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| 5/25 |
| 2005/6/30-7/1 [Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Iraq, Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Israel] UID:38374 Activity:kinda low |
6/30 Apparently, Spielberg's "War of the Worlds" sucks.
\_ I haven't seen a single Spielberg movie I didn't like. In fact
I haven't seen a single Jew-made production I didn't like.
You want proof that the Jews are better? Just turn on TV.
All the intelligent, funny, and likeable commentators, comedians,
writers, and producers are Jews. I wish I were a Jew.
-Not a Jew but TOTALLY worship them
\_ why not move to israel?
\_ suicide bombers
\_ Which are statistically less dangerous than driving in the
U.S.
\_ The motd racist idiot is back, yay!
\_ you should explain why it sucks
\_ I haven't seen it. I've just heard/read a buch of reviews,
and every single one panned it. I'm just a little
disappointed. Here's ebert:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050628/REVIEWS/50606007
\_ you got to give ebert nerd points for picking it apart for
lack of plausibility, and lines like "Three legs are
inherently not stable"
\_ Uh. Tripods are most stable on any varying surface. They're
not redundant, but they are definitely stable.
Now, if they're walking, three is inconvenient, but not
necessarily improbable.
\_ Yeah, I think the core of his argument is that it's less
realistic than Independence Day, and he's fucking pissed!
\_ Three legs walking are more than inconvenient. They just
don't work. John Christopher addressed this in his
Tripods books. He explained that they rotated as they
walked.
\_ Huh? Most of the reviews I saw were favorable. (NY Times, Chron)
-dans
\_ Huh, you're right, LATIMES liked it..
\_ Yes, and the Washington Post loved it
\_ 72% sucks?
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/war_of_the_worlds
\_ I think I would dislike this movie so I will skip it. It seems
pretty stupid. And I don't really care for Cruise. And Spielberg's
stuff, well usually it's good but usually also annoys me in other
ways like having smarmy overly-sentimental scenes.
\_ I haven't seen a single Spielberg movie I didn't like. In fact
I haven't seen a single Jew-made production I didn't like.
You want proof that the Jews are better? Just turn on TV.
All the intelligent, funny, and likeable commentators, comedians,
writers, and producers are Jews. I wish I were a Jew.
-Not a Jew but TOTALLY worship them
\_ why not move to israel?
\_ suicide bombers
\_ Which are statistically less dangerous than driving in the
U.S.
\_ The motd racist idiot is back, yay!
\_ you should explain why it sucks
\_ I haven't seen it. I've just heard/read a buch of reviews,
and every single one panned it. I'm just a little
disappointed. Here's ebert:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050628/REVIEWS/50606007
\_ you got to give ebert nerd points for picking it apart for
lack of plausibility, and lines like "Three legs are
inherently not stable"
\_ Uh. Tripods are most stable on any varying surface. They're
not redundant, but they are definitely stable.
Now, if they're walking, three is inconvenient, but not
necessarily improbable.
\_ Yeah, I think the core of his argument is that it's less
realistic than Independence Day, and he's fucking pissed!
\_ Three legs walking are more than inconvenient. They just
don't work. John Christopher addressed this in his
Tripods books. He explained that they rotated as they
walked.
\_ Huh? Most of the reviews I saw were favorable. (NY Times, Chron)
-dans
\_ Huh, you're right, LATIMES liked it..
\_ Yes, and the Washington Post loved it
\_ 72% sucks?
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/war_of_the_worlds
\_ I think I would dislike this movie so I will skip it. It seems
pretty stupid. And I don't really care for Cruise. And Spielberg's
stuff, well usually it's good but usually also annoys me in other
ways like having smarmy overly-sentimental scenes. |
| rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050628/REVIEWS/50606007 columnists War of the Worlds (PG-13) Ebert: Users: Death and destruction come from above and below in "War of the Worlds." H ere, Tom Cruise has a revelatory science fiction experience. It proceeds with the lead-footed deliberation of its 1950s pred ecessors to give us an alien invasion that is malevolent, destructive an d, from the alien point of view, pointless. They've "been planning this for a million years" and have gone to a lot of trouble to invade Earth f or no apparent reason and with a seriously flawed strategy. The Day After Tomorrow," which depicted the global consequences of cosmic events, it lacks dimension: Martians have journeyed millions of miles to attack a crane operator and his neighbors (and if they're no t Martians, they journeyed a lot farther). To m Cruise), does the sort of running and hiding and desperate defending o f his children that goes with the territory, and at one point even dives into what looks like certain death to rescue his daughter. Tim Robbins ) who has quick insights into surviving: "The ones that didn't flatline a re the ones who kept their eyes open." And there are the usual crowds of terrified citizens looking up at ominous threats looming above them. Bu t despite the movie's $135 million budget, it seems curiously rudimentar y in its action. We learn that countless years ago, invaders presumably but not nec essarily from Mars buried huge machines all over the Earth. Now they act ivate them with lightning bolts, each one containing an alien (in what f orm, it is hard to say). With the aliens at the controls, these machines crash up out of the Earth, stand on three towering but spindly legs and begin to zap the planet with death rays. Later, their tentacles suck ou r blood and fill steel baskets with our writhing bodies. And, for that matter, why balance these towering machines on ill-des igned supports? If evolution has taught us anything, it is that limbs of living things, from men to dinosaurs to spiders to centipedes, tend to come in numbers divisible by four. Three legs are inherently not stable, as Ray demonstrates when he damages one leg of a giant tripod, and it f alls helplessly to the ground. Orson Welles radio broadcast and the popular 1953 movie. But the book and radio progra m depended on our imaginations to make them believable, and the movie ca me at a time of lower expectations in special effects. You look at Spiel berg's machines and you don't get much worked up, because you're seeing not alien menace but clumsy retro design. Perhaps it would have been a g ood idea to set the movie in 1898, at the time of Wells' novel, when the tripods represented a state-of-the-art alien invasion. There are some wonderful f/x moments, but they mostly don't involve the p ods. A scene where Ray wanders through the remains of an airplane crash is somber and impressive, and there is an unforgettable image of a train , every coach on fire, roaring through a station. Such scenes seem to co me from a kind of reality different from that of the tripods. Does it make the aliens scarier that their motives are never spelled out? I don't expect them to issue a press release announcing their plans for world domination, but I wish their presence reflected some kind of inte lligent purpose. The alien ship in "Close Encounters" visited for no oth er reason, apparently, than to demonstrate that life existed elsewhere, could visit us, and was intriguingly unlike us while still sharing such universal qualities as the perception of tone. The alien machines in "War of the Worlds" seem designed for hea vy lifting in an industry that needs to modernize its equipment and tech niques. The human characters are disappointingly one-dimensional. Cruise's charac ter is given a smidgen of humanity (he's an immature, divorced hotshot w ho has custody of the kids for the weekend) and then he wanders out with his neighbors to witness strange portents in the sky, and the movie bec omes a story about grabbing and running and ducking and hiding and tryin g to fight back. Jurassic Park" where characters hide from a curious raptor. The thing is, we never believe the tripods and their invasion are practic al. How did these vast metal machines lie undetected for so long beneath the streets of a city honeycombed with subway tunnels, sewers, water an d power lines, and foundations? And why didn't a civilization with the p hysical science to build and deploy the tripods a million years ago not do a little more research about conditions on the planet before sending its invasion force? It's a war of the worlds, all right -- but at a mole cular, not a planetary level. All of this is just a way of leading up to the gut reaction I had all thr ough the film: I do not like the tripods. I do not like the way they loo k, the way they are employed, the way they attack, the way they are vuln erable or the reasons they are here. A planet that harbors intelligent a nd subtle ideas for science fiction movies is invaded in this film by an ungainly Erector set. |
| www.rottentomatoes.com/m/war_of_the_worlds -> www.rottentomatoes.com/m/war_of_the_worlds/ Movie Showtimes and Tickets Tickets & Showtimes for War of the Worlds Enter Zip Code: Go Enter your zip code to find theaters showing this movie in your area. Change Movie Info THEATRICAL RELEASE Jun 29, 2005 Wide CONSENSUS War of the Worlds delivers on the thrill and paranoia of HG Wells class ic novel. From Paramount Pictures and DreamW orks Pictures comes "War of the Worlds," directed by Steven Spielberg an d starring international superstar Tom Cruise. Create A Journal Want to see your friends' ratings and Tomatometer appear here? Create a j ournal and start rating films in your entries. "May be the most efficiently built engine of escalating terror you will ever encounter. But Spielberg's technique serves no purp ose this time except the visceral." "Para no ofender a sensibilidade dos espectadores (ou a prpria), Spielberg acovarda-se diante de cenas que exigiriam crueldade absoluta." inspires the same jaw-dropping awe as Jurassic Par k and Close Encounters both did with the same mix of fantasy, horror, an d the regular guy." "The moment two youngsters appear to be more frightening than atta cking aliens, you can't help suspecting there'll be additional moviemaki ng trouble ahead. "Tom Cruise gives one of his most intense performances, and the vi sual effects have enough high-tech power to make an army of interstellar invaders cringe." "Spielberg's technical skills are second to none, and his childlike love for a good story remains intact in this marvelously enter taining, 90-percent-satisfying blockbuster." "Fantastic and banal, terrifying and occa sionally dull, pure Spielberg and yet at times anonymous, War of the Wor lds delivers multiple viewing experiences during its two-hour running ti me." "Spielberg, whose previous alien visitation movies (ET The Extra-Terrestrial and Close Encounters of the Third Kind) are consid erably more benign than this film. But he does this more mature, nightma rish material nearly as well." "It's on the road that War of the Worlds makes the jump from thril ling to frequently unpleasant, as Spielberg burdens the movie with Holoc aust imagery and commentary about terrorism and wars of occupation." "This anti-Close Encounters is a spectacular technical exe rcise, but in the final analysis it's as loud and soulless a piece of eq uipment as the aliens' Tripod Death Stars." "Spielberg has not only touched the nerve of the American psyche, he has ripped it out, stomped on it and beat it with a club for a full two hours. "Unsatisfying combination of freeze-dried family troubles and enor mous, thudding monsters... manages to somehow be syru py and cheesy at the same time." "Extravagant in movie terms but stingy in emotional ones, it embod ies all of Spielberg's bad impulses and almost none of his good ones." "Its exploitation of tragic iconography -- just to amp up the scre ams, tug some tears and sell a few more million movie tickets -- should be deplored." "We knew Spielberg had action chops, but didn't know he had this in him. This anti-ET is so rigorously realized it makes Inde pendence Day look like Finding Neverland." "Spielberg seems to have resigned himself to the fact tha t he'll never match the impact of the radio show, but he's making no bon es about going after that FX Oscar." |