Sucked more balls than George Michael on the set filming Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.
After this and the utter shit of Gran Torino, Eastwood needs to call it a day.

Really? I could see not liking it, but such a strong negative reaction is hard to understand. I mean I could see how some people would think it was sappy or bland, but that hardly would be reason for a strong reaction.

Even though Gran Torino was super predictable American Male hyperbole, wrapped in some Jesus Christ posing, it was enjoyable simply for the racial slurs, imo. As in - it is still shocking to hear someone talk like that directly to people.

But, Eastwood has always been a shite director. His movies all follow the same basic model --> Brooding with a Jazz Soundtrack, and often with plot holes so big that they make the movie even more wretched (Mystic River).

My personal theory is that he really is an unmitigated fucking maniac, and everyone in the Academy is afraid he will show up like The Man With No Name and gun them down in the streets if his movies don't win awards, so they keep heaping the noms and the Oscars on him.

I gave up long ago - I only watched Torino because it was on TV, and the wife wanted to.

I think I hated it so much because of the way Eastwood used the racial interactions and relationships in such a cheap way. i.e. the rugby team wins and the little black boy and the taxi drivers hug and celebrate and give him a cap, the white and black security officers jump in the air and start to embrace but there is that slightly uncomfortable moment until they realize that now it is ok to show affection to the other race, yay!!!! we different...but we're the same!!! glory be!!! add that to the stale acting and horrendously slow pacing and it equals a shit sandwich.

I think that that is a valid argument, but the fact that it is based on something that happened lessens the cheapness of it. I watched the movie with an afrikaner who was in South Africa when this was taking place. While he said that things were tidied up for the movie, the event did affect race relations in the way they depicted. While it's true that those relations didn't necessarily last, or are good by most measures, it did have a positive affect. I thought that the acting was good, but the pacing was slow.

That's good to know, it makes it more tolerable in my mind. You never know if it gets completely whitewashed in typical hollywood fashion without a firsthand account.

there's a barber on my mail route that talks like that.

When I was in Asia I was surprised by how overtly racist they were, especially against other Asians. The Thai's didn't like the Malay's, but they both looked down on the Chinese. I see this type of overt racism with some of the older people who live in the south. When I moved to country with my parents when I was 13 the first neighbor I meet flew the confederate flag and told us that he didn't like black people, nice guy in every other aspect though.

dude, gran torino was AWESOME

This rant cracked me up. I loved Gran Torino. It's the first movie of Eastwood I've liked since The Unforgiven (I think you have to be a fan of the genre to really appreciate it).

As predictable as Gran Torino is, the character seemed like a pretty good composite of all my grandfathers or at least my mythologizing of them, which immediately connected me to the character.