Posted on 07/12/2009 7:13:36 PM PDT by bushpilot1
In case you've never heard of The Alamo before, in a nutshell, Mexico wanted Texas, but so too did the white folks. So they duked it out a bunch, generally swapping this tiny little middle-of-nowhere fortified town every few years until eventually Mexican General Santa Anna came a-marching in with 3000 soldiers, surrounded a couple of hundred whiteys and their slaves, and got busy with the shootin'. The crackers sent for reinforcements, but none came, so they went down fighting, with names such as Davey Crockett and knife-fighter Jim Bowie going down alongside them.
John Lee Hancock has the kind of name that makes you think he might have been standing on The Alamo when it was pounded by the Mexican Army, thereby becoming Texan legend. In fact, John Lee Hancock was a TV director who had modest success with the by-the-numbers Disney baseball flick, The Rookie, so when Disney couldn't get Ron Howard to helm their summer war epic version of The Alamo, Disney drafted in the new kid to take over. It turned out to be a dud move.
The Alamo is nearly as exciting as Rosie O'Donnell giving a lapdance; you may well have a physical reaction to the experience, but chances are it isn't going to be a positive one. This is bland, boring, long, poorly constructed, horrendously written, unimpressively shot, lazily acted stuff. History freaks will laugh at the short cuts taken, action freaks will laugh at what passes for action, and drama buffs will be driven to despair by the maudlin, sugar-coated two-hour-plus salute to failure that this film ended up being.
In case you've never heard of The Alamo before, in a nutshell, Mexico wanted Texas, but so too did the white folks. So they duked it out a bunch, generally swapping this tiny little middle-of-nowhere fortified town every few years until eventually Mexican General Santa Anna came a-marching in with 3000 soldiers, surrounded a couple of hundred whiteys and their slaves, and got busy with the shootin'. The crackers sent for reinforcements, but none came, so they went down fighting, with names such as Davey Crockett and knife-fighter Jim Bowie going down alongside them.
Of course, as Mexican Generals are not always the cleverest goons in the garrison, Santa Anna decided to parlay his victory by chasing down Texan General Sam Houston, and duly got his hiney handed to him with the rallying cry of "Remember The Alamo" being heard over the battlefield.
Sounds like an interesting story, huh? Well, it is, if you're reading about it, but watching it played out on the big screen is nothing short of tedious. John Wayne did a version of the story back in the 60's which was rife with racial stereotypes, and the new version isn't far off. Black characters are there, but only get about eight lines between them, displaying themselves as either foolhardy or cowards, depending on which cliche you're looking at. The Mexicans are also there, fighting for both sides, with about as much characterization on either end as you might see in a Fox News report. "Ooh! Bad guys who hate Americans! Eville!"
Then there are the main characters, not one of which is actually the slightest bit three-dimensional. Billy Bob Thornton's Davey Crockett is at least human-like, if hardly exceptional, while Jason Patric's Jim Bowie spends most of the film in the 'famous mostly dead guy' role that Eric Stoltz made famous in Congo, and Emilio Echevarría's Santa Anna has all the realism and scope of Cruella DeVil.
Standing out above the pack in terms of range is relative rookie Patrick Wilson, as Lt.Col. William Travis. Travis was the relative rookie who was given the job of leading the Alamo defenders while his superior officer took a powder, and though his character does, as everyone else does in this film, start off terribly, Wilson manages to save the day by adding a few layers to the guy and making him sympathetic to the audience.
In the end, only he and Billy Bob can claim this victory, as everyone else who had anything to do with this film looked to have been phoning it in. Sam Houston may has well of been played by Randy Quaid, rather than Dennis Quaid, since all he does is scowl, pose and scowl some more.
Early on, it seemed Hancock had been studying Kurosawa's directing methods, because he went to the Japanese master's old go-to before a battle, where his characters would go over the plans of the war, with maps, for the audience. Here, The Alamo seems to gather momentum as the audience can actually see what lies ahead, but in practice Hancock throws viewability to the wind, relying on jump cuts, close-ups of smoke, yelling, a ridiculously loud and ever-present Disney score, and absolutely no sense of where the dead and dying are in relation to the attack. Was Billy Bob fighting the Mexicans at the south wall, or the east? Was that the Lt. Colonel who was chased down into a hole and butchered, or was it some random kid? Was that a Mexican gun blowing up crackers, or a cracker barrel blowing chunks out of Micheal Eisner's leaf blower crew? Damned if I know, and in the end, damned if I even care.
There was a movie in this story, but it sure as hell wasn't the one Hancock found. If anything, the story of Sam Houston and his battle to raise troops, then his guerilla tactics after the Alamo had burned, were far more interesting than what happened at The Alamo itself. In Houston, you have a man torn between what he knows he must do to win and what his men want to do - go protect their brethren, even if it means dying in the act.
That, Mr Hancock, is the makings of a movie. Billy Bob Thornton playing a fiddle on a fencetop is not.
Ultimately, I'm almost certain that Hancock had a longer cut in mind when he made this flick. It took literally months to shoot and they blew $90m on the budget (which came in $82,000 under, to the director's credit), much of which surely went on effects and expensive battle recreations. But in the final cut you seem to have large swathes of talky time, 'long minutes of standing around doing bugger all' time, a few minutes of actual battle action, and then the kind of final act wrap-up that may as well have been told in "where are they now" titlecards, for all the attention paid to actually portraying the scenes for the audience.
The final battle in the legend of The Alamo lasted only eighteen minutes. On screen, it seems to last precisely four cannon shots. What is this, a sitcom?
Actually... yeah, it is.
Post this to the Daily Kos so they can condem his racism.
Anyone have this punk’s e-mail addy?
I’d like to send him a nice non-racist, non threatening e-mail and let him know he’s been exposed.
Anyone have a picture of this creep????
Now the idiot has messed with Texas!!!!!
If memory serves me correctly, there where at least two free black men who fought at the Alamo along side Crockett and Travis. There where also several Native American soldiers.
This “review” certainly reinforces Parry is mentally disturbed. I’m not quite sure what his obsession With Ritz, Nabisco and Keebler says about his mental stability.
Let’s just ping him, he signed up to attempt to defend himself and troll. He admitted to having several accounts here.
Aww hell no. Know that boy has done gone and messed with Texas. Guess he’ll be sorry soon enough.
I almost skipped the film after reading on FR that it was revisionist crap. That was not true. It's a good film on the Alamo.
Chris Barry is a racist.
This entire dustup is for one purpose only — draw attention from O’s falling numbers and try and point attention elsewhere........ it seems it worked. The guy is a jerk, but it doesn’t change that they took the gloves off by going after Palin’s children in a dispicable manner and oh, BTW, Malia WAS dressed inappropriately and that isn’t a racist comment.
Chris Parry is the racist.
Chris Barry is the innocent person with the similar name.
http://democraticsingles.net/photoGallery.php?prfPrfId=16030&cmd=viewPhoto&photoId=18357&dirId=17378
Possible poofter. He has the look.
Nope. Married with kids.
http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2009/7/12/3517/23956/1310#c1310
Update from Chris Parry (42+ / 0-)
Recommended by:
Julia Grey, lanshark, NYCee, autoegocrat, BenGoshi, DickCheneyBeforeHeDicksYou, badlands, Damnit Janet, Catte Nappe, Brooke In Seattle, ratzo, Annalize5, exmearden, begone, Denny in Seattle, rhetoricus, BlueIndependent, Hedwig, Positronicus, skohayes, Morgan Sandlin, dmhlt 66, satanicpanic, bushondrugs, chikindolfin, velvet blasphemy, Apphouse50, MKSinSA, csquared, Losty, Tommymac, MariaWr, Kristina40, aggie98, Dungeon Dwelling Dragon, ShowMeMoBlue, rbarry647, Trobone, one voice, Archie2227, abetterperson, Ezekial 23 20
So I tried to hit FP for a while this morning and answer their questions. I was interested in finding out how I ‘defamed’ them by reporting factually something they don’t deny happened.
Lots of abuse. That’s fine. A few honest questions, so I answered those. Then the conspiracy theories began - they aren’t even worth dignifying, let alone refuting.
Now, of course, they’re saying they’ll email everyone at the company I work for, calling me a racist. My bosses don’t seem bothered, especially being a traffic today is huge as a result, but if you guys could send on some encouragement to the paper for reporting honestly about stuff that other papers steer clear of, that wouldn’t hurt.
Send a Twitter message to http://www.twitter.com/... (so as to not fill his inbox) if you’d like to counteract the ‘kill the messenger’ crowd over at FP.
Oh, by the way, someone who I think is a part of FP’s higher echelon emailed me thanking me for writing the story, saying they need to stop this kind of stuff on their forum and this was just the tonic to correct those mistakes.
That was a nice note to get. Because, really, that’s all anyone on either side should want - mistakes fixed.
Fool me once, I’ll punch you in the fucking head.
by HollywoodOz on Sun Jul 12, 2009 at 01:42:44 PM PDT
Chris. Parry. Is. An. Immature. Liberal. Jerk. Looking. For. Attention.
Most libs that I’ve known can’t help stirring the pot, even when they have one of their own in office. His hit piece on Biden, a brain-dead liberal if there ever was one, is an example of that. They just can’t help “exposing” malfeasance or bad something-or-other.
They also can’t help reminding us of how bad our forebears were, even if they have to selectively remember history to do it.
He is also, if inadvertantly, deflecting attention from 0’s massive failures, as you correctly noted.
http://efilmcritic.com/hbs.cgi?credit=1
Please note Chris Parry bio on efilmcritic.com lists his current residence: Locale: Currently: Vancouver. Previously: Sydney, Tokyo, LA, Las Vegas,
I checked the muster rolls of the Alamo. 13 English born defenders and two Scotsmen. Included in the honours list of immortal heroes. Quite proud of that.
Now we know why somemothers eat their young...
Obviously he dodged a bullet...
But hell, come to Texas...We got plenty to spare...
What an asshat...
http://efilmcritic.com/hbs.cgi?credit=1
Please note Chris Parry bio on efilmcritic.com lists his current residence: Locale: Currently: Vancouver. Previously: Sydney, Tokyo, LA, Las Vegas,
I could have slipped up here. Thought they were different guys.
LOL!!!!!
That is the second site I have seen him on looking for some love.
We may have won the battle of San Jacinto, but Mexico has defeated us crackers in the end and has won the war.
barbra ann
Please don’t take my posts as my assurance that the Vancouver Sun perp is NOT the author of this review.
I don’t know either way.
My grandson adopts words and uses them out of context and racist is one of his latest. If you’re clumsy, he calls you racist, if he asks you for a hundred dollar bill and you laugh at him, he call you racist. If he misses a basket, he calls the ball racist. He is acting in jest like a lot of people who in seriousness like to throw that word around but you are right Chris Parry or whatever his name is, really is racist.
Not to mention Mexico was “run by white folks” then. Hell, Santa Anna was criollo, ‘bout as white boy as they come as far as European ancectry is concerned.
Which just goes to prove an already well proven point, that Chris Perry is a dumb ass...
and in my mind that is the important thing here, we need to expend our energy stopping 0 and his agenda and not let people use Alinsky principles to sidetrack us. If we are to fight O and Acorn and SEIU, etc., people need to get serious and focused.
I read his bio before posting; his residence is listed Vancouver and location of the newspaper Vancouver Sun are the same.
It looks like Chris Parry also writes for Epinions using the handle ‘huntersboy’.
http://www1.epinions.com/user-huntersboy
Backtraced from this post:
http://www1.epinions.com/review/trvl-Dest-United_States-Ohio-Cincinnati/content_7220530820#ow
This may open up a lot of new revelations on Parry. His writing, to say the least, is crap and he seemed to have pissed off a lot of Epinions writers.
</ChrisParry>
I wonder how many guys he got with that pic?
Seems like his idea of good writing is to drink the bong water and fire up WordPress.
Thanks for the info. I will look for the movie.
“Vancouver Sun “journalist” Chris Parry who defamed Jim Robinson and FreeRepublic is none other than radical left blogger “Hollywoodoz” at the left wing extremist site Daily Kos.”
FP?
Before Senior Santa Ana started butchering Yankees, he was getting some great practise in savaging Mexican Indians in the southern part of Mexico.
Mr. Santa Ana was a Crillo, a descendant of white Spanish settlers and originally fought on the side of the Spaniards against Mexico when they were fighting for independence.
The “Napoleon of the West” was one of the world's worst generals, losing just about every battle he fought to the Americans.
Read “so Far from God, So Close to the United States” by Eisenhower to see what contempt Santa Ana had for his own people - mestizos, indians, etc.
This current crop of Aztlanist freaks are much historically challenged as the Racist in the Oval Office.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.