You can forget about Will Ferrell and Adam
Sandler and all the rest: George Clooney is the best actor in the world
if you’re looking for someone to play a credible idiot. A George
Clooney idiot is shallow and utterly self-involved, but he is a
complete person—a complete, shallow, self-involved person.
Traditionally, Clooney has saved his best idiots for the Coen
brothers—his doltish performance in Burn After Reading is a masterwork—but Clooney’s Lyn Cassady, the psychic warrior
who drives the plot of The Men Who Stare at Goats, gives his
best fools a real run for their money.
Based on a nonfiction book about the U.S. Army’s attempts to harness
its soldiers’ paranormal abilities for combat, Goats adds some
fictional elements and sets the film in 2004 at the height of Iraq-war
combat—but it promises before the film opens that “more of this
is true than you would believe.” Indeed, Cassady and Jeff Bridges’s
Bill Django are lifted wholesale from the book, and they’re the most
believable characters in the film. Django’s transformation from a
Vietnam veteran to a new-age hippie soldier is compelling and
believable. The characters who are pastiches or inventions—most
particularly Ewan McGregor’s reporter (who narrates the film in a
plastic, nasal American accent) and Kevin Spacey’s villainous
bureaucrat—lack the (idiotic) roundness of Cassady and
Django.
Even at an hour and a half, Goats is a bit bloated at its
center, heavy with one too many expository scenes. But there’s so much
fertile ground for metaphor here—about how middle management can
turn even the most noble idea into mush, about how the love
generation’s biggest failure was its inability to stop the Iraq war,
and much more besides—that Goats is perhaps the best,
least preachy American movie yet made about our misadventures in Iraq.
It’s a funny and generous film. Even idiots who think they can walk
through walls, Goats suggests, are people too. 
The little goat in that picture is so cute.
This was a fabulous book. I picked it up at the Half Price dollar book sale last year and couldn’t believe it was real.
I can’t wait to see the movie, though I have to wait til the DVD.
#1,,,nice and tender!
“Place one kid goat with hams and shoulders on bottom of roasting rack top with the ribs and backstrap or tenderloin. Make a basting sauce of the following:
One kid goat
1 stick of butter, we prefer unsalted butter for the sweet taste
2 cloves of fresh garlic, minced
1 Teaspoon Salt Juice of one lime
1 Tablespoon Soy Sauce
1 Tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce
1 Tablespoon Celery Salt
1/2 Teaspoon each, Rosemary, Basil, Savory and Oregano
1/2 Teaspoon Black Pepper
Melt butter in microwave and add the garlic, salt and lime juice. Heat thoroughly in microwave. Add the rest of the ingredients. Pour over cabrito and roast for about 3-4 hours covered with foil, basting often with the sauce in the roasting pan. After 4 hours, uncover and baste thoroughly and cook in oven an additional 45 minutes to 1 hour. This will cause the meat to crust over. Baste with the sauce as often as you can. This will keep the meat from drying out. Carve and serve with fresh pico de gallo and sliced avocado.
Source http://www.t4ranch.com/recipes.html“
Whoops, off thread, so, uh, yeah, that Clooney, whoo boy, what a gifted comic actor.
Saw this last night and actually walked out of the movie early for the first time in years.
This movie is awful, they tried to make a Coen Bros movie without the Coen Bros and it failed miserably despite a great cast.
don’t waste your money on this one!
Re: the comment that “the love generation’s biggest failure was its inability to stop the Iraq war…” I’m of that generation, and quite frankly, most boomers didn’t give a fuck about peace, love, changing the world, blah, blah, blah, all of that shit, at least not after about five minutes. Most folks I knew were in all of it because it was a completely outrageous party, with the opportunity to fuck lots of different people, and not have to get married, or even pretend to care about her/him afterwards. Plus, there were lots of (by today’s standards) fairly benign drugs to get wasted on.
This makes me think of the review of the pirate radio movie, and the whole thing makes me cringe at being part of such a lame bunch. We didn’t do more to stop the Iraq war because half of us were going to make a fortune off of it, and the other half didn’t give a shit.
Yes, there were some true believers in the mix, myself one of them (as if this bitter screed were not evidence enough), but mostly, no, just stoned party animals.
It was ok for a comedy, but so unnecessary when the truth is far more hilariously tragic without all the fictitious WACKY elements tacked on.
Buy the book, skip the movie.
“quite frankly, most boomers didn’t give a fuck about peace, love, changing the world, blah, blah, blah, all of that shit, at least not after about five minutes”
Quite true. Their interest in all that was masturbatory and forgotten in the blink of an eye.
Wow –5 & 7 hit that right on the head. Another example of Paul’s misguided analysis of a generation he continues failing to understand. Thanks guys!
PS-The failure to stop the iraq war should really be on the shoulders of Generation X and Y’ers. Fortunately it seems like every generation will have its own war to protest/be responsible for from now on. We’ll still be in afghanistan in 10 more years.