Best Description of ‘Quantum of Solace’ Yet

IMDB:

Roger Moore, who played James Bond longer than any other actor, has complained that the 007 franchise has suffered a decline in quality in recent years. In an interview with Varsity, the student newspaper at Cambridge University in England, Moore expressed admiration for Daniel Craig’s performance in the last Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, but he compared the movie itself to “a long disjointed commercial.”

A very long disjointed commercial.

NBC TV and Universal Film Struggle

LA Times:

The NBC broadcast network and the Los Angeles based Universal movie studio posted weak numbers for the quarter ended Sept. 30. The film studio underperformed at the box office, resulting in a 7.8% revenue decline compared with the third quarter of 2010.

Tepid ratings at NBC as well as increased spending for new prime-time programming added to the drag on NBCUniversal’s overall results. The broadcast TV division barely turned a profit.

Is the economy to blame? The product? Both?

Sony is looking at a billion-plus dollar loss, but that’s due in large part to sales of televisions, Blu-ray players and other electronic items.

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SCOTTDS’ EPIC LINK-TACULAR

FULL-LENGTH TRAILER FOR ‘AMERICAN REUNION‘

RANKED: TERRENCE MALICK FILMS FROM WORST TO BEST

AN INSIDE LOOK AT THE FILMING OF ‘THE HOBBIT‘

‘WALKING DEAD’ RATINGS DIP (BUT ARE STILL HUGE)

FOX RENEWS ‘THE X FACTOR’ FOR A SECOND SEASON

‘THE GOONIES’ VS. ‘THE MONSTER SQUAD’

NEW LINE PURCHASES ‘CATEGORY SIX,’ SCRIPT FOR “FOUND FOOTAGE” DISASTER FILM

TOM CRUISE TAKES ‘MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE’ TO NEW HEIGHTS

GUILLERMO DEL TORO PREPPING HIS NEXT ANIMATED FILM FOR DREAMWORKS

TERRENCE MALICK WILL SHOOT TWO NEW FILMS IN 2012

THE 10 MOST SHOCKING/CONTROVERSIAL MOVIES OF ALL TIME

J.K. ROWLING ADMITS SHE WAS THINKING OF KILLING OFF RON WEASLEY

A LOOK BACK AT THE FAILED 2000 SCI-FI ANIMATED FILM ‘TITAN A.E.‘

AMAZON VISITS PIXAR

AN ESSAY ON JEAN COCTEAU’S ‘ORPHEUS‘

5 REASONS ‘DARIA’ SHOULD COME BACK INSTEAD OF ‘BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD‘

A LOOK BACK AT THE DEVELOPMENT OF ‘SIX FEET UNDER‘

41 THINGS WE LEARNED FROM THE ‘HALLOWEEN’ COMMENTARY TRACK

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LAST NIGHT’S SCREENING

Over the past few days I’ve watched both the 1997 television miniseries version of “The Shining” and Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 theatrical film. I know this is heresy, but I think the miniseries is superior in every way. Better story, scarier, deeper characterizations, and — are you ready for this? Steven Weber’s performance is better than Jack Nicholson’s.

This isn’t Nicholson’s fault. He’s a brilliant actor who did up to a hundred takes for Kubrick that ran through every possible emotion. Therefore the performance is a creation of the director’s in the editing room, but it’s still an over-the-top performance that constantly takes you out of the film, especially the third act.

Weber, on the other hand, is completely believable, especially in the climactic confrontation scene with his young son where everything that’s come before emotionally culminates in this one scene. It’s a heartbreaking scene and, I think, a performance that deserves more attention.

Kubrick’s film is also somewhat stiff and stagy, especially in the opening scenes. Obviously, it’s beautifully filmed and contains a number of iconic moments, but it’s also distant (a Kubrick trademark) and episodic.

I await your scorn.

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--Please send tips/suggestions/requests/complaints to jnolte@breitbart.com

Is he mad at a president and a Democratic Congress that have bungled the greatest political opportunity for liberals in nearly a century? Oh, no. Weber directs his hate towards anyone who doesn’t imbibe the (heavily spiked) pink Kool-Aid as often as he does. More specifically, he’s shaking his tiny fist at the kind of people who contribute to and read this blog. 

Weber latest screed is titled: “What to Do (This Time, Sober).” We’ll have to take Weber’s word for his parenthetical clarification, because if this is a sober post, I’d hate to read Weber’s thoughts on conservatives when he’s on the sauce. 

One can hardly get past the first sentence without a hearty guffaw. Weber writes: “It’s time to tear the mask from their smug, stupid faces.” Let’s just say Weber, in the role of his dreams, is pulling apart the buttons from his shirt and dashing down the street to reveal a giant blue “S” on his chest for “Smug Man.” Or is it “Stupid Man.” You can decide, as you read on:

Liberals — or anyone who has sense and cares about their country — need to gird themselves against an enemy that looks American and squawks American but is as destructive to American principles as any brown shirt-wearing, fascist sociopath. 

Forget that nonsense about how only liberals have “sense and care about their country.” But remember that “brown shirt” reference. We’ll get to that later. 

Be not afraid of the birthers, baggers, deathers, those who decry “the killing of Christmas” or whatever lunatic froth that issues from their sad, desperate brains. They haven’t the guts to back their fiery words up with action. And they are, in many cases, way too fat to move very fast.  

“Deathers”? That’s a new one. And Weber’s one to talk about “lunatic froth” when he throws out enough digital spittle — in just his first five paragraphs — to get a camel from Casablanca to Cairo. And back. Oh, and I’d be careful about those fat jokes, Steven. Remember those hot Hollywood clubs you used to get into when people recognized you? Did you ever see a skinny bouncer? There’s a reason for that. 

Sitting back and letting elected officials do the citizens’ work will result in only more static, more confusion and breathe further breath into the lungs of those quasi-conservative zombots who know nothing of history or need to reinterpret it, in fact, to fit their low brow schemes, therefore allowing more division, thinly-veiled xenophobia, and outright idiocy to reign widespread as it does now.

Yes. That was one sentence. All 63 words of it. But there, in the mess Weber made of that passage, he raises the liberal skirt too far above the ankle. Note that “letting elected officials do the citizens’ work,” in his mind, is a very bad thing. Damn democracy! Damn the ability of we “zombots” to express in person, online, and at the ballot box our dissatisfaction with the agenda of Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid! Such “division” cannot be tolerated. 

Let me try to clear up some confusion for Weber. America’s Founding Fathers purposely established a political and constitutional order in which sobriety, and not Weber’s brand of passion and all sorts of “low-brown schemes,” rules when establishing our society. It was an attempt to preserve liberty and improve upon the European model of government, which did not cherish individual liberty. And the wisdom of the U.S. Constitution was ratified by 200 years of misery in Europe after America’s founding. 

From the French Revolution, to the Napoleonic Wars, to a pair of World Wars, to Soviet domination of half the continent, Europe could have used a bit of unleavened wisdom from our Founders. They didn’t take it. And within the lifetime of Weber’s father, an Austrian man was lifted to power in Germany on the passions of his countrymen — and he was the one who brought the term “brown shirts” into the modern lexicon. It’s a term Weber now throws around quite recklessly at his fellow Americans. 

I was struck by Weber’s ending passages, directed at people who think like him. 

Be resourceful. Be diligent. Be independent. Revere the elderly. Be tender to the helpless. Be fearless in the face of obstructionists. Be humble. Be smart.

But, apparently, don’t be “tender” to those poor elderly people who might not be on the Obama/Reid/Pelosi Express. Give them Hell! Because they are “enemies” whose “instincts often crawl in the dirt and prevent [my] dreams from ever becoming reality.” Because, Weber says: “That is what the right wingers are, after all: killers of dreams.” 

Killer of your dreams, Steven? Gladly.

Anyone remember this HuffPost from Wings’ star Steven Weber back in April? You know, pre-Virginia, New Jersey and *drumroll please* Scott Brown?:

G.O.P. R.I.P.

So there it stands: a naked, pigeon-chested old man, random strands of white hair on its boney shoulders; its swollen-knuckled hands clasped over its dead genitals, looking at once forlorn and menacing, shivering with self-loathing and xenophobia, raging pathetically at its timely and appropriate defeat at the hands of Reason.

Ladies and gentlemen: The Republican Party.

With every passing day, the people who stubbornly, maddeningly cling to an obsolete ideal and who stand in the way of the cultural advancement of this country, this America, spew the base reality of their caustic ideology into the air.

The Republican Party is like a dying tyrant, mad with syphilis, ironically like that very Stalin they would accuse their enemies of associating with. How else to account for their desperation to resurrect the wraith of Joseph McCarthy; the hammy and baffling utterances from high level party officials like Boehner and McConnell; the blatant desire on their part to let the country fail out of sheer resentment; the wanton sedition of Conservative shit-stirrers ranging from the quasi Madame Defarge Michele Bachmann to the porcine, pill-popping porcine propagandist Rush Limbaugh?

It is an all out assault on reason, on progress, on truth. What is the difference between the Republican Party and, say, the Taliban? A rogue by any other name would smell as rank.

And what’s the difference between Bigfoot and an insightful Hollywood Leftist?

People claim to have seen Bigfoot. 

P.S. Credit where credit is due, Steven Weber was excellent as that drug-addicted screenwriter on “The Sopranos.”

Weber’s written a Declaration of sorts, and if I’m interpreting him correctly (my notes are in bold), this is a true bi-partisan moment:

The division is clear. It is, finally, right versus wrong. And on this side of the division we declare:

[I]t is wrong to [sic] for a modern, wealthy country to not provide all its citizens with health care.

Agreed. This is why we oppose ObamaCare and the rationing sure to follow.

It is wrong to not provide better education.

Agreed. This is why we will no longer condemn inner-city children to failing public schools. We will now support the school choice programs that allow them to go to the same private schools as rich kids.

It is wrong to go to war unilaterally.

Which is why we thank God for Great Britain because going to war bilaterally is cool.

It is wrong to cater to corporate interests when ordinary people are disadvantaged and struggling.

Let us come together and demand Hollywood refund that $67 million tax break.

It is wrong to cater to radical, ignorant, religious zealotry and to give it a place at the table when it should be banned to the fringes.

We’re all a little tired of Hollywood caving to CAIR.   

It is wrong to foster a distrust of progress.

We must move beyond the historically failed policies of European Socialism.

It is wrong to have a fear of “otherness.”

Hollywood must stop denigrating Christians, the military and Southerners.

It is wrong to perpetuate institutionalized racism.

Uhm … Hollywood must stop denigrating Christians, the military and Southerners.

It is wrong to deny science and to avoid culpability in the polluting of our planet.

Nuclear power for everyone.

It only makes sense that if ObamaCare’s passed employers will opt out of providing private insurance and millions upon millions, 85 million by some estimates, will end up herded into the President’s public plan. But that’s okay with millionaire actor Steven Weber because he know what’s best for us he and his loved ones will never ever have to worry about being the victims of the government run health-care system he’s so eager to see the rest of us shoved into against our will. Weber’s motives don’t come off as entirely pure, either. This is an angry guy eager to stick it to the rich (who don’t work in the entertainment industry).  

In fact, the greatest threat to the health of individuals in the US is the lack of a nationalized, affordable health care program. Why the spin to cast it as socialist or downright deadly? Because to some, it ain’t medicine which makes you live a better life.

It’s money.

And that’s the only reason everyone from the Blue Dog to the fair and balanced Fox (craven animals which have a tendency to lick their own testicles and consume feces — just saying) hates the idea of people paying less and ultimately becoming healthier and detached from Big Pharma’s slow drip.

Three points:

1. There’s nothing quite like someone labelling someone else as “craven” just before they launch into descriptions of testicle licking and feces consumption — just saying.

2. Do you think Canada’s awesome health-care system might benefit from the billions upon billions America’s “Big Pharma” companies invest into research and development? Leftists demonizing drug companies who have done more to improve quality of life than even 172 episodes of “Wings” is the worst kind of demagoguery. Why not just demonize the American military while you at– oh wait.

3. Anyone pushing ObamaCare but unwilling to subject themselves and their loved ones to it has zero credibility. In order to punish the wealthy (who don’t work in the entertainment industry) and enjoy a nice little ordered Utopian world, Weber and his ilk are willing to risk the health of you and yours with the DMV of Health Care Plans while they float above it all on their platinum plans. Hell, even the President won’t go on his own plan. What more do you need to know?

And who is Weber speaking for anyway? He cites a poll showing 92% of Canadians are happy with their “doctor” but doesn’t seem at all interested in a recent CNN poll showing 80% of American are happy with their health care.

I don’t believe in socialized medicine but if the poll Weber cites is accurate and Canadians are happy with what they got, I’m not going to demand they conform to my beliefs.

That would be elitist.

So, come on Weber, man up. Lobby the Screen Actors Guild to shuffle all you government lovers into ObamaCare and not only is all forgiven but I’ll save you a place in line.