I saw Olympus Has Fallen this weekend and it was, in fact, quite terrible. I wanted to jump in and kill the president myself. Bad, bad horrible movie. We got kicked out of the theater with less than 10 minutes to go in the film because somebody thought it would be funny to pull the fire alarm and I really could've just gone home at that moment, but my companions wanted to stay, so we stayed and sat through the end. Gerard Butler and Aaron whatshisface share one of the worst, wanna be pithy last lines on the way out of the trashed WH in memory. They guy who played the villain was actually a joy. Wish he'd killed them all, including Angela Basset in her excruciatingly bad Florence from The Jefferson's wig. So, so bad.

le nub, I hear you. I thought the documentary's thesis was "confirmation bias is real, yo!" Also "the human brain is amazing at finding patterns and trying to make meaning." I thought they did a nice subtle job of showing how each person saw in the movie what they wanted to see: the Holocaust historian saw a film about the Holocaust; the Apollo moon landing "truther" saw an admission that Kubrick filmed the moon landings.

I don't really want to know what the guy who saw the in-box as an erection brought to the movie.

The level of cinematic kabbalah the documentary highlighted did make me think a lot about the lengths people will go to in order to find symbols and meaning and patterns in something.

The level of cinematic kabbalah the documentary highlighted did make me think a lot about the lengths people will go to in order to find symbols and meaning and patterns in something.

From a critical standpoint, you'd just say that The Shining like Shakespeare, or "The Wasteland" or Gravity's Rainbow is a rich text. It supports multiple meanings because it's very dense and allusive, detailed and layered.

Certainly it's an aspect of the pattern-seeing aspect of the human brain. But it's also what makes art artful.

RIP Jesús Franco: [link]

Hec,

I kind of see what you mean, but for 80-90% of the movie (except for the person who discussed Kubric's directorial choices and the set), I felt like what the movie did was inspire people to write fiction. This is not a bad thing, but nearly all of their interpretations had very little foundation in the movie.

That is why I felt the movie lacked value. This is the kind of thing you hear on a bad blind date or sitting next to the wrong person on a plane. Sure we all can see things and have creative interpretations of anything, but I'm not sure a movie needs to be made out of it.

RIP Roger Ebert.

Man, sometimes I completely disagreed with him, and sometimes I completely agreed with him, but I always loved his reviews. Film criticism has lost a major voice.

Oh wow, PC. I saw an article a day or two ago that his cancer was back...but man, that was fast. RIP indeed.

My sister IM'ed me about it and I thought she must have misread one of the articles about his cancer/leave of absence. Wow.

End of an era.

That's what I thought, too, Suzi. So sad. But he battled it for a long time.

Also, what Jessica said.

My sister IM'ed me about it and I thought she must have misread one of the articles about his cancer/leave of absence. Wow.

Yeah, I saw the first RIP post on Facebook and was like what are you talking about, and then I saw the articles from yesterday, and then she quoted me the Tweet, and dammit.