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Post by the light works on Dec 30, 2013 1:46:03 GMT
I saw "Captain Phillips" out of good sportsmanship, but "Saving Mr. Banks" makes me furious on several levels. I was, however, intrigued by Tom Hanks relating in an interview, that Walt Disney was a heavy smoker, and they retouched photographs of him to hide that when smoking became unfashionable.
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Post by ironhold on Dec 30, 2013 3:44:21 GMT
Actually, "retouching photographs to hide signs of smoking" has been pretty common over the last decade or so. I recall quite the flap when it was discovered that the Beatles had some photos of them touched up to hide the fact that some of the members occasionally smoked in the 1970s.
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Post by Lokifan on Dec 30, 2013 7:21:53 GMT
For me, "Saving Mr. Banks" is a film in which a glorified religious bigot plays a glorified rendition of a religious bigot in order to whitewash a story that IRL ended in tears. Not seeing that. At all. (For those who don't know, Tom Hanks hates Mormons, Walt Disney hated Jews, and the woman who wrote the original book left the theater in tears because she felt that Disney desecrated everything she held dear.) Tom Hanks hates Mormons? As I see it, the only evidence is that he "hated" anyone who supported California's Prop 8 (and the LDS was being painted as the villain by many Prop 8 supporters, not just Hanks). Also, it looks like he and his mother had some problems over her joining the Mormon church when he was younger (among other things)--family issues like that can mess up one's attitudes. Hank's attitude may be enough for you to dislike him and that's fair; but I will note he gave an apology for his comments that seemed genuine--not the usual "I'm sorry you feel like that", but more like "I was wrong and shouldn't have said it". The story that Disney hated Jews seems to be pretty much pure slander. There's lots of evidence against it, but I'll give you a prime example: the 1955 B'nai Brith Man Of The Year award was given to Disney, after an extensive background check. Now, if you're saying that lots of people from that generation held antisemitic attitudes by today's standards, you'd be right--but that wasn't enough for a respected Jewish organization at the time to condemn him. Don't believe everything you see on "Family Guy" and "Robot Chicken". The story about Traver's experience at the theater isn't quite that simple. She cried when she saw the credit sequence (specifically, the "Mary Poppins" title card). She never explained why, although in a letter to her publisher she was obviously not a fan of the movie. From this article: Sherman would know; he was one of the songwriters working directly with Travers. I'm not saying Walt was an angel; in fact, the film makes it pretty clear that he's a manipulative Hollywood mogul who is used to getting what he wants, and will go to great lengths to get it. It also makes clear that Travers was never truly in favor of a film project, and only did it for the money. Remember, it took 20 years for Disney to convince her to sell the rights. Plus, the 39 hours of audio tape (you get to hear some of it in the film) show that she wasn't easy to work with at all. Although released by Disney, the film is not an in-house Disney film--it was written and developed independently until it became necessary to talk to Disney about rights (I believe it was BBC Films that did most of it). Much to the creator's surprise, the rights were granted with minimal interference to the text of the script (according to most articles). I'm not about to be rude enough to insist you have to see it, but I couldn't let the misstatements stand unchallenged; I mean no real offense. Besides, it's not the first time Hollywood rewrote history.
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Post by Lokifan on Dec 30, 2013 7:30:43 GMT
Actually, "retouching photographs to hide signs of smoking" has been pretty common over the last decade or so. I recall quite the flap when it was discovered that the Beatles had some photos of them touched up to hide the fact that some of the members occasionally smoked in the 1970s. I think it was Richard Lester, the director of "A Hard Day's Night", who said that he was constantly taking the cigarettes away from the band members during filming because he didn't want to encourage smoking in youngsters--and that was in 1964. Likewise, Walt Disney was a heavy smoker (he eventually died of lung cancer), but he insisted that he not be photographed while smoking. Some today don't realize how prevalent smoking was back then. I even recall pressure to put ashtrays on the bridge of the Enterprise when Star Trek was being created. "4 out of 5 doctors recommend XXX cigarettes" wasn't a joke in that era.
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Post by the light works on Dec 30, 2013 14:35:25 GMT
Actually, "retouching photographs to hide signs of smoking" has been pretty common over the last decade or so. I recall quite the flap when it was discovered that the Beatles had some photos of them touched up to hide the fact that some of the members occasionally smoked in the 1970s. I think it was Richard Lester, the director of "A Hard Day's Night", who said that he was constantly taking the cigarettes away from the band members during filming because he didn't want to encourage smoking in youngsters--and that was in 1964. Likewise, Walt Disney was a heavy smoker (he eventually died of lung cancer), but he insisted that he not be photographed while smoking. Some today don't realize how prevalent smoking was back then. I even recall pressure to put ashtrays on the bridge of the Enterprise when Star Trek was being created. "4 out of 5 doctors recommend XXX cigarettes" wasn't a joke in that era. to be more precise: Gene Roddenberry had two grand visions: a female black command officer, and a completely smoke free Enterprise. he demoted Uhura to Lieutenant in exchange for not being forced to have smoking in the show.
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Post by ironhold on Dec 30, 2013 16:21:22 GMT
Loki -
It goes beyond what he said in the wake of Proposition 8.
At the time this was going on, Hanks was the head honcho over a TV series called "Big Love". It was supposed to be a show about a religious zealot and his multiple wives, but Hanks did everything he could to make people think that the guy was a rank-and-file Mormon. As part of this, everything Hanks could think of to shock viewers and offend Mormons was included in the series, including questionable or even degrading depictions of religious ceremonies and religious items that actual Mormons hold sacred.
By the time everything was said and done, the series wound up being little more than a giant Chick Tract.
This was further compounded by the network it aired on essentially giving the finger to the people who complained; the show was bringing in ratings, and so the network didn't care of it was offensive or highly inaccurate.
Between this show and Hanks' questionable political activism in the 2000s, he's shown himself to be far from the "nice guy" his movies and his press make him out to be. Rather, he's a petty, vindictive individual who won't hesitate to step on people if it means making bank.
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Post by Lokifan on Dec 30, 2013 16:23:07 GMT
Roddenberry used to tell a story about the changes after the first pilot (from Memory Alpha):
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Post by Cybermortis on Dec 30, 2013 16:57:52 GMT
Its says a lot about how times have changed, and yet remained the same, when you look at Trek.
In TOS they would not allow a woman to have a command role (something that changed in the later books and the animated series as Uhura was shown to be a capable leader when she had to be), it was even stated in one episode that Starfleet had no female Starship* Captains**.
By TNG we had (briefly) a female head of security with the other two crew women in the more traditional 'caring' female roles - Although by this time the ships doctor was allowed to be a women. Both however went on to be shown as capable commanders in later seasons***. It also showed us that at least one Enterprise (the Enterprise C) had been commanded by a women.
DS9 allowed the first female first officer, who could kick backside as well as if not better than the men, and whom commanded both the station and on occasion the Defiant.
Voyager showed us the first female captain AND first female chief engineer****, which for all that shows faults is something that should not be ignored.
Enterprise had a female first officer (again) and in season three and four also showed us that the NX-02 was in fact commanded by a women. (This of course contradicts what was said in TOS**)
The recent films however have relegated women back to the 'supporting' and 'eye candy' roles.
(*It is unclear if 'Starship' in the context this was said meant Star Fleet ships in general, or just the big Constitution Class vessels like the Enterprise.)
(**As noted the NX-02, sister ship to the NX-01 Enterprise, was commanded by a women. So the comment presumably must have been referring to the period of TOS, or possibly at the point the speaker had last checked. Then again the women saying this was not exactly a paragon of sanity.)
(***Beverly Crusher commanded the Enterprise in Decent, being good enough to take out a Borg ship even when undermanned, and later was seen commanding a medical ship in All Good Things. Deanna Troy commanded the ship in Disaster, and was seen in later episodes as standing watch on the Bridge.)
(****There was a female engineer on the Enterprise D during the first season, one of a run of chief engineers who came and went until someone decided to give Geordi the position rather than adding another cast member.)
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Post by Lokifan on Dec 30, 2013 17:17:33 GMT
<snip> It goes beyond what he said in the wake of Proposition 8. At the time this was going on, Hanks was the head honcho over a TV series called "Big Love". It was supposed to be a show about a religious zealot and his multiple wives, but Hanks did everything he could to make people think that the guy was a rank-and-file Mormon. As part of this, everything Hanks could think of to shock viewers and offend Mormons was included in the series, including questionable or even degrading depictions of religious ceremonies and religious items that actual Mormons hold sacred. By the time everything was said and done, the series wound up being little more than a giant Chick Tract. This was further compounded by the network it aired on essentially giving the finger to the people who complained; the show was bringing in ratings, and so the network didn't care of it was offensive or highly inaccurate. Between this show and Hanks' questionable political activism in the 2000s, he's shown himself to be far from the "nice guy" his movies and his press make him out to be. Rather, he's a petty, vindictive individual who won't hesitate to step on people if it means making bank. Fair enough. I never saw the show myself, as I'd done enough research on groups like the FLDS to realize they are substantially different from the LDS--comparing the two is like comparing David Koresh to the Pope. I thought the entire concept of the show was offensive, and still won't watch shows like "Sister Wives" for similar reasons. Side note: If anyone is interested in these types of communities, they should first watch the documentary "Damned to Heaven". Here's a link to it: www.cultureunplugged.com/documentary/watch-online/festival/play/4688/Damned-to-HeavenI didn't know Hanks was involved with "Big Love". I can see where propagating ideas that are akin to the "Blood Libel" would upset many. Maybe it would have been easier if they simply set the story in the FLDS directly, instead of trying to have it both ways and allowing (or worse, even encouraging) folks to believe the characters were LDS. A poor decision at best; a slander at worst.
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Post by ironhold on Dec 30, 2013 18:54:57 GMT
<snip> It goes beyond what he said in the wake of Proposition 8. At the time this was going on, Hanks was the head honcho over a TV series called "Big Love". It was supposed to be a show about a religious zealot and his multiple wives, but Hanks did everything he could to make people think that the guy was a rank-and-file Mormon. As part of this, everything Hanks could think of to shock viewers and offend Mormons was included in the series, including questionable or even degrading depictions of religious ceremonies and religious items that actual Mormons hold sacred. By the time everything was said and done, the series wound up being little more than a giant Chick Tract. This was further compounded by the network it aired on essentially giving the finger to the people who complained; the show was bringing in ratings, and so the network didn't care of it was offensive or highly inaccurate. Between this show and Hanks' questionable political activism in the 2000s, he's shown himself to be far from the "nice guy" his movies and his press make him out to be. Rather, he's a petty, vindictive individual who won't hesitate to step on people if it means making bank. Fair enough. I never saw the show myself, as I'd done enough research on groups like the FLDS to realize they are substantially different from the LDS--comparing the two is like comparing David Koresh to the Pope. I thought the entire concept of the show was offensive, and still won't watch shows like "Sister Wives" for similar reasons. Side note: If anyone is interested in these types of communities, they should first watch the documentary "Damned to Heaven". Here's a link to it: www.cultureunplugged.com/documentary/watch-online/festival/play/4688/Damned-to-HeavenI didn't know Hanks was involved with "Big Love". I can see where propagating ideas that are akin to the "Blood Libel" would upset many. Maybe it would have been easier if they simply set the story in the FLDS directly, instead of trying to have it both ways and allowing (or worse, even encouraging) folks to believe the characters were LDS. A poor decision at best; a slander at worst. First off, thank you for actually doing your research. Far too many people seem to think that the FLDS and other offshoots actually represent the main body of the church, and the media is entirely too keen on keeping this going through their own failures to fact-check. "Big Love" was essentially Hanks' baby; he was one of the producers for the series, and was IIRC a driving force behind the show's decision to push the limits as far as possible. That the whole bit with Proposition 8 happened around the same time as Hanks going hard-core on the offensiveness has caused questions to be raised about whether or not some of this was in retaliation for the church's support for 8.Ever since then, I've made it a point to not patronize Hanks' films or anything that he has had a hand in; as noted earlier, the only exception was for "Captain Phillips", and even then it was for work-related reasons. ** That being said, as bad as "Big Love" was, " September Dawn" was even worse of a "blood libel". In real life, a territorial appointment to Utah brought little in the way of pay or prestige. As a result, many of the men who Washington sent to Utah during the 1850s were unfit for their posts. The "clock-watchers" who saw appointment to Utah as a stepping-stone for a better office elsewhere were generally tolerated as they tended to not make any waves. However, a number of appointees were either flat incompetent or openly antagonistic towards the local Mormons. This included one sod who left his wife back East so that he could bring his mistress with him. The guy was already unpopular with the locals once news of what had happened reached them, but the outcry reached a fever pitch when he began to abuse his office in the name of forcing the Mormons of the territory to be more like the folks back in Washington. Tragically, the dam burst one night when a local Mormon who was particularly critical of the appointee was ambushed and nearly beaten to death. The assailant was soon captured, and it was quickly learned that he was a servant employed by said appointee. The incident resulted in the appointee and some of his friends being run out of the territory on a rail. Realizing that the scandal would mean the end of his career, the appointee tried to blunt the impact of any Mormon reports of the matter by issuing a false report claiming that the territory was in full rebellion. For reasons unknown (but much speculated upon), President Buchanan took the false report at face value and ordered 1,000+ soldiers to the territory. In his haste, however, Buchanan failed to send notice of intent. When news that such a large force was coming to Utah reached the settlers, the lack of any formal declaration by the government was taken to mean that Washington was intent upon genocide. As outrageous as it sounds, this was a real concern. In 1838, Governor Liliburn Boggs of Missouri issued the infamous "Extermination Order" which required that all Mormons in the state be killed or driven out. A band of Mormons had been organized into a posse after reports circulated that a mob had kidnapped some Mormon settlers, and the posse encountered a group of brigands near Crooked River. In the ensuing battle, one of the brigands had been killed. This brigand was later identified as a state militiaman who had gone AWOL. However, when the news of the incident was relayed to Boggs, the messenger falsely stated that a group of Mormons had assaulted a militia unit. Within days of Boggs issuing the order, the Mormon settlement of Haun's Mill was raided by militia. They shot children. Just six years later, church founder Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were gunned down by a mob; the pair had been arrested on nopeed-up charges (what had been a "destruction of private property" charge was turned into a "treason" charge), and the guards standing watch over the prison where they were being held abandoned their posts in the face of the onslaught. And a few months before everything went down in Utah, popular leader Parley P. Pratt was lynched in Arkansas by an irate man who Pratt had recently won a court case against. Paranoia thus ran rampant in Utah. Into this mess blundered the Francher Party, a mixed group of Missouri & Arkansas settlers trying to head to California. They had anticipated on re-supplying in Utah and so had failed to bring with them enough supplies for the full trip. When the paranoia caused people to hoard what they had, the Franchers were unable to buy supplies. Attempts to trade with the local Paiute band of Native Americans backfired spectacularly, as the Paiutes took ill shortly after eating meat from the cattle that the Franchers had traded them. The Paiutes thus came to believe that the Franchers had tried to poison them. The local militia, meanwhile, quickly lost patience with the Franchers; at trial, the surviving members of the militia claimed that the Franchers were trash-talking everyone in an effort to cow the locals into giving them supplies. A heinous bargain was struck between the militia and the Paiutes, a bargain which said that if one of them couldn't whack the Franchers, the other would; in exchange, the Paiutes would take all of the blame. On September 11th of 1858, the militia fulfilled this bargain. Tragically, just one day later a messenger arrived from Salt Lake City: Brigham Young, the leader of the church, had learned of the Paiutes' anger and so ordered the militia to stand down and leave the Franchers alone. The militia told Young that the Paiutes had done the deed on their own, and then hunkered down. However, works like "September Dawn" present a fictitious accounting of events. In these works, the massacre happened because Young explicitly ordered it. Evidence to the contrary is ignored, as the ultimate goal of the writers is to slander the church. "September Dawn" failed miserably at the box office, earning back a mere 1/11th of its budget and receiving zero stars from Roger Ebert. However, it re-ignited the whole blood libel concerning the church's role in the incident, poisoning a new generation of minds. In particular, it was something of a fad for ministers to compare Mormonism and Islam thanks to parallels that the movie and other such works wound up creating.
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Post by the light works on Dec 31, 2013 1:41:40 GMT
The truth is that angels were in short supply in that particular era. and each faction with an interest can find incidents that paint their preferred group as victims of the devils in the other group.and of course, when a faction's sole interest is in finding devils to be the antagonists in Hollywood films, then they will always paint the victims as angels.
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Post by ironhold on Dec 31, 2013 14:25:42 GMT
The truth is that angels were in short supply in that particular era. and each faction with an interest can find incidents that paint their preferred group as victims of the devils in the other group.and of course, when a faction's sole interest is in finding devils to be the antagonists in Hollywood films, then they will always paint the victims as angels. Thanks. ** Back when September Dawn was first released, I publicly issued this challenge to those people who were in favor of the film: "Would you also be in favor of a film that treated the Haun's Mill Massacre in the same sensationalistic light?" Aside from one or two people, nobody ever answered me.
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Post by the light works on Dec 31, 2013 14:36:40 GMT
The truth is that angels were in short supply in that particular era. and each faction with an interest can find incidents that paint their preferred group as victims of the devils in the other group.and of course, when a faction's sole interest is in finding devils to be the antagonists in Hollywood films, then they will always paint the victims as angels. Thanks. ** Back when September Dawn was first released, I publicly issued this challenge to those people who were in favor of the film: "Would you also be in favor of a film that treated the Haun's Mill Massacre in the same sensationalistic light?" Aside from one or two people, nobody ever answered me. I think that was a movie I chose to ignore completely. I go to movies to get away from real life.
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Post by ironhold on Dec 31, 2013 14:45:14 GMT
To me, there's nothing wrong with a good documentary or even a passable docudrama.
But when the people behind something ignore history as it happened for the sake of their own personal grievances, Hollywood should just fess up and label it "fiction".
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Post by the light works on Dec 31, 2013 15:02:15 GMT
To me, there's nothing wrong with a good documentary or even a passable docudrama. But when the people behind something ignore history as it happened for the sake of their own personal grievances, Hollywood should just fess up and label it "fiction". I can certainly agree with that. And I think it should extend to other media outlets as well. (though replace grievances with reasons, motives, or profits)
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Post by ironhold on Dec 31, 2013 15:11:46 GMT
Thanks.
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Post by the light works on Jan 1, 2014 6:02:23 GMT
saw the new Walter Mitty tonight. this was one of those "based on the story" means the title character had the same basic characteristic as in the short story; but everything else was new. they did a good job of it. The story of a man who finds himself living out one of his fantasies.
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Post by ironhold on Jan 1, 2014 15:16:26 GMT
So far as I know, the only new national release this week is "Paranormal Activity".
I'm hoping that they're going for more along the lines of Hitchcock-style horror with this one.
If I wanted blood, guts, & carnage, I'd reflect on all of the injuries I've sustained in my life.
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Post by the light works on Jan 1, 2014 15:32:50 GMT
So far as I know, the only new national release this week is "Paranormal Activity". I'm hoping that they're going for more along the lines of Hitchcock-style horror with this one. If I wanted blood, guts, & carnage, I'd reflect on all of the injuries I've sustained in my life. I've never really been partial to those movies that resemble a documentary about a slaughterhouse. granted, I am also not that excited about hitchcock style horror OR the style of horror you spend half the movie yelling instructions like "no, DON'T split up, you idiots" at the screen.
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Post by Lokifan on Jan 1, 2014 16:12:14 GMT
Although it was a slasher film, I really enjoyed the first "Scream".
Much of it was playing with the slasher cliche--even directly mentioning the "rules" of a teen slasher flick, such as don't ever split up, don't ever have sex, etc.
Along those lines was the excellent but extremely gory "Cabin In The Woods" that Joss Whedon made.
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