f13.net

Clooney, Damon, Goodman, Blanchett, Fucking MURRAY? Yeah, okay, I'm on board.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uuItnYF4ZE

Don't leave Ron Rifkin off the list!

While I love that dude, he's not exactly the name draw the others are.

But yes, Rifkin is awesome too, and probably perfect in that movie.

Great cast, cool premise, and WWII backdrop?

I'm in.

I was all in too... until I saw it.

Perhaps the most charitable thing to say about Clooney's efforts here as Writer and Director (his acting is fine, if predictable) is that the original must have been 5-hours of a great story that in the need to cut down to 90-minutes all the parts about the characters that would have made us care had to be edited out.

There are dozens of ways this film could have been great... but only one way it could have sucked; the way they made it: a slow moving, sloppily written, poorly edited, preachy mess.

The strength of the cast makes it bearable to watch; it is only when it ends that you realize how badly Clooney missed the mark.

Clooney can't write or direct? I'm SHOCKED.

Didn't he do Goodnight and Goodluck ?

That was awesome.

Clooney is both a good writer and a good director. I haven't seen this so I can't comment on its merits, but he can do both of those things well.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is an underrated flick in my opinion.

More's the pity, then.  My observations are specific to this movie and not universal.

It received good reviews when it came out and still seen as a good movie. Not sure why you would consider it underrated.

Because I've never talked to anyone else who liked it but me.  :oh_i_see:  Maybe underrated is the wrong term. Unknown may be a better description.

I thought it was fantastic.

Yeah, I thought it was good.  It was pretty much what I was expecting it to be.

Not seen the film yet, so I don't know details about the plot, but according to a short TV report yesterday it seems to be "Pearl Harbor" levels of history falsification.

From an interview with one of the living witnesses what happened was:

The Gauleiter (state governor) of Upper Austria, August Eigruber, intended to blow up the saltmine. The miners noticed that the eight boxes - labeled "Attention! Marble - Don't topple" - they transported actually contained aerial bombs. The witness said they didn't really care about the art, but for the salt mine which was the main livelihood of Altausee and they didn't want it destroyed. Which lead them to approach the chief of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Main Security Office) Ernst Kaltenbrunner (SS, major war criminal, hanged at Nürnberg) who assured them to countermand the demolition order. In the night of 3-4 May the miners removed the bombs and then blew up the mine entrance to forestall any last minute actions by the Gauleiter. After the capitulation (on 8th) US forces reached Altausee and were informed about the stored art. They reopened the mine and removed the content.

The End.

Fucked up history factoid I just came across when fact-checking on Wikipedia.

Kaltenbrunner was a born Austrian who went to grammar school in Linz, where he first met his later employee, a certain Adolf Eichmann. Incidentally Hitler also visited (a different) grammar school in Linz in which many years later a certain forum poster was educated.  :why_so_serious:

If you have children, don't send to school in Linz.   :oh_i_see: