re: Screengrab Fall Preview: Scott Von Doviak’s Picks

Phil Nugent — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 17:36:26 GMT

I'd love to see a movie about Bush by someone who made the movies that Stone always describes in his interviews and that people sometimes describe in their reviews of his movies. But Stone is the John McCain of movie directors: arch conservatives are so put off his personal style that they're in denial about how much he's their soul brother. He shares their basic political belief that government itself is inherently evil and is only necessary because it sometimes provides us with wars through which boys can bond with other boys and in the process Become Men. He did, after all, make "JFK", in which the last American president to try to enact ambitious social programs for the public good was revealed to have conspired with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to murder his predecessor, and "Nixon", which portrayed its title character not as someone who brought corruption into the White House but as a well-meaning fellow who was destroyed by the "Beast", i.e. the U.S. government itself, and "World Trade Center", which was very pure 9/11 hagiography, complete with a symbolic figure dressed for combat vowing that much blood would have to be spilled to avenge this atrocity.

Like Bush, Stone isn't a thinker, he's a feeler, and also like Bush, he decides what he feels based largely on narcissistic projection. He and Bush have so much in common--they're both rich boys with daddy issues and histories of drug use who, at the age of 40, turned their lives around based on a shared conviction that they were put on earth to settle the battles of the 1960s--that I'd be stunned if the movie doesn't turn out to be a sympathetic portrait. I don't expect him to paint Bush as a successful president, but I do expect him to fall back on the tired cliche that he's a lovable goofball who shouldn't be blamed too hard for the things that meaner, smarter people did in his name.

re: Screengrab Fall Preview: Scott Von Doviak’s Picks

Janet — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:50:30 GMT

I can't imagine who the audience is for W. Surely liberals won't want to see a film about him and conservatives won't want to see a film by Oliver Stone. I has to tank, hasn't it?

re: Screengrab Fall Preview: Scott Von Doviak’s Picks

Mark Maiden — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:49:54 GMT

"No Country for Old Men was a return to form for the Coens, and we’re all happy they finally got their Oscars."

They won screenplay for Fargo.