Now that I have established, per se, that I am my usual light-hearted self, I must rant a bit over my incredulity at stupid things people write in forums online that otherwise belie the intelligence I always took them for having.
At FilmScoreMonthly Messageboard, someone has started a thread entitled, "Has any movie ever offended you?"
I was somewhat intrigued. Has a movie ever offended me? No, actually. I've found "parts" of a movie offensive...a miscast actor, an obtrusive, jarring music score, an inane script or lackluster/lousy/lethargic directing. But no movie, as a whole, has ever offended me.
And then I read replies.
O! My Dear G!
One poster said that "Cocoon" was a highly offensive film. Why? Because he had taken his mother to see it at a time when his grandmother -- who was in her 80s and not expected to live much longer -- was very much on the minds of her family. Yet, here is this film about seniors whose children were (gasp! How unbelievable!) "ignoring" their parents...so the parents hook up with aliens and blast off to another planet where they can live longer lives in good health with agile bodies and minds. That, in essence, was VERY disturbing to mother and son and the movie just SUCKED because of it.
Another poster hates, Hates, HATES "Sleepless in Seattle" because it simplisitcally and unrealistically (gosh! Imagine that of a movie!) reduced a man's personal, tragic loss of his wife into a tale in which everyone is forced to believe that he can find TRUE LOVE with another woman, no matter how deep his grief is.
I swear! People take personal baggage into a movie theater hoping the movie will be escapist fare...and then find themselves wrestling with their personal demons and taking, personally, the movie's premise as though it were a personal affront to them.
Add to that another poster who is always negative, Negative, NEGATIVE about any and everything out there that supports and issues things he dearly loves -- classic films on DVD or Blu-ray and classic film scores on CD. Here is a guy who professes to love movies and and movie music and then goes out of his way to nitpick and/or revile the efforts of those who, by going out on a financial limb because they, too, love these things, make the products possible.
NOTHING is ever good enough. The man is highly irritating, and he's been like this for years. No, he's not that Steven person who blackens the day of every theater lover. No, this one is named Joe, and he suffered some brain damage in 2001 when he was struck by a car while he was out walking in L.A. That's awful, of course. But his life is now posting to the internet. He has long ago forgotten the difference between reality and fantasy and spins some ridiculous lies based on other folks' personal experiences or his own imaginings. He spews these fantasies out in various forums and draws quite an audience of folks who "think" he knows what he's talking about. He's a smart guy, and he does know a lot about films, film making and film scoring. BUT, he inserts himself into some of the stories he tells about other people's experiences, thereby passing them off as first-hand personal accounts. He's also a very bitter man because he's persona non grata at most Hollywood studios where, in the 1980s, he worked producting laserdiscs of films such as "1776", "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes", "Oliver", "Counterfeit Traitor", etc. He also walked out with DAT tapes of film music which "mysteriously" ended up being bootlegged by European CD labels.
At any rate, this Joe person posted a nasty little item on a thread about the UK Blu-ray of "Cleopatra" saying he sure hopes the label Twilight Time doesn't have anything to do with the film's U.S. release "because" they don't have good artwork on their DVDs and they offer no extras or booklets.
Joe completely ignores the fact that, without Twilight Time, none of the titles he has bought would have been available on any other label. No, truth is completely inconvenient for him.
Rant over.
