Speculative fiction at the 2016 Razzie Awards

Today, I follow up on the promise I made at the end of The songs really are the best part of 'Fifty Shades of Grey'.

Some of the nominees are genuinely bad.  Some may be the victims of the voters on beating up on trashy popular entertainment for women, no matter how well executed.  "Fifty Shades of Grey" and to a lesser extent "Jupiter Ascending" may be the recipients of such treatment.  I might have more to say about this when I write about speculative fiction at the Razzies.

I explained more in my response to a comment by Infidel753 on that entry.

I think there's more than a touch of misogyny among the Razzie voters, some of whom are confusing a movie who premise they don't like with a genuinely bad movie--"Pixels" and "Fantastic Four," I'm looking at you.

I repeated that promise as an aside in Drink to 'Deadpool's second week on top of the box office.

I'll write more about "Fantastic Four," as well as the previous holder of the Valentines Day/Presidents Day weekend box office record, "Fifty Shades of Grey," when I report on speculative fiction at this year's Razzie Awards.

Before I take my readers over the jump to list the awards, a reminder of the leaders.

The Razzies, which celebrate the year’s worst Hollywood movies and actors by awarding the winners (i.e. the losers) with Golden Raspberries, have awards for Worst Picture, Worst Actress and Worst Actor. And this year, it’s a four-way tie between Fifty Shades, Paul Blart Mall Cop 2, Jupiter Ascending and Pixels leading the nominations with six nods each.

Now, follow over the jump.

'Warm Bodies': Love, zombies, and marching bands on Valentines Day

Happy Valentines Day!  I concluded Jim Gilmore gone after losing to Vermin Supreme by noting that "'The Walking Dead' returns tomorrow.  Zombies on Valentines Day!"  The movie that best combines zombies and love is "Warm Bodies," which I mentioned in Post-apocalyptic book list by noting "there are some glaring omissions, such as all three of the most recent zombie movies I’ve watched, 'World War Z,' 'Warm Bodies,' and 'I Am Legend,' although the book is on the appropriate index."  I've already written about "World War Z," so it's "Warm Bodies'" turn.*

io9 has a good review of the film that explores the romantic angle in Warm Bodies is Romeo and Juliet and Zombies, only better.

What if Juliet was a post-apocalyptic scavenger, Romeo was a zombie who ate Paris' brains, and Mercutio was a monosyllabic Rob Corddry? Zombie romcom Warm Bodies takes us to a post-apocalyptic future in which zombies stalk the Earth eating human brains—at least until one walking corpse, R, falls for Julie, one of the last living girls.

But put aside the nods to Shakespeare. Warm Bodies is a funny and soft-hearted film that plays far more on zombie- and date-movie tropes than it does on the Bard, and puts an optimistic spin on the undead apocalypse. At its basis, this is a movie about how to be alive, told through the lens of a zombie's awakening.

For spoilers, read the article at the link.  For the conclusion of the review, follow over the jump.

'Spotlight' gets the recognition it deserves from the awards shows

Kunstler opened Shining a Light with a summary of the movie "Spotlight."

The just-released movie Spotlight is about a Boston Globe investigative reporting team circa 2001-02 that uncovered and documented a vast network of child sex abuse by priests in the Catholic Church that had been on-going for decades. More to the point, Spotlight revealed the institutional rot at the very top of the Boston Catholic Church hierarchy, led by then-Cardinal Bernard Law — which marinated church personnel in a code of secret atrocious behavior enabled by systematic lying and deception. In effect, the church gave permission to its foot-soldiers, the parish priests, to engage in whatever sexual antics they wished to, with a tacit promise to shield them from the reach of the courts. The civil authorities of Boston, heavily Catholic due to Boston’s demographics, assisted the church by throwing up every legal obstacle they could to deter the victims and their advocates in the search for justice — and to put an end to the predation of children by priests.

That was the story that Spotlight told, and it did that very economically, without grandstanding.

That's about as positive a passage as Kunstler is likely to produce in response to any part of modern culture.  Of course it wouldn't last, as he used that to springboard into a diatribe against the current state of journalism.  That and my reaction to it, might be subjects for another time.  Since it's Entertainment Sunday, I'm concentrating on my comment on the movie itself.

As for our host's musings on "Spotlight," a Wall Street Journal critic ended his review of the James Bond flick "SPECTRE" by praising "Spotlight," saying it was a much better movie.  That didn't stop "SPECTRE" from becoming number one at the U.S. box office, staying there until "The Hunger Games" Mockingjay-Part 2" dethroned it.  Oh, well, no accounting for the taste of the movie-going public.  Maybe the voters for the awards shows will give "Spotlight" its due.

So far, they have.  Follow over the jump for the nominations the film has received so far.

Paul Krugman and the awards shows on 'The Big Short'

I concluded Music for moving pictures at the 58th Grammy Awards by telling my readers "Stay tuned for at least one more entry about entertainment, this time about the Golden Globes."  After being distracted by 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' among other things, I'm making a down payment on that promise with a movie nominated for several Golden Globe Awards, "The Big Short."  May I not end up undewater at the end of the entry.

Unlike most of the collapse-and-decline-related entertainment I cover here, this film is not science fiction but historical fact.  As for how well it told that recent history, I turn to Paul Krugman and his review in the New York Times, ‘The Big Short,’ Housing Bubbles and Retold Lies.

“The Big Short” is based on the Michael Lewis book of the same name, one of the few real best-sellers to emerge from the financial crisis. I saw an early screening, and I think it does a terrific job of making Wall Street skulduggery entertaining, of exploiting the inherent black humor of how it went down.

The film achieves this feat mainly by personalizing the tale, focusing not on abstractions but on colorful individuals who saw the rot in the system and tried to make money off that realization. Of course, this still requires explaining what it was all about. Yet even the necessary expository set pieces work amazingly well. For example, we learn how dubious loans were repackaged into supposedly safe “collateralized debt obligations” via a segment in which the chef Anthony Bourdain explains how last week’s fish can be disguised as seafood stew.

But you don’t want me to play film critic; you want to know whether the movie got the underlying economic, financial and political story right. And the answer is yes, in all the ways that matter.

I could quibble over a few points: The group of people who recognized that we were experiencing the mother of all housing bubbles, and that this posed big dangers to the real economy, was bigger than the film might lead you to believe. It even included a few (cough) mainstream economists. But it is true that many influential, seemingly authoritative players, from Alan Greenspan on down, insisted not only that there was no bubble but that no bubble was even possible.

And the bubble whose existence they denied really was inflated largely via opaque financial schemes that in many cases amounted to outright fraud — and it is an outrage that basically nobody ended up being punished for those sins aside from innocent bystanders, namely the millions of workers who lost their jobs and the millions of families that lost their homes.

Krugman was one of those economists and so was Robert Schiller, who won a Nobel Prize for his work.  I learned to trust their opinions because they were right.  That's one of the reasons that I sold at the top and was not one of the poor souls who lost his house to foreclosure or was stuck with it when it went underwater.  But enough about me.  What about the movie?

While the movie gets the essentials of the financial crisis right, the true story of what happened is deeply inconvenient to some very rich and powerful people.
...
Sure enough, “The Big Short” has already been the subject of vitriolic attacks in Murdoch-controlled newspapers; if the movie is a commercial success and/or wins awards, expect to see much more.

The movie has earned nominations for not just the Golden Globes, but also the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) awards and the Critics Choice awards.  Follow over the jump for those.

Katniss Everdeen dethrones James Bond at the U.S. box office

Two weeks ago, "SPECTRE" knocked "The Martian" out of number one at the U.S. box office.  This week, it was Katniss Everdeen's turn to assassinate James Bond as "The Hunger Games" Mockingjay-Part 2" came in first, handily outpacing "SPECTRE."  Even in victory, the news was not all good as Daily Variety via Reuters reported earlier today that 'Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2' debuts to franchise-low $101 million.

"The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2" dominated the weekend box office with the final film in the science-fiction franchise debuting to $101 million.

That ranks as the year's fifth biggest opening, but it wasn't as big a sendoff for Katniss Everdeen and her fellow revolutionaries as some had predicted.

The massive bow falls short of tracking that projected the picture would top $120 million in its initial weekend in theaters. It also represents a low for the series, falling far short of the $158.1 million high-water mark established by 2013's "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire." It's a sign, perhaps, that interest in the dystopian world of Panem has crested.

The cresting of the youth dystopia wave is a topic I'll explore over the jump, along with other aspects of the series' legacy.  Those will come after the rest of the box office report.

The weakness of the new films allowed holdovers "Spectre" and "The Peanuts Movie" to pad their box office results. The latest Bond adventure added $14.6 million to its $153.7 million domestic haul, nabbing second place on the charts. "The Peanuts Movie" finished third, picking up $12.8 million to push its stated total to $98.9 million.

The "new films" mentioned were "The Night Before," which earned $10.1 million to come in fourth and "The Secret in Their Eyes," which grossed $6.6 million to eke out fifth place.  That last film may do better at the awards shows than the theaters, along with other films geared to an older audience.  Look for those to make their money on cable and streaming services.

Follow over the jump for reviews of the final installment of "The Hunger Games" from Vox and io9.

'SPECTRE' knocks 'The Martian' out of number one at the U.S. box office

I expressed my intention to skip reviewing last weekend's new releases in 'The Martian' returns to number one as most Halloween films bomb based on my expecting that they wouldn't be that good.  I was right, as New York Magazine's Vulture blog reported This Was the Worst Domestic Box Office Weekend of 2015.  The only new release to break the top five was the cooking film "Burnt," which came in fifth with only $5 million.  Against such weak competition, "The Martian" held on to the top spot.

Meanwhile, "Spectre" was setting records in the U.K.


Yes, James Bond beat Harry Potter for opening weekend.  How very British.

The expectation was that the latest Bond film would revive the U.S. box office when it opened.  It did, as Daily Variety reported in Box Office: ‘Spectre’ Tops ‘The Peanuts Movie’ With $73 Million.

James Bond and Charlie Brown brought the box office roaring back to life, as “Spectre” and “The Peanuts Movie” attracted big crowds over their opening weekends.

“Spectre,” the latest 007 adventure, took first place, debuting to $73 million from 3,929 theaters — a hefty figure and the second-highest debut in series history, but one that nevertheless trails the launch of “Skyfall.” The previous film in the long-running franchise bowed to $88.4 million, but enjoyed better reviews and benefited from being the only new wide release in its opening weekend. Going into the weekend, tracking suggested that the film would debut to $80 million, but the strength of “The Peanuts Movie” and some critical grousing about plot holes wide enough to drive an Aston Martin through may have depressed ticket sales.

One of the critics grousing about the movie was Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal.

"Spectre" is the newest James Bond film, starring Daniel Craig in his fourth turn as the famed spy. But can "Spectre" live up to expectations set by "Skyfall"? WSJ's Joe Morgenstern reviews. Photo: Sony Pictures

Oh, my, the answer to the question appears to be no.  Peter Suderman of Vox was even more scathing, declaring Spectre is the worst James Bond movie in years.  He damned the movie with faint praise before pulling out the knife with his thesis sentence: "Indeed, while the stunning opening sequence offers a succinct demonstration of all the ways a Bond movie can go right, what follows mostly serves to illustrate all the ways Bond movies can — and do — go wrong."  It's a long list.

I could find more poor reviews, but I'll move on after speculating that Sam Mendes may be using up all his best material on Penny Dreadful, which I jokingly call "James Bond, Vampire Hunter."  If so, that would be a shame.

Follow over the jump for the rest of the report and my commentary, including two Bond-related drink recipes from Tipsy Bartender.

'Falling Skies' vs. 'Defiance' for the final season premiere of 'Falling Skies'

I telegraphed the subject of today's post in the conclusion of 'The Last Ship' returns and other summer TV fare.

I'll do the same for "Falling Skies" and "Defiance" next week, when I'll elaborate on what I wrote in the footnote to Detroit fireworks show continues for yet another year.

The first season of "Defiance" reminded me of "Babylon 5," except on Earth.  The second season so far confirms that impression.  "Falling Skies" looks like "The Walking Dead" with aliens instead of zombies and other people as the antagonists and allies.  Given that I've mentioned "Babylon 5" only once until now, and that in passing, while I've mentioned "The Walking Dead" in at least nine entries so far, it should come as no surprise that I like "Falling Skies" more.

Stay tuned.

Despite the different inspirations for the two alien invasion series, the two shows followed common paths last season.  Both "Falling Skies" and "Defiance" introduced two tropes about controlling conquered populations, secular totalitarianism and religion in the form of a false Messiah.  In a further similarity, both shows had the daughter of the male lead as the false Messiah.  Furthermore, the fathers concluded the seasons by redeeming their daughters.  I think these are the kinds of coincidences that strike me as the result of something in the culture that both are responding to.

Follow over the jump for the rest of the essay along with a preview of the final season of "Falling Skies."

Elaine Meinel Supkis uses anime and draws fan art to make sustainability points

In James Howard Kunstler swims against the stream on gender role equality, too, I mentioned another blogger in passing.

By the way, was one of the people who objected to your protrayal of women your neighbor up on the hill, Elaine Meinel Supkis?* I know she thinks you got it wrong about dogs in the "World Made by Hand" and I agree with her.
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* Elaine Meinel Supkis blogs on Culture of Life News. I reviewed her old blog on my LiveJournal. She is another great example of a blogger swimming against the tide who deserves her own post, and I'll have to review her new blog later this month. Yes, my plate continues to fill up.

I may as well repost that brief review.

I present to you Elaine Meinel Supkis, the weirdest financial blogger I've read who still makes any sense.

Yeah, she wears a tinfoil beanie, but in my years of following weirdos online, I've learned how to spot the ones who actually know what they're talking about and should be taken seriously. She's one of them.

One of her most endearing traits is that she uses anime characters to make her points, something that goes over most of her readers' heads, but not mine. Here she is using Risky and Safety.

Killing Corrections Can Be Fatal To Economies

Here she is using Fullmetal Alchemist.

Terrorist Threats to Goldman Sachs And Financial Threats From Within
THE END OF TIME...

And here she is using Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo.

Treasuries Fall To Japanese Levels: 0.02%

FWIW, she's probably the person holding up the "Fail" sign in this photo.





As you can see, she manages to be simultaneously amusing and terrifying while she informs her readers. What a great find!

It turned out that she wasn't the one holding up that sign, but one of the Ron Paul followers sitting near her. Darn.

However, she did draw her own Risky and Safety for that first post I linked to. Yes, a 50-something woman was drawing anime fan art to make a political and economic point. Here's the image.





And here's the actual Risky and Safety from the anime for comparison.  Oddly enough, it's from a poster my youngest daughter and I used to possess.





She got close enough so that anime fans like me could recognize the source material, yet be using her own character designs. I thought that was really cute. I still do, and I'll have to see if she continues to draw fan art and posts it at her new site.

The Livejournal entry I posted above wasn't the only time I mentioned Elaine outside of her blog. I did so in this Usenet post. The heart of that post came from the comments to the post I cited as an example of her using Gankutsuou. I mentioned to her that she should also watch Fullmetal Alchemist, as the show was "very much about what happens when people raid the Cave of Wealth and Death." I found her response both illuminating and revealing.

Full Metal Achemist starts out as a 'child's story' and ends up being this terrifying and amazing tale about time travel and the Cave of Wealth and Death, Naziism, hyper-scientist exploitation of natural forces and magic.

It is one of the most comprehensive reviews of modern magic. Far, far, far more potent and powerful than the stupid Harry Potter series.

And the anime ends literally with Eric seeking out the real-life fathers of the GERMAN rocket program with the hint that Eric will return to his alternate universe via the US space program after meeting my dad in Germany in April, 1945!!!!!

I nearly fainted at that part since the story was aimed at the idea, Eric would find someone who could time travel in the Outer Darkness....and so on. HAHAHA. He had to do this at China Lake and it involved nuclear bombs outside of Las Vegas......my childhood....

Actually, I am not invisible in Japan.

My reponse was incredulous.

*Blink*

These two are your parents?

It turns out they were.  Truth is stranger than fiction, as reality has no editors.

As for her telling Kunstler that he was wrong about dogs in his post-peak-oil future, she did so in her review of "A World Made by Hand." It's a long post, and she has even more to say about dogs on both her old site and her new one, so look for my commentary on those posts later.

James Howard Kunstler swims against the stream on gender role equality, too

A couple of days ago, I wrote this conclusion to my post about Kunstler's skepticism about marriage equality.

I already have my plate full with completing the sustainability linkspams and at least two more posts about Kunstler swimming against the tide, including even more gender fail.

That's right. Kunstler's skepticism about marriage equality was not the only gender equality fail in Man Down, as he defended his depiction of gender roles in his fiction in the very next next paragraph.

I had an interesting experience with my last two books (World Made By Hand and The Witch of Hebron), which were set in a post-oil, post economic collapse American future and depicted daily life in a way that was quite unlike the way we live right now. I received a heap of criticism from female readers - including peak oil activists - full of consternation that I did not present female characters in the kinds of dominant valorized roles that are favored today: the post-oil equivalent of CEO, news anchor, CIA-Ninja warrior, Presidential candidate. What struck me was their complete failure of imagination. They could not conceive of male / female relations that were different than today's, even in a world that had been turned economically upside down.

I had something to say about that paragraph, too.

By the way, was one of the people who objected to your protrayal of women your neighbor up on the hill, Elaine Meinel Supkis?* I know she thinks you got it wrong about dogs in the "World Made by Hand" and I agree with her.

At least here he wasn't advocating against women's rights, and he did have the out of his portrayal of women's roles being the result of pondering Heinlein's three science fiction plot premises--what if, if only, and if this goes on. I know citing Heinlein in and of itself can be problematic in a discussion of gender roles, as the following snippet from a blog on Feminist SF demonstrates.

- singularities that are hard starts (?) ie a sudden jump or shift (this is what I (liz) keep asking for)
- ecological disasters. Peak oil. plastics.
- what are the 3 sf plots – what if, if only, if this goes on
- For god’s sake in this conversation can we avoid 2 things, heinlein and pratchett hahaha

Yes, Heinlein's women mostly aren't real women, but neither are his men. Both of them are male fantasies of men and women. That doesn't make his questions bad; I think they're good questions. It just makes his views about gender suspect.

As far as Kunstler's depiction of women is concerned, I haven't read enough of his fiction to make a judgment, only the Vacation Special -- Excerpt from "The Witch of Hebron" he published on his blog last year. Even so, I can guess that he is not only putting women back in traditional gender roles, but not portraying this as an evil, oppressive thing. After all, he'd have a hard time making circumstances worse for women than in, say, Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" or Heinlein's "Revolt in 2100". The difference is that Atwood saw the state of affairs as bad for women and Heinlein saw it as bad for everyone, and both empowered their characters to subvert, escape, or overthrow the established order in the books and set things right. I'm pretty sure that Kunstler does none of that. Based on what I know of Kunstler, he probably thinks the post-peak-oil world is a good thing that people don't appreciate. Also, from what I gather from this review in the Los Angeles Times, whatever struggles women have, other than mere survival, may just be invisible. You find a female character in this review. I can't.

That written, I'll have to read both of his works of fiction about a post-peak-oil world to make sure. When I do, I'll get back to you on how he treats gender roles. If it ends up that I'm putting money in the pocket of a misogynist, so be it. It's the least I can do for all the great blogging he's given me and will continue to give to me in the future.

Just the same, in context, his defense of his portrayal of women still looks like a fail to me. After all, the preceding two paragraphs were about the unforseen consequences of allowing same-sex marriage. He might be right, and not in ways that make him look good. As Linda Hershman on Slate points out, the marketing of same-sex marriage as marriage equality may be more truth in advertising than even its proponents expect.

When the state legislature passed and Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the law authorizing same-sex marriage in New York late Friday night, the number of Americans who will be able to marry same-sex partners doubled. New York is the first state to legalize same sex marriage after a dry spell following Maine's repeal of its marriage law a year and a half ago. Maybe for lesbian and gay people, It Gets Better after all.

And they're not the only ones. To paraphrase the great gay songwriter Stephen Sondheim: Straight women, rise! As same-sex couples marry, things get better for us, too. Remember the scary (and since-discredited) stories about how a woman is more likely to be killed by a terrorist than to find a husband after she turns 40? Or the one about how suitors are fleeing from Maureen Dowd because they're afraid of her Pulitzer Prize? The poll showing evangelical women in patriarchal marriages are happier than Sarah Jessica Parker? Well, same-sex marriage shows that people can make long-term, loving, sexual bonds with each other even where neither is naturally inclined to tell the other what to do. Or to be the natural homemaker or the hunter-gatherer. Same-sex marriage represents the possibility that marriage can be an equal deal after all—or at least one where inequality is not locked in at birth. The conservatives are right: Same-sex marriage will change opposite-sex marriage. And it's a good thing, too.

The people fighting same-sex marriage know this. They've been fighting some variation of the battle against marriage equality—for women—probably since the early Christians argued for the equality of women's souls.

After reading that article, I'm even more in favor of same-sex marriage, and I'm a straight guy!

Also, the rest of his essay was about the failure of American manhood. That context alone was enough to make his protrayal of women look bad. The kicker, though, was the very next paragraph after the first one I quoted at the start of the essay.

However, this was not inconsistent with the failure of American men to know how to act like men in this anxious moment of history. The choices are pretty unappetizing: be a jobless loser in a "Pray for Death" T-shirt with neck and knuckle tattoos, or a loser in a corporate cubicle, or a loser in that Nevada drone-control bunker, or a loser in the eyes of the family court, or a loser on cable TV. Tom Ball, the man who set himself on fire in Keene, New Hampshire recommended something that sounded a lot like violent revolution, though his tone was eerily measured for someone about to commit the most desperate personally public act. I hope we don't have to go through a convulsion in this land to find out what it means to be a man.

Remember the three questions--what if, if only, and if this goes on? When I read Kunstler's books, I'll not only keep his treatment of women in mind, I'll also keep those questions in mind. I suspect Kunstler thinks his books are trying to answer "if this goes on" and "what if?" in that order, but his portrayal of gender roles may have more than a dash of "if only." Now I really have to read his books. However, Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine", Karl Weber's "Food, Inc.," and Raj Patel's "Stuffed and Starved" will probably come first. Priorities, priorities.

* Elaine Meinel Supkis blogs on Culture of Life News. I reviewed her old blog on my LiveJournal. She is another great example of a blogger swimming against the tide who deserves her own post, and I'll have to review her new blog later this month. Yes, my plate continues to fill up.

Model D Media, fans of Detroit

On Monday, I wrote:

[Optimism] seems to be the theme for nearly all the articles from Model D Media's Buzz page. Of course, one should expect that from a publication whose Twitter profile states:

We love Detroit. We write about Detroit. We photograph Detroit. We film Detroit. We want you to love Detroit, too.

...And whose attitude I characterized as "Optimism but not business as usual." They're certainly living up to both my billing and their own.

Yesterday, I saw that the latest edition of Model D had been posted, with enough sustainablity stories to make up for the magazine skipping last week for the Memorial Day weekend. This prompted me to look for videos on YouTube about Model D Media. I found the following, which is a talk by one of the founders of Model D about the philosophy behind their online magazine.





As you can see, the co-founder had several driving ideas for the publication. First, instead of reporting what the co-founder called "stories about loss," the publication's emphasis is reporting the good news and reward worthwhile behavior. Second, the magazine wants to protray the reality on the ground instead of sticking to the set narrative, hence the kind of stories from Model D, either their original reporting or what they've found reported elsewhere, which shows the grassroots revitalization of the city, not the "Detroit is a disaster zone" reporting typical for the place. Finally, they wanted to show the people in the front rows of change, not the same ten people who always get the press. No wonder I see their tone as "optimism, but not business as usual." That's what they had in mind!

Model D Media, fans of Detroit.

Blog recommendation: Early Warning

Early Warning: Threats to Global Civilization

The blogger of this site is examining many, if not most, of the same issues I am using an even more data-based method, a truly global perspective (although mostly focused on Europe, Asia, North America, and the Middle East), and a lot more original writing.  If you want the view from 35,000 feet, read him.  Of course, if you want what things look like on the ground here in Michigan and metro Detroit in particular, read me.  Between the two perspectives, you'll have a good idea of what is going on.

Hat/tip to Nebris, who linked me to Early Warning.

'Atlas Shrugged' gets the reviews and box office it deserves (Part I of a series)

"I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it."~Voltaire (1694 - 1778)

Allow me this moment of schadenfreude, which I'll eventually demonstrate to be related to the main topic of this blog.


 
Box Office Mojo: 'Atlas Shrugged' Derails?

Atlas Shrugged: Part I was the top-grossing limited release of the weekend, generating an estimated $1.7 million at 300 single-screen locations.

For a pure independent release, Atlas Shrugged: Part I's opening was fine. But for the first-ever adaptation of Ayn Rand's influential mega-selling 1957 novel that had far more media hype than any other independent movie could dream of, it was disappointing.

There aren't many direct comparisons, because it's rare that an adaptation of such a famous book gets such a modest release. Atlas Shrugged: Part I opened higher than recent limited Christian movies The Grace Card and To Save a Life, and it was distributor Rocky Mountain Pictures' third highest-grossing launch, behind End of the Spear and Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. But none of those movies are significant in the grand scheme of things. They're all still blips, even if Atlas was a slightly bigger blip than many.

What's more, Atlas Shrugged: Part I's box office dropped six percent from Friday to Saturday, further indicating niche appeal. The movie would require exceptional holds moving forward to right its course.
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Boosters of Atlas Shrugged: Part I might point to the movie's per theater average to spin it as a success (ex. "it did almost as much per theater as Scream 4!"), but spin is all it is. It's a common ploy to cling to per-theater average to rationalize a soft run. Obviously, it's generally easier for a small release to have a higher per-theater average than one at over 3,000 theaters (at any rate, Scream 4 was a disappointment itself).

That's really crappy box office, which makes me happy. Of course, the movie was only produced for $10,000,000, so it might actually turn a profit, enough to get parts 2 and 3 into theaters. That would make io9's reviewers happy.

Atlas Shrugged: A movie this demented ought to be against the law

Charlie Jane Anders — Every cult needs its own wacky trainwreck of a movie. Scientology got Battlefield Earth, and now the cult of Ayn Rand gets Atlas Shrugged, Part 1. But how does Atlas stand up to Battlefield Earth?

I have an entire canned list of quotes on the similarities between Objectivism and Scientology, but this isn't the post for me to regurgitate all of them. I'll just post this one.

Wasn't Ayn Rand a pseudonym of L. Ron Hubbard?~Mike Huben

Also, if io9, a science fiction site, didn't see the resemblance, I'd be disappointed.

Back to the review.

Quite well, actually. Atlas Shrugged Part 1, which just opened in theaters today, is a grand addition to the roster of movies that are both kooky and clunky. A movie this hideously wonderful really ought to be against the law.
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Actually, scratch that. The federal government shouldn't outlaw dreadful movies like Atlas Shrugged – rather, the feds should just regulate them. For example, we could have a federal mandate that all such movies must star Nicolas Cage or a comparable actor – someone who knows how to bring the right level of gravitas to dialogue like, "Which do I sacrifice: an excellent piece of smelting, or this Institute?"

Call it the Nicolas Cage Full Employment Act. Or better yet, since Nic Cage is a precious national resource that's currently being distributed unevenly, the Nic Cage National Equalization Act. It should be up to the federal government to make sure that as many ludicrously insane movies as possible have access to the vital panacea that is Nic Cage.

Lots more lulzy remarks at io9. At least that reviewer enjoyed the movie, even as a train wreck (and trust me, there are lots of train wrecks in Atlas Shrugged). The same can't be said of most of the rest of the reviewers.

The Nation: Rand Appalling: New 'Atlas Shrugged' Movie Booed Off Planet

It takes a lot to get a 0% at the mass market critics' consensus site Rotten Tomatoes. Pick an awful movie you can think of and it probably managed a 5% or maybe even a 25%. Somehow, Atlas Shrugged, Part I (yes! more to look forward to!), which opens Friday, has at this writing achieved the rare feat.

In other words, not a single critic to date, from major and minor outlet, high or lowest of low of lowbrow, likes it one bit. I like the headline over the Chicago Tribune review: "Taxing Indeed." Still waiting for "Don't Go (Galt) There." Or "Born Under a Bad Ayn."

ETA: The movie's rating has now risen to 8%, which still makes it the lowest rated movie out of the top 50 currently in theaters.

My favorite was from Roger Ebert.

"The most anticlimactic non-event since Geraldo Rivera broke into Al Capone’s vault. I suspect only someone very familiar with Rand’s 1957 novel could understand the film at all, and I doubt they will be happy with it. For the rest of us, it involves a series of business meetings in luxurious retro leather-and-brass board rooms and offices, and restaurants and bedrooms that look borrowed from a hotel no doubt known as the Robber Baron Arms."

The pithiest came from Bill Goodykoontz of the Arizona Republic.

"It has taken decades to bring Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" to the big screen.They should have waited longer."

Time to add those to my collection of anti-Objectivist quotes. Speaking of which, here are some of my favorites about the movie.

"There are two novels that can transform a bookish 14-year-old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish daydream that can lead to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood ...in which large chunks of the day are spent inventing ways to make real life more like a fantasy novel. The other is a book about orcs."~Raj Patel in The Value of Nothing.

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.
~Dorothy Parker on Atlas Shrugged

"Who is John Galt?" A two dimensional character in a third rate novel written by Alan Greenspan's dominatrix.~Inventor on Daily Kos.

Ah, yes, Alan Greenspan. This is where the post turns a little more serious. The late Paul Samuelson had the following to say about him:

And this brings us to Alan Greenspan, whom I've known for over 50 years and who I regarded as one of the best young business economists. Townsend-Greenspan was his company. But the trouble is that he had been an Ayn Rander. You can take the boy out of the cult but you can't take the cult out of the boy. He actually had instruction, probably pinned on the wall: 'Nothing from this office should go forth which discredits the capitalist system. Greed is good.'

Yet again the similarity between Objectivism and Scientology appears, and not in a funny way, either.

Greenspan also makes a cameo in Maureen Dowd's comment on Atlas Shrugged, along with Paul Ryan.

Congressman Ryan has said the reason he got involved in public service was “by and large” because of Rand, and he has encouraged his staffers to read “Atlas Shrugged.”

You’d think that our fiscal meltdown would have shown the flaw in Rand’s philosophy. She thought we could derive morals from the markets. But we derived immorality from the markets.
...
What Rand and acolytes like Alan Greenspan failed to realize is that if everyone acts in self-interest and no one takes into account the weakness to the entire system that occurs when everybody indulges in the same kind of risky behavior, the innocent and the guilty are engulfed.

Ms. Dowd brings me to the serious point of this post (gloating is not a serious point), Objectivism is a philosophy that is contributing to our problems. Worse yet, it is becoming a response to our problems, making them even worse.

What, you say, Objectivism causes collapse? Yes. It's all there in the manual. But that's the subject of Part II.

Stay tuned.

Contemplating the Hedgehog: Introduction

As I wrote in the first post in this blog:

I'll also post reviews of other blogs about societal collapse and what to do about it. There are plenty of them out there, and they all deserve a good meta look.

The first one was an obituary of Joe Bagaent as told through his interactions from a distance with Jim Kunstler. The second was supposed to be a review of Clusterfuck Nation. For some reason, I keep postponing that review. As I wrote in my second post on this blog:

[T]oday isn't the day for that review. It's not that I don't have a lot to say about him; I do, but I can always repackage my opinions on a slow news day.

Or when don't find another blogger that I think deserves more attention, which brings me to the subject of today's post.

My friend andelku on LiveJournal has been posting a series she calls Contemplating the Hedgehog. Why "the Hedgehog?" In the first post in the series, Welcome to the Hedgehog, she wrote:

When I was just a wee lass, me and my talented underachieving college friends spent large amounts of time sitting around kitchen tables and on back porches of our cheap apartments drinking bad wine and talking about how we all sensed this country, if not the world, was headed for some kind of crisis. Until finally one girl says "I'm tired of calling it the Big Awful Thing That Nobody Knows What It Is But Everyone Can See Coming. Let's call it The Hedgehog." And so we did.

In reality, she's looking at the same situations that I'm writing about here; it's just that she's doing it from a more global (pun fully intended) perspective than I am. That means her series is exactly the kind of material I should be reviewing. Besides, I rather like this conceit, so I'm looking forward to commenting on her posts. Not only will it get her writing the attention it deserves, it should be fun.

Joe Bageant is gone

As I wrote in the first post in this blog:

I'll also post reviews of other blogs about societal collapse and what to do about it. There are plenty of them out there, and they all deserve a good meta look.

That was going to be Kunstler's Clusterfuck Nation, but breaking news changed my mind. Instead, Joe Bageant's blog gets the honor. That's because Joe died this weekend.

After a vibrant life, Joe Bageant died yesterday following a four-month struggle with cancer. He was 64. Joe is survived by his wife, Barbara, his three children, Timothy, Patrick and Elizabeth, and thousands of friends and admirers. He is also survived by his work and ideas.

A moment of silence, please.






In a perverse way, I think it's fitting that Joe gets the honor of first review over Jim. It turns out that I helped introduce the two. I'll let one of the first commenters on CN to bring up Joe begin telling the story.

Jim--

When I read your contempt for your social inferiors, and hear it echoed by your fans, I can't help comparing it to Joe Bageant's rueful sympathy for his own benighted tribe of origin, which is also mine. (Go to joebageant.com). Guess which of you comes off as the more admirable and mature person. But then, Bageant has a real class analysis, and you don't. He asks how these deluded right-wing populists got to be the way they are, and rightly blames the capitalist system itself. So does Chomsky, so did Howard Zinn and many others. Check out Theodor Adorno on the psychosocial roots of the original, non-cornpone Nazis. Be more serious, less glibly journalistic.

As Neon Vincent, one of my other noms de net, I responded:

I've been wondering when Joe Bageant's name would appear here in response to Jim's mocking of the rural working class. While both Joe and Jim think their response has been wrong-headed and not in their best interests, and that the system has been hollowed out (Joe calls it "The Hologram" while Jim calls it "The Consensus Trance"--same thing, really), Joe is much more understanding of their plight and explains how they got there, while Jim displays a visceral dislike of the same people that seems to border on a defense against fear of them.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that I think dialog between Joe and Jim would be a good thing. At the very worst, it would degenerate into an entertaining display of verbal pyrotechnics. At best, it would be a fruitful exchange of ideas between two people who are feeling different parts of the same elephant. Either way, I'd enjoy the result.

I should be careful what I wish for. For the rest of the year, Kunstler's commenters brought him up. Believe it or not, Kunstler paid attention.

In his 2011 Forecast, which I really need to analyze, Kunstler wrote:

We're already looking like a nation of ax murderers and cannibals with our tattoo fetish, strange costumes (baby clothes for young men; hooker get-ups for the ladies, which should tell you that adulthood is the new final frontier of the American Dream), and our retarded patois of like-like-like and go-go-go speech - all set in a porn-saturated total immersion huckster hologram (thanks Joe Bageant) of visually incoherent, civically-impoverished, and economically spavined suburbia. I'm sorry, but we just look like a nation of goners. Surely the levels of clinical depression are high out there, and a lot of our fellow citizens are suffering profoundly inside - but is acting like killer-clowns the only option?

Looks like I got half my wish. Did I get the other half? Yes, I did.

Hi Joe,

Greetings from one of the attic dwellers in Canada.
...
Joe, many questions come to mind, but one of the most pressing is this: can you point readers to some kindred spirits of yours on the web who write in the same mold?

And, do you see any Hunter-esque gonzos coming down the pike? If he sensed a new rot creeping into the scene back in the early 80s, his ashes must be doing the funky chicken over Obama not even bothering to coat the horseshit with honey these days.
...
Writers in the gonzo-esque mold? I really don't know any more than you do on that matter. I'd say James Howard Kunstler for one. You may not think of Jim that way, but if he were writing his stuff in 1970, he would have been seen as gonzo. But I'm not sure just who is out there. I really don't cruise the web as much as you might think.

But Hunter was one of a kind. Realistically speaking, Matt Taibbi is probably as good as Hunter was in many respects. But Hunter was the first. Taibbi is better than Hunter in nailing down the facts, but strains too hard at times to be entertaining (who doesn't?) Still, I have a lot of respect for Taibbi. Also, Hunter's political position inasmuch as he had one other than personal freedom, might be called armed and drugged-out libertarian. It was a different era. If Hunter were starting out today, I doubt Hunter could get published by mainstream mags and book publishers. Publishers' legal fears and all.

In that same piece, Joe also showed that he wasn't a Crazy Eddie.

Like anyone else who has soberly observed this age of peak everything, and the avaricious clowns in charge of our future, I'm a doomer. Even if Abe Lincoln, FDR or Gandhi were in charge at this point, I'd be a doomer. But with enough booze, I can gut it out in relative cheer.

But I digress. Joe cited Jim favorably again.

Jim Kunstler, never at a loss to describe a ludicrous situation, sums up the paper economy's engineering of our collapse nicely:

"Wall Street -- in particular the biggest 'banks' -- packaged up and sold enough swindles to unwind 2500 years of western civilization. You simply cannot imagine the amount of bad financial paper out there right now in every vault and portfolio on the planet … the people fabricating things like synthetic collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) had no idea what the fuck they were doing -- besides deliberately creating documents that nobody would ever understand, that would never be unraveled by teams of law clerks ... and were guaranteed to place in jeopardy every operation of the world economy above the barter level."

Phew!

Not only did I get my wish before I died, I got my wish before either one of them did as well.

As for a review, Joe was a keen observer of politics, culture, and economy, especially as it related to the modern American condition and how that condition is contributing to economic and social collapse. He wasn't strong on the science, but he didn't need to be. It's not for lack of science that we are both in the fix were in, know what kind of fix were in, and know how to get out. It's because of all the human factors that Americans are in the mess there're in and only now have the barest glimmer of how big a mess it really is. Joe was also a masterful writer. His prose was gripping and his subject matter was and still is compelling.

He thought he'd escape the ultimate fate of our society by either living abroad or dying first. He got his wish; he did both.

Joe had many memorable posts, but I especially recommend this one: Escape from the Zombie Food Court. It's the one where he best explains "The Hologram"--the corporate-controlled media projection of reality that substitutes for the real thing and which has Americans in its thrall. Happy Reading.

Goodbye, Joe. You'll be missed.

ETA: Jim Kunstler provided the capstone to their interaction in his post today.

I was just informed this morning about the death of Joe Bageant, author of Deer Hunting With Jesus and the soon-to-be published Rainbow Pie. Joe was a brave and funny soul and we will miss him very much.

Remember this moment; it isn't often that Jim says something nice about another person in his blog.