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Post by StevePulaski on Jan 12, 2010 7:26:27 GMT -5
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Post by nopersonality on Jan 12, 2010 14:10:46 GMT -5
The man is what is refered to by many as a "tool."
He's one of the most idiotic men in the American mainstream media. A good critic? He's not only a raging homophobe, but has a pro-religion agenda as well.
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Post by StevePulaski on Jan 12, 2010 18:17:30 GMT -5
I dont think he is that bad, but he does make some bad points.
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Post by nopersonality on Jan 13, 2010 2:46:54 GMT -5
Steve - he is that bad. That's all there is to it.
Read his review of Happy Feet for proof. The movie sucked, but read his review anyway.
Wait, let me post it for you:
"In America's ongoing culture war, with ferocious combatants grabbing every available weapon to strike at each other, innocent children and adorable penguins simultaneously qualify as collateral damage. Recent controversies involving environmental and gay-marriage messages in Hollywood cartoons and storybooks for young children show that in our current climate, even the youngest kids and the most endearing denizens of Antarctica can become targets and instruments of powerful propaganda.
On the eve of our annual holiday season, Warner Bros. released the lavish animated extravaganza Happy Feet, featuring the voices of Robin Williams, Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman and Elijah Wood in a PG-rated story about a tap-dancing penguin. The studio promoted the picture as a feel-good frolic for the whole family, featuring an endorsement quote that promised, "Adults and kids alike will be dancing in the aisles."
Unfortunately, the marketing never acknowledged the movie's unmistakably alarming, discomfiting and politically potent elements - enraging no small number of unprepared parents. The endearing creatures on screen face the deadly menace of leopard seals, killer whales and, most of all, human pollution, overconsumption and exploitation. In the advance screening I attended, one worried mother of a 5-year-old took her anxious, fretful, anguished little boy from the theater during the film's relentless scenes of cute and cuddly penguins in intense pain and deadly peril. The next week, a correspondent who called himself "MikeP29p" wrote on my website: "Unfortunately I read Michael's movie review a day too late. We took our kids ages 6 and 4 last night because they wanted to go because they saw the commercials. I thought an animated movie about penguins would be OK. One of the darkest most disturbing movies I have ever seen. Needless to say, my 4-year-old was terrified."
Even some of the premier critical advocates for Happy Feet acknowledged its nightmarish aspects, but praised them as appropriate because of the film's powerful pro-environmental messages.
Spare the kids
In The New York Times, film critic Manohla Dargis described this animated offering as "a piercingly sad story about the devastation being visited on the natural world." She allows that director George Miller "plunges his hapless hero into a nightmare worthy of Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor. As politically pointed as it is disturbing, it is a view of hell as seen through the eyes and ears of creatures we foolishly, tragically call dumb."
Of course, many parents might not relish the idea of exposing their kiddies to a "view of hell," no matter how much they agree with a movie's propagandistic purposes - nor would they necessarily welcome a picture book for 4-year-olds that has plunged an Illinois school into the bitter debate over same-sex marriage.
A few families of students in Shiloh, a town of 11,000 people 20 miles east of St. Louis, object to the general availability of And Tango Makes Three, an illustrated storybook that loosely follows the real-life story of two male penguins at New York City's Central Park Zoo who adopted a fertilized egg and raised the chick as their own. With its enthusiastic celebration of little Tango's good fortune at possessing "two fathers," and with the narrative's fanciful suggestion that the zoo keeper "thought to himself ... they must be in love," the book clearly took a position in the ongoing arguments about same-sex coupling and homosexual families. In fact, the story concludes with the observation that Silo and Roy "discovered each other in 1996 and have been a couple ever since."
International news stories reported, however, that their partnership proved short-lived: As soon as Scrappy, a sultry, seductive female from San Diego's Sea World, arrived in their enclosure, Silo instantly took notice, straightened up and mated with the irresistible gal - leaving his guy pal behind (an outcome never described, of course, in the propagandistic story book for kids).
Despite parental requests that school librarians remove the controversial volume from the open shelves for young readers (it's designed for ages 4 to 8) and relocate it to a special section for "mature issues," school superintendent Jennifer Filyaw declared that And Tango Makes Three would stay put as an "adorable" and "age appropriate" offering.
Grown-up arguments
Regardless of the aesthetic virtues (or shortcomings) of either Happy Feet or And Tango Makes Three, it's easy to see why even non-partisan parents would object to their targeting of very young children. In school and elsewhere, it makes sense to introduce preteens to ongoing debates about global warming, environmental degradation or the redefinition of marriage and family, but most mothers and fathers would prefer to spare preschoolers from such grown-up arguments.
Some adults may choose to expose the youngsters in their lives to Al Gore's powerful and skillfully crafted documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, but they will know before they go that they're taking the kids to an occasionally frightening message movie. In Happy Feet, on the other hand, you'd have no reason to expect so much unhappy and worrisome content - nor would you expect a sweet, gorgeously drawn picture book about cuddling penguins to include potentially explosive hints about gay marriage and fatherhood. With the celebrated (and controversial) book Heather Has Two Mommies, parents - if not kids - know what to expect. With And Tango Makes Three, many readers (including Lilly Del Pinto, one of the concerned parents in the fight against the book) found themselves unhappily surprised.
As children grow and develop, their natural curiosity and ongoing media exposure will lead them inevitably into divisive issues, which all conscientious parents should prepare to help explain. In the earliest stages of life, however, it makes sense to keep them protected from such conflicts and to avoid using preschoolers - and penguins - as the pawns of propaganda."
If you can't see what's so bad about that, Steve, I FEAR for you.
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Post by StevePulaski on Jan 13, 2010 16:22:24 GMT -5
That is really is a bad review. The wording is fine, but he gave way to much credit to a bad movie.
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Post by nopersonality on Jan 14, 2010 16:04:00 GMT -5
That is really is a bad review. The wording is fine Is it? It's fine for him to say that caring about the environment and gay people are evil? |
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Post by StevePulaski on Jan 14, 2010 16:24:09 GMT -5
When ya put it in that context, it is. Im not homophobic in any way, but I really hate it when people talk like that.
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Post by nopersonality on Jan 14, 2010 16:44:25 GMT -5
Thank you, Steve. Because if ever gays were the norm and straights were being persecuted - I would speak out against it.
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Post by StevePulaski on Jan 14, 2010 19:05:37 GMT -5
Theres nothing wrong with being gay. I cant believe Medved wrote that.
People can live however they want and Im fine.
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