Oliver Stone's Decider biopic "W," starring Josh Brolin

I admit I was a little disappointed that Stone didn't go all the way with the Dubya-sees-God moment when he collapses during the jog. But it woulda been a little too comedic/over-the-top to have some silly Charlton Heston figure coming out of the clouds, I guess....

i went with a group of about six last night who were split down the middle w/r/t its merits. very much flawed - the Rice character & a couple of others were like mediocre SNL parodies. of course the daddy issues were beat to death. a lot of Bush's public verbal gaffes and infamous malaprops were clumsily reprised in the film's staff meetings - which themselves were equal parts lols & ;_;... but yeah the plot, as it were, was kind of threadbare.

Even so, i was definitely in the camp that ultimately enjoyed it. Dreyfus & Cromwell were great, as was whoever played Rumsfeld's daft ass. And I gotta say Brolin did a pretty surefooted job of evoking Dubya. Better than Travolta's "clinton" in Primary Colors, imho. one thing everyone agreed on is that it was just really, really sad. Too soon?

wo many xposts

yeah Wright's Powell was kind of weak.

I loved how all Rummy's lines were impenetrable pseudo-philosophical gibberish

and yeah for all the laughs it was pretty sad. ending shot was fantastic.

as was whoever played Rumsfeld's daft ass

The great Scott Glenn.

How was Karl Rove?

weirdly small, but good.

isn't it the dude from the non-phillip seymour hoffman Capote movie?

Yes.

i liked wright! i thought the scene where he's argued into supporting the war was great. and fuck you dick

every scene involving sports in this was so fucked up

- george bush choked on a pretzel while watching a dolphins/ravens playoff game on a sunday night, not on a saturday during a college game
- at the end of the movie when gwb supposedly swells with pride as the UT baseball team scores a run (we know this because the announcer says this) they are showing the univ of miami scoring (ryan bruan, in fact) on UT
- sammy sosa was still on the rangers in 1990, also bush wouldn't have regretted trading him until he broke out in 98

Why does Oliver Stone think Karl Rove is a gay, with all that flamboyant "fabulous" interjecting?

The way-not-drawn-to-scale map of teh world with a gigantic Iran dwarfing the rest of Asia that Cheney pulls down in the power-point was major lols, and Brolin was fine, but ultimately this movie was a hollow, forgettable dud. I'm glad the chihuahua beat it this wkend

sammy sosa was still on the rangers in 1990

No, he was on the White Sox, but you're right about the last part. The Sox traded him to the Cubs a year later for George Bell.

Why does Oliver Stone think Karl Rove is a gay, with all that flamboyant "fabulous" interjecting?

what? i don't think the movie was trying to portray him as gay at all.

i also lol'd at the Fox News caricatures jizzing all over themselves during the Mission Accomplished circus.

tho i hesitate to call them caricatures, as there was very little exaggeration going on.

haha ya. "women are LOVING him"

"could you imagine a Democrat doing that?! Of course not!"

The woman who plays Ann Coulter was brutally attacked in her home Monday morning.

UH

That was a pretty debbiedowner thing for me to do. Sorry. It's just all over the news here since she's a local anchorwoman.

damn. what was her name?

US TV anchorwoman Anne Pressly found badly beaten at home
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h3sRmbkYztmZI0Nrt0KBPjomlK1AD93UQVQ02

SHE'S NOT PLAYING ANN COULTER.

sorry to shout but if i was this poor woman i'd shoot myself on top of being stabbed -- she is given a completely different name in the film, she is rather explicitly meant to be generic media bimbo, looks nothing like ann coulter, and if she was supposed to be ann coulter i'm pretty sure stone would've had the cajones to CALL her ann coulter considering that everyone else in the goddamned movie was a real person.

everyone and their brother in the media is referring to her as "arkansas's ann coulter" or having played ann coulter in the film -- it isn't true. quite frankly the 30 seconds we get with the character she did play bore no resemblance whatsoever to ms coulter besides a) having a vagina b) being blonde.

END OF RANT.

if only everyone watched this film as closely as jordan did.

Have we verified that Ann Coulter has a vagina?

Wait who stepped on the corn cob again?

I haven't seen the movie personally, but I had been told she played Ann Coulter.

I can't imagine Stone would want to get Coulter moist (or whatever chemical consequences are precipitated by her ego-ecstasy) by dramatizing her on the silver screen.

her adam's apple starts to throb

Was it done like the "Jack Rose" character in Any Given Sunday?

Scott McClellan on W.

I am half-joking, okay, but gee..why couldn't the real Ann Coulter be attacked? Is it because her robotic components would blow a fuze and explode

Oliver Stone hasn't made a profitable film at the BO since Born on the 4th of July. That's 19 years folks...when will it end

JFK, NBK, and Any Given Sunday all made money.

surely others did as well

From that McClellan article:

" The most unflattering portrayal was that of Condi Rice, caricatured by Thandie Newton as a mere yes–woman, which is excessively denigrating but not entirely without basis."

Ouch!

World Trade Center made $162 million.

[I should have said "v profitable" I sppose since I was referencing this: " Of the dozen films Stone has made over the last 20 years, only the earliest—Platoon, Wall Street, and Born on the Fourth of July—were huge hits in the United States" -> http://www.portfolio.com/culture-lifestyle/culture-inc/arts/2008/10/16/W-the-Movie?PMID=alsoin/Bankrolling-W. He's had a terrible track record for almost 15 years now, but is in that minute group of directors that can keep getting their projects financed - by forgiving foreigners]

xpost Yeah but think of the cost in human life.

Also, just on a personal acct basis, he's a monstrous human being even by Hollywood standards - so it's hard for me to not cringe at his repeated opportunities for failure more so than those other directors

the foreigners are forgiving because his movies make money.

maybe his next topic can be The War on Drugs starring himself, and he'll never finish it

"monstrous"? why should I care what kind of a person he is? All his investors care about is whether the dough rolls in - doesn't matter if its dollars, pounds, sheckels, or yen

like lolz did you here Eric Von Stroheim was a sadist? Woody Allen married his daughter! Billy Wilder was a jerk! etc

" The most unflattering portrayal was that of Condi Rice, caricatured by Thandie Newton as a mere yes–woman, which is excessively denigrating but not entirely without basis."

Ouch!

the best scene she's in is when the they've all descended upon the ranch pre-strike and he's leading them down a dirt road, getting updates, handing out directives, etc. she's sort of jockeying for position, trying to walk right next to him as Rove, Cheney et al struggle to keep pace (or are just bored/ put out) with W.

and then he realizes he's misjudged their location. pretty funny.

x-post not over here. When his heavily promoted thing abt a super unpopular president opens 4th after a dog movie that's been around for 3 weeks and gets mixed-to-negative reviews, that's sad -

http://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com/

W.'s on-target debut (SUCH LOW EXPECTATIONS -> $10m) still doesn't mean the movie will recoup its $30M mil budget , plus $25M marketing costs that included a surprisingly aggressive TV ad campaign emphasizing the script's humor. True, Hollywood never bets the farm on political fiction pics because they usually don't attract crowds. Small budget Wag The Dog and Bullworth receved a lot of attention but not a lot of business. Studio pic Primary Colors disappointed. Stone's own JFK was wildly successful, but his Nixon underperformed. Of course, none of these pics were biopics about a sitting U.S. president. It also served the pic well that Lionsgate had experience with this kind of controversial film: it released Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 which went on to open with a $24M weekend from just 868 theaters, and an eventual worldwide total of $222M. W. won't be in that league.

I don't really get what your point is. A lot of his movies make money. This one may not. So what?

I'm not saying his investors care how he is personally - and perhaps YOU don't care but yes other ppl who work in the biz, or have to encounter him, clearly do: his reputation is legendary and more than a few wish him the schadenfreude that is only reserved for the most heinous characters (Shyamalan, Bay, Weinstein, etc)