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5 Comments

news

Cole Wind Blowin’

By David Topping

Last night, Slumdog Millionaire won the Oscar for best picture. But did you know that it is “the most violent film to do so ever”? It’s true, according to NOW‘s Senior Entertainment Editor Susan G. Cole, who has apparently never seen No Country For Old Men (which features a guy strangling a cop to death with handcuffs), The Departed (which features several guys shooting other guys in the head), Gladiator (which features plenty of beheadings and severed limbs), Silence of the Lambs (which features a guy who kills women and makes coats from their skin), Braveheart (which features an extended torture scene complete with disembowelling), or Schindler’s List (which is about the holocaust). Good thing, though, that He’s Just Not That Into You wasn’t nominated for best picture this year, too: according to Cole, it features a scene of “a little boy who pushes [a little five year-old girl] into the sand, sneering at her that she smells like dog poo.” When that girl goes to her mother, her mother tells her that “that little boy did those things…because he likes you.” The scene, Cole writes, is “repulsive,” “totally terrifying,” and is an instance of “abusive parenting” and “excusing violence against women.” Never you mind that Buffalo Bill guy.

Comments

  • http://null Ben

    Now movie reviewers often miss the mark.

  • http://null billdinTO

    For some reason, after reading Cole’s notes, I find the name “Emily Litella” flashing through my mind.

  • http://undefined montauk

    I think it’s interesting how people define movie violence. I’d rather watch half an hour of gory fighting than two minutes of a whimpering woman in a rape or rape-esque scene.

  • http://undefined zip it

    Nothing wrong with an opinion, is there? The movie did have a children’s eyes being removed so they could make more money on the streets, amongst other things… There were quite a few people in the theatre with their heads buried during this and other scenes, so I’d say it is a violent movie. And that the violence is largely on children might make it much worse to some.
    and montauk, the whole “whimpering woman,” comment… not cool.

  • http://undefined montauk

    No, there’s nothing wrong with an opinion, I’m just saying it’s interesting. Really!
    And what’s not cool about my “whimpering woman” comment? I don’t mean that in a defensive way, I just don’t understand. I’m saying that I find combat easier to watch, i.e., less violent, than quieter scenes involving rape. For example, I’d rather watch the entire length of Saving Private Ryan than this one disturbing scene in the movie “Mister Lonely” where the woman’s husband intentionally lets her fall asleep outside knowing she’ll get a terrible sunburn, and then later proceeds to start grotesquely rubbing her skin “sensually” and kissing her as she cries and whimpers in pain (both from him unabashedly groping her sunburned skin, and emotionally, I think). Spoiler alert – at the end of the movie she hangs herself. Again, “artfully”. But what’s odd is that while that whole storyline strikes me as extraordinarily violent, to the point that I had to watch it on mute, for most people it wouldn’t be labeled “violent” or fall into the category of “movie violence”. That’s what I think is interesting, how violence is often conflated with running and screaming and fighting and getting physically mutilated, and to me that’s just the half of it.