![]() It's the "Number One Movie in America!" Again. No word on whether it will remain in the movie, which opens in January. I mean, not homosexual, but my-parents-are-chaperoning-the-dance gay."ĬNN anchor Anderson Cooper reportedly went on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" and said he was "shocked" that Universal "thought that it was OK to put that in a preview for the movie to get people to go and see it." Universal responded by quickly pulling the scene from the trailer. Vaughn's character is speaking to some automotive businessmen (is this a follow-up to Howard's "Gung-Ho"?) and says: "Electric cars are gay. I saw the trailer in front of "The Social Network," October 1. On the day after the near-mystical cosmic alignment of Columbus Day and National Coming Out Day (did the Postal Service suspend delivery on the day Columbus came out in 1492?), and the very day that a US district judge issued a worldwide injunction ordering the Department of Defense to stop enforcement of its absurd, 17-year-old "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy for kicking gays out of the military (best of all, the case was brought by the Log Cabin Republicans!), I have found myself reading about a stupid gay joke that's been removed from trailers for the upcoming Ron Howard comedy "The Dilemma," starring Vince Vaughn and Kevin James. So, I might say I found something about a movie "tedious" or "engaging" or some other thesaurus word, but I'll attribute the emotion to myself and my taste, and even then not without a serious attempt to describe what I'm talking about, and to give at least one specific example.²īut now, "boring" is hot, at least in overheated Interwebular film criticism circles, since the publication of Dan Kois' New York Times Magazine piece called "Eating Your Cultural Vegetables," in which he says: "Boring," I believe, is more like the word "entertaining" - too vague to be of much use in a critical vocabulary. (Yes, there are exceptions to that, too.) I mean, a joke or a gag or an emotional situation can be objectively analyzed, but there are no agreed-upon cultural standards for evaluating "boring."¹ So, saying something is "boring" is not exactly like saying something in a movie is "funny" or "moving" - though, again, I'd prefer to place the responsibility for a response on the "feeler" rather than on the object - because at least you can describe how something is presented or intended to be received as humorous or touching, even if you don't think it is. ![]() When I was a child I was taught that it was unacceptable to call something - a movie, a song, an activity - "boring" because: 1) it doesn't make sense (a thing can't be boring, unless perhaps it is a drill bit a person feels bored) and 2) it's indefensible, since the quality of "boringness" cannot be isolated or identified as an element of the thing itself it's a feeling and it is yours).
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