Comments on: Oliver Stone: No Reason To Hold Back Now

By: Dmac

Dmac — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 22:00:17 +0000

NBK would have been an excellent film if Stone had finally decided not to beat the audience over the head with a hammer to emphasize his points. Pauline Kael said it best of Stone: “He’s a pounder.” He was always an excellent filmmaker -if only his polemics had evolved to a more subtle edge today, he might have been considered in the same league as Scorsese.

I still like watching “Salvador,” though. Woods is usually worth watching, regardless of the screenplay or direction.

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 19:31:55 +0000

I saw it (Natural Born Killers) at the theater on initial release and was really excited (I was a Stone fan then – still am, in some ways, at least of several of his movies). However, as the movie progressed, I began to feel more and more beat up, and by the end, I was ready to scream, enough! It wasn’t the violence for me so much as the noise…

By: mtl

mtl — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 19:11:33 +0000

Nbk did an excellent job of translating a ‘few’ of many aspects of mushroom induced hallucinations. Altered States is the only othe movie that comes to mind that captures a hallucinigenic experience with any degree of accuracy, and the visuals were more consistent with peyote, than shrooms.

Hard to seperate the crap and stigma of violence in nbk(which is not an aspect of mushrooms) from the actual qualities that make it a unique experience. Stone did little justice by linking mushrooms and violence, and while I laugh at ‘reefer madness’ and its campiness, i found the propoganda that stone produced counter-intuitive to what I believe to be his own personal opinion.

By: too many steves

too many steves — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 18:31:57 +0000

You aren’t alone (in despising NBK) and, in fact, are among the very small group of people who is polite while sharing a negative opinion of the movie with me.

I am often reminded of what I consider the key theme of the movie: that much of broadcast “journalism” is nothing more than prurient voyeurism that (too) much of our society is more than happy to watch. The most recent example is the TO flap of two days ago.

But I get it that most people seem to feel the depiction was over-the-top, in terms of the extreme graphic violence. Of course, I suspect that aspect of the film is most attributable to Tarantino rather than Stone.

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 17:52:55 +0000

Oh, man, I despised that movie (and that was before I knew Jane Hamsher was involved!); my favorite Oliver Stone movie is JFK; as long as it is treated like the complete fantasy it is, it’s a darn good piece of filmmaking…

By: too many steves

too many steves — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 17:41:59 +0000

I did enjoy “Natural Born Killers”. Of course, that was a Tarantino story…

By: mtl

mtl — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 17:37:49 +0000

I’m in a panic…

oliver stone, rosie o’donnell-they might actually convince one person to vote this november.

By: Dmac

Dmac — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 16:25:09 +0000

Lest we forget that Stone was the director and producer of the excreable “Letter to Fidel” doc that aired on HBO about two years ago. The man definitely needs to be put out to pasture – or at least encouraged to leave the country he always professes to hate so intensely.

By: too many steves

too many steves — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 09:51:25 +0000

Let’s see, Bush has “set America back 10 years”, which, by my precise calculation, puts us in the year 1996 and smack dab in the middle of Bill Clinton’s time as President. I recall, as they say on SNL, that many view that year through a nostalgic “good times, good times” prism. So is Oliver thanking Bush for a return to the the golden years?

By: mtl

mtl — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 04:02:53 +0000

“wonder if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is looking for his Leni Riefenstahl?”

Allen must have beat him to it. The difference between Allen and Webb? charisma.

Jim will be sweaty over this, the lefty blogs will be screaming.