Apparently crappy film making about the Kennedy assasination ain’t enough. Now Oliver has to show us how great a dude Fidel Castro is.
First he makes Comandante for HBO, when Fidel rounds up 75 dissidents and throws them in jail…it just serves to highlight how ridiculous his hummer for Fidel turned out. So HBO tells him to do it again…and this time make it more credible, and we end up with Looking For Fidel…it has Hallmark After School Special written all over.
The interview he gives to Slate defies credulity. To see how prisoners are treated in Cuba, Stone interviews 8 eight of them.
Dressed in nice perfectly starched shirts.
In front of Castro. :rolleyes:
<snip>
Good frickin’ gravy. Stone makes Michael Moore look like a thoughtful cinematic genius.
Jesus, I was going to pit this myself. Oliver Stone, please seek therapy. I loved this quote (and by ‘loved’, I mean ‘was made sick by’):
And then he excuses Castro’s dictatorship because, well, we had that confusing 2000 presidential election, so really we shouldn’t criticize.
Oliver Stone, you are a deranged apologist for dictatorship. You sucked up to Castro like Marriane Faithful sucked up to the Rolling Stones. You fucking child.
For a moment there I thought the US had allowed visits to Guantanamo but I see it is the Cubans who are allowing prisoners to be interviewed. Oh well. Maybe the USA will take notes and follow suit some day.
I didn’t watch the Stone film, but I read somewhere that he made two films that were meant to be companions to each other – the first one is a softer-than-usual personal look at Castro himself, and the second is a more critical look at Castro’s government.
I think a lot of people outside the United States have a hard time “getting” the American attitude toward Cuba, in the light of friendly relationships between the U.S. and some governments which register far, far higher on the Index of Evil.
As for transparency about Cuban prisons, it’s fun to look at these two recent articles side-by-each.
If by “allowing prisoners to be interviewed”…you mean setting up a sham interview session, trooping out hand picked prisoners to be “interviewed” in front of someone who will easily decide whether they live or die the next day…Then sure, I guess that’s something to aspire to.
If you really think that what happened with Stone was an “interview”, I’m sure you’d fit in swimmingly with the Stone Production Team.
Castro is a herothat stood up against US agression when they tried to take over Cuba for the second time during the Bay of Pigs. The US has a habit of trying to conquor Cuba and other countries and should stop. Anyone who stands up to the US and it’s agressive policies should be called a hero and statues should be made in their honor.
You are using the word “allowing” to suggest that Castro is “allowing” something to happen.
I doubt he is “allowing” anything. He’s parading some prisoners in front of a “friendly” camera crew and (I suspect) offering one hell of an incentive (positive or negative) for them to be “interviewed”.
About ten years ago I reviewed a “baby video” for Movieline, and I viewed it with an actual baby of my acquaintance. I wrote, “Marisa reacted to this video the same way I do to Oliver Stone movies: she cried for awhile and then fell asleep.”
We got a letter from Oliver Stone’s “people” saying he was not amused and to please lay off. Hee!
"Who was the first to conquer space?
It’s incontrovertible
That the first to conquer living space
Is Castro Convertible
Who conquers space with fine design?
Who saves you money all the time?
Who’s tops in the convertible line?
Castro Convertible!
This started going through my head thanks to this thread, so I decided that someone else should suffer too.
I’ve never liked Oliver Stone, on a personal level, although I never had a good reason not to. (I mean, aside from his movies.) Now I’ve got an entirely legitimate reason to hate the sumbitch. Isn’t it wonderful when people you dislike live down to your expectations?
A guy I knew in high school got to visit Cuba briefly when his mom attended a professional conference there. He completely fell for it. EVERYTHING. Came back talking about how it was a worker’s paradise and what a great leader Fidel was.
Oliver Stone, however, is not a 15-year-old suburban kid, so I’m definitely pretty confused here.
That is a non argument. Or do you dispute any of my assertions? I say the US is not doing the right thing in Guantanamo. You can agree or disagree but since the best you can do is attack me personally I take it you have no arguments.
If you read my first post you will see it was just a BTW comment which seems a propos when we are (rightly) condemning human rights abuses in Cuba.
At any rate and regarding Oliver Stone, I just avoid his movies as they do not interest me. I understand some people might like his fantasies but what I don’t understand are those who take his movies for documentaries.