Members of the mainstream media, you know, people who get paid to write stuff like this, often hold people like me in contempt. They sit in their big, snooty offices eating whatever big, snooty takeout food they ordered that day and say in between bites of hoagie or lo mein or whatever, "Stupid internet people with their stupid internet connections are so stupid. They think they can do what I do so they write their stupid stuff thinking all they have to do is add swear words and suddenly it's cool. What the hell is a 'fucktard' anyway? They don't have journalistic standards imposed on them or editors looking over their shoulders." And you know what? The imaginary strawman I just created is absolutely right. I could have used an editor or some standards when I wrote my review of W. As I reread it today, I realized it was a little long yet I didn't say some of the things I wanted to say. So you may call what comes next the review's recount.
I really don't think we saw enough of Elizabeth Banks' Laura Bush. I would have liked to know more about her. When they first meet at the party of a mutual friend, we can see an instant attraction despite the fact that he spends the entire time speaking with a mouth full of food (a habit the real Bush has to this day). She becomes the perfect woman for Bush in that she never says a word to him about any of his excesses. She stares sadly as he pours one glass of Jim Beam after another down his throat and is clearly upset when he suddenly declares that they are dropping their lives in Texas to help with his father's presidential campaign yet she says nothing. I wonder if that is accurate and she's never really stood up to him about anything, if she's the one wife who never says a peep when hubby leaves the toilet seat up. Probably not. I remember an interview in which Bush stated that Laura had once said to him that it was either her or Jim Beam. Oh well, whatever the story is, the movie doesn't give it to us.
To me, the scene that sums up the movie and, for that matter, the entire Bush presidency is when Bush and his inner circle (Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc) are following Bush as he takes a walk across his Crawford ranch. As they walk along discussing the upcoming invasion of Iraq and blithely dismissing General Tommy Franks' recommendations that they go in with hundreds of thousands of troops, Bush realizes that he has gone down the wrong path and they are now lost. There they are, a group of the smartest people you'll ever meet and yet they are following a guy who gets lost on his own ranch. Draw your own conclusions from that.
I thought Thandie Newton was great as Condoleeza Rice. Her imitation of Rice's distinct vocal mannerisms even drew a few laughs in the same way that Tina Fey's imitation of Sarah Palin does. She's also portrayed as an enabler as she never criticizes anything Bush does and agrees with him even when she clearly knows she's wrong. It says a lot about Bush that he surrounds himself with women like this.
And well, that's about it. As I said in that first post, the movie is good but not great. I think the subject matter interested me more than the movie itself did but it's still worth seeing. So go see it.
Oh, almost forgot: Ha Ha Ha to all you right wing fucktards* who predicted this time last month that An American Carol would haul in Titanic-level box office numbers while W. would go down in flames. Thanks for little moment of schadenfreude. I get so very few of those.
*Sorry MSM employee who doesn't know what that means.
No comments:
Post a Comment