WTF: Ben Affleck For Senate in 2008

MATTHEWS: Well, you have a stunningly developed political mind, and I do fear you. Ben Affleck, stay with us. We‘re at Faneuil Hall. We‘ll be right back. By the way, how many people here like Ben Affleck?

(APPLAUSE)

MATTHEWS: Back with more with Ben.

You‘re watching HARDBALL, HARDBALL‘s coverage of the Democratic convention up here in Boston on MSNBC.

Transcript:

MATTHEWS:  Well, you have a stunningly developed political mind,
and I do fear you.  Ben Affleck, stay with us.  We‘re at Faneuil Hall.
We‘ll be right back.  By the way, how many people here like Ben Affleck?
(APPLAUSE)

fucking xpost

Let me think about this.

gaah.

Read: desperately searching for a vain, naive, expendable fall guy with more money than sense, to hurl himself on his sword repeatedly while they do more important things.

I'm not too sure this was a compliment:

Unlike most celebrities, Affleck not only had a firm grasp of where he'd gone and what he'd seen but understood his true value as a spokesman, saying that instead of button-holing congressmen, he was trying to influence the electorate, "a special interest group to whom the politicians have no choice but to listen." Most people who hear Affleck talk come away impressed. As John Powers recently wrote in Los Angeles magazine, when Affleck was interviewed during the 2004 Democratic National Convention, "his analysis was every bit as penetrating as that of the New York Times' David Brooks."

lol

The baby-eating picture cannot be posted often enough.

i am looking forward to this movie. Affleck/Clooney '08.

If you liked him as Bennifer . . . you'll love him as Benator!

he fought at pearl harbor

This is probably the best of ILX's Affleck threads to bump for the release of Argo.

A movie that heartily claps the backs of both the CIA and the Dream Factory. Can't wait for the editorials.

so is this any good?

I enjoyed this

nothing essential, but a solid well-made movie.

yeah, it's pretty good. contains no surprises, but it's a diverting 2 hours that goes down smooth.

I'm skeptical b/c The Town was praised on similar terms and was a piece of shit.

i was skeptical for the same reason, but it turned out to be a pleasant surprise. it's better than The Town (funnier, more exciting), though its ambitions are pretty similar.

I expect Argo to diminish in my memory as time goes on just like Gone Baby Gone did. (Was ambivalent on The Town from the beginning.) Sort of fun in a propaganda-ish way.

No, see, if Ben Affleck ran for Senate, that would be "real."

what happened, what didn't:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2012/10/12/argo_true_story_the_facts_and_fiction_behind_the_ben_affleck_movie.html

Affleck’s version involves every conceivable complication—each one of them, as it happens, invented purely to make the movie more exciting.

How dare he make his movie exciting!

I was gripped by the political dimension of the film and the actual mechanics of the rescue mission, but I found the Hollywood stuff pretty hokey. Don't really get why Alan Arkin is winning raves for such a one-note performance -- lots of hacky industry jokes along the lines of "You think the Shah is bad, you haven't met the head of the Writers Guild!"

He's getting raves mostly for being one of the only characters who exudes confidence. It's a dece fun performance, but it's no Harry Roat.

lots of hacky industry jokes

you have answered your own question

Heh, yeah.

the hwood stuff is silly but kinda charming; i think i was mostly just glad that affleck moved on from dour boston movies. this gets v. square at the end but is 98% stylish and fun.

arkin's mostly getting raves for 'argo fuck yourself'

cranston's really good in this! i thought it'd be a thankless role and it sorta is, but he gets some really nice moments.

yeah it was thankless but cranston gets to do that hunched shoulders open mouth thing and cuss a couple ppl out so it's good

Affleck polling far behind in Massachusetts Senate race atm.

Cranston will arrange things.

wowser, what fucking imperialist propaganda, complete w/a Raiders of the Lost Ark runway climax. Affleck's future with the Obomber Democrats is assured.

good choice of thread

industry audience at screening loved the way it ate out their Variety-reading asses too.

"The Houseguests all reentered the US Foreign Service after their release and fucked over some different Third Worlders."

yeah it was terrible

Oscar ahoy!

"The only surprise in Argo is why Affleck didn’t end with a clip of Ronald Wilson Reagan’s swearing-in."

I expect Argo to diminish in my memory as time goes on just like Gone Baby Gone did.

Yeah, one month later, and this feels kind of like my big "buyer's remorse" movie this year.

Also, if anyone deserves an Oscar nod for this, it's Scoot McNairy.

whoo?

Alfred, an audio cameo from liberals' fave smiley militarist president at the end is good enough.

Surprise cameo of the year! Left everyone with a song in their heart.

(McNairy was the resident skeptic in the group whose change of heart and multilinguality embodied the action movie cliche of the secret hero who didn't know he was a hero.)

Yeah, shit right outta the McKee script workshop, no doubt.

I hadda think you woulda rather been watching the minotaur movie.

my favorite militarist prez is FDR! also fav for most other kinds of president. polio-having president, lesbian-wife president, glasses-wearing president, did not technically order a nuclear bomb dropped on japan president

I meant of the ones who are alive to send them Habitat for Humanity mail (the Shah coddler).

The Shah Coddler = Michael Bay pic

action scene = Carter tells Andrew Young to vote down sanctions against South Africa

HERE'S TO THE CRAZY ONES
THE DREAMERS

hats off to ben affleck for achieving greenlight on a script based on the tension of almost missing a flight

out of curiousity, how did affleck imagine they would get on the plane if his superiors had shut down the operation and ixnayed their flight reservations? i guess he just had faith in cranston to get 'er done? hell of a spin of the roulette wheel there

but hey, he's a square peg in a round hole - he's not fond of rules

..and was i the only one thinking amy smart and affleck were gonna "do it"?

ew

that would not have been professional

amy smart is not in this movie?

I thought Carter and the Shah were going to "get busy."

I had no idea who those Houseguests were until I saw Tate Donovan and Rory Cochrane in the credits.

(admittedly I do not know who Amy Smart is either)

The film did, with the TV news archival clips, capture the MSM obsession with the hostage "crisis" -- being outraged on behalf of US bullyhood -- tho it needed a glimpse of Ted Koppel's AMERICA HELD HOSTAGE (actual title) bullshit. Refreshing esp to see the sainted Cronkite playing right into the Reaganauts' hands.

I thought there was the briefest of clips of AMERICA HELD HOSTAGE.

I just saw Ted's talking head for a bit, not the sparkly title graphic

sorry i mean the girl who looks like amy smart

err kinda

haha she doesn't look like amy smart at all :/

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0245112/

I'M NOT FOND OF RULES, OKAY

OR ACCURACY

Morbs otm

'argo' is a solid l'il flick. however the hollywood shit is fucking abysmal imo, but only for the tedious in-jokes. should have lost the family backstory and the tarmac car chase. there's a better film in there somewhere. i thought the opening scenes were vv impressive, especially.

actually the more i think about this, the weak stuff (hollywood scenes, hollywood script conventions) really overwhelms the good stuff (opening scenes, fairly well-maintained tension.)

yeah, the more time that passes since seeing it, the more diminished it is for me. it's empty calories or something. i did like the tension of simple scenes like them driving through a crowd or walking through the marketplace. affleck's vanity is a turnoff, he couldn't possibly have been less convincing... his massive buff muscles straining against his 70s shirt while he chain-smokes and eats cheeseburgers, c'mon. still love cranston in this

his massive buff muscles straining against his 70s shirt while he chain-smokes and eats cheeseburgers

You know, maybe this flick was actually as good as I initially thought.

lol

i feel like the action movie tropes in the end really undercut the believability of the story and affleck's not quite skilled enough insert such tropes into a fact-based film w/o them coming off as cheap unlike, say, kathryn bigelow.

Cheap thrills, cheap comedy, srsly finding it difficult to remember what I responded to a few months ago.

admirable how Affleck studied True Lies and Jewel of the Nile to learn about the Middle East.

crimson jihad, will they never win?

I did lol pretty hardcore at the jeep chasing the jet down the runway but aside from that I really enjoyed "Argo"

I loved the part where John Goodman thought Alan Arkin's hand was a cheese sandwich and started eating it.

Cheap thrills, cheap comedy, srsly finding it difficult to remember what I responded to a few months ago.

― Zero Dark 33⅓: The Final Insult (Eric H.), Friday, January 4, 2013 3:13 PM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark

i think you just did remember!

Oh yeah right!

+ Affleck feeling himself up in that hotel room, getting his '70s bowl cut all tousled, singing Karen Young's "Hot Shot" into a hairbrush, taking a shower

i was left cold, but knowing it was going to end with a fabricated "nick of time" climax followed by a For Your Consideration reel for best make up did take the wind out going on

going in, rather. even then i didn't expect the hollywood parts to be so cheesy and irrelevant to the story

and really after zero dark thirty i didn't need more "americans look scared in islamic territory as singer wails in background" shit.

bet this might clean up at the oscars, though

+ Affleck feeling himself up in that hotel room, getting his '70s bowl cut all tousled, singing Karen Young's "Hot Shot" into a hairbrush, taking a shower

Read that as "Alfred."

Well yeah

Not nearly as bad as the trailer made it look. The six houseguests were all good, Goodman too. Arkin and Bryan Cranston (I don't watch his TV series, so I don't have any proprietary feelings about him) were not.

Music police: they're over a year off using something from Tattoo You. (The other period stuff fits, so I assume that was an oversight.) But credit them with dropping the needle somewhere towards the middle of Led Zeppelin IV for "When the Levee Breaks," rather than at the beginning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJt4FkNvWfE

but better than Playtime?

Did I squirm less often? Yes.

(The one thing that baffles me about your bafflement that I wouldn't love Playtime is that it's so clearly an extremely eccentric film that's not going to be for everyone. I mean, I think that would be a given.)

best of the "Argo sucks" pieces?

http://www.salon.com/2013/02/18/why_argo_doesnt_deserve_the_oscar/

Prefer Kevin Lee's I think.

You're right, I forgot about that one.

it’s the movie that paints the movie business and movie people in a flattering light, a strategy that almost never fails.

^^^this

i think what bugs me about it the more i think about it is that the story itself just isn't really that interesting to me and the actually interesting aspects of the setting really are window dressing for some folks sitting around waiting for a plane flight. honestly it reminded me more of the time i woke up in burbank a mere 90 min before a scheduled flight from LAX (and had to race against time to catch it!) more than than it did a probing geopolitical thriller.

so following The Artist last year, have two Hollywood-as-hero movies ever won best picture back to back?

Argo is all about brown-skinned people doing prayer calls in the background

this is still my favorite comment:

I loved the part where John Goodman thought Alan Arkin's hand was a cheese sandwich and started eating it.

― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, January 4, 2013 12:30 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the more time passes the more I want to slap anyone who says this was their favorite movie of the year

(in the past week I have heard at least 3 coworkers say this)

Hollywood didn't actually save the day in The Artist. A dog did.

(in the past week I have heard at least 3 coworkers say this)

Yeah, this (like The King's Speech a couple years ago) has def emerged as the obv "film of the year" choice among people who see five movies a year, albeit selectively.

like Sidney Lumet's ex-wife

it was almost embarrassing to be at an industry screening for this and see the OTT laughter for those "hilarious" john goodman one-liners about the movie biz. haha the head of the writers guild, what a bastard. man oh man...HOLLYWOOD.

almost?

"That is true. Women DO shop!"

Arkin had more of those lines than Goodman.... yeah, I was at a similar screening, they sure do like to laugh with a tongue up their ass.

i think what bugs me about it the more i think about it is that the story itself just isn't really that interesting to me and the actually interesting aspects of the setting really are window dressing for some folks sitting around waiting for a plane flight. honestly it reminded me more of the time i woke up in burbank a mere 90 min before a scheduled flight from LAX (and had to race against time to catch it!) more than than it did a probing geopolitical thriller.

― christmas candy bar (al leong), Tuesday, February 19, 2013 2:20 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes totally. and particularly annoying b/c theres this genuinely fascinating major historial event that ends up just being a kind of background/obstacle course for the Late Travelers

i remember one brutal moment where an anonymous iranian shopowner was executed in an alley and it seemed to exist so we could think, "that poor man, his fate could befall those six americans going stir crazy in a mansion."

I'm surprised they were restrained enough not to play Yakety Sax over the runway chase scene

I'm surprised Affleck didn't cut to Reagan smiling during a State of the Union.

the more i think about it, the more i think this is like a really low-stakes schindler's list, except the rescued weren't even going to be doomed to a horrible fate. it's like a non-interventionist's fantasy of how to avoid trouble in a troubled land.

so would have preferred the Kirby movie

canadians are pretty upset about this movie haha

but in that conflicted canadian "we're still happy you're talking about us at ALL" way

thanks for giving the u.s. a place to crash while they were taking a break from saving the middle east, canada

I still haven't even seen this movie yet, but lol @ ilx's favorite past-time of scorning the plebes with dissimilar tastes to your own.

In this case, ignorance is probably bliss.