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Zules
Member
08-21-2000
| Tuesday, February 24, 2004 - 11:47 am
I well remember the furor when Schindler's List came out. There were protests, op/ed pieces, you name it.
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Texannie
Member
07-16-2001
| Tuesday, February 24, 2004 - 12:09 pm
I swear I am losing my mind! I don't remember any of that! But I didn't see that movie either.
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Zules
Member
08-21-2000
| Tuesday, February 24, 2004 - 12:27 pm
Don't be too hard on yourself Tex, it was about 10 years ago now. I remember there was even a website on Holocaust Revisionism. If I remember correctly, it called Spielberg an illusionist and a fraud (among other things). At the time, many also accused Spielberg of libel.
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Brenda1966
Member
07-03-2002
| Tuesday, February 24, 2004 - 1:10 pm
Zules, I remember a lot of discussion about how Schindler was portrayed (was he really sympathetic to the Jews or was he just an opportunistic business man). Interesting comment from Ebert's review: "Note: I said the film is the most violent I have ever seen. It will probably be the most violent you have ever seen. This is not a criticism but an observation; the film is unsuitable for younger viewers, but works powerfully for those who can endure it. The MPAA's R rating is definitive proof that the organization either will never give the NC-17 rating for violence alone, or was intimidated by the subject matter. If it had been anyone other than Jesus up on that cross, I have a feeling that NC-17 would have been automatic." His entire review can be read here: http://www.suntimes.com/output/ebert1/cst-ftr-passion24.html Ketchup -- I'm with ya (I think) 
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Zules
Member
08-21-2000
| Tuesday, February 24, 2004 - 1:39 pm
Brenda, you're right. There was a lot of discussion about that too and thanks for the link. Ebert said: I can respond to the power of belief whether I agree or not, and when I find it in a film, I must respect it. And I will add: That respect does not waiver even if I do not choose to see the movie myself. I respect the views of the people on this board enough that I will come back here to see all of your opinions on it. I hope you all have a positive experience and are moved by this film. I didn't mean to hijack your thread GAL, I just wanted to respond to Texannie's question about the lack of complaint about Holocaust movies....ducking out now.
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Urgrace
Member
08-19-2000
| Tuesday, February 24, 2004 - 2:07 pm
It starts in our theatre this weekend. Since I haven*t seen it yet, it is hard to comment. Our pastor told us about it. In my mind, I*m thinking the violence of Jesus* beating and nailing on the cross will be heartwrenching, because of who Jesus is. Most of us have witnessed gory things in badly done movies, and it probably had a lot less effect since it was *just a movie*. A good friend sent me this today: Remember Gibson in a Man Without a Face? Years ago a hardworking man took his family from New York State to Australia to take advantage of a work opportunity there. Part of this man*s family was a handsome son who had aspirations of joining the circus as a trapeze artist or an actor. This young fellow, biding his time until a circus job or even as a stagehand came along, worked at the local shipyards which bordered on the worse section of town. Walking home from work one evening, this young man was attacked by five thugs who wanted to rob him and proceeded to beat him to a pulp. They mashed his face with their boots, and kicked and beat his body brutally with clubs, leaving him for dead. When the police happened to find him lying in the road they assumed he was dead and called for the Morgue Wagon. On the way to the morgue, a policeman heard him gasp for air, and they immediately took him to the emergency unit at the hospital. When he was placed on a gurney, a nurse remarked to her horror, that this young man no longer had a face. His eye socket was smashed, his skull, legs and arms fractured, his nose literally hanging from his face, all his teeth were gone, and his jaw was almost completely torn from his skull. Although his life was spared, he spent over a year in the hospital. When he finally left, his body may have healed but his face was disgusting to look at. He was no longer the handsome youth that everyone admired. When the young man started to look for work again, he was turned down by everyone just on account of the way he looked. One potential employer suggested to him that he join the freak show at the circus as "The man who had no face." And he did this for a while. He was still rejected by everyone and no one wanted to be seen in his company. He had thoughts of suicide. This went on for 5 years. One day he passed a church and sought some solace there. Entering the church he encountered a priest who had seen him sobbing while kneeling in a pew. The priest took pity on him and took him to the rectory where they talked at length. The priest was impressed with him to such a degree that he said that he would do everything possible for him that could be done to restore his dignity and life, if the young man would promise to be the best Catholic he could be, and trust in God*s mercy to free him from his torturous life. The young man went to Mass and Communion every day, and after thanking God for saving his life, asked God to only give him peace of mind and the grace to be the best man he could ever be in His eyes. The priest, through his personal contacts was able to secure the services of the best plastic surgeon in Australia. There would be no cost to the young man, as the doctor was the priest*s best friend. The doctor too was so impressed by the young man, whose outlook now on life, even though he had experienced the worst, was filled with good humor and love. The surgery was a miraculous success. All the best dental work was also done for him. The young man became everything he promised God he would be He was also blessed with a wonderful, beautiful wife, and many children, and success in an industry, which would have been the furthest thing from his mind as a career, if not for the goodness of God and the love of the people who cared for him. This he acknowledges publicly. The young man is.......MEL GIBSON. His life was the inspiration for his production of the movie "The Man Without A Face." He is to be admired by all of us as a God fearing man, a political conservative, and an example to all as a true man of courage. And to think I admired him before I knew any of this!! He is quite a man!!!! Paul Harvey This may help us understand why Mel Gibson has been so committed to his latest movie venture as director of, "The Passion." Gibson is once again being attacked. This time because of his blunt honesty and commitment to Biblical accuracy in his vivid portrayal of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
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Sillycalimomma
Member
11-13-2003
| Tuesday, February 24, 2004 - 2:18 pm
Actually Urgrace the above is an email urban legend..... As found at this site ..... Mel Gibson Urban Legend To be sure, the great Paul Harvey has propagated more than a few urban legends in his time, but this particular bit of codswallop was not his doing. It's a spoof, passably mimicking the style and format of Harvey's radio commentaries. (I'm told Mr. Harvey did do a 2000 story on Mel Gibson in which he recounted a minor incident in the actor's youth that may have inspired the email tale. But the words you just read were not Harvey's.) As for Mr. Gibson, his actual life story interesting though it may be to his fans is not the stuff of which high drama is made. Born in 1956 in Peekskill, New York, he indeed moved to Australia with his family at the age of 12, but the teen-aged Mel, far from having aspirations to join the circus or become an actor, was, by his own admission, a loner and a heavy drinker with no particular direction in life. "I woke up in the bloody hospital with head stitches, a busted nose, my jaw off the hook, peeing blood..." It was his older sister, Mary, who set his future career in motion by submitting an application in his name and without his knowledge to the National Institute of Dramatic Arts in Sydney. Having nothing to lose, he auditioned and was accepted. He proved to be a talented actor and lived theatrically ever after. His first big break in the movies occurred in 1979 when he landed the starring role in a low-budget Australian flick called "Mad Max," which soon attracted a cult following. There's an anecdote surrounding this early triumph which presumably inspired our apocryphal email story. About a week before the big audition, he got drunk at a party and wound up in a fistfight with three other men. And lost. "I woke up in the bloody hospital with head stitches, a busted nose, my jaw off the hook, peeing blood," he recalled in a 1995 Playboy interview. He was "still a mess" on the day of the audition, but ironically it was his busted-up face (he claims) that caught director George Miller's attention and won Gibson the part as the film's post-apocalyptic antihero. Be that as it may, he did not require a year in the hospital to recover, nor was he left permanently disfigured, nor did he join a circus freak show and spend five years wandering and horribly depressed. On the contrary, he healed quickly, shot Mad Max that same year and went on within the same span of time our email story tells us it took him to hit bottom, find God and undergo plastic surgery to become one of the world's most sought-after leading men. He did, in fact, later direct and star in "The Man Without a Face," the 1993 film adaptation of Isabelle Holland's novel of the same name. In it, he played a reclusive teacher whose face had been horribly scarred as a result of an automobile accident. But the script wasn't based on Gibson's own life, not even remotely. As a matter of fact, the novel as in: a work of fiction from which the film was adapted was first published in 1972. Mel Gibson was 16 years old at the time.
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Faerygdds
Member
08-29-2000
| Tuesday, February 24, 2004 - 2:21 pm
I got this e-mail a while back... checked it out on snopes.com... Claim: Mel Gibson was the inspiration for the film The Man Without a Face. Status: False. Origins: This is a piece too inane even for glurgemeister Paul Harvey. Suffice it to say that someone has taken the framework of Mel Gibson's biography and built upon it a touching but completely fictitious house of glurge. Mel Gibson's father did move his family from New York to Sydney, Australia, when Mel was 12, but the similarities between this piece and Mel's real life end there. Young Mel wasn't dreaming of "joining the circus as a trapeze artist"; he was a Catholic high school student mulling over the possibilities of becoming a chef or a journalist who ended up enrolling in the University of New South Wales' National Institute of Dramatic Art. Young Mel had a role in the low-budget film Summer City while still a student and then appeared in a number of productions with the State Theatre Company of South Australia before the lucky break that catapulted him to stardom: being chosen for the lead role in George Miller's action film Mad Max. A little bit of truth sneaks into the story at this point. The night before his Mad Max audition, Gibson reportedly came in a poor second in a barroom brawl, ending up with a face "like a busted grapefruit." He then had to audition for the Mad Max role with a bruised, swollen, discolored, and freshly stitched face -- an appearance that, legend has it, helped win over producers who wanted someone weathered and rough-looking to take the part. The beating Gibson received did not, however, leave him with "smashed eye sockets," fracture his "skull, legs, and arms," result in the loss of "all his teeth" or a nose that was "hanging from his face" or a "jaw almost completely torn from his skull." He didn't spend "over a year in the hospital," nor did five years pass with Mel in agony before "plastic surgery restored his looks." His face got smashed up a bit, he required a few stitches to close some open cuts, and a few weeks later he was good as new. Mel Gibson did direct and star in The Man Without a Face, a 1993 film about a man who became a recluse after his face was disfigured in an automobile accident, but the movie was based upon a novel by Isabelle Holland, not Mel Gibson's life. Many of our readers have sworn to us they heard Paul Harvey recite this piece, exactly as reproduced above, on one of his broadcasts. He did offer a "Rest of the Story" segment about Mel Gibson on 24 June 2000, and it was a typically (for Paul Harvey) exaggerated version of the truth, but it didn't come close to the glurge reproduced here. What Paul Harvey said, verbatim, was this:
quote:In all his years as a cop, Ollie Gerrick had never seen a beating case like the one before him. The boy's face was smashed in. His partner say he wouldn't survive. The ambulance arrived and took him to the hospital and when he came to, the doctors told him the rest of the story. He was in the hospital and then he remembered that night in the bar. It was late the next night that the young man remembered he had an important appointment. He realized it was tomorrow. He struggled to get out of bed but the nurse restrained him. The next morning, he got out of bed and looked in the mirror and he didn't recognize himself. Nevertheless, he went on to the job interview. Despite the bar fight in October of 1977. He showed up for a role in a movie and the producers were looking for someone unknown who was really tough looking. He got the role they were casting for. They were looking for someone to play the rugged role of Mad Max and this Australian with the beaten up face went on to become one of our best modern-day actors. We know him as Mel Gibson, and now you know the rest of the story.
And now you know . . . the real story. Last updated: 9 October 2000
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Urgrace
Member
08-19-2000
| Tuesday, February 24, 2004 - 2:22 pm
MODERATOR could you combine KLs thread with the one GAL started. <KL, sorry I didn*t see your thread first. I don*t come to this area much and GALs thread was the first one on the topics list when I got here.>
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Faerygdds
Member
08-29-2000
| Tuesday, February 24, 2004 - 2:35 pm
Dang I hate it when I post a tad bit after someone else... <sigh>
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Goddessatlaw
Member
07-19-2002
| Tuesday, February 24, 2004 - 2:37 pm
Hey, KL - I looked for this before I started a thread - I'm sorry, I didn't see it before starting my thread. I hope they can be combined.
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Ketchuplover
Member
08-30-2000
| Tuesday, February 24, 2004 - 3:29 pm
I forgive you 
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Goddessatlaw
Member
07-19-2002
| Tuesday, February 24, 2004 - 4:17 pm

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Ocean_islands
Member
09-07-2000
| Wednesday, February 25, 2004 - 6:58 am
Why are we talking about some other movie in this thread? While I am interested to see this treatment on Jesus's life, I doubt I will. I'm not interested in seeing 'buckets o'blood'. When I was growing up in a fundamentalist Christian household, the complaint about Catholics was that they emphasized the crucifixion and neglected the resurrection. After all, in Catholic churches, Christ is still on the cross. It seems like that is the emphasis in this picture. That wouldn't keep me from seeing it, I just don't really want to see blood thrown across the screen for two hours, I don't see the point. I also feel sorry for church members who feel they have to go see this movie because they are 'Christian'. For many of them it will be the first R-rated movie they have ever seen.
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Goddessatlaw
Member
07-19-2002
| Wednesday, February 25, 2004 - 7:29 am
Well, I can say I woke up nervous about seeing this movie today and it's a feeling that has not gone away. I share your distaste for graphic violence, Ocean and I may spend more time hiding behind my coat than actually watching the film. I guess I'm more nervous about what my reaction will be at the end of it: emotional (not like me), distressed (I think I should be, given the subject matter) or detached (like me - at least when it comes to films). I'm not seeing it because I feel I have to, though - and I'm not what I would consider a religious person. But I do believe the Gospels are accurate biographies of Jesus, a real person who lived 2000 years ago. Being raised in Catholic schools, of course we had his crucifixion impressed on us as the seminal event of his life (and ours), second only to His resurrection. I guess I've always been under-impressed with Hollywood's ability to raise a reaction out of me with re-tellings of his story. But for "The Last Temptation of Christ", they've always seemed whitewashed. I was impressed with "The Last Temptation" because it really caused me to consider the life he could have had and that he gave up for us (marriage, children, a peaceful existence). My question to myself is, "have I really considered the death this man suffered?" I have to admit I have not. I hope the movie will stir in me a human reaction to his life and death, rather than leave me with my more or less analytical manner of addressing the subject matter - "he was crucified and he died for our sins." Well, what did that really mean in his experience, and if He went through the experience, the least I can do is witness the event in (what I understand) is the most accurate depiction of his scourging and crucifixion to date. I may come out totally disappointed, who knows. I don't expect to come out with any sense of religious renewal, just maybe a deeper appreciation of the feelings I already have regarding Jesus the human being.
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Maris
Member
03-28-2002
| Wednesday, February 25, 2004 - 8:06 am
Having read the reviews I absolutely know that I am not going to see it. I hate violent movies and from what I have read it is really really graphic and constant for two hours. I urge everyone who is considering taking their preteens or early teenagers to see the movie first.
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Ocean_islands
Member
09-07-2000
| Wednesday, February 25, 2004 - 8:42 am
There was a cover photo from the film on the NY Post or the NY Daily News a couple weeks ago that I couldn't look at. I don't buy the paper but it was all over the place. That was enough for me to know that I'm not interested in going.
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Kaili
Member
08-31-2000
| Wednesday, February 25, 2004 - 8:52 am
Did you see the Newsweek cover photo? I'm waiting for the letters of complaint to come pouring in. I won't be seeing it. Message or not in the movie, I don't like watching stuff like that. I'd rather see a happy movie. That's why I generally see movies...to have fun.
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Spygirl
Member
04-23-2001
| Wednesday, February 25, 2004 - 8:52 am
I am so conflicted about watching this movie. I really do want to see it, but who am I kidding? I couldn't stomach Gladiator. I avoid violent movies like the plague...heck, Saving Private Ryan was beyond what I really can handle - I'm a wimp. I desperately want to see this movie since my faith is such an important part of who I am, but I am just not sure that I will have the strength to see it. I'm going to wait and see other's reports. GAL, I will be anxious to hear what you have to say since it sounds like we are of a similar mind.
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Sillycalimomma
Member
11-13-2003
| Wednesday, February 25, 2004 - 8:57 am
quote:Why are we talking about some other movie in this thread?
Sorry Oceans. I wanted to put some clarity on the post that Urgrace posted. I didn't think it was too far off the beaten path as it was in regard to Mel Gibson and all.
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Texannie
Member
07-16-2001
| Wednesday, February 25, 2004 - 9:37 am
Beautifully said GAL!!!
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Brenda1966
Member
07-03-2002
| Wednesday, February 25, 2004 - 10:28 am
If critics like Ebert, who see every film, are saying this is the most violent film they've ever seen, then I just can't imagine what it will be like. (And I am disgusted with the MPAA for giving it an R rating when it sounds like it deserves an NC17). On the radio this morning they were talking about the film and a woman called in who was supposed to be taking a group of middle school kids from a youth group to this movie. This horrifies me! I worry greatly about the effect this movie is going to have on kids who are shown this movie because it is "religious". This clearly sounds like a movie for adults only and not one I will be seeing soon (maybe later on video, but not in a theater). I have enough violent movie scenes haunting me.
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Moderator
Moderator
06-30-2002
| Wednesday, February 25, 2004 - 11:52 am
FYI: The two separate threads discussing this film have been combined here. Mod (22)
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Spygirl
Member
04-23-2001
| Wednesday, February 25, 2004 - 3:10 pm
While picking up my dogs at the groomer, I learned from a woman who was also picking up her dog that a woman from the local ABC affiliate TV station (not sure if she is behind or in front of the camera) suffered a massive heart attack while watching the movie today and died. I look for that to make some headlines given the controversy surrounding this movie.
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Maris
Member
03-28-2002
| Wednesday, February 25, 2004 - 3:40 pm
Not surprising when you consider that Disney recommends that people with heart conditions not go on the scary rides. I have heard all day to day about how graphically violent and disturbing this movie is. I cant imagine sitting for two hours and watching someone being literally tortured to death. The reviewer from the New Yorker said that any parent who takes a child is in his mind committing child abuse by subjecting a child to this movie.
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