Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Saw W. (spoilers)
So, when Rachel Getting Married sold out, my friends and I decided to see W.
It was well acted overall (the one exception would be the woman who played Condi). There were some beautiful shots. However, it felt longer than it was and was also incomplete.
Stone tried to go too many directions while still cutting a lot. He should have narrowed in on one idea, and I think the strongest was the familial bonds (particularly his relationship with his father). The simplest improvement would have been for Stone to show the fall of Saddam and W's subsequent 2004 win. It wouldn't have made it a perfect film, but it at least would have made it complete with an arch.
My friends (one of whom is very liberal and the other who is similar to me) were bothered by the cheap shots at Bush, but I wasn't since I was expecting them. The part that bothered me, though, is that they showed him as the bumbling idiot spewing 'Bushisms' during his Gubernatorial campaign, which isn't accurate. If you look at footage from that campaign, he was very well-spoken then.
My friends and I all left with a sentiment similar to what you've all described - we felt bad for the guy at the end.
Re: Saw W. (spoilers)
I saw it last weekend and at the end of the movie was kind of like, "ok, that's that, what's for dinner?"
I was particularly unhappy with the portrayal of Condi, I'm pretty sure that in reality she actually talks. But other than that I was just kind of meh on the whole thing and got kind of tired of being hit over the head with the "daddy issues" anvil repeatedly.
I get that, but the daddy issues segment was the most cohesive theme of the film and the most substantive. That was the story and the one he should have gone with wholly and less superficially. And at the very least, again, I really think he should have shown the fall of Saddam. And I think he could have done so without pissing off the liberal base by showing, 'look, W beat his father's and his own demons by locating and executing Saddam Huseein ...but at what price? And did that solve anything?'
I personally would have liked to see more of his relationship with Jeb and his relationship with his own daughters as it related to his relationship with his father, but perhaps that's asking too much.
IMO opinion they DID show the fall of Saddam - statue toppling, mission accomplished, his father conceding that perhaps W had done the right thing.
What I was annoyed by (and here comes my liberal prism) was the portrayal of Karl Rove and Cheney as haplessly believing intelligence given to them, when we all KNOW that was not the case. They cherry-picked intelligence and were told several times how dangerous that was. The best scene was when the FBI guy offered to resign over the faulty intelligence saying "I've never traded integrity for access" and Bush looks around the room at the rest of his advisers who fed him crap -- Rove, Cheney, Rumsfeld etc. and they all stay silent. Key scene IMO. I agree it could have been done better -- but I think Brolin accurately captured Bush and Thandi Newton did a shit job of capturing Condi -- it was basically an over-the-top impression of Condi rather than and acting job on her part. Condi is a very elegant woman, and Thandi turned her into a female Erkel.