I guess the NY Times has nothing better to do than write fluff pieces about wingnut provocateurs.
Reader Interactions
146Comments
Comments are closed.
This post is in: Our Failed Media Experiment
I guess the NY Times has nothing better to do than write fluff pieces about wingnut provocateurs.
Comments are closed.
Hill Dweller
“Balance”
WereBear
Judging from their reporting the last decade… no, they don’t have anything better to do.
Ted & Hellen
John, will you ever really WRITE another front page post?
Your heart is obviously not really in these tribal, Red Meat to the Bots posts.
Most came here to read YOU and you rarely write anymore.
Yutsano
CAN’T YOU FUCKING LIBZ TAKE A JOKE??
In one sentence Goldfarb undermined any credibility he had.
Cermet
This just proves that the NYT just wants people to pay exactly what they publish is worth – nothing.
gbear
Internets boss T&H iz monitoring ur productivity.
geg6
@Ted & Hellen:
We may have come here to read his stuff, but we stay because he is smart enough not to try to do it all himself and has other FPers with other interests and points of view. Not to mention other pets, recipes, and hobbies. Just because you pine for an authoritarian blog, don’t project your own neuroses on others.
dmsilev
@Ted & Hellen: A full refund of your subscription fee will be issued pending validation of your complaint.
burnspbesq
@Ted & Hellen:
Start your own damn blog if you don’t like the way this one is run.
You’re no better than Goldfarb, a provocateur with no game other than raising people’s blood pressure. What do you want from your miserable life?
VigilanteMark
Not true! They also made time today to publish Ross Douthat’s latest argument that people on food stamps are getting a sweet, even UTOPIAN deal (but of course Medicare will still bankrupt us all):
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/opinion/sunday/douthat-a-world-without-work.html?ref=opinion&_r=0
gbear
@Yutsano:
Actually, Goldfarb’s credibility was wiped out in an interview with Rick Sanchez years ago. He looks like a smug moron. I’m surprised anyone is still listening to him.
raven
Do you know that when you pie someone their pie quote changes when you refresh???
Scott S.
@Ted & Hellen: Thanks for your input, Republican troll.
@Yutsano: He has the only credibility that matters to the Village — he hates Democrats and black people, and he loves Republicans and white people.
Ted & Hellen
@burnspbesq:
Nothing more than your agonizing death in a blazing house fire.
Not so much, actually…please oblige.
Yutsano
@gbear: Backpfeifengesicht. He haz.
eemom
fixeteth.
Ted & Hellen
@Ted & Hellen:
Wow. Way harsh, dude. I’ve never been called that before.
Still, Cole’s heart isn’t in this place anymore. I’m sad to see it. I know you don’t give a shit, but some do.
scav
poor ol’ dear. No doubt sniffs and sends the wine back despite knowing nothing about it just to prove his discernment in face of a (theoretical) date. Whining about service is undeniable proof that one is worth better things and far far more refeened than others in the room, isn’t it?
eemom
@Yutsano:
awesomest word EVAH.
gbear
@Ted & Hellen:
Check. T&H’s life is indeed miserable. No further proof required. He can stop posting now.
Ted & Hellen
Weird. I made a comment about Cole’s very obvious lack of engagement. So follow your own advice, Bots; skip my comments and read those of others.
Pathetic. Even Raven, who claims to have pie’d me, is compelled to indirectly reply. Ha!
Short Bus Bully
Fuck me runnin’… T&H worst troll evah on this here blog?
Discuss.
Yutsano
@eemom: I am in constant awe at the amazing precision of the German language. I really need to step up my fluency.
Suffern ACE
I wanna new drudge. Younger, fatter, more hawkish and less gay.
Pinkamena Panic
Hey Timmeh, keep trolling a Cole post and he’ll ban your ass AGAIN!
Punchy
@gbear: From the article, it appears The Esteemed Senator Lindsey Gayham quoted his work in order to justy his filly. How other journalists refused to call him out for this is a bit stunning….
Pinkamena Panic
Hmmmmmm… a post on trolling brings out a troll. How apropos.
Ted & Hellen
@Pinkamena Panic:
As you well know, Cole has never banned me. Cole almost never bans. It’s the milquetoast tender fee fees front pagers who do so.
Fuck off.
Amir Khalid
Having been a journo myself, I’m uncomfortable with journos who flaunt their political partisanship in their journalism. It’s unseemly and it devalues their work. If they see themselves as partisan operatives, you might as well not bother with them at all. And I guess that’s what Goldfarb is.
I’ve seen worse, though. I get from the story that Goldfarb is his own boss at the Washington Free Beacon, and doesn’t appear to hanker after elected office. Some ambitious reporters and editors here in Malaysia openly ally themselves not just with a party or coalition (typically the ruling one), but with individual politicians who can give them a leg up at the paper, or even in their own future political careers. (Newspapers here are largely owned by business proxies of parties in the ruling coalition, so it’s a natural strategy if you have such ambitions.)
Ted & Hellen
@Pinkamena Panic:
I’ve never been called a troll before.
It hurts somethin’ awful.
Ash Can
I HATE THE FUCKING FOOD HERE AND THE PORTIONS ARE TOO GODDAMNED SMALL
quannlace
So John, guess you didn’t make it to the movies this afternoon.
*****
Has anyone seen any of tonight’s nominated movies?
Patricia Kayden
Why are you all responding to Ted & Helen’s comments? He’s a racist idiot. Ignore him.
I glanced through the NY Times article. Don’t see how it puts Goldfarb in a good light. Makes him look like the ultimate troll. Goes to show why Republicans have lost the White House twice in a row and will probably lose again in 2016.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Sometimes people who get no engagement from the other side of an attempted interaction will give up. It’s a thought.
Jsam
@Yutsano:
Exactly. This part of the article also drove home that these guys don’t just have a poor sense of humor, they don’t have the slightest idea what humor is:
As he tells it, he is simply trying to have fun while practicing his admittedly combative brand of politics — the humor of which, he said, his liberal critics are too self-serious to get.
For instance, he said, a Free Beacon report that the retooled liberal magazine The New Republic had “dropped at least five prominent Jewish writers from its masthead” in what “may signal the publication’s continued drift away from a staunchly pro-Israel standpoint,” was tongue-in-cheek.
Joel
@Ted & Hellen: I come here to read you, Lanny.
askew
Can we please stop engaging with that miserable troll? He has successfully derailed more threads than any other troll. Ignore him already please.
So, Chris Hayes is mad that Obama will go on the Tom Joyner Morning Show and not his Up with Chris Hayes show. Because apparently TJMS with over 7mm listeners is irrelevant while Up with an audience of 500K is essential. That argument just shows the problem white liberals have with Obama. He doesn’t pretend that they are relevant to the country and prefers to give interviews to shows Americans actually watch/listen to.
pamelabrown53
The troll is being well fed today. Are we the Harry Potter “Hagrids” who can’t help ourselves? If we don’t feed IT, it starves from lack of attention. Therefore, IT has no power to hijack threads. Problem solved.
Maybe, we’re a little bored or despondent like John Cole, so we feed halfheartedly feed the troll to pass time?
This Goldfarb guy is a new WRNJ (to me). Sometimes I feel like they’re equivalent to maggots under an overturned rock.
A Humble Lurker
@Ted & Hellen:
Likewise, we’ve never read any of the things you write on this blog here before. Ever. Well, actually we did, but where they failed to change our minds by calling us Obots, you will surely succeed. Really. Not.
Actually, to be fair, I will admit that that whole defending pedophiles thing was new. That was one I hadn’t seen before.
askew
@quannlace:
I’ve seen 3 of them – Argo, Zero Dark Thirty and Silver Linings Playbook. All of them are incredible movies. I’d like to see Zero Dark Thirty or Argo take the Best Picture nod and am rooting for an upset in Best Actress to see Jessica Chastain win for ZDT. But, Lawrence is excellent in SLP.
I have no desire to see Djanjo or Les Mis, but this is the first time in years where I’ve seen this many of the nominated movies and loved them.
raven
Djanjo is cool as shit.
Jebediah
@raven:
Yeah, but sadly I never see the pie-comment I submitted…waaaah!
pamelabrown53
@raven: I know Tarantino has a huge following but for me I can’t get beyond the graphic violence. Hate horror movies too.
lojasmo
@Ted & Hellen:
Yes, you have.
Jay S
Not at all John. The NYT is providing full service wankery today. See the John Harwood stuff explaining that improved cost projections for Medicare is bad news for Obama. How can we cut of granny now in order to balance the budget?
I posted this in the previous thread, but it is more appropriate here.
Mnemosyne
@askew:
I admit to having some qualms about Silver Linings Playbook, and not only because I seem to be the only person on the planet who finds Bradley Cooper annoying and smug, not winsomely adorable. It seems like yet another of those movies that says that debilitating mental illness doesn’t really exist and that you can easily overcome bipolar or BPD with a cute dance routine.
lojasmo
@quannlace:
Silver linings playbook, only.
Yutsano
@Jay S: Austerity cannot fail, it can only be failed. Isn’t that the lesson we’re supposed to be learning from Great Britain right now?
Suffern ACE
@quannlace: I’ve seen 7 of the 9. I thought Lincoln was the best (although the opening and the ending were silly. Who the hell cares what Lincoln’s youngest son felt?). But any of the seven would be ok.
raven
@Mnemosyne: And Tweety has been pimping that flick like mad.
Ted & Hellen
@Patricia Kayden:
And you are, let’s see…a necrophiliac retard.
Even?
raven
@pamelabrown53: So watch Jackie Brown, very low level violence and hilarious.
Suffern ACE
@Jay S: oh my fucking god. If only costs were spiraling out of control. Then we’d have those republicans right where we want them!
quannlace
I’ve got a low tolerance too. Course, I was the kind of kid who was scared by Master Cylnder in the old Felix The Cat cartoons.
Ted & Hellen
@pamelabrown53:
Awww…I haz never been called an “it” here before.
Sadness is great waves iz upon me.
Pinkamena Panic
How cute that people think if you ignore a troll it’ll go away.
It’s never worked that way, but it especially doesn’t work now. No, now it’s all about merely getting the trolling out. People will see it and that’s satisfaction enough for them.
So stop trying to use failed tactics.
Pinkamena Panic
@Jebediah: You know you can just edit the script yourself, right?
Ted & Hellen
@lojasmo:
You are not very bright, are you, Lojism…
Mark S.
@Mnemosyne:
You’re not the only one; my girlfriend does too. The only movie I’ve ever seen him in is Limitless, but my problem with that movie was the horrible writing. But I guess it answers the question of what would happen if the most superficial frat boy in the world all of the sudden had super-human intelligence. The answer: Use it to get rich on Wall St. and get laid. No imagination at all.
handsmile
Sad to read that legendary Chicago blues guitarist Magic Slim passed away on Thursday. Hearing him and his band The Teardrops perform live was like attending a revival meeting in an intimate venue. I wonder if the Chicagoland correspondents here ever had the pleasure?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/feb/24/magic-slim
If as the post title above says, you’ve “Nothing better to do,” you might enjoy giving a listen:
http://www.youtube.com/channel/HC_bkmPEUfiYY
But if for some unimaginable reason that kind of music doesn’t do it for ya, let me suggest you get to know the name Beppe Grillo. He’s likely to make much of the Italian political elite sing the blues today.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/23/beppe-grillo-italian-elections
JPL
I saw Argo, Les Miz and The Beasts of the Southern Wild. The Beast of the Southern Wild probably cost as much to make as one hour of Les Miz. I’m not sure it’s Oscar worthy but it was a good movie. The real Tony Mendez of Argo fame had an interview with BBC.com which is here. link
I’ll probably watch until nine and they switch to PBS.
Comrade Mary
This world would be a better place if Goldfarb were to use a blowtorch as his q-tip.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Mnemosyne: That’s enough to strenuously object to its praise no matter how superb the acting or production. It’s that kind of nonsense that makes NAMI’s work so fucking hard. If anyone would like to help my wee NAMI stay afloat, I’m happy to provide a link. Without a major fundraising push by my entire board, we’ll be out of business by about July 2014.
Redshift
@quannlace:
I saw all the non-documentary shorts (a local theater was showing them.)
For the live-action ones, “Death of a Shadow” was definitely my favorite. It may be too weird to win, though. The rest were mostly horribly depressing, though well-made. I enjoyed “Curfew,” though, even though it had actual wrist-slitting in it, it was actually kind of positive.
In animation, see “Fresh Guacamole” if you can; it’s really good. The Simpsons short is also fun. The rest were very pretty, but mostly too long, and in at least one case, way too long. I wasn’t all that impressed with “Paperman.” The animation was nice, the story just okay. I feel like if it hadn’t been Disney, it wouldn’t have gotten much notice.
Eric U.
@raven: I am amazed how good the pie filter comments are. Just installed it last week though. I find myself nodding in agreement with a comment and then realize it was generated by the pie filter and that just makes me happy. So I thank our resident troll for this discovery
A Humble Lurker
Is it my imagination, or are movies getting crappier? Maybe I’m just shouting at children on my lawn, but it seems to me the floor for how much money goes into a movie of any genre has been raised so much that the idea of taking any risks whatsoever is just not worth the crazy amount of cash you could lose.
I mean, that was probably always the case to a degree, but it seems that it’s at a higher degree now, I guess.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@burnspbesq:
In my browser, T&H wants pie, lots of pie.
Mnemosyne
@A Humble Lurker:
Frankly, most of Hollywood’s output has always been crap — watch TCM or Fox Movie Channel during the day to see the kinds of tedious programmers that were the majority of Hollywood’s output even during the “Golden Age.”
But part of the problem with most big-budget movies these days is that they are not aimed at American audiences anymore. They’re aimed at the international box office, so they need to be things that translate easily into multiple languages without too much work. So IMO what you’re mostly detecting is that very few movies are being made primarily for American audiences anymore.
Roger Moore
@burnspbesq:
Pie, apparently. That’s all I ever see him talk about.
Mnemosyne
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
If our resident troll can post links to his “artwork” for sale, I don’t see any reason why you can’t post a link to your organization, which is a much worthier cause. :-)
(Edited)
Redshift
@Pinkamena Panic:
How cute that someone thinks that not ignoring the troll is better than ignoring it.
No, this one doesn’t completely go away if you ignore it (though some others have.) But it’s a heck of a lot easier to skip over just its crap in a thread than when twenty or thirty percent of the comments are exchanges of insults with other commenters.
handsmile
Re 2013 Oscar films
Both for what was revealed here the other night on John Cole’s “The Dao of Alleve” post as well as for its devastating portrayal of love and aging, I cannot recommend more highly, albeit somewhat cautiously, the film, Amour.
Nominated for several Academy Awards (e.g., Best Foreign Language film, Best Actress), it was the most unforgettable film I saw last year. If you choose to see it, you won’t necessarily thank me for the recommendation, but you’ll understand why I did so. A masterpiece.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amour_(2012_film)
gogol's wife
I really enjoyed The King’s Speech (last movie I saw in a theater). We’ll be watching the repeat of the Downton Abbey finale tonight. This Seth McFarlane guy looks as if I won’t be able to stand two seconds of him, as opposed to the two minutes of Billy Crystal I could stand last year.
gogol's wife
@handsmile:
Hi, Wes guy (or gal)!
pamelabrown53
@raven: Hah! I did watch “Jackie Brown” years ago and since you mentioned it will rewatch. I do appreciate Tarantino’s sense of humor which was evident in “Pulp Fiction”. Still the “Inglorious Violence” diminishes my experience. What can I say? I’m a wuss. I close my eyes when I see someone getting a tetanus shot.
gogol's wife
@pamelabrown53:
I’m just like you. I am constantly quoting Tarantino (“going medieval” is in our family lexicon) but can’t stand to sit through his movies any more.
A Humble Lurker
@Mnemosyne:
Well, yeah. The best some times stands out especially well when you look back because it was surrounded by crap. But what you said about who the movies are made for is probably what I’ve been sensing. It doesn’t feel like older movies are better in general, but…I suppose now that I think about it, perhaps they’re less relatable now than they used to be. Which is sad ’cause they weren’t all that relatable to begin with.
Maude
@Mnemosyne:
That’s not new. The studio system made movies for both US and foreign distribution.
The package deals to make a movie have gotten more complicated. The arguments about trivia have made the pre production have almost intolerable.
Even if there’s a decent script, the changes can ruin it.
MikeJ
@Mnemosyne:
Back then they had the excuse of needing B-movies to feed the beast.Every movie theatre showed two movies, and the b-movies were just low budget time killers. There are very few low budget time killers any more.
Josie
@Pinkamena Panic: It’s kind of difficult to prove or disprove the truth of this idea, since nobody ever ignores this one.
Ted & Hellen
@Redshift:
Ever bother to note who almost always starts with the insults?
No, of course you haven’t.
ruemara
@askew: I’ve said this before in reference to how often the racist posts are up for debate by people who are, shall we say, minimizing how things have impacted the black community. We just don’t exist. 2mm black people, vs the Chris Hayes official liberal audience? That’s 2mm tapdancing unicorns of colour vs The Official Liberals Who Matter.
On topic, I guess the NYT ran out of rich people to profile for their intense suffering as they cannot afford daily laundered starched white shirts.
WereBear
@A Humble Lurker: I don’t think that the Crap Ratio has changed all that much since the peak of 1939.
Good comedies are always rare, most dramas are booooooooooring and think if they are artsy they can get away with it, 90% of science fiction is dreck, and action movies blow things up.
It’s simply that when one looks back, we tend to see only the good ones. They float to the top, and the rest sink.
Maude
@MikeJ:
That’s a very good point. They also could tell if the crews and actors were worth putting into A movies.
ETA, you told me about fridge fan? The freezer fan is fixed. The repairman was excellent.
Roger Moore
@A Humble Lurker:
I don’t see it. If anything, one of the notable trends of recent years is that the best genre movies are getting smarter and more interesting. There are certainly still a ton of stupid genre movies, but look at what Christopher Nolan has done with Batman, or Joss Whedon with The Avengers, or what Sam Mendez did with James Bond. Now compare that not to what remember big movies being like in the past but what they were actually like.
Mnemosyne
@A Humble Lurker:
It’s also that you’re getting old and are no longer in the target audience for mainstream movies, which is males ages 14-25.
@Maude:
Hollywood movies have always made some money overseas, but it’s only recently that the foreign box office is 50% or more of the overall take. That’s where the change is. The Avengers was the #1 movie last year, but it only made 41% of its money in the US. All the rest was from foreign box office. That’s what’s new.
For comparison, when Spider-Man was released in 2002, it was 50%/50% domestic and foreign. If you go all the way back to Tim Burton’s Batman, it was 60% domestic and 40% foreign.
The balance has changed, and foreign box office now gets much more attention than ever before, because it’s much more important than before.
Maude
@ruemara:
Oh, thanks for that. The one article about the food pantry fried my socks. The couple they portrayed had lost their jobs but they had a house or something. OMG. It was the Reagan slurs all over again.
pamelabrown53
@gogol’s wife: “going medieval” what a great phrase. My partner and I refer to it as “hacking and hewing”. Just a precursor to the modern version of the chainsaw.
Maude
@Mnemosyne:
That’s not why US films have gotten lousy. People love to see US films. “Hollywood” uses the US stereotype in a lot of movies and that sells overseas.
Crap is crap and that is a serious problem for the US film industry in the long run.
A Humble Lurker
@Roger Moore:
Joss Whedon = awesome, but I’m personally pretty ‘eh’ about the other two you mentioned.
@Mnemosyne:
Uh, actually…
Mnemosyne
@Maude:
“Lousy” as compared to when? Ninety percent of Hollywood’s output has always been crap, even in the “Golden Age.”
handsmile
@gogol’s wife:
Oh good, glad to see your “nym” here! I had vamoosed before your final reply on that particular thread, seeing it only upon my late night return.
Evidently my comment to which you had replied was lacking vermouth. Your knowing the matriculation status of someone’s grandson was a clue even I could detect. :) (and speaking of clues, I would have thought my identity as a middle-aged white guy had been well-sprinkled by now.)
Also too, might you be a devotee of O’Rourke’s Diner? Of signal importance to my undergraduate years, my last visit was about 18 months ago. (Thrilled it had re-opened from its awful fire.)
Mnemosyne
@A Humble Lurker:
Unless you’re a really precocious 14-year-old, I stand by my statement that you’ve aged out of being the target audience, even if it’s only by maturity level.
If you no longer go to movies to see really awesome special effects, you’re probably too old for most of the current output.
gogol's wife
@handsmile:
This is really embarrassing, but I have never eaten there. I can’t really explain why. My husband hates it, so I’d have to go alone. Everyone else I know loves it.
West of the Rockies
Well, maybe I’m being ageist here, but do the Repubs have a tremendous number of smug, overly-youthful (full-faced) pundits and politicians? I think of little Marco Rubio and his ilk. They look too young to have reached such positions of power or influence. A lot of those Breitbart “writers” look like they’re fresh out of community college.
WereBear
@Maude: There’s also the fact that it goes through stages. Right now, I feel that comedy is in a real trough — I’ve watched 90% of the BIG comedies of the last several years and they suck.
It’s not that I have a problem with low brow humor; I helplessly love the Three Stooges and Dumb and Dumber. At least, I don’t think that’s the problem.
I think the problem is that most of them suck.
Mnemosyne
@WereBear:
I was surprised that I actually liked Ted. I went to see it on the recommendation of someone I respect and found it more entertaining than I thought I would.
But, then, maybe I was overly appreciative of the fact that, unlike most “bro” comedies, the girlfriend wasn’t an evil harpy and was the one who fixed everything at the end. Plus the Flash Gordon jokes made me laugh way too hard.
Maude
@WereBear:
That too and thank you for putting it better than I did.
I liked Laurel and Hardy. The piano. Also when they joined the French Foreign Legion.
Tootsie is borderline comedy and I like it a lot.
askew
@Mnemosyne:
I like Cooper in movies. He has a certain charisma onscreen that is lacking among most leading men these days. And he was phenomenal in SLP. I also didn’t get the impression that his mental illness was fixed by a cute dance routine. He was better because he was taking his meds and had JLo’s character in his life but he still clearly had mental issues.
WereBear
@Mnemosyne: I’ll look forward to that, thanks.
I like the Pegg/Frost comedies (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Paul) very much, and adored Undercover Brother (which is quite a while ago, now.) But when I mention these, most people have never heard of them. So perhaps what I like is just not fashionable… would not be the first time.
Maude
@Mnemosyne:
No, it wasn’t always 90% crap. I doubt it’s 90% crap now. B films weren’t that bad.
I have seen tons of silent and sound films. I love movies and appreciate them. The Golden Age had wonderful movies.
You have an opinion and that’s fine, but things have changed in the US film industry. And not for the better. Hopefully the tide will turn and they start raising the quailty of movies.
FlipYrWhig
@gogol’s wife: I just don’t like his sense of “humor.” I tried to watch Family Guy a few times and totally recoiled. It’s just non sequiturs and random weirdness. Like one of those annoying Cartoon Network “adult swim” shows merged with The Flintstones.
Amir Khalid
@Maude:
I find it interesting that Les Miserables gets called a “Hollywood” film, even though it was produced by a British company (Working Title), directed by a Briton, shot mostly in Britain, and had a British crew and mostly British cast. (I counted only six foreign cast members — three Americans, two Australians, and an Irishman.)
Suzanne
@Short Bus Bully:
I miss FourLoko.
Mnemosyne
@Maude:
It had some wonderful movies, yes. It also had a lot of awful ones. It’s just that, as Werebear said, we remember the wonderful ones and forget about the awful ones. Humphrey Bogart starred in three movies in 1942, but the only one people remember from that year is Casablanca. And IIRC, the reason he only did 3 movies that year was because he turned down other ones that Bogart thought were even worse and Jack Warner suspended him.
IMO, what’s different now is that movies are not made primarily for American audiences anymore, which means that films that don’t translate well (comedies and dramas) get dropped in favor of action films. Hollywood goes where the money is and, right now, the money is overseas.
JGabriel
Jim Rutenberg @ NYT:
Hey, Rutenberg, there’s actually a word for the combination of “weaponized journalism” and “politicking”: propaganda.
And it’s not new.
.
handsmile
@gogol’s wife:
Well, your husband hating it might be one explanation. :)
Thinking how to resolve this dilemma, you might invite a visiting scholar/speaker to nosh there. Visitors just love to try where the “locals” eat, and you could submit the bill to the department for reimbursement! A life denied the sublimity of a steamed cheeseburger (an O’Rourke’s speciality) is but a poor one.
The particular bubble in which I live: I have absolutely no idea who Seth McFarlane is (yeah, there’s that google thing, but nah….)
Mnemosyne
@Amir Khalid:
Welcome to the world of film financing: whoever puts the distribution deal together gets the credit. Since Universal did it, it gets called a “Hollywood” film.
It can get awfully bizarre, especially these days when big chunks of the financing come from non-US sources that have their own ideas about which actors bring in the audience in their countries.
WereBear
Except during Oscar season, or other themed celebrations, doubters should check out TCM during the wee early morning hours. Some of these entries are very far from a Golden Age… more like the Stone Age.
Or, you could just watch Marilyn Monroe’s first speaking role in Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay!
There was a LOT of rural comedies, rote crime films, and the like making up the B lot. They couldn’t all be Val Lewton. I have a silly love of the Women’s Weepies, or melodrammers, but they aren’t good movies.
Amir Khalid
@Suzanne:
Let’s be fair to m_c. She was not so much a troll, more a needlessly emo commenter with some curious verbal tics. She did have something to contribute to the conversation, sometimes, unlike the present troll. Had she more self-control, better manners, and less of a know-it-all attitude, she might be a valued commenter here to this day.
JGabriel
Maude:
I’m with Mnemosyne on this one, though I’d be slightly more generous — in that I think it’s all only 85% crap.
As other’s have noted, the past always looks better in the future, when the tides of time have done their work and washed most of the crap into the deep, vast, and merciful waters of forgetfulness.
.
Ted & Hellen
For those of you discussing the Oscars tonight and Hollywood in general…here is my latest entertainer portrait, of MARLON BRANDO in the biker years. :D
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
This. I got the feeling that she wanted to add something to the conversation. Sometimes she was obnoxious and stalkerish and she got fixated on things, but she was at least trying to contribute. And you have to give her credit for seeing through ED Kain way before anyone else.
Ted & Hellen
Oops! Here’s a much more direct link to the Brando portrait.
Grifting.
Ted & Hellen
@Roger Moore:
I know, because all of the Kool Kid Bot regulars here possess all of the above in abundance. Yes indeed, even back when JC used to post here, this blog was based on nothing less than the utmost civility and politeness, tremulous understatement, and a prevailing deference to the opinions of those who may disagree.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHA…do you even fucking read what you type?
JGabriel
@Suzanne, @Amir Khalid: I know I’m in the minority on this, but I liked Matoko_Chan (and her other sundry aliases).
She made me laugh, and as Amir Khalid notes, she contributed to the conversation.
.
handsmile
@Amir Khalid:
Do you happen to know the circumstances of her departure (her banishment?)? As I think we may have exchanged here sometime ago, I often found her comments to be thought-provoking even insightful, if almost always overweighted with incivility. But then again, I was never the subject of her calumny as I know you were.
Also too, here’s a recent Guardian article on 19th-century Paris from the perspectives of Victor Hugo and Edouard Manet that I’ve been meaning to post for you, as the resident Les Miserables passionne.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/26/hugo-manet-paris-poor-privilege
Jebediah
@Pinkamena Panic:
Seems like cheating, somehow. If my pie-quote isn’t destined to appear, so be it… sniffle sniffle sob…
JGabriel
@West of the Rockies:
Yes, but that’s only because it’s a requirement to join the party.
It’s like marveling at how all the constants of physics are perfectly calibrated to permit our existence, when the truth is, if they weren’t, we wouldn’t be here to observe them (tm Weak Anthropic Principle).
In the same way, we observe a tremendous number of smug, overly-youthful (full-faced) pundits and politicians in the Republican Party, because a Republican Party would not exist without them (tm Weak Republican Principle).
.
gogol's wife
@handsmile:
I just have to make it my business to get down there to eat. I actually really like that kind of food.
Anne Laurie
@West of the Rockies:
As my Celtic ancestors could tell you, it’s easy to stay young if you don’t have a soul.
Seriously, “privileged” people don’t have the life stressors that put lines on the faces of us proles, and they can afford the best care to deal with the gravitational effects of aging. It’s a kind of sociocultural neoteny — Mitt Romney, for instance, is a grandfather, but his face still reads ‘adolescent’.
Suffern ACE
@handsmile: I thought she had a breakdown and morphed into little boots.
gogol's wife
@handsmile:
It’s very noble of Amir Khalid to defend her, maftoon that he is (just kidding!). I miss her too, and I can’t really explain why. I do not miss unlimited corporate cash at all.
gogol's wife
@JGabriel:
For some reason I can watch anything from the 1930s, anything at all, and enjoy it. But I could not possibly sit through 99.9 percent of what’s at the local movie theater. So to me it seems as if 1930s B, C movies had it all over today’s.
WereBear
Man, I love that. So true.
handsmile
@Suffern ACE:
LOL! “Little Boots” is a late-night phenomenon/personage here that I don’t begin to understand or in fact really want to. A fascination/repulsion reaction.
I am not a kook
@Ted & Hellen: @Ted & Hellen:
Yeah, you.
Mnemosyne
@gogol’s wife:
The 1930s is such an oddly split decade in Hollywood film, though — strict censorship came in at the middle of 1934, so you have a lot of scrambling around trying to figure out what the new rules are.
But, still, I submit that the 1930s movies that are available are still the cream of their respective crops. I can’t find the statistics, but there used to be far, far more movies released every week in the pre-television days than there are now, and the majority of them are not available on DVD or TCM.
I really need to get back to work on my Pre-Code movies blog. Gah. I have so many movies of that era in my queue that it’s become intimidating just to think about trying to get through all of them.
cokane
Didn’t seem like a fluff piece at all to me. Guy comes across as nefarious as you could without turning the piece into an op-ed.
Amir Khalid
@handsmile:
I don’t remember it all that clearly, actually. m_c either exiled herself from Balloon Juice or was banned (I don’t remember over what) and simply chose not to come back under a new nym.
The Guardian story is quite interesting, especially the comments. The Graun’s commenters are almost as good as our lot here. I like the last commenter’s suggestion to read Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities as a companion piece to Hugo’s book. I might do just that.
Amir Khalid
@gogol’s wife:
(Blush.)
BillinGlendaleCA
I just want the movie company trucks to get off of my street(shakes fist at movie trucks and then yells at clouds).
handsmile
@Mnemosyne: , @gogol’s wife:
Film Forum, an independent movie theater here in NYC, is now presenting a month-long series of films released in America in 1933 alone. I’ve (re)seen several of them in the past weeks: The Bitter Tears of General Yen, The Emperor Jones, Zero for Conduct, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse.
The roster of films at this link might be of interest to you:
http://www.filmforum.org/movies/more/nineteenthurtythree#nowplaying
Mnemosyne: Whenever you do manage to revive your Pre-code movies blog, here’s one interested reader.
eemom
Count me among the lamenters of the departed toko-loko.
She was, as I remarked at the time, the epitome of a precocious toddler: her presence had a way of sucking up all the oxygen in a room full of grown ups….she could be utterly exasperating…..but she had a brilliant, unerring instinct for calling out certain naked emperors amongst the past and present FPers on this blog.
eemom
Also too, “Little Boots” is downright creepy….especially how it stalks Omnes.
Suzanne
@Amir Khalid:
And if my aunt had balls, she’d be my uncle.
gogol's wife
@Mnemosyne: @handsmile:
Here’s another.
That 1933 festival looks great, I read about it.
Suzanne
FourLoko always reminded me of those friends we all had in college who would get drunk, make total asses of themselves, yet somehow be endearing enough that you drove their drunk asses home even when they puked in your car. And the next Friday, you did it AGAIN, even though of course the same shit would go down. When she started getting mildly self-confessional, telling us about her mess and various diagnoses, I have to admit I found her much less fun. But she always was completely obsessive, which is how she found time to read everything E.D. Kain ever wrote on the Internet ever, so I hope she’s found something in real life to which to devote herself.
Yutsano
@Suzanne: Apparently she lurks but refuses to comment. We’re not good enough for her anymore I guess.
Roger Moore
@Yutsano:
I hope she reads this and decides to pop up for a quick comment once in a while.
Rosie Outlook
@askew: Hear, hear. Cdon’t feed the trolls!
gbear
@I am not a kook:
He started in with comment #3 of this thread. He would have been #1 if he wasn’t…you know…slow.
Death Panel Truck
Wow…insult the troll’s less-than-stellar artwork, and comment fails to post. Okay. Got it.
xian
@askew: where’d you get the idea Hayes is mad? I watched Up today and did not get that impression.
xian
@handsmile: she posted very competently on sam wang’s blog during the election (as “wheeler’s cat”). her pomo-babble was better tolerated by that university-stats oriented crowd. she also sayer on point and seemed to have her flights of fancy under control.
xian
er, stayed on point.