W. the Movie: 'Bout As Good As His Presidency. Oh, Also, Religulous.

Oliver Stone - you fucking asshole. Fuck you. You decided to make this W. movie in January, okay, shot it in like, May or some shit, and fucking rushed it to theaters October 17th. And, it was a movie, that not only served zero purpose, no. It was also a movie that feasted endlessly on my balls. I cannot believe you didn't show Bush blowing coke once. Not Once!!! I'm sorry, but why would you be in such a rush to release a piece of shit movie before elections only to not show our dumb ass president blowing coke. Why?!

Okay. So you decided not to show W. (Josh Brolin) sending line after line of cocaine up his nose in a movie about his mishap of a life in which he blew lots of cocaine. No, I'm behind you, Oliver! Why waste time depicting all of the truth when you're on a tight schedule for no goddamn reason whatsoever!? On that line of reasoning, why waste your time working closely with an extremely talented cast of actors who all turned in sub-par to shitty performances? I mean, why would you wanna do a thing like that anyway, when you're making a movie, you jerk?!


I have one last idea as to why Oliver Stone first made this movie, and then rushed it into theatres. He saw potential interest in the public, because the country generally hates the shit outta this guy. Also, there was no way in hell such a bad idea and paltry product could make money any way else. Well guess what - you made a sucker outta me, Oliver. I plopped my $10 down and saw your pile of shit movie. Happy? I fucking hope so. You just committed career suicide in my book, brother. You think I'll pay for anything else you release here on out? I might watch it pirated. That is, if you ever have another pea-brained idea that raises any interest in me whatsoever. You fucking made Platoon, you fuck, and Natural Born Killers and Born on the 4th of July...some of my favorite movies! How in the hell coul...

*Deep breath*

Anyway, we meet our W. in...no. We never meet our W. We meet Stone's W. on a baseball field filled with cheers, roars, and completely empty seats. This imagery recurs. Fly ball, W. goes to catch it, but there's no ball to be caught. How symbolic! Then we see him in the White House, where he says stupid shit, and in a frat, where he says stupid shit and drinks a lot, and in the 70s where he says stupid shit and drinks a lot, and goading a fist fight with his father while drunk and saying stupid shit after drunkenly driving his car onto Poppy's front lawn (that's H.W., played yawningly by James Cromwell, or as Manohla Dargis of NYTimes put it, "Mr. Cromwell does a nice job imitating a block of wood...") - a decidedly stupid thing to do.

But let's go back to the White House. There they were - everyone I'd been dying to see play their respective crony: Richard Dreyfuss as Cheney; a delightfully comical physicality of Karl Rove from Toby Jones; Jeffrey Wright as a ho-hum Colin Powell; uhmm...some disappointing dudes as Rummsfeld and Ari Fleischer (Ari was actually Rob Corddry, the Daily Show correspondent guy, who I never before found boring); and uhh...oh dear god, the worst - Thandie Newton as a high-pitched Bobblehead Condoleeza Rice. Condy's not high-pitched, nor a bobblehead doll - make note, Mr. Stone: not a bobblehead doll.

So say what you will about the Bush administration, but it's just fulla interesting characters. How they could be reduced to caricatures by actors I'm consistently delighted to see on screen is just...insulting. Brolin and Dreyfuss stood out as actors most accurately inhabiting a physicality of their subjects, but the script - and presumably the director (that's you again, Oliver) - failed to give them anything to play with (that's what she said). Everyone recited sound bites we've all heard blared at us by the mainstream media countless times and don't need to hear again.

And that was the only reason I saw this movie. To get something else. Different. Something Stone-ian, a la Nixon or Wall Street. I got a Cleveland Steamer on my shoe, is what I got.

What a fucking prick, that Oliver...

Which brings me to Bill Maher, the indirect focus of the new documentary Religulous, directed by Larry Charles ("Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan"). These guys decided to go out and make a movie that actually provided a different perspective from the ones rammed down our throats for the past eight years (love that buzz phrase - the past eight years - makes your skin crawl with fascism, doesn't it?). And I fucking appreciated it.


Bill Maher goes around America interviewing religious idiots for laughs, personal and otherwise. Lord knows I be enjoyin' me some laughs at the expense of religious idiots. And laugh I did. Often. For the first hour. Then Maher and company decided to make a point, and I said, "Whoa, whoa dudes. Whoa. Why can't I just laugh at you making jokes out of these religious imbeciles? Ya know, man? Why'd you, uhh, have to start shoving your anti-religious rhetoric down my throat like the Religious Right with their intolerance?" And shove he did, right down all of our nothungryforthisbullshit throats. It would've been nice to just see idiots look like idiots and the occasional religious non-idiot give Maher something thought-provoking to debate. But no. You had to tirade on secularism like a televangelist.

Still, it was quite funny when he made buffoons out of the religious televangelists he interviewed. A lot funnier than anything in W., which...ah, goddammit Oliver! Why couldn't you at least show Brolin send a little white line of nose candy up his fun hole (i.e. nostril)? I'd hate you so much less. Get fucked, Oliver, along with Bill Maher's preachy secularist horsepiss.