I guess I'm so far behind the curve I count for nothing these days.

The reason the Mrs. and I no longer GO to the movies anymore (besides mortgaging one's home for a tub of popcorn )is because we wish to be ENTERTAINED .

We enjoy "action" movies where the bad guy "gets his" in gadawful ways, justice is served with proof crime does not pay and the way cool action hero walks off with a drop-dead looking heroine who helped the hero seek justice for the death of his wife .

or ,

The bad guy is SO bad and the good guys are so bumbling that the bad guy evokes sympathy for the accidential death of his wife during a SWAT bust
that that he gets revenge on the corrupt system with the help of a Bombshell babe who used to be a streetwalker and they steal a bunch of dope from the evidence room and retire to a farm in west Kansas and buy a tractor.

or ,

This guy and this gal in a raggedy ol' Tee shirt wake up from hibernation in their space craft and she gets herself killed in an awful way by this BIG ,uh , monster kinda thingie and HE plans revenge on it with the help of this WAY WAY babe who always wears this far out futuristic reealy tight plastic outfit where you can see all the guns she has and together they kill the monster and and all the people who head the corporation who sent them into space in the first place.

or

The preacher of a small town in the old west is suddenly a widower after a corrupt Sheriff/bad guy shoots his wife while trying to kill some squatters and he loses his faith for a while but with the help of a saloon girl with the heart of gold he once again receives God into his heart and goes on a 40minute rampage of hard justice against the sheriff and his 400 deputies and after the bloodbath he marries the saloon girl in front of six remaining townfolk and they all move to Vegas and start the first casino.

Of course there's more , but you can plainly see we enjoy a FULL genre of Fine Film Fare!

But I will bedarnedgotoheck If I will shell out good money for a bad experience. What ARE these people smoking ?! Who is going to pay to be depressed ..? The clinicaly elated ?

Crap like "Stop Loss" is ..well..crap. When I heard there was no stagecoach robbery in "Brokeback Mountain" I said "nope, not for me ". Al Gore starring in a movie..as what ..a tree stump ?..nope not for me.

Hey Hollywood ! Wanna Make Some Money ??? Make movies that let the audience leave the theater laughing , Awed , Inspired , feeling great and hoping for the sequel.. and not depressed , fearful ,desolate and hating our country.

Hollywood , The above is a guarantee ..uh oh , I guess it's too late for the %%%%%.(sigh )

These are just some of the reasons we never go to the movies anymore..She watches "Hallmark " and I "HBO" .

Bush's Grand Adventure in Iraq has cost the world hundreds of thousands of innocent lives and billions of American dollars. Any attempt to whitewash this monster's personal war of aggression with the words "Support the Troops" is laughable at best.

You hit the nail on the head, Old Timer. Excellent comment!

"Hundreds of thousands of innocent lives"

I suspect that this little interaction will end quickly by my asking you to cite your source....but I am going to go ahead and ask anyway.

It will probably end even sooner when I point out that "Old Timer" and "Disgruntled Republican" both post from the same IP address.

Old Timer is right. And as for Hollywood, during World War II Hollywood made mostly light comedies, which went over big with the war-weary citizens, who desperately needed to laugh since life itself was so grim. I would suspect that the same thing is happening again, where Americans cannot bear to watch the realities of war and instead flock to special-effects movies and fantasies. Even if Stop Loss is an attempt on a lighter format, the subject matter will prevent it from making money, since Americans are angry and tired of losing so many young men and women to an expensive and pointless war.

To Site Admin, there are probably dozens of us who could show the same IP address. Our retirement center has eleven computers but only the one internet service, GrandeCom. We all can have an opinion if that is not a problem. Old timer wrote for me because I am blind Thank you.

Now, about citing that source.....

Even if Stop Loss is an attempt on a lighter format, the subject matter will prevent it from making money, since Americans are angry and tired of losing so many young men and women to an expensive and pointless war.

Americans are tired of seeing heroes defamed. That is what is preventing these movies from making money.

Regardless of how one feels about the war in Iraq, how can Hollywood look into two theatres of operation (Iraq and Afghanistan) and not find any heroes or tales of heroism?

If Hollywood would at least make a movie that was neutral on the war but contained a story about a group of soldiers in a tough spot and how they handled it and looked out for each other it would make money.

To Hollywood, those in the military are either mind-numbed, redneck, uneducated, xenophobic killbots or, if they are not that, are introspective enough to be completely damaged by "what they have done" or what "was done to them" by the monsterous Chimpy McHitlerBurton in his war for oil.

Hollywood would make ten movies about American soldiers that they have to invent that rape and kill indiscriminately or come back as total basket cases or (best yet) turn against the war before they will make one about a Michael Mansour or anyone like him and who actually exist.

My objection is statements like the one above, "With "Stop Loss", Hollywood has cranked out yet another movie that shows, again, that they Just. Can't. Stand. The. Troops." That's like saying, "Liberals hate their own children." Of course that is not true. Women are against this war because it has gone on too long and too many of our children have been blown up with roadside bombs, over four thousand dead and many times that number hidden away in hospitals with life-devastating injuries. Any candidate who will end this war has my vote.

Women are against this war because it has gone on too long and too many of our children have been blown up with roadside bombs, over four thousand dead and many times that number hidden away in hospitals with life-devastating injuries.

Some women. Many even.

And many women, while hating war, are for it because of what they see as the long term benefit of fighting terrorism and defending Western culture.

Now, who is likely to get a movie made about them?

Here is a hint: Everyone knows who Cindy Sheehan is. But have you ever heard of Deborah Johns?

Any candidate who will end this war has my vote.

It is nice to know that after almost 70 years I still have a constituency.

Neville Chamberlain was a Conservative, and the belief of his Party was that if Hitler could be channeled toward the Soviet Union, which the Conservatives believed was a greater danger to Britain, they could literally "kill two birds with one stone." Of course we all know that Chamberlain ended up declaring war against the Nazis, resigning, and was dead of cancer six months later. Chamberlain was not so much anti-war; he thought he had a clever way to make Hitler and Russia destroy each other. This political maneuver doesn't really apply to our 21st century conflict in the desert.

I don't know if Liberals hate their children or not. But if Liberals all shot and edited their home movies to only ever show their children in the worst possible light then I would begin to wonder.

Wouldn't you?

Take what you read here on this blog. After reading the posts here...our product, if you will...you would be fair in assuming that we Just. Cant. Stand. Leftists.

And you would be right.

All we are doing is watching what is put forth by Hollywood...their product...and making the same kind of determination.

a respectful submission:

There are so many comparisons of the invasion of Iraq to 'Nam it boggles the mind . Quagmire ! No Plan Of Withdrawal ! Too Many of our Young Dead !

All the "Withdraw Now" reasons hinge upon the reasoning that our young soldiers were placed into harms way as "cannon fodder" to support the evil machinations of Haliburton et al .

or worse ,

For the presidents evil plan to save the "face" of his father .

And ,of course the chant that this is just another VietNam.

Movies like this "Stop Loss" do such a great disservice to the men and women of today's military I just want to puke !

Some "Inconvenient Truths" of my own.

Unlike VietNam , the soldiers in Iraq and Pakistan are ALL volunteers . No one was drafted into being there ! No judge gave the offender an option of jail of the military . No male ,failing their college year got a tour of the Mid-East for their non-efforts .

To say that a soldier , a volunteer soldier, joined the military not knowing they may have to actually fight and might even die for their efforts is ludicrous and demeaning .

Every time Cindy Sheehan opens her mouth "Dissing" the country her son fought for ,she dishonors his memory and spits on his grave .

Ms.Sheehan forgets her son was a MAN graced with intelligence to make a decision about his future and so he chose .

All soldiers stationed in the middle east joined up knowing that sooner or later they would be there ...that we have lost 4000 troops over this length of time is AMAZING if you consider the amount of troops lost in WW1/2/Korea/'Nam/ in the same amount of time . Amazing at how LIGHTLY We got off.

Things aren't done in a day and we were required to spend years in both Germany and Japan after the war...The Soviet Union was required to spend a whole lot longer in their captu..er ..freed territories.

Give the military a break . The men and women there know darn well why they are there AND they volunteered for it .

And yet military men who contributed to our country's political campaigns gave more money to Ron Paul (who promised to end the war immediately) than to all the Republican candidates combined, with Barack Obama coming up second. That shows that people who are actually putting their lives on the line and seeing the war up close want the war to end, and are willing to back that belief with their hard-earned money. We sit back here and say, "Oh, they like war, they signed up for it," but the actual truth is that many a military man has discovered that the war he is fighting is ill-conceived, pointless, and needlessly destructive to American interests.

Pandora; I received a phone call from Mosul Iraq last week-end and during this conversation I asked an enlisted man who he would vote for, He said he would vote for McCain and didn't know of any soldiers who planned to vote Democratic.

He also said he was getting tired of the one sided press and whiney anti-war cowards.

And yet military men who contributed to our country's political campaigns gave more money to Ron Paul......That shows that people who are actually putting their lives on the line and seeing the war up close want the war to end, and are willing to back that belief with their hard-earned money.

I would like to know where you got your figures on this claim....but nevertheless, where were the votes? Ron Paul never got out of single digits in any primary.

He was all money, and no votes.

This week "Stop Loss" was Number 8 of the Top 10 Box Office Hits, according to Fandango's site, right below "10,000 B.C." I guess it's gaining momentum amongst movie-goers.

When I re-read that quote attributed to Einstein about insanity being defined as doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results, I am reminded that most Lottery winners apparently got their millions that way, not by buying one ticket and then giving up if it failed to win. And of course if you're lost in the woods and trying to start a fire, it would be wise to keep doing the same thing over and over if the flint doesn't kindle the flame on the first try. I'm surprised Einstein didn't bother to think this one through.

Well, I suppose that is what makes you you and makes him, well, Einstein.

I know. The longer one thinks of this quote the more examples appear, from scrubbing a sink to planting a garden to running a race. So many things in life have to be done again to achieve different results. Einstein, who thought in pictures rather than words, could not speak until he was five years old, and failed the entrance exams in chemistry and biology in high school, may not have been the final authority on subjects other than math and physics.
Here's another quote I like: "It is one of the maladies of our age to profess a frenzied allegiance to truth in unimportant matters, to refuse consistently to face her where graver issues are at stake." - Janos Arany