Quite likely the right-wing “comedy” An American Carol will lose the box office fight this weekend to Beverly Hills Chihuahua. The right wing has been pushing the movie hard for months now and they likely have the same sort of artificial sales program they use with books and The Passion Of The Christ which will make the film seem far more popular than it is.
I’m an avid movie goer, and I would go see a movie that makes fun of liberals (Knocked Up, for instance, at its heart has a “traditional” message and was one of the funnier movies of the last few years) but they have to get over this obsession with hammering IDEOLOGY over TEH FUNNY.
I just don’t understand their insistence on making the ideology front and center, instead of cleverly hiding it in the movie. This kind of thing just ensures it will convince nobody, nor be taken seriously — it is purely blatant propaganda. Comedy, on the other hand, actually sells, and I think something like “Dogma” was actually quite effective in making the case for Catholicism in the modern day. Sure, I get that they feel beat up because most artists aren’t conservatives, but isn’t making a movie that lampoons Michael Moore just demonstrating how effective Michael Moore is?
But what do I know. I can’t wait to see “Religulous” this weekend.
The dog movie first
Eagle eye second
Nick and Norah third, possibly second
Nights in Chick Flick fourth
Blindness fifth
How to lose friends sixth, possibly fifth
An American carol seventh, possibly fifth
Religulous and Appalossa should place in the top ten during their expansion, while Flash of Genus, the best new movie of the week, will miss the top ten.
Quite likely the right-wing “comedy” An American Carol will lose the box office fight this weekend to Beverly Hills Chihuahua.
Man, talk about a lose-lose situation.
That photo of gramps in the record.com ad reminds me of my late father. I REALLY need Obama to win.
Yes, I have issues.
Nice point about Judd Apatow’s “Bromances” O-dub. “Forty Year-Old Virgin,” underneath all the potty humor, is basically a conservative (small “c”) film as well: people who wait for sex are perfectly normal, and our culture is way too over-saturated with sex and porn to begin with. Hell, “Super Bad” for all of its gross-out stuff was the same way. The main character _refuses to have sex with a hottie because he thinks she’s too drunk_, and the film ends with them holding hands and going on a little mini-date, perfectly innocent.
Apatow is smart though. He does the gross out humor (which I’ll admit, I like) but he also does a bit of nuance (which I also like, and which Republicans simply don’t understand with their black-and-white morality).
Sucks to be them. They have to go out like good Stalinist apparatchiks and pretend to enjoy the new Zucker. Oh, and the Kirk Cameron Jesus-firefighter one. Hehe.
i’ve never seen “the passion of the christ” and would be more than happy to go to my grave never seeing it. but that movie was inarguably a phenomenon among SOME people. the fact that i might not know anyone who saw it doesn’t mean there weren’t a lot of folks who DID and loved it. god (sic) only knows why…
as for “an american carol” i almost feel sorry for moore’s detractors. watching them flail around and nit-pick at him and his films while never really refuting his central points is depressing. is the right so intellectually bankrupt that ridiculous crap like “farenhype” and this “carol” turd ALL they’ve got? jeez…
and the hypocrisy is staggering. do they think that moore’s occasional chronological lapses, etc. are worse offenses than the shit-flinging o’reilly and the other miscreants at fox engage in? worse than serial liar rush limbaugh? michael savage? i could go on forever. idiots, all of ‘em.
An American Carol deserves to flop just for the fact that the filmakers decided to give Bill O’ Lielly a cameo in it.
An American Carol makes Leprechaun: In the Hood look like Citizen Kane
something like “Dogma” was actually quite effective in making the case for Catholicism in the modern day
Going out on a limb here, but you may have missed the point.
Duros – you’re making the mistake that a lot of the narrowminded Catholic critics of Dogma made. Think about it for a sec – the only reason the story holds together is that Catholic doctrine must be TRUE! God herself has to come down to fix a problem resulting from the Pope speaking ex cathedra… If Catholic doctrine about papal infallibility were incorrect, it wouldn’t have cause God a problem, would it? The entire movie assumes church doctrine is literally true, but then looks at the consequences of that.
If, on the other hand, Damon & Affleck enter the church at the end and nothing had happened then that would be a statement that church dogmas was, in fact, a lie.
Whenever the right tries their hand at parody it fails. Why? Because the parody mirrors the truth.
They tried to do a show like The Daily Show, you know fake news. It didn’t last for that very reason. It was too much like any FOX news show and they KNEW IT.
They should know better than to do parody, it just isn’t funny. Because it is exactly the way they are.
-=t=-
I’m going to sneak into this movie this weekend (so they don’t get any of my money), then sit there loudly applauding the Michael Moore doppleganger whenever he appears on screen, and booing Kelsey Grammar and O Liely when they show up.
Hopefully I will be so obnoxious that I will get forceably removed from the theater, but I’m afraid that there won’t be anybody in the theater besides me.
I’m kind of in a blue county. Maybe I should go do this in Houston. No, I’ll get my ass whupped by Billy Bob if I do that. Better not.
I didn’t like Dogma because I found it too preachy in favor of the church.
“…booing Kelsey Grammar and O’Liely when they show up”.
I understand booing for the latter individual, but not the former. Grammar might be a conservative Republican, but he is certainly not the walking advertisement for birth control that O’Lielly is.
The Passion was, honestly, a good film, if you weren’t expecting King of Kings. It’s what it says it is, a passion play, a Stations of the Cross, and it was perfectly good as such.
Where’s the love for Team America: World Police
No worries mate- the Josh Brolin-as-Bush flick drops soon.
Most action movies tend to work in a lot of conservative themes without falling into self-parody. Conservatives need to stick to their core-competencies without making failing attempts at humor.