comment #1

Edward says ...

Absolutely. Sorry, was just too easy.

comment #2

p.Vice says ...

You mean like when you called that big pile of mediocrity called The Hurt Locker "absolutely a classic war film in the tradition of Platoon, The Thin Red Line, Pork Chop Hill, Paths of Glory and the last 25% of Full Metal Jacket"?

comment #3

Jeffrey Wells says ...

Yes, exactly like that. Guilty. It just happened, okay? Otherwise I hate using that word.

comment #4

Jeffrey Wells says ...

Although there are some instances in which the right people can use it if it's used sparingly. If a sales person or a publicist or a politician or a car salesman uses it, it's highly suspect. If someone like myself blurts it out in a review, it's bad but not that bad.

comment #5

Sabina E says ...

gosh darnit, Wells, you hate gingers/redheads, fat people, and now you hate people who utter "absolutely."

it's absolutely difficult to make you happy :-S

comment #6

byanyother says ...

Sometimes it has to be used because one faces so much suspicion and doubt -- as in, are you sure if I hit "send" the email will go through?

"Do you really love me?"
"Are you sure that's North?"
"Do you really want to use that knife?"

It also reminds me of The English Patient where KST says the word always worries her, or something to that effect.

comment #7

dinther says ...

Funny, when i argue in court, i use this word ALL the time. I can't think of another word the more aptly conveys to the panel (or the judge) my agreement with them in a positive, succinct manner.

Plus, if the questioning is potentially hostile or adverse (as it is w/ Sotomayor), "absolutely" diffuses any adversity by conveying that the person asking the question is not only right, but REALLY right. Which is what people with huge egos (judges, members of the JC) love to hear.

comment #8

BurmaShave says ...

Verbal skill is really such a narrow part of intelligence, especially in such a high pressure and atypical situation. And I'm going to say someone who went to Princeton and Yale Law and was at the top of both is my definition a major intellect. Where exactly did the movie bloggers/commenters of the world get the idea they were equals to the future Supreme Court Justices? We need a little bit of respect for the exceptional back in this country.

comment #9

joefilm1 says ...

If you think a modern Senate Supreme Court hearing is designed to allow a jurist with as fine a mind as Judge Sotomayor to display her intellect sufficiently enough to dazzle you, then you don't get the process. Trying to placate people as inflated and simple-minded as Orrin Hatch or Jeff Sessions does not allow for any dazzle.

comment #10

dave l says ...

Wells, can you provide an example? Otherwise I don't get what you're talking about.

comment #11

twicks says ...

I always liked Stallone's delivery of this word as Rocky, though.

comment #12

Travis Crabtree says ...

"The Hurt Locker" completely lived up to Jeff's hype in my opinion.

"Public Enemies" on the other hand.................. ugh.

Lord that was tedious.... I didn't have a problem with the mega-crisp HD video aspect as much as the over-hand-heldness of it. It's one thing to be handheld and have that news-like look of immediacy, it's another to have a shot appear as if the boom operator kept accidentally bumping into the cameraman.

And forty some years after "Bonnie and Clyde" is it STILL fresh to present a story like this as an example of the irony that sometimes the so-called "good guys" are really the bad guys and vice versa? Wow, man. Heavy.

The police and the FBI are sadistic, woman-beating thugs, whereas John Dillinger's just a free-spirit rebel who plays by his own set of rules and lets regular folk keep their money while he fights the fat-cats and powers-that-be.

Zzzzzzzzz.

Read about some of these people. Dillinger, Clyde Barrow, Nelson, etc. These people were murderous, sociopathic dirtballs, not hunky, misunderstood, puckishly lovable rogues.

comment #13

TL says ...

Not my idea of a dazzling intellect....

Pray tell - what's a girl got to do to dazzle you with her intellect? More specifically, what would you want her to do in the context of a Senate judicial committee hearing when she has no choice but to sit there and listen to the insane prattling of Jeff Sessions and try to respond politely?

comment #14

Joshua Mooney says ...

Travis: I'm intrigued by what you said. My wife had a HUGE problem with "Public Enemies" because it glorified Dillinger and his murder sprees. Whereas she appreciates "Bonnie and Clyde" because that film seemed to be, metaphorically, about something else in 1967. I think Warren Beatty and his script doctors were really on to something with "B&C." And as much as I enjoyed "Public Enemies," my wife has a point. As do you. Barrow, Dillinger, and the rest of them were in reality sociopathic killers. Mann didn't convey another reason to appreciate Dillinger, as Beatty did with Barrow in '67.

comment #15

arch451 says ...

One time my girlfriend asked me if I would ever cheat on her. I replied, "Absolutely not." It was odd that I just didn't say no. I realized afterwards that I was trying to convince myself that my answer was true. (I have no intentions of cheating on her but deep down inside I was not confident that it could never happen.)

comment #16

DarthCorleone says ...

As Obi-Wan Kenobi said, "Only a Sith deals in absolutes."

comment #17

bmcintire says ...

Jeff - in the Moyers/Potter interview regarding Michael Moore and the healthcare system, Potter uses the word "ablsoutely" five times. Four of those times it is used as a complete sentence.

I didn't get the feeling that you were backing away from him or his opinion in that case. Not even once.

comment #18

Floyd Thursby says ...

I always find that youbetcha conveys the right tone of sincerity.

comment #19

Travis Crabtree says ...

Joshua... not to give the impression that I haven't always liked "Bonnie and Clyde", despite its historical liberties.
It was / is a cool film with a fresh (at the time) anti-hero p.o.v.

Loved it, in fact.

comment #20

mrmystery says ...

Barrow, Dillinger, and the rest of them were in reality sociopathic killers.

Kind of like Che. At least Mann didn't turn PE into a two-part lefty wetdream.

comment #21

Mark Redfield says ...

Absotively, posilutely.

To be used only when a mere "absolutely" isn't emphatic enough. Exclamation point(s) optional.

comment #22

nemo says ...

"I always find that youbetcha conveys the right tone of sincerity."

I like to say "Absotively, positutely."

But durn, I see Mark Redfield beat me to it by a matter of seconds.

I also like the Russian version: "AbsoluTEEVnee . . ." I'm not kidding, that's what they say.

comment #23

dangovich says ...

What about abso-fucking-lutely?

comment #24

nemo says ...

"The police and the FBI are sadistic, woman-beating thugs . . ."

Well, that part is *absolutely* historically accurate.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/dillinger/peopleevents/p_frechette.html

"Dillinger paid Louis Piquett, his own lawyer, to take on Frechette's case, and try to free her through legal means. During her trial in St. Paul, Frechette testified that during her D.O.I. interrogation, she had been slapped and deprived of food and sleep for two days. Dillinger became so angry that he vowed to kill Harold H. Reinecke, the agent in charge of Frechette's interrogation. Dillinger reluctantly gave up his intention only after Piquett threatened to leave him if he killed anyone."

You can find more details in Dillinger: The Untold Story in Google books. Of course, Reineke testified the abuse never happened.

comment #25

Travis Crabtree says ...

I believe Piquett and Dillinger over that stupid, fat Reineke. They were so much more beautiful.

comment #26

CitizenKanedforChewingGum says ...

"What about abso-fucking-lutely?"

This is about the only answer I ever hear James Hetfield of Metallica give in interviews.

Even if the question is, "are you gonna finish those fries?"

comment #27

nemo says ...

It's definitely (or I should say, absolutely) a case of Frechette's word against the FBI. But given how routine police abuse of prisoners was in past decades, I'm inclined to give Frechette the benefit of the doubt. Especially when you look at how routine abuse and even outright torture of prisoners has been in Chicago even in recent decades (of course, that's the Chicago PD, not the FBI):

http://humanrights.uchicago.edu/chicagotorture/timeline.shtml

http://humanrights.uchicago.edu/chicagotorture/faqs.shtml

http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=6125
"More than 10,000 complaints of police abuse were filed with Chicago police between 2002 and 2004, but only 19 resulted in meaningful disciplinary action, a new study asserts."

"The study argues the Chicago Police Department should not be allowed to police itself."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/15/us/15chicago.html
"Chicago police officers are the subject of more brutality complaints per officer than the national average, and the Police Department is far less likely to pursue abuse cases seriously than the national norm, a legal team at the University of Chicago reported Wednesday. "

And then there's the routine use of torture by the Bush administration. Frechette's testimony alone doesn't prove abuse by the FBI, but it's plenty believable.

comment #28

dave l says ...

Soderbergh's Che was not a 'lefty wetdream'. I don't know what it was, but nobody who watched was going to get any kind of erotic stimulation unless you have a beard fetish.

comment #29

BurmaShave says ...

This country's hard on people. John Dillinger reacted in a certain way, not the proper way, but understandable. He certainly killed innocents, but so did Melvin Purvis.

comment #30

Travis Crabtree says ...

Well, then you'll love "Public Enemies".

You sound like a college sociology professor, BurmaShave. The old "three fingers pointing back at YOU" argument. You know, the depression was tough on millions of people who didn't feel the need to rob banks and kill people.

It's not even that, though. It's the utter cinematic predictability.

Again, take away the comparisons to real life and history and just think for a moment about the lack of originality.

You wanna REALLY blow people's minds? Make a prison film where the warden and guards are good guys and the prisoners are guilty, violent thugs.

comment #31

KC says ...

I've been pretty impressed by her thus far, of course Wells dismissing her as a good-hearted if relatively mediocre hard worker fits in nicely with shitting on some other guy's dorky old man footwear while walking around in Marty McFly sneaks

comment #32

Josh Massey says ...

"This country's hard on people."

Never been to another country, have you?

comment #33

nemo says ...

"You wanna REALLY blow people's minds? Make a prison film where the warden and guards are good guys and the prisoners are guilty, violent thugs."

I can't even think of a prison film made in the last few decades. Brubaker was made in 1980, Escape from Alcatraz in 1979. That's three decades ago.

But in the 1930s, the heyday of the prison picture, the prisoners were routinely portrayed as guilty, violent thugs. They were often abused by the guards in those movies, but there was never any question those prisoners were thugs who belonged behind bars.

The movie that's freshest in my mind is Each Dawn I Die from 1939. James Cagney is framed, but the rest of the prisoners, including George Raft, are violent lowlifes. That melodrama had no trouble making both cases -- prisoners were often abused, and were also dangerous and guilty as hell.

comment #34

Travis Crabtree says ...

Green Mile.... Shawshank... Longest Yard......

comment #35

nemo says ...

"I can't even think of a prison film made in the last few decade."

Oh, I guess there's The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. I've never seen either one. The Shawshank Redemption is supposed to be pretty good, and The Green Mile is supposed to be terrible. But everything I've heard about them both sounds too sentimental for my taste. A sentimental prison movie! Ugh.

Everything I hear about Sotomayer says that as both a prosecutor and a judge she was always right in the mainstream when comes to throwing the book at 'em in criminal cases. The only complaint the far right has against her is that she's not obviously far right.

comment #36

nemo says ...

The Longest Yard! The Robert Aldrich original with Burt Reynolds (at the pinnacle of his beauty) was just about perfect. There was never any reason for a remake, especially starring Happy GIlmore. A total vanity project. Double and triple ugh.

The Green Mile and Billy Madison's The Longest Yard. No wonder prison pictures have a bad rep nowadays.

I guess The Last Castle qualifies as a military prison movie. And a much of Out of Sight. Don Cheadle and Isaiah Washington were plenty scary as violent, guilty thugs.

comment #37

nemo says ...

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090624/PEOPLE/906249990

Roger Ebert's June 24 interview with Michael Mann. Mann says that he had total cooperation with the FBI, and that they had no sensitivity about how Hoover or the FBI were portrayed (which I guess means they didn't quarrel with the scenes of abuse by the FBI).

Mann asked if he could see Purvis's FBI file. When the FBI pulled the file, they were stunned to see that Hoover had purge of all Purvis's records, like Stalin erasing every memory of Trotsky. They had one sheet of paper -- his application for employment.

Mann also said that the Indiana State Prison in Dillinger's time had institutionalized forms of torture including beatings and suffocation.

comment #38

Colin says ...

Well before you Public Enemies dislikers all start going down on one another. Bryan Burroughs, who wrote the book, said it was very true to fact except for the Cubs-Yankees game that didn't happen.

comment #39

Movie Watcher says ...

Jeff, remember that Sotomayor spoke spanish before she spoke english. It is not her first language, so I think her english is affected because of that. I have been watching some of the hearings, and it's pointless, she will get confirmed. The real fight will come when Obama replaces a conservative with a liberal. The fight will be epic and fun to watch at the same time. Absolutely.

comment #40

crazynine says ...

I know I'm late to the party, but I couldn't let this statement stand for the record without comment:

Burmashave: "Verbal skill is really such a narrow part of intelligence, especially in such a high pressure and atypical situation."

If only folks had applied that standard to President Bush, eh?

Sotomayor has a boatload of annoying verbal ticks and takes gross inaccuracies with the English language-- "providence" instead of "province," "eminent" instead of "imminent," "story of knowledge" instead of "store of knowledge"... it goes on and on.

Oh, and she's a baldface liar when it comes to her previous statements.

But hey, her heart is in the right place, so it's all good.

comment #41

Natali Watson says ...

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