Favorite Movies not Written by Ayn Rand

[kiaer.ts]

Folks:

I do not know if anyone put Sleepers up yet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleepers_(film)

Vittorio Gassman, Hoffman, DiNiro damn great film.

Adam

From the plot description it sounds violent, miserable and disgusting. What did I miss?

[Selene]

Ted:

The theme of justice that can be visited with integrity by folks that were not perfect,

but for various reasons maintained their integrity to a higher sense of truth.

Yes, it is is tough film, but a great one.

King Benny is superior - one scene he is feeding the pigeons and the go between says to him, "I didn't think you liked birds..."

King Benny, the mafia man looks up at him and says, "I like anything that don't talk."

Adam

[BaalChatzaf]

Yep!

Possibly my favorite scene.

Adam

Positively. That particular scene started me to rethink my position on anarchy. Having done so, I re-read Hobbes with new eye (so to speak). I am now convinced that without law (even though law is sometime unjust) we would tear each other to shreds.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Selene]

Precisely.

I still love the anarcho-capitalist paradigm as a Utopian vision,

but the concept expressed in this concentrated statement with the acting power and

skill that Scofield brings to this movie left indelible imprints in my logic nets.

The remake of the Seven Samurai, the Magnificent Seven, [brenner, McQueen, Horst Buchholtz's

(Judgment at Nuremberg)first appearance, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn (Napoleon Solo), James Coburn,

Eli Wallach and Vladamir Sokoloff also made a tremendous impression on me, in terms of an individual's

integrity despite how they arrived at their present position in life.

We all face integrity choices in life. Many times only you know what it costs you to do what you know

is right. Many times, folks around you are not aware of how, why, or how much it costs you, internally or

externally, to choose to do what you know is right and to walk that path or maintain that decision and

follow it through to finality.

However, at the end of the day your self and the values you maintain for yourself is what makes you

a great person.

Adam

[Selene]

Folks:

On TCM today, TIVO time!

Magnificent Seven @ 4:00 PM EST

Vera Cruz next, and

The Mouse that Roared which is flat out hilarious.

Adam

[kiaer.ts]

Folks:

On TCM today, TIVO time!

Magnificent Seven @ 4:00 PM EST

Vera Cruz next, and

The Mouse that Roared which is flat out hilarious.

Adam

Ted Turner will be lucky if he is remembered for founding TCM. Unfortunately, Comcast Cable recently "upgraded" my parents' service. They now get the Golf channel. they also get the Hunting Channel, which regularly features such treats as 14 y/o boys maiming pronghorns with botched shots, and whooping "Cool!" as the animal takes several minutes limping around in circles to die. They removed TCM from basic service to make room for this.

[jeffrey smith]

Folks:

Ted Turner will be lucky if he is remembered for founding TCM. Unfortunately, Comcast Cable recently "upgraded" my parents' service. They now get the Golf channel. they also get the Hunting Channel, which regularly features such treats as 14 y/o boys maiming pronghorns with botched shots, and whooping "Cool!" as the animal takes several minutes limping around in circles to die. They removed TCM from basic service to make room for this.

I think this is Comcast's way of forcing people to upgrade to Digital or whatever they call their high-premium service. One by one all the interesting channels are taken off the basic service.

But they haven't reckoned with me. The only channels I watch regularly are the Weather Channel and the local broadcast channels. The rest of the time, if I'm home, I usually listening to my music.

Nor am I going to pay $43 a month for the privilege of having my Internet service regularly go kaput.

BTW--on the integrity issue, I think Schindler's List is a very good example: one man who, having stumbled into the way of doing good almost accidently, intentionally chooses to do good even when everyone else around him is choosing to do evil: a man who chooses to be human even when everyone around him is choosing to be much less than human. (Although I could do without that mawkish coda in which all the survivors file by his grave.)

Edited July 12, 2009 by jeffrey smith

[ginny]

No, No. Jeffrey. I find the scene with the real survivors the most heartbreaking ever. I cry like a baby. How can you be so cold-hearted? These are REAL people who survived hell bonding with the actors who portrayed them ... don't get me started. I'm crying already.

Ginny

[kiaer.ts]

Folks:

Ted Turner will be lucky if he is remembered for founding TCM. Unfortunately, Comcast Cable recently "upgraded" my parents' service. They now get the Golf channel. they also get the Hunting Channel, which regularly features such treats as 14 y/o boys maiming pronghorns with botched shots, and whooping "Cool!" as the animal takes several minutes limping around in circles to die. They removed TCM from basic service to make room for this.

I think this is Comcast's way of forcing people to upgrade to Digital or whatever they call their high-premium service. One by one all the interesting channels are taken off the basic service.

But they haven't reckoned with me. The only channels I watch regularly are the Weather Channel and the local broadcast channels. The rest of the time, if I'm home, I usually listening to my music.

Nor am I going to pay $43 a month for the privilege of having my Internet service regularly go kaput.

BTW--on the integrity issue, I think Schindler's List is a very good example: one man who, having stumbled into the way of doing good almost accidently, intentionally chooses to do good even when everyone else around him is choosing to do evil: a man who chooses to be human even when everyone around him is choosing to be much less than human. (Although I could do without that mawkish coda in which all the survivors file by his grave.)

I can sympathize with just watchinɡ the weather channel, it has no indecency to put up with. I do sometimes enjoy scfi-fi, comedy (south park) history and animal planet as well as TCM and local channels.

As for Schindler's list, I probably wont watch it unless I break a leɡ and the battery ɡoes out on the remote. I like movies with happy endinɡs, but moralizinɡ feel-ɡood movies in B&W? I may be the only person on earth who refuses to watch ɡood will huntinɡ too. Oh, well, bah humbuɡ.

(Currently I just finished HBO's Rome and am startinɡ season three of Six Feet Under.)

[jeffrey smith]

No, No. Jeffrey. I find the scene with the real survivors the most heartbreaking ever. I cry like a baby. How can you be so cold-hearted? These are REAL people who survived hell bonding with the actors who portrayed them ... don't get me started. I'm crying already.

Ginny

Possibly a different personal context:

1)I tend to dislike, and be suspicious of, anything that seems sentimental (which I define as purposely manipulated emotion). For me, the appropriate ending was the march of the survivors towards their future at the end of the film's action. That's the point at which I started to tear up. The coda turns it from being a march to the future into a salute to the past (and a march into the "untravelled bourne").

2) My grandparents all came to the US no later than the 1920s, but almost every member of their familes who did not emigrate died in the Shoah; the only exception was a cousin, her husband, and her children, who were hidden by a gentile neighbor in the neighbor's oven (apparently Russian peasants of that era had really big ovens--it was more the size of a large bakery oven) before travelling, mostly by foot, to Shanghai and eventually to the US. Of the rest, my family had to assume they died. As my mother once said of her paternal grandparents: "the letters stopped, and we never heard anything after that". I was born well after the war, but the linkage is direct enough that I react a bit more intensely to the topic of the Shoah. When the TV miniseries War and Remembrance showed the march to the death chambers as experienced by the Jewish victims themselves, I had to run out of the room crying because I couldn't stand to watch the full scene.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I certainly am a sucker for that scene.

I still feel the goosebumps when I saw "Schindler's Jews" walking toward the camera and the change from BW to color.

Michael

[jeffrey smith]

I can sympathize with just watchinɡ the weather channel, it has no indecency to put up with. I do sometimes enjoy scfi-fi, comedy (south park) history and animal planet as well as TCM and local channels.

As for Schindler's list, I probably wont watch it unless I break a leɡ and the battery ɡoes out on the remote. I like movies with happy endinɡs, but moralizinɡ feel-ɡood movies in B&W? I may be the only person on earth who refuses to watch ɡood will huntinɡ too. Oh, well, bah humbuɡ.

(Currently I just finished HBO's Rome and am startinɡ season three of Six Feet Under.)

Actually, I do watch ScyFy or whatever it calls itself now whenever it takes a break from commercials and puts on a Doctor Who show.

Schindler's List--you should definitely watch it. The only moralizing feel good moment in the movie is the coda I'm complaining about--there is no moralizing during the main part of the film; you simply see a man choosing to do good with full awareness of the issues involved. Plus some very good camera work at critical points. It's one of those films that should be on everyone's Best Movie Evah list.

(And the software seems to be playing around the "g"s in the blockquote. What's up with that?)

Edited July 12, 2009 by jeffrey smith

[ginny]

Okay, Jeffrey. If you can tear up when the survivors come marching toward the camera, I take back the coldhearted crack. You're a softy. I just don't separate the marching scene and the stones-on-grave scene. Maybe I'm too busy crying. Jeez, I still remembered the first time I saw the movie. I sat in the theater paralized for half an hour. I just couldn't move.

Ginny

[Selene]

Finishing my sports fixation with great sports movies.

The Natural

For Love of the Game

Hoosiers*

Field of Dreams

Remember the Titans*

Glory Road*

Pride of the Yankees*

I almost put in

It Happens Every Spring with Ray Miland - he finds a chemical mix that causes the ball to repel and becomes a phenom

61*

* All the asterisks denote based on real events or people

[BaalChatzaf]

I certainly am a sucker for that scene.

I still feel the goosebumps when I saw "Schindler's Jews" walking toward the camera and the change from BW to color.

Michael

Not just "Schindler's Jews" but their children and children's children. There is a Rabbinic saying: He who saves a life, it is though he has saved the entire world. There are something like ten thousand people who now exist who would not exist if Schindler had not save 1100 (or so) Jews from the Nazis.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michelle]

Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, a film I'm still surprised I enjoy so much, considering I loathe comedy in general and mass-appeal blockbuster comedies in particular. I think it is because the movie, for a mass-appeal blockbuster comedy film, is surprisingly thoughtful in its portrayal of two men who become strangers in a strange land -- Austin Powers and Dr. Evil were men of their times, and now they find themselves baffled and lost in a world where popular morality, currency value, technology, and the balance of political power have all changed dramatically.

Also, the parodic elements, which there are many of, are very funny if you 'get it,' but you don't need to 'get' the various allusions to 60s spy films to enjoy the movie.

It's too bad they had to go and make all of those horrid sequels.

Edited July 15, 2009 by Michelle R

[ginny]

Michelle, if you loathe comedies, have you ever given "Some Like It Hot" a try? It's from the '50s and old-fashioned, but I don't think there's ever been a funnier movie. And the acting was first-rate. I assume you've heard of the movie, but in case you haven't, it's Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon running from the mob by joining an all-girl band on a train ride down to Florida by donning wigs and pretending to be woman. Hysterical.

Ginny

[Selene]

Michelle, if you loathe comedies, have you ever given "Some Like It Hot" a try? It's from the '50s and old-fashioned, but I don't think there's ever been a funnier movie. And the acting was first-rate. I assume you've heard of the movie, but in case you haven't, it's Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon running from the mob by joining an all-girl band on a train ride down to Florida by donning wigs and pretending to be woman. Hysterical.

Ginny

Ginny:

And let's not forget one of Jack Kennedy's lovers who plays a great ditzy blond roll and being an Italian male loved that non-dress which was super racy at the time. Joey Brown played the real millionaire. Great comedy.

Michele: I was actually saddened that you "loathe" comedy. Why such a strong statement for an art form. I mean I know you have serious self expression problems...yeah right!

Adam

[Michelle]

Michelle, if you loathe comedies, have you ever given "Some Like It Hot" a try? It's from the '50s and old-fashioned, but I don't think there's ever been a funnier movie. And the acting was first-rate. I assume you've heard of the movie, but in case you haven't, it's Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon running from the mob by joining an all-girl band on a train ride down to Florida by donning wigs and pretending to be woman. Hysterical.

Ginny

Ginny, I have heard of it, but have avoided it until now. Was that a mistake? I tend to get irritated with movies and shows where the focus of the plot is on crossdressing.

[Michelle]

Michele: I was actually saddened that you "loathe" comedy. Why such a strong statement for an art form. I mean I know you have serious self expression problems...yeah right!

Adam

Two reasons:

1) Comedy is the hardest genre to do well. Ever been to a club and watched amateur comedians trying out new material get booed off the stage? Comedy can either be irritating or hilarious. No in-between. And most people do not fall on the favorable side of that irritating/hilarious dichotomy.

2) Comedy is not something that can stand on its own. The best comedians know this. Good comedy is only supplemental to some actual message or theme. Have you ever seen a Bill Hicks performance, or a video of one of his performances (and yes, I know most Objectivists would loathe watching him merely for the aggressive leftism inherent in his personality, but ignore that for a minute)? He had jokes, sure, but he knew that the jokes were only fluffing for the heart of his routine. Rather, he had something to say, and he would engage in a kind of one-sided dialogue with his audience about the things he cared about. He did so in a humorous manner, but he wasn't being frivolous or nihilistic in the process.

It applies the same to art. Comedy is only supplemental. Pure comedy, that is, comedy for comedy's sake, always collapses upon itself, either from frivolity or nihilistic excesses.

Watch any good comedy--comedy that you find very funny--and you'll almost always see it is about something.

And hell, even with this type of comedy (comedy about something), it usually suffers from the first problem (being unfunny).

Edited July 16, 2009 by Michelle R

[ginny]

Michelle, do stop avoiding comedies, girl! Some of them are very good. I think you should go and give Some Like It Hot a try. It's nothing like the stupid comedies you see today. Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe give a marvelous performance. Just see it and let us know.

Ginny

[Michelle]

Michelle, do stop avoiding comedies, girl! Some of them are very good. I think you should go and give Some Like It Hot a try. It's nothing like the stupid comedies you see today. Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe give a marvelous performance. Just see it and let us know.

Ginny

I'll give it a try. I've been looking for something new to watch, anyway.

I remember Ninotchka being fun.

Edited July 16, 2009 by Michelle R

[Reidy]

I can't imagine why anyone would say comedy needs a message. Some of my favorites are Private Lives, A Night at the Opera, Trouble in Paradise and the aforementioned Some Like It Hot. All are acknowledged classics in their respective genres, but not one expresses a message. They express a sense of life as Rand described it, but that is a much broader concept than message, and the second would become meaningless if you reduced it to the first.

[jeffrey smith]

Add to the list of comedies Ruthless People, with Bette Midler and Danny DeVito. It fully deserves to be on any list of classic comedies.