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A more dignified response (almost as dignified as no response at all) would have been to use the famous "I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. Your review is before me. In a moment it will be behind me" retort, attributed to various famous playwrights & composers.
If anything, Lindy's review kinda made me want to see the movie a little more than I did before I read it. I said a little because you can't really polish a turd and this movie sounds like quite the turd. Even then, I'm still not the slightest bit interested in seeing this movie and I am a HUGE fan of titties.
I do take issue with his point that gay men don't objectify women-- or fixate on breasts. This is a sad, grasping-at-straws tantrum and Mr. Ireland should be ashamed. Grow up. Grow a pair. You are putting your work out their to be seen. Some people won't like it. Some people won't understand it. Get over it.
But I nominate him for a new weekly column: ReBUTTing Lindy West with Dan Ireland.
... wait ...
"You can't exploit/objectify someone you're not attracted to" is only a good argument if you expect to exploit or objectify someone you are attracted to.
Count your blessings.
Funny how I didn't really remember the director's name---now that he's made an ass of himself I will never forget it.....
If I had been Lindy, I would have smiled wanly and silently shuddered.
Lindy is amusing sometimes, but I don't hang on her every word. I sometimes even make up my own mind and disagree with her about a movie. Adults can be like that.
But this letter is pitiful. This letter, more than Lindy's review, makes me not want to see the movie. Mr, Ireland, if you want people to take you seriously, try growing up first.
And I don't think Rex Reed, for one, was all excited about the titties.
@30: It happens all the time, which is weird. I walk out of a movie and the first thing I walk into is a publicity person asking "What did you think?" I usually just kind of grunt or make an "umm" noise or something. Sometimes I lie. But it seems very weird to me that they ask that.
They're always very nice, otherwise, though.
What a great, fabulous movie! I mean it. It was great!! It actually made me cry and kept me glued to the movie from the beginning. This Jolene character was not only stunning in her own skin, but each time she evolved she took you on a journey. Her natural sex appeal shined through and if my guess is rightm she will win something for this performance. I also think she is going to be ahuge star. I have never seen her before...new comer?
Having said that I must also say that Lindy does not speak for all us women. Honestly she sounds like somebody who was asaulted by an older man when she was younger and she never got treatment for it. So it had been festering all this time and now she hates Jolene because maybe Lindy sees herself in that caracter?? Maybe the director of this movie is the one who asaulted her and that's why she hates Jolene so much. I don't know. But it does sound very personal to me. I agree that Lindy did not review the movie like a professional. She sounds very angry at the director and she might need some help. Becase what she described is absolutely not the movie that me, my mother, my sister, and my niece all watched together and thoroughly enjoyed. Lindy may not want to accept this but at some point in our lives, as women, we are all Jolene.
You did a good job with the random boldface type, but you need to replace that cloying, self-pitying tone with some really crisp, illustrative metaphors if you really want to hit it out of the park. Also: MORE PARENTHESES!
I do appreciate how meta it is that you're COMMENTING on YOUR review of HER review of YOUR movie -- that's totally Lindy!! It's too bad it all comes across as petty and vindictive instead of pointedly opinionated and entertaining, like a good Lindy West review is. I give you 2 out of 5 stars. YES I JUST REVIEWED YOUR REVIEW OF HER REVIEW! (It's possible Douglas Hofstader just had an aneurysm.)
Also, have you considered the possibility that maybe you're just a little too long in the tooth for this kind of endeavor?
The trolling of her blog gives it that extra special touch. Well played, sir!
Lindy, if you were a gay man, didn't have a blocked colon, and weren't that scant 14 months older than me your opinion might count. As is, you lack a theatrical bond with ginger boobs and the natural drive to shove your nose up any SIFF staff's butthole. I too pity you.
And how dare you have the gall to pay someone face service about their mediocre film infront of their friends, family, coworkers, and actors instead of being honest in the safety of your own home? Don't you have the balls to tell a harelip baby it disgusts you to its parent's faces? What kind of top notch free weekly paper film critic do you think you are? way to make a living off cuteness and boobs.
!!!
I will never wipe my butt with the Stranger again, no matter how bad I need toilet paper at the Cuff!
See, you don't want to go there. And honey, you're going there repeatedly. So turn off your computer, and get the people who love you to lock it so you don't send any more emails without their permission.
Anyone who's enjoying this little contretemps might enjoy going back to the original review and looking at the comments there again. Because our dear Mr. I weighs in at 25. Even better, 26, repeats 40 from this thread word for word.
Up until now, I thought 40 was a joke ("...at some point in our lives, as women, we are all Jolene." Really? Please!), but now I realize 40 and 26 are some sort of Ireland-bot.
Mr. Ireland, sir! Please stop. You are only making yourself more ridiculous. And unfortunately, you are underscoring Lindy's point. If your movie's theme is that Jolene in some way reflects my psyche, then I truly am insulted and do feel demeaned. I couldn't give a shit that the idea came from E.L. Doctorow, BTW.
Since you have now truly pissed me off (insulting Lindy, and insulting women) I followed your advice and looked at some other reviews of your alleged movie. imdb calls it "truly awful." Jeannette Catsoulis in the NY Times says
"Jolene's skin may smell like warm milk to Brad, but to the rest of us it has curdled long before she leaves his bed." Variety calls it a "queasy spectacle." The NY Post says "So bad it's almost (but not quite) good, Dan Ireland's Jolene is an unusually elaborate and excruciatingly long vanity production...."
Guess what, Mr. I? Looks like Lindy was actually being kinder than some others. And I never would have bothered to surf around to look at all these reviews if not for your bizarre attack on an writer whose work I admire. So stop, OK?
People who work on movies know that some are just turkeys. Yours sounds like it's truly a turkey. I'm sorry.
I am usually a fan of West's reviews yet I initially did not like this one at all. Upon watching the trailer I have a feeling her every word is warranted. I certainly like smart movies that have some titillation and sexiness, in which case some degree of objectification is inevitable (film is a visual form, after all) but my god--characters should have agency even if to give it up in the bedroom. It seems Ireland's "protagonist" only exists to be looked and acted upon by others, which is just depressing no matter how sexy she looks.
Anyway, keep it up Lindy!
1) The accusation of your film being in Landmark because of connections was not made by Lindy, but by a commenter
2) Lindy's job includes blogging, as do the jobs of every other Stranger Author. You see, the Stranger has two blogs, and their writers write things for it. I'm not sure how you expected using the word blogger as an epithet would make your case anyhow convincing. It instead makes you seem childish and out of touch. Do you believe the staff of the Atlantic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, and the Boston Globe (to name a few) should be derided for their blogging? Welcome to the internet age, Mr. Ireland.
3) Lindy said nothing about when the DVD comes out, so she couldn't have gotten that information wrong.
4) A film reviewer needn't read the source material to comment on a film. The job of a film reviewer is to review the movie in and of itself, as a piece of art. To say, "You need to have read the book to understand the movie" is an indictment of any film. It seems that even you recognize the inadequacy of your work.
I'm just commenting that me and my family (the female members) enjoyed this movie very very much and we are real normal normal. So I do not understand all these attacks on the director, except to say that I uderstand this is "The Lindy Show" and you are all of Lindy's fans. So if the director attacks Lindy becaus Lindt attacked the director, then for sure you all would attack the director like piranhas in the water that smell blood.
You've never commented here before 8:32 last night, when you signed up on Stranger Face. You commented on the review, and then felt compelled to repeat that same comment on this thread shortly after Dan Ireland. And we're supposed to believe you have no connection? Uh-huh.
All your bizarre faux-English-is-not-my-first-language locutions, and then in 40 you close with that ridiculous last line with its complicated sentence structure? Nope, not buying it.
I didn't want to get into this, but I've read the Doctorow story. Jolene the character is a truly sad case who, starting in her teens, leads a career of schtupping her way through life, more exploited than exploiting. She winds up dreaming of being a movie star so she can get back the child she lost. (!!) And to this movie you took your mother and your niece? Not my first choice of movies to take a young woman to. Nor my mother, even though my mother is fairly enlightened. And this is the character you think accurately represents all womankind, including your "normal normal" family?
Right.
[And to the person who called me a robot before, all I did was copy and paste from what I wrote on the review page. It's not that hard really. Some people may call it lazy but I call it practical and it does not make me a robot.]
And so I was thinking that, after reading everything that people wrote, it really is for the most part "Lindy Fans" jumping to Lindy's defense because they love her. And I get that.
But I think that if people were to divorce their thoughts and their feelings from everything that has transpired so far. Forget about Lindy. Forget about Dan Ireland. And just watch the movie. That's it! Watch the movie!
I feel that actually more people would actually really like the movie. But then from that point, they would want to keep it a secret that they liked it, because they don't want to be considered a "traitor". And if that were to happen, I would understand that too. So my opinion? Just see the movie! It really is a good movie. Me & my family actually loved it.
I hadn't even watched the trailer or knew anything about the film except from West's review and then the Ireland's letter and thread trolling.
I just watched the trailer. This one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XDuIaZpK…
Wow. West was funny AND right. Talk about skeevy. Why would I, a woman who's 26, liberal, progressive, democrat, feminist, want to watch YET ANOTHER movie about a hot too-young thang who is not only sexually assaulted from childhood onward, but then, only takes from that experience the hackneyed "damaged goods" journey to stripperdom and prostitution. All I can glean from all that is: sweet, pretty Jessica Chastain and her character Jolene, along with myself and every other young woman, are only worth our fuckability and how DUDES see us.
@40. Her sexuality? What? She's exuding male-gazitude. For fuck's sake.
My review?: What a wankfest.
@57: Honestly, the trailer makes my skin crawl. I know nothing of Dan Ireland, I'm capable of disagreeing with Lindy, and I'm completely unwilling to watch a 120 minute film when the 2 minute trailer made my stomach roll.
But this looks execrable. Am I the only one who gets a whiff of Forrest Gump, that this girl bounces around with no ghost of an understanding of what's happening all around her (e.g., she doesn't get that she's being kept by a mobster)? How very charming! Gee, thanks Dan Ireland for delivering this oh-so-spot-on fable on the soul of womanhood!
Indeed, if, as Love Lee Peach has told me (twice!), "at some point in our lives, as women, we are all Jolene," I may just need to turn in my doctorate, get some (higher) heels and find myself a pole, or a lesbian prison guard to hoodwink, or a rich guy to beat me. I finally see the light. I will accept my feminine destiny. Dan Ireland, the scales have fallen from my eyes and I owe it all to you.
It'd be one thing to be sold this as a movie about the horrors of womanhood if we buy into the cultural preconceptions of a patriarchal society. I'd still say it's too filled with the male gaze, but if it was sold as a tragedy, perhaps I'd let that go. But a movie about the deep truths of womanhood? I want to throw up, and then stab myself. And then perhaps find someone who liked the film and stab them as well.
For some reason, I give 'em the benefit of the doubt and usually end up unsurprised, yet again.
One of the big New York reviewers said the poor female lead is only going to escape being associated with this turkey for life because 1) the film died in the theatres and 2) she's just wrapped one with Terence Malick. Lucky things those....
Baci to you both, and to Lindy most of all. Linds, never stop, OK? We are cravenly grateful to your mind and your wit.
And then there is the premise, which I find revolting. Gee, I left home early, too, and I was sexually abused as a child - but I put myself through college and became an engineer. I see no connect in my life - or the lives of any women I know - with this slutty cumbucket, Jolene. Jolene is supposed to tell me what it is like to be a woman? Sorry, as a woman I already know what it is like.
I have to agree that Dan Ireland is an ass.
I apologize for that, really. Our bosses make us do it. The strangest thing is the large proportion of reviewers who answer the question honestly and review the film in a way that corresponds accurately with what they said to me. Old people are so weird.
If all I have to look forward to as a "normal" woman is that kind of lifestyle, i'm doing something REALLY wrong! I'm young, liberal, successful, and un-abused!
When do I find my "prince charming" to strip me of my dignity and happiness so that I may become normal like Jolene?
Bad form, The Stranger.
Inspiring pissing matches online is not journalism, and posting a review of a film on the eve of it leaving theaters makes me wonder why this reviewer is still employed.