Over the weekend, multiple Academy members told TheWrap that they had been passing around a recent article by Dennis Jett in The New Republic that attacks the film for making a hero out of Kyle. "I have not seen American Sniper," he wrote. "But if the trailer is any indication, Eastwood's film, like 'Zero Dark Thirty,' tries to make a straightforward situation more complex than it is."
The film's straightforward treatment of Kyle, who was killed in February 2013 by a veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, is one of the reasons it has been celebrated by the military and embraced by audiences that have made it by far the top-grossing Best Picture nominee.
"He seems like he may be a sociopath," one Academy member told TheWrap, adding he had not yet seen the film but had read the article, which is being passed around.
A piece in The Guardian by author Lindy West criticized Kyle this way: "The real American Sniper was a hate-filled killer. Why are simplistic patriots treating him as a hero?" he wrote.
In the Guardian piece, West wrote of the film, "If [Eastwood], intentionally or not, makes a hero out of Kyle who, bare minimum, was a racist who took pleasure in dehumanizing and killing brown people is he responsible for validating racism, murder, and dehumanization?" [emphasis added] Omitted the Michael Moore comment seen elsewhere here, q.v
#1
They're supposed to have their fingers on the American pulse; ticket sales -- as I recall $92 million for opening weekend vs $21 million for the next closest -- demonstrate dramatically that they do not. So of course they're waxing waspish. It will be interesting to see how American Sniper does abroad, where most films make their profits these days... though after doing so well domestically, foreign profits aren't as key to the final ranking.
#3
who, bare minimum, was a racist who took pleasure in dehumanizing and killing brown people
Unless the Guardian has solid evidence to indicate that this statement is true it is reckless disregard for the truth. IOW it's a damn lie. I believe in freedom of the press but this looks false, libelous and damaging. I'm no lawyer but if I was one of Kyle's heirs I'd be thinking about hiring one to see if this statement is actionable.
I saw this movie on Saturday. There were a lot of Marines in the theater who actually applauded when it was over. Eastwood has a hit and al Guardian types can't stand it because the movie isn't squishy, girly, apologetic and liberal.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/19/2015 12:08 Comments ||
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#4
Je ne suis pas Kyle!
Blazen that on your tee-shirts under your coats while you sip your double mocha decaf while sitting smug and comfortable at the bistro on the boulevard or in your offices in London far away from the real barbarians like ISIS. If you don't want snipers we could have turned most of the ME to glowing glass and never quibble about these little things today. Kinder gentler war BS.
#7
If these mouth-breathers really thought Kyle had done anything wrong they would have called for him to be criminally charged. Plenty of others have been, and plenty of them are doing hard time. Since the Idiocracy didn't make a serious attempt to get charges brought during Kyle's lifetime we can assume they don't themselves believe their own bullshit.
So why make all these mewling noises now?
In part, because Hollywood mostly makes war movies that bomb at the box office. Sniper's success puts them in the difficult position of having to explain why their movies did poorly, and why they refuse to make a commercially successful war movie themselves.
Also, the Left always feels the need to muddy things. It's the same pathology shown by the many Obama fans who refuse to admit that he has ever made a single mistake and the communist fellow travelers who to this day refuse to apologize or admit the atrocities they championed.
Finally, they don't want to give us a hero. Heroes represent values, and they don't want to concede any form of objective right vs wrong. They must be the only arbiters of such things, and the only important moral criteria are the Left's own needs at that particular moment.
#8
OK so define leftist Hollywood. First, not the studios. They are still making the movies. A large number of the directors, the big directors, are still doing this type of movie. So the real complainers are the left movie news, and some leftie actors. We need to narrowly define the haters and out them. Seems on this one it was the movie critics who are folks that are leaches in the media, a big fat Canadian conspiracy anti American director, and a washed up WWF/disgraced SEAL/Leftie governor. We give these hate filled sheep way too much in our media, in our lives, and in our heads. I have never read the Guardian, except for in conservative blogs.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
01/19/2015 14:30 Comments ||
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#9
Went to a theater yesterday to see a 3:30 show. The theater had the kind of seating where each seat has a number and you buy the actual seat for the show. At 3:30 the sign said "All seats for American Sniper are sold out except for the front row for all showings until 9:30".
I think the only thing wrong with that movie is they didn't get enough copies out to the theaters.
Those saying bad things about Kyle are judging the trailer and their own fevered imaginations of what a sniper *must be* because their descriptions don't dove-tail with the movie at all.
1. Anyone wanna bet there will be an actual call to have AS removed from Oscar competition?
2. Gee, I wonder what Jesse Ventura has to say about this.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
01/19/2015 18:34 Comments ||
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#15
One wonders what their reaction to a movie about a jihad who builds and plants IED's to kill and injured civilians to defend his religion from being offended by cartoons.
Not to compare the two - because they are entirely different. But my guess would be that their reaction would be entirely different.
#16
Jesse Ventura? Who's that? I think I heard of him once - an asshole - a phony SEAL who never did the Qual course, nor ever saw combat - yet wears the gear and trades on stolen glory?
#18
Just remember, when Kyle killed members of Al Qaeda in Iraq, he was a murderer, but when Obama orders their descendant organization bombed, he's a Lightbringer.
[NationalReview]. Let us call the roll of national badasses: the 75th Ranger Regiment, USMC Force Reconnaissance, the SEALS, Delta Force . . . James Taylor?
What sort of warriors does a weary nation facing a savage enemy turn to? "The Quiet Professionals," "Semper Fidelis," "Death from Above" . . .
"A Churning Urn of Burning Funk."
The spectacle of the Obama administration's dispatching Secretary of State John Kerry to "share a big hug with Paris" as James Taylor -- who still exists -- crooned "You've Got a Friend" is the perfect objective correlative for American decline: The pathetic self-regard of John Kerry and James Taylor's Baby Boomers meets the cynical, self-serving, going-through-the-motions style of Barack Obama's Generation X as disenchanted Millennials in parental basements across the fruited plains no doubt injured their thumbs typing "WTF?" It is the substitution of celebrity for power, of sentiment for analysis, of sloppy gesture for clear-headed commitment.
We're responding to barbarism from the seventh century with soft rock from the 1970s.
James Taylor may in fact be the quintessential man of his generation. He is the son of two highly accomplished parents, his father a physician and dean of the University of North Carolina medical school who served in the Arctic with Operation Deep Freeze, his mother a soprano who studied at the New England Conservatory of Music. A child of affluence bringing up the rear of the Age of Aquarius, he was in a mental institution by the time he was of high-school age, and then tried to launch a musical career but launched a career as a full-time junkie instead. His fortunes turned around when he inherited money and used his new status to move to London and exploit his social connections to link up with Paul McCartney and become rich and famous with a catchy song about what a complete screw-up he had been his entire life. At some point, this man who is so colorlessly country-club that he makes the Fox News weekday lineup look like the original cast of Hair declared himself a "churning urn of burning funk." For the next few decades he proceeded to burden the world with a burgeoning catalog of insipid mediocrity until, finally, he descended to the lowest point a musician ever reaches, three steps down from busking in subway stations: He became a hired hand for politicians, playing with MoveOn.org's "Vote for Change" tour through swing states on behalf of -- small world! -- John Kerry, our national personification of vanity, a kept man, dilettante, and Democratic time-server whose career was both launched and sustained by self-serving accounts of his service in the Vietnam War, a conflict that Taylor avoided by being declared mentally unfit to serve.
In our hour of need, the French gave us Lafayette. In theirs, we sent them the guy who drained all the sugar out of "How Sweet It Is" and substituted saccharin.
#1
You have to understand. Carole King, JT's ex who originally did the song, was unavailable. And she's jewish, so it would have set the wrong tone.
We're actually lucky Kerry didn't drag Arlo Guthrie over there and have him do 'The Alice's Restaurant Masacree'. Although that probably would have been more entertaining.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
01/19/2015 7:40 Comments ||
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#2
Could have been worse.
Springsteen.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/19/2015 7:43 Comments ||
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#3
Should have been Judy Collins, "Send in the Clowns".
#1
First false truism: "Solution must come from within Islam". It makes people believe that sme bad people have hijacked Islam but Ialm is inherently good and slavation will come from dyed-in-the-wool Muslims. Problem is: Islam has not been hijacked. That is its real face. If anything is the good people between Muslmims who are the heretics.
The completely unintended grain of truth in this assetion is that the solution must come from Muslim countries but this solution would not be Muslim but a new Mustafa Kemal: he was born a Muslim but few people despised and hated Islam and Muhammad as intensely as he did.
[USATODAY] Making matters incalculably worse is the fact that the most immediate threats to free speech in this country don't come from abroad, but from here at home. As described three years ago by Jonathan Turley in the Washington Post, we are witnessing the censoring of speech under one of four rationales: Speech is blasphemous; Speech is hateful; Speech is discriminatory; Speech is deceitful."
Shortly after the Sony affair broke open, Ross Douthat, the loneliest and bravest journalist at The New York Times ...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... , wrote one of the most powerful paragraphs about that, and related, matters:
Of course it had to escalate this way. We live in a time of consistent gutlessness on the part of institutions notionally committed to free speech and intellectual diversity, a time of canceled commencement invitations and CEOs defenestrated for their political donations, a time of Twitter mobs, trigger warnings and cringing public apologies. A time when journalists and publishers tiptoe around Islamic fundamentalism, when free speech is under increasing pressure on both sides of the Atlantic, when a hypersensitive political correctness has the whip hand on many college campuses.
So why should anyone be remotely surprised when Kim Pudge Jong-un ...the overweight, pouty-looking hereditary potentate of North Korea. Pudge appears to believe in his own divinity, but has yet to produce any loaves and fishes, so his subjects remain malnourished... decided to get in on the "don't offend me" act?
So what to do? Enforcement of the First Amendment won't suffice because it only proscribes governmental abridgement of free speech, and only, of course, in the United States.
Here's a couple suggestions. The next time you read or hear something that you think is truly awful, moronic, hateful or false, send a comment by email, text or social media stating your objections but also saying that you respect the right of the offending party to speak his or her piece.
And when you hear of some group or individual threatening advertisers with boycotts for advertising on programs they don't like, contact those same advertisers yourself and let them know that you have a different view.
In the end, free speech can be guaranteed, if at all, not by the press or government, but only by the people.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/19/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
Pap.
As the Hebdo massacre shows, the problem is free speech is dangerous, when people are prepared to kill you for it.
[DAWN] IT has already been termed a paradigm shift. Pakistains reported decision last week to ban a number of violent hard boy organizations, including the Haqqani Network and Lashkar-e-Taiba ...the Army of the Pure, an Ahl-e-Hadith terror organization founded by Hafiz Saeed. LeT masquerades behind the Jamaat-ud-Dawa facade within Pakistain and periodically blows things up and kills people in India. Despite the fact that it is banned, always an interesting concept in Pakistain, the organization remains an blatant tool and perhaps an arm of the ISI... front Jamaat-ud-Dawa ...the front organization of Lashkar-e-Taiba... (JuD), has been welcomed by the international community. The new additions to the list have been carefully chosen to emphasise the point that Pakistain no longer distinguishes between good and bad Taliban.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
01/19/2015 00:00 ||
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[11127 views]
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[DAWN] IN the long, convoluted history of the Pak state banning Death Eater groups, the present episode may be the most mysterious: a US government spokesperson has publicly and explicitly welcomed a decision by Pakistain to ban several more Death Eater groups, even though absolutely no one in government here has made any such announcement.
If US State Department Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harfs assertion in a news briefing on Friday proves true We welcome [the decision] to outlaw the Haqqani network, Jamaat-ud-Dawa ...the front organization of Lashkar-e-Taiba... , and I think about 10 other organizations linked to violent extremism, Ms Harf is quoted as saying it would demonstrate that the bad old days of Pak leaders treating external powers as more relevant and important in matters of national security than, say, the Pak public or parliament have never really gone away.
Even more problematically, the latest move if, indeed, it is announced soon, as Ms Harf has claimed it will be would bolster the perception that Pakistain is fighting militancy at the behest of others, especially the US, and not because this is a war that this country must fight and win for its own survival.
There is no doubt that the Pak state needs to do more against a much wider spectrum of Death Eater and krazed killer groups operating its soil.
Focusing on simply the so-called anti-Pakistain Death Eater networks such as the TTP will only produce medium-term results, perhaps, but guarantees long-term failure in the fight against militancy. This is both because of the overlapping nature of Death Eater groups operational, strategic and ideological and because a long-term future where the state is in competition with militias for predominance inside Pakistain is not a future that ought to be acceptable to anyone in this country.
So yes, the Haqqani network needs to be banned as does the Jamaat-ud-Dawa and sundry more names that may come to light soon. But without a zero-tolerance policy against militancy, there will be no winning strategy.
Zero tolerance certainly does not mean simply military operations and heavy-handed counterterrorism measures in the urban areas; what it does suggest is a commitment to progressively disarm and dismantle Death Eater groups and the wider krazed killer network that enables those groups to survive and thrive.
Of course, simply banning more groups will not mean much unless the previous bans are implemented, the new bans cover all incarnations of a Death Eater group, and there are sustained efforts by the law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus to ensure banned ...the word banned seems to have a different meaning in Pakistain than it does in most other places. Or maybe it simply lacks any meaning at all...
organizations do not quietly regroup once the initial focus fades. That has never happened before.
And the present is even more complicated. What will a ban on the Haqqani network mean in practice given that the major sanctuary in North Wazoo has already been disrupted by Operation Zarb-e-Azb ..the Pak offensive against Qaeda in Pakistain and the Pak Taliban in North Wazoo. The name refers to the sword of the Prophet (PTUI!)... ? What will banning the JuD mean for the Falahi Insaniyat Foundation? Will the government offer answers to anything?
Posted by: Fred ||
01/19/2015 00:00 ||
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[11127 views]
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#3
Mikey says a lot of inane B.S. Seems like he has a case of misplaced aggression and hatred. Our enemies were the Nazis and the Germans during WWII. Some Kraut sniper offed his uncle so now he hates our snipers? That's a little nuts. If his uncle had been killed by a German tank, would he hate U.S. tanks?
#7
Considering this is coming from a fat guy who refuses to tackle subjects that might cause him discomfort or, God forbid, actual danger from pissed off people.... that has got to be one of the most hypocritical statements ever to dribble from his fat pie hole.
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Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
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Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
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Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Over the weekend, multiple Academy members told TheWrap that they had been passing around a recent article by Dennis Jett in The New Republic that attacks the film for making a hero out of Kyle. "I have not seen American Sniper," he wrote. "But if the trailer is any indication, Eastwood's film, like 'Zero Dark Thirty,' tries to make a straightforward situation more complex than it is.".png)
Wazoo
Michael is just like his daddy, he'll never amount to a damn thing. 
