these two paragraphs using the double-underline trick.) I’m pretty sure the web goddesses are aware of this and have it on their to-do list.
Joey Maloney
@Mike D.: Too late to edit, I thought the soundtrack was great, too. It’s not Hawaii-ish, those are some of the Islands’ great players, playing some pretty awesome old slack-key compositions. I know it’s not to everyone’s taste, but it’s the culture’s blues.
Never got that Iz guy, though.
Jebediah
@Yutsano:
On the other hand, General Electric wasn’t bad. Had a lot of spark.
Daaling
I wasn’t impressed with Descendants. Found it quite boring actually. I made it through the whole thing but at the end felt like it was kind of a waste of time.
If you really want to ball your eyes out watch Machine Gun Preacher. Now that is a movie that will make you feel like you got something out of it at the end.
The prophet Nostradumbass
Did any of you see the “reporter” from the Orlando Sentinel who appeared on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show tonight?
Ecks
@Merp: Mostly agree.
And what were the stakes? We were supposed to be in genuine suspense that he might OMG SELL OUT THE BEAUTIFUL LAND THAT HAS BEEN IN HIS FAMILY FOR GENERATIONS AND IS THE SOURCE OF HIS CHILDHOOD SWEETEST MEMORIES, AND WOULD BE THE SOURCE OF HIS KIDS TOO, IN A MOVE THAT WOULD LIKE TOTALLY DESTROY THE ISLANDS BEAUTY FOR EVA AND EVA FOR THE BENEFIT OF GREEDY PEOPLE THAT WE BARELY MEET AND DON’T REALLY CARE ABOUT. I mean, talk about anvilicious. At least try to make is SOMETHING of a dilemma if you’re going to demand dramatic suspense from me.
And also if the title to the land is going to revert to the state in 5 years anyway (not giving anything away, this is the setup for half the movie’s premise) then who wants to spend millions buying land to build a hotel on if you’re only going to lose it a year or two after you’ve built the hotel anyway? Or if selling the land stops the title from disappearing, then can’t he sell it to someone he trusts to run it in proxy for him? Or can’t he make money by building it into a wilderness adventure camp for kids (and maybe also corporate trainers, just to pay the bills), and then it becomes something TRULY shared by the people of Hawaii, and not just one of the world’s most exclusive and under-used private back yards?
There were a couple of scenes with real emotional resonance and even humor, but mostly it was mediocre to very good acting, clunky dialogue, one note characters, an extremely wobbly plot, and a tendency to treat the audience like idiots (really who even finds it remotely plausible that beautiful scenery solves all your interpersonal problems – yet they treat this like some kind of stunning revelation).
And also if the title is going to revert to the state in 5 years anyway then who wants to spend millions buying land to build a hotel on if you’re only going to lose it a year or two after you’ve built the hotel anyway? Or if selling the land stops the title from disappearing, then can’t he sell it to someone he trusts to run it in proxy for him? Or can’t he make money by building it into a wilderness adventure camp for kids (and maybe also corporate trainers, just to pay the bills), and then it becomes something TRULY shared by the people of Hawaii, and not just one of the world’s most exclusive and under-used private back yards?
There were a couple of scenes with real emotional resonance and even humor, but mostly it was mediocre to very good acting, clunky dialogue, one note characters, an extremely wobbly plot, and a tendency to treat the audience like idiots (really who even finds it remotely plausible that beautiful scenery solves all your interpersonal problems – yet they treat this like some kind of stunning revelation).
Steeplejack
@Nutella:
Probably not a coincidence–and not in a “Ha-ha! Dead trees stupid!” kind of way. Of course I don’t know what 15 sites you have open in your tabs, but most Web sites are “click and graze” spots for hunting down and looking at relatively small pieces of information. Balloon Juice, on the other hand–like, say, newspaper sites–is a content-dense site where the visitor will probably end up reading long patches of text. (I can’t think of another site that I read in as much detail as this one.) And I think that a (good) serif font designed for “book text” will end up being more readable and less tiring for most readers.
__
I guess the point I wish I had made last night is that the issue is not simply about legibility but about readability.
gogol's wife
@Bnut:
Okay, I realize no one’s going to see this, but I just have to go on record saying I was joking. It was Sarah Palin who mixed up McClellan and McKiernan in her debate with Biden. I thought everyone would remember that.
Ecks
@Brachiator: Plus some things just translate better. Novels can be very good at illuminating people’s interior lives, and films tend to struggle at that. Hence Remains of the Day is a fine novel that really gets you inside a guy’s head, whereas the film fell a little flat despite great writers and actors. Books that hinge more on dialogue, plot, and characterization through actions tend to translate far better to film…
It’s not that skill and audacity in the makers aren’t important, they are… it’s just that great drama also has an unpredictable spark of chemistry to it that depends on the foibles of the actors, plot, and medium (writing/directing/cinematorgraphy/descriptive text) all clicking together.
Hawes
The Descendants is not a “plot” movie. The idea that we should be in suspense whether he sells the land is beside the point. The point is that his experience unravelling his wife’s life before he says goodbye ALLOWS him to realize that the land (which is really his legacy) is more important than the money.
The land and his kids represents his past and his future. Yes, he won’t be able to keep putting off what he will do with the land, but he’s going to fight for it – even as he fights for his kids.
I loved the ending, because it was so gentle and unexpected, like the end of a Billy Collins poem.
Hawes
Oh, and worst general?
Horatio Gates.
Tommy D
Awful movie, say I, a long-time property owner on Kauai.
First, the movie is myth. Mostly, far and away nearly always, pristine land owned by the descendants of white missionaries has been covered with golf courses and hotels. Very, very few let guilt interfere with profit.
Second, the movie made cruel comedy of personal pain. How is it funny to find that the cuckolding man has a family? Why make a joke of the agonies of the wronged wife visiting the dying adulteress? Why is Alzheimer’s a laugh? How possibly can tragedy be a chuckle?
The music was good. The rest was insulting.
Will
(spoiler alert: don’t read this if you’re avoiding them)
Sorry John, but we’re gonna disagree on this one. I thought The Descendants was a dreadful movie. Nothing but Rich People Have Problems, Too. What on earth will this blissfully wealthy, beautiful family in Hawaii do with its multi-million dollar estate inheritance? What on earth will poor rich girl do with herself now that dad has pulled her out of prep school? The pool is filled with leaves! Dad has to decide how to split hundreds of millions among his cousins! What will they do!
Yes, but you ask, what about the dying mother? And I say, what about her? The family certainly barely seems to notice her. She lies comatose in a hospital bed while the rest of her family galavants around the islands on this ridiculous detective hunt for Matthew Lillard. Matthew frickin’ Lillard. As another reviewer put it, if you’re going to have a character in your story cheat on George Clooney with Matthew Lillard, you better have a damn good reason why. And they don’t. We learn nothing about the mother, or why she would do such a thing.
Meanwhile, finding that out becomes far more important to the family than spending time with their mother during her last days. When George Clooney announces to Matt Lillard that they’ve pulled the plug on her, (the first time the audience hears this news, also), he delivers the line like a punchline, a dig at Lillard. No husband alive would ever say such a thing in this way, and yet Clooney does, because, frankly, I think that is him reaching the limit of his acting powers. He just couldn’t get there.
And that is another big problem with this movie: George Clooney. Clooney needs to stop playing normal people. There is nothing normal about George Clooney. I can hardly relate to him, let alone feel sorry for him. And since he will never be the chameleon kind of actor who disappears into his characters, he needs to start playing off his persona instead of trying pretend he doesn’t have one. He should be playing presidents, captains of industry…movie stars. Not Average Joes. I hear Paul Giamatti was originally going to play this role. Boy do I wish that had happened.
The ultimate blame for this failure lies at the feet of its writer/director Alex Payne, a great talent whose movies I have always enjoyed. The problem seems to me that Payne can never decide on the right tone for this film. He seems to understand that these obscenely rich, beautiful people are ripe for mocking. But then he has this dying woman on his hands messing up that vibe, so he veers back and forth and never really feels comfortable with how the audience should see these people. And so we end up with this muddle where extraordinarily privileged people are presented as just like you and me, because they’ve suffered a tragedy, see?
But they’re not just like you and me.
Sarah
Am I too late?