Cracking me up!!!
Posted on 11/20/2007 8:36:21 AM PST by Rummyfan
Its anti-war films may be aimed at Bush, but what they're really destroying is storytelling MARK STEYN | November 15, 2007 |
A few months back, Peter Berg attended a test screening of his new film in California — not Malibu or Beverly Hills, but out in farm country. The Kingdom is about FBI agents (Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, etc.) investigating a terrorist attack on Americans in Saudi Arabia, and finally, about two hours in, the star talent gets to kill a bunch of jihadists. As Entertainment Weekly described it, "the packed house went completely bonkers, erupting in cheers" — and poor old Berg was distraught. "I was nervous it would be perceived as a jingoistic piece of propaganda, which I certainly didn't intend," the director agonized. "I thought, 'Am I experiencing American bloodlust?' " You really want an answer to that? Okay, here goes: No. It's not American bloodlust. As they say on Broadway, the audience doesn't lie, and, when they're trying to tell you something, it helps not to cover your ears. For all Mr. Berg's pains, The Kingdom was dismissed by the New York Times as "Syriana for dummies." That's to say, instead of explicitly fingering sinister Americans as the bad guys, it merely posited a kind of dull pro forma equivalence between the Yanks and the terrorists. It came out, oh, a week and a half ago and it's already forgotten in the avalanche of anti-war movies released since. There's Lions for Lambs and In the Valley of Elah and Redacted — no, wait, Rendition. No, my mistake. There's a Redacted and a Rendition — one's about American soldiers being rapists, one's about American intelligence officials being torturers. Every Friday night at the multiplex, Mr. and Mrs. America are saying, "Hmm, shall we see the movie where our boys are the torturers? Or the one where our boys are the rapists? How about the film where the heroic soldier refuses to fight? Or the one where he does fight and the army covers up the truth about his death?" And then they go see Fred Claus, which pulled in three times as much money as Robert Redford's Lions for Lambs on both films' opening weekend. Continued Below
As Roger L. Simon of Pajamas Media (and a screenwriter himself) put it: "Hicks Nix Peaceniks' Pix." These films tank at the box office, and disappear from the shopping malls before you've had time to refill your popcorn, and next Friday there's a brand new critically acclaimed anti-war movie in its place. The faster they fall, the more Hollywood is convinced of the "courage" of its "dissent." Tired of hailing pictures no one goes to see, the New York Times' film critic A. O. Scott now routinely pre-empts accusations that the drearily consistent world view of these works is "anti-American." Of Rendition, he wrote: "It has timely issues and serious ambitions, and it also has movie stars — Reese Witherspoon with a huge pregnant belly! Meryl Streep with a Southern accent! Jake Gyllenhaal with sad, sleepy eyes! — as well as young romance, breathless chases and violent explosions. Honestly, what could be more American than that?" Mr. Scott trembles, albeit accidentally, on the brink of a great insight here. Hollywood assumes that if you have enough beautiful stars making out and getting shot at and running up stairwells and diving through windows and outrunning the fireball, that that is sufficiently "American" (as Mr. Scott puts it) that the absence of a heroic narrative won't matter. The movies have divorced the form from the content, or, if you prefer, the telling from the story. You see it most obviously in almost any remake. Take the old 3.10 to Yuma, which chugged in last month, remodelled for the 21st century. The 1957 western was nobody's idea of a masterpiece but it had a moral seriousness: Van Heflin's broke and he'll lose his farm so he agrees to escort a violent felon to meet the train that will take him to prison. He's doing it for the 200 bucks — or so he thinks. But along the way he comes to understand that he's doing it for rather more. When a disaffected sibling of one of Glenn Ford's victims tries to kill him, Heflin prevents him — because, in a civilization as fragile as the young West, he thinks it important that it be the law that dispatches the prisoner. All that's gone in the new version, with Christian Bale in the Heflin role and Russell Crowe as Ford. For Bale, it's just about the money. Now the guy who tries to intercept the prisoner en route is not a vigilante who wishes to shortcut the law but the law itself — a rogue cop as brutal as the man he pursues. Oh, and the 2007 3.10 also gives us a Pinkerton agent who enjoys killing Injuns just for kicks, which even Russell Crowe primly draws the line at. There's no moral universe, just a rotten state in which wickedness and violence are tempered only by degrees of politically correct squeamishness.
Their old formula “If we film it, they will come.” doesn’t work...............
If I recall Hollywood use to test films in Bakersfield a lot in the old days.
Give Mark’s site the click and he’ll reward you with prargraphs :)
Yes where is that movie? And as I said on another thread re:LIONS FOR LAMBS... what world do these people live in?
When they remade The Manchurian Candidate a few years back, the villains were no longer Communists but a big multinational corporation.
Chicks WILL NOT go see these movies (unless they’re the hard-core Castro-loving America-hating hag poli sci teacher’s assistants who’ll never get a date). Chicks WILL NOT watch war movies, regardless of the message. Period. So these movies WILL NOT EVER reach the female audience.
That leaves us guys. All the guys I know will go see “The Kingdom.” Yep, the reaction of the audience when the terrorist got the knife in the balls and then in the head was well worth the trip. We all knew in our guts he had it coming to him.
The same guys went to see “300” for the same reason. The same reason we all went to see “Saving Private Ryan,” “The Big Red One,” “Tora Tora Tora,” “Sink the Bismarck” and “The Sands of Iwo Jima.”
We have no interest in the America-hating drivel spouted by leftist hand-wringing elitists who are so sadly out of touch with the real world.
Indeed, the audience never lies. Hollywood can make whatever garbage it wants. Until democrats control the White House, Hollywood cannot make us watch it.
Hollywood sux
Yeah, but Crowe had a GREAT line in “3:10 to Yuma”, when he killed the Pinkerton [Peter Fonda]. Went something like, “Even outlaws love their mothers”.
Speaking of Private Ryan, I was pleasantly surprised with the movie. No overt anti-american political statements. Just a story. Did not expect that from Spielberg.
I see little/no difference between the Hollyweird types who market these “war”flicks and the inside the beltway types who think they know what Americans across the nation really think.
I wonder if “I Am Legend” is going to be an anti-American flick.
What’s crazy is there are hundreds of millions to be made right now with a formulaic, cliched Chuck Norris type yeah rah America war flick. An American squad gets trapped behind enemy lines in Iraq and has to fight their way back to their base. It’s a plot that’s been used hundreds of times and it always works. I have no doubt that such a movie would be right up there with the Bee Movie as the big holiday blockbuster yet nobody wants to make it.
That’s because his dad was a WWII vet and would have kicked his weenie *ss if he had...
I liked 3:10
“The Kingdom was dismissed by the New York Times as “Syriana for dummies.””
Syriana was for dummies...liberals.
That is not true. I am all American and married. We just watched Saving Private Ryan for the 4th time. One of my favorite movies is Green Berets. The military’s my hero.
I saw the trailer the other night at the movies. Didn’t seem like one. Seemed more of end of days stuff. BTW, don’t take your kids to see Beowolf. Interesting movie, but should have an R rating.
“Speaking of Private Ryan, I was pleasantly surprised with the movie. No overt anti-american political statements. Just a story. Did not expect that from Spielberg.”
Spielberg is doing a story about Lincoln with Liam Neeson in the lead role.
It will be interesting to see how that turns out.
bttt
‘Speaking of Private Ryan, I was pleasantly surprised with the movie. No overt anti-american political statements. Just a story. Did not expect that from Spielberg.’
Neither did Spielberg, who’s noted many times in interviews he was trying to make an ‘anti war movie’.
It was about WW2, the last war the commies supported, because we were saving Mother Russia.
I don’t know, but it sure looks interesting.
Spielberg released SPR (1998) after his “Holocaust” phase; Schindler’s List (1993); Survivor’s of the Holocaust (1996) and Lost Children of Berlin (1997). SPR as favorably showing American GI’s liberating Europe from the genocidal Nazis is not a surprise. WW2 is still viewed by many, even on the left, as a “good war.” Keep in mind that as far as the war in Europe goes, it’s still politically correct because the Nazis killed Jews (among others they deemed undesirable) AND (don’t forget!!!) we fought alongside “Uncle Joe” Stalin, who still got a posthumous induction into the American Left Favorite Communist Dictator’s Hall of Fame.
All of the revisionism of WW2 is based on the war against Japan, which is now seen as “racially motivated” and “forced on the Japanese by us” among the left. Most of this centers around the left’s assertion that the bombs were dropped because of racial motivation and to intimidate Stalin, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Spielberg didn’t get all his money making movies he knew would play to an audience of chirping crickets. It was basically a movie to honor the generation that fought WW2 as it passes into history. Every guy who went to see the movie had a father or grandfather who was, to them, Private Ryan.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
I liked how he went to great pains to show just how horrific the Normandy landing was. As you said, not propoganda, just telling a story as realistic as possible. Bravery under fire. War is not clean nor easy, but it's sometimes necessary. Kudos to Spielberg.
The preamble of the movie that lasts about five minutes ending up with the attacks on 9/11.
I saw tears welling in the eyes of just about everyone that I could see in the darkness of the theater. The theater we were attending the screening was located only a couple hundred yards from ground zero.
Whenever Jamie Fox or Miss Garner silenced one of their targets on their mission, the audience erupted in cheers and clapping. Obviously the audience attending this screening was aware of who the "bad guys" were.
Yep, of course Hollywood would never make a movie about the Katyn Massacre, it took Andrzej Wajda to do that.
I’m not saying that films can’t be made that may question America’s motives or historical context on things...you take them with a grain of salt.
It just seems that every other being MADE TODAY is anti-American. I don’t get it.
And I guess the Hollyweirds don’t see the hypocrisy of making movies against the very nation that gives them total freedom to do their craft.
Define chicks, please.
Garner's husband, Ben Affleck, couldn't have been thrilled with that.
Most of the best war movies are anti-war movies. And with good reason, there’s really no such thing as a pro-war movie, war is nasty business and nobody sane likes it, but when you make a good anti-war movie you wind up making a pro-soldier movie with lots of compelling drama, which will draw in big audiences including the war movie audience. According to the makers Patton, arguably the greatest war movie ever, was an anti-war movie.
You forget Hollywood’s view of itself...it is the righter of wrongs...where the comparison’s today are...
Bush = Hitler
Chaney = Goebbels
US Army = NVA/PRK Torturers
Republicans = Nazis/Imperial Rome
Christians = Blonde hair/blue eye Aryan racists
Conservative = Fascists
Reporters/filmakers = Abolitionists/freedom fighters
I was just going to ask that my own self. I want to see it, but I have this sneaking suspicion that it’s got an anti-war, anti Bush message in it.
(I think the poster is 15 years old at the most)
The Normandy Landing scene is, to me, THE SINGLE MOST intense scene in any movie I have seen. It has to be the closest any film maker has gotten to show what it was like to be shot, shot at, & killed. Steven Speilberg did his best work there.
It does seem to be the type of film that would lend itself to being used in that manner.
BTW, this is supposed to be a remake of “The Omega Man”. It’s going to be interesting to see how the the two compare.
not to put words in the poster’s mouth...
My wife also loves a good war movie...but because we both love HISTORY.
I think most of Hollywood’s revenue is derived from teenagers on dates and families on a night out. Most of the time, the female has the most important thumb up/down on a choice. And MOST will pass on a war movie.
We watched “The Big Country” Saturday night. I think it was filmed in 1958. Most of the movies made in the last few years are awful.
How many action movies did Danny Glover make?
Again, the audience never lies. What sells? A movie that tells a story of conflict between good and evil where good triumphs. The violence is the means of making the story compelling. Whether the movie is fictional (Aliens) or based on real events (SPR) is secondary.
Hollywood’s real problem with selling these garbage movies is based on a problem that comes with socialist/communist doctrine. An audience, like a populace, cannot be “taught” that good is evil and evil is good. It will be rejected at a gut level every time.
“The Normandy Landing scene is, to me, THE SINGLE MOST intense scene in any movie I have seen. It has to be the closest any film maker has gotten to show what it was like to be shot, shot at, & killed. Steven Speilberg did his best work there.”
I watch that scene in my 5.1 surround sound setup...and it’s really unnerving. You can hear the bullets whizzing by, ricocheting off the metal on the beach. While we can never know what it was truly like to be there, Spielberg did a masterful job of at least recreating the drama and action.
That is why I asked him to define chicks. When he does, then we will know and neither of us will have to put words in his mouth...
Michael Moore has made an internationally funded fortune exporting anti-Americanism. The foreign editions of virtually all of his books and DVDs are festooned in Red-White-and-Blue, not so much the US editions (as in NONE).
There is big money returns in selling out this country and encouraging radical terrorism against it on phony grounds (fake but accurate presentations of the “horrors” committed by Americans).
They never asked for your opinion, comrade. They will TELL you want to think.
Yup, Mr. Affleck is one of those foaming at the mouth liberals. But what I find ironic is that whenever I talk to any of these shills in private, I don't even mention Democrat of Republican in anything we talk about. If you leave out those terms, many of them will actually agree with conservative statements or points of philosophy!!!
I really don't think they have any foundational thoughts . They only seem to express and parrot the thoughts and statements of the people around them in an effort to be accepted.
A strange breed they are.
That’s my point. I did not take my wife to see “The Kingdom,”
“Saving Private Ryan” or “300.” From what I saw in the theater at all movies, most men made the same choice. Very few women there, and those that were it was obvious this movie was not their idea of date night.
Sure, it’s a generalization, but all marketing is based upon generalizations. My point is that Hollywood is missing their target audience with the messages in these films. When they nominate all of them for Academy Awards it will be preaching to the choir and the vast majority of the American public that goes to movies will yawn.
I agree. And I have long advocated that american patriots and Republicans, either buy or build a studio of their own. They’d make balefuls of money hand over fists, while the turd freak traitor pervert “community”, would continue to rot on their poisonous vines,
“No money for YOU!”
You Hollywood Traitor Pervert rats are unfit to love.
Producers, writers, diectors, actors...You’re all FITRD!
Get *OUT* of our country!
Cracking me up!!!
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