Ebert on Occupy & a movie
December 7th 2011 23:25
Roger Ebert on the Occupy Movement:
My hesitation all along has come with uneasiness about the Occupy tactics. The idea of physically occupying public spaces--parks, plazas, malls and so on--is a questionable strategy. The notion of pitching tents, running kitchens and maintaining libraries on a quasi-permanent basis would have Saul Alinsky tearing his hair out. If you set out to do something that will obviously not work, you're setting yourself up for inevitable failure. Very few people are mentally or constitutionally able to live in a tent for long, especially with the approach of winter. Young and strong people can. Soldiers do. But the Occupy movement is intended to be populist, and a great many ordinary people have children, families and income requirements that make it inconvenient to camp out.
Here in New Zealand, the police have been very loathe to get involved, even when the City Councils have come up with trespass orders against the Occupiers. Yet there's now a law that if someone has a campervan and stops where there are no toilet facilities, they'll be moved on. Isn't there some irony here?
And his tweeted comment on Pearl Harbour - Of all the negative reviews I've written, "Pearl Harbor" may have my favorite first sentence.
"Pearl Harbor" is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how on Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle. Its centerpiece is 40 minutes of redundant special effects, surrounded by a love story of stunning banality. The film has been directed without grace, vision, or originality, and although you may walk out quoting lines of dialog, it will not be because you admire them.
My hesitation all along has come with uneasiness about the Occupy tactics. The idea of physically occupying public spaces--parks, plazas, malls and so on--is a questionable strategy. The notion of pitching tents, running kitchens and maintaining libraries on a quasi-permanent basis would have Saul Alinsky tearing his hair out. If you set out to do something that will obviously not work, you're setting yourself up for inevitable failure. Very few people are mentally or constitutionally able to live in a tent for long, especially with the approach of winter. Young and strong people can. Soldiers do. But the Occupy movement is intended to be populist, and a great many ordinary people have children, families and income requirements that make it inconvenient to camp out.
Here in New Zealand, the police have been very loathe to get involved, even when the City Councils have come up with trespass orders against the Occupiers. Yet there's now a law that if someone has a campervan and stops where there are no toilet facilities, they'll be moved on. Isn't there some irony here?
And his tweeted comment on Pearl Harbour - Of all the negative reviews I've written, "Pearl Harbor" may have my favorite first sentence.
"Pearl Harbor" is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how on Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle. Its centerpiece is 40 minutes of redundant special effects, surrounded by a love story of stunning banality. The film has been directed without grace, vision, or originality, and although you may walk out quoting lines of dialog, it will not be because you admire them.
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