commenter-thread

Comments on Open Mic for the week of 3/3/2025 by Dark Matter in reply to Saul Degraw

Chris: I mean, she’s right, the movie is dated.

Very true. That's a professional challenge for her to overcome. She failed.

If she had nothing positive to say about the original then she should have said nothing about it and focused on how she "enjoyed" working on the update and hopes everyone will enjoy it. Alternatively she could have called it "time tested" or something else vague.

Her job is to reach out to the fans of original and try to convince them to see the movie. Describing the previous male lead as a "stalker" seems unlikely to do that.

Questions about whether or not she was up to the part could have been trivially fixed by releasing a clip of her singing one of the songs or just a picture of her in costume (btw she looks and sounds great).

The fans of Vampire Lestat thought Tom Cruise was a terrible choice up until the studio released a clip of him in character. Try picturing what the fans would have thought about Tom describing Lestat as a gay serial killer.

The lines I normally draw are...

1) Can an otherwise uninvolved student still function?

If the protesters are shutting down the U then they're preventing other people from getting educations.

That very much would include setting up lines and insisting that anyone attempting to cross them "denounce Israel". Whether that's a protected class or not is irrelevant.

2) Violence and the threat of violence.

The normally illegal things are still illegal. That would include calling for genocide... which I would think includes calls to destroy Israel.

DavidTC: Firstly, not letting people through unless they denounced Israel is _not_ discrimination against any sort of protected class.

This is like saying obstructing traffic isn't discrimination of a protected class.

DavidTC: I don’t think private universities should make investments that support ethnic cleansing,

What we had going on was a war. Normally the line we draw with "investments" is "legal" vs "illegal".

DavidTC: I think people at those universities, who are giving them that money, have a right to protest that. Because that makes _them_ feel unsafe.

Legal fiscal investments in Jewish companies makes people "feel unsafe"?

How does that work?

It's a lot easier to claim racism than try to defend what's happened on that movie.

Zegler's behavior was seriously unprofessional. Her job is to generate good PR for the project, not be "a waking PR disaster for Disney". Describing Prince Charming as "a guy who literally stalks [Snow White]", going on to deem the story "weird".

I hope all of this drama has been mishandled marketing and they end with a product my daughter and I would enjoy seeing. However Disney cancelling the premiere suggests they know they have a turkey on their hands on top of what Zegler has done to advertise it.

Chris: ...the only reason for being upset about this casting decision is racism.

Most remakes of popular movies don't have their lead actress give interviews on how bad the original was. That's just unprofessional. I think the same interview also had her talk about how they've redone the plot so it's now about girl power and how Snow doesn't really need Charming.

To answer Chris' question, the University is under pressure from the student activists to treat that sort of thing and the shutting down of various educational buildings as a normal student protest and largely does.

Various other groups (including Trump) see it as deeply antisemitic and/or criminal and think the University should be using criminal charges and the law to deal with it.

Chris: What are some examples of this discrimination?

Criticism increased when a January 2024 recording of one organizer, Khymani James, saying "Zionists don't deserve to live" was released

...Another protester was recorded holding a sign reading "Al-Qassam's next targets" in front of student counter-protesters holding Israeli flags.

...protesters both on and off campus were recorded targeting Jewish students with antisemitic vitriol...

...protesters at the encampment were filmed chanting "Zionists not allowed here", while another protester called for "10,000 October 7ths". One Jewish student reported protesters saying "kill all the Jews" and "we want one Arab state",

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Columbia_University_pro-Palestinian_campus_occupations#Allegations_of_antisemitism

InMD: modern day Russia’s nuclear weapons don’t actually work.

Yes. Nukes require extremely expensive maintenance and go bad over a few years because of half life.

The corruption in Russia is so bad they can't have military tires.

Russia pulled out of the Test Ban treaty and they've made a large number of nuclear threats. They have no reason to avoid testing a nuke and every reason to show they still have them.

They don't even need to announce a test before hand. They could try to set off a hundred nukes one at a time until it works and then claim they only tested that one.

A nuclear test would be a massive step towards winning the war politically. If they still had them they'd showcase it.

Saul: Am I supposed to argue with [Tate]
in good faith

I wouldn't. Tate does/says controversial things for the point of attracting attention.

Having said that, normally I assume good faith as a matter of policy.

We have a lot of people thinking that Russia was a reasonable actor with nukes and the Ukraine was a tiny country who would be crushed easily. Some of that is decades of Russian propaganda. Some is wishful thinking so we-the-West don't need to cut social programs and rearm.

In reality Russia is not a reasonable actor, they don't have nukes, and everything they've said is a lie.

It would be much easier to get and pay for Universal HC if HC were much cheaper.

 

 

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