Here is an interesting article from http://www.debbieschlussel.com/ about Alex Rodriguez. This follows this post about Blockbuster video.This follows this post about some of the movies from last week and THIS POST about some movies that have been released over the past few years that you might have missed! This all follows this post about guidelines to choosing good movies to watch yourself!

It’s Official: A-Rod Now a Trophy Wife – “Men, the New Women” Alert

By Debbie Schlussel

A-Rod & His New SugarDaddy Anne Wojciki You may think this is a trivial topic. But when a multi-zillionaire playboy pro athlete voluntarily assumes the position and becomes a trophy wife, you know that America has collectively lost its collective balls.
Sometimes I get sick of writing about ISIS, Islam, amnesty, and the Presidential race. And many times discussion of other things–changing American lifestyle cues–gives us a much bigger clue of why we are losing America. This is one of those times.
A-Rod f/k/a Alex Rodriguez used to be a ‘roid-using, masculine Major League Baseball player who liked to “date” (euphemism) hot blonde actress types. Kate Hudson, Cameron Diaz, Madonna (okay, not hot, but still peroxided blonde), etc.
But, now, Rodriguez, wealthier than most with a net worth of $252 million, is the new trophy wife/bimbo for ex-Mrs. Google, billionaire Anne Wojciki, who is, well, um . . . not hot. Not super-ugly, but nothing special. As they say, “she has a GREAT personality.” Pointing this out is not a mere shallow, sexist, Mean Girls observation. It’s an observation of a trend: formerly masculine men who could have anyone . . . willingly assuming the position of the gold-digging chick. (Maybe the ‘roid damage to a certain region was permanent?)
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And like most gold-digger chicks, A-Rod is now dating the unattractive woman in this relationship strictly because of the size of her wallet. That’s sad. Men used to be men. Especially pro athlete men. No longer. If A-Rod is doing it, a ton of less wealthy men are doing it: transforming into the chick in the relationship and dating women for their money. He went from alpha male to beta girlfriend. Men–The New Women. It’s never a good thing when American culture delves deeper and deeper into the the feminizing of men and the masculinization of women.
You know what they say about the power of the purse strings. I don’t care what you say about the liberation of men and women in relationships where the woman makes or has more money than the man. Thou doth protest too much. It’s all BS. There is no such thing as egalitarianism in romantic relationships. One party always has more power than the other–the upper hand. And that party is almost always the one with more money. It’s just the way it works in our society.
So, basically, A-Rod has ceded that power. He’s now the Mr. Mom to ex-Mrs. Google. Nobody knows just how much exactly Wojciki, recent ex of Google founder Sergey Brin, is worth. But the new divorcee is certainly a billionaire. At the time of her divorce (which was finalized last year), the Brins were worth about $30 billion. It’s a good bet that she got a significant fraction of that.
Yup, A-Rod picked one of the few women in the world who would have the power of having more money than A-Rod. That’s what a guy who’s given up his testicles does. Or a broken man. Or a liberal wimp proud of being a vegan Mr. Mom who knits with the LGBTQABCDEF knitting community.
And if multi-millionaire A-Rod is willing to give up his masculinity and being a man in exchange for the company and wallet of an unattractive rich lady, it’ll take a lot less to lead regular guys to do the same. Men used to “keep women.” Now, they want to be the kept . . . and, frankly, they want to be the women. We’ll see this more and more as economic and employment situations continue to get worse and those of women continue to get better.
While that’s going on, ISIS and Al-Qaeda are laughing at us all the way to the next terrorist attack.
It’s not just A-Rod who eagerly gave up his balls. It’s America, too.
Hint: you never saw Bin Laden dating a chick richer than himself. And you won’t see Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi doing that either. Just sayin’.
***
Yeah, it would be nice if we lived in a world where people weren’t so vain and didn’t judge people by their looks. But we don’t. We live in the world that is more shallow, vain, and looks-focused than ever. So, don’t romanticize A-Rod’s relationship with this plain Jane billionaire chick as “awww, love before looks.” That ain’t what’s happenin’ here. A-Rod has a track record of only “dating’ (euphemism) lookers. And now he’s playing the hooker.

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Wknd Box Office: The Great Gatsby, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Peeples, Upstream Color

Here is an interesting article from http://www.debbieschlussel.com/ reviewing some of the movies that came out over the past weekend. This follows this post about some of the movies from last week and THIS POST about some movies that have been released over the past few years that you might have missed! This all follows this post about guidelines to chosing good movies to watch yourself!

Wknd Box Office: The Great Gatsby, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Peeples, Upstream Color


By Debbie Schlussel



Nothing new that’s notable or good at theaters, this weekend.


* “The Great Gatsby“: Should have been called, “The Great Glitz-by,” or “The Jay-Z-izing of F. Scott Fitzgerald.” ‘Cuz that’s all it was, a bright, loud, horribly miscast, rushed-and-yet-long 2.5 hours pretending to be “The Great Gatsby,” the Fitzgerald novel about a mysterious millionaire trying to woo his married long lost love. And it was ridiculously drenched in cacophonous Jay-Z-infested synthesizer noise.



While the movie is better than I expected, that’s only because I set my expectations extremely low. It is pretty true to the book, even though reports said it was based on the darker first draft, “Trimalchio,” which Fitzgerald lightened at the request of his publisher. Still, the movie is filled with Jay-Z music, hip-hop, and rap. And the few musical notes that actually come from the era of the 1920s were pumped up on steroids, sped up and chock full of loud hip-hop beats. And the movie was way too bright, flashy, and glitzy from start to finish. It wasn’t eye candy. It was garish, distracting, and annoying. Oh, and I saw it in 3D. Why on earth does a novel about the wealthy old- and new-moneyed on East and West Egg (the fictionalized Long Island) in the 1920s need to be in 3D? I still don’t know.


I just didn’t see Leonardo DiCaprio as the mysterious stalker Jay Gatsby or Carey Mulligan (whose acting “talent” seems limited to pouts and tears) as Daisy Buchanan, the selfish, torn debutante who was his love five years earlier. Joel Edgerton as wealthy polo player Tom Buchanan was a better pick, but even he was far too cartoonish to be the guy I pictured as I read the book. The only one that I think fit the bill was Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway (Daisy’s distant cousin and Gatsby’s neighbor), but even he looks too young. Like DiCaprio, he is too boyish-looking and looks like he had his Bar Mitzvah yesterday.



The movie went way too fast at times and then way too slow. It was kind of exhausting, though the two-and-a-half hours dizzyed past me. Also an annoyance was the constant use of handwritten words on the screen as Nick Carraway uttered them. Why did we need that? The screen wasn’t busy enough? This movie is very high on style–in fact, it’s overloaded with it (the costumes and sets are fabulous but excessive)–but has little substance.



The best way to see “The Great Gatsby” is in your own mind as you are picturing the book while you read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s words. This movie proves yet again that attempts to best that by putting it on-screen generally fail.



I didn’t completely hate it, and it was mildly entertaining, so I give it . . .



HALF A REAGAN



* “The Reluctant Fundamentalist“: More like, “The Liberal, Muslim Fantasy of Why Muslims Are Right to Hate America.” I hate, hate, hated this movie. It’s typical anti-American crap based on the novel of the same name written by Muslim author Mohsin Hamid. Like the book, this is pan-Muslim propaganda. There is nothing “reluctant” about this movie, including and especially the anti-American orgy that populates it. I’ve seen other critics upset that this movie “doesn’t explain” the “subtle reasons” why the Muslim main character smiles and rejoices at the attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11. . . as if there is a justifiable reason for that, “subtle” or otherwise.



The main character in this movie, Changez Khan (Riz Ahmed), has been given everything by America–an athletic scholarship to Princeton, a prized, high-paid position at a high-powered consulting firm in New York, and the personal tutelage of one of its principals (Kiefer Sutherland), who takes Khan under his wing and gives him a plum promotion. And, yet, he smiles at the attacks on the World Trade Center, a move that this horrible (and horribly slow and boring) flick’s point of view believes is justified.



Khan is shown unfairly harassed by police and strip-searched at the airport because he is Muslim and has been profiled. But, while we should have done that to Muslim aliens here (in Khan’s case, he is here for no legit reason–we have plenty of Americans suited for consulting jobs and on unemployment), that is exactly the opposite of what politically correct America did. We didn’t and still don’t profile Muslims.



Khan’s rich American photographer girlfriend (the always annoying Kate Hudson, who, herself, said she hates Americans) also ridicules him in her art exhibit which features his photo, recordings of him, and phrases in Arabic. Yeah, right. Like liberal American rich girl artists ridicule Muslims. Just the opposite, sadly. They readily lie down and spread eagle (and she did some of that, too, in this film). But in this movie, the Muslim main character is endlessly the victim of countless horrible acts by the evil Americans.



And after this, Khan is ordered by his “evil” Western boss (the one who hired him instead of Americans and promoted him ahead of Americans) to fire a Muslim publishing house exec. He refuses, quits his job, and moves back to Pakistan, where he leads student radicals and is suspected of helping kidnap an American professor.



Most of the movie consists of Khan telling an American journalist/CIA agent (Liev Schreiber) his story, while the agent wants to know where the professor is so he can be rescued. Schreiber accuses him of being part of the kidnapping. Of course, predictably, Khan is innocent, wrongfully accused. And, yet again, we Americans are the bad guys.



High quality Bin Laden cinema brought to you by Indian director Mira Nair, whose hubby is Muslim. Ms. Nair has made millions showing her films in America, and this is how she slaps us in the face in response. One other thing: the movie is financed and produced by the Doha Film Institute, funded and run by the same Qatar government that funds and runs Al-Jazeera, the Terrorist News Network. This is typical of the kind of propagandistic crap they put out.



FOUR MARXES PLUS FOUR OBAMAS PLUS FOUR BIN LADENS




* “Peeples“: Prime Gitmo torture material. Absolutely awful. Extremely painful to sit through. Anything with two words attached to it–Tyler Perry–is absolute crap. And this is no exception. It’s “Exhibit A” of the rule. And it’s an example of the real racism that permeates Hollywood: that Hollywood execs believe Black America apparently isn’t worthy of anything better than this Black version of “Three’s Company” misunderstandings as plot points and groanworthy, unfunny jokes. And apparently Black America is self-hating and racist against itself, too, because the screening I attended for this horrid cinematic display was chock full of Black moviegoers who seemed to love this tripe.



Kerry Washington plays the girlfriend of a man (Wade Walker), who is not up to the standards of her wealthy, snooty family. He crashes her family weekend at a Hamptons beach house and learns the family is unaware he exists. But now that they know, they mostly don’t like him, as made known to him by his girlfriend’s judge father (David Alan Grier). Soon, the boyfriend begins to learn that most of the family is weird, living a lie, and really not better than he is. But to get there, the audience has to endure cheesy, unfunny jokes, bad dialogue, and other silliness.



A complete waste of time and ten dollars. Skip this.



FOUR MARXES PLUS FOUR OBAMAS



* “Upstream Color“: WTF? I’m not sure what this was about. I spent ten dollars and over 1.5 hours to see this artsy-fartsy movie that has no story. Instead I sat there and watched scenes of a guy in a pig farm interspersed with scenes of a woman hypnotized to give her life savings to some guy and a woman (may be the same woman–don’t know, don’t care) and a man who are dating and then hiding from some invisible thing while sleeping in their bathtub. Oh, and the guy with the pig farm also records noises of rocks, insects, and streams. This is one of those horribly boring, David-Lynch-style, pretentious nonsense movies. When I asked others who saw it if they understood what was going on, they responded that it’s “art” and that “you’re not supposed to understand what’s going on. It’s designed to evoke emotion.” (How much you wanna bet these phonies and idiots, who pay ten dollars to see a nonsensical movie “to evoke emotion,” voted for Obama?)



Well, it evoked emotion all right: anger and frustration that I wasted money and time I’ll never get back. Thanks for nothing.



FOUR MARXES PLUS FOUR OBAMAS

Wknd Box Office: Thor, Something Borrowed, Winter in Wartime, Cave of Forgotten Dreams

Here is an interesting article from http://www.debbieschlussel.com/  reviewing some of the movies that came out over the past weekend. This follows this post some of the movies from last week and  THIS POST about some movies that have been released over the past few years that you might have missed!  This all  follows this post about guidelines to chosing good movies to watch yourself!

Wknd Box Office: Thor, Something Borrowed, Winter in Wartime, Cave of Forgotten Dreams


By Debbie Schlussel



The best–and ONLY good–new movie this weekend is a small arthouse thriller about World War II and the Nazis. If you can’t find it, best to stay home and rent/Netflix something else.











* “Thor“: Rhymes with bore . . . for a reason. Yaaaawn. This ain’t no “god of thunder.” More like, god of slumber. Chris Hemsworth (who trained for this movie at the Detroit area gym where I work out–nice house, no one home) plays an uninspired version of an already uninspired superhero, Thor. This movie was boring, a mess, and had a dull, waste of time story.





Thor, a prince of some distant planet, is a brash, arrogant, immature guy who defies his father, the King, and goes to some planet where they freeze people. He fights the frozen dudes and upsets the balance of things. His evil brother puts his father in a coma and sends Thor to earth, where he falls in love with an annoying Natalie Portman (sooooo sick of her and her lackluster acting–her best performance was as a kid in “The Professional” (read my review) and it’s been all downhill from there). Portman is a scientist studying storms and disruptions in the desert, where Thor lands. There is no spark between them and no chemistry. The same can be said about Hemsworth and his role. Dullardsville.



I saw the movie in 3D, and it was a waste. Didn’t need to be 3D and there was barely any of it of substance. Kinda like this long, boring movie. Nothing objectionable here. Just nothing worth spending $10-$14 bucks and more than two hours of your life on. It’s fine for kids. This is mindless baby-sitter stuff. Nothing more.



HALF A REAGAN





* “Something Borrowed“: Wow, it’s official. Anti-American Kate Hudson hit the wall. She’s supposed to be “the hot one” in this movie, but instead, she really looks like a fat old cow, far older than her years. Awful. This is an unbearable chick flick I advise guys to avoid like the plague. Yes, there are a few really funny lines, but they are all the property of John Krasinski, and there’s not enough of him and far more of the annoying chick flickish fawning and brooding stuff.



Ginnifer “my parents got the ’70s Jennifer memo but were hooked on Seagram’s or couldn’t spell” Goodwin plays a lawyer who is the “geeky,” “less pretty” half of a best friend duo–two women who’ve been BFFs since they were little kids. Hudson is the half of the duo who always gets what she wants, is supposed to be super hot, and is engaged to the lawyer Goodwin always wanted but didn’t think she was good enough to have. The guy–by the way–is played by a Colin Egglesfield, who looks like they took Tom Cruise Silly Putty and put him on a stretching machine. It’s too distracting how much he resembles a semi-twisted version of Cruise.



The guy always had a crush on Goodwin and didn’t think she wanted him. Now he is engaged to Hudson and they are about to be married. But he and Goodwin have a one-night stand and the machinations continue. Does he break off his engagement? Does Hudson find out about them? Who cares? I sure didn’t. Booooooring. Next. This went on forever, despite being more predictable than death and taxes.



It was even less convincing because Goodwin, who normally ain’t all that, actually looks better than Hudson in this. Stick a fork in it, Kate. You’re done. So, what was that you said about how you hate Americans? Eat it. Oh, wait, looks like you already have . . . and then some (and this was filmed before she got pregnant, so save the e-mails).



TWO MARXES




* “Winter in Wartime [Oorlogswinter]“: I cannot say enough good things about this masterpiece. LOVED It! Excellent. And while it begins slowly, it sneaks up on you as a great thriller. Easily one of the best movies of the year, and definitely THE BEST so far.



A boy in his early teens is the son of the mayor of a Nazi-occupied town in the Netherlands. He secretly helps a British pilot whose plane crashed in the woods nearby and is working with the partisans. The boy has an uneasy, precarious position because his friends have been arrested and killed for being involved with the partisans, and his father is trying to maintain an uneasy peace with the Nazis to save his village people. At the same time, the boy’s uncle–who is working with the partisans–has moved in. Who can the boy trust? Will he be able to sneak around and save the soldier without risking others’ lives?



Such a young boy shows incredible fortitude and maturity, as many surely did amidst Nazi occupation during World War II, as did many American boys who served, fought, and some of whom lost life or limb. Kids his age in the current era pale in comparison, and I doubt most would have the guts to do against the Islamic threat what this kid and many others did against the Nazis.



In Dutch with English subtitles. A MUST SEE. Terrific.



FOUR REAGANS PLUS






* “Cave of Forgotten Dreams“: Werner Herzog directed and narrates this documentary about a French cave preserved for thousands of years because it was sealed off with rocks, etc. Inside, there are many drawings and paintings of various animals, along with stalagmites and stalagtites, and the preserved bones of dead bears and other animals.



While this was interesting at first, it went on and on and on. It could have been a 20 minute television feature, and that would have been more than enough. Instead it covered the material to death, and then some. Listening to Herzog narrate this was kinda like listening to an evil villain from the “Die Hard” movies narrate something academic. Strange and mildly comical.



But the comical became absurd when Herzog goes 20 miles away to some sort of reptile sanctuary and asks what the crocodiles (or alligators–I forget which) think about the paintings in the caves nearby. Really? Did you really just ask that, Werner? I laughed a lot. But, unfortunately, the movie didn’t end there. It kept on going and finally it was over. Great stuff for insomnia.



Plus Herzog never tells us how the paintings/drawings were made and what implements were used or what type of ink. Other basic questions like that just weren’t answered as he bored us to tears with his repetition and inane musings. I don’t dislike Herzog. He’s a bright guy. But it’s important to note that he is the same guy who defamed brave American Gene DeBruin in his “Rescue Dawn” movie. I’ll never forget that, and neither should you when you watch anything else he makes that gets to the big screen.



HALF A REAGAN