I saw "Alexander" this weekend.

[Goldmund]

There has never been such a brilliant piece of movie-making.

Anybody else seen it?

[romantico]

1. I hear it puts that piece of crap

"Citizen Kane", "Lawrence of Arabia" & "Gone with the Wind" to shame!

[Goldmund]

3. Lawrence of who?? Wind, what?

Once you see "Alexander" you feel like you've never seen a real movie before. Like this is the first real movie ever made. If there are still those who deny that film-making is an artform, "Alexander" will shut them up.

[AlCzervik]

7. I probably won't get a chance to see it on the big screen

but i will see it when i t comes out on DVD. As long as it's better than Troy i'm game.

[Goldmund]

9. Make sure you have something else to do as well during the 3 hours.

If picking your nose isn't your cup of tea, bring your Gameboy or a crossword puzzle.

[skypilot]

19. Wait a minute. What?

I'm confused. Did you like the movie or not. Post #3 lead me to believe that you enjoyed it but this post indicates otherwise. I haven't seen it but for a minute there I was kind of excited.

On edit: Never mind. I read further and now I see what you really think of the movie.

[Goldmund]

23. Sorry for the confusion :-)

I'm totally confident that anybody who's seen this movie would think it's a piece of shit, so I thought I'd joke around a little.

[jobycom]

27. So it's like

LOTR, only a third as bad. Damn, I had hopes for it.

[Goldmund]

29. What's "LOTR"?

[jobycom]

30. Lord of the Rings. nt

[Goldmund]

31. Oh, right

I didn't like that either. I thought I was the only person who didn't like it.

[CatWoman]

21. BTW: What ever happened to Troy, anyway?

It disappeared like the wind.

[AlCzervik]

22. After the first 10 minutes

"Helen, she's run off with the Trojans!" I thought it was a satire, like airplane. My friend and i and the couple behind up were chuckling through most of the movie. It was so bad it was bad, not even like guilty pleasure bad, just a movie i never want to see again. I'm sure TBS or USA will run it like 20 nights in a row next year.

[chookie]

33. I read an interview by Peter O'Toole recently

He said he deeply regretted his involvement with it, and was totally amazed at how breathtakingly ghastly it was. A disaster.

I had thought about seeing it for the "eye candy" production values -- all the yummy guys: Sean Bean, Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom, and elderly hottie O'Toole -- but had the good fortune not to have made it to the cinema to see it.

I'm not sure I could have sat through it, even with all the dishy guys running around -- I probably would have walked out rather than subject my brain to it.

Come to think of it, I turned off SNL when Jude Law was on, because not even he was good looking enough to tolerate how shitty SNL is these days.

[AlCzervik]

35. Lots of eye candy for sure but it was unwatchable

as for SNL it has gone downhill, i hate to watch anything on Fox, but i love Madd TV and the Simpsons.

[AngryLizard]

42. It's not

My husband I saw Alexander this weekend and walked out 45 minutes into it. It's a very bad movie.

[Goldmund]

44. Tell your husband he missed Rosario Dawson naked

I'm not saying it's worth sitting through the movie, but... You sat for 45 minutes and got nothing. I sat for three hours and got to see RD's brestaces. Yeah, I got a bum deal, but at least I got SOME payment for sitting through that piece of shit...

[Jessica]

2. Really?

My dad & I went to the movies this weekend, but we went our separate ways - he saw Alexander & I saw Bridget Jones. He said it was terrible - a real snooze-fest. Hmmmmm. Maybe I'll have to see it after all.

[Goldmund]

4. NO! DON'T!! IT WAS SARCASM!!!

Bying 1223 packets of ketchup would be money better spent!

[Jessica]

6. I'm still struggling with determining "tone" in here ...

:)

[Goldmund]

12. Alright, alright...

...it was a _complete_, _utter_ piece of dog shit. Like, spectacularly shitty. Like, you had to be talented to make something THAT shitty.

[Richardo]

16. Talent *and* $200 million!

Someone said it's this century's "Heaven's Gate" :scared:

I kind of hope so because maybe that would force Oliver Stone out of the movie biz once and for all. Man do I hate his movies.

[loudestchick]

45. sooooo...you didn't like it?

you really should be more OBVIOUS, some people are a little "special" and need help to recognize sarcasm. I'll stop...I promise.:evilgrin:

[Goldmund]

46. Sarcasm?

What sarcasm???

[Avalux]

5. No - won't waste my money

and I really hope you are being sarcastic. :hi:

[Goldmund]

8. Sarcastic?!

How dare you suggest that so brazenly?

[terrya]

10. Since Alexander was a big homo...is there any man on man action in it?

Just curious.

[Richardo]

14. You crack me up terrya...

'big homo' HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! :D

[Goldmund]

15. Oh, definitely --

-- they even HUG! And not in that back-slappin' manly way... Kinda gently, actually... Can you believe it? They're showing this to our kids...

[terrya]

18. Colin Farrell and Jared Leto....I'll even take a gentle hug.

Not QUITE what I was hoping for, but...

:-)

[Chipper Chat]

20. Alexander was not a "big homo"

He was normal. In those days it was acceptable for men to explore sexuality with women AND other men (or boys). Even today, probably 80% of men are bisexual (my statistics) and are capable of relationships with the same sex. It's just not practiced today; not that it's not there!
OK Falwell, Sheldon, and Dr. Dobson - have your hissy-fit.

[jobycom]

26. John Boswell

The historian John Boswell did a lot of work on homosexuality throughout western history. His conclusion was basically that it didn't exist until modern times. Don't get me wrong, the act existed, but the concept of it as something strange and different from the normal didn't exist. There was no word for it in ancient Greek or Latin, or in Hebrew, or in any of the other 26 or so languages Boswell could translate.

Much of Greek literature, from Plato's Sypmosium to the poetry of Sappho, was clearly what we would call bisexual. Plato argued that true love could only exist between men, because women were not equal, and one could not truly love a non-equal.

The early Catholic Church condemned the act as a sin, but not a mortal sin, as it later became. By the 12th century, the Church had started to consider it a mortal sin, equal to unmarried heterosexual sex, and between then and the fourteenth century it became a greater sin, and led to executions-- as did just about anything else the Church felt like getting rid of. From then on, the idea of "homosexuals" being a class of person separate from heterosexuals has developed. Before, people were not classified by their sexual orientation.

As for 80% of men being bisexual-- how could one know, with all of the societal pressures against even considering such a thing? One thing that's obvious-- everyone has the ability to be physically aroused by their own gender. Otherwise, masturbation could not exist. You may think of the opposite sex while doing it, but it is still only you. So, there is no physical requirement for heterosexuality.

[jonnyblitz]

40. "he was normal"

too funny.

[Goldmund]

47. I think all he meant was "the norm"

[AngryLizard]

43. NONE

All inuendo, and half-naked men wrestling. And Angelina Jolie's line about how the girls don't think Alexander likes them. And Colin Farrel's idea of soulful acting is to open his eyes really, really wide. It was AWFUL. It starts out with Anthony Hopkins talking to the camera for like 5 minutes, explaining a bunch of stuff very poorly, AND WE HAVE NO IDEA WHO HE IS UNTIL 30 MINUTES INTO THE MOVIE. Angelina shrieks, Val Kilmer stumbles, and Colin Farrel needs to stop making movies.

[Aiptasia]

11. I'll see it eventually

but i'm sure "Alexander" isn't the godhead you make it out to be. Oliver Stone occasionally does good work, but generally he's too obsessive about his artsy montages and ham fisted segue shots.

Olly has dreams of being Stanley Kubrick.

[Goldmund]

17. Oh, it is definitely the godhead

hahahahahaha

[Crankie Avalon]

13. Hah!

I read a review that said it might have actually been a good movie if only Stone had gotten lucky with his lead the way Lean got lucky with Peter O'Toole for Lawrence of Arabia. Unfortunately, though, Stone picked that little, what's his name, Farrell-guy?

Review: http://www.nypress.com/17/47/film/ArmondWhite%20.cfm

[chookie]

24. I can't even sit through the tv promos

Alexander looks BAD.

"The future belongs to the bold." What shit do you think they're selling?

[Goldmund]

25. There's even more of that in the movie

Before they go off to slaughter, they bloviate about "liberating" people "who yearn to be free".

[chookie]

32. Question:

I think its pretty spooky that epic movies about "bold leaders" and mighty imperial conquest are in vogue at the moment -- clearly, it is part of the Zeitgeist....

But what was the "moral" of the movie? What message were viewers supposed to take home with them?

[Goldmund]

34. A message?

"I really shouldn't have put that much butter on my popcorn."

As far as clumsy attempts at an actual message... Well, here are some concluding quotes by the narrator: "Alexander's failures tower over others' successes.". Or, "Alexander's ransacking of Thebes was an exception, not the rule.". Alexander's portrayed as an anti-racist; he chides his followers for "not respecting civilizations much older than ours", right after kicking their asses on the battlefield...

I saw this movie in Tennessee, where my parents live. I went to visit them for Thanksgiving. On the way there, while driving through Virginia, I was listening to a local AM station where some conservative blowhard was talking about the movie and said that if the Iraq occupation turns out to be a success, that history will remember Chimpy as "Bush the great.".

[chookie]

36. Yeah, that's the vibe I was getting from it

It provides a fiction by which to interpret current events. :puke:

I bet the only thing that makes President Pinhead hard these days is the thought that Alexander's name is STILL used as a bogey man in modern Iran to scare children and to describe the Ultimate Asshole.

Funny -- one of the "messages" that His Chimperial Highness and his Chimperial Consort Condi float is that those of us who decry the meaningless chaos in Iraq are so racist we don't think brown people can rule themselves, and that the "liberation" of Iraq is exactly equivalent to the civil rights movement in the USA. That's one of the absurd horseshits they are flinging at us these days.

A FEW people are calling them on this obvious BS -- alas, too few....

[Goldmund]

37. That "absurd horseshit" is brilliant, IMO.

It's one of their main propaganda devices: projection of your own bigotry onto your opponent. Recognize your political weaknesses and attack your opponent for those exact weaknesses before they attack you.

Hence we have the "liberal media"; hence the feminists are actually responsible for gender inequality, and affirmative action is "racism" because we don't believe that minorities can make it on their own... And the example you cite is a good one, too.

It's only "absurd" if you take it at face value, if you think they actually believe it. But they're not dumb, they know exactly what they're doing. As a device on the political battlefield, it obviously works and is far from absurd.

[chookie]

38. Sorry, I forget sometimes that up is down, and that war is peace, etc

You're right. They use it because it works.

If they can get Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court because they had him play the bold hand of accusing Democratic Senators of participating in the "high-tech lynching of an uppity black man" -- they can have Condi declare war on everyone on earth, and Gonzalez openly advocate the torture of Americans citizens for crimes of ideology, and the "opposition" would once again cave, for fear of being called a nasty name in public.

Wolfowitz is also protected, because disagreeing with him on anything makes you anti-Semitic.

If I was in the Senate, I'd stake my career on calling these people on their bullshit. The longer this goes on, the worse the consequences they will bring down on our country.

[Goldmund]

39. I couldn't agree more

But, the thing is that if you were a Senator, you'd simply be labeled -- successfully, if I may speculate -- a kook for calling them on their bullshit.

The reason that this bullshit works is exactly as you say: "up is down, war is peace, etc" -- the very perception of reality has been methodically and throroughly conditioned by the media, by politics, by the churches to be friendly to this kind of propaganda. And the neocons didn't invent it, they just took it to a new level -- the power structures in this country built it on top of centuries' worth of experience in mass mind control; because unlike other empires of the past, the ruling circles in this country always need to have 51% of the votes; in addition, they have unprecedented monetary and technological resources to spread their propaganda. And so, we won't have concentration camps, gulags, wide-spread political assassinations, etc. We will have billions of dollars' worth of statistical and psy-ops research to make sure that 51% of people will vote for the ruling classes, and that no substantial number will rebel.

We're the first democratic dictatorship.

[chookie]

41. That is a first class analysis

It's also the most disturbing thing I've read in a while, and mind you, that's against some pretty tough competition....

From now on, anyone with post-Enlightenment ideas will be ridiculed as a "kook."

As Mussolini said, fascism is a reaction. The Italian fascist slogan "to believe, to obey, to combat" was the antithesis of "liberty, equality and fraternity."

"To believe, to obey, to combat" has been resurrected.

[underpants]

28. Buddy of mine saw it-He said it was really good

He didn't care for the bisexual stuff much but he said it was a good movie-lots of action and Alexander was one ruthless mofo.

ON EDIT- This was funny

Him:"When they make movies like that people either half ass a Persian accent or them speaking in English accents"

Me:"What did Val Kilmer speak in?"

Him"Oh he spoke in Val Kilmer"