Monday, November 14, 2011

Welcome to Hell, JoePa

You know your reputation is in tatters when you're even dissed in a movie review that has literally nothing to do with you. Such is the nature of damnation for ex-Penn State coach Joe Paterno. Writing in Time, critic Richard Corliss trashed the new film Immortals (from the producers of 300), starring Mickey Rourke in the role of Hyperion, a virtueless god-man. Corliss's verdict: the movie is "great-looking but brain-dead." He writes, "For all its lustrous crimson escapism, Immortals offers a few fortuitous contemporary metaphors. ... And when one of Hyperion’s misdeeds cues the line, 'How can you stomach bearing witness to such atrocity?', an image of Joe Paterno, the graven, craven Penn State coach, may rise unbidden and unavoidable. A leader of young men who allowed a colleague to defile and virtually devour young boys: this tale of majestic horror could be a dark chapter from the apocrypha of classical mythology." It may not be fair, but, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, Paterno is learning that when the gods wish to punish you, they tend to answer your prayers.

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