Sunday, March 22, 2009
Movies: Changeling & W
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I just now stopped watching 'Changeling, about 5/8 of the way through. About a week ago, I watched W.
Some pre-faceing:
1) I expected to like Changeling more than W. I like Angelina Jolie more than George W. Bush, for obvious reasons.
2) Critically I think (although unable to substantiate via my favorite source on movie reviews (not reviews themselves though), rotten tomatoes, where the two movies score a 61% (Changeling) and 60%(W.)) Changeling was better recieved. Angelina was nominated for a best actress role (I can see where they are coming from), and W may have been dismissed as a political endevour for the publically democratic Stone (director), who purposefully released W. prior to the final leg of the Barack vs. Old White Guy election this past November.
To the movies:
I <3ed W. The movie was fucking funny. Unless you are in the 3% that approved of Bush by the end of his attempted hijacking of America, you will find humor in Oliver Stone's portrayal of Bush's brain-trust wriggling their way into Iraq, as well as anachronistic jumps through W's spotty adolecence as a 'Kappster' at Yale, an alcoholic in Texas and an all around dissapointed son (Schadenfreude much?). There is oddles of humor between the personal interactions amongst white-house big-whigs, Cheney, Condie, Blair(Tony), and H.W. (played well by George Shinn), (Rove is constantly called 'boy-genius). Obviously beneath it all is the said truth that the portrayal is closer to truth than fiction. Thankfully those 8 years are history and we can start mending the present (see, ANY MAJOR NEW SOURCE?!?)
Changeling. I very much disliked this offering from Clint Eastwood. Basically the plotline is this. Single mother has to go to work on Saturday in 1930s LA. Her son is abducted. After five months, a boy is returned, albiet not her actual son, but an impersonator supplied by the LAPD for closure to avoid public embarrasment. Jolie fights impossible uphill battle against unbelievable corrupt police department. This movie tugs at any rational emotions in the wrong way. It is maddening to watch a single mother beat against ruthlessly corrput police beaurocracy (J.J. Jones) for her son back. She is condemned to a mental institution, turtured essentially. I shut off the movie when in an unrelated case a ~12 year old boy confessed to murdering about 20 kids his cousin kidnapped. Rather watch a recap of the Thirsty-32 (mine) on Sportscenter then this cockamamie-horrifying-gut-wrenching plot.
Although I am still hoping to see Eastwood in Gran-Torino, where instead of setting on the tall canvas chair, he sits on his porch and single-handedly wars with nieghborhood (SE?)-Asian gangs.
APF
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