Gangs of New York
Posted by erin at December 28, 2002 11:34 PMI feel now as if I need to write an apologetic review of this film. It seems as if I need to apologize in two areas - firstly in that I am sorry that I liked the film, and secondly, since so many people whom I have talked to did not like the film, I worry that my review may consist largely of excuses, as if I am apologizing for the film's quality.
As I left the theater, I did not feel that I was alone in liking Gangs of New York, nor did I feel that the movie was particularly lacking in quality. Sure, I knew that critics had given the film a luke-warm reception, but my family and I, and the handful of friends who went with us to the theater, agreed that this was a "good" movie which all of us "enjoyed." It was only when I returned to New York that I realized that many of my friends had neither enjoyed the film, nor appreciated the overall quality. Herein I should like to play up the films strong points, and touch upon a few criticisms of my own.
Daniel Day-Lewis. One thing everyone seems to agree on is that Daniel Day-Lewis made this film. His performance was downright stunning, and I'll be damned if he doesn't win an Oscar for the role. Mr. Day-Lewis has created on screen one of the most memorable villains in recent movie history. To me, his portrayal of Bill the Butcher is equivalent to Marlon Brando's role in Apocalypse Now. Yes, he was just that good. (One may wish to note at this point that I have never seen any other movie starring Daniel Day-Lewis from start-to-finish save for A Room With A View.)
There is, unfortunately, a down side to Mr. Day-Lewis's incredible performance in Gangs of New York - he makes all the other actors seem like slack-jawed yokels. Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz run around not knowing what they're doing. While I watched the film I reached the conclusion that their characters were rather confused, although now I realize, as others have pointed out to me, the actors simply did not know how to act.
Scorsese-isms. I'm a big fan of Scorsese. He went to NYU back in the day, he's from New York, he's made many terrific film-boy-favorite films, and if you've ever seen him interviewed, he's a terrifically intellectual, as well as a spastic madman. Gangs of New York contained many Scorsese-isms that made me smile.
For example. the film begins with a close-up. This is a rarity in the film world. Most films begin with a wide establishing shot, to give you a sense of where everything is. Scorsese started off as an editor, so he knows this rule of film, and he knows the resonance of breaking such a rule. He opens Gangs of New York with a rather extreme close-up of a man shaving. This is comparable to The Godfather, another close-up opener, which, if you'll recall, starts with a close-up of a cat. Shaving is significant for Scorsese in particular as one of his early short films is The Big Shave.
There are many other terrific Scorsese-isms in the film. The largest, perhaps, is the rampant use of ambiguous morality. Much like in Taxi Driver and Goodfellas Scorsese does not draw a line between good and evil. His heroes are anti-heroes. They are not concerned with differentiating good from bad or right from wrong, and their only moral code is that of honor among thieves. Moral ambiguity appeals to me in a most unhealthy enjoyable way, especially when it comes to cinema. I tend to think that a lot of morality is relative anyway, even though I know that moral relativism is not the soundest philosophical argument.
Also not unlike Goodfellas, the opening of Gangs of New York presents us with gangsters scene through the eyes of a child. In Goodfellas the child narrates to us, "For as long as I can remember, I've wanted to be a gangster..." Leo's character, Amsterdam Vallon, is hardly given any other choice in life except to be a gangster from the very start. He's never been interested in doing anything else.
Violence. Scorsese has given us many wonderfully violent movies in his day. Watching Gangs of New York I realized that I particularly enjoy the way Scorsese portrays violence. In most action movies, both heroes and villains act out violently. In a typical American movie, the audience will expect that the villain's violent actions are unjustified, and that's what makes them the bad guy, whereas the hero's violence is doled out on an only-when-necessary, or merely-in-justifiable-self-defense basis. Since Scorsese's films tend to star villainous anti-heroes anyway, the audience must come to terms with the fact that although some of the protagonist's violent acts are justified, many are not.
Better still, I tend to think that Scorsese shows us more or less realistic violence, and not gratuitous violence. One gets the feeling in Gangs of New York that real gangsters really did rip off each other's ears as trophies, and he's not just showing us that to gross us out (as compared to movies like Meet the Feebles wherein everything is meant just to gross you out). Scorsese is saying, "This is the way it is!" Not, "Look at my cool blood special effects!"
Furthermore, I greatly enjoyed the way the fight in the opening scene was shot. There were jump-cuts to people dying and arteries squirting blood everywhere - it seemed highly realistic in style and substance. I felt like I was there.
The Plot. I have heard some outcry about the plot of Gangs of New York not making enough sense. I can't see why, as it made sense to me. Bill the Butcher kills Amsterdam's (Leo's) father, and Amsterdam wants to avenge his death. He decides the best way to do this is to join the Butcher's gang, and kill him on the anniversary of his father's death, in front of the highest-up members of the Butcher's gang. Amsterdam is afforded some anonymity in the Five Points area, since he's been in jail for the last 18 years. He uses this anonymity to join the Butcher's gang. The Butcher takes a liking to Amsterdam and makes him his favorite apprentice.
I think that's great! I mean, as long as you're making a revenge killing anyway, why not make it as painful for the victim as possible by becoming his heir and best friend and then turning on him? That's downright Shakespearean! (And it is supposed to be Shakespearean, as there's even a line in the film to that effect.) Amsterdam is in serious trouble when he finds himself taking a bullet meant for the Butcher when someone else tries to assassinate him. This stirs up a lot of conflict for poor, confused Amsterdam/Leo. Maybe he really likes the Butcher after all and doesn't want to kill him!
The movie gets weird after Amsterdam finally takes a decent stab at the Butcher. The film really should have ended fairly soon after that point, but instead it does not, and we learn that Cameron Diaz has been saving up money to move to California, and the Draft is becoming a serious problem in the city. Finally there are some massive Draft Riots, which, even though they were established very early on as a plot element, still seem very strange in the film, as if they don't quite belong there.
New York. To wrap up my praise of the film, I should like to add that I am very interested in the history of New York, especially since the first two years I lived here, I lived in the old part of the city, below Fulton Street. You can't live there without wondering what the place was like when it was just wooden shacks and not glittering skyscrapers. Scorsese very kindly points out, throughout the film, exact intersections and street names, which is useful and highly interesting to New Yorkers watching the film, as the streets are still there.
And now on to my own complaints about the film:
Embarrassing Love Scenes. I saw this film with my parents. It's always kind of weird for me to watch anything having to do with sex with my parents, since in our family we have a don't-ask-don't-tell policy. I don't want to think about my parents having sex, and they don't want to think about me having sex. So when we're both watching Cameron Diaz lick Leo's scars on a 12-foot tall silver screen, it makes me kind of uncomfortable. Even if I weren't watching the movie with my parents, I still think that the love scenes in particular were poorly acted out. Those who have seen it may wish to cringe as they recall the wussy slap-fight scene.
John Woo Style Flashbacks. The main reason I don't like John Woo films are the flashbacks. His so-called best movie, The Killer contains the best example of this phenomenon I usually cite: As the Killer opens, there is a big shoot-out wherein a woman is blinded. After the opening credits, we are told that ten years have passed. The blind woman meets a man from the shoot-out. John Woo then gives us no small number of flashbacks to the opening scene. I could see where this might be necessary if, say, an hour had past between the opening scene and the flashbacks. However, in real time, it has only been about 2 minutes since the opening credits. Does the director have no confidence that I'll remember anything I saw 3 minutes ago, or is he anticipating late-comers into the theater? This is a constant problem with John Woo movies.
To me, flashbacks make sense in movies only under two conditions: 1. Scenes being flashed back to happened before the movie began (as in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) or 2. Scenes being flashed back to shed new light on something we the viewers may have missed (consider the Beck video "Devil's Haircut") or give us a new perspective on what happened, for example, another character is giving us his or her take on the situation (as in Rashomon). These rules do not apply to television episodes containing flashbacks to older episodes which I may or may not have seen.
98% of all John Woo movies break my two simple rules, and frankly, I find this insulting. Films are only 2 hours long. Unless there was a flashframe I missed, I can usually remember everything I've seen in the past two hours. Signs is a big offender here - yes, the clues all fell together in the end, no, I did not require a flashback to figure it out.
Scorsese, as far as I can tell, is not flashback-crazy like John Woo. However, Gangs of New Yorkcontained quite a few totally unnecessary flashbacks to the opening fight. Yes, thank you, I remember that Dead Rabbit's face. Even if I didn't, Leo's persistent staring at the guy would clue me in on the fact that this is a person from his past.
So there you have it. That's my take on the film. I thought it was flawed, but overall enjoyable and worth watching, no apologies needed.
It is also worth mentioning that three kids sitting in front of me for the first 45 minutes of the movie were causing trouble and I was still able to enjoy the film. Eventually the troublemakers got bored with the movie and left. Only to come back for 5 minutes and leave again. It's a good thing they took off. The violent acts in the movie made me feel compelled to do violent things to them. I have never actively fantasized about kicking anyone in the head before. But then again, this is the first pair of steel-toed boots I've ever owned.
Comments Individual Archive Index
December 29, 2002 01:34 AM, Whir said:
I also respectfully request that you change your text color back to black. The pink hurts my eyes. Honestly.
GoNY looks like it will be good. I will not see it until it has been released on DVD.
December 30, 2002 12:00 AM, Rick said:
Well here's my review of Gangs of New York:
The movie opens up like some sort of cross between Mad Max and The Warriors with a bunch of papists leaving their cavern (which is filled with human skulls and apparently within new york city) to do battle with the Top Hat gang. An electronic soundtrack kicks in as the cartoonishly violent battle rages on, and when I'm watching a movie about the 1860's, I want to hear as much techno music as possible (luckily that was the only scene where the score was horribly anachronistic). The only thing I could think as I watched was "Is this some sort of joke?"
I kept repeating that question to myself as Day-Lewis not so subtly played Bill the Butcher, a glass-eyed antagonist ("How can we make the villian cooler?" "I don't know let's give him a hook or peg-leg or something, that always makes villains cooler.") who constantly butchers meat while giving speeches about how he controls new york, is a bad-ass and hates immigrants. Are audiences supposed to take this seriously? This is on the same level as watching Tommy Lee Jones play Two Face, only I expect over-the-top cartoonishness in the Batman movies, not in an epic period piece that seems to think it's a real movie. Add to that DiCaprio's on and off accent, Cameron Diaz as the pointless love-interest ("We're guarenteed a strong male audience with the gallons of blood, to attract more female viewers, I think we should add a romantic sub- plot that adds nothing and goes nowhere."), way too much time spent showing off eleborate sets, and the fact that even though the only thing really going on in this movie is Dicaprio wanting revenge against Day-Lewis, a good hour of the film is the two of them devoloping a friendship (supposedly so that DiCaprio and be in a better position to kill him, but you don't devout that large a portion of a film showing the villain pmpering and being a swell fellow to the supposedly wronged hero).
Ultimatly the real problem is that this is just some stupid revenge story set against a backdrop of the 1863 draft riots. I don't think that's acceptable. One couldn't make a romantic comedy that just happens to be set in Germany during the holocaust. In the same way this movie touches on too many important issues to just be a fun, stupid movie. As you watch the onscreen idiocy the corrupt politicians, opposition to the civil war and warring bands of immigrants just serve to remind you that someone could have actually made a good film about this.
Another thing that bothers me is I'm not sure if the movie was supposed to be morally vague or if I'm just too jaded to root for America hating immigrants that murder blacks in order to protest the draft. Was DiCaprio supposed to be some sort of hero? He just looked like a street thug out for revenge to me. Did the makers of this film actually try to portray his personal crusade as some sort of battle for immigrants' rights? Are we supposed to be outraged by Day-Lewis's belief that a man should be willing to fight and die for his country? I got the distinct sense that one was supposed to be rooting for DiCaprio, but I can't imagine why anyone ever would.
As far as bloated cinematic abortions go, this movie is actually pretty fun to watch, both to see Day-Lewis act more ridiculous than Gary Oldman did in the 5th Element and to constantly be shocked that anyone, let alone once-adequate director Scorcesse, had the audacity to film this. But be forewarned, in no way is this a good film.
December 30, 2002 12:11 AM, Erin said:
Jesus, Rick, get your own blog!
Also I liked the film. More on this later.
December 30, 2002 09:37 AM, ET said:
Ha ha - Rick squatted on your blog, not on mine.
Anyway, I liked the movie a lot. And I think the point was that although DiCaprio's character was the most sympathetic to the audience, they were all thugs. There were no good guys in the movie. I like the moral ambiguity. I like that Scorcese didn't really take sides apart from the fact that DiCaprio was the protagonist. Just because someone believes in something good, it doesn't automatically make them a good guy.
December 30, 2002 11:07 AM, Maggie said:
Personally, I didn't find the movie enjoyable. It had some cool tricks, like Bill the Butcher tapping on his glass eye with a knife, but everything else was too bloody and attempting to be shocking for me to like it.
Then again, I might've liked it more if I didn't see it at 11pm when I was already really sleepy at 9pm.
December 30, 2002 11:31 AM, N. said:
[I strongly dislike spoiler warnings, but I'd better put one in. Spoilers ahead. You have been warned.]
Well, Rick is wrong about a couple of things. Firstly, it's totally possible to make a romantic comedy that 'just happens' to be set in Germany during the Holocaust - Ernst Lubitsch did it perfectly well in To Be or Not to Be (which Rick should watch if he hasn't - the IMDB entry is at http://us.imdb.com/Title?0035446).
Secondly, Dead Rabbits (a cool gang name if there ever was one) included blacks, as did the church that aligned itself with them, and that, I believe, was the sole faction that the audience was meant to root for. The mob, which was shown burning down the Colored Orphan Asylum, was not sympathetic at all. Mobs typically aren't (except in Russian films made during the 1920s, in which the mob is actually the protagonist).
Bill the Butcher /was/, I think, largely sympathetic and /no/ I don't think the viewer is meant to be outraged by his willingness to fight and die for his country (although, I gotta say, he could easily have been fighting for the South, and he _wasn't_, so there's more to it than that). In fact, I don't think that Bill is punished on a moral basis at all. His real failing - and why Boss Tweed ultimately abandons him - is that his ideas are antiquated. There are simply too many immigrants to expect that they will not eventually gain an economic foothold and become a political force. Even Bill knows this, which is why he doesn't bother using guile in killing the newly elected Happy Jack - he just stabs the man in the back, in broad daylight.
The real reason to watch this movie is for the hats and the facial hair. I am contemplating adding 'the pants' to that list as well, because Bill the Butcher had such incredible pants. Did you see those pants?! Those were some pants, I tell you what.
Also, it could've used a little more violence.
December 30, 2002 12:56 PM, Agnieszka said:
Also, you should all know that it's very losely based on the book The Gangs of New York, which I hear is really cool. The Gangs of New York is a history of the gangs of New York, and I don't think is organized as a story with plot, but as a history. From what I know of the book, whatever brutality was protrayed in the film was probaby much much less than what actually happened. I don't know if they kept any of the actual gangs from history, but there were some really weird and insane gangs.
December 30, 2002 01:33 PM, Whir said:
You haven't changed your font color.
December 30, 2002 02:33 PM, thecomicman said:
Bill didn't kill Happy Jack. Amsterdam killed Happy Jack. Happy Jack was the ex-Dead Rabbit-turned-cop. Bill killed that dude with the notched club who wasn't really in the Dead Rabbits.
and the pants were cool.
December 30, 2002 02:48 PM, N. said:
Who the hell was the Sheriff, then?
December 30, 2002 02:57 PM, N. said:
Monk Eastman?! I don't remember that.
Yes about Happy Jack, though. I'm wrong about that one, boy howdy.
December 30, 2002 04:57 PM, ET said:
The pants were definitely stunning. Either Daniel Day Lewis is really tall or he was wearing stilts. (But it was probably the pants. Whoo-wee!)
Regarding the book: I heard that it's pretty sensationalistic, but still good reading. Everyone should also read Five Points, which recently came out in paperback. It's supposed to be really good. I plan to read both books eventually.
December 30, 2002 11:28 PM, Rick said:
Well, the audience I saw it with seemed to like DiCaprio's character and the trailer for the movie explicitly refers to him as a hero. I know the marketing people can certainly mismarket a film, but while watching the film I got the distinct feeling that I was supposed to be emotionally invested in and cheering for DiCaprio.
But all that's besides the point, even if it was intended to be a morally vague film, it was still awful. Instead of being a movie that intelligently deals with the draft riots, this was just an attempt to overload the senses: gallons of blood constantly being spilled, cartoonish villians, half-naked (or fully naked) women running about and fondelling one another, 'epic' battles that look like they belong in the Road Warrior and moronic lines that are supposed to be profound or prophetic (example, "You never wash the blood from the blade. One day you'll understand.") People are saying this:
"a considerable achievement, a revisionist history linking the birth of American democracy and American crime. ... It is instructive to be reminded that modern America was forged not in quiet rooms by great men in wigs, but in the streets, in the clash of immigrant groups, in a bloody Darwinian struggle." (Ebert's Review)
This movie was more ridiculous than Spiderman and less entertaining. It certainly isn't a movie that has any profound meaning. Maybe if John Sayles had made a meaning on the Draft Riots it would have some meaning or historical relevence, but this was just pure idiocy. Did N. actually enjoy this? (or more appropriatly, did N. actually think this was good, because I could very much see how someone could find this enjoyable)
December 31, 2002 10:19 AM, N. said:
Yes, I enjoyed it. As I said, though, it was mostly the production design (hats, facial hair, pants) that I liked. The narrative was only so-so.
I am, however, a sucker for You! Are! There! historical film making. Spielberg will do this sort of thing, and for my money it's really the only reason to see his films ("You will probably never see a dinosaur - so here's the closest thing to it! Ever been in a WWII firefight? No? Well, here you go! Probably never get to witness first contact with the aliens, either... but it would look something like this...") - historic accuracy to the point of documentary.
Remember that old PBS series _The Day The Universe Changed_ with James Burke? I loved that show. For a while, I thought that historical recreation documentaries were to be my life's work (witness the two high school video masterpieces, _Totalitarian Recall_ and _Science A-Go-Go_). Someday I will at least _write_ a script on the rise and fall of Otto von Bismarck. It's amazing stuff, history. And the narrative... it's all there, already! So you don't really need the revenge story, no (unless you are talking Shaka Zulu here, in which case, ah, you do).
December 31, 2002 10:28 AM, ET said:
That's funny. I saw Gangs of New York, and the movie delivered with a bunch of crazy Five Points gangs running around. Not surprising, since I've heard that the book the movie's based on is pretty sensationalistic. Is there a movie called Draft Riots of New York playing somewhere?
Also, Ebert is frequently confused. He's a Chicago guy. Guess what - the whole immigrant issue has had little effect on the majority of modern America, which, it turns out, does not exist solely in the densely populated urban centers where most immigrants end up. People from urban centers are frequently pulling monkeys out of their asses when they talk about "modern America".
Keeping in mind that Scorcese is a very New York director, it would've been far more accurate to say, if the movie was about the forging of anything, it was about the forging of NYC. A lot of organized crime groups start out as immigrant social/support groups trying to defend themselves against immigrant hostility. Note the evolution of various "Benevolent Societies" in Chinatown into tongs/triads. In fact, all the gangs and organized crime groups I can think of have an ethnic identity - e.g. the mafia, Latin Kings, Bloods, etc.
The pressures and hostilities that immigrants face today are still the same, the uptown rich (it was so cute that 28th street was "uptown") are still a whole other world from the ghettos and riot mobs still don't give a crap where you live.
December 31, 2002 11:47 AM, Erin said:
whoa whoa whoa:
the whole immigrant issue has had little effect on the majority of modern America,
What are you talking about? 1 in 4 Americans today have ancestors who passed through Ellis Island during the big immigration between 1840-something and 1940-something. I know I have relatives who immigrated.
Granted, the face of immigration has changed. Back in the day, white Europeans like the Irish in the film were getting off the boats. These days the vast majority of immigrants tend to be non-white, that is, Asians, Latin Americans, and Middle Eastern folk.
Besides, America is a nation of nothing but immigrants. Unless you're a Native American of some sort, your ancestors were immigrants. Immigration issues are what this country is all about.
December 31, 2002 12:17 PM, N. said:
...not to mention the 1862 Homestead Act which scattered immigrants willy-nilly across the U.S. No question - immigrants /arrived/ in urban settings, they did /not/ end up there. I'm looking for a source on the freaking statistic (can't find it), but (to compliment Erin's statistic) 1 in 4 homesteaders were immigrants. They ended up every damn place. Inasmuch as the USA has a history, it is the history of displacement of and resettlement by foreign populations.
December 31, 2002 03:02 PM, thecomicman said:
no, but the movie, good, yes?
December 31, 2002 03:11 PM, ET said:
My point was that the kind of concentrated pressure that fueled the conflicts in the movie are the result of urban immigrant life. (Please remember that there was a context to my statements.) My intention was not to make sweeping statements about Immigration and America, but to point out the absurdity of Ebert taking the events in the movie and applying them to America in general. Instead of "the whole immigrant issue has had little effect on the majority of modern America", I should've specified, "the immigrant issues addressed in the movie has little effect on the majority of modern America".
By immigrant issues, I refer specifically to things like ghettos and the conflicts that arise directly from the presence of large immigrant groups. I'm talking about sweatshops where the INS is the only government agency the workers can identify, places where signs have more than one language on them, where the schools offer ESL and accent elimination classes and where people send most of their income to another country. I haven't heard about any houses of prostitution in Wichita where all the prostitutes are working off their passage to America and disciplinary measure include losing fingers.
Can you guys honestly say that the majority of the American population today is affected by, or even familiar with, all this? Is this the point where Erin tells me that there's a major chapter of the Latin Kings in Ypsilanti? What, if any, immigrant issues exist today in non-urban America?
December 31, 2002 03:14 PM, ET said:
Argh. Between the first and second paragraphs, pretend there's something to bridge them along the lines of how the issues in the movie are relevant to modern immigrant issues, yadda yadda.
January 1, 2003 08:07 PM, thecomicman said:
also, i'd like to point out how not all immigrants passed through Ellis island. there were many Asians that came from the West and settled in California, Nevada, Utah, and those other squared-off states. and then how about them Mexicans and South Americans that came from the south.
i'd also like to point out how a bunch (and i mean a bunch) of Mexicans went to bed one night full citizens of Mexico and woke up as second-class citizens in the USA. that kinda shit just isn't nice.
January 2, 2003 12:08 PM, Erin said:
P.S.
Rick totally missed the point of this film. Also:
One couldn't make a romantic comedy that just happens to be set in Germany during the holocaust.
That movie was made, and it was called Life is Beautiful.
To ET:
What, if any, immigrant issues exist today in non-urban America?
Tons! If you lived in rural Texas, you'd be deeply concerned with immigration (not just Mexicans either, consider the Koreans on King of the Hill), or indeed, if you lived even in the farmiest farm-town of California you could not possibly ignore migratant workers and non-citizens.
Although I will not claim that there is a huge chapter of the Latin Kings in Ypsilanti, Michigan, I could also point out that Ypsilanti is only 10 minutes east of Ann Arbor, wherein there is an enormous population of Japanese immigrants who moved in during the late 1980's.
Yes, comicman, I realize not all immigrants went through Ellis Island, that's why I said one in four. It is worth noting that I have read information from the US Census bureau stating that by the year 2015 Latinos will out-number blacks as the largest minority group in the United States.
January 2, 2003 12:36 PM, ET said:
A) Yeah, I know about Chinese building railroads in the Old West. At one point, I was gonna specify that the majority of immigrant communities not only tend to congregate in urban areas but along the coasts. But then everyone would start pointing out that there's, for example, a bunch of Japanese in Ann Arbor, even though I didn't say that immigrants only live in urban centers along the coasts.
B) Please don't cite a cartoon as "evidence".
C) Context of the movie. Context of the movie. Context of the movie. Context of the movie. Context of the movie. Context of the movie. Context of the movie. Context of the movie. Context of the movie. Context of the movie. Context of the movie. Context of the movie.
D) I will say one more time that my point all along has been that the specific immigrant issues raised in the movie are most relevant to the whole modern urban immigrant situation and that Ebert was wrong to say that the movie is about all of America because most of America doesn't live in cities.
E) Give me meaningful statistics (cartoons don't count) about the hotbed of immigrant activity in the type of areas (e.g. rural, urban, etc.) where the population of the U.S. is concentrated as tied in to specific issues addressed in the film if you want to argue my point.
January 2, 2003 12:47 PM, thecomicman said:
"by the year 2015 Latinos will out-number blacks as the largest minority group in the United States."
that's not soon enough. now i'll have to move my goddamn time table back another ten years so more of my brethren can jump over a fuckin' fence before i can take over the world.
January 2, 2003 01:07 PM, N. said:
Life is Beautiful wasn't a romantic comedy - it was, if anything, a father-son coming-of-age story.
If anything, I am, at this point, more interested in finding out why cartoons don't count than I am in the politics of immigration. I think cartoons count. Why not quote truth where you find it?
Incidentally, I resent the fact that most America doesn't live in cities. Sergei Eisenstein was dead-on right when he said that American 'culture' is a mixture of big city finance and small town mentality. Naturally, having a strong dislike for the small town mentality I would like to see it divested from the culture entirely.
January 2, 2003 01:27 PM, Rick said:
>That movie was made, and it was called Life is Beautiful.
Ok, I haven't seen To Have or To Have Not so I can't comment on that, but Life Is Beautiful:
1.is not a romantic comedy (but that's sort of beside the point)
2.does not just happen to be set during the holocaust. The fact that it takes place in the holocaust is essential to the plot and message of the film. The movie set out to show that life was beautiful even in the face of atrocious things like the holocaust. It would not have been the same movie if it had taken place in modern day America. Gangs of New York could pretty much be transplanted into any setting (modern day business world, modern street gangs, waring tribes of indians, etc.) without drastically changing the plot or message of the movie (btw, i think the message of the movie was that glass eyes, weird pants and butcher knives are cool)
January 2, 2003 02:31 PM, ET said:
To say that there are Korean immigration issues in Texas because there's a Korean family on King of the Hill is ridiculous. That's like saying that everyone living near nuclear power plants have primary yellow skin and three fingers. On the other hand, saying (this is an example, and I'm pulling numbers out of my ass - so I am not interested in arguing about the accuracy of the stats) that the last Census indicated that one out of every 100 Texans is Korean and this is represented by the presence of Koreans on King of the Hill is perfectly acceptable. It is not a widely known fact that there is a significant Korean population in rural Texas and to back up such a claim by citing nothing but a cartoon does nothing to confirm the veracity of the statement for me.
January 2, 2003 02:57 PM, Erin said:
Okaaaaay let me cite N, who lived in Texas for a year or two, and claims that King of the Hill is VERY accurate in that all of the sudden suburban Texans seemed to have Korean neighbors at some point.
January 2, 2003 03:47 PM, ET said:
Now that's much more reasonable, although I do feel compelled to point out that Texas is pretty damned big.
February 22, 2003 08:44 AM, WINKLE PLOP said:
WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!!!!!
HOW FUCKING LONG MUST IT TAKE THE PEOPLE IN THIS PAGE TO TYPE THESE FUCKING GAY REVIEWS, WHO THE HELL IS LISTENING TO YOU SAD CUNTS, NOBODY!!!
WHO GIVE A FLYING FUCK WHAT YOU THOUGHT OF " GANG OF NEW YORK" NOBODY!!!!!!
HERES MY REVIEW:
FUCK OFF
December 29, 2003 11:18 AM, Erin said:
Holy crap! Winkle Pop is RIGHT!
January 6, 2004 11:39 PM, Halifax said:
Is it too late to point out that the family in King of the Hill is Laotian?
January 8, 2004 02:49 PM, Whir said:
Do you know how many internet ettiquette rules you're breaking by typing in all caps? Well... Just one. Don't type in all caps.
Strongbad 4ever!
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