Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)

[LordoftheRings]

Originally Posted by dkelly26666

And no film is "clearly" the Best Picture of the Year, no film is "clearly" the Best of the century. That is ALL your opinion. Not fact.

A film isn't 'bottom-tier' because one says so. That's opinion, too.

One can have that opinion, and I can have the opposite opinion, without being wrong. Or, "not in the real world". What nonsense.

That's how this works.

If I need a mint, you need an enema...

Without looking far, last year Best Picture Oscar Winner by the AMPAS voters was ... Everything Everywhere All @ Once. That's the AMPAS voters.

Me I made real clear which film (for me) was the Best Picture: All Quiet on the Western Front.

Who's wrong and who's right?

As the world fell, each of us in our own way was broken. It was hard to know who was more crazy... me... or everyone else.

EEA@O ... it's a joke, a sci-fi fantasy joke.
The AMPAS voters were in a fantasy joke mood last year.

This year who knows; they might be in a Killers mood, or a Barbie mood?
Perhaps in a Poor Things mood?

In my movie book I know which film deserves the most the Best Picture Oscar.
If the AMPAS voters can see with true artistic cinema art eyes good for them.
If not no big deal ... life keeps on living. There will be more films, There Will Be Blood.

Can't fight the system, can't fight the ghosts, can't fight what's already the decided winner.
Can't fight our own destiny, death.

If Killers of the Flower Moon wins the Best Picture Oscar it would be a great choice, a victory, a fair judgement. If Oppenheimer wins the Best Picture Oscar, ...same, nothing more nothing less.

Would that be something if both films win equally Best Picture Oscar ...
If that happens I'd buy two copies of Poor Things; one for me, and the other for everyone else.

[LordoftheRings]

[Show spoiler]

Originally Posted by cgpublic

what? You've never seen la dolce vita?

Listen, you're a little confused. Let me explain a little bit about cinema. That's me channeling marcello as i read some of the nonsense thrown up as opinions when i read some of these posts, not my own.

Like yours, for example.

Unbelievable.

Like, where's that post where the poster was saying kotfm didn't do too badly at the box office, in fact, it was pretty good.

Anyone remember who that guy was?

Kotfm has lost hundreds of millions of dollars.

It's an embarrassment.

Did you see the mugs on scorsese & co. At the globes?

Wha happen'ed?

I've just gotta throw my hands up.

Sometimes they never come down!

Ha ha ha.

As of yesterday ...

Grosses
DOMESTIC (43.1%) > $67,370,116
INTERNATIONAL (56.9%) > $89,000,000
WORLDWIDE > $156,370,116

It's an Apple's flick; using a different cash register system.

As for the true film's value ... Expert Movie Critics

And, in comparison with other 2023 films ...

[James Luckard]

Originally Posted by BluBonnet

That particular word may date back to 1944, but there were other words used before it to describe such an act. In using the modern-day word, they may have decided that the slight anachronism could be excused if it meant that the audience would understand what is being described with that word.

Actually, I don't think that's accurate.

That scene bothered me for the same reason - the use of the word "genocide," a word and concept that didn't exist until 20 years later.

The word wasn't coined to be a more specific one to replace an existing word, as usually happens. Instead, it was the result of a whole new school of thought around human rights at the end of WWII.

There's a recent book (which I keep intending to read) called "East West Street", by a noted legal scholar, about the two men who coined the terms "genocide" and "crimes against humanity" in the aftermath of WWII. Rafael Lemkin and Hersch Lauterpacht apparently both went to university in Lviv (today called Lvov), and were in the same circles, though they didn't know each other. The book sounds fascinating.


https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385350716/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_West_Street

It's not just that the word didn't exist in the 1920s, it's that the very concept it described really didn't have concrete form in people's minds.

[BluBonnet]

Originally Posted by James Luckard

It's not just that the word didn't exist in the 1920s, it's that the very concept it described really didn't have concrete form in people's minds.

That's 100% wrong. There were words in several languages to describe such atrocities

Before the term (genocide) was coined, there had been various ways of describing such events. Some languages already had words for such killings, including German (Völkermord, lit. 'murder of a people') and Polish (ludobójstwo, lit. 'killing of a people or nation'). In 1941, when describing the "methodical, merciless butchery" of "scores of thousands" of Russians by Nazi troops during the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Winston Churchill spoke of "a crime without a name". Lemkin's Axis Rule in Occupied Europe describes the implementation of Nazi policies in occupied Europe and mentions earlier mass killings. After reading about the 1921 assassination of Talat Pasha, the main architect of the Armenian genocide, by Armenian Soghomon Tehlirian, Lemkin asked his professor why there was no law under which Talat could be charged. He later explained that "as a lawyer, I thought that a crime should not be punished by the victims, but should be punished by a court."

[James Luckard]

Originally Posted by BluBonnet

That's 100% wrong. There were words in several languages to describe such atrocities

Yes, but the film is in English.

I think the only word that might have come close pre-WWII would have been "extermination." There really wasn't an English word, as far as I know, for the killing of a group of people based on their identity.

The second half of your quoted portion actually reinforces my point. The murder of the Armenians was fairly well-publicized in the 1920s in US and European media, I've read a fair amount about it, but most languages lacked a specific way to describe it at the time.

It's ironic that German may have been one of the few languages to have such a specific word, but I'm curious about the etymology of Völkermord, and when it was first used. I took German for a number of years, and I don't think it was all that widely used before WWII, it's used today simply as a German synonym for "genocide," as far as I know.

[BluBonnet]

Originally Posted by James Luckard

Yes, but the film is in English.

You said "very concept it described really didn't have concrete form in people's minds." That obviously transcends languages.

[James Luckard]

Originally Posted by BluBonnet

You said "very concept it described really didn't have concrete form in people's minds." That obviously transcends languages.

Yes, and my point was also that almost no languages on earth had such a word. I'm still suspicious of Wikipedia's assertion that Völkermord was a commonly used German word with the same meaning prior to WWII. The only things I can find online suggest it's actually a Germanization of the very component parts of the constructed post-WWII word geno-cide - geno meaning group of people and cide meaning to kill. Völker similarly means group of people and mord means to kill.

I was also primarily referring to the people in the film, though the point is broader.

When you look at contemporary coverage of what we now call the Armenian genocide, the media at the time really struggled to describe it without that word. The trial of Talat Pasha's assassin in Germany (ironically) was huge news at the time, but it was very difficult for the media to even describe what the Turks had done.

My issue with that scene wasn't the nitpicky use of a word before it was coined, it was that characters were discussing a more modern concept that really didn't have concrete form in that era.

[James Luckard]

This online German dictionary shows virtually no occurrences of the word Völkermord prior to 1946:

https://www.dwds.de/wb/V%C3%B6lkermord

There's a chart on the right that shows it starting at what seems to be 0 usages of the word in 1946, and then increasing. If you toggle it, there's a less specific chart which seems to similarly show the word come into use around that time.

The German Wikipedia entry for the word shows a couple of occurrences in writings in the 1800s, but it seems to refer more to the decline of a national identity, rather than to the extermination of a group of human beings, and it doesn't seem to be a word that was commonly used:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%B6lkermord

It's fascinating to me when there are concepts that are obvious to us today, yet were so foreign in the past that languages lacked a word for it.

My understanding is that Lemkin really championed the general usage of the word "genocide" that he coined, in order for people to understand the concept behind it. I really need to read that book I posted above.

The German Wikipedia page for the word has a bit of info that's not on the English page that's interesting:

Since 1941 at the latest, Lemkin had been looking for a word that accurately described atrocities such as those of the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians and the Nazi regime. He also attributed the fact that he was unable to convince the League of Nations committee at the Madrid meeting with his draft in 1933 to the fact that words such as barbarism and vandalism, which he had used at the time, ultimately glossed over such acts. It should be a word that should capture all aspects of targeted attacks on a population group, including measures such as mass deportations, the forced reduction of the birth rate, economic exploitation and the targeted repression of the intelligentsia . A term like “mass murder” did not encompass all of these aspects. Nor should it be a term that, like barbarism and vandalism, had already been used in other contexts. Lemkin developed the term “genocide”, and it played a role for him that it could be used in a slightly modified form in numerous languages, untranslated.

[LordoftheRings]

The Osage were one of the wealthiest tribes in the United States in the early 20th century, due to the discovery of oil on their reservation. Each Osage was allotted a headright, which gave them a share of the oil revenue. This made the Osage a target for white fortune hunters, who married into the tribe or befriended Osage people in order to gain access to their oil money.

The murders began in 1918 and continued until 1926. At least 24 Osage people were killed during this time, but some estimates suggest that the death toll could be as high as 100. The victims were killed by a variety of means, including poisoning, shooting, and bombing.

The Osage Murders were a dark chapter in American history. They are a reminder of the racism and violence that Native Americans have faced in the United States.

In the early 20th century, the Osage Native American Tribe (also known as the Osage Nation), discovered oil on their lands. This made the Osage very wealthy as the land was sitting on top of significant oil reserves. However, the oil boom brought exploitation and violence to the Osage.

Somewhere along the way, a policy, (US government driven), was implemented that required each Osage to have a white guardian to manage their wealth. However, this often led to financial mismanagement and fraud. Many Osage were killed in a series of mysterious circumstances, including prominent leaders and wealthy individuals with valuable oil headrights. This became known as the “Osage Indian Murder Investigation.”

The FBI, led by J Edgar Hoover, became involved in solving these crimes. Many settlers, including those who married into Osage families, conspired to murder Osage individuals to gain access to their valuable oil wealth. This led to a significant scandal and highlighted the deep-seated prejudices and corruption within the community.

The investigations resulted in reforms to the guardianship system. Today, the Osage area remains a significant part of Osage . the Osage tribes experience during the 1920s serves as a stark example of some of the many challenges faced by Native American communities in dealing with the impact of resource wealth and the historical complexities of their relationship with white settlers and the US government.

Killing for money. Killing for the land. Killing for power.
Killing for control. Killing of jealousy. Killing of greed.

Who are the Killers? Is it clear in the film?

[LordoftheRings]

The right to express our own opinion without starting World War III

[bhampton]

My wife sort of wants to watch this but considering it's 3 hours of misery she thankfully has procrastinated.

[jimcorenson]

I don't think we are getting this on Blu-Ray at all same goes for Napoleon and upcoming Argylle. Greedy Apple is not gonna allow a physical release of any of their produced movies they have not released ANY of their movies so why would they suddenly start now.

The Italian one coming out for this movie isn't even an official release from PARAMOUNT. Its from a company named Eagle pictures and features only Italian Subtitles too. Practically useless to anyone outside of italy because of spoken language not even in english.

[LordoftheRings]

Originally Posted by jimcorenson

I don't think we are getting this on Blu-Ray at all same goes for Napoleon and upcoming Argylle. Greedy Apple is not gonna allow a physical release of any of their produced movies they have not released ANY of their movies so why would they suddenly start now.

The Italian one coming out for this movie isn't even an official release from PARAMOUNT. Its from a company named Eagle pictures and features only Italian Subtitles too. Practically useless to anyone outside of italy because of spoken language not even in english.

Apple they can keep their flicks to themselves ... it has zero effect on my life, less than zero.

And, I will never buy a subscription, never ever.
Plus I will never buy an iPhone.
I care less than zero about Apple and their way of doing business.
There and therefore thereafter ...

[jimcorenson]

Originally Posted by LordoftheRings

Apple they can keep their flicks to themselves ... it has zero effect on my life, less than zero.

And, I will never buy a subscription, never ever.
Plus I will never buy an iPhone.
I care less than zero about Apple and their way of doing business.
There and therefore thereafter ...

Me either but it sucks that we aren't getting any of their big movies on any physical media.

[LordoftheRings]

Originally Posted by jimcorenson

Me either but it sucks that we aren't getting any of their big movies on any physical media.

Apple sucks

[russweiss1]

Originally Posted by LordoftheRings

Apple they can keep their flicks to themselves ... it has zero effect on my life, less than zero.

And, I will never buy a subscription, never ever.
Plus I will never buy an iPhone.
I care less than zero about Apple and their way of doing business.
There and therefore thereafter ...

This isn't quite true as you cared enough to write about it.

[BluBonnet]

Originally Posted by russweiss1

This isn't quite true as you cared enough to write about it.

In my experience, people who hate Disney and/or Apple spend far more time thinking about them and speaking about them than the rest of us, who remain mostly indifferent.

[LordoftheRings]

Originally Posted by russweiss1

This isn't quite true as you cared enough to write about it.

I was a bit angry in the moment; Killers of the Flower Moon (and Napoleon) deserve a 4K Blu-ray release.

[LordoftheRings]

Originally Posted by BluBonnet

In my experience, people who hate Disney and/or Apple spend far more time thinking about them and speaking about them than the rest of us, who remain mostly indifferent.

I certainly share and write about Apple products, including their iPhones and their 3D goggles. I even bought an iPad for my Mom's 88th birthday. It is also a fact that I own zero Apple products. My family and my friends do though, and I love them.

Anyway, it would be truly sad to not get Killers of the Flower Moon on 4K Blu Dolby Vision/Atomas (same for Napoleon).

As for Disney ... I'm big on PIXAR and 3D.

[JamesKurtovich]

I enjoyed it. Seemed to cover the story very accurately too.