I have complained about this film before. I shall not repeat myself, but I am most glad to see that the film is doing incredibly poorly at the box office and will be pulled at the end of the week. It made $5,600 per screen in its first week, on three hundred screens. For comparison, Fred Claus made $5,138 per screen. Then it was expanded to 465 theaters and plummeted to $1,890 per screen. Plans to expand it to a thousand screens have been scrapped. The King's Speech did $6,406 per screen over Christmas weekend and $11,107 per screen the week after that (when it opened in four theaters a month earlier, it made over $88,000 per screen). It had been playing for almost four months before its per-screen take dipped below that of Atlas's second week.

So, yes, as I predicted, this movie was terrible, was universally panned by critics, fell somewhere between Battlefield Earth and Transformers 2 on the Tomatometer, and was a commercial flop.

Now, the producer is threatening to Go Galt by himself and refuse to make parts 2 and 3 since the critics were "lemmings" and the public wasn't ready for his genius or some crap: basically, "No fair, I'm taking my ball and going home." Good. Get lost. Nobody cares if film producers, especially those helming such god-awful projects, go on strike. Nor do I care if the manager of Best Buy Store 4327 "goes Galt," or even if the CEO of GM goes on strike. Go on, you parasites. You contribute nothing anyway and certainly nothing worth even a fraction of your 7-8 figure salaries. If you want to see Atlas shrugging for real, go see a garbage strike. Then you'll find out who really makes the world turn. It's not the people at the top who mismanage their companies into the ground and leech off the public. It's the little people who grow your food, process your sewage, dispose of your trash, pour your coffee and connect your calls. And don't tell me that entrepreneurs are necessary to make successful enterprises and that initiative and development depend on profit and private ownership of the means of production. There are at least three hundred worker cooperatives in the U.S.A. employing thirty-five hundred workers. If business cannot succeed without the Randian entrepreneurial class, there should be zero.

Picture credit: Angry Flower

I cannot think of someone better suited to being the face of the U.S. state than an ultra-privileged, inconceivably rich white man completely out of touch with the lived experiences of the average citizen.

I cannot think of someone who would be a better head of the executive branch than this loud-mouthed, racist, misogynistic, bigoted bully.

I cannot think of someone who would better represent the United States to the rest of the world than such a supremely arrogant, conceited, self-righteous, small-minded, power-crazed fool.

Trump represents the worst of everything in American politics, and since the worst has become so, so dominant in all aspects of the U.S. state, why not let him be President? Let's call a spade a spade. A disgusting government should be led by a disgusting figurehead.

Link to further insanity

(H/T: Rob Beschizza at BoingBoing)

Greg Frazier, MPAA Vice-President, recently made a lobbying trip to Brazil. Like many Latin American countries, Brazil is a hotbed of piracy. In an interview with a local newspaper, he remarked that piracy was doing "great harm to culture," and when the reporter questioned him about Creative Commons licensing (which is growing popular in Brazil), he said:

They [Creative Commons supporters] don’t always agree with what we advocate. And you are talking about democratizing culture, this is not in our interests. It really isn’t my interest.

Now, when you put that together with his comments on piracy doing harm to creativity and culture, the underlying message becomes clear. The small number of U.S. corporate heavyweights that the MPAA represents feel that they should define what culture is, that they are the only people entitled to creativity, and that they reject any kind of worldview in which art and creativity can come from the demos. Let us not forget, while we're at it, that they feel they are entitled to make a profit from culture. If culture comes from creative outlets other than their own, not only are they not interested, but they want to stamp it out; it infringes on their markets. We should protect culture, if it comes from under the umbrella of the MPAA. If it doesn't, it's not culture.

This business model has to stop. It's woefully outdated, and depends upon the creation of artificial scarcity. Yes, artificial scarcity: taking resources that are abundant and then using legislation and litigation in order to make them artificially scarce so that you can charge (more) money for them. Something like iron is a scarce resource: there isn't enough iron for us to do all the things that we want to do with iron, and if you have a quantity of iron, I cannot simultaneously possess the same iron. We need economics to decide who gets iron, either by central planning, market forces, or whatever else. Abundant resources are not scarce and need no economic protection. Think about the Happy Birthday song. If you learn it, does that mean I forget it? No - if you learn or perform the song, it does not prevent anyone else from learning or performing the song. It can be replicated infinitely without any impact on the "copies" that already exist.

The only reason that the model which the MPAA is protecting is still viable is because of the legal rules surrounding it. It is neither sustainable or profitable, and it isn't in the public interest, which (in my opinion) is the only decent reason to keep an unprofitable business going. Delivering healthcare to rural towns might not be profitable, but it is in the public interest.

I also have to say that, quite frankly, the creativity of the companies the MPAA respresents sucks. They churn out endless sequels, reboots, rip-offs and other similarly unimaginative offerings every year, usually with budgets so bloated you could build hospitals with them. There are very few really creative and original directors currently working, and most of their projects are studio-mandated cookie-cutter Hollywood fare, which they are obliged to make so that they can (very rarely) get to work on their own creative ideas. GQ ran a very interesting article that looks into precisely why this is happening, and why it won't be changing any time soon.

I'd like to refer you to Beyond Black Mesa and Nuka Break, two fan-films set in the worlds of two popular videogame franchises. Consider that these are two shorts made by a dozen or fewer videogame fans with virtually no budget. No matter what you think of the plot, the acting, and so on (and yes, these projects are inherently derivative), my point is that these are extremely well-made films considering the extremely limited resources behind them. Consider also Pioneer One, a crowdfunded, bittorrent-distributed TV series being made for under $30,000 an episode, which is pretty amazing considering that ER cost NBC about $13 million per episode. Pioneer One is actually pretty good. I don't think it's up there with The Wire or The Shield or any of the other HBO greats (actually, what were the others? Band of Brothers? What else was there?), but if I saw this on network television, I'd think, "this is pretty good," even if I thought that it had big money behind it.

I think these examples show that there are clear and superior alternatives to the current model of movie and TV production. Crowdfunding is a way to democratically fund creative efforts, and it puts money directly in the hands of the artists, not in the pockets of exploitative middlemen. Bittorrent and other web-based distribution models offer a way to reach a wide audience using existing infrastructure, and the bandwidth is only used by those who are going to watch the show - it isn't wasted by beaming 250 channels into a home that's only watching one. The public can directly reward the art it wants to see more of, and contributions are optional - you pay what you feel you should, or what you have the means to pay.

I'm aware that money has been behind art for a long time. Roman poets and playwrights were kept by wealthy patrons, and the Old Masters generally worked on commission. I'm also aware that the Romans used to enjoy watching people being torn apart by wild animals and that they kept millions of slaves, and that for all of human history bar the last century, women couldn't vote anywhere. Just because a practice is traditional, ancient, or revered doesn't make it good or right, and because art has been backed by money throughout human history does not mean that art should be backed by money.

The existing movie and TV industries are the equivalent of telegraph companies, steamship lines, sedan chairs, or Blockbuster Video. Time to move on, guys, new technology and new business models have made you obsolete. Maybe you can get some minimum-wage McJobs instead; people are trying to lead me to believe that these are just fantastic and a great replacement for well-paid unionized work. But that's another rant.

The reviewers shrugged too. Actually, it's more like they spat in its face, danced on its grave and blacklisted its children (almost literally: most reviewers are predicting that parts 2 and 3 of the promised trilogy will probably never be made). The film that I predicted would be indescribably awful turned out to be quite describably awful, if you're Roger Ebert, of course. It just opened yesterday and already it is at 5% on the Tomatometer. For reference, that is 1/4 the score of Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, although it more than doubles the score of Battlefield Earth (which is like getting double the score of a blind man in a target shooting contest). To describe it as a critical flop would be like describing the Saturn V rocket as an oversized firework.

Some excerpts from Rotten Tomatoes' Top Critics page:

Ayn Rand's monumental 1,168-page, 1957 novel gets the low-budget, no-talent treatment and sits there flapping on screen like a bludgeoned seal.

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

The first in a proposed trilogy, "Atlas Shrugged: Part 1" is nearly as stilted, didactic and simplistic as Rand's free-market fable.

Mark Jenkins, Washington Post

About to lose his long-held rights to Ayn Rand's novel, and perhaps to cash in on apparent Tea Party interest and support, producer John Aglialoro ... rushed this film into a low-budget production and it shows in every frame.

Loren King, Boston Globe

The acting is so poor and the story so badly told that the viewer's feelings about Rand's novel -- an epic ode to free-market fundamentalism -- are almost immaterial (though if you're a devoted fan, you'll perhaps be more forgiving).

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic

Let's say you know the novel, you agree with Ayn Rand, you're an objectivist or a libertarian, and you've been waiting eagerly for this movie. Man, are you going to get a letdown.

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Flubbed, under-produced representation of the first third of Ayn Rand's still controversial novel bodes ill for parts two and three.

Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter

In the comments section of the page, this one struck me:

When "Atlas Shrugged" was first released in the 50's it received much the same kind of reviews that the critics are giving the movie today,

Yes, that's because it was also terrible. Critics, taken as a body, generally know what they're talking about. It's incredibly rare that something they pan will turn out to be an enduring success.

and yet it is rated as the second most influential book , behind the Bible, in America today.

Actually, that is a myth invented by the Book of the Month Club in a brutally unscientific and spurious "study" that they conducted in order to sell more copies of the stupid thing. The Library of Congress was basically involved due to an elaborate scam by the Book of the Month Club. That same list also includes classics such as Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, Scott Peck's The Road Less Travelled and Gail Sheedy's Passages. What? Exactly.

While I don't think the movie will attain the same exalted status of the book, it should come as no surprise that the critics still hate it.

No, and it doesn't, because like the book, it's shit, and critics generally don't like shit.

I've read the book 3 times

How? I threw the thing across a room after 250 pages (BTW, if you're writing a novel and you're not done in 250 pages, just stop. Unless your name starts with "T" and ends with "olstoy"), and I have read some long and tedious books in my time. Atlas Shrugged, at almost 1200 pages, was not the longest book I ever attempted to read, but it certainly seemed like it.

I wish they would have made it into a HBO type mini series

I think HBO has certain criteria that shows have to meet before they are greenlit, chief among them, "not being shit."

So if you want to see an enjoyable and thought provoking movie I highly recommend this movie...

... be thrown into the trash where it belongs and replaced with something that's actually good. If you want a political film that doesn't make you want to puke for half-a-dozen reasons, go and rent The Constant Gardener. Seriously, it's just great. It is the photo negative of this film. DO NOT WATCH THIS FILM.

Update: The Gin and Tacos review is up. I highly recommend it. Also, the tomatometer has gone up to 9% since yesterday, when I originally wrote this. OOOOH.

Update 2: No, back down to 8% again. I guess the reviews are still coming in, but it looks like they'll stabilize in the 5-10% range. The consensus is that it's much worse than Transformers 2, but much better than AIDS.

Yes, the list is growing long and undistinguished. Ikea is the latest to get themselves put on it, thanks to union-busting efforts in Virginia. Ikea in Europe has a reputation as being a good corporate citizen that respects workers' rights, but in the USA, it has given in to the excesses of management culture and exploiting workers, and now those workers are getting quite pissed off and want to form a union. I would too: they've cut wages, increased hours, introduced obligatory overtime, and there are many allegations of racism and discrimination in hiring and promotional practices. But are they going to address those problems? The hell they are! They've got a better plan: bribe and cajole the workers into selling out their own interests, and if that doesn't work, just threaten and intimidate them.

Ikea has hired old-fashioned strikebreakers a union-busting law firm so that it can keep on exploiting the hell out of workers that don't have many other options, thanks to neoliberalism and the death of the good American job. As Joseph Atkins notes, one of the ironies is that the community gave big financial incentives to Ikea in the hopes that they would provide good, well-paying jobs. Well, that will teach you.

So I have bought my last Lümpi bed and Slöe alarm clock. Go put a paper bag over your head and dance in traffic, Ikea.