Does a thread exist for the movie Crash?

Yes.

A mess I'm glad I saw

Nope.

http://www.crashfilm.com/

1. Racism
2. Classism
3. The need to justify actions/decisions one knows are onerous for the sake of "getting by"

very original use of Samuel barber in the trailer.

But, oh, Brendan Fraser!

An odd collection of actors to say the least... methinks a lot of higher profile actors may've passed on this one. Sandra Bullock was crap as usual. Brendan Fraser's character amounted to very little. The rest of the performances were good (some surprisingly, like Luda and even Ryan Phillipe), it's a shame they didn't have better material to work with.

Not a great film, but one I'm not sorry I saw either - it'll at least provoke some reaction in you.

I can't disprove that one. I'm not the biggest Magnolia booster in the world, but I think it makes Crash look like a magpie-ing sham in the comparison.

(Also, the men in Crash are pretty hot overall -- especially Michael Pena and Phillippe -- but that doesn't make me like the movie any more.)

It's not going to stop, 'til you wise up... honky.

Oooh, this means I will like Crash then!!

Shopkeeper's daughter - HAWT: agreed!

...and they're all here on ILX!

Which chick?

Obviously a film like this is a slave to its structure. If you want actual "coincidences," you're going to be disappointed. There aren't any coincidences that would link this group people so fundamentally, especially in L.A.

Mil said above that better actors had passed on the script. Would seem to me quite the opposite. This is the kind of film that actors kill to get cast in.

Moreover, with a production budget of $6.5 million, you can be sure that Sandra Bullock appeared gratis. You may not have liked the Misses Congeniality, but with her ownership stake in those two pictures, she doesn't have to work on anything but scripts she really cares about. Brendan Frasier and Matt Dillon, okay, they're glad to get in anything.

If the budget was really $6.5 mil as reported by the New Yorker, all the actors worked for scale, although probably with back-end participation, should there be any. $6.5 mil isn't enough to have rented the locations and blown up two cars.

And there will be a sizable back-end, unlike Sandra Bullock's back-end. (I thought she looked good, where's the love?) The film's grossed $20 mil so far. Split that 50/50 between exhibitor and the studio and then subtract marketing expenses. Of which there were precious few as has been remarked. Another week in theaters and they've covered costs. DVD and TV/Cable TV/Foreign sales will be pure gravy for the studio/producers/actors with points. And that can account for as much as 85% of the take, by the way.

The sweet bits were a bit sappy for my taste, and yet I found Crash to be very powerful despite an immediate awareness of how manipulative and stylized the structure and execution are. Comments on various groups' parking and driving styles were on target, in as much as one hears exactly those comments in L.A. every day. And L.A. is an extremely balkanized city. Incredibly diverse, but with very defined borders.

I thought it was great.

Like Jimmy the extent of my knowledge about this movie comes from the posters in the subway, so I thought it was a love movie.

I said Crash was great, and I mean it, but oddly, I don't really disagree with the upstream criticisms posted here. It was certainly flawed, but despite some wobbles, the entire effect was simply powerful.

After 15 minutes, I thought, great, just what L.A. needs, a movie to stir up race hate. You really can't think this by the end of the movie, if you haven't walked out.

Every era demonizes certain of humanity's...well, inhuman aspects. And completely ignores, or glorifies others. Currently we tend to say, oh that person is a racist. I scorn and avoid him. The lowest of the low. No possible redeeming features. One hundred years ago, it could have been, in some areas, oh that person is a catholic. Don't talk to him. Don't hire him. That would seem small-minded, or illegal, today, but to ostracize someone for racisit tendencies gives many people a moral hard on.

Crash fuels some interesting discussion in this direction. The Matt Dillon character is a great example. Your first impulse is to hate him for being a corrupt, racist cop. As his storyline progresses, you see that it isn't so simple. Is there a difference for his character between hating blacks and being angry at blacks, even irrationally? I don't know. Maybe he is a corrupt, racist cop. Maybe he's not.

Eric said above: What the movie really labors under is the assumption that all forms of racism involve overt, confrontational name-calling... be it in the guise of rah-rah post-9/11 jingoism or "let's be honest" behind closed doors one-on-ones at City Hall. For me, this is probably the films biggest failing. This is tip-of-the-iceberg racism--it certainly happens, but a lot, obv. is never spoken, only acted on. It weakens the film to a certain extent, but, again, this didn't bother me. Like the "unlikely" Altmanesque structure, I just allow the writer/director this lifeline.

i knew every little detail that would be important later in the film the instant they happened.

worst script ever. there was absolutely no subtlety or room for interpretation. Characters said things that were ridiculous and over the top... such as the bullock lock changing scene.

bullock and fraser were especially bad... cheadle and newton did well in their roles.

please dont go see this terrible, terrible thing

A tremendously ridiculous film. But also a tremendously enjoyable one for me, and exactly why, I'm still figuring...

I think Crash actually may have invented a new cinematic style or something, called "throwing_EVERYTHING_on_screen_sans_developmen_and_watch_multiple_storylines_experience_instantaneous_climax,_for_the_sake_of_interminable_catharsis." Or maybe further developed this style of no-development, that was first crystallized in Magnolia. [[ The Angeleno settings of both films are a moot point; I really don't think that this film had much to do with Los Angeles, ultimately. It just served as an effective backdrop. I suppose it was about racism, but even there, it didn't really cohere into a single theme after a few well-delivered early soliloquies and transparently shocking exchanges. ]]

Crash was not as emotionally compelling an experience for me as Magnolia, since I was able to suspend my disbelief for the latter (not for teh frogs, but the characters), due to the ability of Anderson's narrative expressionism to single-mindedly ring pathos out of the viewer. Or at least coherently attempt to, while intermittently irrtiating us with Aimee Mann songs. Haggis takes us halfway ....well, somewhere, perhaps to some well-intentioned destination, but not before making so many multiple turns that you feel like you're watching some sort of fascinating opera so oblivious to its contrivances, that they demand our respect. Like the ::SPOILER:: whole Persian man subplot, where he winds up shooting a blank at the Latino man's daughter. A number of us were laughing after that...just too much, dude, but hey. It was so luda-cris, it was actually...COOL!! And yes...Luda actually killed it in this big-role debut, IMO. The diatribe he goes on against hip-hop...."clever"!!

What really irritated me, aside from the god-awful Phillip Glass-wannabe score that strove so, so earnestly to MAKE. US. FEEL. all throughout the last half - was that I liked some of these characters. I liked some of them a lot, and wanted to know more about them, but we could never delve too deeply into their lives. Who has the time when you have a dozen other people's Overhanging Issues to take care of within two hours of narrative exposition and denouement?! For a film that tried to get so preach about us not making "connections" with the humans around us, Crash was sadly very frustrating for not letting us make an extended connection with any of the interesting characters, as Haggis had to keep dealing with the outcomes of the less interesting ones. Why'd he introduce so many?

All the performances were truly impressive, and I think Dan is right when he says that it doesn't feature any highly annoying "look at my AHH-CTING" moments a la Magnolia. But at the same time, my inability to entirely suspend my disbelief (or regain its suspension after it bounced off after the halfway mark when the film became an extended epiphany in twelve parts ...look all the characters are c-c-changing! simultaneously...growing as people!!) again lay with the fact that no one particular performance moved me greatly, as I never got to know a single character in depth. I still haven't seen MDB yet, but maybe it really is the greater film as it explored Hilary Swank's dilemma with a single-minded focus that was missing here? Haggis bit off a lot more than he could chew, but to his credit the stuff he spit back out since there was too much in his mouth still looks ...neat....in terms of trying to guess what it was supposed to be before the chewing, if that. =) Like okay, Sandra Bullock is a Bev Hillsish beotch, fine, not too hard to buy that, but then ::SPOILER:: she slips on her socks in her mansion and suddenly hugs her previously chastised Mexican housekeeper with the realization that "you are my only friend"...HILARIOUS!! How much of the screenplay was excised before this, this insta-development? Or was none of it at all, and Haggis just had this miniscule amount in mind, with the attempt of crafting some kinda racial commentary out of it? That makes it even more fascinating, in a "wow, how banal! thats kind of effective, playing as it does on our cheapest and/or most superficial sympathies" kind of way.

Another example of this jarring and instant-climax aspect would be how ::'NOTHER SPOILER:: the whole Chinese-or-was-that-Thai--ppl-in-back-of--Ludacris-van-moment.

What the hell?

FWIW, I still think it's really worth seeing. Has some of the rawest dialogue out there, excellent ensemble turns, and will likely be remembered as one of the key "cultural-moment" films of where (Paul Haggis thought) Los Angeles / America was in Two Thousand & Fivvvvvve.

All 'coz its making about 40 times its costs at box-office, of course. Since Haggis was so overambitious on this one, god knows what he'll think he can do next...

-- robots in love (robotsinlov...), May 18th, 2005.

Oh come on - the only reason _you_ hated it so much is 'coz you couldn't suspend your disbelief of it for even 4 seconds, as it wasn't nonfiction. I know you still liked the Suburban Ch0lo M4rk, shut up!

I don't think it was really that terrible a film. I wish there were other people who feel ambivalent about it, instead of loving or hating it.

Looks pretty relaxed to me:

http://graphics.stanford.edu/~bjohanso/england/glasgow/haggis.jpg

-- EComplex (EComple...), May 16th, 2005.

Perhaps "higher-profile" actors wasn't the words I was looking for, but I certainly think a lot of "credible" actors would've passed on this. You can't deny it's a real hotch-potch of a cast, it's hard for me to believe many of these actors would've been first, second or even third preference in their respective roles.

Bullock / Fraser / Phillipe have all been successful but in films lacking in creativity (to say the least), as you say, they weren't doing it for the money but for the potential critical / credibility boost from being involved. It'd also be a lot easier to sell the film (it played in commercial theaters here) with names like Bullock and Fraser attached, so they just give 'em both a token role each.

Nothing feels genuine about this film to me.

Granted, I do have my own issues about suspending disbelief, but there were several things about this movie--mostly just the clunky obviousness of it all--that just made it that much harder to care, and give it the benefit of doubt.

Nothing feels genuine about this film to me.: I like this comment a lot.

But I actually didn't have a problem with all the coincidences, mostly because I don't think they were *played up* as coincidences as much as in Magnolia. You just have to accept them as part of the narrative structure. (Actually, come to think of it, part of the reason why I disliked the magic invisible bullet scene -- even though I really loved the first scene between the locksmith and daughter -- is that it smacked too much of "serendipity," like the raining frogs.) (And yes, I know Pulp Fiction had the exact same thing happen, but the fact that Jules "learned a lesson" from it -- is sort of meant to be funny, not all tearful "I shot a little girl! But it's okay!" babble!) (Also if Mr. Shopkeeper supposedly can't read English, how does he find where the locksmith lives? All he has is the bill with his name, right? His home address wouldn't be on there, would it?)

It's not that I reject the film's premise; but Haggis' method of dramatizing them was as reductive and offensive as the racist epithets his characters spew.

Haggis' doggedness does suit a few of the performances. I was quite taken with Cheadle and Newton, yet I did wonder when Brandon Fraser (like Dennis Quaid, a decent, underrated actor; reminds me of Joel McCrea) was gonna be introduced to the rest of the cast.

I sat behind a whole row of teenage girls who were there to see "the Ludacris movie". They squealed like pigs at the slaughter when he got whaled on by Terrence Howard.

he looked it up in the phone book, because obviously there aren't all that many people named "juan vasquez" (or whatever run of the mill latino name they gave his character) in the valley.

the coincidences didn't bother me half as much as the portentous, overwrought style and the whole emotional pornography aspect which was really at amazingly high levels for the last 30 minutes. also all the token "redemptive" conclusions to the various plot threads.

(a) sandra bullock falling down the stairs (overhead shot of her splayed across the steps in her booties)

(b) "oh no! the dead kid is DON CHEADLE'S BROTHER"

moments. also when the iranian woman passes in the background at the morgue.

not that we didn't see this coming like an hour before....

also did anyone else get a sense that there may have been a brendan-fraser-having-an-affair-with-his-black-assistant subplot that was excised?

(I laughed at the vanload of Cambodian immgigrants. So did one other guys at directly behind me. The rest of the audience (smug Berkeley types) were silent.

Definitely. There was that weird scene when he gets in the elevator and leaves her behind, and the camera lingers...

And Ludacris gave him a handful of AMERICAN MONEY to stare at!

http://www.newyorker.com/critics/cinema/?050502crci_cinema

"Paul Haggis, the Oscar nominee for Million Dollar Baby is not "most writers." With his brilliant new script for Crash, the best film about race since Do the Right Thing"

And this is a close personal friend, Jaymc?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0434139/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416818/

I do not understand adam

adam, did you read the new yorker article on Miyazaki?

xp - yes, it says he has a theme park. Neat!

http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/pfa_programs/ghibli/index.html

I don't know what the key to liking Paul Haggis films is.

xp gygax, it is the PFA darling, no dubbing here

This other one had nothing.

the dialogue was unnatural. the only reason people would talk that way is to convey some hackneyed "insight" about race, in a trite "message" film. i also thought the ryan philippe good cop's switch to "shoot first, ask questions later" hot-headedness was too abrupt, and unlikely. also a major thumbs-down for the sandra bullock subplot. they needed a resolution of some sort for each character, and hers was particularly feeble.

even in a film about race, i don't think *every* piece of dialogue has to be so race-centric or racially charged or whatever - maybe it would be better for these frank admissions about race to happen amid different subjects/themes?

his climactic and redemptive speech about the girl being an angel is in (practically flawless) English.

Haha, so true.

I can't remember the music, except that when the title theme was running M (from the other room) asked me if I had turned on a video game instead of the movie.

if he'd cast Charlie Sheen instead of Matt Dillon and stuck some gags in, it could've passed as a new Hot Shots film. and would've been miles better.

as for the score...Stereophonics. need anyone say more?

You've got be fucking kidding!!!!!

(This movie has only rotted in my memory.)

Mr. Haggis is eager to show the complexities of his many characters, which means that each one will show exactly two sides. A racist white police officer will turn out to be physically courageous and devoted to his ailing father; his sensitive white partner will engage in some deadly racial profiling; a young black man who sees racial profiling everywhere will turn out to be a carjacker; a wealthy, mild-mannered black man will pull out a gun and start screaming. No one is innocent. There's good and bad in everyone. (The exception is Mr. Pena's character, a Mexican-American locksmith who is an island of quiet decency in a sea of howling prejudice and hypocrisy).

That these bromides count as insights may say more about the state of the American civic conversation than about Mr. Haggis's limitations as a storyteller...

In defense of the year's 'worst movie'

One reason I will never see this movie: It did not occur to many of its viewers that "Crash" was a "liberal" or for that matter a "conservative" film, as indeed it is neither: It is a series of stories in which people behave as they might and do and will, and we are invited to learn from the results.

Whoever wrote about the "'do you see?!' factor" upthread is OTM and in diametric opposition of Eberg's clame.

Nonstop sledgehammer ironies + Grand Canyon-style liberal racism (x3) = worst Best Picture nominee ever?

But maybe "Casino Royale" will be his "Showgirls"....

I've never seen an extra on a DVD like Haggis' "introduction" to Crash. It lasts about 30 seconds; he's looking very smug in a projection room, and describes the film as "a passion piece." If I'd seen it first, I probably would've skipped the feature.

http://mcsweeneys.net/2006/2/6lloyd.html

i accidentally grabbed the fullscreen version of this out of a cheap used bin the other day :(

Isn't the way Ludacris and Larenz Tate play the "We just hit a Chinaman" scene amazing? It's like an outtake from "Fresh Prince" or "Charles in Charge."

oh well. im going to put hotel rwanda in now. getting a don cheadle daily double tonite

There is absolutely no call for that. You've gone too far this time.

I joined my grandfather and father in time for the whole Dillon/Newton "fellatio/molesting" scene and left when I saw Cheadle telling his mom that he was on top of a white girl having sex. Awkward.

and did they all change/grow for the better as people? i didn't get that at all!

Still it was probably better than the half-hour of Million Dollar Baby I forced myself to watch.

Only if it was the last half-hour of MDB (which is more like a prequel to Crash the more I think about it).

Seitz's lengthy diatribe on the pure evil that a Best Picture win would do:

http://mattzollerseitz.blogspot.com/2006/02/anything-but-this.html

...but per this NY Times story, it might be awesome if it won and the 'unrecognized producers' rushed the stage, using slurs, shooting blanks, changing their dads' catheters, stampeding Chinamen, etc.

'Crash' Producers Clash Loudly Over Credit and Payment
By SHARON WAXMAN

LOS ANGELES, March 1 - On the eve of this weekend's Academy Awards, a bare-knuckled fight has broken out among the producers of one of the leading Oscar-nominated movies, "Crash," over two of the things Hollywood cares about most: money and credit.

Even as the last Oscar ballots were being cast late Tuesday, Cathy Schulman, a producer of "Crash," filed a lawsuit that accused Bob Yari, her fellow producer and former partner, of acting from "greed and ego" in failing to pay at least $2 million in producing fees to her and her partner, the film's executive producer Tom Nunan. Mr. Yari had earlier sued the pair, claiming in January that they had taken funds owed to their joint production company, Bull's Eye Entertainment.

And on Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Yari, who put together the $7 million in financing for "Crash," took the unusual step of suing the Producers Guild of America and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for "wrongful denial of fair procedure," over having been denied credit for "Crash" in a secret arbitration.

"In at least one crucial respect - the designation of award nominees for motion picture producers - the processes are neither honest nor fair," Mr. Yari's lawsuit alleged.

Mr. Yari was denied a producer credit in an arbitration by the guild in December, and denied again after appeals to the guild and the academy , which awards the Oscars. As a result, he will not take home a statue if "Crash" wins best picture on March 5.

Ms. Schulman and Paul Haggis, a co-writer and the director of "Crash," are the only producers eligible for the prize, though the film lists six producers in its credits.

Mr. Yari's lawsuit is the strongest challenge yet to rules instituted since 1999 at the academy that limit to three the number of producers that can be eligible for the Oscar. The rule was an attempt to rein in expanding producer credits on Hollywood movies; this year the academy decided to allow the guild to determine producing credits when they were in dispute.

Mr. Yari's essential complaint was that all the arbitrations, including the appeals, were held in secret, and no reasons were given for the decisions.

An academy spokesperson could not be reached for comment about the lawsuit. But Vance Van Petten, the executive director of the producer's guild, issued a statement saying, "We have every confidence in the fairness of our procedures, and look forward to the court upholding our process."

Meanwhile, Tuesday's legal complaint by Ms. Schulman and Mr. Nunan used strongly personal language regarding Mr. Yari. It denounced what it called the "squalor of Yari's ugly behavior" and claimed that the producer, a former successful real-estate developer who created a Hollywood company in recent years, acted like "an impetuous child" toward Ms. Schulman after being denied producer credit. The complaint said that Mr. Yari's lawsuit was, in effect, retaliation for losing the producer credit in arbitration.

Mr. Yari responded, "This lawsuit is a shameful misrepresentation of the facts concerning my partnership with Ms. Schulman and Mr. Nunan." He said that the lawsuit reinforced a pattern by Ms. Schulman of "deceitful and litigious behavior."

A lawyer for Mr. Yari, Neil Sacker, who is also a defendant in Ms. Schulman's lawsuit, denied that Mr. Yari's suit was retaliation.

Because the budget on "Crash" was so small, many of the principal people involved - including the producers, the writers and the director - took no money during the production of the film, deferring fees until the film saw a profit. As is often the case with low-budget films, the principals also had deals to participate in the profits.

Although "Crash" was filmed two years ago and has taken in $83 million at the box office worldwide plus millions more in home video and DVD sales, Ms. Shulman's lawsuit alleges that Mr. Yari has not shown her or Mr. Nunan any profit-and-loss statements and has not paid basic producing fees or profit participation. But Mr. Sacker said that Ms. Schulman and Mr. Nunan had been paid salaries as partners in Bull's Eye Entertainment, and that their fees for producing "Crash" were not meant to be paid until all the overhead costs for Bull's Eye had been recouped.

"Most producers are not paid a salary," Mr. Sacker said. "She was being paid a salary. Her fees were paid against her salary and overhead."

Melvin Avanzado, the lawyer for Ms. Schulman, disputed that. "He's recouped everything several times over," he said. "There's been four movies on which there has been financing in which he has recouped. We just can't tell how many times he's recouped because he hasn't given us an accounting."

Other producers on the film declined to comment on the dispute, or on the question of their being paid by Mr. Yari.

".'Crash' has been a great thing in my life, and I expect everyone to act honorably," said Robert Moresco, a co-writer with Mr. Haggis who is nominated for the best-screenplay Oscar. Mr. Haggis could not be reached for comment.

"Crash," a multicharacter story about racial tension in Los Angeles told through varying car incidents, is nominated for six Academy Awards: best picture, director, screenplay, supporting actor (Matt Dillon), original music and editing. The film, which was made independently and acquired for domestic distribution by Lionsgate, became an unexpected hit and has been showered with nominations throughout the Hollywood awards season.

On Wednesday Mr. Yari also took out full-page advertisements in Hollywood's trade papers with a ringing call to uphold justice and due process - or at least a show-business version - by abolishing the secret panels that award credit for best picture.

In his open letter to the academy, published in The Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety on Wednesday, Mr. Yari compared his speaking out against the arbitration process to Edward R. Murrow's standing up to Senator Joseph R. McCarthy's authoritarianism, as depicted in one of the other best-picture nominees, "Good Night, and Good Luck."

"Murrow reported on and exposed a dark period in our country's history, when accusations and hearsay alone were enough to condemn," Mr. Yari wrote. "Unfortunately, the lessons learned then seem to be forgotten now."

The lawsuits have cast a pall over celebrations scheduled for the next several days, including a gala dinner given by Lionsgate on Friday and the Independent Spirit Awards on Saturday. And there was a fitting, if unfortunate, footnote to the dramatic tension rising around the film: in the midst of it all, Mr. Yari's publicist, Lynda Dorf, was involved in a minor car crash on Wednesday. There were no reported injuries.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Unfortunately it was.

note: i do not like this movie, i do not see it as pure evil tho.

I disagee, and the Norton mirror thing is much more honest, partly cuz the character turns it on himself, the real source of his venom. And cuz Paul Haggis makes Spike Lee look like Bresson.

I think the enthusiasm stems from the fact that there's so rarely such a strong consensus over a movie on ILX. Though I, for one, hardly think I'm just getting carried away. This is quite possibly the very worst movie I've ever seen in a theater. That includes Batman & Robin.

Lee is perceptive about racism in people we wouldn't necessarily call racists in Do the Right Thing, and even Jungle Fever.

whaaaa? no WAY man! they get out the van and they look totally terrified and lost and dazed and "what fresh hell is this?"

Considering what movie they're in, I want so badly to believe you...

Of late, the biggest star always wins Best Song, even if that didn't work in the "9 to 5" era.

I would like to see PSH do the sequel, Disco Truman, with Mario Cantone as Liza Minnelli.

I'd rank them thusly:

Capote
Brokeback Mountain
Munich
Good Night, Good Luck
(I wouldn't even include Crash)

Munich
GN, & GL
Crash
Brokeback Mountain
Capote

xp

Yeah I was about to say, you are kidding, right? Ang Lee's not a particularly visually exciting director though. I don't think anyone would dispute that. But to be fair it's really not his bag. He's definitely an actor's director.

Oscars bring out the best in people.

Not a virtuoso shot, I'll grant you, but hardly static, and most expressive.

I mean, Capote and Brokeback are "unexciting" films and don't rile you like Munich does, but in that they're not charmless.

??? !!!

With the possible exception of Eminem two years ago -- if one considers him a "bigger star" than U2 -- this is just about completely wrong.

Spielberg and his collaborators actually WRESTLE WITH a socially timely issue, in a way that's relevant to me every time I get on the F train every day and hope to get off. When you tell your grandchildren that you were indifferent or worse to Munich when you first saw it, they roll their eyes in amazement! (well, OK, they obviously won't care about a 40-year-old movie, but you get me.)

Heath Ledger's impromptu "Honey, I'm homo!" assfuck; the reunion scene that includes one of the cinema's least believable same-sex kisses; and Jake Gyllenhaal's sexual encounter in Mexico, bloodlessly portrayed as a zombified swagger into an engulfing abyss. Clearly Ang Lee—the pan-cultural Ron Howard—hasn't an honest boner in his body.

Dream on.

Will Jon Stewart dare do to some kind of Crash racial-cauldron joke? Maybe just a clip of him hugging his maid.

is "pan-cultural" the new way to say "not white"?

I did see Tony Takitani last night btw. Really quite good.

I have to say I liked Splash and Apollo 13 more than BBM, tho nowhere as much as Eat Drink.

I dunno. If so, it was probably the only way not included as dialogue in the script for Crash.

So will there be a Crash montage playing on the stage's screen(s) while the Sub-Enya Song is being performed?

http://www.mnfilmarts.org/oakstreet/calendar.php

All shows playing at Oak Street Cinema
Friday, March 03 - Thursday, March 09
Crash
5:15pm & 9:30pm

because he's chinesea

ang lee

Get one Bresson, dude!!

"do I look like I want to be on the discovery channel?" AARRRGGGGH
"you want to jeopardize both of our careers or admit to having a problem of a personal nature?" ARRRRRRRUUUGGGHH
"my father's janitorial business was wiped out by affirmative action" UUURRRRKKKK

The reason The Latinos and The Persians aren't explicitly involved with the others in any way is because they're too much like actual real people with normal problems instead of Law & Order Racial Victims Unit problems. Also Persian Angry Man can't speak a Meaningful Paragraph in English, so obviously there's no way for him to interact with another character as glib and opinionated and well-spoken as, say, Luda.

BTW the only way we know Matt Dillon's character is a RACIST and not just a LECHER is the fact that he has that convo on the phone with Shaniqua The Customer Service Problem Child right before he does Bad Things. So I suppose we have to assume that Phillippe has heard him talk racist shit before, as well. Otherwise I just get the idea that Matt Dillon is mostly a prick of the general-purpose sort.

As an ensemble piece it's better than Caddyshack. Though, as with Caddyshack, I have trouble detecting a clear lesson here amidst the muddle. Besides, of course, "Buy Blanks."

I think I'd even take A Beautiful Mind (x3) over Crash (x1).

Though anyway surprise I think most of the people on this thread are completely fucking insane!

Oh though worst acting/dialog/etc in the film: Ludacris by far. WTF? Why would Don Cheadle's Brother even hang out with him? Sandra Bullock actually kind of pulled off her character because I can totally believe her as a horrible political wife bitch, she looks and sounds the part. Cringiest part of the movie: the very beginning when Jennifer Esposito suddenly just starts ranting anti-Asian slurs at that poor Korean woman. It was totally out of character for anything else she did in the entire movie and didn't make a lick of sense.

Larenz Tate was hanging out with Ludacris because he (Larenz) was an idiot. I was with Luda right up until the "There you go, Chinaman" bit, at which point I was also a little like "OK movie!" but overall I really, really liked it (and vehemently disagree that the movie needed to focus on/flesh out Dillon/Newton/Howard because fuck a redemption movie in the ear).

1) when the little girl got shot
2) when the little girl didn't get shot

Tom, yr OTM cept it's waaaay worse than all those other Best Pics but for maybe A Beautiful Mind, which I haven't seen.

Ludacris did what he could with the ludacris everything.

Ally & Tom are both racist, homosexual-exclusive white men.

Is it because two of the black characters are actually criminals, is that why so many white dweebs have a problem with this film? Hint: Brendan Fraser is playing you in the film.

It means at least DMD was set in the '40s and '50s, accurately reflected its time, and featured two fine actors playing plausible people.

One can endlessly fill in the blank of "Crash is _________ with a lobotomy." Do the Right Thing, Short Cuts (you know, the original version of Magnolia), any number of Charles Burnett films (the best black American filmmaker 99% of Americans will never know), etc.

Because at the end of the day "Caddyshack" is one the prototypes for Rob Schneider's and David Spade's film careers?

I think we can at least take it back to Nashville, if not Grand Hotel.

XPOST!!!

Not goin there, but at least if Munich had won Best Picture you'd have dutifully rented that.

i was just thinking about this myself! If you switched Ice Cube and Ludacris the actors in Crash would be uniformly superior. But Crash's message was rather muffled while Higher Learning had the word THINK in big letters at the end.

Everybody also seems to be imagining some kind of big clear moral message here, which I think is basically sticking your own white guilt into the notches where it fits, and why the actual minorities on this thread don't agree with any of you.

Only because Peter Jackson dragged out LOTR for 9 hours, you mean.
Oh wait, Los Angeles can NEVER be used as a milieu for fantastical storytelling.

I think the "clear moral message" in the movie is "we are not as enlightened as we think we are", which makes criticisms that follow the "racism looks like THIS therefore I can ignore this movie because I don't do THIS" line kind of hysterically myopic and willfully non-analytical to me.

(xpost: Haha oops)

LOTR is a plausible story about what life is like for elves, for all I know.

x-post the only reason we see Matt Dillon's dad is so we can see that he hurts, that his "general-pupose prick" status has some sympathetic inspiration.

We won't even get into the sidebar that there is a point to making even characters like Matt Dillon's scuzbag kind of sympathetic, because that's just, like, beyond or something here?

What is the boggling-at-acute-lack-of-self-preservation emoticon?

See if the movie ACTUALLY had characters which most viewers of the film identified with I could at least totally get behind that message (despite thinking the film is still poorly made.) Unfortunately, I think the message of the movie is far closer to "THEY are not as enlightened as they think they are".

[how] illustrating that both the White Cop and the Black Detective have elderly parents that need taking care of is explaining why either of them is racist

It doesn't. It's clearly meant to humanize Dillon tho, in the most shameless way possible (and makes the audience, at a minimum, 'see his point' in his Affirmative Action Destroyed My Nonracist Dad speech).

See the MZ Seitz blog way upthread -- bigots of all stripes no longer scream their biases at the top of their lungs in an American megalopolis night and day like they just stepped out of Joe or "All in the Family." Even as a stylistic choice, it's an anachronism by at least 30 years.

Sandra Bullock! (at least Angelinos would).

um xpost bigots of all stripes no longer scream their biases at the top of their lungs in an American megalopolis night and day like they just stepped out of Joe or "All in the Family."

This is completely untrue?

If it were, Tom's pal saying "Negro" in Ben's Chili Bowl wouldn't have blown Dan's mind, now would it? And that's mild next to the level of verbalized venom in the movie.

the scenes of him dealing with his dad's health issues happen before the car rescue, and you're right that it was gratuitous.

Also Tom you missed a step re: Don Cheadle's mother and it starts with her not being senile...

xpost Morbius you live in NYC and you're saying this with a straight face? The reason it's blowing Dan's mind is because, most likely unlike you, he has actually been to Ben's Chilli Bowl, which is a slightly different environ than, say, Jennifer Esposito's giant anti-Asian accident rant in the middle of a highway surrounded by fellow police officers.

This makes sense only if you're watching the film with the attitude of "I am better than the characters in this movie," in which case you weren't going to get anything out of the movie anyway because you've moved past that.

xpost: Anthony, reducing the number of characters completely eviscerates any point the movie has! The entire point of the movie is that this is NOT an isolated character study that can be waved away as being exceptional; it is a commonplace fact of American life that I would say has been exaggerated for dramatic effect. Your argument is almost akin to say that Swift's "A Modest Proposal" would have been much more effective and less ludicrous if he'd suggested growing more fruits and vegetables for the hungry poor as opposed to advising that they be fed to the rich.

Yes, OTM. But the problem with your statement is that this hasn't been a commonplace facet of American life since 1975, as evidenced earlier by a post on some blog.

DING, DING, DING.

It's possible that the point would be lost if there were fewer characters (though personally I think that having it "exaggerated for dramatic effect" to such a ludicrous extent nullifies the power of the "commonplace fact" plenty), but it would have made for a more emotionally effective film to have three fleshed-out characters whose lives intersect in a revealing way than 16 stick figures stuck in a game of chutes & ladders run by a mediocre screenwriter.

I don't think it's as much "better" as it is "like". I think it's difficult for me to imagine most people watching this film recognized their own behaviors reflected on screen and that makes it very easy to distance oneself from them.

Yeah, otm. I mean, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, for all its perversities, is a better film for this reason.

Alex only if you imagine most people watching this film to be white college graduates. And in this movie there are exactly two, maybe three characters who fit that mold, if I'm remembering correctly.

Oh you first, man of the world.

Where's that Nick Sylvester line about making up quotes?

the horseshit you've been spewing about how "done" racism is all over this thread

Never wrote such a thing.

Crash doesn't address this excruciating, paradoxical behavior (unless you count Sandra Bullock's Ms Daisy moment with her maid, which I don't).

Um. About twelve years ago, I lived in Bedford Hts., a mostly-black suburb of Cleveland. My wife and I were frequently treated to a downstairs neighbor who would walk around the parking lot, the hallways and his balcony screaming, "I hate white people!" Similar things happened when we lived on the near West Side of town, from both black and Hispanic neighbors. And for all its problems, I don't believe Cleveland is some particularly benighted cesspool of poor race relations that L.A. is not.

I think that if you're going to ironically trade on stereotypes as a form of humor (and there isn't a single person on this thread who doesn't have a post in the ILE database that doesn't do this) and you can't imagine that there are people out there who do NOT trade on stereotypes in an ironic manner, you are a fool. If you have never SEEN someone non-ironically trade on stereotypes, you are sheltered.

(xpost: Alfred makes another good point; although I think the Ryan Phillipe character was supposed to fill this role, he doesn't really do so successfully, mostly because the chain of events is inverted from the way you would expect that type of behavior to be presented.)

xpost

His character and what he does are perfect examples of how the movie could have been improved by whittling away the more egregious talking heads and/or streamlining the plot. The irony of shooting what's-his-name at the end of the movie would have registered much more insidiously had Haggis not already bludgeoned us with a half-dozen other examples.

the one problem people are ignoring here is that i watch EVERY movie with an attitude that i am better than the characters therein.

i also read every ilx thread the same way, btw.

xpost ha ha!

http://www.nypress.com/18/20/film/ArmondWhite2.cfm

He's OTM.

No one did this.

blount, I can only assume that's not an Amos & Andy ref. YOU IS DA STUCKEE!

Shakey, this is the black hole of sociological analysis we got right here.

I'm sorry, but Ghost World has more to say that Todd Fucking Solodnz. Are we there yet?

Uh, not the ones on this thread, though.

which should tell you that race ain't the deciding factor.

They are legitimate in terms of being port of an actual human being's life experience and a necessary part of how we need to discuss race issues in this country, as opposed to making the people whose minds we are trying to change/educate feel condescended towards, ignored and belittled, thus further entrenching them in their positions as part of a defense mechanism.

uh, aren't these all American movies, and primarily mainstream, or at least big indie ones, at that? (there's only a few I'm not familiar with)

Was this when he extolled the "superior probings into race" of those arthouse obscurities Amistad, Beloved, Gentleman's Agreement and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

Eric, see why I didn't link White (who isn't, btw).

The only L.A. resident I know is a 60something guy, raised a New York Jew, who was in the film, music and TV bizzes for decades. He quit the music branch of the MPAA when they refused to disqualify a Stevie Wonder tune for Best Song in spite of evidence that it had been written years before. He says he saw Crash last year and it lifted him out of a depressive state. Make of that what you will.

Well, yes, being as Dan and I are technically of two different races I think we knew that already.

? I could never play a bludgeoner.

I stopped reading White's review after this point.

Suggestions:

* Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
* Try different keywords.
* Try more general keywords.
* Try fewer keywords.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

at least I'm not the one arguing that making generalizations based on anecdotes is legitimate. I don't even know what you're referring to with that remark, as I said no such thing... but whatever I ARE A RACIST for not liking a shittily made film incapable of properly addressing its subject. check.

"If you want to change someone's mind, you have to understand their perspective" "Personal experience justifies racism".

"Even though the situations in 'Crash' are exaggerated for dramatic effect, it is foolish to say that people don't ever think and act that way" "Overt racism is a worse problem than subtle racism"

Etc etc etc I'm not speaking Farsi here!

I'm sure we can all come up with anecdotal evidence from either side (obnoxiously obvious instances of racism vs. more subtle ones)

jeez so I guess all those anecdotal stories racist people use to justify their own stereotypes are legitimate after all. Gosh, who knew.

I'm not sitting at your keyboard.

You're still an idiot and I've got a myriad of ways that I can waste time that will end up being more productive and enjoyable than speaking slowly enough for you to understand my point of view.

...? OMG YES ALL THESE STORIES OMG WTF WHAT A BUNCH OF IDIOTS! Seriously, what is the matter with you?

OTOH this is a thread where people linked to an Armond White article that is full of like basic "Pull up IMDB for fuck's sakes" errors throughout it and praised it so whatevs y'all.

1) Morbs says people aren't as overtly racist as they used to be
2) A bunch of people post personal anecdotes of people being overtly racist
3) I say that doesn't prove anything, as anecdotes can't be realiably used to extrapolate social trends.
4) Dan calls me a moron.

The end.

And this in a thread where someone (apparently seriously) posts a Larry Elder editorial.

You seem to be missing a key point.

Not that it matters, but I didn't exactly praise Armond's review, either. I just posted it because no one else had.

Shakey Mo and Morbius seem to think their anecdotes and experiences are worth more than mine, dan or Ally's anecdotes or experiences. So to break up the monotony I decided to show Shakey who is actually using "statistics" to illustrate trends regarding this film and how it relates to the world. I guess I was going over everyone's head with that one, so never you mind.

If you want something specific to "how do racists in LA behave" it'll take a lot of work and research to try and answer that particular question (tho obviously finding a lot of info about community relations and corrupt cops in LA would probably be relatively easy - and I imagine there are more reputable sources than Larry Elder)

Dude, if you make a wholly unbelievable film where every scene deals with racism, I assume you have a purpose.
-- Zwan

Because THAT way the white folx in-tha-kno will understand that you are making a pointed, clever statement about race instead of insulting their intelligence with silly parables about how hard it is to excuse human fallibility while having zero tolerance for prejudice and bigotry.
-- TOMBOT (if.only.wayne.brad...), March 20th, 2006 3:19 PM.

"true dat"

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109842/

Shanghai Noon and Shanghai Knights kick ass BTW. I need to go buy the twofer of those.

one's definitely shorter, less pretentious and more entertaining though.

He's perfectly cast in TQA. He's also great as Ian McKellan's studmuffin foy in Gods & Monsters. Any actor who can have fun with his amiable cute lunkheadedness deserves watching in my book.

(1) the reductive formal neatness to the screenplay, the methodical doubling of traits, the way all the pieces had to fit together to form a kind of closed circle of violence/recrimination/redemption. --the absence of anything that seemed genuinely strange or unusual or surprising in the narrative construction. the way that each "coincidence"--each connection--was underlined by a hectoring stylistic choice (see #2).

(2) the banal way film style was deployed. repetitive obvious reaction shots, "meaningful" push ins and crane shots at ends of scenes. the use of music cues.

a lot of this was very stylish and professionally done in that sort of soderberghy psuedo-documentary, over-art-directed, telephoto-lens mode but it wasn't stylistically imaginative at all, quite the opposite. i thought it was incredibly corny.

some of the speeches were ok, i thought. i liked the film well enough for about 30 minutes until i began to see that it wasn't going to do anything exciting or surprising or anything to keep me from wanting to doze off really.

i don't think this reaction was overdetermined by my race or social position or whatever. just that i ask a lot of movies and this didn't deliver.

also all you guys need a little less testosterone--girls included.

"It's the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something."

"Why do these guys have to be black? No matter how we spin this thing, I'm either gonna lose the black vote or I'm gonna lose the law and order vote!"

That bit in the beginning where that woman says "One of us just lost our frame of reference". Plus that whole "You watch the Discovery Channel?" speech, and plenty more. Hackneyed to the max.

I don't know how any of the people upthread whose opinions I generally respect could have such a hardon for this film. It plays like some b-grade Hallmark movie!

-- gear

haha goddammit gear!

Shakey Mo and Morbius seem to think their anecdotes and experiences are worth more than mine

Hell no. My only point on that score is that every racist would have to be an over-the-top inyerface one to match the vision [sic] of this movie.

Sorry, Dave Chappelle's comedy -- based on the maybe 25 minutes of the show ever, plus his perf in Undercover Brother -- is more valid because of the attitude implicit in the jokes. It's the singer not the song, and the fact that comedy is automatically regarded as having 'no depth' ... well, that's the Motion Picture Academy in a nutshell.

Wish you were all in the Brooklyn bar where a gentile ILXor was called "Jewfro" last night by a middle-aged Latin drunk (who'd just gotten done screaming about "not eating kosher asshole"), or on the crowded F train Sunday where about ten black teens verbally harassed and yocked at every female they chose to, challenged only by a young white woman -- it was all way more insightful than arguing about a shrill, badly made melodrama. Which I'm now done talking about too, as I don't know who Wayne Brady or most of the other cultural refs being made in this thread are.

Yes, you're right. I wish you had said that, oh, 500 posts ago instead of reposting nonsense about how this type of behavior is out of date by 30 years.

you all seem to understand the argument this film is trying to advance, yet superfically reject it without engaging with it. race has always, and will always matter(maybe not the way some of you want it to). we should always unequivically reject any forms of discrimination or unequal treatment based on race, sex, sexual orientation, etc but we are fluid, complex beings. some people hold divergent, unpopular worldviews based on experiences they've had in life, they're class, they're race, they're sex and yet are still able to respect and accept other peoples differences. racism isn't a monolithic, static entity that some want to portray it as.

to reject a piece of art b/c you don't agree with its ideas or message is extremely shallow.

the liberal intellegentsia in this country(with all its pretense of tolerance and open-mindedness) has a reactionarily harmfull and paternal view of race relations. one of the main ideas that crash advances is a rejection of the attempt by a large chunk of society to demonize, blackball, and ruin a person that gives off the slightest hint that they might not share the same ivory tower, utopian worldview.

most of you are wealthy and extremely white, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that(my goal in life is to marry a wealthy, excessively older woman who will take care of me.) but it does naively color your perspective concerning race.

there are unfortunately a lot of people in this society who will attempt to silence competing ideas through name calling, blackballing, fabricating evidence, and knowingly distorting the truth. as a result, the political discourse in this country has become anemically superficial. some examples. andrew sullivan calling noam chomsky anti-american for his criticism of its policies, bill o reilly knowingly making up historical events to win an argument in front of his viewing audience(awesome bill). the blatent, astoundingly stupid smear tactic of calling any attempt to criticize the policies of israel anti-semitic.(they will always say the criticism is anti-semitic, but they will virtually never challenge the truthfulness of the statement.) the ass backwards attempt to morally blackmail the anti-war camp as not supporting our troops. ann coulter's being is nothing more than a liberal baiting shock jock. its unending.

closing the coordinates of debate and acceptable ideas stalls societal evolution/progression and highlights your ideology as being nothing more than elitist, close circled, toothless jerk off sessions. if it is a bad idea it will be defeated.

what is going to happen when a catastrophic event (god forbid) ruptures our society(or the world). will we be able to have an open an honest debate then, or will it be too late?

The latter.

I can't get past this paragraph.

Without doing a census, I suspect that's bullshit.

wow Tracer, sorry I was late for that performer. (Indians-WhiteSox Sunday?)

-- Dan Perry (djperr...), February 27th, 2003 1:45 PM. (Dan Perry)

"You think you know who you are. You have no idea." (but someone on ilx will tell you, and it won't be pretty)

BURN
Christmas 2007

Dolly Parton
Smokey Robinson
Andrew Lloyd Webber
Steven Spielberg
Zubin Mehta

(P.S. I don't have all movies -- I enjoyed Friends with Money the other day, even if it felt more like the pilot for a particularly funny HBO series.)

I'd be pleased if the other 4 Kennedy Center nominees threw Lloyd Webber out of the balcony. (well, he did write "I Don't Know How to Love Him.")

I do hope for your sake that you didn't REALLY hate the others. Would be kinda sad if you don't like any movies you watch.

I loved Crash.

Movies I've seen recently and particularly liked: Being There, Me and You and Everyone We Know, How to Get Ahead in Advertising, Primer, some Mandy Moore thing that was on TV

Movies I've seen recently and been indifferent to and/or uncompelled to finish watching: The New World, A Prairie Home Companion, The Seven Year Itch

My use of capitals there is an homage to the tone and delivery of the film itself.

Also I think a lot of trouble would have been saved had the saintly locksmith just been like "look, dude, walk back here and look at the door, it'll all make sense."

Jesus's worst parable.

must be why i didn't mind this film so much

nabisco, make sure you're never hired to punch up a script based on the Challenger disaster

But what it gives you is the lavish Hollywood treatment of broad gestures -- i.e., an almost dangerous misrepresentation of what racism is actually like. (To be honest, I think it takes a conservative's view of what discrimination and racism are like, and so it creeps me out that the film is considered socially liberal.*) The funny thing is that the writers seem to know this. They know damn well they'd be getting a closer shot at nitty-gritty racial dynamics if Matt Dillon just lightly, smugly felt up Thandie Newton, instead of practically fingering her. But they want Hollywood drama, so they make a compromise: they set up a whole second string of even more lavish, improbably occurrences in which each of those dynamics gets turned around and run from another angle. And I'll admit that this is a totally neat trick -- incredibly clever -- but the driving force behind it is that they want to eat their cake and have it, too: they want to make a big, simple, melodramatic Hollywood movie that can still claim to examine the subtle, complex, confusing dynamics of race. And I could maybe deal with the fact that that's such a giant aesthetic and artistic cop-out, but what I can't really brook is that it's such a huge moral cop-out, or that it insults people's intelligence (by wanting to make a film about the subtleties of racism, but having zero confidence that people could understand those things in any kind of subtle presentation). I felt terrically insulted by it.

[* In fact, I think Hollywood's overuse of standard "types" and clear-cut moral dilemmas -- good guys and bad guys, violence and comeuppance -- always creates a creepy mirror for conservative's views of the world.]

I call the thing a moral cop-out because it squashes that truth. By having Dillon go up the crotch, it suggests that everyday racism is still a matter of clear, broad injustices, one in which it's the power of the offending party that allows it to happen -- a world in which everyone knows and agrees what's right and wrong. (And so it scripts a second act to "complicate" this: aha, it's a job-minded black supervisor who declines to take action on this!) But if this movie is trying to look at modern racial dynamics, it's just skipped over the main thing that marks them -- the fact that we do not know what's right and wrong, the fact that we disagree about race and racism, the fact that (for instance) police do countless things now that communities argue and seethe about forever after, deeply divided on what race had to do with it.

So, it seems to me that the big thing you're objecting to is that Matt Dillon's character was a wholly unsympathetic caricature and his presence obliterated any useful point the movie could have. I thought the movie did a reasonable job of presenting the main characters involved in the overlapping as initial broad-brush archetypes that were granted more substance as the movie progressed. I also think that the complaint you raise about the movie painting all of the negative interactions between the characters as being explainable by racism is flat-out wrong. I think the ambiguity is definitely there in many instances, such as the scene between the Persian guy and the locksmith; from what I remember, thtat just starts out as one guy being unreasonable and shitty because he's a dickface and progresses from there. Race is involved in a lot of the tension but it isn't the underlying reason for all of it; many times it gets brought up as a scapegoat to excuse or rationalize someone's shitty behavior.

I didn't really go into this movie expecting hyper-realism or subtlety so I wasn't mad when I didn't really get it (although I guess the movie was more subtle about some things than people say it was, like for example the whole issue with the blank bullets). I really appreciated the movie as a narrative web; one area I think the movie did ultimately fail is that the discussion of racism it seems to spark is much more along the lines of "whatever, that's not REAL racism" as opposed to "how does racism tinge interactions between personalities already negatively inclined towards each other".

Random note: I think their aim with the Persian guy wasn't simply that he was being a dickface, but that he was essentially frightened and thus suspicious; he felt powerless and attacked enough to lash out in fright.

I really shouldn't hang all the reasons I didn't like this movie on its treatment of race, or anything along those lines -- my experience while actually watching it was just to think it was ridiclous and melodramatic. Like I said, there were a few scenes in the second half that got me past that (particularly the police stand-off), but for the most part I just couldn't buy into the drama; there was actual laughter and burying of heads in hands at that drippy obvious moment where of course the locksmith's daughter rushes out in slow motion. . . . It lost me on that sort of thing just as a matter of aesthetics. Characters seemed flat, plotting seemed over-engineered (sometimes successfully so, but mostly not in the fun way), drama seemed pompous, etc. (It's funny how its turning dynamics on their heads should have deepened the characters -- made them more three-dimensional -- but they still just felt to me like flat characters being trotted into more complicated dynamics.)

revive for Lou1s J@gger

You folks are talking about the one that was based on J.G. Ballard's book right? That movie was horrible compared to the book.

Um, no.

well this is just perfect.

gross

there is so much wrong in the world

GOD NO

Will there be a special guest victim every week?

i was rolling when that bitch fell down the stairs

how does one picket a television?

Fuck all of you, this will be awesome.

...Okay I can't even think that without cracking up and I liked the movie.

do you think it'll have a theme song?

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000002WYT.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

what if they accidentally adapt the cronenberg version??

probably something by sarah mclaughlan

Starring Crash Bandicoot!

i'd pay to watch a tv show where crash bandicoot has sex with a car on the la freeway. oh wait it's tv, it's free!! don't have to pay!!!

Starz isn't free, though.

it'll be funny if the "WHEN I WANT MOVIES I WANNA SEE STARZ!" channel does this without a single name actor.

Matt Dillon's probably not too busy, though.

Matt Dillon should play every part.

Yeah, this can only be saved by making it more like Norbit.

i'd rather watch a tv show based on the 1st Crash. but with more of a reality angle to it.
like dude that just got pulled into a buick by some horny chick he just meant has no idea he's a bout to go on a screaming deathride fuckfest off the edge of the Gardiner Expressway!

Crashfield

http://us.ent1.yimg.com/images.launch.yahoo.com/000/017/386/17386579.jpg

and Hillary Clinton as Villified White Bitch

The power of art:

A lawyer for a Swedish hip-hop artist accused of murdering a pedestrian in a sensational act of road rage invoked the movie “Crash” today in asking for a reduction in the performer’s $1-million bail.

In court papers, David Jassy’s attorney wrote that the fatal encounter in a Hollywood crosswalk was a “prime” example of the Academy Award-winning film’s “thesis ... that random interactions of diverse people in a City as frenetic as Los Angeles can lead to disastrous consequences.”

Police say Jassy, 34, punched, kicked and then ran over John Osnes, a 57-year-old jazz pianist, during the Nov. 23 incident. Witnesses told police that Osnes, who did not own a car and was a stickler for pedestrian rights, struck the front of Jassy’s SUV after it edged into the crosswalk.

In the filing, lawyer Donald Etra wrote that further investigation and forensic tests were required to determine the facts, but his summary of the alleged crime suggested Jassy may contend that Osnes played a more aggressive role than authorities have said. The lawyer labeled the incident a “fight” and said Osnes was “angry that his way was partially blocked” and had “pounded his fists on [Jassy’s] vehicle.”

Osnes was an inch taller than Jassy, according to jail and coroner’s records, but Jassy outweighed him by about 40 pounds. Jassy “has never been in trouble before, and, never in his wildest dreams did he ever think he would find himself in jail, especially for an offense as serious as this one,” his attorney wrote.

never in his wildest dreams did he ever think he would find himself in jail, especially for an offense as serious as this one

yeah maybe the time to reflect on that is BEFORE you intentionally run yr SUV over someone

plz don't let this lawyer see Slumdog Millionaire

Witnesses told police that Osnes, who did not own a car and was a stickler for pedestrian rights, struck the front of Jassy’s SUV after it edged into the crosswalk.

Sign number two that I have to stop doing stuff along these lines.

"a stickler for pedestrian rights"

"you have the right to get your ass run over by an SUV"

http://timescolumns.typepad.com/stothard/images/cellu11.jpg

I'M WALKIN' HERE!

agressive stickling

Yeah see does it make me a "stickler" to find it depressing that believing in basic pedestrian-safety traffic law makes someone a "stickler," as if these are unimportant rules only a nit-picker would care about?

Well no, but thinking that you can get away consequence-free with pounding on someone's car is something only idiots do.

I would never do that to the front of a car. I have however smacked the sides of cars that are passing. TRY AND TURN AROUND NOW FUCKER!

I imagine this will result in me getting shot instead of run over.

I have as well, but I knew it was a stupid thing to do. (I don't do it anymore.)

xp: lol