Fan Baiting: It's a thing

Prediction on the Downfall of the MCU Coming To Pass

Disney/Pixar just laid a pretty big turd this weekend, so it seems like a good time to revisit my answer to a Quora question a year ago. It has garnered 75 likes in that time, and so I am kind of proud of that. Honestly I just rushed my answer out with a lot less work that I generally put into blog posts. The reason people like it is obviously not because of brilliant writing but because the message resonates with fans of stories of all sorts. Here's the text:

Will Marvel Studios’ “woke” stance backfire like the comics did?

If the storytelling goes downhill, then the MCU will fall. “Wokeness” seems to erect artificial barriers to good storytelling. For example, look at the Charlie’s Angels movie. All the women are Mary Sues and can all do just about everything. All the men are awful and easy for the women to beat. The old white guy turns out to be the villain and this surprises no one. The movie tanked and was deservedly mocked.

“Batwoman” is another recent cringeworthy example. Good storytelling takes a back seat to woke button-pushing, and it is one of the lowest rated things in the DC realm.

Having said all this, there are many macho-crap films, stuff as far from “woke” as possible, out there that suck as badly as Batwoman. They feature one-dimensional, steroid-jacked heroes and hot women posing merely damsels in distress. I have just never heard anyone insist that those examples of film-making are great. Not in the way people insist that Last Jedi or Rise of Skywalker is great storytelling when the plot holes in those films are gaping and their characters demonstrably less realistic.

The best of the older, cheesy action films didn’t suffer from macho or woke posturing. Commando didn’t take itself very seriously, but neither of the females comes across as a fearful damsel-y character, but rather tough characters with courage. Rae-Dawn Chong actually uses a rocket launcher to free Schwarzenegger from a paddy wagon. But if Chong was shown beating all these military guys up with Arnold sitting there cheering her on that would have ruined the story. I feel like there are a bunch of woke fans that want that, i.e., ruin the story for the sake of a narrative that shows that men need to take a back seat to women, not that men and women can work together, using different talents, to beat the bad guys. “Edge of Tomorrow” is a good example of a more recent example of this, along with the first “Avengers” film of course.

“Falcon and the Winter Soldier” is a good example of the latest MCU project which was not sure what it wanted to be. Quirky action romp or preachy geopolitical / racial statement? Fortunately, the great action scenes provided enough cover for fans like me to ignore the cringe-worthy monologuing and confusion about who really is the “bad guy”. But here’s the thing: I’m a hardcore comic movie fan. If the MCU takes the wrong message from its decent ratings and injects more statement and less fun into their products, they are going to lose a lot of audience. You have got to get normal people to see your movies. If you are just able to count people like me coming through to door then woke or not, you’ll go broke.

I added a number of comments over the months about new MCU movies. I noted that Spiderman did really well and was missing all the SJW virtue signaling. A guy whose first name was Mohammad showed up in the comments and agreed with me numerous times, providing his own insights and examples that I appreciated very much. Unfortunately he deleted all his comments. He may have been scared that people might see them and decide he is a _______phobe, so I do not blame him one bit.

There are many people out there calling this stuff out now and pointing out that political messaging destroys stories. So many in fact that a list would be sort of hard to make, but here is a partial one: Critical Drinker, Nerdrotic, Ryan Kinal, Infinity Girl, The Quartering, Clownfish TV, Geeks and Gamers and Odin's Movie Blog. A lot of these folks are great fellow travelers for traditional Christians and conservatives to follow and check out.

"Jonathan, what have you done?"

Speaking of si vis pacem....


Man, can't wait for 5/17/19. Very happy this is after my anniversary; wouldn't drag my wife to see this one.

Avengers Endgame Trailer

Open Comment Thread (2016-07)

Here's a new open comment thread you all, my friends! Speaking of friends....

Stop the madness, or proceed with the madness, or go halfway or maybe two thirds... Or, how about do 3 sets of 12 madness lifts twice a day. Or maybe have a madness shake with some kale and blue berries? Or something.

I was thinking that maybe a good topic to discuss here is frenetic, undisciplined migrations to nearby towns and whether that is a conservative value. Or maybe moving because no one understands you or sour cream vandalism going on that you can no longer protect your family from. This might be a good post to review for starters as well.

"I could do this all day."

Marvel supposedly makes its biggest cash hauls from a film if RDJ is in it. But IMHO, their best story-line and character development efforts are achieved when the main character is Captain America. So this thing looks like a winner from all sides. Of course, my favorite MCU flick so far was The Winter Soldier, and I'm including both Avenger movies in the comparison. So I'm optimistic going in that I'll like it.

Open Comment Thread (2016-03)

I'm way behind on posting a new Open Comment Thread. But here it is, with somewhat updated graphic for the age of Trump.

Please talk about anything you want to here, including but not limited to the following:

• Benedict Option(s)
• Trump / Drump
• Should I upgrade to Windows 10?
• The Catholic Bashing Industry
• Music, Art, Humor

Actual Journalism vs. Spotlight

When I heard the title of the movie which lionized those oh-so-heroic reporters who covered the Boston Catholic abuse crisis back in the early 2000's, I thought it was perfect. Sunlight, Bryce's and Brandeis's "best disinfectant", illuminates half the globe at once — everyday. And we're talking about the actual globe we live on, not the Boston newspaper. But a spotlight only illuminates one particular thing at a time, leaving everything else in darkness. There is a searching quality about it; usually the spotlight adjusts a bit to focus on its target and moves along with it whether the target is a tap-dancer or a pop diva. The spotlight is unconcerned with anything else which may be going on in the theater or outside it.

So one might be led to think that the famous Spotlight division at the Boston Globe after which the film is named was shining light on the crime of child abuse. But they were actually shining light on a very particular subset of those crimes: only those in which the perpetrator was a Catholic priest. Just like the spotlight in a 1970's theater might have been indifferent that an aging Fred Astaire was enjoying the show in seat D5 and only interested in shining on a less talented dancer on stage, so this team was unconcerned that there was and still is child abuse going on in public schools, Hollywood talent scout offices and non-Catholic religious communities—that is, anywhere else.

But we've detailed all this before. There are several books about it (like this one), but most of it falls on deaf ears even though it's worthy to bring up again. My friend Jonathan Carpenter writes me in an email today:

Guess who watched "Spotlight" on his way home from Italy?

Did anyone ever ask Dreher or his Media buddies why they missed the terror Jerry Sandusky did at Penn State? How about the abuse of kids that went on in Hollywood during that time and still goes on? It is because it is easier for him and his friends to make it seem as if it is only a Catholic problem; when it is a human problem.

I agree heartily with Jonathan who, I confess, is more tireless than I. It's probably the military training, or maybe I've lapsed into an accepting sanguinity about the whole matter. People believe what they wish to believe.

But once someone knows the truth about a matter, they really have no right to opinions which deny it. Stated differently, when you learn something is full of lies, you should discard it as worthless. That is why I'm advising everyone read this article about the veracity of the Spotlight movie in its entirety. It is written by JoAnn Wypijewsky, a person who identifies with the political and cultural left and has no particular love for the Catholic hierarchy in Boston. It is meticulously researched and formidably executed. It is itself a spotlight on distortions, lies and obscuring the whole truth about characters and events. It is published in Counter Punch; it is a knock-out punch. The article is long, but I'll excerpt some of it in an attempt to entice you to read the whole thing.

I was in Boston in the Spring of 2002 reporting on the priest scandal, and because I know some of what is untrue, I don’t believe the personal injury lawyers or the Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” team or the Catholic “faithful” who became harpies outside Boston churches, carrying signs with images of Satan, hurling invective at congregants who’d just attended Mass, and at least once – this in my presence – spitting in the face of a person who dared dispute them.

I don’t believe the prosecutors who pursued tainted cases or the therapists who revived junk science or the juries that sided with them or the judges who failed to act justly or the people who made money off any of this.

And I am astonished (though I suppose I shouldn’t be) that, across the past few months, ever since Spotlight hit theaters, otherwise serious left-of-center people have peppered their party conversation with effusions that the film reflects a heroic journalism, the kind we all need more of.

Although I never had my face spit in, I have had people tell me directly that I don't care about the victims of abuse because I'm not more angry, and that I should support that ridiculous "Crimes Against Humanity" brief filed in the UN court against the Vatican if I really cared about The Children.

Both men were called monsters. Both men were offered plea deals by their respective prosecutors that, had they actually committed the crimes, would be an affront to justice and proportion. Shanley was offered time served – the seven months he’d been jailed while awaiting trial – plus two and a half years’ house arrest if only he’d say he was guilty of raping a child on Sunday mornings between Masses. MacRae was offered three years in prison, later reduced to two, if only he’d say he was guilty of cruelly molesting a teenager. Both men refused and went to their fates abandoned by church hierarchy.

“Can you imagine”, Shanley said to me after his conviction in 2005, “here I am, the worst monster, a danger to children everywhere, and they offer me time served? … But for refusing to lie, I got twelve to fifteen years.”

I have never denied that some priests did horrible things to children, but I have always thought the details smelled fishy. I remember hearing a local talk radio broadcast in Cleveland where the talkers were livid that a case against a priest had been thrown out of court for lack of evidence. Wypijewski confirms this phenomenon as abeing not just local, but Globe-al:

Besides normalizing the presumption of guilt, the Globe’s courtroom of panic made a high and punishing principle out of cheap popular opinion: Well, maybe he didn’t do this, but he had to have done something! Where there’s smoke, there’s fire! Where the victim has to be believed, it doesn’t much matter if one person is telling the truth and one person is a money-grubber (or, to put the kindest interpretation on it, just looking for a simple explanation for all the troubles of his or her life). It doesn’t much matter who is in the dock or behind bars for what because, after all, statutes of limitations are limiting, and the notion that guilt might go unpunished is intolerable. Someone must pay. The church must pay. Priests must pay, because even if they didn’t do something, they said something; or they said nothing but they should have spoken; they knew nothing but they should have known; they should have acted. We “thought they were God”, and we must have our pound of flesh.

I hope you have gone over to read this article in full by now. After all, it is much shorter, cheaper and less boring than watching a movie where Mark Ruffalo doesn't get to suck face with Scarlett Johansson or turn into a green monster. But I'll understand if you are busy at the moment. Here's one more excerpt which deals with the real issue for all the scumbags who rode this train of deception:

It’s unseemly to mention money. We are asked to believe that the ATM that is the Catholic Church, password VICTIM, could not possibly be an inducement to any of the thousands of accusers who have lined up since the “Spotlight” team’s first breathy reports – as if the usual reflexes of American money-grubbing are inoperative in this one area of life, and the people who, for instance, clambered for cash to ease the pain and suffering of having seen a priest naked in the YMCA really are salt of the earth.

The church was known to have begun making settlements with accusers by the early 1990s. Some, perhaps many, were legitimate, but as a closet culture, an institution scandalized by scandal, the church is also particularly vulnerable to extortion. Spotlight does not reflect that reality, just as the Globe did not seriously explore it. Every financial settlement in the film is proof of beastliness.

...

It was in the early 1990s also that a drug addict and criminal named Thomas Grover said he had been molested as a 15-year-old by MacRae. The first assault, he said, occurred during a counseling session in the early 1980s. He returned for counseling three more times because, he said, after each bout with the priest he suffered total amnesia, his memory erased until one day years later he remembered all. Grover eventually collected $200,000 from the church.

Under pressure from the Globe, MacLeish and others, the church paid Shanley’s accuser, a military malcontent named Paul Busa, $500,000; it defrocked Shanley, presumed guilty on every front, and it did all of this before the trial had even begun. Let that sink in, too.

Oh, what the heck. Just one more:

Gregory Ford had been Boston’s favorite victim, the ultimate proof of Shanley’s monstrosity, from the time MacLeish introduced him to the world during that PowerPoint presentation in April of 2002. I won’t relate the young man’s sad and tortured tale here except to say that his claim of recovered memory (which Busa copied in all important respects) did not ring alarm bells with those noble reporters or their editors. When it was pointed out that Ford’s own mother was the catechism teacher at the time he claimed his agony of weekly rape began, the family, the lawyers, the press, the prosecution, simply amended the start date. When the prosecution dropped Ford from its child rape case against Shanley because at various times Ford had also said he was raped by his father, a neighbor, a relative, our noble reporters did not review their past unskeptical reports and say, “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.” Likewise when the two other men were dropped from the case, and Busa was left standing alone, the press, like the prosecution, pretended it didn’t matter. Against the advice of its legal counsel, the church had settled the civil suit MacLeish had brought on behalf of all four men. Ford faded away, with a check for more than $1.4 million. At the time of Shanley’s trial, broadcast live on TV and covered by media across the country, it was as if Ford had never existed, but he and the others are counted among Shanley’s victims.

Emphases mine. So the story was changed as needed. And lies were told under oath. For money. Please read this article. It's all you need to know about this Hollywood confabulation.

(H/T MediaReport)

"Subsequently..."

In a mood which this sums up. Yes, I know it's a cover of a Modern Lovers tune, but I like this version better.


Pablo Picasso - Burning Sensations by DeeDarden

Obviously I'm "looking for the joke with a microscope" today.

Hilarious Mashup

Start off your weekend with this hilarious "It's a Mad Mad Mad Max Fury Road" Faux Trailer!

It's a Mad Mad Mad Max Fury Road - Trailer from Zequiodzilla on Vimeo.

Bill Clinton's Dumber Brother

Mr. Vice President, you don't do this stuff while the camera's rolling. Unless you're Dom DeLuise in this scene.



I mean who could resist Madeline Kahn? Really.

RIP, most of the cast in this hilarious movie. "Remember... to dust you shall return." (How's that for an Ash Wednesday post?)

Berkeley students dislike Israel, don't mind ISIS

Amazing but not surprising.



Ami Horowitz: I have always thought that there was no connection between intellect and wisdom. To put this theory to the test, I headed out to the University of California, Berkeley.

Students at Berkeley clearly have a lot of intellect; it is one of the most prestigious and selective universities in the country. But do they have wisdom? I went to the bucolic campus armed with a flag that represents the greatest evil known today, ISIS. If these are our best and brightest then we should all be afraid, very afraid.

The shocking video above unfortunately proves once and for all that there is in fact no connection between intellect and wisdom.

"And it was all right"

Wow, what a great mashup. Someone took a video of a tune I'd never heard before called "I see you, you see me" by The Magic Numbers and put it behind VU's Rock and Roll. It totally works in my arrogant opinion.



At first I thought it was one of Warhol's films, which actually it may be. It has that feel. It's hard to figure out when it was shot.

New York Times Continues Crying

Yesterday they start crying as I noted here. I just googled the phrase exit poll and found out that they have continued crying in this piece which should be headlined "PLEASE, DEMOCRATS, GO OUT AND VOTE AND DON'T GET DISCOURAGED BY THE DESTRUCTION OF YOUR PATHETIC CANDIDATES!!" The articles is replete with various boring examples, excerpt:

Take Missouri. According to the 2012 American Community Survey, which is conducted by the Census Bureau, there were 491,000 black adult citizens in Missouri. If 16 percent of 2.7 million Missouri voters were black, as the exit polls said, then there were 442,000 black voters in 2012. That would require 90 percent turnout among eligible black voters, which obviously didn’t happen.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....

Hey, Democrats, if you haven't voted yet don't bother going out and wasting your time tonight. Pour a stiff one and watch Marley and Me.

"You're all puppets tangled in strings!"

Dark.

"Pull up a seat"

She will return.

"He was close; I could smell the cookies."

I know. It's so wrong. But so funny.



Awwww, the wittle baby penguin....

Tor en Torsdag

Hat tip to Mr. Low-key himself.

Can't wait.

Trailer for Captain America: The Winter Soldier

There is so much Cleveland in this; I love it already. The part around 2 minutes in where he's riding the motorbike on the bridge is the part they filmed a block from my house which I blogged about earlier. Here's a still I lifted:

"Jack? Pot? Jackpot! That's a joke, son!"

I'm totally opposed to people being cruel to animals. But animals being cruel to other animals is hilarious.

I always wondered why there isn't a band called Foghorn Leghorn. Oh, wait, there is one.



Oh, heck yeah.