Atlas Shrugged WOWS Moviegoers!

Critics predictably slammed the film but 85% of those who saw it approved, read this report, from here.

Atlas Shrugged (MOVIE) despite very limited distribution, 3rd highest ticket sales

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Movie ticket sales company FANDANGO is reporting that the movie ATLAS SHRUGGED has the 3rd highest number of tickets pre-sold of any movie in history. This is pretty amazing given several factors.

• ATLAS SHRUGGED is only showing in about 10% of the major movie theaters nationwide.
• A small independent producer made the movie.
• ATLAS SHRUGGED has no big name stars, in fact it has no stars but rather used TV actors and actresses.
• The movie was made on a tiny (by Hollywood standards) budget of only $20 Million.
• Professional movie critics hate the movie, but individuals who have seen it overwhelmingly like the movie.

WALL STREET JOURNAL article => http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/...hrugged-a-hit/

Quote:

Rotten Tomatoes lists more than 5,000 user ratings with a total of 86% saying they “like it,” while the critics’ average is a disastrous 7%. . . . According to Kaslow, the second and third parts of the film are in the active planning stages, with the second part scheduled to go into production this June for release on April 15, 2012, and the third to follow the same timeline the following year. “The green light decision is ultimately John’s,” says Kaslow. “If we learn there is no commercial interest in the film, I doubt there will be a second or third one. But at this point, we’re the third most ticketed film on Fandango, so I don’t have any reason to believe that we won’t be successful.”

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"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion:
the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases,
while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage
of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force."
- Ayn Rand

The Wall Street Journal  media section called Speakeasy, carries a report, linked here, declaring the movie a hit which has so far attracted 426 comments. The authorities attempt to bury the film and its message might yet fail, now we must hope it can be seen across the non-democratic EU!

An early review of Atlas Shrugged Part 1

The review is linked here. A brief quote:

The producers of a new movie based on Ayn Rand's classic libertarian novel "Atlas Shrugged" say its theme of rebellion against intrusive government paints an eerily accurate picture of socialistic forces in modern America under the Obama administration.

"The film is about now," Harmon Kaslow, producer of "Atlas Shrugged Part 1,” tells Newsmax. "Look around, you see the Middle East imploding, you see gas prices skyrocketing, you see the government interfering with business. These were all themes that were part of the book and are also now part of the movie.

"There's so many parallels," he says. “It's almost haunting how similar what [Rand] wrote 50 years ago is to what's actually taking place today."

The link provides a video link to an interview with those behind the film (if this below does not work):

Did Ayn Rand foresee our future in Atlas Shrugged?

Any casual read of Ayn Rand's masterpiece "Atlas Shrugged" must leave the reader with an uncanny sense that she had foressen our present age back in the nineteen-fifties when the almost 1200 paged novel was first written.

A closer study of all the striking similarities between the book and the world created by our present crooked political leaders and their armies of moochers and looters, who depend on the maintenance of this corrupt rule, might turn such suspicions into racing certainties.

I spent my own working life in the international oil industry and therefore have an absolutely clear idea on what petroleum geologists thought of the prospects for shale oil as a future energy source, back in those days. I therefore consider this passage from the book as clear enough evidence for me of Ayn Rand's ability to discern the likely course of events. This passage appears on page 720 of the Penguin Modern Classics edition of Atlas Shrugged,  ISBN 978-0-141-18893-5, and was as follows:

"It was oil that ran in a glittering curve from the mouth of a pipe into a tank at the foot of the wall, as the only confession of the secret struggle inside the stone, as the unobtrusive purpose of all the intricate machinery - but the machinery did not resemble the installations of an oil derrick, and she knew that she was looking at the secret of the Buena Esperanza Pass, she knew that this was oil drawn out of shale by some method men had considered impossible."

A modern description of oil shale is here.

The movie of the beginning of the novel is released in two weeks time. It clearly must not be missed, especially given the attempts to block its distribution and its limited production budget, both no doubt caused by the fears of the fabulously wealthy, in terms of digital money, who have created our present nightmarish world.

Britain's brainwashed and manipulated mainstream media and Atlas Shrugged

An amazingly perceptive and apt small passage, which exactly fits the present state of Britain's mainstream media, both print and broadcast, comes in Chapter VIII of Atlas Shrugged, I quote it here:

" The reporters who came to the press conference in the office of the John Galt Line were young men who had been trained to think that their job consisted of concealing from the world the nature of its events. It was their daily duty to serve as audience for some public figures who made utterances about the public good, in phrases carefully chosen to convey no meaning. It was their daily job to sling words together in any combination they pleased, so long as the words did not fall into a sequence saying something specific. They could not understand the interview now being given to them."

Details of how to obtain this book are on my previous posting on Atlas Shrugged.

Money as opposed to the proceeds from productive effort - from Atlas Shrugged

The following passage from Chapter Two of Part II of 'Atlas Shrugged,' illustrates the pointlessness of most of the debate and proffered solutions surrounding the ongoing western economic crisis, particularly the emptiness of the grandstanding within the UK Coalition Government about bankers bonuses, involving as it does fictitious billions of sham and confetti-like, over produced and falsely printed pound notes.

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"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Anconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honour -- your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is the statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil?"

"Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions -- and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.

"But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it?  Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made -- before it can be looted or mooched -- made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.

"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labour that which they are worth to the men who buy them but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgement of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss -- the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery -- that you must offer them values, not wounds -- that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best your money can find. And when men live by trade -- with reason, not force, as their final arbiter -- it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgement and highest ability -- and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?......

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The above is one third of the passage on money and effort. It goes from page 410 to 415 in the edition quoted at the end of this post. There is enough here for readers to quickly realise the truth of what is written and perceive the fact that those who run the EU, the three main political parties in the UK and many of their counterparts in the West have destroyed the peoples' money by their own personal greed, they are the moochers and looters of the 21st century , they are easily spotted and they know who they are, to quote the concluding paragraph:

"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonestly; the man who respects it has earned it.

"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bellk of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another -- their only substitute, if they abanon money, is the muzzle of a gun"

This blog has frequently made the case for a return to sound money, as things deteriorate hopefully this obvious fact will be more widely appreciated together withg the realisation that we must first remove the moochers and looters now in control. In the UK the voters at Oldham will this week have their chance to make a beginning!

Please read the book, it is available in Penguin Modern Classics, 'Atlas Shrugged' by Ayn Rand, £10.99 ISBN 978-0-141-18893-5; It predicts where the policies of the leaders of the EU and particularly those of ALL the three main political parties in the UK, David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Miliband Minor are taking the country under 'Progressivism'

A vision of the corruption of our lawmakers from nineteen fifty-seven!

A quote from Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand written either during or before 1957, exactly predicts the corruption and worthlessness today being displayed by the Western World's current crop of elected legislators, as quoted below from Chapter II, of Part II of the novel Atlas Shrugged:

"Did you really think we want those laws to be observed?" said Dr Ferris. "We want them broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against -- then you'll know this is not the age for beautiful gestures.  We're after power and we mean it.  You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men.  The only power any government has is to crack down on criminals.  Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them.  One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.  Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone?  But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectivelt interpreted -- and you create a nation of law breakers -- and then you can cash in on guilt.  Now that's the system, Mr Reardon, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with."

Atlas Shrugged - The Movie

There is an interesting plug for both Mark Steyn and Atlas Shrugged in one posting on Samizdata today, linked here. Two of my favourites in one post, good show Johnathan Pearce!

To plug the new film due out in mid-April in the USA, you can respond to the video on this link:

http://www.atlasshruggedpart1.com/IAmJohnGalt

My Ayn Rand quote for Good Friday

"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force. "

Visit the site of Euro-trashed.com to learn the truth of your own individual destruction!

Update! A long weekend could be a good time to get stuck in to the novel "Atlas Shrugged", it uncannily describes our present world although written decades ago.

This brief description I found here:

Atlas Shrugged is not primarily a political novel. It is a novel about what happens to a world that denounces its best minds as greedy and immoral. It’s a novel about what happens when, instead of thanking and rewarding the brightest and most successful, a nation denounces, despises, and shackles them. It’s a novel about what happens when the best minds stop allowing that to happen. Whether this last aspect of the plot will play out in real life is yet to be seen, but the parallels to date are remarkable.

Wesley Mouch urges boycott of Atlas Shrugged Movie Part One

Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to become the means by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of other men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other.
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

The warped thinking of Progressivism

The slogans of Progressivism are 'No can do' and thereafter 'Not my fault'.

The following excerpt from Atlas Shrugged occurs in Chapter VII of the book, when the mother of a successful industrialist pleads for him to give his worthless brother (whom he has supported with handouts and help throughout his miserable existence collecting for progressive causes) a full-time well paid job doing nothing supposedly for the benefit of his brother's self-esteem. The passage quoted begins with the mother asking:

" Don't you ever think of people and your moral duties?"


" I don't know what it is that you choose to call morality, No I don't think of people -- except that if I gave a job to Philip, I wouldn't be able to face any competent man who needed work and deserved it."


She got up. Her head was drawn into her shoulders, and the righteous bitterness of her voice seemed to push her words upwards at his tall straight figure: " That's your cruelty, that's what's mean and selfish about you. If you loved your brother, you'd give him a job he didn't deserve, precisely because he didn't deserve it -- that would be love and kindness and brotherhood. Else what's love for? If a man deserves  a job, there is no virtue in giving it to him. Virtue is the giving of the undeserved."


He was looking at her like a child at an unfamiliar nightmare, incredulity preventing it from becoming horror. " Mother," he said slowly, " you don't know what you are saying, I'm not able ever to despise you enough to believe that you mean it."

Please read the book, it is available in Penguin Modern Classics, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, £10.99 ISBN 978-0-141-18893-5; It predicts where the policies of the leaders of the EU and particularly those of ALL the three main political parties in the UK, David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Miliband Minor are taking the country under 'Progressivism'

Atlas Shrugged - Another excerpt!

Part 1 of the movie opens in the USA tomorrow, but all can read the book any time in English. My pick for the eve of the film's long awaited premier is below:

   "Did you wonder what is wrong with the world?  You are now seeing the climax of the creed of the uncaused and unearned.  All your gangs of mystics, of spirit or muscle, are fighting one another for power to rule you, snarling that love is the solution for all the problems of your spirit and that a whip is all the solution for all the problems of your body -  you who have agreed to have no mind.  Granting man less dignity than they grant to cattle, ignoring what an animal trainer could tell them - that no animal can be trained by fear, that a tortured elephant will trample its torturer, but will not work for him or carry his burdens - they expect man to continue to produce electronic tubes, supersonic aeroplanes, atom smashing engines and interstellar telescopes, with his ration of meat for reward and a lash on his back for incentive.

"Make no mistake about the character of mystics. To undercut your consciousness, has always been their only purpose throughout the ages, - and power , the power to rule you by force, has always been their only lust.

"From the rites of the jungle witch-doctors, which distorted reality into grotesque absurdities, stunted the minds of their victims and kept them in terror of the supernatural for stagnant stretches of centuries - to the supernatural doctrines of the Middle Ages, which kept men huddled on on the mud floors of their hovels, in fear that the devil might steal the soup they had worked eighteen hours to earn - to the seedy little smiling professor who assures yoy that your brain has no capacity to think, that you have no means of perception and must blindly obey the omnipotent will of that supernatural force: Society all of it is the same performance for the same and only purpose: to reduce you to the kind of pulp that has surrendered the validity of its consciouness.

"But it cannot be done to you without your consent; If you permit it to be done you deserve it."

Who is John Galt? Buy the book of Atlas Shrugged, see the film! Go Galt, like I did in 1989! Don't give THEM the use of your mind!

More on money from Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged.

"Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion, when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot."

 Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged.

The movie of the book, voted second most important after The Bible by Americans, first published in 1957, finally opens with Part I in US movie theatres this Friday! See it!

The rotten oak tree from Atlas Shrugged

At the start of 2011 I offer these two short passages, both from the very first chapter of Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand to provide thought for the New Year which I trust will be happy and secure for all my readers!

   The great oak tree had stood on a hill over the Hudson, in a lonely spot of the Taggert estate. Eddie Willers, aged seven, liked to come and look at that tree. It had stood there for hundreds of years, and he thought it would always stand there. Its roots clutched the hill like a fist with fingers stuck into the soil, and he thought if a giant were to seize it by the top, he would not be able to uproot it, but would swing the hill and the whole of the earth with it, like a ball at the end of a string. He felt safe in the oak tree's presence; it was a thing that nothing could change or threaten; it was his greatest symbol of strength.

   One night, lightning struck the oak tree. Eddie saw it the next morning. It lay broken in half, and he looked into its trunk as into the mouth of a black tunnel. The trunk was only an empty shell; its heart had rotted away long ago; there was nothing inside - just a thin gray dust that was being dispersed by the whim of the faintest wind. The living power had gone, and the shape of it left had not been able to stand without it.

***

  Eddie Willers smiled. He had said " Whatever is right," twenty-two years ago. He had kept that statement unchallenged ever since; the other questions had faded in his mind; he had been too busy to ask them. But he still thought it self-evident that one had to do what was right; he had never learned how people could want to do otherwise; he had learned only that they did. It still seemed simple and incomprehensible to him: simple that things should be right, and incomprehensible that they weren't.

Who is John Galt?

The Firm giving private viewings of Atlas Shrugged.

One firm in the USA is offering private showings of Atlas Shrugged (the film Hollywood did not want you to see) in three large cities in the USA this weekend, namely Richmond, Atlanta and Pittsburgh at the firms own expense.

Read a full report from this link. Thanks to Johnathan Pearce of samizdata for alerting me to this fact!

WSJ on Atlas Shrugged Premier - Threads treasures N° 62!

An article in the Wall Street Journal, by Donald L. Luskin, linked here, on yesterday's premier of part one of the movie 'Atlas Shrugged' up to this point has gathered 420 comments, many of which are well informed and worthy of further consideration, unlike the entirely predictable chastisement the film has received across most of the liberal media.

I have selected this, from James Kelly, to become this blog's Treasure from the Threads - number sixty-two:

• James Kelly wrote:

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As one who owes Ayn Rand a dept of gratitude for challenging his mind in his early twenties with her thought-provoking books, I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Luskin's assessment that Ms. Rand was neither left nor right in the traditional sense. Thirty-five years have transpired since I read her works--years that included a twenty-year career in railroad problem-solving/management, direct involvement in Neuroscience, twice serving as a surrogate 'stem cells' spokesperson for the GW Bush White House, and (currently) writing a novel. More sharply than the passions of youth, life has taught me to appreciate Ms. Rands superlative skills in crafting characters and plots that plumb the depths of human nature. However, regarding her endorsement of unbridled capitalism and high-minded captains of industry, I suggest a caveat that scientists have confirmed with functional MRIs: Human have an amazing and disturbing ability to interpret reality to match what they want to believe regardless of facts, reason, or consequences. Sadly, this truth applies as much to our political and social leaders irrespective of worldview persuasion as to the man on the street or executives in corporate board rooms, even John Galt. Can't wait to see the movie!
10 Recommendations

Was Ayn Rand first to state Tea Party Aims?

An interesting op-ed from Bloomberg that is linked here.

Good news for fans of Atlas Shrugged and Ayn Rand, it being reported that the second part of the movie has been given the go ahead!

Who are the villains?

I have finished Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I will leave this blog's readers with one last quote, from Part III, A is A, Chapter II, The Utopia of Greed:

"Oh yes, I would have killed-- but whom was there to kill? It was everyone and no one, there was no single enemy, no center and no villain, it was not the simpering social worker incapable of earning a penny or the thieving bureaucrat scared of his own shadow, it was the whole of the earth rolling into an obscenity of horror, pushed by the hand of every would-be decent man who believed that need is holier than ability and pity is holier than justice. But these were only occasional moments...."

Get the book, go Galt!

Good Luck to the film Atlas Shrugged Part 1!

I have selected this quote from Ayn Rand's book to mark the launch date of the movie in the USA:

The controlling stock of Taggert Transcontinental was left to James Taggert. He was thirty-four when he became President of the railroad. Dagny had expected the Board of Directors to elect him, but she had never been able to understand why they did it so eagerly. They talked about tradition, the president had always been the eldest son of the Taggert family; they elected James Taggert in the same manner as they refused to walk under a ladder, to propitiate the same kind of fear. They talked about his gift of "making railroads popular," his "good press," his "Washington ability." He seemed unusually skillful at obtaining favours from the Legislature.

Dagny knew nothing about the field of "Washington ability" or what such an ability implied. But it seemed to be necessary, so she dismissed it with thought that there were many kinds of work which were offensive, yet necessary, such as cleaning sewers;somebody had to do it,and Jim seemed to like it.

May the film get green lights all along the way and the book reach ever more readers!

A new energy "Golden Age" has dawned - Welcome back Phillips 66!

The newly re-established Phillips 66 company is to order 2000 crude oil carrying rail freight wagons as pipeline systems are swamped by growing demand!

I was proud to be associated with Phillips 66 as their Marine Manager for Europe and Africa, based in London, when we opened up the North Sea Oil Production Era with the pioneer direct loading from the Ekofisk oil reservoir,  via sub-sea well heads and a jack-up oil/gas  separation rig the Gulf Tide directly to the 35,000 dwt 'Theogennitor' oil tanker in the early 1970s, just as Colonel Gadaffi was becoming successful in destroying the West's economy through wildly escalating oil prices and threats of supply interruption.

Earlier at Gulf Oil I had seen the tankers bringing oil to Europe grow from 28,000 tons with a crew of over 60 jump to 326,000 tons with crews of less than 2O arriving at Bantry Bay. These were the developments upon which the post-war prosperity of Europe relied. The predecessors of today's EU looters and moochers such as Van Rompuy, Barroso, Rehn, Barnier et al were then arguing over wine lakes and butter mountains, similarly without a thought for the growth or prosperity of the people of Europe. By the late nineteen-eighties, when the trashing of the sanctity of contracts had even penetrated to the heart of the oil and shipping industries, I went "Galt".

Ironic then that it is the bedrock of Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged, the railroad industry, that caught my eye in this early sign of a renaissance, hopefully also soon in integrity and ingenuity. Fitting too, at this moment of EU collapse and especially for me, that it is taking place in the oil industry and that the consequences of the intervening abandonment of standards in business, most clearly noticeable within the now increasingly evil EU, I had chosen to chronicle under the blog titles Ironies and Ironies Too!

If there is to be another chance of an economic revival in Britain, as the North Sea brought in the closing decades of the last century, then the Coalition Government needs to ignore the vested interests of companies such as Shell and Centrica in their fracking report!

AND

 Get Cracking with Fracking - ASAP!

Younger readers unfamiliar with the underlying connotations of Route 66 may enjoy this Nat King Cole version of one of many songs written on this one road:

Further reading and food for thought from today's New York Times.

Atlas Shrugged - The Movie

Visit this link to view the scene of Henry Rearden returning home for dinner.