What favourite movie of yours did the pope just describe?
Mine is Titane.
u/vemmahouxbois — 2 hours ago
u/vemmahouxbois
"The Criterion Collection collection isn't preserving conservative films. I don't even think you can call it a film if it's conservative" Venting about the lack of 4k bluray releases of Michael Bay movies spirals into partisan anger at The Department of Justice.
Background:
Michael Bay is a mostly washed up action movie director who peaked in the 90s with the first two Bad Boys movies, The Rock, and Armageddon. His career got a second wind with the Transformers franchise but has recently faded into semi obscurity. He is mostly known for adding sparklers and other embellishments to pyrotechnics. He is maybe nominally right wing, having directed a couple of Victoria's Secret fashion shows for Jeffrey Epstein associate Les Wexner, the brand's founder as well as 13 Hours, a dramatization of the attack on the American embassy in Benghazi, Libya in 2012. He is currently listed on IMDB as the director of an upcoming Skibidi Toilet film adaptation.
The Criterion Collection is a US based film distribution company known primarily for restoring and releasing lesser known foreign, independent, and art house films on Laser Disc, DVD, Bluray, and 4k bluray formats. They are a subsidiary of Janus Films, who are focused on theatrical distribution. In the late 1990s, Criterion published Laser Disc and DVD editions of The Rock and Armageddon along with Robocop, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Clerks, and Chasing Amy to offset the much lower margins of selling Ingmar Bergman and French New Wave movies to the general American public. These titles continue to hold cult/meme status among Criterion and other boutique brand collectors. The Armageddon release is particularly infamous for Ben Affleck's unfiltered thoughts on the disc's commentary track.
The Walt Disney Corporation and Sony: You know who these people are. However, Disney currently own the distribution rights to both The Rock and Armageddon as well as all the films in the 20th Century Fox corporation, who they acquired in 2019. In 2024, Disney laid off its entire home entertainment staff and contracted Sony to handle physical distribution of all their titles in the US and Canada. This has allegedly caused a massive bottleneck in actually printing DVDs, Blurays, and 4k Blurays within the Disney/Sony pipeline.
The Federal Trade Commission is an independent agency of the United States government founded by President Woodrow Wilson to enforce civil antitrust law and promote consumer protection. They share jurisdiction with The Antitrust Division of The Department of Justice.
Alex Pretti was an ICU nurse working for the United States Department of Veterans Affairs who was shot and killed by two United States Customs and Border Protection officers while filming an arrest. Following his death, Pretti was alleged by the Trump administration to be a domestic terrorist without evidence presented to back up those claims.
The Drama
Some guy wants to know when The Rock and Armageddon are going to get 4k releases. A very normal, very common question on film and physical media Reddit.
Someone explains the Disney situation:
>Disney is sitting on A LOT of great movies unfortunately when it comes to 4K releases...
and this dude comes winging in out of nowhere to make it partisan:
someone provides further context:
>Disney isn't a monopoly.
>And Disney/Sony has been pumping out as much as they can. The issue is there aren't enough pressing plants to keep up with demand.
>Sony now has to balance their own releases with Disney's releases.
buddy is undeterred:
>
Who dissolved and pushed for streaming? Republican “business” geniuses, lmao.
the woke mind virus has entered the chat:
>Streaming was pushed by Netflix. The two Co-CEOs said they wanted to "kill physical media and kill theatrical releases". Netflix has been a huge push for wokeism, so has Disney, Disney only backed down because it was losing them customers.
>The only one that fits that would be Paramount but they were one of the last to the Streaming war.
debate continues, the woke hater endorses a hypothetical WB monopoly in exchange for 4ks:
>I'd be perfectly fine with WB having a monopoly. Their 4K team is great.
>Here's what we are getting from Disney this year:
>Is This Thing On?, Send Help, Avatar 3, Zootopia 3 Alice in Wonderland, Fight Club, Predator Badlands, Tron Ares, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, Minority Report (UK, Lionsgate only did US).
>So thats 10 movies so far. Sony has to balance their order from the production plants so that both Sony's and Disney's movies get a good amount of units produced.
>The issue is Physical media is at an all time high right now. More and more people are switching.
Elsewhere, a new challenger contests that lack of antitrust oversight in the US isn't a partisan issue:
Buddy unleashes an entire manifesto that, among other things, claims that "home video flourishes under Democrats," Criterion would agree with him, and invokes both the shooting of Alex Pretti and Palantir CEO Alex Karp for unknown reasons:
>Yeah, but the Netflix, Paramount, Warner thing could have been stopped by her. But you know, endorsing any mass murdering chomo that’s not Roman Polanski is how you’re gonna vote anyway.
>But we’re gonna get another mega merger in the vein of Disney and it only ever happens when a mass murdering/child molester/"Christian Messiah" is in office. He loves children, when he molests them, and especially when he drone strikes 200 of them. He also enjoys pretending that they didn't murder Alex Pretti, but we're not gonna get into murdering American protesters, then running a smear campaign on them. After all, I wouldn't want to piss off Alex Karp.
>Disney buys out 20th century Fox under Trump's first term. Skydance and Netflix bid over Warner Bros. during Trump's second term, after Skydance bought out Paramount, during Trump's second term. Neither of these happened during that other guy's administration. There's an orange constant to these media consolidations. When these happen, home video departments get layoffs from hell. It seems, that if you love Physical Media, the last thing you want is a Republican in office. Home video flourishes under Democrats. From DVD to bluray to 4k bluray, Democrats seem to be far nicer to Home Video. It seems that even the folks at Criterion would agree with me. Yeah, under Obama, Disney bought small companies like Marvel and Lucasfilm. Under Biden, Amazon bought a struggling MGM. But the corporate raiders only come out when Trump is in office.
>All you have to do, is take a peak at how he wants one bootlicker to run the Federal trade commission.
>So, this seems to be the Conservative way. As for woke films, didn’t half of those get financed by Trump’s former cabinet member Steve Mnuchin? A GOP fear mongering psyop if I ever saw one.
>I don't get hate for woke film, if you buy anything from the Criterion collection, it's woke as fuck. The Criterion Collection collection isn't preserving conservative films. I don't even think you can call it a film if it's conservative, it's more thinly veiled christian propaganda, it's North Korea, but with Jesus, that one guy who ghosted us for crucifying him.
>I guarantee a DOJ under Kamala Harris wouldn't have been run into the ground by an idiot like Pam Bondi, and then left in the incapable hands of an acting Attorney General, and something would have been done to prevent another Mega Merger consolidation. But, the Dow at one point in 2026 was at 50,000, it just isn't at 50,000 now. All I'm really saying is, there's a hell of a correlation of events that you're refusing to see.
I'm not going to purity test the entire Criterion closet but i have my doubts about the leftist credentials of The Rock (Spine #108), Armageddon (Spine #40), Hard Boiled (Spine #9), Sorcerer ( Spine #1269, nice), Farewell My Concubine (Spine #1228), or All That Jazz (Spine #724).
u/vemmahouxbois — 2 days ago
an honest question plunges r/flags into its own circlejerk sub
Background
r/flags is normally a pretty chill place where people talk about flags and make up their own flags for various places. However, it's a semi regular occurrence that people will ask for help identifying flags their neighbors are flying that turn out to be (semi) obscure fascist/far right/neo nazi in origin.
r/vexillologycirclejerk is typically a pretty funny satire sub about flags. vexillology is the study of flags.
The United Kingdom and Their Racist Flag Problem
The Union Jack, the flag that represents the United Kingdom is more or less the combination of three saltires, or emblems, of saints who represent the component nations within the UK:
- The red cross is the St George's Cross and represents England
- The red "x" is the Saltire of St Patrick and represents Northern Ireland
- The white "x" on the blue backgroud is the St Andrew's Cross and represents Scotland
- Wales is shit out of luck
The St George's Cross is the flag of England, which does not get used a lot for official purposes other than international competitions where England, Scotland, and Wales compete separately. However, the St George's cross has long been used by right wing English nationalist groups.
Post Brexit, this has evolved into widespread adoption by the racist far right who are currently attempting to co-opt and control the St George's Cross as a way of flying under the radar and attracting normies to their cause. There has been significant angst in the national press over the last couple years about whether the St George's Cross is becoming a hate symbol like the Confederate flag in the US.
Soccer Stuff
Arsenal, or more properly Arse Anal, is an English Premier League soccer team based in Islington, North London. Their flag incorporates the St George's Cross, as they are based in England. Despite being ranked first in the league, they are currently being accused of "bottling" or choking under pressure for playing poorly in a game.
The Drama (Not Affiliated with A24, Robert Pattinson, or Zendaya)
Earlier today, an Arsenal supporter (ha ha, hee hee) made a post in r/flags asking if the team flag he has over his bed comes off as racist, due to the far right cooptation of the St George's Cross at marches and political demonstrations. He specifically referenced the EDL or English Defense League. That post was pretty chill except for an American Ice Hockey Fan:
> omg you people can't do anything
with another guy agreeing:
>It’s a wonder how they make it through life. Existence must be miserable
but OP is unruffled, and it's what happened next that caused the real drama. A whole wave of generative AI parodies got posted. Some of them are just silly like the one that replaced the canon with a water bottle referencing the team "bottling," and people showed up not getting the joke. Another one involved a flag for death metal band Christian Death, who have had some unsettling lyrics in the past, but are no Burzum.
The obligatory Nazi variant got posted and it was locked.
OP of the original post appears remorsefully:
>
Crimes against humanity (be an arsenal supporter)
Another comment that got deleted by the mods really pissed people off:
>Profile pic checks out
>my god delete this fucking comment and leave you're embarassing yourself
The deleted comment must have been wild.
Shit finally got real when someone posted an Ole Miss flag belonging to the University of Mississippi football (not soccer) team. The usual types appeared:
Who cares. Should the 100 or so people who own it be put on a watchlist?
>If you're small minded and know nothing about history and a Yankee from up north then yes
>It's cringe, but its not racist.
Then the usual fight about "democrats" and "republicans" breaks out:
It's hilarious that this flag gets called racist by the very party that created the damn thing
>Dishonest or a moron?
I think both
It’s hilarious that people think parties cannot change over the course of
160 years
>I mean Eisenhower was a Republican who was fine a top income tax rate of 90%. Why do Republican heads explode if someone says, let’s raise the tax rate on high-income citizens? I mean it’s only been 70 years.
Someone dunks on the confederacy:
and a guy with a crusader flag/Pete Hegseth chest tattoo pfp pipes up:
>The British empire recognized them as independent
no one enjoyed that:
>Among other things that wouldn't be recommended yes
>because they were dependent on cheap southern slave cotton and they gave no further support once Lincoln said fuck yall u dont get cotton while we at war
(Fun historical fact, the UK textile factory owners sure did fly Confederate flags during the war and the largely Irish laborers in the factories raised money for emancipated slaves.)
Meanwhile, there are a couple versions of the arsenal flag post including derogatory racist imagery 1 and 2 still up. There's also this unrelated ongoing shit show. RIP, r/flags.
u/vemmahouxbois — 9 days ago