31 responses to
“Oliver Stone’s revenge.”

1. moe99 said on July 29th, 2008 at 11:47 am

   His­tory will not be kind to W. And it’s here already!

2. whitebeard said on July 29th, 2008 at 11:51 am

   Do you remem­ber the debate on what can be done in Pho­to­shop to change pho­tos and how far can you go. Well, the LA Times is going to see how far with its new Sun­day mag­a­zine at http://​adage​.com/​m​e​d​i​a​w​o​r​k​s​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​?​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​_​i​d​=​129945
   The com­ment ““You can­not Pho­to­shop or alter pho­tog­ra­phy at all if it comes from a news­room,” Ms. Ander­son pointed out. LA will not be so con­strained. “You know the mag­a­zine world,” she said,” should open up some inter­est­ing debates.
   Let’s see. Yes. Can you sub­si­tute a Pepsi can for that Coke can? Of course we can.

3. whitebeard said on July 29th, 2008 at 11:59 am

   W. is on my fall movie sched­ule for sure now; I was wait­ing for the other Stone to drop for a long time.

4. LAMary said on July 29th, 2008 at 12:29 pm

   The LA Times Mag­a­zine has been mashed up, tossed out, and redesigned too many times. Bring back Bob Sipchen and con­tent beyond restau­rant reviews and over­priced trendy crap.

5. beb said on July 29th, 2008 at 12:38 pm

   About two weeks back armed men broke into the Michi­gan Humane Society’s Detroit office dur­ing busi­ness hours. The armed men weren’t look­ing to rob any­one, they wanted all the shelter’s pit­bulls. How­ever since the shel­ter does not adopt out pit­bulls where were none for them to take. Grand Theft — pitbulls.…only in Detroit.

6. Sue said on July 29th, 2008 at 1:12 pm

   Just fin­ished a “rise and fall” type biog­ra­phy on Karl Rove and I’m still feel­ing a bit queasy. Given that Karl’s polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tion meth­ods date all the way back to his Texas days and from the start he didn’t have a prob­lem tak­ing out selected Repub­li­cans as well as Democ­rats and inno­cent bystanders, I can’t help but won­der why those who put him in power (not just W.) were will­ing to ever let him out of Texas. Won­der how Oliver Stone will han­dle Karl.

7. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 29th, 2008 at 1:35 pm

   Karl will be played by Mar­lon Brando (ok, a dig­i­tal repli­cant of Mar­lon Brando).

8. LAMary said on July 29th, 2008 at 1:38 pm

   I think Jack Nichol­son would be a good Karl.

9. moe99 said on July 29th, 2008 at 1:54 pm

   Karl Rove is being played by Toby Jones, an actor I’ve admired for his work in The Painted Veil and Amaz­ing Grace. I hope he can muster the nas­ti­ness and pres­ence needed to por­tray Karl. He’s like a junior Phillip Sey­mour Hoffman.

10. coozledad said on July 29th, 2008 at 2:06 pm

    LA Mary: It looks like they got a ringer for Karl. Maybe he can act. As much as Rove’s on TV any­body ought to do a plau­si­ble job just by study­ing video­tape.
    I have to dis­agree with you about Jack, though. He can do the crazy, but in his good work, peo­ple can find a lit­tle of them­selves in the mad­ness. Karl ‘s evil is more a warm pud­dle of some non-Newtonian fluid most peo­ple would be inclined to step around if they encoun­tered it on a side­walk. I’m think­ing more of a genet­i­cally mod­i­fied amal­gam of Paul Williams, Don­ald Pleas­ance and Andy Warhol, with a lit­tle touch of Hein­rich Himmler.

11. Joe Kobiela said on July 29th, 2008 at 2:31 pm

    I won’t give Oliver Stone one cent of my money to see HIS take on Bush. But let me ask you one thing, If you took a hard par­ty­ing Lib­eral, that screwed, drank, did drugs, and shirked his mil­i­tary duty and he became pres­i­dent, you all would think it was the great­est feel good story of the cen­tury. Oh wait, we already did that with Bubba Clin­ton.
    Pilot Joe

12. Julie Robinson said on July 29th, 2008 at 3:04 pm

    Toby Jones played Tru­man Capote in Infa­mous and he can be all that C’dad says. The evil is under­neath the pleas­ant man­ner and sim­per­ing voice. It’s impressive.

13. Jim in FL said on July 29th, 2008 at 3:17 pm

    Well, lets see…When Clin­ton was president:

    1. We weren’t at war.
    2. My 401k more than dou­bled in value.
    3. The fed­eral bud­get deficit was shrink­ing, soon to become sur­plus.
    4. Gas prices aver­aged $1.58/gallon.
    5. Ter­ror­ists blew up a fed­eral build­ing in Okla­homa City, killing hun­dreds, but the guilty were found and brought to justice.

    Yeah…I felt pretty good.

14. nancy said on July 29th, 2008 at 3:27 pm

    You can hang­ing the screw­ing on Clin­ton. And sure, he gamed the sys­tem to avoid the draft (as did W). Drink­ing and drug­ging, don’t think so. (That’s part of what made the “didn’t inhale” claim so ludi­crous.) Clin­ton was a poor boy, extra­or­di­nar­ily ambi­tious, who got where he was by work­ing very very hard and being equally smart.

    Dubya’s par­ti­sans will never under­stand the con­tempt he arouses in peo­ple who weren’t born on third base with a long lead toward home, the way he was — and still he man­aged to nearly piss it all away. If most of us stayed drunk until the age of 40, we’d be pay­ing for it until our dying day. That’s why I’m intrigued by the idea of this movie. The “Won­der­ful World” theme shows maybe Stone brought a sense of humor to this project, some­thing sorely miss­ing from the rest of his work. Fin­gers crossed; thumbs still noncommittal.

15. Danny said on July 29th, 2008 at 3:34 pm

    Joe, I think a lot of folks here are going to come home with hick­ies and soggy under­pants after see­ing this movie. They’ll prob­a­bly pack­age the DVD release with that Rea­gan made-for-TV movie and An Incon­ve­nient Truth. It’ll be like Lord of the Rings, except even more fictional.

16. LAMary said on July 29th, 2008 at 3:41 pm

    Speak­ing of soggy under­pants, did you feel the earth­quake Danny? It shook pretty good here. 5.8 is def­i­nitely noticeable.

17. Danny said on July 29th, 2008 at 3:45 pm

    No, but many of my cowork­ers felt it. I think I was walk­ing at the time and that is why I didn’t notice it.

18. Sue said on July 29th, 2008 at 3:50 pm

    Gotta pop in here: I will not kill myself if John McCain is elected pres­i­dent. I keep in mind that his pri­mary cam­paign last elec­tion was effec­tively tor­pe­doed by vicious lies spread by mem­bers of his own party. Lies that involved his child. I’m not thrilled with him, but I’m not thrilled by politi­cians in gen­eral; they have to do dis­taste­ful things to get elected. But after the elec­tion, usu­ally, they remem­ber that they were elected to gov­ern, not move the party agenda for­ward by any means nec­es­sary. I would very much like to look for­ward from here on in. Both McCain and Obama will prob­a­bly make decent pres­i­dents. What has been going on the last sev­eral years dis­gusts me, and I can­not believe that we would put any­one in office who will not begin imme­di­ately to clean some things up. Danny, I am offended by your com­ment. I don’t need crap like that in a blog that’s known for respect­ful behav­ior. I think I’m outta here for awhile.

19. Dexter said on July 29th, 2008 at 3:51 pm

    I’ve seen all the big Stone films but this one arouses no curios­ity.
    I am so sick of this bas­tard at 1600 the last thing I want to do is go see a movie about him and his ascen­dancy , or legacy-grab, or whad­de­vah.
    What I am most con­cerned with is the fact that as bad as this jerk fucked-up the coun­try in his first term, he was elected to a sec­ond. That is a mys­tery no analy­sis ever sat­is­fied.
    How can any­one believe that if Bush was re-elected, McCain can­not be also? No mat­ter how burned-out and con­fused McCain is, no mat­ter how wrong he has been as a sycho­phant for the prez on Iraq, after all he is a Repub­li­can, and they got the cur­rent occu­pant of the White House re-elected after he had set the course for a drain of the econ­omy for a war that even a top Repugg adviser two days ago called “fuck­ing stupid.”

20. nancy said on July 29th, 2008 at 3:51 pm

    Oh, Sue. That’s why we love Danny. Please come back tomorrow.

21. Kirk said on July 29th, 2008 at 4:06 pm

    I enjoyed “Pri­mary Col­ors,” and I’ll prob­a­bly enjoy “W.”

22. del said on July 29th, 2008 at 4:15 pm

    Agree with Dex­ter. The deeper and more trou­bling ques­tion is how W. got re-elected. For­ever changes the tenor of the debate over the mer­its of our “democ­racy.“
    Sue, don’t let Danny get your goat. He rebuts with humor when the pro­saic truth proves prob­lem­atic. Give him points for cre­ativ­ity. Soggy under­pants? Maybe Danny liked George Clooney’s por­trayal as one of the Soggy Bot­tom Boys in O Brother, Where Art Thou?

23. Danny said on July 29th, 2008 at 4:26 pm

    del.…you mis­pelled prozac.

    Sue. Chill. Nev­er­mind all that. This is why I am loved.

24. Catherine said on July 29th, 2008 at 4:37 pm

    Mary & Danny, I def­i­nitely felt the quake here in Pasadena. The curi­ous thing I think y’all might find inter­est­ing: I didn’t turn on the TV (so-called) news to find out the mag­ni­tude, epi­cen­ter, dam­age, etc. I just went right to the USGS web­site, which was updated within 5 min­utes. I don’t need video of gro­cers in their shops with push brooms and some bro­ken jars. This might be one of the things killing the MSM — folks don’t need inter­pre­ta­tion and talk­ing heads when the facts are read­ily available.

25. del said on July 29th, 2008 at 4:46 pm

    Spelled pro­saic right but messed up syco­phant a few days ago. Is it mis­spell or mispell?

26. LAMary said on July 29th, 2008 at 5:17 pm

    Cather­ine
    We don’t have radio or TV here in my office and the phones, cell phones and inter­net didn’t work for what seemed a long time. It seemed long because my kids are home and I’m ten miles away. I didn’t know then where the epi­cen­ter was or how large the quake was. I con­fess I started cry­ing when I was finally able to reach them and find out every­thing was ok.

27. Dexter said on July 29th, 2008 at 5:22 pm

    Del…caught that film late last week on cable. John Tur­turro as Pete was great. Almost as good as Roberto Benigni and Tom Waits and John Lurie were in “Down by Law” (1986) in the prison-escape-big-adventure genre.

28. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 29th, 2008 at 6:02 pm

    I sec­ond Kirk’s com­ment, and [koff] i voted for W. the sec­ond time, eyes wide open. Could have voted oth­er­wise, didn’t, ain’t los­ing sleep over it. But if the Stone movie is any­where near as enter­tain­ingly inter­est­ing about the inter­sec­tion of pol­i­tics and peo­ple as “Pri­mary Col­ors” was, i’ll go. Oliver did ok with “Pla­toon” but it was no “Deer Hunter” or “Apoc­Now,” and “JFK” was embar­rass­ing on so many lev­els i skipped “Nixon” and then was star­tled by “WTC.” I love Ron Rosenbaum’s take on Oliver Stone (google the two names in quotes and check out the story, involv­ing uri­nals and lots of yelling).

    What i don’t get is that i went look­ing for “Wag the Dog” the other day, and can’t find it on DVD any­where, and don’t want to plug in the cords for the VHS again.

    If you really want a view on pol­i­tics and peo­ple and pro­ce­dure, get “The Mila­gro Bean­field War,” which is the world in pic­turesque miniature.

29. Catherine said on July 29th, 2008 at 6:50 pm

    Mary, yes. My kids were right here and that averted much trauma. Hus­band was out and the cell­phones didn’t work — not so much fun, that. Glad every­one is OK at your end!

30. moe99 said on July 29th, 2008 at 10:32 pm

    We got Wag the Dog via Net­flix. Just like Z. Easy to order, hard to sit through the latter.

31. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 29th, 2008 at 11:34 pm

    Look­ing back over Pres­i­den­tial endgames –

    Kennedy — well, yeah.

    John­son — ram­bling mono­logues in dark­ened Oval Office, riot­ers in the street.

    Nixon — ram­bling mono­logues in dark­ened Oval Office, impeach­ment com­mit­tee in the hall.

    Ford — Poland is free? Infla­tion, swine flu, prat­falls; no scandals.

    Carter — Bert Lance, malaise, recrim­i­na­tions, Kennedy ego.

    Rea­gan — Iran-Contra, the birth of the depart­ing staffer bio, Nancy with astrol­ogy charts in the East Wing.

    Bush 41 — Checks watch, asks about check-out.

    Clin­ton — Move on.

    Bush 43 — Alberto.

    Point being they just don’t go gen­tle into that good night. Ford man­aged to avoid exit scan­dals more than any­one on this list (JFK’s came long after, but will last in mem­ory), but both par­ties have trou­ble mak­ing a clean exit from the stage.