Director Oliver Stone’s new movie, a love letter to socialist leaders like Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, isn’t making a dent in the box office.
“South of the Border’s” $111,000-plus haul over three weeks of release seems beneath a director of Stone’s reputation.
The film can only be seen in seven theaters at the moment, and that’s despite heavy media play for the once great director. Perhaps theater owners know audiences will have little appetite for the film, which even liberal minded movie critics have labeled second-rate propaganda (WWTW has yet to screen the film).
Audiences in Venezuela weren’t interested in “Border,” either. The film tanked there, with empty theaters despite a sizable media push on the film’s behalf.
And don’t expect Venezuelans to Twitter anything negative about the film. We’ve already seen what happens to Venezuelans who run afoul of the government’s Twitter policies.
It’s another step in Stone’s precipitous decline as an artist.
Stone once regularly delivered terrific movies like “Platoon” and the underrated “Talk Radio,” he’s now left to make unnecessary sequels to his earlier classics (“Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps”) and rushed hatchet jobs of sitting presidents (“W.”).
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
agreed. Some people need to know when to call it a career.
Some of Stone’s movies are great. World Trade Center, JFK, NIXON, Platoon, Any Given Sunday among others. But lately he seems to spend too much time telling people “hey, remember me? I’m a lefty who was cool before Michael Moore and unlike him, I actually have talent” but no one cares.
I never have agreed with the assertions he makes in his films but I contend that many of them were great movies. And ditto on “W” which was so obviously rushed into production that it’s an insult to Stone’s previous works. It comes across as not much more than an over the top SNL skit with better production values.
Stone needs to either call it a career or take some time off and re-evaluate his goals.
You keep hoping he’ll rebound, find one last fastball to whiz past us, but it never seems to happen.
Remember when he had a sense of humor, like in the movie, “Dave”?
We have enough socialism through Snake Oilbama without paying money to learn about Chavez. Hopefully his people will send him packing soon.
Hopefully, Stone will go broke on this.
Everyone knows the commies in this country – the only people who would be interested in this garbage – don’t have enought of other people’s money to buy a movie ticket. Yet. Obama hasn’t gotten to it.
It’s right out of Mel Brook’s “The Producers”: “Springtime for Chavez”!
Hey Oliver, can you hear us now?
I am truely amazed at the extent of the leftists in this country who are without a “Clue” about the American people and how they “view” them. It really is astonishing. They live in a bubble of fantasy, cavorting with dictators and mass murderers, and they think the people of this country abide and agree with them? Incomphrehensible…it really is.
I’ve never understood the pathology of Hollywood folks who have reaped the greatest benefits of America and Capitalism, then use their gold plated bully pulpits to attempt to bring that very system down. I guess I’m just one of the stupid masses, too ignorant to see the finer points of treachery.
Too ignorant, which is why I would be saying prayers of gratitude for the good fortune of being born talented in a country where there was no limit on the heights that could be reached.
It’s nice that American citizens are forewarned, thus able to pass on paying to be insulted and ridiculed. Stone now has enough of a track record that his future work will have no credibility.
To be honest, not many people are going to want to watch a movie that is so deep and heavy. Obviously there will be some people interested in that kind of genre, but most people go to the cinemas to relax and see something with either a lot of action, a lot of romance or a lot of comedy.