Megalopolis

[Secular Sanity]

Francis Ford Coppola’s winery is not too far from my house. I’ve taken several out of town guest there because it’s beautiful. It’s expensive but the grounds are gorgeous. He has all his movie memorabilia and one of the tucker cars on display.

It’s a hoity-toity place, for sure. Last time I went, I noticed that the servers weren’t doing their usual, “Francis said this, or Francis does this or that” spiel. I found out that he had sold it to Delicato Family Wines. They bought his winery, wine and brand, so everything still had his name on it.

Hollywood wouldn’t invest in the movie he wanted to make, so he spent $120 million of his own money to make this film.

He said that America is the New Rome, that made a lot of money because it was conquering half the world, but it didn’t really go to the people, it went to the people that were running Rome, and the same exact thing is happening in America. Our Senators are all manipulating their power, which ultimately leads Rome to dictatorship. He said that he didn’t want it to be seen as a "woke" Hollywood film, but I watched until the end and never quite understood what he was aiming for, if not that.

He believes human beings are geniuses and that we can solve world problems. A big utopia film, I suppose. He said that advertisements are there to sell happiness and they say over and over that we’re miserable unless we have a Mercedes. Our commercials contain ingredients for mental disease, but I think he has quite a car collection himself, he also owns two Tucker 48’s, valued between 1.5-2 million.  His net worth is around 400 million.

What is it with out of touch rich people and utopian ideas? I guess when you have all the money in the world, you may start to believe that anything is possible, including creating a perfect society.

Most are calling it a box-office Mega Flop(olis). It was like having someone telling you about their dream for 2 hours. There's some talk about him smoking a lot of MJ in his trailer and then coming out and changing things. He denied it but at least that would make more sense.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/pq6mvHZU0fc

[Syne]

It was like having someone telling you about their dream for 2 hours.

My god, that sounds awful.

[Secular Sanity]

It was like having someone telling you about their dream for 2 hours.

My god, that sounds awful.

Yep, 120 million dollars’ worth of awful and he only made $7,629,085 at the box office.

[C C]

With both feet edging closer to the grave (at 85), maybe FFC is nostalgically looping back to his Roger Corman beginnings ("Dementia 13").

Nothing like presenting something conceived in the 1980s to an anachronistic audience of 4 decades later. Especially when there's an animated sitcom called Krapopolis for the viewers to mentally correlate to. I did hear rumblings (months ago?) that it was a major snoozer that he was cranking out.

"Metropolis" worked because it was the silent era and German expressionism in cinema was somewhat new.

But who knows... Films like Scott's "Blade Runner" originally received mixed reviews and underperformed at the box office in North America. And in a Rome or "para-Rome" context... If today's world can retrospectively laud Caligula[1] as a cult classic, then maybe the future will re-interpret this wreckage in a different light someday.

"One filmmaker has always been ahead of his time..." Nah, the trailer just vaguely reminds me of the last(?) misguided attempts to put Ayn Rand's John Galt on the screen. I've never seen those either, but I gather they were rather clumsy and disastrous.

- - - footnote - - -

[1] Incidentally, I consider the 2010 Pay-TV series Spartacus to be ten times more decadent and gorily graphic than "Caligula", and nobody seemed to blink an eyelash about it. Compared to the uproar over the other in '79 or '80.

Roger Ebert gave it zero stars, calling it "sickening, utterly worthless, shameful trash". [...] It was one of the few films Ebert ever walked out of—he walked out 2 hours into its 170-minute length after feeling "disgusted and unspeakably depressed".

[Secular Sanity]

After watching him on The View, and listening to his speeches, I’d say the best way to sum it up is "The emperor has no clothes," and don't waste your money or time. LAME!

He dusted off his old ideas and tried to Trump them up to fit modern times. He read "Twelve Against the Gods" by William Bolitho.

He said, "this book is about twelve individuals who defied the facts of their times—people like Isadora Duncan, Cagliostro, the Prophet Muhammad. One of them is Lucius Sergius Catilina.

The historian Sallust wrote a record of the Catilinarian conspiracy some decades after it took place. As you know, people who are in a conflict and who win—history is written by those people. Cleopatra and Mark Antony, for instance, because they lost their conflict with Caesar Augustus, what we hear about Cleopatra is that she was sort of a temptress. But she was a remarkable, brilliant person. She wasn’t even pretty, but she could be funny in many languages. Yes, she was a seductress, but not because of her beauty.

Anyway, since Catiline lost the conflict, he’s portrayed as a bad guy. But reading this book, I began to think, well, Catiline didn’t write the history. What if he were someone who would have brought something wonderful, but what usually happens happened—the traditional forces subdued the new idea? I started to develop that, and then I thought about having a mayor Koch or mayor Dinkins character. With Cesar Catilina, I basically combined Robert Moses with Walter Gropius. Then I began to shape up that there was going to be this Cicero character, a conservative and a classicist, against this enlightened artist’s opponent, and that would be like a Roman story set in modern New York. And a lot of it came from this book."

Side note: Clemency was often reserved for those whose crimes were seen as less threatening to the Roman state, family members, or whose families had political influence. Political rivals were less likely to receive mercy.

Trump wrote, "Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?"

I'd say no since they're still rounding them up.

[Syne]

Trump wrote, "Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?"

I'd say no since they're still rounding them up.

I can't decide if Biden is a huge liar or honestly doesn't remember the many times he said he wouldn't pardon Hunter.
He not only pardoned Hunter for the charges against him, he pardoned him for anything over the last 10 years... including influence peddling for "the big guy."
So you have to wonder if the pardon is more self-serving than for his son. Is he essentially trying to pardon himself?

[Secular Sanity]

Trump wrote, "Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?"

I'd say no since they're still rounding them up.

I can't decide if Biden is a huge liar or honestly doesn't remember the many times he said he wouldn't pardon Hunter.
He not only pardoned Hunter for the charges against him, he pardoned him for anything over the last 10 years... including influence peddling for "the big guy."
So you have to wonder if the pardon is more self-serving than for his son. Is he essentially trying to pardon himself?

But that was in June when he thought he was still up for reelection, wasn’t it? If so, not pardoning him would have been more self-serving.

I think that after Kamala was nominated, everyone kind of assumed that he would end up doing it.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room...-biden-11/

[confused2]

Biden pardons his son for [not actually said] being an idiot.
Trump pardons the 'J-6 Hostages' [insurrection] because they are heroes.

[Syne]

I can't decide if Biden is a huge liar or honestly doesn't remember the many times he said he wouldn't pardon Hunter.
He not only pardoned Hunter for the charges against him, he pardoned him for anything over the last 10 years... including influence peddling for "the big guy."
So you have to wonder if the pardon is more self-serving than for his son. Is he essentially trying to pardon himself?

But that was in June when he thought he was still up for reelection, wasn’t it? If so, not pardoning him would have been more self-serving.

I think that after Kamala was nominated, everyone kind of assumed that he would end up doing it.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room...-biden-11/

Yeah, everyone knew it was lie. Just like the lie that the DOJ persecutions of Trump were fair because they were also going after Hunter (with a sweetheart plea deal thwarted by a judge, ultimately followed by a pardon).

But yeah, Biden's just a huge liar. As his own statement says, "From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted." So he's aware of his promise, evidenced by him trying to lawyer his way out of it here.