Posted on 07/27/2007 5:35:11 PM PDT by lowbridge
First it was the traumatized Vietnam veteran, now are Iraq vets set to become the next "progressive" cliché?
Being the strapping patriot sort of folks that they are, the Hollywood left is gearing up to release a bunch of anti-military movies that portray veterans of the Iraq war as deranged psychopaths, screwed up by an "unjust" war. The New York Times's Michael Cieply reports (h/t Instapundit):
Now some in Hollywood want moviegoers to decide if the killing is emblematic of a war gone bad, part of a new and perhaps risky willingness in the entertainment business to push even the touchiest debates about post-9/11 security, Iraq and the troops’ status from the confines of documentaries into the realm of mainstream political drama.
On Sept. 14, Warner Independent Pictures expects to release “In the Valley of Elah,” a drama inspired by the Davis murder, written and directed by Paul Haggis, whose “Crash” won the Academy Award for best picture in 2006. The film stars Tommy Lee Jones as a retired veteran who defies Army bureaucrats and local officials in a search for his son’s killers. In one of the movie’s defining images, the American flag is flown upside down in the heartland, the signal of extreme distress.
Other coming films also use the damaged Iraq veteran to raise questions about a continuing war. In “Grace Is Gone,” directed by James C. Strouse and due in October from the Weinstein Company, John Cusack and two daughters struggle with the loss of a wife and mother who is killed on duty. Kimberly Peirce’s “Stop-Loss,” set for release in March by Paramount, meanwhile, casts Ryan Phillippe as a veteran who defies an order that would send him back to Iraq.
In the past, Hollywood usually gave the veteran more breathing space. William Wyler’s “Best Years of Our Lives,” about the travails of those returning from World War II, was released more than a year after the war’s end. Similarly Hal Ashby’s “Coming Home” and Oliver Stone’s “Born on the Fourth of July,” both stories of Vietnam veterans, came well after the fall of Saigon.
Of course, these movies aren't politically motivated at all:
“Media in general responds much more quickly than ever before,” said Scott Rudin, a producer of “Stop-Loss.” “Why shouldn’t movies do the same?” He said his film was deliberately scheduled to be released in the middle of the presidential campaign season.
That impetus for immediacy is driving other filmmakers and studios as well. In October, for example, New Line Cinema will release “Rendition,” in which Reese Witherspoon plays a woman whose Egyptian-born husband is snared by a runaway counterterrorism apparatus. Paul Greengrass, the director of “The Bourne Ultimatum,” in which the bad guys belong to a similar rogue unit, is adapting Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s book about the Green Zone in Baghdad, “Imperial Life in the Emerald City,” for Universal Pictures.
Brian De Palma’s “Redacted,” focusing on an Army squad that persecutes an Iraqi family, is to be released in December by Magnolia Pictures. And Sony Pictures is developing a film based on the story of Richard A. Clarke, the former national security official and Bush administration critic.
Isn't it wonderful how the left can with one hand decry the "unfairness" of the one medium that the right dominates (talk radio) while shamelessly making politicized movies (and television shows for that matter) explicitly designed to whip up anti-war frenzy and bash our nation's military?
No Thank you!!!!
What amazes me is that Americans will go see their crap in sufficient numbers to make these films profitable. Shame on them.
Now they make one version and ship them world wide. Who cares what Americans in the US want to see. A flop here may be a winner overseas so they pander to the overseas audience.
Not like I go to the movies anymore, anyway.
The Hollyweirdos “support” the troops! Yeah! Right McCarthy was right!!!!!!!!!
My whole unit at AIT went to see ‘300’ the weekend it came out. We weren’t ordered to go to the movie theater, but we were compelled to... Everyone liked it. It’s also a good exposure to history.
Um...Duh...etc. What else DOES Hollywood do. If it’s not a stupid movie, it’s a stupid antiwar movie. That’s just what they do. They can’t help it!
In before the ZOT!
Just like the old communists prescribed for preparing the way for a boshevik-style revolution here.
right to DVD in most cases....
Yes, Jon Voight was at the Freedom Concert with Sean. I had seen him in studio on Hannity’s show and was surprised also to learn he’s conservative, I have new found respect for him.
Based on recently declassified information and the personal wartime experiences of journalist Mark Boal (who personally adapted his experiences with a bomb squad into a fact-based, yet fictional story), director Katherine Bigelow's Iraq War drama The Hurt Locker presents the ongoing conflict in the Middle East from the perspective of those who see the fighting firsthand - the soldiers. As an elite Army Explosive Ordinance Disposal team tactfully navigates the streets of present-day Iraq, they face the constant threat of death from incoming bombs and sharp-shooting snipers. Jeremy Renner stars as the leader of the squadron that also includes Guy Pierce, Anthony Mackie, and Brian Geraghty, and Ralph Finnes co-stars as a war weary mercenary. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
Anyone ever hear of this Mark Boal? Just from googling his name, I've seen it on anti war sites.
I don’t boycott or “don’t go to the theater”, nor do I buy/rent a movie “just to see something”.
Call me a absolutist but I simply do not pay OR SPEND MY TIME on movew I do not want to see. We I do see a movie I want to see in the theater I can tell from the trailers immediatly the kind of propaganda pablum contained.
We have recently had a slew of motherinlaw, feminst hack, homo pushing, and PCindoctrination (non)thrillers. A rash of blood splatter shock films and a group of moview promoted as “made by the peopl who brought you [X]” where [X] is a movie I wanted to see EVEN LESS than the latest hollyweird waste of my time fest.
It is no longer the money, I just don’t want to waste my PRECIOUS TIME on those movies. They do NOT ENTERTAIN, they do NOT ENLIGHTEN, and all I want is eye candy, well there are more than enough beautiful conservative women with sexy conservative brains to boost the blood flow.
Now if only we could take these facts of life to the idiots in the film schools.
Did you know Victor David Hansen was a special consultant on the project.
In addition, I have had a chance to speak to Greek Historians about the movie and to an individual they all applauded it. No all were thrilled about the historial accuracy portrayed but they were very excitted the topic was portrayed in an accurate light.
‘No End In Sight’ looks like a hit piece movie. Hollyweird at its finest.
I watch movies to be entertained, right now on TCM:
War Hunt - 1962:
“After years of apprenticeship on the stage and in television, Robert Redford finally made his feature-film debut in this odd, low-budget war film. He plays the new man, a replacement sent to a front-line platoon under Aidman’s command in Korea. Under the tutelage of the other men, many of them WW II veterans, Redford quickly loses his illusions about war and heroism. He also meets Saxon, a private who goes on solitary nocturnal patrols with his face blackened, stalking and killing North Koreans...”
It’s not the DIME it’s the TIME!
Hollyweird thinks they will EVENTUALLY GET US TO WATCH EVERYTHING as it works its way through the viewer levels.
Don’t take time to watch in theater?
then you will see on DVD.
Don’t take time to watch on DVD?
they you will watch when it goes to cable/satelite (especcially if you have premium channels)
Don’t take time to watch on cable/satelite?
then you will see it on free TV
Don’t watch it even then?
They you children will be FORCED to watch it as part of a classroom project.
(see inconvenient truth, brokenbk mountain, sicko, farenheit911, ALL have been in classrooms pushed by agenda teachers)
When we deny hollywood our time, they die.
It’s all about the PROPOGANDA, folks...
There is an election to win, and Hollywood is about to go ALL OUT to make sure Hillary wins.
We couldn’t have any 9/11 Movies about the greatest massacre of our lifetimes, because we “Weren’t Ready” or A.k.a, It Might Help Bush”.
The stories will be made up by leftist (mostly gay) writers, and funded by the Hollywood Left. It worked in the 70’s (Winter Soldier BS-based War Movies)
I’ve never seen that movie. I’ve put it on TCM and will listen to it. Thanks.
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