Get Cynical

Comrades! Fear not. Our perpetual war on Christmas will continue until the secular forces defeat the evil dark forces that is Christmastide.

Unfortunately I won’t be joining you because I will be spending the next few days with family, friends and various retail clerks. I don’t intend on blogging much for the next few days so stay safe, stay warm, and cthulhu fhtagn.

(via The Daily What)

AGAIN we celebrate the victory of Light over Darkness, of the God of day over the hosts of night. Again Samson is victorious over Delilah, and Hercules triumphs once more over Omphale. In the embrace of Isis, Osiris rises from the dead, and the scowling Typhon is defeated once more. Again Apollo, with unerring aim, with his arrow from the quiver of light, destroys the serpent of shadow. This is the festival of Thor, of Baldur and of Prometheus. Again Buddha by a miracle escapes from the tyrant of Madura, Zoroaster foils the King, Bacchus laughs at the rage of Cadmus, and Chrishna eludes the tyrant.

This is the festival of the sun-god, and as such let its observance be universal.

This is the great day of the first religion, the mother of all religions — the worship of the sun.

Sun worship is not only the first, but the most natural and most reasonable of all. And not only the most natural and the most reasonable, but by far the most poetic, the most beautiful.

The sun is the god of benefits, of growth, of life, of warmth, of happiness, of joy. The sun is the all-seeing, the all-pitying, the all-loving.

This bright God knew no hatred, no malice, never sought for revenge.

All evil qualities were in the breast of the God of darkness, of shadow, of night. And so I say again, this is the festival of Light. This is the anniversary of the triumph of the Sun over the hosts of Darkness.

Let us all hope for the triumph of Light — of Right and Reason — for the victory of Fact over Falsehood, of Science over Superstition.

And so hoping, let us celebrate the venerable festival of the Sun.

Robert Green Ingersoll – “The Agnostic Christmas” (1892)

One star Amazon reviews of classic movies, music and literature. Today we take a look at It’s a Wonderful Life:

This movie never won any awards. It was so bad that the studio could hardly give it away when they first puit it on tape, then they let it be colorized just so they could sell SOME copies of it, and suddenly the big war cry from the Hollywood liberals was — “OOH! Save a classic black and white film!” Baloney! No one liked this movie when it was made. No one liked it the 1950s. No one liked it in the 1960s. No one liked it in the 1970s. No one liked it in the 1980s, then SUDDENLY! — it’s an American classic. NOT! It’s Communist propaganda about the “evils” of American free enterprise from a guy who made a lot of pinko films but never thought HE should have to live like this “common man” he kept making pictures about.

I am a big fan of Frank Capra movies. But for some reason I waited 20 years since it’s video release to watch this movie. Back in the 1980′s and 1990′s it flooded the tv channels at Christmas time. All my friends watched it and said it was great. As a Christmas treat I decided this was the year to see it. What a let down. First of all it was about a half hour too long. Jimmy Stewart’s character was a born loser. Everything bad happened to him from the beginning. He also passed up opportunities to better himself. He ignored the prettiest gal in the movie (Gloria Graham) for a plain Jane (Donna Reed). To me, Lionel Barrymore’s was the best character in the movie and he certainly gave the best acting performance. This was a big Frank Capra disappointment. With the length of the movie and the failings of the George Bailey character, when he was on the bridge near the end I was yellinh “JUMP JUMP JUMP”.

I bought this as a birthday present for my mom because she used to have the It’s A wonderful Life in color on VHS.I recored over this VHS about 5 years ago, and i have felt terrible ever since. AMazon said that this edition was in color, so i decided that this was a perfect gift for my mom. I received the DVD today, and i am so dissapointed that it is not color? Why did they tell us it wasn’t~

This is the story of an ambitious young man with dreams of leaving his small town, but due to circumstances beyond his control, has to stay there the rest of his life. His savings and loan has to constantly help out the poor inhabitants, who seem incapable of either earning or saving money. At the first sign of financial trouble, all the dear friends that George has helped out demand their money back. George is such a poor businessman that at the prospect of missing ONE payment to Potter his business will go backrupt and he is prepared to kill himself. Then a angel shows up and convinces George that his miserable life has at least made OTHERS happy.

In a cruel irony, George is forced to accept hand-outs from the townsfolk he helped out. If they had this money, why did they need the loans in the first place?

No wonder people cry at the end of this ridiculous stinker — they’re so grateful it’s over! Jimmy Stewart, who was a returning war hero when he made this thing, is, as a result, totally miscast as a naive small-towner who never goes anywhere. Donna Reed is gorgeous but she was wasted making films in an era when she couldn’t show off her body. Clarence the Angel is OK for the Teletubby crowd, but a movie intended for grownups as well? Yikes. All Lionel Barrymore’s bad guy needs is a mustache to twirl and he’d be the perfect cartoon villain. The ending is a cheat — not only would the whole table-full-of-money thing never happen in real life, but what about all the poor saps watching the movie who have to think, “Well, maybe George Bailey could believe his life is worth living, but he’s a movie character, and the script is built that way — what about me?” I can see this movie being responsible for more suicides than anything excluding Ingmar Bergman. Oh, and that line — “She’s an old maid — she’s just about to close the library” made me spit out my drink the first time I heard it. Give me A Christmas Story any day.

This is an extremely poor movie. It is a shameless enterprise in sentimentality, constantly bordering on bathos. Typical of many American films both of that period and contemporary times. Very boring to boot.

It gets all its mileage out of holiday sentiments, and the hazy glow of the holidays colors too many people’s view of the film.

One star Amazon reviews of classic movies, music and literature. Today we take a look at A Christmas Story:

I have to agree whole heartedly with Jamie. This is the worst Christmas Movie I have seen. The profanity ruins it. It’s a 1940′s film with 1990′s movie profanity. If you have children under the age of 10, you need to be aware. The father is mean. The are two prolonged scenes where a bully makes another boy put his tongue on a metal pole and another where Ralphie fights with him. And to top it off the Santa and his elves are mean. There is not an uplifting feeling throughout this movie….

I just watched “A Christmas Story” and was very disturbed by it. It takes place in the 1940s (I think), but it is not at all like “Miracle on 34th Street”, which was made in the 1940s. There is a lot of violence in this film (hitting, beating, slapping) and worst of all, profanity. The boy in the movie has a fantasy of getting an air rifle and killing crooks. In this age of gun violence, this is the last thing that kids or adults need to see. I would not recommend this movie to anyone. And if this movie is about Christmas, I certainly couldn’t tell.

I first saw the promo for this on Turner Classic Movies. I was going to be sure that it was, and had to be, dumb, scary, violent, and mean-looking. To
tell you the truth, I was right. It is about this boy named Ralphie, who dose
not mind the adults looking after him. He behaves like a SPOILED, SELFISH, ROTTEN, CHILD OF A BRAT. He tells his parents that he wants a BB air rifle gun for Chirstmas. I repeat, A BB AIR RIFLE. But, his mother tells him no, and that it’s dangerous. Children should not be allowed to play rifles, including BB ones. Ralphie was, and is, a terrible, terrible child. I did not
like him at all. A child wanting a gun for Chirstmas… is horrible. Do not show this to your children. It’s more of a rated R then a PG.

I gave this one star, because there is no “0″ rating. Many people encouraged me to watch this…….this……thing, so last year I tried it. I kept wondering why everyone liked it so much. It was absolutely horrible. I forced myself to finish the movie: 1) I had hopes it would get better and 2) everyone said it was great.

If you have not seen it, let me tell you it is NOT great. It is boring, silly, immature and a great big waste of time.

I feel this DVD should not be a part of Christmas, maybe it should be shown at Halloween. I appreciate that this is how one man remembers his childhood but I wish my in-laws had never shown this movie to my children. They are not permanently damaged by this movie but it should be labeled as twisted.

What is this junk? How can so many people think it’s so cute and funny and consider it a classic?

It’s just about a whiny child who wants a gun for Christmas, and just about every adult tells him he’ll “shoot his eye out”! That’s the 1940s’ equivalent of a child asking for a violent video game such as the Grand Theft Auto series and parents saying, “you’ll end up shooting your next door neighbor” in today’s world! How can you call “A Christmas Story” a classic if it’s a hypocrisy of today’s standards?

Yes, entertainment’s entertainment. Movies are supposed to be fantasy road trips that takes us away from real-world problems for 90-or-so minutes. But I think movies tend to have a deeper meaning that is often hidden behind the superficial eye candy and storyline.

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