Context.

 So, uh, what's going on with you folks? Anything interesting happen to you today?

 Me? No, nothing. I mean, there was the whole "comment" thing, but that's really no big deal, you know?

 Okay, it is, but not for the reasons some might expect. If you didn't find my X-Men: First Class review from last week via social media today, I received a pointed comment from Jan Niechwiadowicz which read as follows:

 "The film may take place in the Marvel universe not ours BUT it still wasn’t a Polish concentration camp. Please don’t shift the blame for murder of millions onto the Poles. Please correct your review to say it was a German concentration camp."

 At first, I was a little irritated because the commenter had not only misread the intent of the sentence (which has been changed, if you're curious) - it used to say "Things get off to a bit of a shaky start during the opening scene, which retells the prologue to the first X-Men involving a young Erik Lehnsherr manifesting his powers for the first time in a Polish concentration camp..." What I was inferring was not that the concentration camp belonged to Poles, but merely that the camp was in Poland, as the title cards of both X-Men and X-Men: First Class say at the opening of their respective films.

 I learned a lot today before heading to work, especially about Jan Niechwiadowicz; for one, I appreciate any commenter who stakes a strong position and leaves their name. Nothing personal, anonymous commenters, but after the "Roman Polanski" incident, I don't have much patience for people who hide behind anonymity while pursuing their agendas. Anyway, Jan Niechwiadowicz (I'm not trying to be rude, but it's very difficult based on Google to say with any certainty whether Jan is a "he" or a "she," so I'm just going to stick with the name and avoid pronouns) is a member of Support Poland Against the Lies, and you can read why at the link embedded in the organization's name. I'm not going to misspeak because I had no idea how sensitive of an issue it is.

 What I am going to do, even if I agree in principle with the concept of defending one's home against erroneous information (as detailed on another blog here where Jan also left a comment), is take exception to the imprecision and hyperbole found within the comment in my X-Men: First Class review, on two counts. The second one is more important to me, but as another commenter (anonymous, but I have an inkling of who it was) raised a very important point that Jan Niechwiadowicz doesn't get a free pass for.

 1) Yes, I changed the language of the review. I had no idea that Poles felt so strongly that they were being incorrectly tied to the Holocaust, so I opt to remove the imprecision of wording. As I said, it was a reference to location and not ownership. If you have an issue with the title cards of the movie, I suggest you take that up with Bryan Singer and Matthew Vaughn, but I'll get to that in a minute.

 I'm willing to overlook the fact that you imply I "shift the blame for murder of millions onto the Poles" when that's CLEARLY not the case. That's imprecision on your part, but not by any means the most egregious count. What I am not going to overlook (and neither did the commenter who responded to you) is the fact that you, Jan Niechwiadowicz, are asking me to "correct" my review to say "German" concentration camp. Not Nazi concentration camp, but German. Do you understand the difference there? Just as you make a leap to assume that I'm somehow blaming the Holocaust on the Poles, you are not lumping all of Germany together as Nazis with the same specious logic. How is what you imply I'm doing (and I'm not, and there's nothing anywhere on this blog that would support your leap in judgment) any less mistaken than what you did. All Germans were not Nazis. Period.

 Accordingly, I amended my post to say "Nazi concentration camp in Poland." If you take exception to that, not my problem. That's how the film presents it, and this is a site which reviews films. To take it one step further, the Nazis in Dead Snow are gold coveting zombies. Is that accurate? Well, the zombie part is highly unlikely, but Nazis are used as stock villains to distinguish them from any other zombie movie. They don't even really behave like zombies, since they prefer to punch and stab people, but whatever. I'm not looking for historical accuracy in a movie like Dead Snow or X-Men First Class; I'm looking at how the story is told, which brings us to the more important point...

 2) Based on your comment and the first half of the first sentence (from which I really can't decide if you're being glib or not), you clearly weren't interested in the review itself. Of course, I know this because I've slowly but surely been keeping an eye on people who came to this post with the search words "polish concentration camp." I had no idea what the significance was until you decided to leave a comment, but I was aware that the review was being observed. That's what sitemeter does (the little link at the bottom) - it helps me see who is coming to the page, what for, and how long they stick around. Now this usually is disheartening, because other than students looking to cut and paste my Coen brothers auteur analysis, most of the time it's people looking for "naked chick in Drive Angry" or "Monsturd."

 However, it does help me understand what people find interesting on the blog - I write nearly every day, so there's a lot to sift through. Almost everything I write about is movie related. I would rather not make assumptions about you, Jan Niechwiadowicz, but I somehow doubt you read any part of the X-Men: First Class review based on your comment. I have my doubts you even read the entirety of the paragraph from which your complaint originated, and that's the problem.

 It's fine if you want to correct the language about Nazi concentration camps in Poland, even if you do it badly by leaping to conclusions about the intentions of other people AND you insult Germans who weren't Nazis. I support you in principle, if not execution.

 However, since you made that assumption without reading the review or caring about the SUBSTANCE of the paragraph you want me to correct, then we have a problem. You picked an incidental detail from a debate about whether one director lifted shots wholesale from another in the interest of expediency (which he did, although Vaughn might argue it was for consistency). My analysis was strictly about what shots were reused, what shots were new, and its impact on the quality of the film. I can only surmise that because you didn't mention ANY of this in your comment that you had no interest in the substance of the review of X-Men: First Class but rather three words from a 1704 word review. As long as I made the change you wanted, it didn't matter what I thought of the movie.

 That I have an issue with; it's not often that someone takes something I wrote totally out of context and makes it part of their personal crusade (in fact, the Roman Polanski commenter is the last one I can recall), but I'm going to be very blunt here: it's not welcome. If you don't have something to add about the substance of what I write here, then don't bother dragging me or any of my readers into your causes. Your comment adds nothing to the review of X-Men: First Class, and since you're only interested in having your correction, you have it. No go away. If you aren't interested in reading about movies, and only in pushing your agenda, then we don't need you here. If you'd like to say something about X-Men: First Class or any of the other reviews here, be my guest, but keep it to the merits of the films themselves. As I said to the anonymous commenter who distorted my analysis of the timing of Roman Polanski's arrest last year, this is not a high volume readership blog. What I do here is talk about film and things related to film, and a small group of devoted film fans follow and comment. I didn't intend to demean your or Poland, and for that I apologize. I won't be using your name again on this blog, so if you're planning on coming back, this is it. If not, so be it - I'll continue doing what it is I do tomorrow. If that's not enough for you, then I'm afraid I can't help.

 - Cap'n Howdy