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"I never knew what it was to feel disgust and contempt ‘till I traveled in America." – Charles Dickens, 1842
"I have many friends in America, and feel a grateful interest in the country. To represent me as viewing it with ill-nature, animosity, or partisanship, is merely to do a very foolish thing, which is always a very easy one; and which I have disregarded for eight years, and could disregard for eighty more."
- Charles Dickens, 1850
I wasn’t going to watch this movie. It was the bad critics’ reviews that made me do it. Not because I use the supposed out-of-touchness of critics as a barometer against what I would like or anything like that. It was because they used words that said things about my hero.
Michael Moore? Nah, Charles Dickens.
Like Roger Moore from The Orlando Sentinel:
One hundred and sixty-five years after Charles Dickens called for civic reform, compassion, humanity and charity to be watchwords in human life with A Christmas Carol, Hollywood's most rabid conservatives have rallied to make An American Carol, a comedy that equates dissent with "treason," that presents Bill O'Reilly as a model of political restraint and offers us Kelsey Grammer as the ghost of General George S. Patton.
Yeah, when I think "Blood and Guts," I think Frasier.
Or like Prairie Miller from News Blaze:
Kicking off the theatrics with a thud, is Leslie Nielsen as a senile grandpa cooking up inedible burgers at a Fourth of July picnic. When his grandchildren gag on the grub and demand a story instead, Grandpa conjures up a tall tale about a pompous, obese and unpatriotic eating disorder liberal moviemaker named Michael, uh, Malone (Kevin Farley), who hates America so badly that like Scrooge at Christmastime, he wants to abolish the Fourth Of July holiday. He also wants to get famous so badly, that Malone accepts funding for his next movie from Al Qaeda. Ha ha.
If Charles Dickens isn't rolling over in his grave by now, there's more.
Makes Dickens roll in his grave? I haven’t heard that phrase since the 1998 Great Expectations movie. Intriguing ...
But what interested me more was Roger's quote. Why bring up Dickens' "civic reform, compassion, humanity and charity" in a way that implies this movie works against or betrays those principles? It’s almost as if Roger Moore feels like the movie has stolen something from American liberals by using Dickens' story structure as a loud bullhorn for hawkish American conservatism.
So, has it? Well, that's a long story.
( Read more... )
"I have many friends in America, and feel a grateful interest in the country. To represent me as viewing it with ill-nature, animosity, or partisanship, is merely to do a very foolish thing, which is always a very easy one; and which I have disregarded for eight years, and could disregard for eighty more."
- Charles Dickens, 1850
I wasn’t going to watch this movie. It was the bad critics’ reviews that made me do it. Not because I use the supposed out-of-touchness of critics as a barometer against what I would like or anything like that. It was because they used words that said things about my hero.
Michael Moore? Nah, Charles Dickens.
Like Roger Moore from The Orlando Sentinel:
One hundred and sixty-five years after Charles Dickens called for civic reform, compassion, humanity and charity to be watchwords in human life with A Christmas Carol, Hollywood's most rabid conservatives have rallied to make An American Carol, a comedy that equates dissent with "treason," that presents Bill O'Reilly as a model of political restraint and offers us Kelsey Grammer as the ghost of General George S. Patton.
Yeah, when I think "Blood and Guts," I think Frasier.
Or like Prairie Miller from News Blaze:
Kicking off the theatrics with a thud, is Leslie Nielsen as a senile grandpa cooking up inedible burgers at a Fourth of July picnic. When his grandchildren gag on the grub and demand a story instead, Grandpa conjures up a tall tale about a pompous, obese and unpatriotic eating disorder liberal moviemaker named Michael, uh, Malone (Kevin Farley), who hates America so badly that like Scrooge at Christmastime, he wants to abolish the Fourth Of July holiday. He also wants to get famous so badly, that Malone accepts funding for his next movie from Al Qaeda. Ha ha.
If Charles Dickens isn't rolling over in his grave by now, there's more.
Makes Dickens roll in his grave? I haven’t heard that phrase since the 1998 Great Expectations movie. Intriguing ...
But what interested me more was Roger's quote. Why bring up Dickens' "civic reform, compassion, humanity and charity" in a way that implies this movie works against or betrays those principles? It’s almost as if Roger Moore feels like the movie has stolen something from American liberals by using Dickens' story structure as a loud bullhorn for hawkish American conservatism.
So, has it? Well, that's a long story.
( Read more... )
