Reviewing Hollywood snakery

Questions, speculations & updates on the techniques and nature of media fakery
pov603
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Re: Reviewing Hollywood snakery

Unread post by pov603 »

Yes! Cheers Flabbergasted!
sublimity
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Re: Reviewing Hollywood snakery

Unread post by sublimity »

Speaking of which, here is a screenshot from the extended cut of Independence Day that is similar in composition to the average 9/11 rubble image. :rolleyes:



Image

Source: http://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=587558
VexMan
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Re: Reviewing Hollywood snakery

Unread post by VexMan »

I wanted to share with all what I found a while ago... not sure, if it is going to fit perfectly into this thread but anyway, it most definitely is food for thought for anyone willing to think about Hollywood machinery. It's about the movie "The Counselor", made in 2013 by Ridley Scott from a script by Cormac McCarthy. The review was written by Jasun Horsley, full link to it here: http://auticulture.com/wp-content/uploa ... nselor.pdf. There are few points from Horsley's review I'd like to bring forward here :
As a vision of evil The Counselor is completely persuasive. Its depiction of soullessness as eerily sumptuous, even sickly erotic, of moral incoherence as the driving force behind civilization, makes it almost Lovecraftian. With its relentless, seductive insistence on horror as the soul of the plot, it may be the first really postmodern horror film. By going all the way into the nihilistic perspective of a godless universe, it achieves what Coppola failed so spectacularly to do with Apocalypse Now, and takes us all the way into the American heart of darkness.

And—surprise, surprise—it’s in Mexico
I bolded in above quote what stunned me when realising what Horlsey observed - there need to be no images involved in order to make a horror movie. It for sure wouldn't be the first movie which tried to inflict emotions of fear/horror without showing any image of it (Blairwitch Project as a recent example), however The Counselor is not a horror movie neither by story nor by any context. So while talking about the snakery, this movie comes as a prime queen of such.

There are many of very profound points Horsley makes in his observations. I'll quote just one more as an example , which interlaces many of the subject discussed here on CF. IT is about the specific part within the movie where a dialogue is set between the diamond dealer and the counselor:
The diamond dealer gives a long, difficult to decipher speech about how every country that has driven out the Jews has “suffered the same fate.” He makes the bold claim that there is no culture (since the Greeks) besides the Semitic culture, and that the heart of a culture is found in the nature of its hero. Western culture, while driving out the Jews, has adopted the Man of God, Christ, “the prophet-penitent,” as its hero, even though the God in question is that of Jewish culture. “How do you steal a God?” he ponders. The counselor offers no answer. The dealer winds up his speech by saying that “The Jew beholds his tormentor in the vestments of his own ancient culture.”

The insinuation of this speech, as far as I could tell, is similar to something the poet William Blake wrote, that when a nation rejects the Jews but adopts the Jewish faith, it becomes subject to “Jewish rule.” Christians worship the same God as the Jews, and yet the Jewish God is temperamentally opposed to the Christian virtue of mercy and forgiveness. Jehovah is a wrathful, avenging deity who smites anyone who displeases Him (and even some who don’t, as Job can testify). The Jews appeased Jehovah by offering up blood sacrifices, and the film’s heart of darkness (Mexico, the barbaric land outside the walls of the Empire) is a killing field where young women are tortured and murdered for the entertainment of cosmically depraved overlords—as blood sacrifices to appease monstrous appetites.
Farcevalue
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Re: Reviewing Hollywood snakery

Unread post by Farcevalue »

I found this to be a very powerful movie, although I could not bring myself to recommend it to anyone. Well executed might be a way to describe it without bringing the Nietzsche-esque abyss-staring aspects of the content into it .

There was a clearly nihilistic moral in that the most unabashedly innocent suffered horrible fates, while the most corrupt psychopaths prevailed. This is an ending that movie goers generally find intolerable (or at least most producers must think so, as it is very uncommon).

I actually liked, not necessarily enjoyed the movie, although perhaps being preoccupied with the world as I now understand it to work in reality has tempered my ability to endure that type of content.

I find it to be well within the current context of glorification of anti-heroes and normalization of psychopathy, with a bit of in your face "Whaddya gonna do about it?" thrown in for good measure.

I am curious to see Suicide Squad, although refuse to fund it, as the premise is recruitment of psychopaths to be used in the service of good.

If we can make heroes of our murderers, pedophiles and rapists, bankers and politicians must surely be angels.
Flabbergasted
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Re: Reviewing Hollywood snakery

Unread post by Flabbergasted »

A piece of number trivia

Director George Lucas was fond of the elevenoid number "1138", which became popularized through the title of his social science fiction movie, "THX 1138".

THX 1138 is the name of the protagonist. The two other main characters are called LUH 3417 (female lead) and SEN 5241 (villain). The letters seem like random sequences ascribed to dehumanized people but they are likely thematically intentional. It is fairly certain that THX stands for “sex” and his companion LUH stands for “love,” (the two rebels become connected via sex and love after refusing to take their government-mandated, mind-altering drugs). SEN stands for “sin.” The characters SRT, NCH, and PTO are believed to represent Sartre, Nietzsche and Plato, respectively, because of their philosophical ramblings while THX 1138 is imprisoned.

Lucas is said to have named the film after his San Francisco telephone number, 849 1138 (the letters THX correspond to 8, 4 and 9 on the keypad), although in an interview for the DVD compilation "Reel Talent", he claims he chose the letters and numbers for their aesthetic qualities, especially their symmetry.

The title of the film, or parts of it, appears in other productions, such as:
- American Graffiti (1973) - the license plate on John Milner’s car is "THX 138".
- Star Wars, Episode IV, A New Hope (1977) - Luke Skywalker and Han Solo transfer Chewbacca to "prison cell block 1138" while disguised as stormtroopers.
- Raiders of the Lost Ark: a loudspeaker in the submarine dock scene announces "ein, ein, drei, acht,"
- The cinema sound certification developed by Lucas's company is called "THX".

The number 1138 probably appears in many other media productions, like so many Easter eggs. The other day I saw it twice in a Duke Nukem game (episode 2, level 2, Incubator). It´s pretty well hidden, though.

On the wall, below a UN-like logo:
Image

On a computer screen nearby:
Image

More here:
http://mentalfloss.com/article/76955/15 ... t-thx-1138
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066434/tri ... tt_trv_trv
dblitz
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Re: Reviewing Hollywood snakery

Unread post by dblitz »

Good noticing Flabbergasted, are you a gamer?

Also, Farcevalue -
If we can make heroes of our murderers, pedophiles and rapists, bankers and politicians must surely be angels.
Great point.
ICfreely
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Re: Reviewing Hollywood snakery

Unread post by ICfreely »

File this under: The American Dream[work]

(viewtopic.php?f=27&t=995&start=15#p2411950)



Hollywoodism: Jews, Movies and The American Dream | Feature Documentary

full link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sc0oExksfoY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sc0oExksfoY

2:14 - Neal Gabler: “All of these men who founded Hollywood were born within a 500 mile radius of one another and all of them wound up roughly within 15 miles of one another in Los Angeles. One could say that the American Dream was really born in Eastern Europe.”

19:47 - “Now why did they move to California? I believe that they went there because California was a raw social environment and although there was a social system in place, it was nowhere near as sophisticated and nowhere near as entrenched as the social hierarchy in Boston or New York or even Chicago where these moguls came from. So coming to California they realized they could create their own social environment. They could create an empire of their own.”
ICfreely
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Re: Reviewing Hollywood snakery

Unread post by ICfreely »

The Andromeda Strain (1971) VIRUS EXPLORED

full link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut9ejKRuni0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut9ejKRuni0
The Andromeda Strain is a 1971 American science fiction thriller film produced and directed by Robert Wise. Based on Michael Crichton's 1969 novel of the same name and adapted by Nelson Gidding, the film stars Arthur Hill, James Olson, Kate Reid, and David Wayne as a team of scientists who investigate a deadly organism of extraterrestrial origin. With a few exceptions, the film follows the book closely. The special effects were designed by Douglas Trumbull. The film is notable for its use of split screen in certain scenes.

Plot

The story is told in flashback by Dr. Jeremy Stone, testifying to an unseen committee. After a satellite, a U.S. government project code-named Scoop, crashes near the small rural town of Piedmont, New Mexico, almost all of the town's inhabitants die quickly. A military satellite recovery team tries to recover the satellite but is stopped in mid-sentence. Suspecting that the satellite brought back an alien :ph34r: organism, the military activates an elite scientific team it had previously assembled for this type of emergency.

Hall awakens in a hospital bed. His colleagues reveal that clouds are being seeded over the Pacific Ocean, which will cause rain to sweep Andromeda out of the atmosphere and into alkaline seawater, rendering it harmless. The movie ends with Stone testifying to a senator that, while they were able to defeat an alien pathogen this time, they may not be able to do so in the future. The cliffhanger ending shows "Andromeda" dissolving in seawater and then forming the number "601"- the Wildfire computer signal of too much information coming in too fast for the computer to analyze….

Scientific response

A 2003 publication by the Infectious Diseases Society of America noted that The Andromeda Strain is the "most significant, scientifically accurate, and prototypic of all films of this [killer virus] genre... it accurately details the appearance of a deadly agent, its impact, and the efforts at containing it, and, finally, the work-up on its identification and clarification on why certain persons are immune to it."[13]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andro ... ain_(film)

(viewtopic.php?f=27&t=2108)
ICfreely
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Re: Reviewing Hollywood snakery

Unread post by ICfreely »

The Iranian short film, The Frozen Rose, that I'd posted on page 10 of this thread is no longer on the Tube but someone else uploaded it on December 27, 2018 so here it is again.


'The Frozen Rose' Short Film English Subtitles

full link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRlcyVfV0KY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRlcyVfV0KY
Flabbergasted
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Re: Reviewing Hollywood snakery

Unread post by Flabbergasted »

ICfreely wrote:The Iranian short film, The Frozen Rose...
It has some parallels to the Little Match Girl. In that story, what passers-by see and pity (a poverty-stricken girl shivering in the cold and, in the morning, a frozen corpse) is completely different from what the girl actually sees in her last moments and her happiness at being reunited with her grandmother. Unfortunately, many readers don´t get this point and veer into a trite social justice discourse.
ICfreely
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Re: Reviewing Hollywood snakery

Unread post by ICfreely »

My point is, when one group of innocent kids (Jewish) are continually brainwashed with a social justice/injustice story (Purim) that may or may not have taken place thousands of years ago it results in other groups of innocent children suffering real life consequences. Tens of thousands of real Iranian/Iraqi children were orphaned as a result of the Iran-Iraq war. Now Netanyahu is playing the Purim card once again to justify a perpetual war against practically all of Israel’s neighbors in the region (Iran included). To what end?

An argument can be made that no other nation on the face of the earth, except maybe America, throughout its history has done more for Jews that Iran. And this is the thanks it gets? How many American kids have been orphaned as a result of the “War on Terror”? How many more kids will needlessly be orphaned in future wars?

Americans don’t want war. Iranians don’t want war. Even Israelis don’t want war. I think Jews and Christians should, once and for all, do away with the Godforsaken Book of Esther. So, yeah, I respectfully disagree with you, dear Flabbergasted. It’s anything but trite to me.
Flabbergasted
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Re: Reviewing Hollywood snakery

Unread post by Flabbergasted »

IC, I am sorry, I now realize it must have sounded like I had your posts in mind when I criticized the social-justice-only interpretation of Andersen´s fairy tale. I did not, in any way. It was merely a digression. Like (I believe) everyone else on the forum, I keep collecting precious nuggets from your posts every day. And, yes, by all means, the world has seen enough of that pernicious Go-Esther insanity.
Mansur
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Re: Reviewing Hollywood snakery

Unread post by Mansur »

ICfreely » April 5th, 2016, 5:01 pm wrote: ...As omnipresent as Hollywood is, it doesn’t have a monopoly on filmmaking...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRlcyVfV0KY
I am afraid it does. Film-making works I think always and everywhere in monopolized situations and cannot but be tools for propaganda. It was created as such and it works as such. No exception possible, - at least I have never seen any. This is a fact I think for everybody and anybody, except for the consumers. (It is not about partisanship which can be taken -statistically- as negligible entirely, but about industry, whether “low-budget” or not.)
Maybe I am wrong and you, dear ICfreely, are right as to the general conditions of this thing, but that wouldn’t change anything in the following.


(Psychoanalysts if employed on these fields i.e. on “reviewing Hollywood snakery” might yield some real profit to people, as it does everything which is working on its proper place. But maybe it is a crazy idea; it would imply “whistle blowing”…)

Is there in Iran such a thing as frozen anything, in nature? I assume freezing to death (especially if dressed adequately) is certainly not a commonplace occurring there as it was in northern regions of Europe at Christmas-time two centuries ago. So the motive doesn’t seem being a simple parallel but a conscious or half-conscious “adaptation”. Maybe for Iranians abroad?

- The girl is to be reunited (not with her transformed grandmother, “the only one who loved her,” but) with the father, and was ushered to him at the end in a most sinister scene.
- Then the “unsympathetically” behaving and “negligent” mother (causing as it were the tragedy herself).
- Then: this girl (not the “poor little thing” of Andersen at all) has a look already “frozen” from the start…
- etc. etc. etc.
- (Maybe, not sure, it would be interesting to know what the description says on the red ribbon of her bouquet, flagging down, so that even the cameraman found it worthy to follow it - from 3:42.)
- The other “motive”, the leitmotif, “every time she gave someone a bunch of flowers he would get martyred” (origin?) seems to be there rather for the lads…

I don’t know anything about the statistics of orphanage in Iran or the social circumstances and importance of it, but this film is not for any solidarity with them or with anyone else, let’s certain about that. Using and propagating sentimentalism (usually of the worst type possible) is always the stamp of propaganda.
ICfreely
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Re: Reviewing Hollywood snakery

Unread post by ICfreely »

“There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.”
― George W. Bush
ICfreely
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Re: Reviewing Hollywood snakery

Unread post by ICfreely »

Goonies Abc cut out "IRANIAN "

full link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHzcGN1ak0A

Oct 20, 2011
BohicaLord

..........Guess what line just got bleeped out.? "Like the time you told me about the 50 Iranian terrorists who took over all the Sizzler Steakhouses in the city?"...They bleeped out IRANIAN..NO JOKE!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHzcGN1ak0A


Oh my G-d!

Quick, somebody call the ADL.

How dare ABC edit the work of a cinematic impresario like Steven Spielberg.


The Goonies (4/5) Movie CLIP - It's Our Time Down Here (1985) HD

full link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0atATbXbQ9g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0atATbXbQ9g

I wonder sometimes, did Chunk ever get over that pathological lying thing?
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