Posted on 01/23/2011 11:15:04 PM PST by smokingfrog
For someone so lauded by such a large portion of conservative America, it's surprising there's been no feature film about Ronald Reagan in the 30 years since he took office.
That vacuum -- coupled with the continued influence of the former president's policies and the ongoing invocation of his name in political rhetoric -- makes Eugene Jarecki's "Reagan" feel timely even though the late president had been out of public life since well before the beginning of this century. (It's also timely because, as Reagan supporters prepare to celebrate what would have been his 100th birthday in a few days, a controversial book from son Ron Reagan has been disavowed by other members of the Reagan family.)
Jarecki begins his movie -- which premiered Sunday at the Sundance Film Festival -- with an ironic clip of Reagan talking about the slipperiness of truth and images, and follows it with a mocking clip sequence of conservative pundits and politicians extolling Reagan. He speeds up the cuts until it becomes, comically, a jumble of Reagan-mania before it ends, hilariously, with a clip of Jon Stewart letting out a primal scream over an image of Reagan.
But this is hardly a Michael Moore-style drive-by.
Jarecki ("Why We Fight"; also a brother of documentarians Nick and Andrew Jarecki) soon gets down to more scholarly business. Following a linear chronology -- Reagan's childhood, his acting career, his involvement as a Screen Actors Guild leader, his governorship and, finally, the many highs and lows of his presidency -- Jarecki paints a complex portrait using a fairly conventional mix of talking heads and archival footage. Ron Reagan, James A. Baker, biographer Edmund Morris, conservative thinker Grover Norquist, liberal author Thomas Frank and many others pop up to talk about the truth and myths as they see them.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimesblogs.latimes.com ...
And from HBO, of all places!
Color me stunned.
...it's only surprising to the Los Angeles Times.
aN ADMITTED DECEIVER.
PISS ON HIM AND THE JACKASS THAT BOUGHT HIS FILTH.
NOT WATCHING.
I'm continually SHOCKED that George Clooney hasn't written, produced and directed a film about Reagan.
I guess he's still hashing it out.
Now we’ll have one more reason to hate Grover Norquist ... if we needed another.
Maybe Hollywood is still working on the script for the Jimmy Carter movie.
Didn’t they cancel the Kennedy thing? Hypocrites.
Both the author of this piece and the filmmaker are dunces. That is one the big reasons why conservatism has been able to make advances in the last thirty years. Because many prominent media libs are so dense. And Zeitchik is surprised that a film has not made about Reagan in the last thirty years...except of course, for the upcoming hatchet job by Zarecki. These people are bleeding obtuse.
Oh, and I forgot to mention the part about Zarecki not telling HBO he had an axe to grind. That’s rich...the ONLY!! docs HBO puts out are anti-conservative, anti-American hatchet jobs. Thanks for the cheap laugh Zarecki.
Like they didn’t have enough opportunity to screw the guy when he was alive, now they’re trying to rape the corpse.
Yeah, but wasn’t it amazing — and heartwarming — to see the national outpouring of affection and respect after his death? The media was stunned.
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