Category: Two-Minute Hate

Disgusting People

Off My List

Entertainment, Two-Minute Hate

I’ve moaned about this nonsense before:

Since hitting UK cinemas last month, the atomic bomb thriller Oppenheimer — which stars Cillian Murphy in the titular role — has been given a slew of five star ratings while critics branded it Nolan’s ‘best and most revealing work’.

However:

BBC News star Jane Hill revealed she walked out of Christopher Nolan’s film halfway through after spotting a major flaw that left her ‘disappointed’.

I was thinking “historical inaccuracy” or “gratuitous sex/violence”, but no:

It appears Jane was certainly not in agreement as she shared that she was frustrated at not being able to hear the film’s dialogue properly due to the loud soundtrack — and was even more astounded to learn that the issue occurs in almost ‘all’ of Nolan’s films.

She told her followers: ‘Saw Oppenheimer. Well, managed half of it. Disappointed that music & effects often drowned out the actors, I missed whole chunks of dialogue. 

Well, that takes the movie off my “to watch” list.

Till fairly recently, I thought that this degraded sound in movies was simply the result of my age- and tinnitus-ridden hearing, but now I know the truth.  It seems that the new trend in cinema verité  is now to muddy up the dialogue either by having the actors mutter their lines — and sometimes in thick, incomprehensible accents withal — or else to submerge the speech with over-loud sound effects and / or “background” music.  Or in the case of this weasel Nolan, both.

Sorry, but there’s not much verité  when you can’t hear it being spoken.

I know, the answer is to wait for the movies to appear on a streaming service, and then tap the “subtitles” button.

Nah I’m not going to do that.  If I’m going to have to use subtitles, then I’ll just watch furrin stuff like gloomy Scandi detective shows or Belgian whodunnits, which quite frankly are often better than their “English” competition anyway.

The Son&Heir suggested that I get a sound bar for my TV so that I can turn up the “mids” (mid-range audio) and compensate, but I’m not going to do that either.

This little trend is like an artist covering his painting with sheets of thick gauze so you have to strain your eyes to see what’s on the canvas.  I wouldn’t bother looking at those, and I’m not going to watch these shitty movies either.

A pox on all of them.

Related:  Oppenheimer  director Nolan tells us all to fuck off.

Oh, Why Not?

Heroism, Law and Order, Muzzies

Looks as though Fargo ND dodged a bullet — more specifically, several bullets and a bomb — when they whacked a terrorist of the Religion Of Peace persuasion recently:

When he came upon a fender bender last Friday afternoon, [Mohammed] Barakat was armed with multiple weapons, explosives and grenades and had spray painted the back windows of his car.
“Based on the time and the direction he was going he was either likely to be taking a right when he got to main avenue going downtown and taking a left when he got to main avenue and going to the fairgrounds,” Wrigley said.
Video footage reveals he came upon the crash, circling and casing the scene for about 15 minutes before parking his car and opening fire, killing 23-year-old officer Jake Wallin and critically injuring officers Andrew Dotas and officer Tyler Hawes, as well as, civilian Karlee Koswick (who was involved in the initial car accident).
Barakat was eventually shot by officer Zach Robinson and later died at the hospital.

Given how much the Powers That Be (even in Fargo ND FFS) are keen to downplay the motives of this asshole, I’m surprised the D.A. didn’t describe him as a “street vendor, on his way to peddle his wares at the fairgrounds”.  (That the wares happened to include bombs and stuff are irrelevant, of course.)

Of course, the Fibbies had no fucking idea of this tool’s intentions, they being too busy tracking down terrorists in the Angry Anti-Grooming Parent Brigade.

Just a bunch of incompetent poltroons, the lot of them.

Why Indeed?

Celebrities, Travels

The question is asked:

Why DO US megastars Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and George Clooney prefer the UK to California?

The answer is actually quite simple, and it’s one of the reasons why I love going there too.

The pat answers, of course, are manifold — especially in the case of the above reptiles — and the first, obviously, is that anywhere in Yurp (including Britishland) is preferable to the shithole that California has become, especially when the said reptiles are also filthy rich and can buy things like “cottages” on the Thames River or castles in Devon;  and being all part of the same mutual admiration society, they can also count on their buddies to put them up for a day or week.

Then they can play the part of the “locals”, and go to quaint little pubs and tearooms and drink “pints” and drink PG Tips tea, go to Wimbledon and thus hobnob with all their precious little Hollywood buddies also visiting “for the occasion”.

And if the weather turns shitty (as it sometimes does in Britishland), they can simply jump into a first-class seat on an airliner and head off to, oh, Cannes, Como or Malibu.

The thing is, it’s very easy to fall in love with the U.K. under those circumstances.  All that British stuff and the matchless beauty of the countryside is like one big theme park, and it is just how it’s described:  charming, quaint and pretty.

And I haven’t even touched on the history, the kind one experiences when finding out that people have been worshipping in a little stone church since the 12th century, or stumbling across some broken clay pots from the Bronze Age in a field somewhere, or seeing the outline of a Roman road winding across an impossibly-green meadow where now a flock of snow-white sheep are grazing contentedly, safe from predators like lions, bears or even wolves.

It’s a gentle country, so unlike the harshness of the U.S. — and especially so when one is living in a wealthy cocoon like Clooney or Depp.  And it’s really easy to love a place when you’re not forced to live there as a native:  by family tradition, work or heritage.

If I sound familiar with the topic, it’s because I feel exactly the same way, having spent weeks and months living in Britishland, whether in Wiltshire at Mr. Free Market’s country house or The Englishman’s farm or in the latter’s cottage in an impossibly-beautiful Cornish seaside village.  After the first couple of weeks I was last there, I found myself browsing the real estate listings, wondering just how I could perhaps buy a little cottage in Devizes or Burton-on-Trent or Norton St. Philip or… or… or…

And if I had the wealth of the Cooneys, Depps, Cruises or their ilk, I would have done exactly what they have done.

Here’s the problem, though.  As I discovered, at some point you get sick of living in a foreign country, even one as pleasant as Britishland.  At some point, you get sick of the high prices (Brits are ripped off more than tourists in Manhattan, and it happens all the time);  sick of the tiny little roads that are so picturesque, and such a huge pain in the ass to use when you need to get somewhere in a hurry;  sick of the class- and wealth envy that you see every day on TV and hear in conversations in those quaint little pubs that serve delicious bitter ale, at £6 ($7.70) a pint.

You get sick of the stupid TV — oh, don’t get fooled by Downton Abbey or Midsomer Murders:  those are the very few jewels scattered around in the dreck and swill of Strictly Come Dancing, Love Island, TOWIE, the empty-headed morning TV hosts, and Piers Morgan.

And you get sick of how primitive the place is — a place which has simultaneously the best newspapers in the world and the worst Internet service (unless you live in London).   A place where you can wait a week for an electrician to come and fix your plug outlets, or where train service can be interrupted for days on end by chilly weather (!), not to mention the frequent strikes of the pampered working class.  Where a lowly bureaucrat can stop you putting up a privacy fence on your property, or after you’ve put it up, tell you to take it down because it’s six inches too high.

You’ll get sick of the petty crime that abounds everywhere — even in those postcard-pretty villages — and the indifference of the police to the problem.

And yes, you get sick of the weather, eventually.  Even those who prefer cooler temperatures and overcast skies will get sick of the ceaseless drizzle, the chill that seeps into your bones, and the inability of your clothes to ever dry out properly.  Like Seattle, only twenty degrees colder.  Why else would Britain boast the largest per-capita percentage of expats who move to Spain, Portugal, France and gawd help us Australia, in ever-increasing numbers?

None of this matters to our celebrity part-time Brits, because their careers take them off to film sets in California or Colorado where they can become, once again, Americans.

I still miss the place, terribly. I just don’t want to live there.

Delicate Flowers

Snowflakes, Two-Minute Hate

Oh FFS:

Why we should ban perfume in public places
For most people, being in close proximity to someone smelling of honeysuckle and patchouli may be sublime. For those, like me, who suffer with ‘fragrance aversion’ — a strong physical reaction to the ingredients in modern perfumes — it is torture.

STFU.  “Fragrance aversion”?  Seriously?

Sorry, but I happen to love the scent of a woman — New Wife uses Michael Kors Wonderlust, Connie used Giorgio Armani’s Orangerie, my mother wore Estée Lauder’s White Linen and I still have a crush on an old girlfriend who used to wear Revlon Intimate — all with devastating effect on my senses.  And the very fact that I still remember those specific scents after all these years should demonstrate my deep affection thereof.

Nothing smells as good as a woman wearing perfume.

Now granted, the thing can be taken too far.  I once rode in an elevator with, it should be said, an older woman who must have used Chanel as a bath additive, but even as overpowering as it was, at least it was a pleasant smell.

You see, I too suffer from an aversion.  I fucking detest delicate people:  people who get the vapors from (as above) scents, people who start hyper-ventilating at the thought of using public transport, people who can’t eat processed meat, people who fall apart when someone says the word “nigger”, and people who are afraid of guns because “guns are dangerous”.

I can live with peanut allergies, because people can die from that — why, I wonder sometimes, was this never a thing when I was a child? — and similar things that are genuinely harmful.

But a fragrance “aversion”?  Why did the stupid bint in the above article not just open the car window when her traveling companion reeked of (rough guess) Axe body spray?  But oh no, she had to get out of the car because she was nauseated.  What bullshit.

I’m not an inconsiderate person — okay, I try not to be inconsiderate, most of the time.

But I’m getting heartily sick of having to tip-toe through life because of people’s “aversions”.  It’s just a physical manifestation of the “offended” mindset.  And as a wise man once said:

So fucking what, indeed.

Down The Blue Sinkhole

Marxists, Two-Minute Hate

Illinois has joined California (and not for the first time) in their blue-state legislative insanity, and IlGov Fatboi is leading the charge:

Starting January 1st, 2024, Illinois landlords will be required to rent or sell property to illegal aliens. Illinois Democrat Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed SB 1817 into law in late June, which will add “protections in the Illinois Human Rights Act for housing regarding immigration status protection and discriminatory advertising.”

Did I mention that Illinois also passed legislation, which Pritzker also gleefully signed into law, extending standard driver’s license privileges to illegal aliens?

Illinois Democrat State Sen. Ann Gillespie led the effort to expand housing rights to illegal aliens, absurdly claiming that the bill will ensure that illegals aren’t “unjustly denied housing.”

“Someone’s background should not disqualify them from buying or renting property.”

Almost without reflection, I can think of five reasons why illegal residence (which has nothing to do with “background”, by the way) is a very valid reason for disqualification.

To my Ill-Annoys Readers (and I think you know who I’m talking to):  it’s time to leave the state, or actively start seeking employment- and residential opportunities elsewhere so that you can.  Your state is fucked, California-not-so-lite, and that’s the beginning and end of it.  As I say to recalcitrant South Africans:  you don’t want to be in the line for a seat on that last helicopter on the rooftop;  get out while you can.

Look, I know that it’s not an easy decision:  I myself decided to flee Chicago only after much thought, soul-searching and anguish, especially as Connie really didn’t want to leave.  We even looked at northern Michigan for a while (I wouldn’t now, but that’s a different discussion), but eventually decided on Texas because Texas.

Ultimately, we were driven out by the combination of horrible gun laws, high taxes and a Marxist congressional representative (Jan Schakowski), but even when we lived in the NW burbs, our state senator was… the above-mentioned Ann Gillespie.  All those factors forced us to leave.  And that was then.  Now?  Huh.  Like a flash.