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Go see "Idiocracy". Fox is trying to kill it.

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survivor999 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Sep-30-06 12:24 PM
Original message
Go see "Idiocracy". Fox is trying to kill it.
Edited on Sat Sep-30-06 12:29 PM by survivor999
Has anyone seen it? Does anyone have any information? I heard a greeat review this morning on NPR.

"Mike Judge's first movie since 1999's massive cult hit Office Space rolls out in eight cities this weekend, almost as an afterthought. Actually, afterthought isn't the word. Idiocracy is being treated like a red-headed step-child. Fox is intentionally and inexplicably trying to kill it. Idiocracy arrives without a movie trailer or even an official poster. 20th Century Fox hasn't bothered to let anyone review it, and in fact until about a week ago when some executive decided to change his mind, the movie wasn't going to be released at all. Usually when a movie gets this kind of treatment it's because it's a piece of crap, but Idiocracy is one of the best movies of the year."

http://www.cinemablend.com/reviews/Idiocracy-1775.html
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skids Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Sep-30-06 12:33 PM
Response to Original message
1. I can't.


The bastards haven't released it in my area. I've been dying to see it but...

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question everything Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Sep-30-06 12:34 PM
Response to Original message
2. I hope it will come to town
if it did not come and went when we were out during the end of August

Read also http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=103&topic_id=235154
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survivor999 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Sep-30-06 12:35 PM
Response to Reply #2
3. Thanks! I've been trying to see WHERE it's playing
in the US or Canada, since I'll spend a week there at the end of the month. But no luck... Damn.
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skids Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Sep-30-06 12:39 PM
Response to Reply #3
7. Los Angeles, Atlanta, Toronto, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Austin.
Edited on Sat Sep-30-06 12:40 PM by skids


Initially, the film has been released only in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Toronto, Chicago and three cities in Mike Judge's home state of Texas--Dallas, Houston, and his hometown Austin


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy
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survivor999 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Sep-30-06 12:51 PM
Response to Reply #7
11. Thanks!
Damn. Hope it does well so others will pick it up.
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StellaBlue Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Sep-30-06 12:36 PM
Response to Original message
4. Saw it twice here in Austin, TX
Best movie I have seen in ages.

Hilarious but so relevant. Funniest thing since the Natalie Portman gangsta rap.

Get it on DVD as soon as it comes out.
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survivor999 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Sep-30-06 12:38 PM
Response to Reply #4
5. Waaaahhhhh!
Why only in Austin!!!!???
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survivor999 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Sep-30-06 12:50 PM
Response to Reply #4
10. It's playing also in Chicago, it seems:
AMC Loews 600 North Michigan 9
600 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL, 60611
(11:00am), 3:20, 7:50

http://movies.yahoo.com/showtimes/movie?mid=1808674683&z=Chicago
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malaise Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Sep-30-06 12:39 PM
Response to Original message
6. I adored Office Space
Two of my nephews and I must have seen it about eight times. The first time we watched it together, they wanted to see it again just to hear me laughing non-stop. Even after all this time anytime it's on cable, one of them calls me. I will definitely see Idiocracy.
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kansasblue Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Sep-30-06 12:40 PM
Response to Original message
8. sounds crazy...
It's corporate America that takes the biggest belly blow, and there's no way Judge did it with their blessing. Costco is an all-powerful, all-purpose monolith. Carl's Jr.'s is the world's leading food provider/robber baron, a Gatorade-like drink with "electrolytes" has replaced water (except in toilets), and Starbucks has become a popular chain of jack-shacks. Ordering a "latte" is now an inexpensive and socially acceptable way to get full-release.
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StellaBlue Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Sep-30-06 12:43 PM
Response to Original message
9. Review:


http://www.avclub.com/content/node/52408

Reviewed by Nathan Rabin
September 6th, 2006


A long-shelved, not-screened-for-critics, high-concept science-fiction comedy that's being released in a handful of cities with all the fanfare of a CIA black-ops mission, Idiocracy gives viewers many reasons to be suspicious. But before dismissing it sight unseen, it's worth remembering that Mike Judge's last film, 1999's Office Space, was released to groaning indifference, only to become a cult classic, and that Idiocracy is an unrepentant satire, a genre George S. Kaufman famously defined as "what closes Saturday night." Idiocracy feels more like a Beavis And Butt-head follow-up than an Office Space follower, thanks to its depiction of a society devolving at a rapid clip, and the way it satirizes its instant-gratification-obsessed target audience using the limited vocabulary of the terminally stupid.

In Beavis And Butt-head, that devolution is just suggested; in Idiocracy, it's made dizzyingly literal. A perfectly cast Luke Wilson stars as a quintessential everyman who hibernates for centuries and wakes up in a society so degraded by insipid popular culture, crass consumerism, and rampant anti-intellectualism that he qualifies as the smartest man in the world. Corporations cater even more unashamedly to the primal needs of the lowest common denominator—Starbucks now traffics in handjobs as well as lattes—and the English language has devolved into a hilarious patois of hillbilly, Ebonics, and slang.

Idiocracy's dumb-ass dystopia suggests a world designed by Britney Spears and Kevin Federline, a world where the entire populace skirts the fine line separating mildly retarded from really fucking stupid, and where anyone displaying any sign of intelligence is derided as a fag. Working on a sprawling canvas, Judge fills the screen with visual jokes, throwaway gags, and incisive commentary on the ubiquity of advertising—for instance, with the presidential-cabinet member who works paid plugs for Carl's Jr. into everyday conversations. Like so much superior science fiction, Idiocracy uses a fantastical future to comment on a present in which Paris Hilton is infinitely more famous than Nobel laureates. There's a good chance that Judge's smartly lowbrow Idiocracy will be mistaken for what it's satirizing, but good satire always runs the risk—to borrow a phrase from a poster-boy for the reverse meritocracy—of being misunderestimated.

A.V. Club Rating: A-
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cui bono Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Sep-30-06 01:28 PM
Response to Original message
12. thanks for reminding me...
Edited on Sat Sep-30-06 01:31 PM by cui bono
I'm definitely going to see it this week now.

"Idiocracy
By EdwardHavens

September 4th, 2006

The theatrical release of Mike Judge’s new comedy “Idiocracy” is one of the most egregious travesties of modern cinema. Not because the film is awful, which it most definitely is not. Seeing this film dumped during one of the slowest movie attending weekends of the year, in only a handful of screens, with no theatrical trailer or television commercials and only a single opening-day newspaper, is a crying shame. Or, at least, that is the most polite thing I can write without breaking into a profanity-laced tirade.

<snip>

So the question is, why didn’t “Idiocracy” get any kind of chance to sink or swim on its own merits? Why was this hidden away from the press, and kept away from most of the major East Coast metropolitan cities? Elementary, my dear Watson... the film is just too savage in its brutal skewering of modern society for mass consumption. While a movie like “Talladega Nights” might tap the audience it targets with a velvet glove, “Idiocracy” hacks away at both the smart and the dumb with a comedic machete."

http://www.filmjerk.com/reviews/article.php?id_rev=917


And yes, the reviews are mostly positive:

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/idiocracy/
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bigluckyfeet Donating Member (559 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Sep-30-06 02:05 PM
Response to Reply #12
14. I just Checked Blockbuster
I already had the movie on my list,Blockbuster said it is to be released on DVD on 12/31/07...I hope they mean 1/1/07.

Full Synopsis

Mike Judge wrote and directed this offbeat sci-fi comedy which gives a new meaning to the expression "people are getting dumber all the time." Pvt. Joe Bowers (Luke Wilson) is a soldier chosen to take part in a secret military scientific experiment in which he will be put into induced hibernation for one thousand years. Bowers is chosen for the assignment because he is statistically the most average man in the Army; however, Bowers is forgotten a few decades into the experiment, and when he wakes up in the year 3001, he finds himself living in a society where intelligence has taken such a landslide he's now the smartest man in the world. What will Bowers do in a nation where an unremarkable man is elevated to the level of a genius? Produced under the title 3001, Idiocracy also stars Maya Rudolph, Dax Shepard, and Stephen Root. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

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and-justice-for-all Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Oct-01-06 01:17 AM
Response to Reply #12
19. Something needs to shock their system.....
...Sadly, its true and not only do we blame ourselves but those who keep it that way.
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ovidsen Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Sep-30-06 02:03 PM
Response to Original message
13. It figures
I hope this even MAKES it to video....
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prole_for_peace Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Sep-30-06 02:29 PM
Response to Original message
15. had to drive 70 miles to houston but i did get to see it.
a great movie. very funny with a lot of insight to what could happen. well i don't think things could get that bad. at least i hope not.
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bonzotex Donating Member (740 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Sep-30-06 02:42 PM
Response to Original message
16. really funny!
Saw it in Austin. I was surprised at how little publicity this film got. Pretty much none, except for reviews (generally very good). It is damn funny. This is no ground shaking, oscar worthy effort, but it's about 6 times better than most of the big-budget super-hyped comedies dumped on us in the last 2-3 years.

There probably is a story behind why this movie is getting the bum's rush from the distributors.
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zonkers Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Sep-30-06 02:54 PM
Response to Original message
17. Some friends saw it in CA. LIked it. It no doubt is being "buried" till
after midterms. It will do great on video, no doubt. Judge has a great following. And why not, he's the man.
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mhatrw Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Sep-30-06 07:18 PM
Response to Original message
18. Kick n/t
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