i kinda thought it played alright myself, and it stopped short of his response
Posted on 04/15/2011 1:31:44 PM PDT by RobFromGa
Atlas Shrugged Part 1 Quick Review- 5 stars!
Very faithful to Rand's ideas. I didn't feel like they skipped any major items... the back story with Francisco was hinted at and would have been too hard to develop completely.
Casting was superb. Hank (Hooray!) and Lillian (Boo!)Rearden and Ellis Wyatt (!!!) were done perfectly as was Wesley Mouch and the other moochers and looters. Dagny was good but it took about ten minutes for me to completely buy her in the role.
Pace was perfect... it kept moving at a fast speed, and I didn't want it to end.
Cinematography very good- hard to believe only cost about $5 million! The Rearden Metal bridge was great, as was the Colorado landscape shots...
Audience Reaction: Duluth, GA 12:25pm showing was about 80% full (there was noon showing in a larger theater already going) & audience reacted with enthusiasm throughout and Applause at end.
Can't wait for Part 2! I will be going back to see Part One more than once...
Minor nitpick- shouldn't have had the date 2016 on the movie, it is timeless.
“In sumation[sic], I would give the movie two stars out of five.”
Ouch, 2stars out of 5 doesn’t bode well. I thank you though for an honest review. I will of course see the movie anyway. I want this to be a great movie but frankly I am skeptical. I can see this would be a hard movie to pull off in this day and age. I wish they would have put it in it’s original setting instead of attempting to modernize it.
It is fine today, but what about in 2016 or 2017 or 2030?
And "atlas shrugged" is the number one search term on Google today. Telling, indeed.
Grrrrr... no showings in my area.
I have read the book a couple of times. You will find out who he is in the second movie.
I saw the kings speech and thought it dragged, especially for a movie. It felt more like something I’d catch on the history channel. Not horrible, but not top grades
exactly
heh heh heh
Can't be sure, haven't seen the movie.
But ... I'd cast John Galt as the bum in that scene.
Good, I use the Roger Ebert reverse review system.
A current day setting is perfect. The moral of the story is the need to change the politician created mess we have today.
How much sex was in it?
I enjoyed it. Small group in our party but the theater was fairly full for a noon showing. Too bad there are half a dozen threads on this..would have been good to stick with the one posted first & just added to it so all comments could be together
Always frustrating here at FR when there are so many threads on the same topic essentially..
Ping for later.
We're going tonight. I hope my wife remembers to wear her "Liberty Bracelet" forged from Rearden Metal.
My wife and I saw the 12:25 show also. I do not have much of a critical eye for acting and cinematography, so take my review with a grain of salt. :-)
Go. See. Atlas. Shrugged.
It’s not without it’s technical problems, but the message is too important to throw the baby out with the bath water.
Some things I noticed have been mentioned upthread — the acting was a bit rigid but not so much so that it was terribly distracting. The production was true to Rand’s work, as well as I can remember. (I read AS 3 years ago and had forgotten some details. I had completely forgotten Paul Larkin, for example.)
As has been mentioned, some of the villain characters were a bit underdeveloped. The viewer can see that there are several of them and get a sense of what they represent, but more of their hidden thoughts and objectives could have been brought out. It’s clear they’re up to no good when the Equalization of Opportunity bill is passed, but the underlying evil which drives such ideas could have been presented more explicitly.
When I came out of the theater I remembered Obama’s speech from Wednesday and thought of the similarities between it and and the looters in Atlas. One can barely distinguish the two.
My wife is a full-time mom and homeschools our 4 kids who range in age from 1 to 7. During this period of her life, most of her news and “outside world” information comes through me, and Atlas is no exception. As I read the book 3 years ago I would tell her about it as I went. She saw the movie with me today and at times I could see her wiping away a tear. The message of the movie is not lost on those who are willing to see that message.
As we left the theater, I was gratified to see a vanity plate on a high-end automobile which said “RGNOMX”. It warms the heart. ;-)
Ping for later, going tonight (hopefully).
there was a bedroom scene that was probably 1 minute long between Hank and Dagny. no nudity and mainly kissing but they were on a bed and embracing. pretty tame, but it was adultery as well.
there was also a short bedroom scene between Hank and Lillian showing him leaving after they were done that was a chuckle point in the movie...
Roger Ebert hated it. Tells me all I need to know - It must be great!
Oh I don’t want them to change the moral. No the gist of the book remains the same no matter what. I just feel it would have given the movie a better feel to stay within the time frame of the book. I feel a period piece, particularly one depicting train travel, would seem more natural and enhance the message even more. Either way I hope the movie breathes new life into Ayn Rand’s message for a whole new generation.
The answer is-- both. To be exact, the action of Atlas Shrugged takes place in the near future, about ten years from the time when one reads the book. (Letters of Ayn Rand, p. 613)
Rand considered the setting of the novel to be shifting, regardless of when it is read, and therefore it has no specific time setting other than "near future."
Reinforcing this idea of a non-specific time setting, Rand comments in The Art of Fiction, saying that "Atlas Shrugged is of no period" (p. 163).
Yes, that’s on my short list. I hear it’s great.
There was another thread about how well it did at the box office according to Variety?
Thank you so much!
I would like my 13 and 11-year-olds to see it. I would not let them read the book because of the sex. They did read the Spark Notes and have studied the main idea of the book.
I searched before i posted, and this is the only thread I see for Freeper comments on the movie that came out today. What other threads are you referring to with the "so many threads" comment?
Book club members, post your own reviews.
Well, that was an interesting trip back to the future. I think the Republican party needs to adopt Ayn Rand’s simple advice. “Separate government from economics”. Just imagine what a change that would create in both government and economics.
thanks!
also pinging FreeKeys
The appears in Part 3, not Part 1.
My disappointment was that there were no shots of Starnesville and the way that section of Wisconsin regressed back to the Dark Ages after the factory closed.
I also thought that Ivy Starnes, whom Rand sets up as a proto-hippie, should have been smoking a joint as big as Baltimore rather than hanging out the wash.
Mine neither. That DVD isn’t going to come out fast enough for me.
if you have any doubts... Henry Rearden Comes Home
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PK5Sq3bIHY&feature=player_embedded
Only 20 people at the first show in Seattle, but you could cram the entire conservative and libertarian population of Seattle into a phone booth, and they would fit comfortably.
How was Midas Mulligan depicted?
Midas was picked off in the first scene, which made it contemporary, rather than 6 years previous. We get to meet Galt as a man in a raincoat with his face obscured. Good bit of screenwriting.
Drat, just watching that scene, I’m not sure I want to see the movie. The casting is not up to my imagination from reading the book. That’s what I hate about movies made from books, especially if you have read the book. Hank Rearden is a much tougher man, more introspect. The strong silent type who lives in his own head with little regard for people around him (until he meets Dagny. John Wayne in a suit or Clint Eastwood type would be Hank. I don’t know who the actor is, but he is squishy, almost effeminate. Lillian and the rest of the family are okay. I imagine Dagny as looking like a Lauren Bacall with short hair. Tough.
Another minor nitpick was the scene with Hugh Akston at the Diner- he said nothing at all of interest and seemed kinda like ‘The Dude’... but a very minor problem. Stadler wasn’t impressive either considering the role that the two of them played in the 3 protaganists education...
Rob, I am sorry, didn’t mean it to be critical of you but in reading my comment, it surely came out that way.
yours is probably the only AAR (comment) thread. In general there have been the past week quite a few threads (I am usually PMed or Emailed on them due to having the cinema ping list)
It just would be nice for so many things to be in conversation with people without having to bounce to various threads to do so.
I guess I am tired & over reacted.
I did post a comment on IMDb (usually takes a day or two)
thanks for the thread even though I have come across as an ungrateful _________ (fill in whatever yuk word you want)
d
Dr. Robert Stadler with a Middle European accent threw me a bit.
Grant Bowler did a great job with Hank Rearden imho.
And Taylor Schilling took a few minutes to get used too, but she pulled it off imho...
If you enjoyed the book, I think it is safe that you will find the movie to be true to it.
I do not know when I'll get to see it. Hopefully in the near future.
Still, even the book itself written in the 1950s tended to ignore Television and jet planes, and other evidence of Progress. The book to me had the flavor of the 1930s which seems counter intuitive to produce in the era of Sputnik and Sound Barrier breaking.
I am saying that Rand herself used the same sort of technique in order to tell her story.
She ignored stuff, and that involved "the suspension of disbelief" was required in order to get her real message out.
How did you like my cameo?
i kinda thought it played alright myself, and it stopped short of his response
Dolly,
I am not offended at all.
All the other threads were based on links to some ‘professional’ reviews of the movie as they came out.
This one is a thread just for Freeper thoughts and reviews...
:-)
Rob
I really did appreciate you posting the links from the book thread on the Atlas Shrugged thread a week ago. I shared them with many friends who had & who had NOT read the book & they were impressed with your work
I have had a couple years of hit /miss at FR with my mom’s decline & death.. missed a lot including your offering which I would have loved to have participated with over the course of the posting
The bum was Jeff Allen, who witnessed the fall of the 20th Century Motor Co.
The actor who played Paul Larkin played a lot of gay characters in various TV shows. I didn’t expect to see him here, but he was a good casting choice.
I thought Owen Kellogg was very good. The first competent person we saw actually go on strike and the one who made Dagny start to question who is the Destroyer and what is he up to?
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