Well, the virgin ben was doing so well as a Lawyer, that he needed to expand his craft into the realm of cinema reviewing. Needless to say, his favorite films are: Spartacus!, Gladiator! and 300!

All of which are chock-full of hot man-on-man action core republican values.

Not, that there is anything wrong with the ghey, just in the virgin ben’s constant denial of himself. Also.

It’s not just that he’s wrong about these directors, his prose is so poor as well. He accuses QT of being like a high school child. Well most bright high school Students would be ashamed to hand in something as childishly written as vBen submitted to Big Hollywood.

I bet he can’t name ten directors he does like without resorting to Malph doing a particular episode of Star Trek: Voyager.

I see a role for Ben as one of the closeted gay guys in the polygamist compound in HBO’s Big Love. He’d bring authenticity to the role don’t you think? In addition to his nerdy appearance, he’s a fucked up unevolving mess with a hint of sociopathy.

Ben is NOT gay. That would be Rose Douthat. Ben is a scrappy, storefront lawyer in LA, a bottle of YooHoo in his bottom desk drawer, waiting for that next leggy blonde with an intractable problem to walk through the door. Ur all sooooo crewel. He’s even got a terrific website with odd, grainy features. You guys all suck!

http://benjaminshapiro.com/

Yikes, those comments are brutal. My favorite from Justin Runia:

“Ah hahahaha, what a twat. Can’t wait to see your Top 10 Awesome Movie Directors Who Don’t Highlight My Own Creative Impotence list. This column is a great summary of the entirely of Big Hollywood; player-hating people who succeed both creatively and commercially using inane political claptrap instead of a shred of legitimate criticism.

On the other hand, you’ve succeeded in getting me over to this crusty sock of a website, so I can’t begrudge you the scant pennies you’ve scammed from whoever is dumb enough to run ads here. Kudos to you, good sir.”

I, myself, am surprised vBen didn’t list Orson Welles as his worst. Everyone knows what an overrated piece of crap “Citizen Kane” was.

North by Northwest relies on the tried-and-true random helpful coincidence to save our hero, time and again.

Hmmm. I must have seen a different North by Northwest. I seem to remember not a string of helpful coincidences, but complex conspiracies operating just outside the perception of Roger Thornton. Maybe Ben missed that when he fast-forwarded to the scene with Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint hopping into bed in the Pullman compartment.

Yeah? Well, what did you expect, Siskel and Ebert? The boy may be smart, but he sure ain’t got the maturity. I figure Red Dawn is in his Top Ten list somewheres.

We are in the Age of the Opinionated Twerp — Ross Douthat a self-styled expert on culture and novel writing, Ben Shapiro a self-styled expert on directing films, David Brooks a self-styled expert in well, everything, ad nauseum — in which the home-schooled and Harvard-educated inflict their meager and misinformed opinions convinced of their own superiority. So we get endless litanies of Twerp stuff I don‘t like and pronouncements of Twerp opinion-as-dogma: Douthat- Great art depends on walls as well as open doors, on constraints as well as cultural blank checks. Shapiro – The auteur theory of cinema is idiotic, since writing is truly the key. (Ben really needs to update the 7th grade photo of himself that adorns his crap — it‘s like the Picture of Dorkian Gray.)

We’ve all known insufferable nudniks like these, boring everyone with their non-stop pontificating on Things I know Very Little About But That Never Stopped Me. But with the Internet, Opinion sections, and the hatchery of Fox airheads, the witless expounding is inflicted on millions, non-stop. Lucky us.

We call Shapiro “The Virgin Ben” on the political blogs, but I think it’ll work on BigHo, too, because he clearly has never so much as held hands in a movie theater.

Aside from “Rear Window” being one of the most entertaining movies ever made, I agree with Ben wholeheartedly.

He appears to dislike Mulholland Drive because of the lesbian scene. This proves he’s gay.

Big Hollywood=Crusty sock of a website.

If that aint the best summation of the dreck offered by that Eraserheaded tool Blartblart I don’t know what is.

-G

“Alien is slow.”
“Everything Lean made is too long by at least half an hour.”
“The Aviator takes as long to tell as Howard Hughes did to live.”
“Casino is nasty, brutish, and long.”

I sense a theme, here.

This kid must have been raised on a steady diet of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs and Mountain Dew. Either that or he’s ADD. If it takes more than ten minutes, it’s too long.

Yes. This. I wish I had put it exactly the way you did. Nicely done.

I guess that, now that Ben’s out of college, he feels free to come out as a movie lout–even in the most boneheaded of frats, there’s always the chance that someone’s a secret movie buff who would be willing to pin him to the wall by his ears just for the Hitchcock comment alone. I also find it fascinating that an ostensibly heterosexual man finds lesbians so icky, although my sapphic sisters may be relieved to know that this demi-goblin isn’t interested in what their home team does.

WRT comments, this nested set is my favorite:

You, sir, are an idiot.

Grow up. It’s called opinion.

Indeed it is. It is also an opinion that this list indicates the author to be an idiot.

UCLA summa cum laude. Harvard Law cum laude. And yet he writes (and thinks) as if he were unable to pass Freshman Remedial English. Honest to FSM, I can’t figure this out. Are Ben and Ross and all the other ilks just giving us some kind of performance art?

Oh, and Doug Flutie – you are dead to me.

“Ridley Scott has, for some odd reason, received accolades that far outpace his actual accomplishments.”

This may be the only subject TAFKATVB actually knows something about. (Not Ridley Scott – receiving accolades that far outpace his actual accomplishments.)

JDM3, that is one weird shot. Now if I had a website, I doubt I’d use my high school graduation photo all scratched up with a fork like VBen…

According to said website, Ben went to UCLA @ 16 and went on to Harvard Law. His actual juvenile age must have put him right in touch with the juvenile thinking there. [I wonder if he took any classes from Cass Sundstein?]

Need we say more?

The boy may be smart, but he sure ain’t got the maturity. I figure Red Dawn is in his Top Ten list somewheres.

Right after “Ishtar,” “Heaven’s Gate” and “Waterworld.”

OT: did you see that the replacement judge for the crooked selling-kids-into-jail judges in Wilkes-Barre was arrested last night for beating up his wife and strangling her? Doubtless another best of Old Forge pizza argument. Can’t be that sordid whispering about the sixteen year old Puerto Rican hooker in South Wilkes-Barre, because this judge is a republiKKKan from Perry County.

Another reason why I’m so glad to no longer live in Northeastern PA.

Nooooooooo! I didn’t! Even the manly Mr. B didn’t know!

Perhaps the missus ordered from Domino’s–there IS one in Old Forge, the presence of which puzzled my children even when they were very tiny.

“Picture of Dorkian Gray”

Kudos R. This has been a dismal day and the vote count ain’t even in. Thanks for the laugh.

A few quick postscripts:

1. I love how he thinks Laurence of Arabia has slack editing. Maybe a couple of quick cuts or something to establish the mood. Even more so than any Hitchcock movie, Laurence of Arabia is unassailable as a cinematic achievement.

2. In the comments, he gets a tongue bath by “noted” coot Burt Prelutsky and then someone responds to Burt’s support as another example of the callowness of youth. This to a guy who’s been saying “Git off my lawn” since the Harding Administration.

3. Prelutsky said Shapiro missed one: John Ford, which goes to show you that every single conservative is vastly off in some important way.

4. Stealing Elaine Robinson from the wedding was Ben’s entire goal. The befuddled look on their face at the end of the movie rightfully shows the “now what?” ambivalence of two kids who just made a getaway without a plan (bonus: Maybe Nichols, no boomer, was saying something about the fecklessness of the Woodstock culture!) — but to Ben Shapiro that’s no ending at all!

5. One can think Tarantino is overrated without deluding oneself into thinking that’s even remotely controversial.

More explosions please. Thank you.

I’m almost always rewarded when I remember to hover my cursor over the photos you embed, to see how you’ve titled the .jpgs. A true mark of quality blogging. Well done as always, sir!

True, it is a mark of quality blogging. Funny how much of a kick I get out of checking out Tbogg’s pictures with my special mail order decoder ring and seeing his secret messages. Okay, so I’m a lonely dork, but it’s still fun.

Seriously, somebody needs to take the keyboard away from the Virgin Ben before he hurts himself.

Gangs of New York … (on a side note, there is no excuse for killing Liam Neeson in the first ten minutes of a film).

Noted without comment (or excuse).

You’re half right: it’s in his top ten list twice. It could well have been in there a third time if he hadn’t stopped at seven.