Category Archives: Movies & Television
Grunt’s Saturday Late Night (OK, Sunday Night) Movie Micro Review – Get the Gringo
Reprinted from my post at 4gfc.wordpress.com back in 2012 because I just saw it again, and Mel is a genius. And not just because I’ve been hitting the Bourbon. Quentin Tarantino couldn’t make a movie like this if he was sober for a decade.
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Filed under Hollywood, Movies & Television
UPDATE: American Sniper
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has declared February 2, 2015 “Chris Kyle Day” in Texas.
He got a lot of thumbs up for honoring a true American hero and a lot of thumbs down for honoring “a murderer & a terrorist & a coward.”
My fave tweet:
It’s a brilliant and honest story that demonstrates the truth of the following:
How do you get conservatives angry? You lie to them.
How do you get liberals angry? You tell them the truth.
Last Friday, First Lady Michelle Obama PRAISED American Sniper:
“[It] reflects those wrenching stories that I’ve heard — the complex journeys that our men and women in uniform endure, the complicated moral decisions they are tasked with every day, the stresses of balancing love of family with a love of country, and the challenges of transitioning back home to their next mission in life. … The vast majority of Americans will have never seen these stories or grasp these issues without portrayals like this.”
American Sniper opened at Baghdad’s Mansour Mall theater earlier this month.
It was pulled after a week, but before that, one Iraqi man named Gaith Mohammed said that it played to full and enthusiastic crowds. “Some people watching were just concentrating, but others were screaming ‘Fuck, shoot him! He has an IED, don’t wait for permission!!’”
THIRD week-end box office record!
American Sniper set a new Super Bowl week-end record and has the highest box office tally for a war movie. It has been nominated for six Oscars, including best picture and best actor.
Sources:
- http://twitchy.com/2015/02/02/texas-gov-greg-abbott-formally-proclaims-chris-kyle-day-haters-spew-venom/
- http://www.ijreview.com/2015/01/242901-first-lady-gives-acclaim-american-sniper-accurate-portrayal-veterans-journeys/
- https://www.facebook.com/FFWeekend/photos/a.534271186599834.139218.529802693713350/1040035416023406/?type=1
- http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/2015/02/01/american-sniper-box-office/22684851/
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Filed under Armed Forces, Chris Kyle, Greg Abbott, Iraq, Michelle Obama, Movies & Television
And the Oscar for pointless movie reviews goes to … – UPDATED
… the New Republic review of American Sniper which the reviewer admits he didn’t watch.
THIS is worth reading!
“Make no mistake: Looking through a magnified rifle scope and killing another human being is a difficult job. It’s a burden many snipers bear long after their service is completed. But contrary to what many believe, snipers are not mindless murderers or killing machines. They’re intensely dedicated professionals willing to do a very difficult, extremely dangerous job with the goal of protecting others.”
Source:
Filed under Armed Forces, Chris Kyle, Clint Eastwood, Media Bias, Movies & Television
God Messes with Angelina Jolie Right After Granting Miracle
A couple of days ago, Angelina Jolie recorded a video message distributed by Universal Pictures to explain why she would be conspicuously absent from promotional events prior to the release of her movie Unbroken on Christmas Day. She was stricken with Chicken Pox, apparently, during this critical time in the weeks before the release of the movie marking her directorial debut – a time usually filled with numerous high-profile interviews and studio events.
Just days before, stories like this one by Chrissythehyphenated, circulated about a desperate prayer made by Jolie during the final day of filming in Australia. The prayer was made very publicly and on her knees in front of the entire film crew and cast on set. Reportedly, the prayer was answered, because the rain stopped and director Jolie received just the exact amount of sunlight she needed to complete filming, and no more.
Few religious people can count on receiving this kind of spectacular response to a publicly-made prayer, but Jolie is very openly irreligious. Though she has expressed recent willingness to believe in a universal benevolent power, she’s never admitted to belief in a personal God who would be able to hear – or respond to – human prayer. This has resulted in some friction at times with her famous father, actor Jon Voight, who is a devout Catholic and has even played Pope John Paul II on the big screen.
Though once estranged, Jolie is currently close to her father. I wonder how their conversations are going while she convalesces. Are they discussing God’s sense of humor? Or perhaps his capacity to remind us that we are not in control? It seems to me that as we speculate on the nature of God, we should not be surprised when he attempts to explain himself to us, even if he does it by taking away something we want very badly right after he gives us exactly what we need.
Filed under Atheism, Movies & Television, News Media
Unbroken
Unbroken opens on Christmas Day
Reprinted from IJ Review:
While filming Unbroken in Australia, director Angelina Jolie needed sunlight for the very last scene of the movie, but the rain kept pouring down.
So she did something she learned from the film’s subject, Louis Zamperini. According to the Christian Post:
“She was not a person of faith and had never prayed before but she found herself at the very last scene of the movie … they needed sunlight to shoot this very important scene and there had been a storm that had been going for a while,” Zamperini’s daughter Cynthia Garris said at a press conference in New York.
“[Angelina] said ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do, so I’ll do what Louie would do.’ She got on her knees and she prayed for a miracle … everybody saw it,” she recalled. “It stopped raining. The sun came out, a rainbow came out, she said, ‘let’s get this take’ [and] they shot the take. When she said ‘cut,’ it started to rain again.”
Zamperini was an Olympic runner who became a prisoner of war during World War II. He endured torture by his Japanese captors and survived 47 days in a raft after his plane crashed in the Pacific.
The film tells his story — How, in his lowest moment, he turned to God and had his prayers answered. Before his death in July of 2014 he met with Jolie multiple times and testified about his faith. These conversations seem to have impacted the actress.
Zamperini’s daughter says:
I’ll tell you, when my father died we were all with him in the hospital. [Angelina] came about 45 minutes later and she was pointing above saying ‘I know he’s with us, I know he’s there with God.’
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Filed under Movies & Television
UPDATE: The Gosnell Movie
More from the transcripts, plus crowdfunding has reopened, so you can help finance the film.
Dr. Kermit Gosnell is the most prolific serial killer in American History, but almost no one knows who he is. The Gosnell Movie aims to change that. The minimum amount they needed to make the film was raised from public donations during a successful Indiegogo crowdfunding.
Indiegogo recently created a new opportunity called “Forever Funding” which has allowed The Gosnell Movie to re-open their crowdfunding campaign.
The original crowdfunding for The Gosnell Movie was a great success, but the truth is that the budget is extremely tight. They can and will make the movie for the $2.1 Million they raised, but since a lot of the costs are fixed (equipment, filming crew and locations) and already in the budget, extra money could go directly toward making a BETTER movie.
E.g., hiring more talented (i.e., higher paid) actors and/or extending the shooting schedule beyond the insantly short three weeks they’ve budgeted for.
If you can afford $25, do that. It’s a GREAT DEAL, cuz you get a free DVD of the finished product mailed to you as soon as they’re ready!
But, if you didn’t donate during the original campaign and have only a smidgen of money to spread around for Christmas, consider giving the minimum donation of One Dollar. Yes, ONE DOLLAR!
Each individual donor is counted as ONE BACKER, regardless of the amount given, and the higher the number of individual backers the movie can rack up, the more oomph they’ll have when it’s time to approach distributors.
In other words, ONE DOLLAR will mean more people see the film after it’s done!
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Filed under Abortion, Kermit Gosnell, Movies & Television
polination.blog 