Richard Linklater’s latest film is a coming-of-age story for a boy who’s exactly the same age as my kid, and it was filmed over a twelve-year period so we get to see the boy, his sister and his parents grow up. Since it was a nostalgia-fest for me, of course I thought it was great, even though there was a little bit of the stilted dialog that plagued his last movie, Before Midnight. Make your own judgment on the aesthetic merits of the movie, but I will say that it is a pretty accurate reflection of the mostly white middle-class teenagers that I know.
The main character, Mason Jr., is a bit of a slacker, so he’s subjected to a few “listen here young man” talks from adults in his life. I don’t know if Linklater intended those talks to model the kinds of commentary one hears from olds when the topic of “kids nowadays” come up, but they reminded me of the low opinions of the current generation of kids held by some adults.
I think that’s backwards. From what I’ve seen, these kids are members of the most sensible generation in history, and make better choices than the teenagers I grew up with. As shown in the movie, alcohol use is down (actually at an all-time low), but smoking pot is more popular. As far as I’m concerned, that just reflects a group of kids who are pretty smart about how they want to get high. Another indicator of this group’s maturity is that teenage pregnancy is also way down.
If anything, the way Mason Jr approaches college, which is a little skeptical and on his own terms, is also a reflection of the general intelligence that I see with my kid’s friends who aren’t sure about their career goals. College doesn’t make sense for everyone, and probably is a wash, income-wise, for kids who will end up in the bottom quartile of college-educated wage earners. Mason might well end up in that group, so he makes what’s probably a smart choice for him, even if it isn’t what his other friends are doing.
Since this movie is above all honest, I’m sure that the same people who are constantly bitching about the current group of teenagers will see it as a document of decline, but the only decline I see when I look at kids born in the early 90’s is a decline in the opportunities available to them.
OzarkHillbilly
As one who grew up in the 60’s and early 70s, I have always had more faith in the following generations. How fvcked up were we? Watch “Almost Famous” for a taste of the excesses we reached for. Every time I watch that movie I laugh even harder because, yeah, we really were that stupid.
cmorenc
Perhaps Mason, Jr. is majoring in one of the social sciences or humanities – the ticket to a well-educated person with no job skills beyond writing papers.
Southern Beale
We saw “Boyhood” when it first came out about a month or so ago. I thought it was fabulous. You really get attached to the Mason character, the unfairness of the bratty sister, the trauma of the abusive step-dad, all of it … very realistic and relevant. It also made me feel a little nostalgic ….
MomSense
Thank you for saying that this generation is the most sensible. I completely agree.
c u n d gulag
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yeah, I turned 20 in ’78, and the stuff me and my friends used to do in in the 70’s!
Oy, it’s a miracle any of us survived the ’70’s, let alone this long.
And I was considered one of the most mature ones!
My nephew just turned 20, and he’s a hell of a lot more mature at that age, than I was.
Botsplainer
I have been getting more concerned about the number of young women who aren’t even bothering to consider getting abortions when getting pregnant from casual encounters. They’re not too poor for D & C – frequently, they’re college age and attenuating their own life choices and having to work with somebody they never lived with and whose motivation, lifestyle and abilities are opaque in raising a child. The necessary trust isn’t there, and it leads to significant and chronic low-level conflict that is simply life crushing.
When I was that age, abortion services weren’t a big deal and there were a number of providers, none of which were picketed even though this is a flyover city. Now that the city is about doubled in size, there are enough extremists concentrated among the kidfucking enabler demographic to man solid demonstrations.
Princess
I agree with you about this current batch of teens/late teens. My son, who fits into that group, is so much wiser than I was at his age. Very liberal, open,and tolerant, and also aware that he has been really lucky in life, and others are less so. I hope it lasts.
Southern Beale
Meanwhile, for the past two weekends we’ve been wanting to see a movie and there is NOTHING on in Nashville of interest to anyone who is not a) a right-wing fundiegelical wackadoodle, or b) a teenager.
And Hollywood wonders why box office receipts were down 15% from last year. I hate to sound like an old curmudgeon but where the fuck are the grown-up movies? I’m tired of comic book movies, they’re all the same, every single one of them. Seen one, seen them all. Husband dragged me to the last X-Men film and I thought it was incredibly lame. The story’s entire premise was so stupid. Let’s go back in time and stop this thing from happening. Well, if you can go back in time then you have the power to stop this thing from happening in a million OTHER ways that would be easier/better/less complicated but of course you don’t have the expensive special effects. It’s like the whole movie’s premise was to set up the special effects.
I fucking hate plot holes and every one of these Marvel comic book movies is riddled with them.
Suffern ACE
The movie does not show alcohol use at an all time low. 2 of the stepfathers in the movie have major drinking problems. Mason feels the need to get drunk before he can attend his graduation party. That was one of the more depressing scenes in the movie, actually. Kids these days…turning into their parents in the movie.
Dave
As a member of GenX, I’ve had the suspicion for years now that the olds bitching about “kids these days” are covering up their guilt in that they were not the Good Stewards of their parents’ generation, but instead, fucked up their kid’s futures by being such unrepentant shitheads. Their anger stems from the idea that if the kids were resilient enough, they could turn the mess into success. Since they can’t (or won’t), it makes their failure that much more stark.
Bobby B.
@OzarkHillbilly: We were stupid all right but our music was better. Whipping Post!
aimai
@cmorenc: Those are job skills–lots of jobs involve reasoning, research, writing, and communicating. While its true that a degenerating economy may not support those jobs or those workers anymore there is no need to make fun of the teaching or the work involved in aquiring those skills.
Southern Beale
@OzarkHillbilly:
I graduated high school in 1979. We didn’t have the helicopter parenting that today’s kids have. I’m always surprised at my friends with kids, how their lives revolve around orchestrating every single minute of their childrens’ lives. We had a lot more independence when I was a kid. If I wanted to do something after school or go to a concert or the movies, there was none of this, “sure Mom or Dad will drive you and we’ll be waiting outside the show when it’s over.” It was, take the dang public bus. Figure it out. I’ve got a life, my life doesn’t revolve around you.
Don’t see that with kids today.
Botsplainer
@Southern Beale:
Late summer movie doldrums have always been a thing. The cycle is late September, Thanksgiving and February. There are a couple of nice ones coming – “The Equalizer” and “This is Where I Leave You”.
There are plenty of artsy things coming out to limited release all the time as well.
constitutional mistermix
@Suffern ACE:
Mason’s mom has an unfortunate habit of choosing alcohol-abusing men, but that’s not my point. Alcohol use among teenagers is at an all-time low. All the alcohol use by teens in the movie was moderate. Kids were having a few beers. Mason and his friend shared a flask after graduation, which isn’t “getting drunk” – they were still walking and talking rationally. I grew up around teenagers who got knee walking drunk regularly at parties. Not happening with this group of kids, that I’ve seen, and it didn’t happen in the movie.
aimai
@Botsplainer: This just strikes me as an incredibly weird thing to attack random women for. 1) How many people are you talking about? More than two?,IF its not more than 20 or so its not an actual epidemic its just something that has salience for you.
2) Who are you to say what was a “casual encounter” and what was, for them, an actual relationship?,
3) Abortion is not an easy choice where you may be physically attacked for trying to access it. Many women, especially young ones, do not have the medical support necessary to get diagnosed and seen in time for regular abortions. And many women, of all classes, are pressured not to have abortions by their lovers or families. Despite all the endless talk about how angry men get about having to pay child support or co-parent “accidental” children if you read any sociological studies of women’s actual lives you will oftenfind that the men in their lives pressured them to have the childrenand simply blowoff the part of parenting/child support they don’t want to pay.
4) People have different life trajectories in mind and when the job market tanks or people don’t see great short term prospects people have always decided to go ahead and have children. Family planning has always been something that the upper classes thought the lower classes needed to engage in but families happen in all kinds of ways and not necessarily on the time line that an outsider thinks is rational.
Southern Beale
We have a good independent theater but it’s been showing Boyhood and Cavalry for the past month.
I’m eager to see The Skeleton Twins, which I think opened last weekend but it hasn’t come to Nashville yet. The theaters here are still showing “Atlas Shrugged” and those smarmy quasi-Christian films.
Mike in NC
@Southern Beale: After reading all the hype over “Guardians of the Galaxy”, we went. Absolutely hated it.
But “Gone Girl” looks like it might be something an adult could appreciate.
pete
Boyhood: Great movie. Not perfect, but an extraordinary conception that works remarkably well. Filmed in multiple short stretches over a dozen years, financed apparently by coin found in the studio’s metaphorical couch (by executives who kinda kept quiet about it), featuring extraordinary commitment from the lead actors and a stroke of genius or luck or (most likely) both in the casting of the kid whose growing up is the focus. I strongly recommend you go see it. It’s long, but held my attention throughout.
Botsplainer
@Southern Beale:
I’m an ’80. Compared to kids now, I’d have been considered a really bad kid – underaged unlicensed driving, drinking, pot, smoking, fighting, car racing, out to all hours, lots of unprotected sex from 15 on. Plus, I had a mouth, and yes, got arrested once. Oh, and I was Wreck, the Destroyer of Cars (usually at excessive speed, music loudly blaring).
All the hooliganism and bad sonism was countered by solid academic ability and some innate jock skills. Got me an appointment to USAFA, despite my discipline issues.
My daughters dated nobody like me. Thank Dog, because I’d have been forced to kill him.
FlipYrWhig
@aimai: Does any classic college major give you “job skills” beyond those anyway? It ain’t like majoring in physics punches your ticket to the lucrative world of private-sector physicking. I don’t think college has ever really instilled “job skills” per se. It’s always been meta-job skills, like how to read and process complicated information and how to write clearly and persuasively.
OzarkHillbilly
@c u n d gulag: I graduated in ’76 so we are about the same age. I consider that to be the end of my “growing up” and the beginning of my “education.”
And yeah, as someone once said (De Niro?), “If you remember the ’70s, you weren’t there.” That pretty well sums it up. Survival was definitely questionable and in the decade following graduation I lost more than a few friends to the excesses that became habitual. I think the only reason I made it is because of a strong survival instinct and a 6th sense for trouble.
Southern Beale
@Mike in NC:
Did you read the book for Gone Girl? I felt kinda .. cheated by it.
OzarkHillbilly
@Bobby B.: Nobody like the Allman Brothers. I never got to see Duane, but damn….
Suffern ACE
@Southern Beale: I saw skeleton twins last night. It is a very good adult film. I was worried that it would be Another Family Gathering Movie, and was quite happy to be wrong.
Poopyman
Completely OT, but I just realized it’s the anniversary of a local event. Two hundred years ago this morning from aboard the HMS Tonnant up the Bay here aways, Francis Scott Key was able to see the flag still flying after the British had spent the night bombarding Fort McHenry. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Recent related news: Remember the Canadians announcing they’d found one of the two ships from the Franklin Expedition in the Northwest Passage?
Well, there’s a 50% chance it’s the HMS Terror, formerly one of the ships to have bombarded the fort that night.
Mike in NC
@Southern Beale: No, didn’t read the book. Have no idea how the film version will follow it.
Amir Khalid
@Southern Beale:
I just Googled “movies nashville tennessee” — I take it you’ve seen all the decent ones already — and I see what you mean. But if you can wait for them, I hear there are really good British-made biopics of Stephen Hawking and Alan Turing coming out later this year, starring Eddie Redmayne and Cummerbund Bandersnatch respectively.
Botsplainer
@aimai:
I take calls on this (on average) weekly, sometimes multiple times in a week. The vast majority of the time, they don’t have the funds to address the issues (sometimes parenting time/condition/decision issues, sometimes support, most of the time both). Ofttimes, the young man in question doesn’t work, and if he does, works casually or under the table, all whole living with mommy.
Every two weeks, it’s a call about a one night stand pregnancy. Most of the time, it’s about a couple of weeks.
I’m in agreement on this.
I know – we’re failing them as a society.
Iowa Old Lady
@FlipYrWhig: The relationship between college and job skills is cloudy. It’s tempting to say that’s not what college is for, except historically only the well off went to college, where they learned ruling and recreation, ie their “job” skills.
aimai
@Botsplainer: What is it that you are “taking calls” on? I didn’t know this was a professional opinion based on real data. I think different issues come into play when you are talking about the kinds of people who call help hotlines–by definition they are unsupported in other ways and have to resort to strangers. Those people are not going to be representative of all the other people who aren’t calling your line so I’m not sure I think you are getting a representative sample of anything. I defer to you, of course, but I’d like to point out that by every objective measure teen pregnancy is down in this country and going farther down.
At the same time we as a country have left the middle years (18-30) as a financial wasteland for young men and women. IT used to be perfectly respectable for young men and women to form their families then–and they were able to do it while also working and buying their first homes. Now everyone is expected to defer starting their families until both parties have high powered/high paying/secure jobs. A lot of people will never see those jobs or that security. ITs not logical to expect everyone to be able to defer gratification (and children are gratifying) into an indefinite and distant future. I think all this criticism of the individual decisions of young people have to take into account that what the upper classes and older people think is “rational” in terms of family formation is now beyond the reach of most poor or marginaly educated people and, in fact, is out of reach even for the upper working classes and the lower middle classes.
Poopyman
@Iowa Old Lady: And introduced into their “network”, aka “the ruling class”.
I’d be tempted to say that college teaches a person critical thinking, but in my life’s travels I’ve discovered that most people either have it by the time they’re 18 or they never get it.
OzarkHillbilly
@Botsplainer:
I once had a cop ask me, “Just how far thru the carburetor did you have the accelerator pushed?”
“Oh, no Sir, Officer Sir, not me, I wasn’t speeding, not at all….” By the time I was 20 I had totaled at least 3 cars, maybe 4,…. 5? It’s all kind of hazy now.
My friends parents’ all thought I was a “hood”, and I was the only one that didn’t smoke dope. One buddy of mine, his Colombian grandmother came after me with a log while screaming in Spanish. She thought I was going to corrupt her little Nino. Years later when the medics were wheeling her out on a stretcher after she had had a heart attack, she grabbed my hand and wouldn’t let go. My Spanish wasn’t very good, but I caught enuf to know she wanted me to watch out for her Nino.
jimbo57
Personally, I’m waiting on the Michael Medved review where he rips the film for not showing the tragic arc of the protagonist’s evolution into a earring-sporting arts major more in line with the guitar-strumming, Obama-supporting Ethan Hawke character despite the example of conservative manhood presented by the two other father-figures, Professor Wife-Beater and Bitter Prison Guard…
Botsplainer
@aimai:
I’m mostly a family law practitioner, 25 years in. While teen pregnancy is objectively down on a statistical basis, those which happen now appear to come about far more casually. The complexion of these cases have definitely changed. In the past, the problems weren’t nearly so intractable because there had been more of a connection between young parents and both families.
Now?
It is a nightmare. No trust, no basic respect.
Another Holocene Human
@Southern Beale: Don’t blame Marvel, or if you do, blame them for giving the rights away on X-Men–they don’t control those movies. In fact, they can’t even use the word “X-Men” in their movies. Also, GotG was not bad at all. I’ve been meh’d out on X-Men movies but somehow was talked into watching both Thor movies and because beefcake is not my thing I was pretty underwhelmed. Movie #2 especially was dumb as fuck but apparently a lot of British people were excited that they trashed a British location instead of an American one with CGI. hooookay.
They release all the “adult” movies crowded towards the end of the year when you’re probably too busy with your own life because awards schedule.
WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: Your Colombian grandmother story is quite touching.
Ruckus
Just anecdotal of course but my limited exposure to a few 20 somethings at work doesn’t fill me with great expectations that this generation is much better than this early boomer’s. They seem to be about the same, abet maybe a little/lot less liberal. And I’m talking only 3 towns over from where I grew up, which in socal is about 6-10 miles. They drink, they party, they screw, they are generally idiots. The same.
Another Holocene Human
@Southern Beale: Parents who loosen the leash up a bit get punished, harshly, if anything happens. Helicopter parenting is not a choice but an obligation. Is it psychologically healthy? Probably not.
When I was a kid I ran around in the woods picking blueberries … but even so I lacked a lot of outlets where I felt a sense of competence and accomplishment because my life revolved around school. My grandparents’ generation were already being groomed for a trade. I’m not saying their life wasn’t hard in some ways but it’s also hard to feel like a burden and have no self esteem and lack life skills that would help you escape that situation.
Another Holocene Human
@constitutional mistermix: If that’s true that’s encouraging–while I was not a drinker myself I was surrounded by budding 15yr old alcoholics. That was New England and my understanding is that Old England has an even worse youth drinking problem. The one time I was in London there were drunk people vomiting off the end of the train platform. I say this because I’m from Boston and it was all a bit much for me, you know, I’m from the place where all of the subway stations have that faint smell of urine mixed with creosote. Mmm, home.
jimbo57
Yup, watching my stepdaughter and her friends, and their boyfriends, can’t help but reflect what a crew of hopeless jagoffs we were at that age. For people facing a truly daunting job market, they are a remarkably cheerful. optimistic bunch.
The film itself, in its best moments, reminded me of the 7UP series where we watch random kids, some fine, some damaged, grow up and age from first grade to their fifties. Some deal with their shit. Some, sadly, don’t. Both a longitudinal case study in sociology and a work of art.
rikyrah
This has nothing to do with voter fraud…
this has everything to do with Voter Suppression
…………………………….
Voter fraud probe roils Ga. Senate
September 12, 2014, 11:13 am
Voter fraud probe roils Ga. Senate race
By Alexandra Jaffe
A group helmed by a major donor and policy adviser to Democratic Senate candidate Michele Nunn is under investigation by the Georgia secretary of State for alleged voter fraud.
Secretary of State Brian Kemp (R) said in a memo, reported by WSB-TV, that his office has “received numerous complaints about voter applications submitted by the New Georgia Project,” an organization launched to register and turn out voters to the polls.
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/senate-races/217544-group-led-by-nunn-donor-and-adviser-under-investigation-for
Another Holocene Human
@FlipYrWhig: Actually, wrong on both counts. They do in fact teach you skills directly to go into certain white collar fields, and in turn the expectations in those fields are shaped a bit by colleges. Also, they absolutely teach you physicking in a physics major, it’s very pragmatically oriented. The probably is there is a dearth of jobs, public and private sector, so you’re forced to take your math skills and port them somewhere else. Or pick up some bio and go into medical research. I could see the writing on the wall and I didn’t think my great mission in life was to do materials research to help Samsung develop the thinnerer thinnest thin screen of all time. Fuck it. So I quit.
But my major was a nerd dream, I was huffing all the sweet sweet leaded solder smoke you can imagine, playing with thousands of dollars worth of dangerous equipment, dicking around with microprocessors and oscilloscopes … yeah.
Kay
@aimai:
The “job skills” theme is complicated, more complicated than anyone is willing to let on.
Just to use an example, they’re pushing job skills training in the rust belt, it’s federally-funded, and I’m fine with that up to a point and as long as they weigh some really tricky factors. The programs vary widely in quality, and a lot of them are “public-private partnerships” so I think it would be wise to look at all the various players incentives and not just jump on a faddish bandwagon. Obviously, a manufacturer would rather the public pay for employee training than pay for it themselves. That’s just a fact.
I looked at two of the Cleveland programs, and one of them is great, the enrollee (and the public) will get real value for their investment- it’s run thru a community college, they’d be able to take the skills to SEVERAL employers and they’d earn a good wage. The other one, frankly, sucks. It’s a specific skill for a specific employer, the course is 8 weeks and the job at the end pays ten bucks an hour.
The problem with that is UNSKILLED manufacturing wages are at 10 to 14 here now (there’s demand and the facilities are competing) so one of the Cleveland programs would actually drive DOWN wages for people who now have that skill and may drive down wages for the unskilled, now.
Also? The “skills gap” in manufacturing might be bullshit, and the programs are predicated on the “skills gap”. CEO’s push the skills gap, and there’s an incentive for them to do that: push off training costs on the public and justify falling or flat wages. I just wish there was some awareness of these narratives we adopt and a hard look at who is pushing them.
I wish there was more rigorous thought going into this, more evaluation of the various incentives of the various players, less credulity. When the Caterpillar execs say they can’t find “skilled workers” what does that mean? What skill? At what price? Could they “find” them if wages went up? They’re not, so how desperate are they?
I’m “for” skills training. I DON’T think everyone has to go to college. I just don’t want young people ripped off, again, and I don’t want to end up paying for one more subsidy to the private sector, one that may or may not benefit the workforce and the public.
WereBear
Yes, indeed. Then again, their opportunities to make and sell the products of their own endeavors is much much greater than when I was their age.
Ronnie Pudding
Regarding dissing the youth of today, go to ESPN (and presumably other sites) and read the comments about Adrian Peterson. “The problem with these kids today is they aren’t shanked.” God save the poster who points out that kids today aren’t that bad (and don’t believe that linking to statistics helps).
aimai
@Kay: What we want is something like what the Germans have–a private/public/union system which has the corporations pay for the training of the workers they want.
aimai
@WereBear: For intstance they can sell their own kidneys.
Joel
@Southern Beale: it’s all about the global market. Simple, universal themes like those found in comic books are easy to translate. Visible stars are the same. I would argue that terrible movies like the Last Airbender and The Tourist are great examples of how to succeed financially despite lacking plot or any semblance of decent dialog.
Betty Cracker
Haven’t seen “Boyhood” yet but definitely want to. RE kids today, I have a 16-year-old, and I’m constantly amazed by how much more responsible and thoughtful she and her friends are than I and my friends were at that age.
However, at least among the kids I know, they seem less bold (or perhaps reckless) and less eager to be independent. Maybe that’s wisdom, or maybe it’s a more realistic perspective of their choices.
Ruckus
@Kay:
In mfg 40+ yrs ago a great many in my experience knew/decided that that was one of costs of doing business, training, apprenticeship programs. Somewhere along the line someone must have figured out that all costs must be offloaded onto someone else, training, facility, maintenance, wages, responsibility, so there is only pure profit left. Of course it doesn’t work that way does it? Well it doesn’t for anyone who is participating in creating the wealth but it works grand for those who are taking it all. So we end up with inequality out the wazoo, jobs that pay crap and demand total commitment of time/energy, bad safety, bad environmental, no labor protections, bad skills training(a competitor may be able to use them!) lack of incentive(because there is no reason if there is no reward). It amazes me that anything gets done and that we don’t have mass labor riots. Maybe I’m just ahead of the curve.
Iowa Old Lady
@Kay: I think about this every time someone says there’s a shortage of nurses. There are plenty of people with nursing degrees who no longer work in nursing because working conditions from salary to level of staffing are bad. Change conditions and the “shortage” might go away.
I’m constantly shocked at ads I see that demand high levels of skill for crappy pay and too much work.
Kay
@aimai:
Well, there’s some of that in the works, and I agree with you, I like that.
Part of what happened (skills gap!) is the loss of labor unions and the loss of employer–funded apprenticeships. I just think this droning “the workforce lacks skills!” is a tad self-serving to employers. Just because they say it doesn’t mean we have to completely swallow it. We’re hiring right now and I got “skills” out the wazoo. I have a different problem. It’s an entry-level position, and there’s no where to ‘advance’. We have one skilled employee, and we’ll only ever need one. The second person isn’t getting promoted, ever.
We had to send out a big batch of emails telling some applicants they were overqualified, because they are.
WereBear
@aimai: I thought that was still illegal?
Basing my comment upon the young people I know who form bands or set up an Etsy store for their crafts. Back in the day, it was living in a van. Now, you can have a website, build a fan base, tour/show in places where you know you have a market.
Belafon
@Southern Beale: I always love when people talk about plot holes that they explain in the movies.
Southern Beale
@Amir Khalid:
LOL yeah Fandango is pretty depressing for the Nashville area.
Saw a preview for the Stephen Hawking film. Looks good but it seems to be set up as a love story and didn’t he dump his wife for another woman? Wondering if that will make it into the film …
Amir Khalid
@Southern Beale:
Well, the movie is based on her memoir, so she definitely has her say in it; and Hawking says it’s essentially true. Alas, Eddie Redmayne, whose performance of Empty Chairs At Empty Tables in the Les Miz movie was so memorable, doesn’t sing in this one.
hells littlest angel
At least one reviewer has compared Boyhood to The 400 Blows. I think that’s a perfect comparison — Boyhood is that good. After the showing was over, I stayed in the theater and watched the whole thing again.
Rand Careaga
The reviews for Boyhood were all so uniformly glowing that I went to see it shortly after its release. Halfway through, I was feeling underwhelmed — not to the point of regretting the ticket purchase, but not seeing what all the hype was about. By the end, though (and has anyone mentioned yet that it’s a long film?), the sheer cumulative effect had persuaded me, and I and recommend it unreservedly. Boyhood is a remarkable artistic achievement, and brought to mind an evaluation made long ago in a similar context by the late John Updike:
Southern Beale
@Mike in NC:
I got dragged to Guardians of the Galaxy and it wasn’t that bad, it had some cute moments. The best thing about the film was the soundtrack.
FlipYrWhig
@Another Holocene Human: all right, fair enough, but most white-collar-ish don’t have a set of “job skills” you’re supposed to be well-versed in before Day One. And the students who major in something like business or economics, thinking that they are now better job candidates at all businesses for having studied it, are going about it the wrong way, IMHO. Most careers don’t have a one-to-one correspondence with college majors. Colleges and college students need to keep that in mind.
Southern Beale
@Amir Khalid:
Oh dear God did you have to mention Les Miz? That’s 4 hours of my life I’ll never get back.
I hated that movie so much I wanted to punch it. And then I just felt like a huge idiot. What did I expect? It even has “miserable” in the title!
Mnemosyne
@Southern Beale:
Plus you had to admire all of Chris Pratt’s hard work to get ready for that shirtless scene. I did, at least. ;-)
Amir Khalid
@Southern Beale:
Tsk, tak. It’s only two hours forty minutes, no longer than on stage. And Anne Hathaway’s mom says it’s the best movie musical ever made. Its only flaw is that Hugh Jackman’s Bring Him Home doesn’t quite rise to the very high dramatic standard set by the other singers’ solo numbers.
JoyfulA
@Kay: I was thinking of you last night, when I saw on Twitter that Ohio public schools did much, much better in their test scores than Ohio charter schools.
aimai
@Kay: I was responding more to the knee jerk “hurr-hurring” of people–and you see it all the fucking time on public boards and comment threads on newspaper stories–about how “kids these days” take “stupid” majors like psychology, women’s studies, history, music, or whatever–I mean: literally whatever. There are no liberal arts majors which are considered meaningful or appropriate to a future employed person. The right wing has been dinning our ears with attacks on higher education and liberal arts since the development of modern concentrations like African American Studies, Native American Studies, and Women’s Studies and this critique has flowed seamlessly from “hippies are studying the wrong kinds of people” to “why study history, literature, languages, or anthropology/sociology/psychology at all? ” There are people in this country who don’t think that anything other than business and hotel management are worth doing for white collar jobs.
Southern Beale
@Amir Khalid:
Oh.
Well it FELT like 4 hours.
I really despise Andrew Lloyd Weber. I liked Evita and that was it. He doesn’t understand subtlety. Every fucking song has to have it’s big, ear-splitting crescendo moment. You weaken the emotional impact when EVERY fucking song does that.
Southern Beale
Seriously, my top 3 worst movies (of movies that were “supposed” to be good) of the last 10 years are:
1- Incredibly Loud & Extremely Close
2- Les Miz
3- The Blind Side
Don’t read anything into the fact that 2 of them starred Sandra Bullock. I generally like her.
WereBear
@aimai: And they don’t like science, either. Very little left…
Amir Khalid
@Southern Beale:
Les Misérables isn’t one of Lloyd Webber’s, actually. It’s by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg, with English lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer.
Gene108
Chanel surfing and CNN interrupts it’s regular scheduled program -Fareed Zakaria GPS – which is usually pretty good and worth watching to update us on ISIS. I wonder what is more painful, be heading or being stuck with a cocktail of chemicals that may or may not actually kill you and may or may not be anywhere close to painless, ie is beheading really more barbaric than the recent episodes of botched or near botched executions of death row inmates in the USA.
I understand journalists that died did nothing wrong other than being I’m the wrong place at the wrong time, but as a method of execution are we anymore considerate than groups like ISIS.
Gene108
@rikyrah:
The last quote in the article has Pedrue’s spokesman referencing Obama’s reliance on the vote fraud kings ACORN, in 2008. They really know how to drill a talking point into people’s heads, so every time they dog whistle their voters know what to hear.
gian
@Southern Beale:
There are three different studios with rights to the marvel characters IIRC.
The Disney ones have been the higher quality ones
Fox I think did the X men wolverine ones and they’re not as well done
Whichever studio is doing the fantastic four is supposed to be screwing the reboot up and the new spiderman flicks are about maintaining the rights to the character.
I really hate the chase scene designed to port to the video game tie in. The second hobbit movie has a couple of those (barrels in the river and the melt the gold on smaug)
SuperHrefna
@Southern Beale: Maybe you could try catching one of the year’s early releases on DVD? Only Lovers Left Alive is on DVD now, for example:
http://www.amazon.com/Only-Lovers-Left-Alive-Hiddleston/dp/B00KE7PCIE/ref=tmm_dvd_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=
So is Chef: http://www.amazon.com/Chef-Jon-Favreau/dp/B00KQTGWPC/ref=tmm_dvd_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=1-1&qid=1410718814
And Belle is available for streaming: http://www.amazon.com/Belle-Tom-Felton/dp/B00KOAMW16/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1410718895&sr=1-1&keywords=belle
But yeah, it is really annoying how the studios are holding all these great movies over for a month or two from now and giving us nothing to watch now.
SuperHrefna
Help! I’m in moderation, I think I put too many links in my reply…
cckids
@Iowa Old Lady:
This x1000. This spring there was a job ad for a part-time Ranger-type at Lake Mead Visitor’s Center. It required a college degree, the ability to research and write about local history/geology/biology to be both clear and engaging, interaction with the public, including giving educational talks/nature walks for groups of all ages, the ability to lift (because you’d be helping re-stock the store or do minor trail clean-up), plus, plus, plus.
All for the princely hourly wage of around $9. So stupid, because it would have been a perfect summer job for a college kid like one of mine, who are majoring in environmental science and art respectively, can write well, etc. And don’t need the 9 bucks an hour to pay for rent & food. But they haven’t graduated yet. Its a depressing message to them about what they have to look forward to.
gian
@cckids:
This is the age of the unpaid internship. You have to be able to work for free get get the experience to get a shot at a real job.
Kay
@aimai:
I think that’s the flip side of what I’m talking about, though. That’s the other part of narrowly viewing “jobs skills” and turning “job skills” from something that should empower people and give them choices into “let’s pay for whatever employers say they need right at this minute”.
It’s the same faddishness and bandwagon-climbing, trashing liberal arts. It comes from the same place. They need to just take a deep breath and design an approach that lasts, and stop listening uncritically to business people who have some incentives to recommend training that helps their bottom line, short-term.
I don’t even know what they’re talking about half the time. My two older kids went to what is a standard-issue Ohio public school. 50% free and reduced lunch, the middle of the middle. They pushed BOTH of them hard towards math and science. My daughter had to actively resist, because she was good at math but she didn’t want to be an engineer. She ended up focusing on a foreign language because that was the OTHER area they were pushing, and she figured they’d stop bugging her about being an engineer if she focused on foreign language.
I don’t know any public schools that don’t push math and science. They’ve been pushing it forever. They were pushing it when I was in school. I heard the exact same thing she did.
Southern Beale
@Amir Khalid:
I thought he wrote the main title song? “I dreamed a dream of dreaming dream in my dream” or some such?
Southern Beale
@gian:
Ironically, when I graduated college after the LAST Republican economnic meltdown it was also the age of the unpaid internship. And yes, I had to work for free several times until the economy rebounded.
Funny how whenever Republicans take over the government the end result is people working for free or nearly free.
Southern Beale
@SuperHrefna:
We saw “Chef” already, I thought it was sweet. Not a barn-burner but a nice little film. We missed Belle when it was at our indie theater in town, I’ll keep it in mind for the future.
Last night we streamed “Blue Is The Warmest Color,” which we knew was about a lesbian romance but I wasn’t quite prepared for the extremely long, protracted, detailed lesbian love scenes, and did I mention they were long? In fact, the whole movie was incredibly long. I fell asleep.
Barry
@FlipYrWhig: “Most careers don’t have a one-to-one correspondence with college majors. Colleges and college students need to keep that in mind.”
Last I heard, the majority of people in college are majoring in business, teaching, education, nursing and engineering. Those are going to correspond well.
A strict 1-1 is ridiculous, of course.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@FlipYrWhig:
My kid’s friends are WAY better and smarter than My friends and I were at his age.
VERY happy he’s considering following the old man into nursing (and hopefully, onward into medicine, like i failed to do)
The Illogical Planner
Pls include me among all the people on this thread who thought the movie was just phenomenal. It was so TRUE!