We saw The Hobbit and Les Miserables over the holidays. I liked them both. I have no interest in seeing the two movies Kunstler saw this weekend.
Going To the Movies
By James Howard Kunstler
on January 14, 2013 9:26 AM
I don’t go to the movies much anymore, alas, because the nearest mall cineplex — owned by a company named Regal that runs the place like a self-storage facility — is a dump with broken seats and teenage employees who forget to turn out the lights when the movie starts. But the weekend weather here was sloppy, and this is the movie awards season, and I wanted to get an idea of what Hollywood thinks America is about these days, so I hauled my carcass over to see Django Unchained and Zero Dark Thirty, in that order.
Years ago I rather admired Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction for its rococo storytelling method and comic expansiveness. The sheer volume of gore and mayhem strained my suspension of disbelief, but I was charmed by the audacity — for instance the scene where a character played by Quentin himself repeats to the two hit men with a dead body that he’s not in the business of “dead nigger storage,” which was in there, I’m sure, just to rub a lot of sanctimonious minds the wrong way.
Django Unchained is something else: perhaps the most incoherent movie ever made, but in a way that nicely represents the culture that it comes out of. For the uninitiated, the movie tells the tale of a slave named Django (“the D is silent,” actor Jamie Foxx informs another character) rescued from a slave coffle by a German bounty hunter named Schultz posing as an itinerant dentist. Together they ride forth to slaughter white people involved in the slavery business to 1) make a lot of money off bounties, 2) free Django’s captive wife Broomhilda, and 3) enjoy many acts of bloody revenge.
What you notice right away is that the filmmaker has no sense of American history or geography. One moment you’re in the Sonoran Desert, the next moment the Montana Rockies. Huh? Of course the line on Tarantino by film savants is that his weltanschauung is a gleeful composition of movie history pastiche. That is, his ideas come only from other movies (or television), not from the so-called real world and the record of goings-on there. So in this case they are derived from previous movies made by earlier auteurs who got the details wrong about mid-19th century life. That may be so, but the difference is that the earlier movie directors, however mis-educated or befuddled by convention, might have cared about the milieu they attempted to represent. Tarantino is content to be wildly wrong about just about everything. Or rather, the details don’t matter as long as the fantasy satisfies portions of the brain where ideas are not processed.
What interests me about all this is how perfectly Tarantino’s mental universe reflects the current situation in our nation, in particular the infantile disregard for the facts of life, the self-referential inanity of our culture, and the complete absence of authenticity in anything. What disturbed me about the movie was the sense that Tarantino has set the table for race war, like a jolly arsonist playing with matches and gasoline in a foreclosed house. He won a Golden Globe award for directing last night.
Zero Dark Thirty tells the tale of a CIA unit based in Pakistan and its laborious efforts to track down Osama bin Laden, perpetrator of the 9/11 airplane attacks on the USA and other misdeeds. It focuses on the doings of a female American agent, uncelebrated in the annals of this long, strange “War on Terror,” who pored over the minutiae of cell phone records for a decade before locating the messenger who led CIA watchers to bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad, where Navy SEALs finally sent him to his eternal reward of feasts and virgins.
The movie, directed by Kathryn Bigalow, is a bloodless recounting of some very grim and bloody business from recent history. The controversy around it comes from the extensive scenes of “extreme interrogation” carried out by American officials against captured jihadists in “dark” locations. Critics have objected to the movie’s lack of a moral position about these brutal activities. Was it right? Was it wrong? The movie simply asserts that it happened that way. Some politicians have objected as to whether the depiction of all these matters is correct in the first place. Nor is the killing of bin Laden treated as an occasion for fist-pumping histrionics. If anything, the event leaves you with a hollow feeling and a bad taste for the time we live in. I admired especially – for the first time in many a movie – the absence of techno-triumphalism involving computers.
The contrast between the two movies is extremely interesting to me: Tarantino the populist, shall we say, reveling in a splatter-film Americana with barely a tenuous connection to reality, either historical, cultural, or emotional; and the assiduous Bigalow laying out the very serious business of capable adults engaging with a world that consistently terrifies and disappoints. Kathryn Bigalow didn’t win an award for directing at the Golden Globes.
TC says:
We haven’t “gone to the movies” in years. We rent the DVD at a redbox for $1, which is about what that shit that comes out of Hollywood now a days is worth (or less.)
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14th January 2013 at 10:19 am
Stucky says:
Is there ANYTHING dickhead Cunstler likes? Krist. Now it’s a Regal movie theater he bitches about. What a low life hating everything piece of shit. What a miserable wretch of a human being. We have a Regal cinema I visit. It’s very clean and comfortable. Cuntsler can go fuck himself.
I saw Django two weeks ago. It was packed, all the way to the front row. I don’t go to movies … ESPECIALLY a Tarantino movie … to get a historical education. I go for entertainment. Period. Again, Cuntsler can go fuck himself. Many blacks in the cinema … they laughed the loudest. Hey .. a black slave named ‘Brumhilda’, who speaks German! That’s funny shit right there. So was a lengthy scene involving pseudo-Klansman complaining about their hoodies and not being able to see clearly … and then calling off the raid. More funny shit. There was LOTS of humor in the movie and LOTS of violence. I love funny. I love violence. Great movie!
Hot debate. What do you think?
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14th January 2013 at 10:27 am
Stucky says:
Zero Dark Thirty
Theme #1: We killed Osama. Really!! Everything else is Conspiracy Bullshit, so STFU.
Theme #2. America is GRRR-E-A-T! We ALWAYS get our man.
Theme #3. The end justifies the means.
Theme #4. Thank you, Obama. (PBUH)
That’s not entertainment …. that’s brainwashing. Fuck that movie.
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14th January 2013 at 10:32 am
Hope@ZeroKelvin says:
HAHAHAHA. Kunstler is trying to be a movie critic now, good grief, no wonder he is so depressed all the time if these are the kids of movies he goes to.
The Hobbit is freaking AWESOME. It is a must see. I have seen it 3 times already and plan to see it again this weekend. That entire LOTR series is about Good versus Evil, of the power of the INDIVIDUAL in shaping events (“even the smallest person”), about the value of fellowship, of sacrificing for a greater goal, of loyalty, of persevering throug adversity. No wonder the libtard proglodytes don’t “get” it.
I wouldn’t waste one penny or my precious time on anything Tarantino produces, it’s just mindless blood, gore, violence and general mayhem. Besides I don’t need to here the N word 1000 times, thank you. If I want to experience a Tarantino movie, I’ll just take a stroll through the 30 Blocks on Sat night, heh.
Bigelow has done some great stuff in the past.but perpetuating the myth that we “got” Osama when NOT ONE SINGLE SHRED OF CREDIBLE EVIDENCE HAS BEEN RELEASED BY THIS GOVERNMENT puts her in the Joseph Geobbels camp for me.
At least no slaps at NASCAR, gun ownership, or southerners this week, thanks God.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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14th January 2013 at 10:36 am
Stucky says:
Obviously, I meant to say “The means justifies the ends.”
STFU
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14th January 2013 at 10:37 am
Eddie says:
Haven’t seen either one of those. I generally like Tarantino, but I get Kunstlers point about the innaccuracies..I’m sure Tarantino is more oriented toward entertainment than history…and almost everything he does is an homage to one of his favorite directors of the past.. Lots of little touches for movie buffs that the rest of us probably wouldn’t get.
Every place Kunstler visits appears to offer proof of decaying America culture. He should find a better theater.
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14th January 2013 at 10:40 am
Eddie says:
The Hobbit is on my must see list.
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14th January 2013 at 10:42 am
Administrator says:
Eddie
We saw The Hobbit at The Movie Tavern. I think it is a Texas based company. They have a bunch of theaters in Texas, but only one in PA. I think it is a fantastic concept. You can drink alcohol and eat dinner while watching the movie in big comfy leather seats.
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14th January 2013 at 10:48 am
Hope@ZeroKelvin says:
@Admin: You will know it is a Texas based theatre if you are also allowed to carry your firearm inside, heh.
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14th January 2013 at 11:10 am
Kill Bill says:
“….,and I wanted to get an idea of what Hollywood thinks America is about these days,…”
Who gives a ungulates glue factory ass what Hollyweird thinks??
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14th January 2013 at 12:07 pm
BUCKHED says:
Saw Gangster Squad this week-end….. I LOVE any movie th
at has Sean Penn getting his kicked.
My brother worked on Django…had a blast partying with Tarantino..said he was a nice guy.
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14th January 2013 at 12:08 pm
Kill Bill says:
You can drink alcohol and eat dinner while watching the movie in big comfy leather seats. -admin
If it was a real Texas theatre it would smell like wintergreen chewing tobacco and you would be stepping in puddles of spit that look like wet worm dirt.
Just saying.
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14th January 2013 at 12:09 pm
AWD says:
The number one movie at the theatres last week was “Texas Chainsaw 3-D”. What does that say about the mentality of our country?
It dropped this week, but people like watching other people get massacred by a chain-saw wielding psychopath more than anything else. Reminds them of our great president.
Stuck, Kunstler likes matzo balls and menorahs.
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14th January 2013 at 12:15 pm
backwardsevolution says:
I want to see a movie made from this story: AARON SWARTZ. Co-founder of Reddit, he ended his own life last Friday. He was facing 35 years in prison for downloading academic papers from JSTOR.
“Aaron Swartz was liberating information that was paid for by the public. JSTOR is a store for academic articles that the public have to pay unnecessarily high charges to view. Academics are trained by the state, their research is, for the most part, funded by the state. Academic publishers are just another example of corporate welfare. Swartz was liberating what, in any just society, belonged to the public.”
Corzine, the beloved, goes free. Swartz is hounded. Justice in a nutshell!
The following is a video of Swartz. If you can’t watch it all, AT LEAST watch the part starting at 15:00 where he talks about politicians and freedom.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Fgh2dFngFsg
This story makes me furious. If you are not mad as hell about this, go get yourself checked!
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14th January 2013 at 1:26 pm
Ron says:
His two movie picks were so obviously horrible movies why even go to see them?
Romney did have a point,about putting so much stock in killing one tall terrorist.I wonder how much was spent to get Obama,err Osama.
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14th January 2013 at 3:04 pm
Stucky says:
Who are the fice muthafuckers who voted down my Django review?
Fuckin’ niggers.
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14th January 2013 at 5:12 pm
Muck About says:
Sorry, Kuntsler will never be a movie reviewer. Of course, neither will I, since I don’t go to movies anymore because of the lack of interest I have in the awful shit being displayed.
I tried to see “Lincoln” but when it became obvious about 20 minutes into it that they intended to beatify the bastard instead of a biography of the times, I got up and left. He had the worst taste in generals ever exhibited – picking looser after looser while killing off several hundred thousand Union troops through incompetence, hesitation, idiocy and just piss-poor soldiering.
If they could have just told the truth (that the Civil War had very little to do with slavery) and it would have made a great story.
Sigh…
MA
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14th January 2013 at 5:19 pm
SSS says:
“Who are the fice (sic) muthafuckers who voted down my Django review?”
—-Stucky
Make it six. Tarantino sucks, Stux.
And here we ago again with the number five. Before, you just skipped the number, and now you can’t even spell it.
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14th January 2013 at 5:36 pm
SSS says:
Muck
You walked out too early, but I agree with your premature, but accurate assessment of how the movie was trying to portray Lincoln. Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance as Lincoln was over the top. He won the Golden Globe award for best actor, and he will win the Oscar for same. I rate his acting performance pretty much on a par with Jack Nicholson in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”
My all time favorite acting performance was Alan Arkin in “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.” That is the saddest, most heart-wrenching movie I’ve ever seen. I literally wanted to stand up in the theater and yell, “Goddamnit, where is the humanity for this guy?”
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14th January 2013 at 5:49 pm
BUCKHED says:
Wish they’ d do a movie on John Wilkes Booths….portraying him as a hero…a killer of one of the worst tyrants .
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14th January 2013 at 6:22 pm
bob says:
Tarantino is scum.
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14th January 2013 at 10:25 pm
Eddie says:
Tot he best of my knowledge, the shift to theaters that serve alcohol and food started here in Austin with Alamo Draft House, a fine establishment. There are a number of copy-cats. It’s the best way to enjoy a movie, imho.
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14th January 2013 at 9:04 am