Posted on 11/12/2007 2:18:36 PM PST by blam
Hollywood misreads response to war on terror
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 12/11/2007
Hollywood has misjudged the public's appetite for films about Iraq and the war on terror, Cathering Elsworth says, as a slew of new movies have flopped at the box office.
The latest casualty, Robert Redford's "verbose" Lions for Lambs, starring Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise, took just over 2 million dollars when it debuted on Friday, lagging far behind the animated adventure Bee Movie, which opened the week before.
Cruise, Redford and Streep in Lions for Lambs
Despite its a-list cast - Redford not only directs but stars in the film - the release has been savaged by critics as a ponderous, worthy sermon on American foreign policy.
Anthony Lane, writing in the New Yorker, said Lions for Lambs is "most charitably described as Ibsen with helicopters" while online magazine Slate claimed the film "ought to have been called Slugs for Snails, so leisurely does it creep toward its predictably bombastic conclusion".
The film's poor opening - which puts it on course to be Cruise's lowest-grossing movie of all time - follows the lacklustre performances of similarly themed releases such as Rendition, In the Valley of Elah and A Mighty Heart.
Jolie as Marianne Pearl in A Mighty Heart (left) and Witherspoon in Rendition
All three boasted Oscar-winning stars - Reese Witherspoon and Meryl Streep in Rendition, Tommy Lee Jones in In the Valley of Elah, and Angelina Jolie as murdered reporter Daniel Pearl's widow in A Mighty Heart - yet bombed spectacularly.
Rendition, about the CIA's outsourcing of interrogation of terror suspects, was beaten on its opening weekend by a re-release of the 14-year-old A Nightmare Before Christmas and has so far taken just under 10 million dollars.
The slim takings bode ill for other upcoming releases including Brian De Palma's Redacted, based on the real-life rape and murder of an Iraqi schoolgirl by US soldiers, Grace Is Gone, in which John Cusack plays a man whose wife is killed in Iraq, and Stop Loss, with Ryan Philippe as a soldier who refuses to fight.
Critics say the films' failure shows just how badly Hollywood has misread Americans' response to the war on terror, confusing "the public's war-weariness with their own carefully cultivated rage", as Jonah Goldberg, in the Houston Chronicle, put it.
"Hollywood and the left generally have misread this political discontent thinking there's a mandate for their trite Vietnam-era nostalgia for mass protest and Joan Baez specifying," he wrote.
"But few Americans are eager to spend their money to listen to the Jane Fonda set say, 'I told you so!' for two hours."
http://www.libertyfilmfestival.com/libertas/?p=7166
If Tokyo Rose were alive today, she wouldn’t get jail time - she’d get a three-picture deal. — Govindini Murty
My wife wants me to go see “Dan in Real Life” with her. Any FReeper critiques on this one for me out there...
That Tom Cruise guy in the picture at the top, looks eerily like John Edwards.
Those with the income to spend on entertainment are fed up with the Hollywood Liberals, and they're showing it at the box offices.
Hollow-wood’s only hope for these movies is that peer2peer will download them and MPAA can sue the downloaders.
Or the networks pick them up for broadcast during the writers’ strike.
Good point. This is not WWII when Hollywood made movies that totally supported our men and women in uniform. Even if some of them didn’t agree with the war, they knew where the money was. Hollywood, today, doesn’t seem to care if they go broke and our people will be happy to assist them. These people in Hollywood have put themselves on a pedastal...........in their own minds, and the American people are falling for it. They can be against the war today, but don’t dare do anything that has any negative effect on our military. Even their supporters will turn against them.
Did not know Cruise, Redford and Streep were still around.
Meryl Streep looks the most male in that picture. Yikes, I think I would rather be Waterboarded for 2 hours??
Pray for W and Our Veterans
I’m thinking there is a good chance of that happening but the war won’t be the major issue, illegal immigration will.
The boiled down version -- "We don't want to pay for crap war movies with a liberal slant!" would have been so much simpler and less painful.
...whatever happened to Cindy Sheehan’s movie?
This is actually a pretty accurate article. Hollywood believes that their movies are tanking because people want to escape from George Bush’s unpopular war. (article found here: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=071109152054.vnv6fviw&show_article=1)
They refuse to believe that the majority of people do not buy in to their hate US mantra.
With all the new rumors popping up about Hillary
Clinton’s alleged affair with her aide Huma Abedin -
and the possibility that the LA Times is holding a
story about it -
here’s your bumper sticker - Hillary’s not Kosher!
Facts
Abedin was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan to an Indian
father and Pakistani mother, both Muslims. True
enough. But the facts that Abedin was raised in Saudi
Arabia where her mother has long been a professor of
Islamic studies in Saudi Arabia are of crucial
importance.
Even more troubling than the lesbian thing is Huma’s
Saudi background and the question of whether Huma is
a Saudi agent. Of couse, the lesbian affair could be
linked to Saudi blackmail, considering that Huma was
mentioned in one MSM story to be Her Thighness’
Middle East advisor.
......a top level U.S. Department of Justice
official is saying Hillary Clinton is fooling around
with one
of her top female aides Huma Abedin........“I am close
enough to Hillary and Huma to tell you that this
‘rumor’ is true,” the official says. “It is well known
inside her campaign that Hillary and Huma are an
item. “If you call Hillary’s residence in DC first
thing
in the morning, Huma answers the phone,” the official
continues. “Same thing late at night, and on the road.
It’s a closely guarded secret that Hillary’s inner
circle guards at all costs........”
and finally ...
many tipsters have reminded us of page 42 of Gennifer
Flowers’s 1995 book, Passion and Betrayal. Starting
on that page, Bill Clinton’s ex-flame says that he
very
clearly told her that Hillary is a lesbian:
“There’s something you need to know. I’ve been
hearing tales around town that Hillary is having
another
thing with a woman.” I watched his face to see his
reaction, and couldn’t believe it when he burst out
laughing.I was stunned! I asked him what was so funny.
“Honey,” he said, “she’s probably eaten more p***y
than I
have.”
Bill said he had known for a long time that Hillary
was attracted to women, and it didn’t really bother
him anymore. His first clue came from her lack of
enjoyment of sex with him. She didn’t like to
experiment and insisted on the missionary position
and nothing else. Because she wasn’t enjoying herself;
neither was he. Sex with her became a duty; nothing
more.”
It’s the Fall of the Hollywood Traitor movies.
LOL! “Lions” is a BO atomic turd bomb! Numerous people walking out of the movie, long before it’s over.
Great timing for REDfurd. Victory is all but done in Iraq and he’s painting Vietnam. Stick to what you know Robert, whatever that is.
Pray for W and OUr Veterens
Saw “Bee Movie” today with two 11-yo boys. None of us hated it, but none of us particularly liked it, either. Aimed at a younger crowd, I guess. And I nearly fell asleep, so I guess the chair was comfy enough. It didn’t have much going for it, really.
These people are idiots, movie after movie tanks, and prognosis is not good for the next three moives:
“The slim takings bode ill for other upcoming releases including Brian De Palma’s Redacted, based on the real-life rape and murder of an Iraqi schoolgirl by US soldiers, Grace Is Gone, in which John Cusack plays a man whose wife is killed in Iraq, and Stop Loss, with Ryan Philippe as a soldier who refuses to fight.”
Who in the wide world of sports do they think is going to watch those three turkeys?
They will lose tens of millions of dollars to try and follow their leftist agenda.
Those with the income to spend on entertainment are fed up with the Hollywood Liberals, and they’re showing it at the box offices.”
__________________
That would be me. Not spending good money on such dumpy films.
Hollywood is DEAD! Hooray for Hollywood!
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