Controversial Opinions (For Everything Other Than DC Comics)

[GOLGO 13]

There are four and only four Christmas movies I watch and NEVER before December, they are:

12/21: A Christmas Carol (1951)
12/22: A Christmas Carol (1984)
12/23: A Christmas Carol (1999)
12/24: It's A Wonderful Life

Good Sir, I counter you with:

BAD SANTA (2003)
Synopsis: A highly erratic, raging alcoholic & his criminally motivated midget partner annually heist mall outlets (as a drunken Santa & his malevolent elf) as their Christmas tradition. The holiday inspired scene with both Billy Bob & Lauren Graham in a hot-tub is forever burned in my eternal memory banks.

BAD SANTA 2 (2016)
Yes, an admittedly slightly inferior film compared to the ingenious original, but it's filling & still tastes great. It will cleanse the palate after an afternoon of The Hallmark Channel Satanic Christmas Movies, Bataan death march like endurance test.

ELF (2003)
Step 1. Put Will Ferrell in a elf costume
Step 2. Consider the general idea of a hyper-active man child working his way through typical cynical New York City during Christmas time, posing as an actual 6ft+ elf from the North Pole.

ELF should be considered a must-see Christmas movie forever more.

[Jack Dracula]

I plan to watch Kung Fu Hustle because it's my favorite movie and like me, has nothing to do with Christmas.

[Starter Set]

I plan to watch Kung Fu Hustle because it's my favorite movie and like me, has nothing to do with Christmas.

I love that movie.

[mathew101281]

People who talk about tech tend to fall into two catalogues. Idealist who are trying to sell the technology. And pessimists who don’t seem to trust society with anything advanced. The down side of the pessimist is obvious, life saving advancements would have never come to be if they had had their way. But their is also serious perils in the other way of thinking to. The current internet, and the unmanaged and chaotic social and political landscape it has spread was created by a bunch of Silicon Valley idealists. Most of them seemed incapable of fathoming how their creations could be used to tear us a part rather then bring us together.

[aja_christopher]

Hate to even give this pretentious nonsense press but ignorance like this is all too common and deserves to be exposed for what it is.

Apparently, he never reads comics but he knows that they can't be "profound" because they include pictures.

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"Bill Maher doubles down on Stan Lee comments: Reaction 'proves my point'"

"Bill Maher clarified — yet also doubled down — on his controversial comments about the late Marvel legend Stan Lee.

The HBO Real Time host told Larry King in an interview posted Wednesday that he didn’t intend any offense to Lee’s memory, but that comic book fandom culture’s explosive reaction to his diss “proves my point.”

“Talk about making my point for me,” Maher said. “Yeah, I don’t know very much about Stan Lee and it certainly wasn’t a swipe at Stan Lee…I am agnostic on Stan Lee. I don’t read comic books. I didn’t even read them when I was a child. What I was saying is: A culture that thinks that comic books and comic book movies are profound meditations on the human condition is a dumb f—ing culture.

And for people to, like, get mad at that just proves my point.”

The talk show host claimed he didn’t even realize people were mad because he doesn’t “follow social media like that, every stupid thing people lose their s— about."

Originally, Maher wrote on his Real Time blog, “The guy who created Spider-Man and the Hulk has died, and America is in mourning. Deep, deep mourning for a man who inspired millions to, I don’t know, watch a movie, I guess,” he wrote in the post, which he titled “Adulting. “Someone on Reddit posted, ‘I’m so incredibly grateful I lived in a world that included Stan Lee.’ Personally, I’m grateful I lived in a world that included oxygen and trees, but to each his own.

“Now, I have nothing against comic books — I read them now and then when I was a kid and I was all out of Hardy Boys,” he explained. “But the assumption everyone had back then, both the adults and the kids, was that comics were for kids, and when you grew up you moved on to big-boy books without the pictures.”

Maher went on to write how, in the past 20 years, “adults decided they didn’t have to give up kid stuff” and “pretended comic books were actually sophisticated literature,” while “some dumb people got to be professors by writing theses with titles like Otherness and Heterodoxy in the Silver Surfer.

Maher concluded his blog post by claiming our culture hasn’t “necessarily gotten stupider,” we’re just “using our smarts on stupid stuff.” He added, “I don’t think it’s a huge stretch to suggest that Donald Trump could only get elected in a country that thinks comic books are important.”

https://ew.com/movies/2018/11/21/bil...ents-reaction/

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[dancj]

Not "sort of", Die Hard IS a Christmas movie, and one of the best!

Well it's set at Christmas, but that's about it.

So is Trading Places - and I wouldn't consider that a Christmas film either.

Anyway, as this is the "Controvorsial Opinions" thread...

Die Hard is a boring film.

[numberthirty]

Hate to even give this pretentious nonsense press but ignorance like this is all too common and deserves to be exposed for what it is.

Apparently, he never reads comics but he knows that they can't be "profound" because they include pictures.

----
"Bill Maher doubles down on Stan Lee comments: Reaction 'proves my point'"

"Bill Maher clarified — yet also doubled down — on his controversial comments about the late Marvel legend Stan Lee.

....

Maher concluded his blog post by claiming our culture hasn’t “necessarily gotten stupider,” we’re just “using our smarts on stupid stuff.” He added, “I don’t think it’s a huge stretch to suggest that Donald Trump could only get elected in a country that thinks comic books are important.”

https://ew.com/movies/2018/11/21/bil...ents-reaction/

-----

While I guess I can understand the inclination to try to call this for what it is, the only reasonable reaction is one I saw over in the "Marvel" sub-forum.

Should be ignored.

Bill Maher is a man who is fully in love with himself, who believes his opinion is the end all. Even bothering to acknowledge him is to give him what he wants.

Anything except for doing that is just playing the guy's game, and he is the only one who will win when you do.

[The Darknight Detective]

Well it's set at Christmas, but that's about it.

So is Trading Places - and I wouldn't consider that a Christmas film either.

Anyway, as this is the "Controvorsial Opinions" thread...

Die Hard is a boring film.

IMO, it's a great action film, but a Christmas movie? For me, a Christmas movie has to have the holiday at the forefront, which Die Hard clearly doesn't.

[aja_christopher]

I disagree -- at a certain point you can't just let people get away with that kind of stupidity without consequence: some people just need to be put in check.



With that in mind -- you choose your battles and I'll choose mine: there's absolutely nothing wrong with providing a counterpoint to ignorance.

[Tuck]

Maher's got some hang-ups about geek culture in general, which does come off strange for a guy who talks about how much he likes smoking pot . . . but why is even the discussion of the ubiquity of feature-length corporate toy commercials potentially being less then great for society off the table?

(Bracketing out the hateful commenters) when people complain about Anita Sarkeesian criticizing the thing they love, they are rightfully called out for both insisting games shouldn't be held up to scrutiny as such and for taking it too personally, as if criticism of the thing they love is criticism of them.

[aja_christopher]

It's obvious that the guy is coming from a place of ignorance with his comments -- he admits as much when he says that he doesn't read comics.

Ultimately, he seems reasonable enough to (possibly) change his opinion after reading a graphic novel like Maus, V for Vendetta, Persepolis, Blue is the Warmest Color, Season of Mists, The Death of Speedy Ortiz (etc) but conversely too arrogantly dismissive to even acknowledge that such works not only exist but are highly relevant to the medium as a whole.

If the criticism is solely against "pop" entertainment then it's a fair one but in calling out "comic books" in general without acknowledging that said medium is as diverse as any other -- if not more so due to the ease of creation of "indie" projects -- he just comes off as another close-minded fool who needs to keep his mouth shut when discussing things he doesn't understand at all.

Just as with books, films and music, some comics are meant to entertain while others are meant to make you think, and the best can do both.

[Tuck]

If the criticism is solely against "pop" entertainment then it's a fair one but in calling out "comic books" in general without acknowledging that said medium is as diverse as any other -- if not more so due to the ease of creation of "indie" projects -- he just comes off as another close-minded fool who needs to keep his mouth shut when discussing things he doesn't understand at all.

Just as with books, films and music, some comics are meant to entertain while others are meant to make you think, and the best can do both.

Sure.

But Marvel has significantly more impact on the culture than Oni Press. Mainstream is generally where one looks for impact on the world. Indie stuff usually impacts either indirectly by influencing the mainstream (the whole almost no one listened to Velvet Underground, but everyone who did started a band thing), or by becoming mainstream.

I mean, Maher just has a mad-on for geek culture. It's a bit irrational. But the internet response is coming off (to me at least) very similarly to any other closing-of-ranks taking-it-too-personally defense of "our thing".

[aja_christopher]

Sure.

But Marvel has significantly more impact on the culture than Oni Press. Mainstream is generally where one looks for impact on the world. Indie stuff usually impacts either indirectly by influencing the mainstream (the whole almost no one listened to Velvet Underground, but everyone who did started a band thing), or by becoming mainstream.

I think the same could be said for publishing houses -- there are plenty of equally popular low-brow action adventure and trashy romance novels out there (many of which are made into blockbuster films ironically enough) but he's not holding said medium to the same standard as he's holding comics. It's not like the average person sits around reading Shakespeare or Nabakov -- you're much more likely to see "50 Shades of Grey" making money both in book format and at the box office than the something like Donna Tartt's "The Secret History" unless some big star or director takes an interest in developing or promoting said piece of literature.

Conversely, films like Ghost World, Constantine, V for Vendetta, Blue is the Warmest Color, Persepolis (etc) get made but it's Avenger's Infinity War that gets people in the seats -- doesn't make sense to point the finger at companies like Marvel for trying to have the best of both worlds, both story and profit wise.

I don't really have anything to say about the "internet reaction" to his comments: everyone is going to see this differently and some (like Moore) might even agree with it to a certain extent -- I just dislike when people pass judgment when they obviously have no idea what they are talking about and that's exactly what Maher has done.

That said -- he's welcome to his opinion, as uninformed as it might be.

[Tuck]

I just dislike when people pass judgment when they obviously have no idea what they are talking about and that's exactly what Maher has done.

Fair enough.

(The internet isn't exactly conducive to identifying the nuanced individual inside the noise machine.)

[JCAll]

There are four and only four Christmas movies I watch and NEVER before December, they are:

12/21: A Christmas Carol (1951)
12/22: A Christmas Carol (1984)
12/23: A Christmas Carol (1999)
12/24: It's A Wonderful Life

Controversial Opinion: The Muppet Christmas Carol is the best Christmas Carol.