User comments are often very dumb

Netflix, Amazon, imdb.com

Turning on the old day time talk show, there would occasionally be something on there...

There was a comic book about the Jeffrey Dahmer case. Families of Dahmer's victims were offended by it, naturally, but everyone there in the studio audience, everyone on the show, had the idea that comic books were intended only for children. They heard "comic book" and they imagined this on the rack next to Heckle and Jeckle and Scrooge McDuck comics.

They did a show on a company selling trading cards. They printed up serial killer trading cards. They were sold at specialty stores, and they kept explaining that. But, apparently, everyone in the audience imagined that they were selling these at candy counters as bubble gum cards.

And, finally, there was The Faces of Death, the profoundly offensive "documentary" showing archival footage as well as fake footage of people dying.

I had some friends who rented one of those movies on videotape. I watched a few minutes of it and left. The guy who insisted on renting it changed his mind about watching it, but two guys who later turned out to have some serious mental problems kept watching.

One thing I thought was strange. They showed a scene which they claimed was filmed by a news crew of a man setting himself on fire to protest nuclear energy. I thought it was strange that there was a reaction shot---the camera man apparently stopped filming a man on fire to get a shot of the crowd reacting to his being on fire. I was also impressed with how quickly men in security guard uniforms rushed in with fire extinguishers.

That footage was obviously fake.

There was other stuff that was apparently real, and a lot that I would assume was fake. The whole thing was profoundly offensive in any case.

They were discussing this "documentary" on The Phil Donahue Show because a disturbed 13-year-old repeatedly watched it before murdering another child.

People were right to be repulsed and disgusted by the movie and it likely played a role in the child's murder, but I bring it up here because the audience seemed to think this video was a product of "Hollywood", that this was produced by the mainstream movie industry. They couldn't distinguish a movie produced by a movie studio from one pieced together by some scumbag with access to an editing room.

"It's a movie, ain't it?"

In a way, it's similar to the user comments and reviews on Netflix, imdb, and Amazon. These people seem to have no idea what they're looking at. If it's on DVD, they assume it's the product of a major studio then they're bewildered and angry when it's not what they expected.

Look at amateur reviews of extreme low budget movies, any art film, any underground movie, any foriegn film, anything remotely avant garde. Anything that's not complete crap.

I heard that idiots kept returning The Blair Witch Project to video stores complaining that it was filmed on videotape and black & white film.

I've thought for a long time that mediocrity is the ideal. Just give them what they expect and make them happy.

Faces of Death vs. Jenny Jones

Well, this horrible series, The Faces of Death seemed to be partly responsible for one murder of a child. Jenny Jones, the daytime talk show host who was attacking the long-haired wretch who produced the disgusting Jeffrey Dahmer comic book, was more directly responsible for one murder. A young man named Jonathan Schmitz was humiliated on her show. He had a history of mental illness. He shot and killed the gay guy who he felt humiliated him on the show.

That puts Jenny Jones on par with Nancy Grace who was responsible for one suicide. She lured a young mother named Melinda Duckett onto her show then badgered and attacked her, accusing her of being responsible for her own child's disappearance. Police had never considered the woman a suspect in the disappearance of her 2-year-old son. But Grace badgered and abused her, essentially accusing her of murdering her own child. She committed suicide before the show was aired the next day. The scum at CNN then allowed Grace to use to her show for the next several days to justify her conduct by continuing to attack the dead girl.

Nancy Grace claims that she hates crime because her fiancé was killed. But I'd say the guy really dodged a bullet when his co-worker shot him. Imagine being married to Nancy Grace.

Grace, by the way, wrote a book in which she lied repeatedly about her alleged fiancé's death. She claimed he was killed by a stranger when he was killed by a co-worker, she claimed that the killer refused to speak to police when he actually confessed almost immediately. She claimed that the jury deliberated for days when it actually took a couple of hours and she falsely claimed that he repeatedly appealed his conviction---he never appealed.

How did she get all this wrong? Did she even know the victim? Did she pick a random murder victim she saw in the paper and claim he was her boyfriend to hide the fact that no man would ever want her?

Nancy Grace is now married. Sadly, she has children, twins. They were born 7 months after her wedding, which is why she lied about their date of birth. My guess is that they'll end up just like "Dr Laura's" sick bastard son.

Jon Voight's an idiot

Last year, Jon Voight wrote a silly "open letter" to Barack Obama accusing him--I don't get this at all--of being anti-Israeli, of hating Jews and trying to promote anti-Semitism world-wide.

This has been a standard smear against blacks for years now. Baseless accusations of anti-Semitism are just a slight refinement of the old racist smear they used to use against black leaders, that they "hate white people". Glenn Beck tried to use the old version against Obama and got slapped down, but people seem to be getting away with the new version.

Voight recently traveled to Israel. He said he was "shocked" to find that Palestinians are treated in Israeli hospitals. It's an odd thing to be surprised by. For one thing, Zionists have been using this as part of their propaganda for years.

It should be noted that Israeli hospitals are being paid by the Palestinian Authority for treating Palestinian patients. They're making a fortune from it, gouging the Palestinians for the limited funds they receive from international donors. The Palestinian Authority got tired of paying for Israeli propaganda and they didn't want to be dependent on Israeli hospitals, so when the Israelis launched their attack on Gaza, they briefly halted payments to the Israelis. And the instant the payments stopped, the Israeli hospitals began refusing Palestinian patients.

No, Israelis aren't helping Palestinians. They're just grubbing for Palestinian money.

It is strange, though, that Voight loved Israel so much even though he assumed that Israeli hospitals were racially segregated and that Israeli doctors refused to treat non-Jews.

Here's Voight's "open letter" to Obama. Really amazing. Making a valid criticism of a politician is such a simple thing to do. Making a criticism based on an ideological difference is even easier. But there's nothing here but baseless nonsense:

June 22, 2010

President Obama:

You will be the first American president that lied to the Jewish people, and the American people as well, when you said that you would defend Israel, the only Democratic state in the Middle East, against all their enemies. You have done just the opposite. You have propagandized Israel, until they look like they are everyone’s enemy — and it has resonated throughout the world. You are putting Israel in harm’s way, and you have promoted anti-Semitism throughout the world.

You have brought this to a people who have given the world the Ten Commandments and most laws we live by today. The Jewish people have given the world our greatest scientists and philosophers, and the cures for many diseases, and now you play a very dangerous game so you can look like a true martyr to what you see and say are the underdogs. But the underdogs you defend are murderers and criminals who want Israel eradicated.

You have brought to Arizona a civil war, once again defending the criminals and illegals, creating a meltdown for good, loyal, law-abiding citizens. Your destruction of this country may never be remedied, and we may never recover. I pray to God you stop, and I hope the people in this great country realize your agenda is not for the betterment of mankind, but for the betterment of your politics.

With heartfelt and deep concern for America and Israel,

Jon Voight

Even if you accept his attacks on the President of the United States, Voight traitorously insults America's loyal NATO ally Turkey by calling Israel the "only Democracy in the middle east." Even if Israel were a democracy, they wouldn't deserve any credit for it since they actively oppose the democratic revolution in Egypt.



And one more thing:

What exactly did Voight mean when referred to "the Jewish people and...the American people as well"? If you're Jewish you're not American? Was he using the word "Jew" when he meant "Israeli", or more correctly, "Israeli Jew"?

Someone commented on this entry and stupidly accused me of hating Jews. Imagine his reaction if I had said anything like that.

09/02/11

Something they used to do in movies based on plays

Michael Caine put out an instructional video on movie acting. At one point in it, we see an actor performing a scene from a play. Maybe it was from Alfie. I don't know. He's sitting in an apartment with his girlfriend. His girlfriend leaves the room and goes into the kitchen, and the actor turns and begins speaking to the camera.

Michael Caine stops him. The actor was a stage actor, so when he starts talking to the audience he speaks loudly so they can hear. On film, Caine tells him, you speak quietly, confidentially, so the girlfriend in the kitchen can't hear.

But there are a lot of movies based on plays where they don't do this. I'm talking about old movies. And it's very strange because the movies were generally made with actors and directors who had no connection to the stage production. The actors bellow out their lines as if they were on stage even when it's wildly inappropriate in a movie. Maybe they were trying to recreate the experience of viewing a play.

I watched a family drama called The Dark at the Top of the Stairs. There are a bunch of relatives visiting a couple whose marriage is on the rocks. This is in the '20s. The wife is thinking of taking the children and leaving. She has talked to her sister, Eve Arden, about it. Arden is afraid her sister will try to move in with her, so she takes her husband aside and tells him what he should say if the woman says anything to him about it. The problem is that she bellows out her lines at the top of her lungs. If it was real, everyone in the house would have heard.
Then there was Every Little Crook and Nanny. About a nanny who kidnaps the son of a Mafia don played by Victor Mature.In one scene, we see the nanny and her husband or boyfriend or someone-----I think it was Lynne Redgrave and Paul Sand. They are in an apartment with the kidnapped child. I don't remember if the child even knew at that point that he was being held for ransom. But the couple is shouting every word they say, even things that are supposed to be spoken normally. The kid can hear, the neighbors can hear, anyone who happens to be walking past down the hallway can hear them shouting as loud as they can about the kidnapping they committed.

There was one scene I remember from The Bad Seed. Leroy, the handyman, is working, looking up and talking loudly to the camera. There was no way to do it realistically in a movie, but they could have made an effort---had him mutter to himself as he worked.

Angus T. Jones looks trim and fit

I posted this long ago, and I hope it doesn't come across as anti-Angus T. Jones. I thought he was adorable as a kid. Now he's a nice-looking young man.

Angus T Jones has lost weight. Or maybe he's just gotten taller and remained the same weight, but he looks rather slim now. He has sideburns. He also wears glasses. I wonder if they're real. The poor boy plays such a dumb kid on Two and a Half Men, and there are celebrities who wear fake glasses to make themselves look more intelligent----that's why Kato Kaelin started wearing them, and, I heard, Sylvester Stallone.

I've always wondered how overweight actors felt about fat jokes. There was Kate Smith who started out in Vaudville. She appeared in an act with two comics would say things like, "Every time that girl sits down, it looks like a dirigible coming in to dock!" They say that poor Kate would sob in her dressing room after each show.

In Angus T Jones' case, he was just a child, yet they were making jokes about him eating and eating and eating. There are actresses on TV who've been turned into anorexics this way. There were fat jokes, jokes about various excretory functions, masturbation. Jokes about poor hygiene. But as he got older, they gave him girlfriends.

Jon Voight: Just embarrassing

Jon Voight turned into an especially idiotic Bush supporter. He used to at least give the impression that he was a leftist, or at least a liberal. I don't remember him expressing any political views back then, but, if he did, I would have found it embarrassing.

It happens all the time. Dim witted people enthusiastically embrace some opinion you sort of share.

There was a hippie-like person---this was many years ago. I was hanging around at the university and he started talking to me. Nothing he said interested me, so he started talking to another guy who was listening carefully.

The hippie guy started explaining the Russian Revolution.

"The Communists---were the Mafia," he said.

"You mean the Communists were like the Mafia?"

"No, no. The Communists---were the Mafia."

"You mean the Communists acted like the Mafia?"

"No, no. The Communists----were the Mafia."

"How were the Communists like the Mafia?"

"No, no. The Communists---were the Mafia."

Some time later, he spoke at a political rally. He started by saying that they don't usually let him speak at these things. Then he started talking about how John Lennon and Yoko Ono were living separately at the time Lennon was killed. He seemed to think this was extremely significant to the peace movement.

But that wasn't really a case of an idiot sharing your views. That was more a case of an idiot giving the vague impression that he was some sort of leftist. Of some sort.

I wonder what ever happened to that guy.

And then you have Jon Voight.

I don't know if he ever expressed his political opinions before when he was supposedly a liberal or a leftist or something. All he did was appear in some political movies like Coming Home and the movie based on the Pat Conroy novel.

He was also in some terrible movies over the years, like Table For Five.

And now he's a right-winger. He denounced anyone who criticized George Bush because Bush was the leader of the Free World and represented America, but now he's smearing Barack Obama in the dumbest terms possible.

Here's a quote I lifted from Wikipedia from Dallas Morning News columnist Rod Dreher:

Last weekend, I tuned into a Fox program hosted by the avuncular former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, of whom I am a fan. There sat actor Jon Voight, staring gravely at the host, who praised the thespian's "courage." ... Voight then accused the president of trying to depose God and deify himself — as, according to the Book of Revelation, the Antichrist will do. It may sound ridiculous — after all, who looks to celebrities for political wisdom? — but it's deadly serious to millions of Americans. To his great discredit, Huckabee, a pastor, let this crazy talk pass unchallenged.

I suspect Voight was just as embarrassing in his pre-right wing days. But you can't tell. I know that you're not supposed to say that right-wingers are stupid, but I've seen it happen----when people turn right-wing, they very often turn stupid. And it's not just that I disagree with them now. They become objectively stupid.

Movies they show in TV in New England

Quite a few years ago, I lived on the east coast for several months and I saw movies on TV I hadn't seen in years.

I saw an old made-for-TV movie I watched when I was six or seven years old called The Screaming Woman. An old woman keeps hearing her neighbor calling for help----she's been buried alive by her estranged husband who thought he had killed her. But the old woman can't get anyone to believe her.

I remember sitting in the living room, my sister complaining constantly. In one scene, the old woman, Olivia de Havilland, tries to hire neighbor children to dig up the woman. She offers them a dollar. Cheap old bat. A woman's buried alive and all she'll pay is a dollar?

"A DOLLAR!!!" the children exclaim.

Even back then, when a pack of Twinkies cost 12 cents, kids weren't that impressed by a lousy dollar.

If she had paid them more, maybe they'd have helped her. As it was, they got spooked when they heard the buried woman begging for help and ran away. I'll bet they would have done it for twenty.

My sister also didn't like the freeze frame at the end over which the closing credits ran. It ended with a shot of Olivia de Havilland in a horse-drawn buggy, as I recall, looking very proud of herself. The movie was set in the present-day. At the time I thought the idea was that old people liked things like horses and buggies because they reminded them of the old days.

They showed that thing on a Boston TV station. I hadn't seen it since 1972, and I haven't seen it since.

Also saw a terrible movie called Bunny O'Hare, starring Bette Davis and Ernest Borgnine. Bette Davis is angry at the bank that foreclosed on her mortgage. Ernest Borgnine is an ex-convict plumber who takes her toilet to sell as the house is bulldozed. So. Bette and Ernest join forces. They disguise themselves as hippies and commit a series of bank robberies. Ernest Borgnine would release a bird into the bank. While employees tried to get it out, Bette Davis would rob the bank. And bank employees, seeing an elderly woman wearing a wig and hippie clothes, would naturally describe the robber to police as a young bohemian girl.

That movie made a big impression on me when I was eight. This year is its 40th anniversary. You'd think they'd do something to commemorate it.

I later read that they had to re-dub Bette Davis' last line. She insisted on saying "Fuck you" which would have gotten it an R rating. They had to redub it as "screw you" to get a PG rating. Thank God they did or I never would have seen it.

Interesting thing was how well I remembered the movies when I watched them again. I hadn't seen them since I was second grader. It could be that, watching them at such a young age, my memory wasn't distorted by additional knowledge.

But anyway. I don't know why these things were on TV there but not here. Do they show different stuff east of the Mississippi? Are we, on the west coast, that much smarter than the easterners?

Masterpiece Mystery

Okay. Now it's Sunday night. And there's nothing on. So I'm watching Masterpiece Mystery on PBS. A murder case involving historical reenactment. English people reenact a battle from their Civil War.

Seems like there was an old episode of The Avengers which took place among people who were into medieval reenactment.

And was there a made for TV movie or some pilot I saw? It would have been about 30 years ago. Two amateur sleuths race to prevent a murder. One of the would-be killers says they'll knock the victim off his pace. They realize that the victim has a pacemaker and they plan to murder him with a microwave oven. Which is ironic since it had some sort of medieval reenactment thing happening, if I remember correctly.