Did you know that Atlas Shrugged, Pt. II had been released? Poor Paul Constant was forced to review it for Seattle’s Stranger:
Return to Assholes’ Paradise
… I went to the first Atlas Shrugged movie a year and a half ago, and it was an embarrassing cinematic experience. The sets were cheesy, the acting was awful, and the script was totally hambone. Because the first Atlas Shrugged movie did so poorly at the box office, the sequel bears almost no relation to the earlier film. It has a different director, a totally different cast, and, presumably, a different crew working behind the scenes. And the impossible happened as I watched Part II: I was nostalgic for part 1. As awful as the first Atlas Shrugged movie was—and make no mistake, it was incredibly boring—it had a kind of ratty soap operatic charm to it. It at least felt, with its romantic entanglements and fancy parties, like an off-brand episode of Dynasty.This movie is completely joyless. And the chintz levels go through the roof: The special effects are, bar none, the worst I’ve ever seen on a movie screen, with see-through fire effects layered over still shots and bad computer models of derailed train cars rubbing against each other with all the heft and weight of a bouquet of balloons at a kid’s birthday party. The set design is even cheaper than the first outing, too…
Before, the acting was at least passionate, in a sort of hilarious way. Now it’s grim, and the new actors don’t seem to understand what they’re saying half the time….
And that reminded me that I never got around to sharing Anthony Lane’s magisterially dismissive review of The Expendables 2:
It would be unkind, and possibly beyond the reach of statistical science, to calculate the combined ages of the stars who appear in Simon West’s new film. Suffice it to say that various mature gentlemen have gathered together—a larger team, indeed, than the one from the previous movie—to fight not merely a swarm of foreign foes but also the degrading prejudice that insists that only the young and unwrinkled have the right to administer savage violence. So it is that Sylvester Stallone, Dolph Lundgren, Bruce Willis, Randy Couture, Jet Li, Terry Crews, Chuck Norris, and Arnold Schwarzenegger gang up on Jean-Claude Van Damme, which does seem a little one-sided. Also present are Jason Statham, Nan Yu, and, in the role of a sniper, Liam Hemsworth, who seems like a babe in arms amid such company. The plot is plutonium-flavored, but the film exists for two reasons alone. First, to see how many times Schwarzenegger can say the words “I’m back” without inciting his co-stars to beat him senseless. (The dialogue is a procession of thudding bons mots: “Rest in pieces,” “I now pronounce you man and knife.”) And, second, to show blood being shed with astonishing and eruptive frequency, while still convincing audiences that what they are watching comes under the rubric of harmless fun. In English, more or less.
Come to think, “In English, more or less” would apply to the Randroid vanity project, too also…
Villago Delenda Est
Well, this sort of describes Randroids in general, doesn’t it?
owlbear1
Judging from the trailer alone it looks like a bunch of hyperventilating 14 year-olds got together to make a movie for a bunch of delusional paranoid schizophrenics.
Amir Khalid
I’m waiting for the DVD box set.
Triassic Sands
Thank goodness the producer and director remained true to the novel.
It’s funny really, Ayn Rand had this bloated idea of towering intellectual giants whose contributions make the world go around and all she contributed was a handful of dreadful books and a cartoonish
“philosophy”excuse for being selfish. John Galt would not have been impressed.cckids
My daughter, who works at a theater, came home after her shift Friday night & said “You know Atlas Shrugged II opened today? You’ve never seen so many Ron Paul shirts in one place in your life”. She wasn’t aware of that particular Venn Diagram overlap, & wasn’t sure why her comment made me laugh so much.
cckids
What I’ll never understand about the ongoing support for Atlas Shrugged, is that even if you agree with its poisonous “philosophy”, it is such a badly written book. It is boring, juvenile & just dull. Makes Twilight look like a masterpiece.
Arclite
The first Expendables was Godawful. I thought it might be a fun nostalgic romp, but it was just terrible. Statham was pretty good, but everyone else was phoning it in and Stallone was insufferable. I’ll definitely pass on E2, *but* the all-female version is shaping up with a nice cast, including former MMA fighter Gina Carano and Katie Sackhoff (Starbuck!).
SRW1
@Amir Khalid:
I’m gonna wait for the Blue Ray 3D version. I mean, if you really want total immersion into crappy special effects, it’s absolutely gotta be 3D HD.
Narcissus
James Clavell is a better writer than Rand, and his heroes are very galtian. You don’t necessarily like them, but the books aren’t half-bad.
amk
question for balloon juicers – what happened to the balloon man’s balloon and the capsule after he jumped ?
Schlemizel
@amk:
Funny they never talk about that. It seems at some point it will stop being lighter than the air around it & will float around as helium molecules escape through the wall of the balloon. That will make it descend & at some point be much heavier than the air it is in. So I’m guessing it will crash down some place.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@amk: The capsule cut loose from the balloon and was coming down on a parachute when we turned off the feed we were watching. The balloon will probably drift around, spawning UFO reports, until it finally crashes, much like any other balloon.
arguingwithsignposts
I don’t know, Constant’s description kind of makes me want to see it on Netflix Instant with the sound turned off.
amk
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Ah. Thanks. My feed didn’t show that.
catclub
@arguingwithsignposts: MST3K seems possible also.
SensesFail
You gotta love the final paragraph of the Paul Constant review:
Frankensteinbeck
@SensesFail:
I’m not sure this is true. Every bio I’ve read of her suggests she had a huge and narcissistic ego that needed to be constantly fed. She ran a rich boys’ cult, for pity’s sake. That a movie was made of her work and her followers would work tirelessly to promote it as though evangelizing a religion might please her enough to overlook the terrible quality of the movie itself.
PurpleGirl
I saw an ad for the movie and thought it was a commercial for the Romney campaign. A bad ad, at that.
drew42
0% rating from critics, but 81% from moviegoers!
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/atlas_shrugged_part_ii/
Snarki, child of Loki
@catclub: Alas, MST3K is no more. Rifftrax is okay, but they need ‘bots.
Years from now, movie critics will look back at “Atlas Squatted II: Just Push It Out” as a golden age. Never has the critic’s rhetoric been able to deliver high-altitude firebombing in such a target-rich environment.
Nicole
@cckids:
Having read both, I can say this is not true. Rand at least had the excuse of not writing in her native language.
(This is not praise for Atlas Shrugged, mind you.)
I’m totes going to watch it when it comes to On Demand (which will probably be in a matter of weeks). I thought the first one was a hoot. A hilariously bad hoot, but a hoot nonetheless.
quannlace
Or artisticlly. The fact that it was not released to the critics is kind of a dead giveaway.
****
On the other hand, Forbes magazine loved it!
ThresherK
How did this pass me by before?
“I now pronounce you man and knife.”
If I’m thinking of Reiner Wolfcastle (as McBain) from The Simpsons, they’re doing it wrong.
jheartney
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: The world’s supply of helium is running low. Seriously. I can understand how pumped people are about the daring feat that was just accomplished, but really, is that a good use of such a large quantity of a depleting resource?
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
I love the self-important commercials for Atlas Shrugged II:
Maybe the Student Council election for Most Likely to Bore Classmates with Narcissistic Drivel.
owlbear1
@jheartney:
Yes, if for no other reason than we now know what happens to a human being who passes through the sound barrier while wearing only a pressure suit.
Amir Khalid
@drew42:
And that just goes to show, you can’t trust the critics’ judgement.
bcinaz
Sometimes I really miss MST3K – This sounds like a fun movie for that.
Mnemosyne
@Snarki, child of Loki:
I prefer Cinematic Titanic myself, since they have Joel, TV’s Frank, Mary Jo Pehl, and Trace Beaulieu.
Origuy
You know how bookstores put out tables of books which are recommended by teachers for their students? I’ve seen both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged on those tables. What English teacher thinks those are good examples of American liturature?
Steve Finlay
I happened to see the 1949 movie of The Fountainhead on TV a few years ago. What really got my attention was the courtroom scene where Gary Cooper, playing Howard Roark, gives a long speech in his own defense. There was Cooper, using every bit of his acting ability and personal magnetism to make Roark appear noble, worthy of support and sympathy, and other good things. But no matter how well he did this (and he did do it very well), it was absolutely impossible to NOT see that the entire speech was the words and thoughts of a monster raving loony.
Mr. Wonderful
No one, living or dead, should have to read Atlas Shrugged. For those who have, and who need something to have made the effort worthwhile, there is this. It also serves as an alternative to actually having to read the hideous thing:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/54707
Tom Hilton
Technically, Atlas Shrugged part 2 is actually titled “Atlas Made an Indeterminate Hand Gesture”. Part 3 is going to be called “Atlas Said ‘Fugeddaboutit'”.
Patrick Phelan
The trouble is determining which MST3K, because isn’t Mike something of a crazy wingnut these days?
That said, I think he’s an entertainer first, and thus that he’d be willing to put the politics aside in favour of snarking on the art. But if I was deciding to watch someone piledrive Atlas Did His Thing, I’d want my money’s worth on EVERY POSSIBLE MOCK TARGET.
Central Planning
Maybe mistermix or DougJ know of George Grella. He writes reviews for the City Newspaper here in Rochester. I like his style of writing and he really does a great job skewering movies that really deserved it.