for this and for your record of standing up for good.

The ballots we nt out way before the movie hit the screen in all the theaters. I believe either Boyhood or Birdman will win....most likely Boyhood.

nt

Although I loved Birdman.

I'd be happy if either won. I try to see as many of the Oscar movies as I can. I skipped American Sniper.

and 'Birdman'. It will be one of those two films almost certainly.

both Selma and Sniper were well done as movies and deserve nominations but neither brought anything new to the craft of filmmaking while both Boyhood and Birdman had something fresh and special.
Personally I prefer Boyhood because I was more emotionally moved when it was over but I was impressed with Birdman.

In the end the Oscars not about the political content but the art of filmmaking.

K&R

What is the word for immoral explicitness?
Graphic depictions of sexual acts are objectionable yet graphic images of wanton murder are entertainment?

including more than a few DUers

"Sniper" is an evil work of propaganda - right up there with Leni Riefenstah's
"Triumph of the Will." Most importantly, Sniper re-writes and mangles history
from a far-right point of view. Just to give a single example, the Second
Battle of Falujah was a disgraceful war crime of epic proportions, not a place of US heroism.
It's very important that people speak out against it.
Thank you Code Pink.
Signed Veterans For Peace

And yes, it is selling the US war machine just as much as Triumph of the Will. For a movie to be made with US military gear, it must be signed off on by the very highest levels of the military. Their films are not only justification for war but recruitment propaganda.

considering skipping the Oscars and it's not just because I live on a remote rural Indian reservation where I'm often culturally isolated and haven't been able to see any of the movies. I am utterly disgusted that that piece of shit movie glorifying war and our destructive racist role in it, and especially glorifying a hate-filled racist's gleeful killings, was given any attention at all, let alone being Oscar-nominated. I can't stand the thought of having to endure that kind of positive attention for it throughout the program. And yet if you say anything about it, you're "unpatriotic" and "anti-American". Bleh.

I was genuinely pissed off at the end of the movie, but not because of the cardboard cut-out depiction of Chris Kyle as a cross between Rambo and Nathan Hale.

I was pissed off because for me the movie was a 2 hour internal reflection on just how many lies and financial agendas it took to have our soldiers in Iraq in the first place, year after year after year; and just how many guys went to that "war" - it was really an illegal invasion of aggression and an unpunished exploitation of the American AND Iraqi people by Bush's cabal of war criminals - thinking they were doing their duty when they were really doing the dirty work of homicidal greed monsters.

I believe that somewhere slightly more nuanced than Eastwood's ham-handed direction allowed is the story of truly heroic American soldiers who signed up to legitimately "protect our freedoms", the problem is that our politicians - and Democrats, who refused to shut down American governance in response to Bush's lies and crimes the way Republicans essentially shut down EVERYTHING after Obamacare passed, are equally guilty - are craven money and power whores who would do anything, say anything, sell-out anyone and literally kill anyone just to keep a seat at the fringes of the table of power.

I saw American Sniper and it caused me to internally reflect on what my country has become since 9/11/01 and I really don't like what I saw. We have killed. We have stolen. We have plundered. We have exploited. We have tortured. We have shirked all responsibility for holding the leaders responsible accountable to the rule of law.

If the use of the terminology "savages" is what makes people upset in this piece, then its my opinion they are as lacking in introspection as the Commander-in-Chimp himself.

See this movie, but look past the superficial and the button-pushing jingoism. Look inside yourself, and how living in this country, and knowing what we know now, about that entire escapade into Iraq, how can NONE OF THEM - Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and more - how can NONE of them be held responsible for the carnage they wrought in the name of ideology?

didn't you know before viewing this film you would experience exactly what you in fact experienced?

The reaction was more introspection than I expected and a lot more empathy for the soldiers and victims of that monstrous crime instead of just revulsion at the patent jingoism of Eastwood's direction and Kyle's story.

I actually felt bad for Kyle as a dupe as well. Maybe it was just Cooper's performance, but I was thinking he would come across more like the yahoos in that old Charlie Sheen movie "Navy SEALS" and it didn't play that way for me.

I'll burn my academy membership.

I had a completely different take on this, I saw it as an anti-war film. At the conclusion I thought what a terrible waste that all of these people died for nothing. Anyone thinking that we were in Iraq to avenge 9-11 was, at best, not at all paying attention. From Eastwood himself:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/26/clint-eastwood-american-sniper-anti-war_n_6547068.html