December 30, 2011

iSteviest movies of 2011

It's always fun to try to guess who is influenced by your stuff, whether directly or indirectly. In 2011 movies, If I had to guess, I'd look to the screenplays of three of the more interesting movies of the summer: Rise of the Planet of the ApesX-Men: First Class, and Bad Teacher. (By the way, all three made at least $100 million at the domestic box office.) And maybe a little bit toward two fine indie films: The Guard and Win Win

On the other hand, even I can't see much of my influence on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but, who knows? 

30 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's...arrogant. And hilariously mistaken about your relative importance.

Wes said...

My vote is for Planet of the Apes. It actually had an important message with HBD overtones (even thought I doubt the movie makers meant for it to).

Anonymous said...

You're warm wrt G w DT, but it's an older, slightly related film I watched recently that I'd swear was paying homage to HBD thought.

Of course lately, Sailer, no one's gonna be incorporating your memes. Are you ill?

Anonymous said...

Steve, "Bad Teacher" didn't make $100M in domestic box office. It bombed.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1284575/

Anonymous said...

Most critics compile ten best list. Sailer comes up with isteviest list.
But given most movie are Ebertian, I doubt if Sailer could list ten.

Anonymous said...

Project Nim?

Moneyball?

Anonymous said...

Descendants?

Anon87 said...

I'm not much for overblown CGI cartoons, so I skipped Apes and X-Men. I did watch Bad Teacher based on your recommendation, and it wasn't as horrible as I expected. It was worth it to see watch the Justin Timberlake SWPL teacher embarrass himself.

The Guard I thought was very entertaining and underrated. I've always been a fan of Cheadle and the bloody shootouts were a huge bonus. I recommend this one to as many people as I can.

Win Win baffled me. Why this was getting good reviews when it was unintentionally bad is beyond me. It didn't have any of the annoying indie quirk to it, but instead it just seemed cliche and sub-television movie quality.

I'm still trying to catch up on 2011 releases. Take Shelter, War Horse (I'll trade off the expected sappiness for horrors-of-WWI scenes), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Oldman!), Midnight in Paris, Melancholia, Carnage, Martha Marcy May Marlene, and Into the Abyss are all on my list.

Favorites this year are Moneyball, Tree of Life, and Drive. Bellflower was a nice surprise that shows directorial potential. Knuckle was an interesting look into never-ending family feuds among bare knuckle Irish fighters. Not many good comedies this year. Cedar Rapids maybe?

Overrated: 13 Assassins (I love Miike, but if I hate CGI in American films, the stampede of poorly done bovine kills any drama for me) and I Saw the Devil (technically very well done and some shocking violence, but a bit ridiculous. I await the inevitable Nicholas Cage remake).

Rubber is worth seeing just to say you've seen a killer tire movie.

ELVISNIXON.com said...

Obama, AIDS and the Planet of the Apes
There is a very strange series of connections regarding the subtext of the blockbuster Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Steve Sailer convincingly argues that the film is actually metaphor for AIDS.

AIDS was originally spread by a "gay" flight attendant whose transcontinental jaunts spread the disease worldwide instead of allowing it to be isolated to areas like Fire Island or the Castro District in San Francisco.

Oddly, the links all have a simian intersection. I dub this the Lancelot Link with reference to the early 1970's Saturday morning children's series that featured live chimpanzees (Lancelot, voiced by Walter Matthau) acting out James Bond/Cold War era spy skits.

James Franco gained Hollywood gravitas as a direct consequence of his willingness to portray a homosexual partner of Harvey Milk in Sean Penn's Academy Award winning Milk.

Prior to his role in Milk, Franco had been a sort of poor man's Heath Ledger (who also gained respect for playing a homosexual in Brokeback Mountain) and a low-level comedic actor usually cast as a pot-head in films like Pineapple Express.

The irony is that Franco's biggest payday is in the Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a film that posits the end of human civilization as a consequence of a commercial airline pilot transmitting a disease worldwide via his job. This mirrors the real life story of "Patient Zero" --a homosexual male flight attendant who managed to spread HIV/AIDS all over the globe as a consequence of his wanton lifestyle

Ironic link number #2 is the Lancelot Link, i.e. the monkey connection. Many believe HIV/AIDS came from human sexual contact (bestiality) between chimps and people. As inconceivable as that may be, consider the recent case of an illegal alien from Mexico, Tomas Bautista who reportedly came home drunk and sexually assaulted a Chihuahua in his backyard.

A "gay" man sodomizes a monkey and AIDS spreads around the world. AIDS is transmitted worldwide via Patient Zero. The favored lab animal for experimenting for HIV/AIDS cures? The chimp.


Nim Chimpsky, the monkey in the documentary Project Nim was spared being used as such an experiment because of his (relative) fame as the lab animal that would "prove" that language was learned and not innate (contra linguist Noam Chomsky)

Chimpsky is a sort of Caesar without the IQ drugs. He could only go so far without external forces modifying his nature.

What that leaves us is the existential question for the role of President Obama. Is it not his duty to protect US citizens? Rise of Planet of the Apes posits man's downfall due to a highly contagious disease - that disease mirrors HIV/AIDS in its monkey linkage and consequences. Should there be a quarantine of those known to be infected from entering our country?

There was. Obama removed it

Should the group that is overwhelmingly known to be infected by the fatal disease be prevented from living in close quarters in a potentially bloody career path- like the US military?

They were. Obama and Pelosi/Reid removed all protections of our soldiers, sailors and marines from potential HIV/AIDS infected blood.

The Left always appeals to science, and its so-called great and infallible power. Unless, of course, the science doesn't support its radical social agenda. Out with the facts, in with the dogma. They ignore reality to enact their social engineering, and with dire, often deadly, consequences.

Chimp, to "gay" man, to air travel = worldwide plague.

Obama + dereliction of duty =?

Given the Caesar ape scenario, it must be asked: would a continued Obama presidency doom mankind to the Planet of the Apes?

Anonymous said...

"A 'gay' man sodomizes a monkey and AIDS spreads around the world."

It could be an African had sex with a monkey, and some gay guy had sex with the African.

Paul Mendez said...

Many believe HIV/AIDS came from human sexual contact (bestiality) between chimps and people.

You are going to get SOOOOO bitch-slapped for posting that particular bit of nonsense here!

For your theory to even begin to make sense, the chimp would have to be the top and the human the bottom.

Anonymous said...

I would argue that The Adjustment Bureau has either iSteve or maybe even WN influence. iSteve has had a massive influence on the WN community, so either way there is iSteve influence.

The plot is basically this: an honest white politician wants to get married and settle down rather than being a tool of the elite. They don't want him to get married to the girl he wants to marry (an attractive and intelligent white woman), and pull all manner of strings to prevent it. The male and female lead go through hell trying to find each other and stay with each other, and "The Adjustment Bureau" go through hell trying to split them up... until there is a change of plan at the top and they are allowed to stay together.

As if the current elite decided that that PC and the mass miscegenation they are encouraging wasn't such a good idea after all.

Anonymous said...

HIV/AIDS was spread from chimps to humans by Africans butchering chimps for "bush meat" and cutting themselves in the process. The idea of anyone catching and having sex with a wild chimpanzee is ridiculous.

Anonymous said...

For all the hereditarians out there, there is an interesting indie movie
"We Need to Talk About Kevin".

It's hardly showing in any theaters but easy to find a pirated DVD screener on Internet. It is intentionally ambiguous on the issue of nature vs nurture and it does hit few obviously false notes treating this subject. And yet, it is well enough done that it is utterly disturbing and upsetting. Manic performance by Tilda Swinton, too.

Recommended!

Anonymous said...

A "gay" man sodomizes a monkey and AIDS spreads around the world. AIDS is transmitted worldwide via Patient Zero. The favored lab animal for experimenting for HIV/AIDS cures? The chimp.

Try sodomizing a chimp, and get back to me on how it went. What could possibly go wrong?

Peter

Drawbacks said...

Sex with a chihuahua? How could anyone stoop so low? Sex with a chimp? I really can't see it.
How influential is Steve Sailer? I have no idea. What you could do is set up a site peddling SWPL commentary on made-up news stories (sailerbait.com is not taken), post your meta-commentary here, then use the made-up names to track the memes.
(Just tracking the old iSteve-isms won't work so well if people aren't keen to acknowledge you. Or maybe it would, but, hey, don't be clouding my blue-sky thinking.)

beowulf said...

Yeah, but The Descendants was the most like a movie that you could have written.

Anonymous said...

The Left always appeals to science, and its so-called great and infallible power. Unless, of course, the science doesn't support its radical social agenda. Out with the facts, in with the dogma. They ignore reality to enact their social engineering, and with dire, often deadly, consequences.

I think this leftist belief in science rests on one thing only: Darwin vs Creationism. Thats it. I cant think of any other debate where they invoke science or even try to.

Anonymous said...

"The idea of anyone catching and having sex with a wild chimpanzee is ridiculous."

I don't think it was chimps. I recall hearing something about monkeys. Monkeys are smaller and easier to handle. Horny guys will do anything.

Baaaaaaah!!!

Anonymous said...

Coincidentally, Japanese word for penis is chimpo.

Anonymous said...

First anonymous 3:52am : I know the writers of two of the first four movies Steve listed. Arrogant he may be, but he's not wrong. A surprising number of screenwriters are interested in Human Biodiversity and nature/nuture questions. They just tend to reject the "blacks and latinos are dumber on average" part because they know smart black people.

Anonymous said...

"That's...arrogant. And hilariously mistaken about your relative importance."

Get a sense of humor plox.

Mr. Anon said...

"Anonymous said...

A surprising number of screenwriters are interested in Human Biodiversity and nature/nuture questions. They just tend to reject the "blacks and latinos are dumber on average" part because they know smart black people."

But apparently do not know the meaning of the word "average".

Widest Critic and Audience Gaps said...

This list of HBD movies made me wonder what films have the widest gap between critics and audience ratings.

1st:Rotten Tomatoes Critics %
2nd:Rotten Tomatoes Critics num
3rd:Academy Awards Nominated/Won
4th:Rotten Tomatoes Viewers
5th:Netflix stars (approx)

1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th
(not so diff for big action films)
Planet Apes 83% 7.1 87% 3.0
X-Men 87% 7.4 88% 3.0

(biggest gaps-, PC sacred cows)
Bad Teacher 44% 5.3 37% 2.6
Apocalypto 65% 6.3 3/0 79% 3.0
Passn Christ 49% 5.9 3/0 84% 2.6

(biggest gaps+)
Brokeback Mt 87% 8.2 5/3 77% 2.1
Crying Game 100% 8.6 6/1 76% 2.8
Kiss Spdrwm 88% 7.5 4/1 77% 2.5

(surprising)
Idiocracy 73% 6.5 0/0 57% 2.1
Perhaps shows that writers and critics are more interested in HBD than the average joe who wants better FX.

Another metric would be to measure each film's profitability.

rob said...

Many believe HIV/AIDS came from human sexual contact (bestiality) between chimps and people. As inconceivable as that may be, consider the recent case of an illegal alien from Mexico, Tomas Bautista who reportedly came home drunk and sexually assaulted a Chihuahua in his backyard.

No one with a fraction of a brain thinks HIV jumped from apes to people through ape-fucking. Unlike those hideous hispanic dog-things, apes can do more than screechwhine. For one thing, it hardly matters how big and strong a dude is. If the ape doesn't wanna, dude's going to lose his face/testicles/arms or all three.

Anonymous said...

What about Warrior? Nick Nolte was amazing!

syon said...

anonymous:"Steve, "Bad Teacher" didn't make $100M in domestic box office. It bombed."

This is wrong. Both IMDB and BOX OFFICE MOJO show the film grossing over 100 million dollars in domestic profits alone.

RS said...

> For your theory to even begin to make sense, the chimp would have to be the top and the human the bottom.

A woman was once raped by a captive orangutan. I'm pretty sure I read it in a Richard Wrangham book. Almost sure it was some credible source, anyway.

Maybe this would never happen with a wild animal, but you obviously can't rule it out given the precedent of the above attack. 99.9% of wild specimens might be terrified of humans, but there's always a dizzying variety of pathological individuals in any population -- mutated, infected, autoimmune, whatever.

Of course, orangutans do quite large amounts of rape. Chimps certainly do a fair amount. When resisted they commence violence until resistance is cowed.

I guess my point is, your reductio ad absurdum is not at all absurd, so open your mind a little. (I guess most people just have no clue that rape is abundant in apes. Also many duck species.)

I would imagine >50 uL blood transfer from bush meat is hundreds of times more common at minimum, probably more like 10,000. I don't know how much blood it would take for SIV/HIV. But certainly for many parasites, blood transfer in somewhat larger volumes is extremely efficacious for transmission. I think an ordinary medical transfusion is like 75% efficient for some viruses.

Anonymous said...

"A woman was once raped by a captive orangutan. I'm pretty sure I read it in a Richard Wrangham book. Almost sure it was some credible source, anyway. "

Seems to be the day for righting some of the wrongs from last year. I'd wager that a lust-filled ape isn't aiming with much accuracy nor will he wait to strip the human naked before mounting behavior begins. So, unless the victim is naked, appropriately positioned and somehow forced to stay that way, I'd be more worried about the ape ripping the person's head off after satisfying himself with a little leg riding.

Anonymous said...

anonymous:"Steve, "Bad Teacher" didn't make $100M in domestic box office. It bombed."

This is wrong. Both IMDB and BOX OFFICE MOJO show the film grossing over 100 million dollars in domestic profits alone.


No Hollywood film ever makes a profit.