Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged Adapted to Film.

[urbanlibertarian]

^^ If it makes it to theaters. 

[urbanlibertarian]

Below are the local theatres that will be showing the movie.  It comes out April 15.

Jacksonville

5 Points Theatre
1028 Park Street, Jacksonville, FL 32204

Cinemark Tinseltown and XD
4535 Southside Blvd, Jacksonville, FL 32216

Regal Beach Boulevard 18
14051 Beach Blvd, Jacksonville, FL 32250

Orange Park

AMC Orange Park 24
1910 Wells Road, Orange Park, FL 32073

http://www.atlasshruggedpart1.com/theaters

[buckethead]

Below are the local theatres that will be showing the movie.  It comes out April 15.

Jacksonville

5 Points Theatre
1028 Park Street, Jacksonville, FL 32204

Cinemark Tinseltown and XD
4535 Southside Blvd, Jacksonville, FL 32216

Regal Beach Boulevard 18
14051 Beach Blvd, Jacksonville, FL 32250

Orange Park

AMC Orange Park 24
1910 Wells Road, Orange Park, FL 32073

http://www.atlasshruggedpart1.com/theaters

Now I understand why they changed Tax Day.

[finehoe]

I notice the trailer says "Part 1".  Is it going to be like the Harry Potter movie in two parts?

[KenFSU]

Man, I was really looking forward to this, but the movie is just being ripped to shreds by critics. Most cite poor acting, wooden dialogue, and a low budget feel. Rotten Tomatoes currently has the film at a 6%, which is shockingly bad.

A real shame.

Still might see it though.

[Jaxson]

I am going to be at the Tinseltown theater for the 7:45PM showing!  Anyone else going?

[Ajax]

I'm going to 5 Points at 7:10.  I really hope it doesn't suck. 

[5 Points Theatre]

We now interrupt this discussion for a shameless plug:

Don't forget - the 5 Points Theatre has six beers on tap, including offerings from Bold City and Intuition, plus wine, Pizza Palace pizza and fresh brownies!

I hope MetroJacksovillians will choose us over the mutli-plex if they see Atlas Shrugged.

Showtimes tonight and tomorrow at 5, 7:15 and 9:30 pm, and Sunday at 5:15 and 7:30 pm.

[RiversideLoki]

As much as I respect Ayn Rand's writing abilities, had she stuck around to see how her philosophies have been so utterly twisted to the point of being unrecognizable from what she most likely meant when she wrote them, she would probably be putting her head in an oven a la Sylvia Plath.

Today, Maureen Dowd released a pretty good op-ed detailing the ridiculousness of the current fervor over her writings and summed it up pretty nicely with this...

She wrote about Nietzschean superheroes who made things. She died before capitalism evolved into a vampire casino where you could bet against investments you sold to your clients, and make money off something you didn’t own or that existed only on paper.

The sexy Manichean ’toons in the novels of the goddess of capitalism don’t behave unethically. When they blow up things, it’s because they will not be sacrificial victims to evil second-raters.

Greed had a less ennobling effect on real genius capitalists. Instead of fighting the looters, they joined the looters.

What Rand and acolytes like Alan Greenspan failed to realize is that if everyone acts in self-interest and no one takes into account the weakness to the entire system that occurs when everybody indulges in the same kind of risky behavior, the innocent and the guilty are engulfed.

Nevertheless, Rand is blazing back as an icon of the Tea Party, which overlooks her atheism, amorality in romance and vigorous support for abortion.

I'll probably go see the movie. Just to see what the fuss is about.

[ben says]

Ironic how cheaply the film was made....

[finehoe]

Ayn Rand’s adult-onset adolescence

By Michael Gerson, Thursday, April 21, 8:00 PM

The movie “Atlas Shrugged,” adapted from Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel by the same name, is a triumph of cinematic irony. A work that lectures us endlessly on the moral superiority of heroic achievement is itself a model of mediocrity. In this, the film perfectly reflects both the novel and the mind behind it.

Rand is something of a cultural phenomenon â€" the author of potboilers who became an ethical and political philosopher, a libertarian heroine. But Rand’s distinctive mix of expressive egotism, free love and free-market metallurgy does not hold up very well on the screen. The emotional center of the movie is the success of high-speed rail â€" oddly similar to a proposal in Barack Obama’s last State of the Union address. All of the characters are ideological puppets. Visionary, comely capitalists are assaulted by sniveling government planners, smirking lobbyists, nagging wives, rented scientists and cynical humanitarians. When characters begin disappearing â€" on strike against the servility and inferiority of the masses â€" one does not question their wisdom in leaving the movie.

None of the characters expresses a hint of sympathetic human emotion â€" which is precisely the point. Rand’s novels are vehicles for a system of thought known as Objectivism. Rand developed this philosophy at the length of Tolstoy, with the intellectual pretensions of Hegel, but it can be summarized on a napkin. Reason is everything. Religion is a fraud. Selfishness is a virtue. Altruism is a crime against human excellence. Self-sacrifice is weakness. Weakness is contemptible. “The Objectivist ethics, in essence,” said Rand, “hold that man exists for his own sake, that the pursuit of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose, that he must not sacrifice himself to others, nor sacrifice others to himself.”

If Objectivism seems familiar, it is because most people know it under another name: adolescence. Many of us experienced a few unfortunate years of invincible self-involvement, testing moral boundaries and prone to stormy egotism and hero worship. Usually one grows out of it, eventually discovering that the quality of our lives is tied to the benefit of others. Rand’s achievement was to turn a phase into a philosophy, as attractive as an outbreak of acne.

The appeal of Ayn Rand to conservatives is both considerable and inexplicable. Modern conservatism was largely defined by Ronald Reagan’s faith in the people instead of elites. Rand regarded the people as “looters” and “parasites.” She was a strenuous advocate for class warfare, except that she took the side of a mythical class of capitalist supermen. Rand, in fact, pronounced herself “profoundly opposed” to Reagan’s presidential candidacy, since he did not meet her exacting ideological standards.

Rand cherished a particular disdain for Christianity. The cross, she said, is “the symbol of the sacrifice of the ideal to the nonideal. . . . It is in the name of that symbol that men are asked to sacrifice themselves for their inferiors. That is precisely how the symbolism is used. That is torture.” Yet some conservatives marked Holy Week by attending and embracing “Atlas Shrugged.”

Reaction to Rand draws a line in political theory. Some believe with Rand that all government is coercion and theft â€" the tearing-down of the strong for the benefit of the undeserving. Others believe that government has a limited but noble role in helping the most vulnerable in society â€" not motivated by egalitarianism, which is destructive, but by compassion, which is human. And some root this duty in God’s particular concern for the vulnerable and undeserving, which eventually includes us all. This is the message of Easter, and it is inconsistent with the gospel of Rand.

Many libertarians trace their inspiration to Rand’s novels, while sometimes distancing themselves from Objectivism. But both libertarians and Objectivists are moved by the mania of a single idea â€" a freedom indistinguishable from selfishness. This unbalanced emphasis on one element of political theory â€" at the expense of other public goals such as justice and equal opportunity â€" is the evidence of a rigid ideology. Socialists take a similar path, embracing equality as an absolute value. Both ideologies have led good people into supporting policies with serious human costs.

Conservatives have been generally suspicious of all ideologies, preferring long practice and moral tradition to utopian schemes of left or right. And Rand is nothing if not utopian. In “Atlas Shrugged,” she refers to her libertarian valley of the blessed as Atlantis.

It is an attractive place, which does not exist, and those who seek it drown.

michaelgerson@washpost.com

[Jimmy]

I enjoyed reading that review.  Objectivism as an arrested state of adolescent development sounds right to me.  I've said it was a dressed up form of narcissistic personality disorder.