American Sniper

[Slammr (imported)]

This is a movie that's not out yet, but I just read the book. In this case, I'm sure the movie will be better than this "good ol boy" autobiography, which mostly goes like this:

"I saw this guy, and I popped him. I saw another guy, and I shot him."

He won the contest among snipers and killed the most, but the telling of it was pretty boring. I can't say I liked the guy much by the end, and I respect the SEALS. I just didn't particularly like this guy. He liked killing a little too much.

[Dave (imported)]

MOVIEW MOJO

or Box Office Movie Mojo, says this:

Debuting at four locations, American Sniper took in an estimated $610,000 this weekend ($850,000 including Christmas Day). That translates to an exceptional $152,500 per-theater average, which ranks 11th all-time. More impressively, it ranks second all-time for a live-action movie at more than one location, behind March's The Grand Budapest Hotel. Sniper expands nationwide on January 16th.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=3987&p=.htm

Let me note: Weekend is not Christmas because Christmas was on Thursday. It seems so obvious once you read it.

$200,000 per theater on Christmas Day is amazing.

[Riverwind (imported)]

I guess I will never understand why people think its important to shop on Thanksgiving, go to movies on Christmas (unless of course they don't celebrate Christmas).

What happened to family?

River

[DeaconBlues (imported)]

I guess I will never understand......... What happened to family?

River

Uhhh, may I introduce you to MY family? My abusive mentally ill brother who makes death threats at least once a week to anyone he knows? Or my thieving sister who tricked our senile mother into a "home equity line of credit..." and left the family estate $80,000 (at 7.5%) in debt and now says it is not her responsibility? My other drug addicted brother, who truly loves abusing children? Is it any wonder I do not even speak to any of them? No way would I ever waste my Thanksgiving or Christmas or any other day with any of them.... To answer your question, drugs, greed, cruelty, that is what happened to the family, or at least my family, that is why I pretty much ignore Christmas Day traditions.

[Riverwind (imported)]

Sorry about your relatives, I know you can't pick them. When I said family I meant the people that you want to be with, this last Thanksgiving sense all my kids are on the main land I had dinner with the members of our church, I think of them as my family, I guess I should have been clearer on my definition of family, sorry.

River

[DeaconBlues (imported)]

Sorry about your relatives..........

clearer on my definition of family, sorry.

River

No River, I am sorry, sorry about my previous post, because I positively hate it when people "hijack threads" and here I have done that very thing, this thread is clearly about the movie "American Sniper," and I somehow hijack the subject to me complaining about my family.... I am sorry for dragging my personal problems out and climbing on a soapbox. Looking back at it now, I would delete my previous post but that would make your response to my post (and this one) sound odd.

As for the subject of this thread, I have not seen the movie "American Sniper" yet, and it is not the sort of movie I will probably watch. Hollywood ALWAYS get's it wrong when they try to tell a true story.

More than twenty years ago, I read a book ( "Marine Sniper: 93 Confirmed Kills" I think it was ) about the US Marine sniper, Carlos Hathcock, ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Hathcock ) he had only a mere 93 confirmed kills on his record, and according to the book Carlos was the first to point out that counting numbers of confirmed kills is the stupidest thing people do when judging snipers. That book was well written, and the best parts were the seemingly slow moving chapters, where Carlos Hathcock spent days crawling thousands of yards to get his one shot at a Frenchman who was famous for torturing captured American POW's. Or the female VC sniper who always chewed betel nuts, and was truly a ruthless, cruel, clever and challenging enemy. Or the chapter about when he had to find a sort of "bed check" enemy sniper, who regularly fired twenty rounds aimlessly into an American base every night, this "sniper" was not even aiming his shots, but he had to be stopped from his nightly activities.... so one night Carlos Hathcock found him and killed him.... and then saw the "sniper's" family come out screaming and crying to recover his body - later, after the bed-check sniper had been killed, the Marines found out the truth about this bed check sniper, a very realistic story about the stupidity of war.

And yet, even the great Carlos Hathcock's story pales when compared to the snipers like Simo Hayha ( http://www.damninteresting.com/?s=white+death <<<-THAT LINK REALLY IS "DAMN INTERESTING" by the way ), and Vasily Zeitsev ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Zaytsev ) of the movie "Enemy at the Gates" fame.

Sorry, I digress, quite a bit don't I? I started out apologizing for hijacking the thread, started to actually address the subject of the thread, then digressed so horribly that I have HIJACKED THE THREAD, can't I do anything right? Well, suffice to say I do NOT care much for the products of Hollywood today, they take way too much "artistic license" when they convert the truth into a script. Sometime back in the '80's, they actually did make a movie that was supposedly based on Carlos Hathcock, it was HORRIBLE and not even loosely anchored on any fact, yet Hollywood felt no problem taking Carlos Hathcock's story and politically correcting it, then setting it in present day Central America, and completely ruining a very good and important part of history.

[Arab Nights (imported)]

River probably feels jumped on for your response to an innocent post, but sometimes a hijack - which happens all the time - actually can be an interesting subject to be discussed in a separate thread. I think yours might lead to some interesting comments.

Kudos to you for at least recognizing you had hijacked a thread and apologized for it. There are not many apologies here.

[Riverwind (imported)]

I have a wonderful idea, I can either move them to a new thread or better then that, delete them, your call.

post 3 through 8

and it never happened.

River

[DeaconBlues (imported)]

I have a wonderful idea, I can either move them to a new thread or better then that, delete them, your call.

post 3 through 8

and it never happened.

River

Thank you! Yes, I vote to delete 3 to 8, (9 now including this posting), but I really do believe that Slammr should be the one who makes that call, he is the original poster and "thread owner" by my reckoning. What say you Slammr?

[Slammr (imported)]

It really doesn't matter to me. I have little invested in this thread, time or emotional attachment. I'm pretty well through with it until after I've seen the movie, and I don't care who "hijacks" it in the meantime.