This one made me smile.
Peter Berg, director of the “yes, the really made a Battleship movie” movie, was a little harsh to an Israeli reporter during a press junket. Actually, quite a bit more than a little harsh. He belittled the reporter for being insufficiently bellicose towards Iran and accused him of dodging his required military service. Many in Israel avoid conscription, but Berg was not amused. As the AV Club had it:
“What? Are you a draft dodger?” Berg asks, pressing the reporter on why he’d yet to answer the call of duty so ably fake-performed by heroes like Rihanna, which the reporter laughs off with, “We’re not having this conversation.” “You gotta join the army, motherfucker,” Berg concludes
Berg, of course, is a decorated veteran himself has made some war porn, so he knows all about sacrificing oneself for a noble military cause. Charming guy.
So you’ll for give me for being a little happy that Battleship has prompted Nikki Finke to declare “Bombs Away!” Finke notes that even now-notorious flop John Carter opened stronger at midnight showings. It’s small comfort; the film still did well overseas and Berg’s an established director. But in a world where shameless chickenhawks just keep on winning, I’ll take a little comfort where I can.
(“Holt doesn’t sound Jewish.” Jesus, what a jackass.)
Baud
I have to admit, this post went completely over my head. Has the Internet run out of cute pictures of cats and dogs?
Mark S.
That’s liberal Hollywood for you.
Freddie deBoer
@Baud: I think haranguing somebody for not joining the Army, when you have no idea about that person and what his deal is, is bad behavior. So it made me happy to see his film bomb domestically. That’s all.
Uncle Cosmo
Berg needs to be dropped abruptly into the middle of a firefight somewhere. It would be interesting to see whether he gets his fucking head blown off before he dies of massive intestinal rupture from not being able to shit himself fast enough.
Baud
@Freddie deBoer:
I’m ashamed to say, I only first heard about this film this morning and have no idea what it’s about. But if some guy associated with it is a dick, I’m happy to see it bomb.
Sly
I will agree with Peter Berg that a nuclear-armed Iran is a more pressing geopolitical issue than the movie Battleship, and applaud his humility in seeing that distinction.
Rhoda
wow. He was so hot on Chicago Hope, too.
Really, there is nothing worst than fuckable crazy. It’s what led to the 27%.
c u n d gulag
WTF!?!?!
This is like Cheney chastising Jewish citizens for not joining the military.
Or Colonel Sanders telling chicken’s to get in line.
Berg, dude, you directed a feckin’ War MOVIE – you ain’t exactly Caesar, Napoleon, Ike, Patton, or Ol’ Dougie M.
When the feck did you serve?
Who?
What?
Where?
Why?
How?
‘Til then, stfu and count your losses.
Sorry, but I ain’t paying to watch any film by you, so Feck You!
gogol's wife
@Rhoda:
And don’t forget “The Last Seduction.” Too bad.
aangus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aB8kSNlz2A&feature=fvsr
Egg Berry
Hey, from Wiki:
He’s done his time in the trenches. /snark
Spaghetti Lee
Ah, whatever.
Frankensteinbeck
Just a note, John Carter was quite good, even if it made no money.
S. cerevisiae
I’m sure the game made you think more than the movie will.
Egg Berry
I had to check to make sure this was really a movie based on “Battleship,” the board game. What’s next, a game based on “Chutes and Ladders”?
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
america finally got bored with mobster movies too, not wanting to go see war porn could be a very good sign.
Frankensteinbeck
@efgoldman:
I’ll give McCain that. As a warmonger, he at least knew what he was throwing soldiers into, first hand. It’s a little freakish when JOHN MCCAIN is a moral pillar compared to most of the GOP today.
Citizen_X
“You gotta join the army, motherfucker”? For realz? Boy, that guy’ s got some nerve. And what branch of the military did he serve in? The Hollywood movie-making branch? JUST LIKE JOHN WAYNE!
Oh, and Iran getting the bomb is the world’s number one question? Um, no, not that much more than Pakistan v. India. You may not have noticed this, being busy with movies where superior alien races get their asses kicked by Great-Grandpa’s cutting-edge technology, but most Americans have reacted to the OMG IRANIAN NOOKZ! stuff with a great big yawn.
Spaghetti Lee
@Egg Berry:
I think Clue and Monopoly are both, actually, on the horizon.
What I don’t get is why this even needs to happen. I mean, OK, Harry Potter, the Hunger Games, etc., popular stuff in other media that lots of people want to see on the big screen. That makes sense. But Battleship? I mean, hell, your movie is about humans and aliens blowing each other up. Why do you need a brand name for that, a brand name that has nothing to do with humans and aliens blowing each other up, no less? I mean, I know the story behind this is that Hasbro basically ordered it up on a silver platter, but that doesn’t make me less angry. There’s licensing that can be made into something more, like a good book or comic, and there’s this gratuitous licensing, licensing that doesn’t need to happen for any reason, and is only happening because some company’s got something to sell. It’s the spiritual successor to all those crappy 80’s cartoons made only to sell toys, just now they’ve got a $200 million dollar budget to play with.
I know complaining about Hollywood’s unoriginality/love of filthy lucre is old hat at this point, but gah, it didn’t used to be this bad, did it?
Egg Berry
@efgoldman:
This is true, but the ride had actual characters and some semblance of a plot.
Joey Maloney
@Egg Berry:
Nope. Candyland.
Egg Berry
@Spaghetti Lee:
IIRC, Clue was already made and starred Tim Curry.
Monopoly I could see, if it was kind of like a “Great Race” comedy. As things are, it would probably be directed by that guy who likes to blow stuff up.
jwb
@Cato: Aw, you sunk my battleship. VICTORY! WOLVERINES! Whatever… Seriously weak tea.
Origuy
@Egg Berry:
Here you go.
Funny or Die’s version. I think the other one’s better.
Spaghetti Lee
@Cato:
Mail? With the socialist Post Office? You RINO!
Cato
@Spaghetti Lee:
Mail service is one of the explicitly granted powers of the federal government in the Constitution.
Egg Berry
In a perfectly enjoyable discussion of stupid movies and asshole directors, let’s remember to not feed the troll.
Citizen_X
@Cato: Baptism record? Seriously?
(Note to others: it’s just various records–law clients, medical records, etc–that are routinely kept private as a matter of legal obligation, which have all been labeled “SEALED.” CONSPIRISEE!)
Yutsano
@Spaghetti Lee: wot I was gonna say. Plus nothing says attention getting like delivering junk mail. Butn you know, VICTORY!! And stuff.
jwb
@Cato: We could tell you, but then we’d have to kill you. WOLVERINES!
Corner Stone
@Spaghetti Lee: Clue was an amazingly good movie. Just a stellar cast and really sharp. Still one of my rainy day catch on TV favorites.
“it it the f it flam flames. Flames, on the side of my face, breathing breathl heaving breaths. Heaving breaths… Heathing…”
Egg Berry
I see I’m too late.
Baud
@Egg Berry: I applaud your effort.
piratedan
@Cato: ARE YOU SERIOUSLY IMPLYING THAT MICHELE OBAMA IS A JOB CREATOR?
AxelFoley
@Egg Berry:
Yeah, that threw me off when I first heard about this movie. “Battleship”? The game? Really?
Thing is, from what I remember, neither the board game version nor the electronic version had anything to do with an alien invasion.
AxelFoley
@Spaghetti Lee:
Shit, they already did Clue back in the 80s. Had Tim Curry in it.
AxelFoley
@Egg Berry:
And I see Egg Berry already beat me to it. Shoulda known someone else would. Ya’ll are a bunch of pop culture freaks like me. ;)
robertdsc-PowerBook
One less reason to see this shitfest of a movie.
Suffern ACE
@AxelFoley: I’ve only seen trailers for the movie. They were wretched and loud. If the movie has anything to do with the game, wouldn’t it need at least a scene where the actors say “Send the bomb into section G-16” and the aliens say “Missed. F-10”
Richard
I think we have to cut Berg some slack. You see, he suffers from post traumatic stress disorder, which he suffers from as a result of playing too many shoot-em-up video games.
Omnes Omnibus
@Citizen_X: And Michelle Obama is registered inactive as an attorney in IL. WHY?
Pathetic, actually.
ReflectedSky
@Egg Berry: Also, too, they took some care and effort in developing it.
That usually makes studio movies worse, but it doesn’t have to. And Disney did recognize that Pirates was a beloved park icon, and meaningful enough in the history of the brand that they couldn’t crap on it. They can’t tell stories, nor do they care about them. But they do understand and care about brand management, at least in theory.
eemom
@Egg Berry:
Why should that surprise you? We have an Etch-A-Sketch running for president.
gene108
The reason Battleship is sinking is everyone’s going to stay home tonight to watch the Sci-Fi original movie American Warships!
gocart mozart
@efgoldman: It was a popular game from the 60’s man. By Milton Bradley not Hasbro?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrHs8CWDzmc
Redshift
@Egg Berry: Would you believe Hungry Hungry Hippos?
(No, I wouldn’t either, but it’s a great graphic.)
Mark S.
@Redshift:
Shit, if the hippos are that big, that might not be a bad movie.
malraux
@Egg Berry: Last I looked, Ridley Scott was the director of the Monopoly movie. In theory, it could be good, though I know it won’t be.
gocart mozart
Apropo of something . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=gzX9iRKrVvU&NR=1
and,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=4xRv9ZQOCPo&feature=endscreen
And yes I had a bigweel and a battleship game as a kid. Come to think of it, there have been no good movies made about cheese. I think that should be Berg’s next big opus. He seems like just the man for the job.
Arm The Homeless
@Mark S.: I can only assume the protagonists fight them while ensconced within giant opaque spheres.
The hippos always seemed so happy, and care free. I blame the gay agenda for hiding this from us.
EDIT: Upon further consideration, this movie would only last about 45-seconds until someone slammed a little too hard and all the marbles went flying off the game.
gocart mozart
@Omnes Omnibus:
Um, because you have to pay a yearly fee to keep your liscense active. Why pay if you are not gonna use it. Or maybe it’s because she only REALLY passed the Kenyan bar!
Keith
Battleship will be long forgotten in only a couple of weeks. Whatever money it makes now is going to be it.
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
Meh, Berg’s on drugs or just jet-lagged or something.
Villago Delenda Est
Next up on the big screen: Trivial Pursuit: the Movie
OK, now I leave it open to the juicitariat to give us the plot.
gene108
Snakes and Ladders the original:
Might work as a movie.
The snakes are demons/sins, so you have some built in characters.
Threadkiller
Just for that, I’m gonna watch The Last Seduction tonight and cheer at the end.
Villago Delenda Est
@gocart mozart:
That’s as good a theory as any, and since it’s on the tubes now, I expect Fucker Fuckerson to latch onto it within the next 30 minutes.
Mark S.
@Keith:
It will be forgotten next week when Men in Black 3 comes out.
BTW, what the fuck is this: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter?
Suffern ACE
@Villago Delenda Est: Wasn’t that the Big Chill?
Amir Khalid
@Mark S.:
It’s based on the book, which according to asiangrrlmn is historically accurate. (Well, that’s what she told me that time, and I believe her.)
Omnes Omnibus
@gocart mozart: I know that. My license is inactive in Ohio for that reason.
Corner Stone
@gocart mozart:
I’d bit torrent it.
Suffern ACE
@Mark S.: That is the culmination of the online creative forces made manifest for mainstream audiences. First they came for Austen, and made her zombie fighting subtexts manifest and a new york times best seller. In ten years, when they finally make the first “Spock and Kirk in love” feature, the victory of the fans over culture will be total.
The prophet Nostradumbass
The best version of Battleship was in Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey’s parody of the Death playing chess bit from The Seventh Seal.
eemom
@Threadkiller:
I did not realize until this thread that this guy Berg played Linda Fiorentino’s patsy in The Last Seduction.
Yep, you sure could get your schadenfreude on there. Probly before lil Freddie’s time though.
And that movie itself was just a cheap knockoff of Body Heat.
gbear
@gocart mozart:
Mousetrap: The Movie!
Spaghetti Lee
@Cato:
Point well taken! Someone should remind Paul Ryan and the like.
Mike in NC
@gene108:
That’s going to be awesome! A grade of 2.6 at IMDB has got to be a new low.
piratedan
@Mark S.: the latest thang… hipster cinema :-)
gbear
@gbear: FYWP, Edit not working.
The link in my comment is to a review of the game, not an actual movie. Berg needs to get on it.
r€nato
I saw what I thought was a trailer for an upcoming film based on the board game Monopoly, but it turned out to be just a Romney campaign ad.
Citizen_X
Why this shit, anyway, if they’re gonna make stupid scifi movies about battleships. Why not a live-action movie of Space Battleship Yamato?
gocart mozart
@Mark S.:
That is the greatest thing since black metrosexual Lincoln
http://www.bing.com/movies/search/trailers?q=Abraham+Lincoln%3a+Vampire+Hunter&id=1ff62d21-0f44-45aa-9556-30b6b103e6ff&v=ab7a826b-a85d-467a-bb1e-11e647f9896a&FORM=DTPMVO
John S.
Peter Berg also directed that piece of shit Hancock.
Redleg
What a simplistic son-of-a-bitch. Either fight Iran now or deal with a nuclear-armed Iran in the future? This dumb bastard doesn’t understand that there are many options in between. Duh.
gene108
@Mike in NC:
Few people have the sophistication to truly appreciate Sci-Fi channel original movies, sort of like Van Gogh’s popularity in his lifetime.
Trust me, in 100 years historians will look back at such classics as Megashark versus Giant Octopus, Thor: Hammer of the Gods, Ice Spiders and many others and marvel at how they never won an Academy Award for Best Picture.
EDIT: 2.6 isn’t that bad on a relative A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell scale.
sagesource
@Richard: He plays the wrong video games then. There’s been a very strong pushback against the glory of war in a lot of games recently. He should have a chat with the PTSD vet living in the Riften sewers in Skyrim: “They gave me a medal. It had someone’s face on it. I threw it away. It didn’t help,” or the pacifist battlemage in Dawnstar, so haunted by the horrors of her service that she refuses ever to fight again.
Steeplejack
@Mark S.:
Trailer here.
lamh35
@Mark S.: I think you are right about Men In Black.
I’ll admit, I do want to see it. Will Smith seems like a good guy and from the trailer, Josh Brolin’s young Agent K aka Tommy Lee Jones seems spot on.
Who knew the younger Brolin would be such a good “protrayer” (sp?)
Oh and speaking of action movies, I’m watching X-Men and X2 and I just can’t look at Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan (Professor X and Magneto) and not see their younger and HOT couterparts James McElvoy and Michael Fassbender.
Mr Stagger Lee
@gocart mozart: So they are going to fight the Comet Empire?
Splitting Image
@Villago Delenda Est:
It’ll be a documentary of Mitt Romney’s quest for the Presidency.
Egg Berry
I hope every one of these people who have “Zombiefied” our culture is writing a big fat royalty check to George Romero.
burnspbesq
I’ll hold my laughter until Monday. I want to see if “Battleship” gets outdone at the box office by “Crooked Arrows,” aka The Native American Mighty Bad News Hoosiers.
Comrade Mary
Entering the thread late after one or more Cato comments were atomized — WTF is the deal with baptism certificates? (Or certificates of baptism. Whatever.)
Chris
@Mark S.:
As someone else here pointed out recently… this is the same “liberal Hollywood” that gave us John Wayne, Ronald Reagan, Charlton Heston, Clint Eastwood, Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, Chuck Norris, Mel Gibson, Ben Stein, Jon Voight, Fred Thompson, and Ahnuld the Governator. The same “liberal Hollywood” that banned a non-trivial number of actors back in the fifties for being suspected communists (when, one wonders, has a conservative or even a fascist been barred on account of politics? That’s what I thought).
@Baud:
Nothing to be ashamed of. I’ve seen the trailers. Looks to be more Science-Fiction-War-Porn-As-Military-Recruitment-Commercial, basically a poor man’s Transformers. (They can’t very well make recruitment movies about the wars we’re actually fighting, so instead, they’ve taken to milking the “Independence Day” concept for everything it’s worth).
Pity about Rihanna, I like her music just fine.
lamh35
@burnspbesq: I saw that preview for that. Is Brandon Routh Native American? Also maybe I’m paranoid, but did they give him tanner skin as well?
Front page rivalries
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity:
Don’t fret DougJ, get back to bringing the meat and Freddie’s posts And popularity won’t be kicking your ass.
Arundel
Not to be too much That Dirty Hippie, but in light of “The Avengers” becoming Disney’s biggest hit and grossing a billion worldwide, there’s an ongoing question of why New Mexico gave the production $22 million in tax credits to film there. Couldn’t NM have found better uses for $22 million? How many real jobs there could have been created or sustained by that “mere” tax credit that the state gave to this Hollywood money-monster?
Over thirty states give tax credits for film and TV production, the idea being that it helps the local economies. But it’s a brief bump locally, the money goes more to the out of state production and technicians than it does local economies. Most films aren’t great hits like the Avengers, most films bomb. But the tax credits used to “lure” film production to local economies and states doesn’t end up benefitting those places much at all. Most often it’s a loss. And a folly.
Freddie, always do appreciate your posts.
henqiguai
@Citizen_X (#78):
Um, because it could never hold a candle to the animated series that played on the television box?
catclub
@Egg Berry: They made that.
Trading Places.
catclub
@Egg Berry: The film inside of Super8, which the kids are making, had Romero Chemical where the zombies appear. I got that joke.
Good Movie.
catclub
@Splitting Image: “Trivial Pursuit: the Movie”
How about National Treasure?
What do I win?
Another Halocene Human
Motherfucker.
Uncle Cosmo
@gbear: No good movies about cheese? Aw c’mon now–what about Going My Whey, Cheddar Cheddar Bang Bang, East of Edam, A Brie Vacation, The Roquefort Files, Gorgonzona vs. King Kong,….?
S. cerevisiae
@gene108: Ah yes, Sci-Fi originals. While not all can reach the level of Mansquito, One you mentioned has this awesome scene.
Another Halocene Human
@Suffern ACE:
You soooo missed the boat on that one. Fans and fandom are the reason that the horrid Star Trek: The Motion Picture and the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation got made, and why they sucked so hard.
(They made back their money, though, so in both cases the network executives pushed Roddenberry out and put a professional in control, resulting in an improved product. Although rewatching TNG now is … weird. Hard to believe it was the #1 syndicated show of all time. It’s kind of dull. And annoying.)
PS: you can also, quite plainly, blame fandom for the most awful scene in any Star Trek movie, the Troi-mind-rape-scene in Star Trek Ten, which was written by the kind of fans who used to stay up late under the covers reading IMZADI and surreptitiously masturbating.
Another Halocene Human
Come to think of it, Suffern, Star Trek: The Motion Picture was the “Kirk and Spock in Love” movie.
http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/this-simple-feeling
Probably everyone didn’t notice because they had fallen asleep by this point in the film.
I did manage to make it all the way once awake and I was a little surprised when they didn’t kiss at the end. You know, they pan away from the symbolic union of the lovers Decker and Ilia, human and alien, machine and flesh…
Well, whatever. Also, the costumes suck also.
Gustopher
@Frankensteinbeck: John Carter really was a lot of fun. Pity it flopped, and we won’t get more.
Another Halocene Human
@Uncle Cosmo: Your talent is clearly wheysted here.
Corner Stone
@Another Halocene Human:
You. Me. Fields of honor at dawn.
Another Halocene Human
Speaking of Ed Wood, did I miss something or were Big Fish and Ed Wood Tim Burton’s only actually good movies? Edward Scissorhands was charming but forgettable and I don’t “get” Beetlejuice. Everything else he’s done has come off like recycled, lazy crap. Am I very much wrong?
Note: I hated corpse bride more than the Wonka movie. I can’t say I hated the wonka movie, actually, but I probably wouldn’t rewatch because it was a bunch of visual gimmicks that probably wouldn’t pop so much the second time.
gnomedad
“It’s the most serious issue facing the planet today — more so than the movie Battleship.” Did that actually come out of his mouth?
Hob
That movie sure does look stupid, and Berg may be a world-class asshole, but I have to give him props for Friday Night Lights.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Uncle Cosmo:
I thought the final battle was a bit cheesy.
burnspbesq
@lamh35:
Routh is part Kickapoo. Chelsea Ricketts, who plays his sister, has no NA ancestry that anyone knows about, but she is decidedly easy on the eyes.
Mike G
@efgoldman:
Berg needs to be dropped abruptly into the middle of a river somewhere.
Berg’s total years of military service, in the US or Israel: zero. So he needs to STFU with chiding others for their lack of military service.
I’m sure the IDF would take him on in some capacity if he really wanted to put his money where his motormouth is.
Bill Murray
@gene108: Trust me, in 100 years historians will look back at such classics as Megashark versus Giant Octopus, Thor: Hammer of the Gods, Ice Spiders and many others and marvel at how they never won an Academy Award for Best Picture.
While they might be deserving, being shown on TV first makes them ineligible for an Academy Award. And if Mansquito didn’t make the Academy change the rules, there is no way Ice Spiders would
Karl The Crap Blog Detective
Btw, have you people seen the ads for new Call of Duty game. You know, the ones with Ollie North in them?
Patricia Kayden
I loved the Israeli Journalist’s reaction to Berg. Very cool. Must have taken alot not to go off.