Hollywood’s Terror Dream
July 29, 2008
Today I went to see the much-hyped Batman film, The Dark Knight. I find the whole idea of comic book superhero films a bit silly, but it is always the subtext that interests me. Leaving the theatre I remarked to a friend that the film could very well have been written by neoconservative guru Leo Strauss. In this case it carried two key tenets of neoconservative ideology — the ‘noble lie’ and unitary executive. The film could also be seen as apologia for Bush’s ‘war-on-terror’ — Batman uses surveillance, torture, kidnapping (rendition), and suppresses the truth lest the Joker (aka the ‘terrorist’) wins.
Having said that, the IMAX aerial shots of the city were breathtaking. The direction is slick, but most memorable of all — worth the price of the ticket in itself — is the turn by Heath Ledger as the Joker. Should he win an Oscar, he would have earned it. But unfortunately isn’t enough to rescue the film from its dross plot.
Who’s crazier, the Joker or his admirers? Christopher Nolan’s Batman sequel The Dark Knight has been compared to Hamlet, hailed as a work that “smashes [the Batman] legend into a million broken pieces,” praised as a film that refuses to “disguise from us the fantastic chimeras that dominate our real lives,” and singled out for “manag[ing] to handle grown-up subjects such as domestic surveillance with more frankness and honesty than our own real-life representatives.”
So what is all the fuss about? If you haven’t seen the film, here is a brief summary, with a few necessary spoilers. After the events of Batman Begins—which concluded with Bruce Wayne/Batman buying up and privatizing all the shares of his slain father’s company and teaming up with honest Lieutenant Gordon to battle crime as a wealthy corporatist playboy duce by day and a fear-inspiring vigilante by night—Wayne and Gordon are joined in their crusade against crime by new golden-boy D.A. Harvey Dent. The men form a “band of brothers” to crush the mob, but their plan goes awry when a madman called the Joker shows up preaching a doctrine of anarchic violence and absolute resistance to all forms of order.
The Joker gets himself hired by the mob to deal with Batman and Dent and complications ensue, some of them hinging upon Dent and Wayne’s homosocial erotic rivalry: Rachel Dawes, Dent’s new girlfriend, is Wayne’s long-lost love, and she spends her brief screen time torn between the two men, before being brutally dispatched in a glaring instance of the “women in refrigerators syndrome,” a sexist literary trope identified by feminist comic-book readers in which male authors kill, maim or de-power strong female characters as a woman-devaluing plot device.
War, Inc.
May 26, 2008
I just watched John Cusack’s new film, War, Inc. In one word, a blast! Raucously funny, exceptionally well acted, and phenomenally intelligent. The direction is superb, and the film retains its intensity till the very end. Ben Kingsley, Joan Cusack, Dan Aykroyd and Marissa Tomei all turn in superlative performances. But the biggest surprise is Hilary Duff’s over-the-top funny Janica Babyyeah. I will be writing about it more shortly, but for now, here his Anthony Arnove’s take on the film.
In the Orwellian world of U.S. politics, often it takes artists to say the truth that otherwise can’t be said — or heard.
Stanley Kubrick brought home the reality of militarism and the madness of U.S. nuclear doctrine in Dr. Strangelove as no nonfiction work of the time could. Sidney Lumet’s Network did the same for the corporate takeover of our culture.
Today, John Cusack’s War, Inc. fires a similar shot across the bow of our tortured political discourse.
War, Inc. is a Swiftian allegory of the world not as it might be in some possible future but as it is today, with a performance from Ben Kingsley as memorable as Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove. (It also features a deconstruction by Hilary Duff of her own fame and our twisted, sexist culture that has to be seen to be believed.)
The film is scathing, farsighted, bold, and truer than nonfiction. Cusack and the stellar cast of War, Inc. don’t blink. War, Inc. takes us inside the world of war profiteers, war makers, embedded journalists, mercenaries, entertainment moguls, and “disaster capitalists” (as Naomi Klein has called them) who form the interlinking military-industrial-media-entertainment-political complex.
Torturing Iron Man
May 21, 2008
Nick Turse on ‘The Strange Reversals of a Pentagon Blockbuster’
“Liberal Hollywood” is a favorite whipping-boy of right-wingers who suppose the town and its signature industry are ever-at-work undermining the U.S. military. In reality, the military has been deeply involved with the film industry since the Silent Era. Today, however, the ad hoc arrangements of the past have been replaced by a full-scale one-stop shop, occupying a floor of a Los Angeles office building. There, the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, and the Department of Defense itself have established entertainment liaison offices to help ensure that Hollywood makes movies the military way.
What they have to trade, especially when it comes to blockbuster films, is access to high-tech, tax-payer funded, otherwise unavailable gear. What they get in return is usually the right to alter or shape scripts to suit their needs. If you want to see the fruits of this relationship in action, all you need to do is head down to your local multiplex. Chances are that Iron Man — the latest military-entertainment masterpiece — is playing on a couple of screens.
John Cusack’s War
May 18, 2008
The Actor Battles to Un-Embed Hollywood. Jeremy Scahill on John Cusack’s new film, War, Inc.
Back in 1989, in his smash hit “Say Anything,” John Cusack famously stood with a boom box above his head outside the home of the woman he loved blasting Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.” With his latest films on the Iraq war, Cusack is standing outside Hollywood with a TV above his head broadcasting his political movies calling on the public to wake up and “Do Something.” John Cusack began working on his new film “War, Inc.,” which premieres in LA and New York May 23, about a year into the US occupation of Iraq.
From the moment US tanks rolled into Baghdad, Cusack was a voracious consumer of news about the war. He took it deadly seriously, regularly calling independent journalists and asking them questions as he sought as much independent information as he could. Watching the insanity of the erection of the Green Zone and the advent of the era of McWar, complete with tens of thousands of “private contractors,” Cusack set out to use the medium of film to unveil the madness. He wanted to do on the big screen what independent reporters like Naomi Klein, Nir Rosen and Dahr Jamail did in print.
Redacted and the Iraq War
April 10, 2008
IFC News coverage of the 2007 New York Film Festival Press Conference for the film “Redacted.” Director Brian De Palma speaks with J. Hoberman about his reasons for making the Iraq war drama “Redacted” and his use of Internet sources.
IFC News coverage of the 2007 New York Film Festival Press Conference for the film “Redacted.” Director Brian De Palma talks about the controversies generated by his films, and his experiences being labled a ‘misogynist’ and a ‘traitor.’
IFC News coverage of the 2007 New York Film Festival Press Conference for the film “Redacted.” Tempers flare when Director Brian De Palma criticizes Magnolia Pictures owner Mark Cuban for his “redaction” of certain images used in the film. Magnolia President Eamonn Bowles interrupts the conference to dispute De Palma’s accusations. Moderator J. Hoberman allows Bowles to explain Magnolia’s position. Later, “Redacted” Producer Jason Kliot jumps on stage to defend De Palma.
More Bombs than People
March 27, 2008
Bomb Harvest Laos looks at the secret US airwar in Laos a country that was bombed extensively to cut off Vietcong supply lines. The film follows a bomb disposal expert training a team to clear “big bombs” their name for 250 - 1000 pound munitions. One villager who survived the war describes how, with a popualtion of three million, there were more bombs than people. I’d call this the attempted extermination of a people and I can’t help but be reminded of South Lebanon. In the last few days of the 2006 July War, when peace was being negotiated, the Israeli’s cynically dropped 4 million cluster bombs (UN estimate) on the South of Lebanon. The total population of Lebanon is 4 million so for the South this is probably two bombs per man, woman and child. When will Israel and the States pay for their crimes? Where is the outcry? Where is the justice?
If the people of these countries really believe in Democracy - and we have to presume they do since they never stop drivelling on about it - then they’ll understand they are fully responsible for this and they are by association murderous criminals.
That was the number killed by unexploded ordnance in Laos in 2005. Almost all of the ordnance in Laos is American, left over from the secret air war of the late ’60s and ’70s. The US dropped almost 2 million tonnes of bombs in nine years, trying to stop the flow of troops and munitions from North to South Vietnam via the Ho Chi Minh Trail.”
Brave New World
March 18, 2008
MTV’s brave new world. Hard hitting ads on emerging police states.
On a related note, Ridley Scott and Leonardo DiCaprio are working on a film based on Aldous Huxley’s prophetic dystopia. ‘A prophet returns‘, writes Susan Salter Reynold.
A writer’s ideas are his legacy. After he dies, it’s up to executors, heirs, lawyers, agents and colleagues to keep them alive — and perhaps especially up to us, the readers, to thread those ideas through the weave of history, the passage of time, our own lives. Writers are the most potent of ghosts. Their spirits lodge in our quotidian decisions; we turn to them in times of change and times of terror. When their wisdom is unavailable, our choices get harder.Aldous Huxley — born in England in 1894, visionary author of 11 novels (most famously “Brave New World,” in 1932), seven short-story collections, seven books of poetry, three plays, two books for children and countless essays — is there for us when we need him most. All his life, Huxley concerned himself with the most pressing issues facing humanity: environmental degradation, capitalist greed, totalitarian oppression, scarcity of resources, war, human cruelty and human potential. After his death — on Nov. 22, 1963, the day JFK died — his widow, Laura, tried to keep his memory and his work alive, but a perfect storm of factors — personalities, family politics — kept most of the work from getting the wide distribution and range of media it deserved.
Redacted
March 17, 2008
Reflecting on his experience visiting Gaza with an MSF team Daniel Day-Lewis wrote that it took him a week to lose his neutrality. Those who have been there tell me it takes even less in Iraq. In cases of extreme injustice neutrality merely reinforces the status quo. Brian de Palma feels in no way obliged to aim for neutrality, and that is his crowning achievement. This film is brutal as reality itself. This film is in UK cinemas right now, and I urge everyone to go watch it.
No One Wants to Know
March 8, 2008
Brian De Palma, Nick Broomfield and Paul Haggis have been called traitors and villains, their films branded ‘Bin Laden cinema’, writes Simon Hattenstone. ‘They are desperate to tell the truth about what is going on in Iraq. But there seems little appetite for war films right now’.
It’s 2006, and Brian De Palma can’t believe his luck. Dotcom billionaire and aspiring film producer Mark Cuban offers him $5m to make a movie. About anything. The only proviso is that it has to be shot in hi-definition. Of course, De Palma jumps at the chance. He tells Cuban he’d like to make a film about the war in Iraq, Cuban hands over the $5m, deal done, everybody is happy.
Fast-forward two years: Redacted has won the prestigious Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, websites such as BoycottRedacted.com are encouraging people not to see it and De Palma has been labelled a traitor. Oh, and De Palma and Cuban have fallen out, the film-maker accusing his producer of censorship.Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. After all, De Palma has spent much of the past 40 years inflaming public opinion. He has always loved to play Contrary Mary, and seems to take pleasure in offending. He has been called a misogynist (feminists were infuriated by 1980’s Dressed To Kill and its conflation of stilettos, sluts and slashing) and a plagiarist (for borrowing from, or paying homage to, heroes such as Hitchcock). He has even been called a traitor before - his 1989 film Casualties Of War also showed soldiers raping and murdering, back in Vietnam. But this time it’s different. In a less liberal America, his fellow countrymen seem to have had enough of him. Scan the internet and lap up the bile. One blogger writes: “This guy should be held accountable for each American death after the release of this filth. He is a treasonist, and should be stripped of his citizenship, and expelled from this country as penniless as he came into it in birth.” Fox anchor Bill O’Reilly called De Palma “a true villain in our country” and wished that “FDR was president so De Palma could be imprisoned for treason… Even if you disagree with the Iraq war, even if you dislike President Bush, no loyal American should support an enterprise that incites hatred against America.” Meanwhile, US critic Michael Medved focused his criticism on the film. “It could be the worst movie I’ve ever seen,” he said.
Winter Soldier
March 5, 2008
Confessions of Vietnam Vets. Want a true account of what happens in war?
“I would kill anyone I could whether they were innocent or not just to make sure I wouldn’t get killed and that was my philosophy. If I’d go into a village and I’d have to kill a hundred people just to make sure there was no one there to shoot me when I walked out thats what I did.” Trailer
One of the most powerful documentaries I’ve seen.
“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands now, deserves the thanks of man and woman.” Thomas Pain
Part 2 | Part 3| Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9
Wintersoldier.com: Winter Soldier documents the “Winter Soldier Investigation” conducted by Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) in Detroit, Michigan in the winter of 1971. A call went out from VVAW to veterans all over the country saying, in effect, ‘everyone is talking about the war that you know from the inside. If you want to have anything to say about it, come to Detroit and tell it like you saw it.’ At the investigation, over 125 veterans representing every major combat unit to see action in Vietnam, gave eye-witness testimony to war crimes and atrocities they either participated in or witnessed. The purpose of the investigation was to bring to light the nature of American military policy in Vietnam.
