Anyone see Ides of March?

[Laura PourMeADrink]

Advertised as a political thriller, George Clooney's Ides of March, was to me, only a wisp of a movie.

Clocked at 1 hr and 40 minutes only. Some good acting, but no character development, no real complexity to the
plot. What a rip off

[CTyankee]

1. I saw it. I liked the acting a lot. I love Clooney pretty irrationally (!).

This kind of movie surfaces now and again. They attempt to make grand tragedy out of political campaigns and those campaigns aren't grand enough to support the hype. So they kinda fall flat.

Philip Seymour Hoffman was the most interesting character in this movie IMO. He was a decent guy, a bit of a schlump who believed his own rhetoric about loyalty and then got screwed. He accepts it with a sadness that I found very moving.

Gosling's character never sounded or looked like he was ever a true believer so that was a problem in the movie for me. He looked like a pure opportunist from the moment he appeared on the screen. The look in his eyes...

I liked the way Clooney had himself shot in the big scene in the kitchen with Gosling. He looked ominous and evil and at one point even bared his teeth. A nice predatory touch...

As with all of these political potboilers there are good moments and nice touches but basically we are dealing with a venal enterprise that never gets to tragedy and so is ultimately not very satisfying.

We know what these movies are going to tell us in advance of seeing them...they should tell us something we don't know...

[Laura PourMeADrink]

6. I agree with a lot of what you say. We couldn't

get over some of these flaws:

1. Why did the girl kill herself? They didn't really develop the idea that her father was such an anti-abortionist she had to take her own life over it. If she was so concerned over appearances (sullying her father's reputation) why would she have non-nonchalantly slept with the prez and actively pursue and sleep with Gosling?

2. I didn't see Gosling as an opportunist at the beginning. I thought they presented him as an idealist who was mesmerized by Clooney. But this didn't ring true. Clooney was an asshole to people. If Gosling had SO much political campaign experience, as he said, why wouldn't he know that Clooney was an asshole - just from hearing others talk about him.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

8. CT Yankee

Are you a writer? I have, for a long time, had an idea for a movie similar to this one. I haven't fully developed it (hopefully some day) - but here are the main story components. It's main theme is abortion and politics, as well.


**We are at the point where some states have banned abortion completely, and abortions are performed secretly and illegally.

**We are dangerously close to having Roe v Wade overturned. And the Supreme court is set to vote.

**There are several Supreme Court judges who are very right wing anti-abortionists - and who have college-aged female children/grandchildren - who are portrayed as shy, weak and controlled by their father/grandfather.

**There is a group of young pro-choice activists - perhaps driven by a personal abortion related tragedy. They hire a couple male gigolos to woo the females and impregnate them. They don't even know why they are doing it...but perhaps figure it out at some point...or perhaps fall for one of the girls?

**This all sets up the dilemmas - To have an abortion or not. To vote for or against. i envision one of the girls committing suicide over it, just like in this movie - but with a fully developed plot about the judge's beliefs and control in their life.

Whatta ya think??

[CTyankee]

9. I'm not the person to ask, since I am not a writer altho I wish I were!

But I have worked for Planned Parenthood, raising money. So I know the face of activism in this area.

What you have described is an interesting scenario where prochoice activists are driven to do something that in normal times theywould never do, out of desperation. That is a great theme, but it would be hard to believe this particular scenario since prochoice advocates would, at some point, see that the real victims would be these young women. Either they would have a difficult situation where they might not be able to find a safe means of ending the pregnancy or they would face an unwanted pregnancy. Either way, it takes agency away from the young women.

I always love "ends justify means" plots, tho, and it would be great if you could come up with another twist on the story. I particularly like the idea of developing the realization dawning on the antichoice justices. I'll bet, though, that there have been antichoice justices with exactly that dilemma!

You've given me something to think about...

[Laura PourMeADrink]

11. good point

in your second paragraph. You are right - a group of pro-choice advocates would never all agree to perpetrate such a plan. Perhaps it could just be one activist (or she and her brother (a second character to allow conversation about it) who is secretly driven to the extreme to concoct the plot to get the girl(s) pregnant. Maybe she lost her mother with a botched abortion. Perhaps the brother opposes the idea...but she convinces him that nothing horribly bad will happen - either a baby will be born or an abortion will happen. Maybe the brother could be the one to woo the girl.

Thanks for brainstorming with me. I just read a story about how Ken Follet writes his novels. He imagines the end results - events. Then, he creates characters and builds them according to how they would act related to that event. Maybe I will go take a fiction writing course and go from there.

[CTyankee]

12. Good luck! I've tried my hand at writing a short story and it was just an ordeal!

The hardest part was knowing what I really wanted to express but not having it come out that way...

[virgogal]

2. I loved it---thought Gosling was fantastic.

[Kceres]

3. Plot? I didn't notice. George Clooney--yummy!

[Booster]

4. Just saw it today. I was a little disappointed. The acting was

top-notch but the story didn't teach anything that we don't already know. Thought the young girl was excellent, and, of course I loved George. This one is what my friends call "a rental".

[SheilaT]

5. I saw it a week or so ago and thought it was excellent.

Clooney captured all of the nuances of a guy like the one he was playing.

I've done volunteer work on several campaigns in my time, although I've never been at the kind of upper level that this movie depicts. But what was shown rang very true to me.

[Capt. America]

7. I liked the movie. I thought it was a well done "small" drama movie.

I think Clooney will get a best director "nod" for Oscar because he's in the "club" and directed a solid movie, but he will not win because the movie itself is not a "large" drama.

As for the girl's suicide that others mentioned above, it could be that she super bummed that her first "go-around" in the family business as an adult utterly failed?

[CTyankee]

10. The suicide bummed me because I thought it was a bit of an outdated scenario.

It seemed that it was a plot device to make you enraged at these two men ("and she'd had an abortion, so there was no DNA."). That part was certainly believable...

[brettdale]

13. If I want to

Watch a actor tilt his head slightly (and call it acting) and look at the camera, I will watch Jim from the Office.