The Men Who Stare At Goats

[Gilberto]

I liked this movie, but I'm a little disappointed in it compared to Jon Ronson's book. Their focus on the psychic spies as the story kept them from featuring some of the more bizarre and absurd real life events that surround this story. In a way the movie misses the point for that because one of the frustrating things that happens in the book is that the media center on the ridiculous aspects of some actually horrific events and end up making a joking out of them rather than analyzing just how terrifying it is that things like this are really happening in a supposedly rational world.

Not that Ronson is above getting fascinated by the bizarre, but as always he manages to deliver the entertaining elements of the story in their appropriately disturbing context. I would recommend this read, as I would all his books so far.

[lynn]

It's your dark side coming out again Gilbert, the guy who wrote the First Earth Battalion manual didn't like the book because he felt it was too dark, especially in the face of the optimism of his manual. He liked the movie better.
Am I the only one who is turned dyslexic by Ronson's name? I can only ever say it as Ron Johnson, that's how it is in my mind. Weird.

[Gilberto]

The movie is sort of fun and positive, but I think it makes fun of the ideas in the manual more than Ronson, who seems to be making a better argument for Channon's optimism.