The New World

[SoNowThen]

 

oooh oooh sorry guys soooooo sorry I don't love your precious new world story

It's been Disneyed to death, and by the looks of the trailer, will be again. Poor noble savages, destroyed by whitey and his corporations, where's Michael Moore? Maybe he can do the making-of...

[Gamblour.]

you know, you're right, I'm wrong. I TOTALLY missed the singing dancing raccoon in the trailer. Malick, you are a genius.

[SoNowThen]

Hahaha, you guys are proof that PC-ism still lives on. Read less between the lines, and just answer my initial question: does anyone think the trailer made the film look like a huge waste of time? Should I take your flaming of anything negative I say in this thread to mean that everyone saw this preview and got really excited for anything besides the fact that it had Malick's name on it?

Three years later and we're still railing against the fact that I write in a smarmy, racist, condescending, sexist, right-wing, reactionary, bigoted tone? Cos of course it is all those things to not be interested in a pocahontas movie...

note: my sarcasm made a whole lot more sense when there was a post from hedwig above... which is now gone... so I guess just concentrate on the top part...

[hedwig]

SoNowThen, you are rivalling pyramid machine with your mind-numbing stupidity in this thread.

It's been Disneyed to death, and by the looks of the trailer, will be again. Poor noble savages, destroyed by whitey and his corporations, where's Michael Moore? Maybe he can do the making-of...

what a ridiculous paradox. first you complain that the story's been "Disney'd to death," then you give that smarmy, condescending, racist description of the story as "poor noble savages destroyed by whitey" which makes it sound like you're AGAINST a film that truly depicts how ruthlessly whitey treated the native americans -- well then you should LIKE the Disney version, because it's a sugar-coated piece of shit!

i deleted my post because i wanted to add this: by deyning the story's historical significance, you're exposing that you were born yesterday. by denying the importance of this story because you think it exaggerates the suffering of Native Americans, you're just exposing that you're a racist moron.

[Pubrick]

does anyone think the trailer made the film look like a huge waste of time?

since that's just asking for our opinion, the answer is no. your claim that it shows a disney story is ridiculous, gamblour proved this.

so this is just about a trailer and not the huge rant you went on based on it? about how u don't give a fuck about native american history, or the history of the american continent in general? ok then. there's a simple rebuttal to that.. it's a fucking trailer. it showed everything malick's films have always shown, voice overs and a lot of languid shots. what more is there to say about it? surely not a long winded racist rant.

[SoNowThen]

From Hedwig's thing:

2 important considerations:

1. Does a "historically significant" story justify being made into a movie, and does cinema suit the telling of such a story?
2. Has anybody seen the movie? If not, how can we say how it portrays the "suffering of the native americans"?

To P:

Yes, I'm obviously going on the trailer, which I made fun of for a solid minute, even saying to a friend "this looks like a bad version of the start of TRL", then heard Malick's name and had my draw drop at how disappointed and surprised I was.

If you say it's racist to not be interested in this story, then I guess you can call me racist. With rare exceptions I've never enjoyed films in this type of context. It could turn out to be amazing, and not a good poor indians getting slaughtered by all bad (except maybe one) white guys, cartoon-style simple conflict movie... but I'm not holding my breath.

[SoNowThen]

perhaps it's also worth pointing out that no one took exception to the whole Irish-as-drunks comment, but went nanners on the injun thing

[Pubrick]

Yes, I'm obviously going on the trailer, which I made fun of for a solid minute, even saying to a friend "this looks like a bad version of the start of TRL", then heard Malick's name and had my draw drop at how disappointed and surprised I was.

if your drawers are dropping you should think of purchasing a smaller size.

It could turn out to be amazing, and not a good poor indians getting slaughtered by all bad (except maybe one) white guys, cartoon-style simple conflict movie... but I'm not holding my breath.

maybe u don't like malick. that's your problem. case solved as far as i'm concerned.

oh and about the irish thing, yeah so u continue to be a stereotyping jerk who thinks it's progressive to not care about the past. case solved as far as i'm concerned.

[Pozer]

I am the only one who thinks that the trailer for this makes it look like the biggest piece of shit, hokey, crap-flinging, joke-version of the first 20 minutes of Thin Red Line???

Why do seemingly smart directors keep casting Colin Farrell? This guy's as Irish as drunkenness and a huge head -- he just doesn't fit as anything else but a useless Irish twat. I wanna believe that Malick is still untouchable, but you just gotta laugh when someone asks what your new movie is (especially when your new movie comes out on average every 5 - 10 years) and you say "the pocahontas story"... "no, really, what's your new movie", "seriously, it's the whole Indian thing -- you know, them old Indians, the ones we can't call Indians anymore"... "(laughing) oh you kidder, you, no really, you must have picked something interesting, right?", "no, I swear, we got this huge budget so we could make the white guy - native chick love story".... (looks at him sideways, like he just shat on the table) "um... whatever, man..."

Worst-post-ever.  The stupidity of your words in your follow up posts as well makes you a useless... whatever you are twat.

[hedwig]

From Hedwig's thing:

2 important considerations:

1. Does a "historically significant" story justify being made into a movie, and does cinema suit the telling of such a story?

yes of course. the story must be told, i don't see why cinema is an inappropriate means of telling it. as with any artform, it's up to the artist to utilize it as a powerful storytelling medium, which cinema can certainly be.

2. Has anybody seen the movie? If not, how can we say how it portrays the "suffering of the native americans"?

well you haven't seen it either so shut the fuck up. i was responding to the way you trivialized the suffering of native americans, which you're continuing to do.

and please, this isn't "SoNowThen's Hate Speech thread," this is a thread about the movie. what a pathetic hijacking. in the future take that trash where it belongs.

[Gamblour.]

Actually, my thread was more about subtle, subconscious manifestations of racism. his is a little overt and as subtle as a lynching. but I'll let him post in my thread, because I don't discriminate.

[MacGuffin]

SoNowThen can Malick my balls.

[SoNowThen]

From Hedwig's thing:

2 important considerations:

1. Does a "historically significant" story justify being made into a movie, and does cinema suit the telling of such a story?

yes of course. the story must be told, i don't see why cinema is an inappropriate means of telling it. as with any artform, it's up to the artist to utilize it as a powerful storytelling medium, which cinema can certainly be.

2. Has anybody seen the movie? If not, how can we say how it portrays the "suffering of the native americans"?

well you haven't seen it either so shut the fuck up. i was responding to the way you trivialized the suffering of native americans, which you're continuing to do.

and please, this isn't "SoNowThen's Hate Speech thread," this is a thread about the movie. what a pathetic hijacking. in the future take that trash where it belongs.

Now:

What story must be told? What is this movie about? What story about the first settlers is worth telling, and where are we getting our info from?

Don't get so defensive about me not seeing either, cos I never claimed to. I was making comments about the trailer. You're the one who made a statement about the story and the movie. Now, that's what I went on to point out, that sometimes some fellas have selective reading, where I post something as a question, statements, whatever, throw a little goofiness into it, and BANG all of a sudden it becomes me against the world. The initial post made no attempt to hijack, but I have to defend myself subsequently, don't I?

I don't think "historically significant" things make good movies. I think it's kind of pompous and useless to go for some great meaningful assessment of an event or an era, except, as I said before, in special cases where the filmmaker does something above and beyond, such as Malick did in TRL. So I have hope to believe he will do something wonderful here. And no, P, of course I don't hate Malick -- you silly goose.

As to movies about the Native American plight, I get annoyed with them. The native american plight annoys me, and I'm not trying to "spread hate", I'm stating an opinion that I don't give any support to them for any current agenda. As to the history of said plight, I don't think it will do any good via awareness, because those people are dead and that time is past. Now you can say it's good to remember it, keep it in the public light, so to speak, but really if anyone wants to know about these things they can go read a bunch of books, which is most likely what the storytellers had to do in the first place. And to those who say cinema can bring info to those who won't actively go seek out the info, well your answer to wanting people who are too lazy to get the info you want them to have is that most likely they aren't gonna place the same respect on retaining and meditating on it as you want them to. In other words, I don't want the one movie I get this decade by one of my favorite directors to be on this subject. It upsets me. If you're not upset, be happy, feel lucky, cos I don't.

As to trivializing the suffering of native americans, it's not that I trivialize it... I don't care about it in the least. Not even enough to trivialize it. Many many many peoples have had to suffer attempts at genocide, colonies have come and gone, horros have been perpetrated all across the board. What does such a general retelling of this fact of life serve to the artist? Is there something specific he can touch upon (I use "he" not for Malick but for us all)? Suffering happens everyday, on a daily basis, to us all. Somewhere someone starves, someone is killed, someone's lover lies to them, someone can't communicate to their parents. This native american thing and the holocaust thing are just beloved little stories for people to hide behind. Lazy lazy lazy storytellers, I say. Now, if you think about it, this is leaning more towards a hijack, because we can't refute or support anything I say based upon the actual movie, which none of us have seen. I never wanted to get into all this, I just wanted to express some frustration and fear regarding the quality of the trailer, and the seeming subject of the movie.

As to the case being "solved" regarding the Irish thing, I think far from it. I don't think anything about being progressive, I just don't start warning bells when someone makes a statement using a hot-topic race. The fact that I can slide with using blunt shorthand to slag Colin, but must cover myself with mounds of paperwork and legal-ese to even approach pocahontas is something I find unfair and short-sighted.

But I must now admit, I must be the only person who isn't stoked on the new Malick movie here. And it's really surprising to me, cos I really feel it is a wasted topic and a horrible trailer.

[Gold Trumpet]

I'm nowhere near the biggest supporter of Malick, but I'm really excited to see this film. I thought the biggest problem with The Thin Red Line was not its poetry, but that the film was 40 years too late. The topic of war has been rammed through our heads by countless other films that The Thin Red Line never swayed my sensibilities. I liked Apocalypse Now more even though it was pop culture symbolism at its most superficial. The New World is fresh but important material. The story of Pocahontas, before even being bred to Disney identification, has a carried an aura of myth to American beginnings that still stands to this day. Much of that myth can come down now. A Malick translation could do that but more importantly it could be the fresh ground Malick needs to bleed his camera to.

[Gamblour.]

it could be the fresh ground Malick needs to bleed his camera to.

Nice meaty description there.

anyway i agree with sonowthen. The plight of the dead indians is of no interest to me. in fact, anything dead or anything past is not suitable for cinema. it's just not relevant and we can all go read about it if we stupidly felt the need.  I mean, the only reason I'd watch a film about history is for the information itself. not the emotional resonance or the moral lessons that might appeal to us today, as seen through the unique poetic lens of a Malick film. Cold hard text, that's all I wants ta hears about it. You know those Jews? Why do people keep making movies about them and their "plight" during the "holocaust" which may or may not have happened! Spielberg needs to quit teaching us about these people and just let us read about it.