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By Jason Apuzzo. A film from the recent LA Film Festival that we loved was Disco & Atomic War.  Disco is an extraordinary new Estonian documentary about the so-called ’soft power’ influence of American and Western culture on the minds of Soviet citizens living in Estonia during the Cold War, who were able through clever means to watch Finnish television broadcasts emanating from just over the border. As Disco informs us (in amusing detail), American popular culture – especially in the form of glamorous TV shows like “Dallas,” or movies like Star Wars and even Emmanuelle – was deeply feared by Soviet authorities due to the ideas and expectations such programming planted in the minds of Soviet citizens. This led to amusing co-optings, such as the Soviets creating their own officially sanctioned disco instruction course for TV(!).

You can read the LFM review of Disco and Atomic War from the LA Film Festival, and also read LFM Contributor Joe Bendel’s recent review on Joe’s personal site.

This is documentary filmmaking at its finest, and easily one of the best – and most drily amusing – films I’ve seen this past year.  We want to thank the folks at SnagFilms for making the full-length film available for everyone to see, for free.  Also: special thanks to SnagFilms for following Libertas on Twitter!

Posted on July 30th, 2010 at 1:58pm.

By Joe Bendel. Euphemisms can be terrible instruments of evil.  For instance, when former Khmer Rouge cadres speak of “solving problems” what they really refer to is the systematic torture and execution of roughly two million Cambodians, whose only crime was to be deemed insufficiently Communist.  Thet Sambath understands this all too well.  After losing his parents and brother to the Khmer Rouge reign of terror, he spent years interviewing former cadres to understand why they killed their countrymen.  His self-funded investigation ultimately resulted in Enemies of the People (trailer above), a truly newsworthy documentary co-directed by Rob Lemkin, which opens in New York this Friday and in Los Angeles next week.

A newspaper journalist in Phnom Penh, Sambath’s quiet, unassuming demeanor is perfectly suited to winning the confidences of his interview subjects.  However, he does not advertize his tragic family history, especially not with the big fish, Nuon Chea, a.k.a. Brother Number Two, the Khmer Rouge’s chief theoretician – second only to Pol Pot (Brother Number One).  For years, the largely silent Chea has maintained his ignorance of the Killing Fields, but Sambath wore down his reticence.  With Chea facing charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, what he says on Sambath’s tapes is extraordinarily timely.

Depicts the ideologically-driven crimes of the Khmer Rouge.

Beyond its potential relevance in the Cambodian Tribunal, Enemies is highly significant as a pioneering Cambodian documentary inquiry into the Khmer Rouge’s crimes.  Providing historical context that will likely be instructive for western audiences as well, Sambath explains that the Khmer Rouge directly looked to China as their revolutionary inspiration.  Indeed, one can argue the Killing Fields were an indirect product of the Cultural Revolution.

The former low level cadres interviewed on camera also confirm their victims were brutalized and murdered out of ideological zeal.  They were capitalist or counter-revolutionary “problems” to “fix.”  The matter-of-factness of their videotaped statements is quite chilling, lending credence to Hannah Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil.  While some express remorse, decades after the fact, for the most part, it seems like Sambath is not tapping into feelings of guilt so much as a Dostoevskian compulsion to confess.  Obviously suffering from his own survivor’s guilt, Sambath also has his own stories to tell.  However, he appears to attain a measure of closure through his ambitious undercover research project.

In Enemies, Sambath puts to shame most western journalists who simply preen in front of cameras and regurgitate talking points.  At no small risk to himself, he set out to get the truth, succeeding rather spectacularly given his modest resources.  Frankly, the ignorance and misunderstanding of the Khmer Rouge borders on the criminal in the west, but Sambath and Lemkin bring their genocidal crimes into sharp focus.  Yes, the American bombings are mentioned in Enemies, but only briefly – never suggesting they excuse or rationalize the crimes of the Khmer Rouge in any way.  Truly, Sambath understands who the killers really are, and he got them on tape.  Thoughtful and legitimately bold, it opens this Friday (7/30) in New York at the Quad and next Friday (8/6) in Los Angeles at Laemmle’s Music Hall, Beverly Hills.

Posted on July 30th, 2010 at 10:36am.

DiCaprio is fed up with Mel Gibson.

By Jason Apuzzo. • The big story right now is that Leonardo DiCaprio is apparently dropping out of Mel Gibson’s forthcoming Viking epic due to Mel’s recent … do I need to tell you?  As I said when this story first broke about Gibson’s ranting and physical abuse, he wasn’t going to survive this scandal.  And now we’re seeing it.  For what it’s worth, I think DiCaprio has made the right decision.

• In the wake of the recent debate here at LFM over alien-themed projects, Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel has a new screenwriter, who also happens to be the guy working on both the new Star Trek films and also Cowboys & Aliens.  Should the same guy be doing all this?  Incidentally, Ridley Scott is also apparently circling around Gucci, which may star Angelina Jolie as Patrizia Reggiani – who was sentenced to 29 years in prison after being convicted of plotting the murder of her ex-husband Maurizio Gucci, after he’d taken control of the family’s fashion empire.  It would be an alluring femme fatale role for Jolie – and I’m sure the opportunity to be around Gucci products has absolutely nothing to do with her interest in this project.

• In other Jolie-related news, what’s with all these sexy Russian spies?  The latest is Anna Fermanova, a young Russian beautician now facing a federal felony charge in Texas for allegedly trying to smuggle night vision scopes to Moscow.  Unreal.  I’ve never seen such a bizarre run of coincidental publicity for a movie, ever.  This would be like the Russians introducing a new stealth fighter just in time for Firefox.

• Another very big alien project just got announced: Guillermo del Toro is set to direct and James Cameron produce a 3D adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s famous novel, At the Mountains of Madness.  I would love to see this, even given my current intense displeasure with Cameron.  At the Mountains of Madness is one of my favorite novels, and is one of the most influential science fiction novels of all time.  You could say, in a sense, that it already has been adapted by way of such films as The Thing and Alien … but it would be wonderful to see a new take on the original material, provided everybody is respectful toward Lovecraft’s novel (which I assume they would be).  Del Toro seems to have the right florid sensibility for this.

JWoww in Harpers Bazaar.

• In other sci-fi news, Len Wiseman wants to do a remake of Total Recall.  Yawn.  And there are some new set pics out from Transformers 3.  Also check out director Alex Aja’s fun interview about Piranha 3D.  I’m so ready for that film.  It’s my treat for having sat through Inception.

• Obama says he doesn’t actually know who Snooki is. But I’ll bet he knows who JWoww is, right?  Come on Barry, fess up!  Don’t go on The View and pretend you don’t know these things.

• Did you know that Paul Giamatti will be playing Nikita Krushchev, in a new HBO movie?  The title of the movie is K Blows His Top, about Krushchev’s famous visit to the United States – during which he blew his top in public after his Disneyland trip was cancelled.  Tom Hanks is producing on this one.  Hanks recently blew his top when The Pacific was released.

• Carla Bruni just started shooting Woody Allen’s next film … and she blew her first scene!  Apparently she looked into the camera.  Maybe that’ll end up on the DVD.

• In the annals of overhyped bloggers, nobody quite takes the cake like Olivia Munn.  Today she had this elegant, insightful remark to make about Wonder Woman’s new costume: “She doesn’t need to wear a f**king star to be a f**king patriot.”  Thank you, Olivia.  You and your fanboy compatriots certainly elevate everything we do on the internet.

Author/celebrity Katie Price.

• In the wake of Oliver Stone’s recent impolitic musings on the Jewish people (ahem), Haim Saban wants Stone’s 10-part series “A Secret History of America” to be pulled from Showtime.  Ari Emanuel is apparently joining him in this effort.  I actually think Les Moonves might cave here.  Saban is one the Democratic Party’s biggest donors, and heads will roll if Stone’s show airs … as they should.

• Libertas favorite Jessica Simpson may be joining American Idol as a judge. Hooray!  Can you imagine how funny that’s going to be?  [UPDATE: It's going to be Jennifer Lopez, instead.  Won't be as fun, but it works for me.]

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … in America we have Snooki, Kim Kardashian, Heidi Montag, etc.  In Britain all these women are more or less rolled into one as Katie Price, who has a new novel out right now called Paradise.  Price’s last novel Sapphire hit #1 in the UK, and she’s already written about 6 children’s books and 3 autobiographies – while still only in her 30s.  One thing’s for certain: the woman is building up a substantial body of work.  So to speak.

And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood.

Posted on July 30th, 2010 at 1:13am.

LFM Co-Editor Govindini Murty was on Lars Larson’s national radio show today, talking about the new Angelina Jolie anti-communist thriller, Salt – which we loved here at LFM (read our review).

Special thanks to Lars and his staff for inviting Govindini on again.  Govindini always has fun appearing on his show.

Lars’ show runs at different times across the country, so be sure to check out his website here.  We’ll also try to get the MP3 up later.

Posted on July 29th, 2010 at 5:59pm.

Daniel Craig in "Iron Man" director Jon Favreua's "Cowboys & Aliens."

By Jason Apuzzo. Many thanks to the LA Times’ Patrick Goldstein for noticing what we’ve been talking about a lot here recently at LFM, namely the new trend toward alien invasion pictures – both of the Hollywood and indie variety.  As I mentioned in my Hollywood news round-up from Tuesday, and have otherwise discussed on countless occasions here recently, we’re facing an interesting new wave of films that feature villainous aliens, communists and even space Nazis (!) in our midst.

Aaron Eckart combats aliens in "Battle: Los Angeles."

The sheer number of major films following this trend is striking.  On the alien invasion front, we’ve got Jon Favreau’s forthcoming Cowboys & Aliens with Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig; Battle: Los Angeles with Aaron Eckhart and Michelle Rodriguez; J.J. Abrams’/Steven Spielberg’s Super 8 (coming soon on the heels of Abrams’ Cloverfield); Oren Peli’s Area 51; Spielberg’s forthcoming TV series Falling Skies; Ridley Scott’s forthcoming reboot of the Alien franchise; the untitled Bobby Glicker-Michael Bay alien invasion flick that just got picked up by Paramount … and in the indie scene, there’s Skyline (to be released this fall by Universal), Iron Sky (still in production) and The Mercury Men (the hotly anticipated web series that was just at Comic-Con) and a few others I know about in the pipeline.  And really we shouldn’t forget the obvious recent examples of Avatar, the Transformers series and Predators, all of which involve intense warfare between humans and aliens.

Angelina Jolie fighting communist infiltrators in "Salt."

What’s interesting is how this trend toward alien invasion is being matched by a new trend toward communist invasion and/or infiltration scenarios.  We just had the Angelina Jolie thriller about retro-communist sleeper agents in our midst, Salt (we loved it here at LFM); at some point in the fall or early next year we’re presumably going to get MGM’s Chinese communist invasion thriller Red Dawn; there’s the ambitious indie web series Red Storm; not to mention the recent Soviet espionage thriller Farewell (read our glowing review); and I even detect certain Cold War themes evident in things like the recent Karate Kid remake (set in communist China) and the forthcoming Mao’s Last Dancer.  [In this context I should also mention Chris Gorak's forthcoming alien invasion thriller The Darkest Hour, which is actually set in Moscow.]

I locate the beginning of this recent trend with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (a movie I loved, by the way) – which managed to feature both aliens and Soviet communist infiltrators, who are intent on using alien technology for mind-control purposes against the West.

So what’s going on here?  Here’s what the LA Times’ Patrick Goldstein thinks:

This sudden obsession with alien invaders has me wondering: Why now? Trends usually happen for a reason, even if it isn’t always clear at the time what that reason might be. There were a host of similar alien invader films in the early-mid 1950s (my personal favorite being “The Thing”), which film historians theorize were inspired by fears of the U.S. being invaded, either physically or ideologically, by communism. If you get two film professors together and let ‘em watch the original “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” they’ll argue over the hidden meanings of the film for weeks on end.

But what’s up with all these new films? What new hidden fear do we have that is being sublimated into our movies? Glenn Beck, for one, seems almost grotesquely overwhelmed by fears of all sorts of hidden conspiracies, but I doubt that whatever is bugging him is the same thing that’s bugging this generation of filmmakers. Could the collapse of the economy have spooked so many Americans that it’s created an intense level of fear and unrest that is being channeled into film projects? And, of course, there’s always the possibility (WOO-HOO) that there really are a few aliens poking around, looking to abduct a few of us. I guess anything’s possible.

My own opinion, more or less along the lines Patrick describes, is that we are seeing a revival of the 1950’s anti-communist sensibility (Crystal Skull was even set in the 1950s) that’s getting sublimated into fantastical fears of domestic alien invasion.  And I think all of this was more or less predictable, as our society gets increasingly re-engineered along progressive-liberal/pseudo-futuristic lines, and as we face an increasingly hostile and dangerous threat from nuclear-armed terrorists and/or their client states.  What’s more, this trend is being super-charged by James Cameron’s recent revival of that old, stand-by technology that emerged directly from 1950s science fiction: 3D.  One thinks here in this context of such 1950s 3D classics as It Came From Outer Space and Creature from the Black Lagoon.

In "Crystal Skull," Soviet agent Cate Blanchett hunts alien technology.

[I should mention, incidentally, that the best analysis of this 1950s anti-communist/alien invasion mentality certainly comes in Peter Biskind's marvelous book, Seeing is Believing: How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the Fifties. Biskind goes into this stuff in great detail in close-readings of Them!, The Thing, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came from Outer Space, etc. I can't recommend Biskind's book highly enough if you want to understand the mentality depicted in these films.]

And so ultimately this is a trend that I lustily endorse … with one proviso: pace this return to the 1950s sensibility, does this mean we can now go back to those optimistic bosoms and/or brassieres of that era?  Because the problem with most of these films – Salt very much excluded – is that they just don’t have the 3D feminine firepower, so to speak, that they should.  And even in Salt we never see Angelina in a dress!  Which is really a crime.

Kathleen Hughes, from 1953's "It Came From Outer Space" in 3D.

But there’s more to be said about this revival of the 1950s/Cold War mentality, actually.  I think the filmmaking world is gradually coming around to the side of freedom.  It’s happening in fits and starts, and sometimes awkwardly – but it is happening.  There’s no way that movies like Salt or Red Dawn or Four Lions or Mao’s Last Dancer or The Infidel would be getting made, otherwise.  It’s something that we’re talking about all the time here at Libertas, and I think this is a trend very much to be celebrated.  [We even just posted today about Frank Miller's new project Holy Terror, which pits a superhero called 'The Fixer' against Al Qaeda baddies; this follows directly on the heels of Frank's quasi-metaphorical look at the current War on Terror in the forthcoming Xerxes.]

So for every occasion nowadays when a Captain America or Wonder Woman get their patriotism downgraded by Hollywood censors (and, yes, censorship is what’s happening there), there are now counter-examples where freedom – and America’s role in promoting it – is being championed.  And that’s a very positive sign.

Some of you, for example, may be wondering why we haven’t been harping on the latest scandals involving Oliver Stone or Roman Polanski here.  The reason, in part, is because these guys are old and irrelevant and very much out-of-step with what’s going on in the filmmaking world right now.  These trends that we’re talking about here toward invasion and/or infiltration scenarios are major trends that are affecting what projects get funding at the moment – particularly among the younger, more active crowd of filmmakers.

And so on with the invasion!  Just don’t forget the brassieres.

Posted on July 29th, 2010 at 2:54pm.

Frank Miller takes on the terrorist threat in "Holy Terror."

By Jason Apuzzo. According to today’s Los Angeles Times Hero Complex blog, Frank Miller – best known as the writer and artist of The Dark Knight Returns, 300 and Sin City - is in the final stages of completing a long-developing project of his that will pit a brand-new superhero character called ‘The Fixer’ against Al Qaeda.

This long-awaited project, which began initially as a storyline for Batman – and was supposedly rejected for political reasons by D.C. Comics (Miller disputes the long-standing rumors to that effect) – will apparently be published next year (Miller is speaking to publishers right now) with the title, Holy Terror.

This is wonderful news, as I’d thought this project had been abandoned by Miller some time ago.  Here’s Miller:

“It’s almost done; I should be finished within a month,” Miller said. “It’s no longer a DC book. I decided partway through it that it was not a Batman story. The hero is much closer to ‘Dirty Harry’ than Batman. It’s a new hero that I’ve made up that fights Al Qaeda …

“The character is called The Fixer and he’s very much an adventurer who’s been essentially searching for a mission,” Miller said. “He’s been trained as special ops and when his city is attacked all of a sudden all the pieces fall into place and all this training comes into play. He’s been out there fighting crime without really having his heart in it — he does it to keep in shape. He’s very different than Batman in that he’s not a tortured soul. He’s a much more well-adjusted creature even though he happens to shoot 100 people in the course of the story …

“I pushed Batman as far as he can go and after a while he stops being Batman. My guy carries a couple of guns and is up against an existential threat. He’s not just up against a goofy villain. Ignoring an enemy that’s committed to our annihilation is kind of silly, It just seems that chasing the Riddler around seems silly compared to what’s going on out there …

“It began as my reaction to 9/11 and it was an extremely angry piece of work and as the years have passed by I’ve done movies and I’ve done other things and time has provided some good distance, so it becomes more of a cohesive story as it progresses,” Miller said.

Needless to say, we’re very excited to learn this and wish Miller the best.

"The hero is much closer to 'Dirty Harry' than Batman."

What Miller touches on here is one of the things that’s been bothering me the most about the post-9/11 boom in comic book movies: which is their tendency to feature narcissistic heroes who almost never (Iron Man excepted) are asked to face the current terrorist threat.  This is something that is a complete betrayal of what happened in the 1940s, when so many of the original comic book heroes were asked to face down the Nazi/fascist threat.  So good on Frank for pushing through and completing this, and bad on D.C. for ripping this storyline away from the Batman series if indeed that’s what happened.

Miller is also right now of course working on his 12-part Dark Horse comics series called Xerxes, which is a prequel to 300.  And Zack Snyder and Kurt Johnstad are already at work on the screenplay for that.

Posted on July 29th, 2010 at 10:36am.

Jolie in Tokyo.

By Jason Apuzzo. • Angelina Jolie premiered Salt in Tokyo yesterday, as her world tour of the film continues.  I’m not trying to turn LFM into a Jolie fansite, but she’s making that awfully difficult.  [Re: the picture to the left ... I'm still wondering why they couldn't dress her like this in the film, even for one scene!]  In other Salt news, producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura does an interesting interview about the film and his many other projects today.  He might be the hottest producer currently working in Hollywood.

• Did you know that Vaclav Havel is directing a film? [All he ever wanted to do was direct!]  The name of the film is Leaving, an indie production based on his stageplay of the same name.  With nods to King Lear and The Cherry Orchard, Leaving is apparently a (characteristically for Havel) witty and autobiographical story about a former chancellor of an unnamed country who’s been unceremoniously booted from his sumptuous government villa.  I’m very eager to see this once it’s completed.  Havel has always been a hero of mine, an almost inconceivably perfect mixture of intellectual and statesman, a courageous man of letters who stood up to the communists when doing so could easily have cost him his life.  Would that we had such men here in the States rather than the charlatans of both parties we currently have to put up with.

Alien invaders from "Skyline."

• How much do you care about what happened at Comic-Con?  Personally, I’m still trying to keep myself from confusing The Green Hornet with The Green Lantern.  It all seems like one, big, infantile, hyperglycemic blur – you know?  Here’s what I can tell you: the trend toward alien invasion pics is now officially out of control. Comic-Con saw presentations on Jon Favreau’s Cowboys & Aliens (Harrison Ford showed up to that panel), Battle: Los Angeles, Steven Spielberg’s forthcoming TV series Falling Skies, and the latest example of an FX-laden indie sci-fi invasion project (we’ve been talking a lot about those here lately) called Skyline (see here, here and here), that will be released by Relativity Media in December.  Oh, and if that’s not enough for you, word comes today that Bobby Glicker (I loved his Iraq/zombie short Road to Moloch – why did he pull it off Vimeo?) made a spec sci-fi trailer that Michael Bay loved (supposedly it’s a cross between Paranormal Activity and Cloverfield) … and now the project has been greenlit by Paramount as a $12 million sci-fi alien abduction feature.  And there isn’t even a script yet!  So we’re going to get that project from Paramount next year … along with J.J. Abrams’ alien movie Super 8, and the Paranormal guy’s new movie Area 51, and the alien invasion movie set in Moscow called The Darkest Hour … and why are all these alien invasion projects suddenly being done?  Is it that we feel that we’re being invaded?  Lucas and Spielberg ignited this trend with Crystal Skull, and it still hasn’t let up.

Harrison Ford at Comic-Con.

• In related Comic-Con news, Machete has a new Red Band trailer out (very gory, but funny – emphasizing Danny Trejo’s lethal abilities with machetes); a new trailer is out for 300 director Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch (so-so; too many images, too little narrative); Rihanna will be starring in the new adaptation of the Battleship boardgame; and Die Hard 5 is apparently soon to be greenlit.  Hey Bruce – will you be fighting terrorists this time?  Or is that beneath you now?  I’m hoping the title of the next film is simply Dead.

• Amanda Bynes, age 24, has now officially un-retired from acting. Even better than that, though, is the news that Carla Bruni is back before the cameras in Paris … unfortunately for the benefit of Woody Allen’s new film.  Oh, well – you can’t have it all!  It’s hard to watch anything Woody does this days without feeling that you need to take a shower afterward.

• Oliver Stone has been behaving badly lately (see here and here) – so badly that I think he’s probably cooked this time.  Unfortunately he still has several projects in the pipeline that he’ll be inflicting on us, starting with Wall Street 2.  [Sigh.]  When will the long, public nightmare of this person’s career end?

• Poor Snooki!  Over the weekend the “Jersey Shore” star got semi-blasted by The New York Times, and now even the Governor of New Jersey is condemning her show.  [She did, however, get to open the New York Stock Exchange today.]  My favorite piece of reportage about this diminutive Italian American firecracker is the great Q&A she did recently with Meghan McCain for The Daily Beast.  You’ll learn that Snooki voted for (Meghan’s father) John McCain, for example, “because he was really cute and I liked when he did his speeches.”  Here’s my other favorite exchange from that article:

Snooki: Um, I really don’t see the reason why there would be a tax on tanning, because so many people go tanning even though they’re not, like, Guido/Guidettes. People go tanning because they like to feel tan. You feel more sexy when you’re tan and I don’t understand why you would tax on that, because you’re making yourself feel more happy about yourself. So I really don’t understand why that would be, but you know, whatever.

Meghan: Got it.

Katy Perry, on the cover of her new album.

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … I’m getting the distinct impression that Katy Perry is about to take over the entire planet, or something.  She seems to be everywhere.

It’s impossible to turn on the radio without hearing her and Snoop do “California Gurls,” which I now learn has 25 million views on YouTube?!  Does this mean we have to do a Teenage Dream review?  I don’t know who to ask, because I’m in my 30s.

All I can say is, if she can keep Lady Gaga out of the media for the next month, I’m all for it.

Posted on July 27th, 2010 at 10:45pm.

By Jason Apuzzo. Filmmaker, best-selling author and former rock drummer Larry Schweikart recently sent me the trailer (see above) for his forthcoming documentary, Rockin’ The Wall.  Rockin’ The Wall is about the liberating force of rock music for young people living behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War.  The film is based in part on a segment of Larry’s book, Seven Events That Made America America.  Many of you also may remember Larry as the co-author of the #1 New York Times best seller A Patriot’s History of the United States.  [Both of these books are available in the LFM Store below.]

Rockin’ The Wall deals with how rock music served as a source of hope for young kids growing up in the communist world, and how the music subverted the grip that totalitarian regimes held over societies within the Eastern Bloc. Larry and his team interview rockers from the Cold War era, including the band Mother’s Finest – a black funk-rock band out of Atlanta who played East Berlin two weeks before the Wall came crashing down.  Also interviewed are young eastern Europeans from that era whose lives were changed irrevocably by rock music and the cracks that music opened up – literally and figuratively – in their otherwise repressive world.

One of the great details that Rockin’ The Wall apparently goes into is how the communist regimes – seeing what a powerful force rock music was among the youth – tried to co-opt the music for their own purposes.  In the Soviet Union this lead to the Russians actually creating a ‘Ministry of Rock’(!).  I’m hoping Larry has some samples from that Ministry’s music – it must be hilarious.

Rockin’ The Wall reminds me of a marvelous film from the Los Angeles Film Festival that we recently reviewed here at LFM, called Disco & Atomic War.  Disco & Atomic War is an extraordinary new Estonian documentary about the so-called ’soft power’ influence of American and Western culture on the minds of Soviet citizens living in Estonia during the Cold War, who were able through clever means to watch Finnish television broadcasts emanating from just over the border.  As Disco informs us (in amusing detail), American popular culture – especially in the form of glamorous TV shows like “Dallas,” or movies like Star Wars and even Emmanuelle – was deeply feared by Soviet authorities due to the ideas and expectations such programming planted in the minds of Soviet citizens.  This led to amusing co-optings, such as the Soviets creating their own officially sanctioned disco instruction course for TV (shades of the ‘Ministry of Rock’?).

You can read the LFM review of Disco and Atomic War from the LA Film Festival, and also read LFM Contributor Joe Bendel’s review of the film from yesterday.

Rockin’ the Wall premieres in Washington, D.C. on September 9, at the national Tea Party “March on D.C.” event. You can also pre-order the DVD here, and follow the film on Facebook here.  We wish Larry and his creative team the best with this project.

Posted on July 27th, 2010 at 11:49am.

Irving Kristol in 1976.

By David Ross. The word “neo-conservatism” suffered a wild and unfortunate distortion during the last nine years, coming to mean something like “the neo-fascist philosophy of George W. Bush and his Satanic cohort,” or even more simply, “the wicked tendency to invade other countries.”

Given this slippage of meaning, I cannot recommend highly enough Joseph Dorman’s documentary Arguing the World (1998), which provides a thoughtful and accurate account of neo-conservatism as it traces the careers of literary critic Irving Howe, political thinker Irving Kristol (father of Bill), Columbia/Harvard sociologist Daniel Bell, and Harvard sociologist Nathan Glazer. The story will be familiar to conservatives who know their own lineage: bookish, Jewish New Yorkers arrive at City College; fall under the spell of Trotsky; revolt against the murderous tyranny of Stalin; begin to qualify their leftism; cast their lot with the high modernism of Partisan Review; found Commentary; begin to take seriously the Soviet threat; increasingly recognize the perverse incentives and disincentives created by LBJ’s Great Society; recoil from the brainless nonsense of the counter-culture; begin creating the intellectual foundations of modern conservatism in a series of groundbreaking books and articles; preside over conservatism’s return to power on the back of their own ideas.

While remaining strictly neutral and objective, Arguing the World explains these weighty developments in American political and intellectual history and rescues an important tradition from cartoonish caricature.

Posted on July 27th, 2010 at 10:11am.

By Jennifer Baldwin. The Boomers love making TV shows and movies about the 1960s; it fulfills their narcissistic desire to relive their own adolescence and young adulthood – and it makes their generation seem “important,” the most important generation of all. Naturally, most of these shows and movies about the turbulent 60s approach the era from the point of view of young people: teenagers, college students, the youth movement and the hippie scene.

The reason AMC’s original series Mad Men was such a sensation when it debuted four seasons ago, and what continues to make it one of the best shows on TV, is that it approaches the 1960s from a somewhat different angle. It’s the angle of men in suits, women in tasteful and elegant clothing, cocktails and business meetings – in other words, the world of grown ups. This is the 1960s from the point of view of the adults. What makes the show so brilliant is that by focusing on the adults of the era it shows where the real breakdown of society occurred in the 60s:  not with the kids, but with their parents.

Kids will always rebel, in any era, in any time period. It’s part of our adolescent development to test boundaries and question our world. But it’s up to the adults in a society to maintain civilization in the face of this adolescent upheaval. Where the 60s went wrong – where the rot set in – wasn’t that the youth started tuning out and turning on, it’s that the adults did as well.

At the end of the third season, there was quite a lot of upheaval in the adult world of Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and his cohorts: JFK was assassinated; Betty (January Jones) went to Reno to divorce Don and remarry Rockefeller Republican Henry Francis (Christopher Stanley); British firm Putnam Powell and Lowe were preparing to sell Sterling Cooper; and in perhaps the most exhilarating finale of the show’s entire run, Don, Roger (John Slattery), Bert Cooper (Robert Morse), and English newcomer Lane Pryce (Jared Harris) all joined forces and left Sterling Cooper to form their own advertising agency (Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce) – taking Peggy (Elisabeth Moss), Pete (Vincent Kartheiser), Joan (Christina Hendricks), and Harry (Rich Sommer) along with them.

Season three ended with the show going through such a radical change that fans have been anxiously waiting to see just where things would pick up in season four. Would Sterling-Cooper-Draper-Pryce still be in existence and would they be successful? Would Betty finalize her divorce and marry Henry? Would Don be happy in his new role as bachelor and big shot creative director and face of the company at his new “scrappy underdog” agency?

In the season four premiere, “Public Relations,” Matt Weiner has jumped ahead one year in the story – to Thanksgiving, 1964 – and the changes we witnessed in the last episode of season three are now in full bloom. Weiner doesn’t reset anything. Don is living the bachelor life; Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce is now an established agency (though not without the headaches and anxieties of being a small upstart); Betty is remarried to Henry Francis; and Don Draper is faced with a new professional challenge: promoting himself.

In the past, Draper has always emphasized that the goal of advertising is, first and foremost, to sell the product. An ad may be cute or clever, but if it doesn’t sell the product, it’s worthless.

Now in season four, Don is confronted with a new paradigm. He’s not just selling other people’s products; he must sell himself. It’s an uncomfortable role for a man who has stolen another man’s name, a man who has spent most of his adult life constructing a new identity for himself. As we open the episode, a reporter for Advertising Age is interviewing Don, asking him, “Who is Don Draper?” Don can’t/won’t answer that question. He says he’s from the Midwest where he was taught that it wasn’t polite to talk about oneself. Don’s trying to be modest, to remain the man behind the scenes who is just doing his job.

But when the article comes out mid-way through the episode, the reporter has mistaken Don’s modesty for aloofness, his humility and professionalism for coldness and mystery – and mystery is a killer for someone who is trying to be a salesman. It’s a huge misstep for Don, because as Roger and others point out, Don is the agency’s biggest asset – he needs to sell himself to the world in order for Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce to get more business.

The thematic counterpoint to this storyline is the plot with the Jentzen bathing suit executives, who make two-piece bathing suits (not “bikinis,” as the prudish executives are always pointing out) and who want to sell their suits without resorting to salacious sexiness the way their bikini-making competitors do. Again, the theme here is modesty. Whether it’s modesty in dress or modesty in terms of humility, this first episode is drawing a contrast between the traditional way of thinking and the new, more “authentic” way of thinking. The world is becoming more sensationalized, more in your face. It’s about not holding back anymore when it comes to your wants and desires. It’s about, as Don puts it to the Jentzen men, “would you rather be comfortable and dead, or risky and possibly rich?”   In other words, standards, decorum, modesty – these are the things which must be sacrificed in order to stand out in the world, and standing out in the world is what will get people’s attention, and getting people’s attention is the key to success. Continue reading »

The Red Queen (Scarlet Woman?): Jolie in Moscow.

By Jason Apuzzo. The new Angelina Jolie anti-communist thriller Salt, which we loved here at LFM, took in $36 million at the domestic box office over the weekend.  That was a strong opening for the film – strong enough that producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura is already dropping hints in Hollywood Reporter today about the potential of a sequel.

This is why LFM readers need to go see this film, and continue to spread the word about it – because if we get a franchise out if this, what we’re going to get is … SPOILER ALERT … Angelina Jolie stalking the land, eradicating communists from our midst.  And we want that, right?  … END OF SPOILERS.

Salt finished second at the box office this past weekend to Inception, as Christopher Nolan’s fanboy-zombie army continues to show up in droves to that film, eager to have their brains scrambled.  It’s worth mentioning, however, that Salt is on fewer screens, and – depending on whom you believe – its budget may only have been half of Inception’s.  And, of course, we know how the critics have been (for the most part) carrying Nolan’s water for him.

Meanwhile, the big news is that Jolie premiered the film in Moscow on Sunday, and the Russians went wild.  Here’s Reuters:

Clad in a floor-length Versace gown she described as “Russian Red”, Jolie blew kisses to thousands of fans who came to watch her play a suspected Russian double agent in the blockbuster, which opened at No. 2 in the U.S. at $36.5 million. “I think this film is positive for modern Russia,” a broadly smiling Jolie told Reuters television at her first ever premiere in Moscow. Earlier, she took four of her six children to see the gold onion domes and iconic red walls of the Kremlin.

“As much as there are bad guys that are Russian, there are also heroes that are Russian in this film,” she said as her diamond stud earrings sparkled in the sunshine of Moscow’s record-setting heatwave … “It really makes me happy that we have returned to the theme of Russian spies in Hollywood films,” 23-year-old architect Alexander said after watching the film.

Good stuff.   “It really makes me happy that we have returned to the theme of Russian spies in Hollywood films.” Don’t you love how eager these guys are to re-start the Cold War?  To all my Russian friends (and I do have them, including someone who worked in The Kremlin): we miss you guys too!  The Cold War was such fun, especially compared to today.  Hugs and kisses.

Watch Jolie work the crowd below at the Moscow premiere.  They obviously ate it up.

If you haven’t seen the film, it should be pointed out that Salt makes a strong and obvious differentiation between the retro-communist bad guys who are the villains of the film, and those forces within modern Russia who are trying to achieve a reconciliation with the West.  That’s why the Russians are undoubtedly so eager to embrace this film – because it sort of allows everyone to have their cake and eat it, too.  The Russians get to look cool and villainous and relevant again, while at the same time the genuine changes in Russian society that have taken place since the communist collapse are fully acknowledged.

Here’s more about the Moscow premiere, from today’s New York Daily News:

“Angelina, Angelina” chants and clapping filled the air as Jolie, who plays a CIA officer accused of being a Russian sleeper-spook, signed autographs, posed for the cameras and kissed one little girl on the cheek at the Oktyabrskiy theater … Jolie had the Russians cheering at “Spasibo,” charming the audience with her Russian during the film’s introduction.  Her “Dobriy Vecher!” – Russian for Good Evening – greeting was met with screams and whistles.

“This is my first premier in Moscow and I’m so excited to be here,” she said switching into English. “I hope you enjoy the film. I tried to speak a bit of Russian. I hope I did okay.”  Once the projectors started rolling, the audience cheered and clapped for any references to Russia and with particular zest for a scene where a fur hat clad Jolie rides the Staten Island Ferry.

Yes, Jolie wearing the fur hat was a great scene in the film, as I mentioned in my review.  And actually, I would’ve like a lot more of that sort of thing from the film.  One of the few problems I had with the film is that you never see her in a great outfit like the one below.  Why couldn’t they put her in a red dress?  The film cries out for it.

Improving Russian-American relations.

Meanwhile, rumor has it that Jolie tried to arrange for Russian spy Anna Chapman to be at the Moscow premiere (Sony claims to know nothing about it).  I don’t know whether I believe this rumor – but it’s fun to think about, isn’t it?  In any case, Chapman didn’t show.  [Or did she ... perhaps in disguise?]

Jolie’s considerable publicity efforts for Salt, by the way – which have already included trips to Comic-Con and Moscow (within a few days of each other) – are leading industry wags to say that she’s definitely earning her $20 million paycheck for this film.  Is this good for women – as we’ve been asking a lot here at LFM?  Yes, I tend to think it is.  Jolie is launching a major international film in multiple markets, and proving that women can do that if given half the chance.  And she’s probably creating more good will for us in Russia right now than Obama is, although that probably isn’t hard.

Word also comes in The New York Times today that a new, unauthorized biography of Jolie by Andrew Morton will be out soon,  featuring details of her complex, strained relationship with her father Jon Voight – a relationship which Morton considers to be the source of her curious, ambivalent behavior toward men.

I’ll leave that subject to the psychoanalysts and/or the female readers of our site; all I’ll say is that Salt’s a colorful, refreshing (for being so politically incorrect) film – powered by an engaging star performance – and we’ll be keeping an eye on it here at LFM.  Make sure you see it so we can ensure that more films like it are made in the future.

Posted on July 26th, 2010 at 1:23pm.

Kelly O'Neill & Shane Curry from "Kisses."

By Patricia Ducey. Kisses, a 2008 Irish film and favorite at many important festivals, is now in wider release throughout the US this summer.  [See the trailer below.]  Writer/director Lance Daly spins a tale of two abused Irish kids from the unfashionable outskirts of Dublin who run away from home to find freedom from family strife. No leprechauns or legends in this Ireland – the film takes place in a modern, industrialized Ireland, chockablock with rusting warehouses, traffic jams, and pop culture references. Daly, after a few preview screenings in the US, has wisely provided subtitles to aid the American ear in decoding the Irish patois. [I implore other filmmakers whose films are not in spoken American English to do the same. I’m talking to you, Sarah Gavron.]

The Irish Film Board, Bord Scannán na hÉireann, which has been financing and promoting the national cinema of Ireland since the 1990s, helped finance Kisses. What is the “national” cinema of Ireland, though, in actuality? Films written or produced by Irish persons, or films about Ireland? Or some permutation of both? Irish filmmakers have borrowed from early American films, like the docudrama Man of Aran or the romanticized The Quiet Man, and vice versa.  I spent some time in Ireland in the ’90s, when the Board first starting supporting these films – I was researching my thesis on this subject – and came to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a purely national cinema. But times were good in Ireland then, and the Board plowed ahead. Irish moviegoers, though, voted with their feet and many of these board-supported films ended up, oddly, being shown in art houses in Ireland – while the likes of Mrs. Doubtfire drew the crowds near Grafton Street.  Whether it is smart for any government to support the arts is debatable – just look at the bidding war over tax incentives for movie production here in the US – but such a debate has begun in Ireland due to the now faltering Irish economy.

Young Shane Curry in "Kisses."

The truth is that film and narrative have always been ‘globalized’ and Kisses is no exception. The two runaways, Kylie and Dylan, live in a neighborhood Antoine Doinel would feel at home in. The runaways cadge a ride down the canal ala Huck Finn, courtesy of a Russian émigré boatman who introduces the kids to Dylan’s namesake – Jewish/Christian American folk rocker Bob Dylan – with his impromptu rendition of “Shelter From the Storm.”  And later Dylan learns a lesson about the give and take of love from a Jamaican prostitute eking out a living in Dublin.

Dylan and Kylie’s world, though, is a drab working class Ireland. The two families live in comfortable enough homes, but Dylan’s father, a handsome guy, drinks and bullies, while Kylie’s uncle fools everyone in the family except her – she knows from bitter experience what he really is.  Both Dylan and Kylie reach the end of their respective ropes on Christmas Day; one battle royale, one unwanted advance too many, and they are off, with Kylie egging Dylan on to make a run for it. They hop a river barge to the city, and the adventure begins – for good and ill.

The cinematography is lovely. Daly shoots the opening scenes of the housing development in bleak black and white, and lets the color slowly seep into the frame as the kids and the boatman get farther and farther away from home (a nod to The Wizard of Oz? Again, the cross-pollination of film). The two child stars, real Dublin kids Kelly O’Neill as Kylie (a Drew Barrymore look-alike) and Shane Curry as Dylan, shine as newcomers. Daly draws joyous and heartbreaking performances from both of them, without the wise-assery or precociousness we see in so many preteen stories. I wished that perhaps Kylie was a little less heroic a heroine, but that’s a minor quibble.

If you liked a recent Irish film Once, you will like Kisses. Kisses is the anti-Inception. It is small and slight but you won’t forget it – just like your first kiss.

Posted on July 26th, 2010 at 12:45pm.

Winning the Cold War and looking fabulous: Angelina Jolie in "Salt."

By Jason Apuzzo.  Now we know why the Chinese communists banned this film.

Before I tell you how deliciously pleasurable and cathartic Salt is, before I begin to gush in embarrassing ways over Angelina Jolie’s pouty lips and high cheekbones – and how sexy she looks decked out in a Russian fur hat (I’m buying one for Govindini immediately; every beautiful woman should have one) – I need to let you in on a few things that may shock you.  So here we go:

The premise of the new Angelina Jolie/Phillip Noyce action-thriller Salt is that the United States has been massively penetrated by Cold War-era Soviet communist sleeper agents, who even in exile from contemporary Russia are dead set on America’s destruction.  These agents are nasty, dangerous, and out to get every one of us.  They hide out in the open, but also in upper echelons of power – where they wait patiently to strike.  And there are a helluva lot of them, far too many for our otherwise overloaded intelligence bureaucracies to handle.

A dangerous woman on the run.

How dangerous are these sleeper agents?  For starters, their first successful operation – as we are informed by way of flashback – was nothing less than the killing of President Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald, who (and here Salt’s fictional story dovetails nicely with actual history) spent several years living in the Soviet Union before returning to his life as an underworld drifter in New Orleans.  And now our nation is flooded with such men – cold, calculating, highly effective killers trained to strike on command and plunge America into its final, richly-deserved (from the communist perspective) apocalypse.

Oh, and by the way – one of them might be Angelina Jolie.  [I knew those lips were too good to be true!]

Does this premise surprise you?  It certainly surprised me, because Hollywood hasn’t been telling stories like this since the 1980’s.  But in point of fact, I don’t even recall films with this sort of premise appearing in the 80’s!  And it’s for this reason that Jolie, Noyce and producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura deserve a lot of credit for bringing this taut, intelligent and politically incorrect thriller to the screen right now, when – ironically – we would seem to need it the most.

I’d like to tell you more about the plot of this film, actually, and take you through every suspenseful twist and turn, but that would spoil the fun when you see it – and really you should see Salt.  Because months before Red Dawn is released, months before Mao’s Last Dancer hits theaters – and even, frankly, with an otherwise commendable film like the French Cold War thriller Farewell in theaters right now – Salt is the dealbreaker for me that suggests that Hollywood is not as irretrievably left-liberal-progressive as we’ve been led to believe.  It can’t be, at least not any longer; there is simply no way this film could’ve been made, were it so.  The sense I have is that a fight is underway in the industry right now, that our national narrative is up for grabs.  Maybe it’s backlash against Obama causing this.  Maybe it’s too many years of bad movies belittling the war on terror.  Who knows?  [Plus, there's also the issue of Jolie's father, noted Tea Partier Jon Voight.  Is some of the old man's craggy wisdom finally rubbing off on his formerly estranged daughter?]

Good girls wear black.

In any case, Salt really helps matters right now, provided that you’re oriented toward liberty.  Salt won’t take back Avatar or a lot of other nonsense that the industry has been dishing out, but it definitely is a shot in the arm.  All you really need to know about Salt’s storyline is this: the film has two major cathartic moments in it, both of which revolve around Angelina Jolie terminating communist agents.  And if that doesn’t get your freedom-loving blood flowing, you’re insensate  [Or, alternately, you're one of those well-tailored, narcotized characters in a Christopher Nolan film.]

Salt sets up a situation in which C.I.A. agent Angelina Jolie may be a Soviet sleeper agent.  For quite a while we don’t know – indeed, we’re not even sure she knows, a la Bourne.  Outwardly, she appears to be a highly effective C.I.A. field operative.  We first get to see her in the midst of a harrowing, torture-filled captivity by the North Koreans (the North Koreans wisely keep her in lingerie, however), before she’s released by way of a spy transfer; listen in this sequence, by the way, for the film’s nice potshot at Kim Jong Il.  Once back in the States, Jolie just wants to settle down with her nerdy, German entomologist husband and retire upward to a desk job.

Jolie married to a nerdy German entomologist.  Holding down a desk job.  I know – I laughed, too.

But events won’t let her settle down, of course, because in through the C.I.A.’s door (literally) walks a Soviet agent with a story to tell – a story about a secret communist operation, dating back decades, to train a generation of super-spies to infiltrate the West.  These agents are trained to remain undercover, to adopt Western ways (in Jolie’s case, this obviously includes looking fabulous in a pant suit), and to then strike at the opportune moment. Continue reading »

By Govindini Murty and Jason Apuzzo. As we recently posted here at LFM, Jason Apuzzo and I had the chance last week to visit the set of Atlas Shrugged, the highly anticipated film adaptation of Ayn Rand’s epic 1957 novel.  We interviewed the film’s director, Paul Johansson (the first interview he has given to the media about the film).  We also spent several hours watching Johansson direct a crucial scene between Atlas Shrugged‘s heroine Dagny Taggart and her antagonist, millionaire playboy Francisco d’Anconia.  We saw first hand Johansson’s close working methods with his actors (the actor playing d’Anconia compared Johansson’s hands-on directing style to that of Robert Redford) and the passion he was bringing to the production.  The location was the historic Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.  We posted Part One of our interview with Johansson on Wednesday, and now we’re pleased to post here Part Two.

Govindini Murty with Director Paul Johansson.

As a special treat for our Libertas readers, Part Two of our LFM interview with Johansson consists partially of a video we’ve created out of footage Jason shot during the interview.  Jason created the video out of our interview footage with Johansson because we felt that video better captures Johansson’s articulate enthusiasm than the printed word alone could.  So the LFM video above contains selections from Part Two of our interview with Johansson, while the article below contains other selections from Part Two of the same interview that we also thought were interesting.  The video above and the article below do not cover the same portions of the interview, so be sure to take a look at them both.

We hope you enjoy watching the Libertas video above.  It was fun to do it and we look forward to doing more such videos so that LFM readers can feel that they are there too when we visit sets, meet filmmakers, and attend special events.  Enjoy!

We pick up here our discussion with Johansson about the structure of the novel and how it relates to the film.

A large enough story for three films.

JA:  Let me ask briefly about the multi-part aspect of Atlas Shrugged.

GM:  Yes, I think you said this was going to be in three parts, or four parts?

PJ:  Well, the thing is I don’t think you could possible tell this story in one movie.  It has to be a three part movie.  And I’m glad I’m doing the first one because it’s all set up.  I mean, they don’t fly the plane into the Colorado mountains and land it in the mirage and all the other stuff – I don’t have the world crumbling in part 3 where John Galt rises from the ashes … I don’t have that … I have the set-up, which is cerebral.  Which is probably what I’m better at.

GM:  And also it’s more character-based.  When you’re working with the actors – in your approach to the drama – are you at all thinking of Stanislavsky and the Method?  [Stanislavsky was active in Russia in the early years when Rand was growing up there.]

Still influential today.

PJ:  I use him as ploys and tricks sometimes with the actors … because of the material there’s a little bit of intimidation involved.  People are afraid that this is too much, or it’s not going to work or the dialogue is this or whatever.  It does have that … 50’s film noir style to it – the way that [Rand] wrote the dialogue, because that’s the way people wrote back then and that’s what people responded to.  And that can be intimidating.

So what I do sometimes (and the actors have been terrific and have given completely of their hearts) is have them try to loosen up the dialogue by finding the contractions in the words and have them repeat the last line from another character, because it helps the flow … because a lot of the stuff doesn’t really flow as well as we’d like it to.  But again, you have to pick a style.  You have to pick a style.

GM:  And just go with it.

PJ:  And just go with it, you know?

GM:  Because that’s the way they did it back then.  I mean, Stanislavsky would stage things at the Moscow Art Theatre like Maeterlinck’s “Blue Bird” – these very symbolist plays – but [would] find a way to make it powerful and engaging to people.

PJ:  I tell you, if Stanislavsky were alive today I would have called him up and asked him to come down and help out.  I would.  [Laughs.] Continue reading »

"Greetings, Earthlings!" Jolie at Comic-Con.

By Jason Apuzzo. • Angelina Jolie showed up at Comic-Con yesterday, in black leather - and the audience nearly blew the roof off in approval.  She talked about her character in Salt. Money quote: ”She’s an interesting, damaged type of person … She’s not just heroic, or even brave. There’s something a little off about her … and maybe there’s something a little off about me. Maybe it’s a good match.”  Um, right.  I’ll be talking more about this film tomorrow.  In the meantime, director Phillip Noyce does an interview about Salt with the Wall Street Journal today.  Plus check out related Cold War-themed buzz about the new Jack Ryan reboot, Moscow.

• Jolie hubby Brad Pitt will apparently be both producing and starring in World War Z, the adaptation of the blockbuster all-out-zombie-war novel.  I skimmed through this novel when it came out – it read fairly well, although it’s certainly nothing special.  My sense is that it will adapt well to the screen – unless the zombie genre is already dead, so to speak, by the time Pitt gets to it.

• There’s a deluge of news coming out of Comic-Con right now (see here).  Tron: Legacy has a big new trailer out, for example, and frankly I’m disappointed with it.  It looks incredibly trite – with the hackneyed, Baby-boomer inflected ’search for the father’ theme dominating throughout.  Isn’t there any other story these guys can tell?  My enthusiasm for this film just dropped about 3 floors, although it’s not quite in the basement just yet.

• The rumor mill currently has The Riddler as the new villain for Batman 3, with the potential of Inception’s Joseph Gordon-Levitt playing the role.  How much do I care about this?  Actually very little because The Dark Knight bored me to tears.

"Tron's" Olivia Wilde: thrilled to be at Comic-Con.

• We’re now learning more about Captain America … and apparently the redoubtable Captain is no longer going to be a “flag waiver,” or “jingoistic” (thereby defeating the point?) … and now probably I’m “not going to see this film” and its creators have “just lost my business.”  And you can quote me on that.  Making a quick visit to Comic-Con, Captain America director Joe Johnston had this to say about his film, which is currently shooting in London: “[T]his is not about America so much as it is about the spirit of doing the right thing … It’s an international cast and an international story. It’s about what makes America great and what make the rest of the world great too.”  Does that include the Nazis, by the way, whom Captain America fights in Johnston’s film?  Are they ‘great’ too?

• In other Comic-Con news: Alien invasion flick Battle: Los Angeles is making a big splash (see here and here); Zack Snyder is moving forward on the script for Frank Miller’s Xerxes (we covered this project previously here); Karl Urban (Bones McCoy in Star Trek) may be tapped to play Judge Dredd in the long-developing Judge Dredd 3D reboot; Jennifer Lawrence talks about ‘prepping’ to play the sexy Mystique in X-Men: First Class; the Wonder Woman character will soon have her own Mac cosmetics line;  and Pixar is being consulted on Disney’s forthcoming reboot of the Muppets movie franchise.

• Natalie Portman and director Darren Aronofsky are set to open the Venice Film Festival with their new ballet thriller, The Black Swan, featuring Portman as a ballerina who has a steamy erotic relationship with a rival ballerina played by Book of Eli’s Mila Kunis.  And we certainly are a long way from Queen Amidala now, aren’t we?  [Side note: setting The Wrestler aside, has Aronofsky really done sufficient penance for The Fountain?]

Katherine Heigl rolls on.

• In the new wave of film projects being launched in the wake of the Twilight craze, we now have a post-apocalyptic teen girl novel, The Hunger Games, being adapted by the same screenwriter who’s writing the new 24 movie (which takes place Bourne-style in Europe, by the way).  Get ready to see a lot of this.  Teenage girls are the new teenage boys in Hollywood.

• The Islamist punk who was threatening the South Park guys has been arrested in an anti-terror sting, thank goodness.  What they should now do is lock the guy up and force him to watch South Park, which would actually be worse than waterboarding.

• Apparently inspired by Sex and the City, a British woman claims to have spent the past 10 years bedding a thousand different men. She’s now making her way through Law and Order DVDs, and plans to sue the men for harassment.

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … Katherine Heigl’s career rolls on, implacably, without a hit in sight. The sturdy blonde is now set to star in Adaline, billed as an “epic romance”; and she’ll also be playing a bounty hunter (?) in the forthcoming One for the Money. Adeline is described as being about “a beautiful woman who hasn’t aged in 100 years but hasn’t found love, either,” which sounds like about half the women in West LA.  Ph.D. dissertations will someday be written on how Heigl has blown her career, but in the meantime we wish her well on these increasingly Sisyphean projects.

And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood …

Posted on July 22nd, 2010 at 11:45pm.

Director Paul Johansson sits with Govindini Murty for his first interview on "Atlas Shrugged."

By Govindini Murty [Editor's note: LFM was recently invited to visit the set of an important and much-discussed new film: Atlas Shrugged. The director of the film, Paul Johansson, sat down for his very first interview about the film, conducted exclusively with Libertas Film Magazine.  Part I of that interview is below.]

Atlas Shrugged Set Interview With Director Paul Johansson, 7-12-10, L.A., Biltmore Hotel.

Filmmakers have been trying for decades to bring Ayn Rand’s epic novel Atlas Shrugged to the big screen.   The 1000 plus page novel, with its weighty philosophical themes, multiple story-lines, stylized characters, dystopian-futurist setting, and sprawling, continent-wide scope, has defied numerous attempts at cinematic adaptation.  Finally,  in this summer of 2010, a group of brave independent filmmakers – no longer content to wait for the Hollywood studio system – have taken it upon themselves (in keeping with Rand’s own self-reliant, individualist philosophy) to make the movie themselves.

Businessman John Aglialoro is financing Atlas Shrugged, and is producing it with Harmon Kaslow, and is also co-writing the script (although on Imdb the script credit goes solely to Brian O’Toole).  Atlas Shrugged is being directed by Paul Johansson (“One Tree Hill”), who has also been reported to be playing the central, mysterious figure of John Galt (more on that below).  The film stars Taylor Schilling (“Mercy”) as Dagny Taggart, Grant Bowler as Henry Reardon, and Jsu Garcia (“Che”) as Francisco d’Anconia.  Director/actor Nick Cassavetes (“The Notebook”), son of renowned independent filmmaker John Cassavetes, is also acting in the film.  The producers have announced their plans to film Atlas Shrugged in three parts, with the first film budgeted at $5 million.

It’s an ambitious undertaking to be sure, but with low-cost digital filmmaking technology and CGI effects, filming a massive novel like Atlas Shrugged on a modest budget is now something that is within the realm of possibility.  More importantly, though, the decision of these filmmakers to go ahead and shoot Atlas Shrugged themselves highlights the democratization of film that we have been discussing at length here at LFM.  Digital filmmaking technology is making it possible for filmmakers with visions that do not conform to the orthodox Hollywood system to now sweep aside the cultural gatekeepers and make films themselves.  In an ironic sense, these pro-freedom filmmakers have seized the means of production from the collectivists who run the Western filmmaking establishment – and will for the first time in decades subject them to some real competition.  That’s why I believe we have seen an explosion of films recently with refreshingly bold ideas – one thinks of new films that we’ve covered extensively on LFM like Four Lions and The Infidel that dare to satirize Islamic radicalism, or upcoming films like Red Dawn, Mao’s Last Dancer, and Farewell that fearlessly portray the evils of Communism.  This liberation of perspectives in contemporary film has everything to do with the digital filmmaking revolution – and with filmmakers finally getting fed up with Hollywood’s stultifying political orthodoxy.

For these reasons, we at LFM have been lauding the Atlas Shrugged production team’s independent-minded attitude ever since Variety announced that the production had begun shooting in June.  We were all the more delighted when the Atlas Shrugged production team contacted us and invited us onto the set of the film.  Jason and I visited the Atlas Shrugged production last week on location at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.  The grand old hotel was a perfect setting for the scene that was being shot that day – a showdown between heroine railroad executive Dagny Taggart and millionaire South American playboy Francisco d’Anconia.  In between set-ups, Jason and I had the opportunity to talk with the film’s ebullient and literate director Paul Johansson.

Johansson told us that this was the first interview he had agreed to do for Atlas Shrugged (he had refused all other requests), so we’re proud to share with our LFM readers this opportunity to hear from the director of this highly-anticipated film.  So without further ado, let’s dive into Part One of our exclusive two part interview with Atlas Shrugged director Paul Johansson.

Director Paul Johansson.

GM:  What is your approach to adapting “Atlas Shrugged” as a movie?

PJ:  You’re talking about an art form, a living breathing art form … “What is a sculpture?” … it’s everything you’ve taken away from it, and what’s left is the sculpture – that’s what a film is.

We took some of the densest material available in literature … and we’ve decided that there are certain parts of that story that cannot be told with the amount of time that we have.  We’re taking one third of the book – because this is going to be part one of three parts – or perhaps four parts depending on how they’re going to shoot it all – and we’ve taken what we think is the essential part of Part One – which is 127 pages to Wyatt’s Torch.  That’s what we’re up to.

We’ve decided that this is the pertinent part of the story and I guarantee you that the reason I have not been doing any interviews or any discussions with anybody is – first of all – everybody is going to be disappointed.  [I express surprise.] Because when you love a book like I love this book  - like I loved “The Fountainhead,” like I love “Atlas Shrugged” – I would say … well why don’t you take it and make it a $40 – $50 million dollar film?  Well, if you do you’re still going to have to cut it down and … you’re going to have to choose what part of the story is the most tellable part.  So it’s not really possible with all of the characters and all of the density of this book to make everybody happy.  It doesn’t matter what you do – you’re not going to make everyone happy.  So I decided to do what makes me happy. [Pause.]  I’m serious.

GM:  Good for you.

PJ:  Absolutely 100%.  I made the decision.

GM:  When you’re an artist that’s the only way to go.

PJ:  And so that’s why I stand by the film.  This is what I think is the most important part of the story: it’s not a story about steel, it’s not a story about railroads, and it’s not a story about oil magnates or copper mines or all the other things that you see in this.  This is a story about an ideology – about the way that you live.  You can’t say in a [movie] like this who a character is by having people stand up and say “I make metal” or “I make railroads” – you can only do it by presenting them with choices, and what choices they make define the character.  And that’s how I’m telling the story.

Govindini Murty talks with Paul Johansson.

GM:  That’s very interesting.  You think of people like Orson Welles who were so fantastic at adapting Shakespeare -

PJ:  You’re thinking of me as Orson Welles -

GM:  [Laughs.] Well, look at how Welles adapted Shakespeare – he would slash down “Macbeth” or “Julius Caesar” …

PJ:  Absolutely -

GM:  … to next to nothing – but he kept the kernel of it and made a fantastic movie or a fantastic stage production out of it – so you have to do that.

PJ:  Right.  That’s interesting you should say that.  His “Othello” was really interesting – have you seen it?

GM:  Yes, it was incredible.  Done on a low budget, but very imaginative. Continue reading »

"The Hills'" Kristin Cavallari at the "Salt" premiere.

By Jason Apuzzo. • It’s been a great week for Russian spies.  Yesterday here in LA we had the Salt premiere (see here and here).  A lot of big names showed up to this premiere – including the estimable patriarch of the Jolie/Voight family, Jon Voight; I wasn’t aware, incidentally, that Russian model Olya Zueva had snuck her way onto the cast of Salt – an added attraction, clearly.  But word also comes today that in her ongoing rush to cash-in on her notoriety, Russian (not so super-)spy Anna Chapman may have some exciting new opportunities opening up for herself in the entertainment world.  Ahem.

Without giving anything away, let’s just say this new job opportunity of hers gives a whole new meaning to the term ’sleeper agent.’

• Is über-Producer Jerry Bruckheimer losing his mojo?  Wags are wondering whether 4 straight flops in a row may be jeopardizing Bruckheimer’s relationship to Disney. My guess?  Jerry’s fine, because this is still coming out next year.

• Do we finally have a universal digital video platform? The creators of UltraViolet certainly hope so as that format finally debuts in public today.  I’m still skeptical about this, and have about a million technical questions regarding how transitioning to this new platform/codec is going to play out.  The basic problem here, as far as whether this platform will actually take hold, is that people are always going to want to innovate and come up with something better – and no industry consortium (no matter how powerful) can shut that process down.

Olya Zueva.

• The Star Trek sequel should be shooting by next summer, although there’s still no script.  The next film will apparently be bigger and more thematically ambitious than the first.  I’ve been a little concerned about noises from the screenwriters that the next film may be more ’socially relevant’ than the first one, which I enjoyed very much.  We all know what ’socially relevant’ usually means these days (“Get out of Iraq!!!”) … here’s hoping they don’t go there.

• According to imdb’s estimable readers, Christopher Nolan’s Inception is the 3rd greatest movie of all time! [Citizen Kane, by comparison, weighs in at only #36.]  And you’re wondering why some of us don’t like Mr. Nolan’s fanboys dumbing down standards of excellence?  Still, the adults continue to weigh-in negatively on Inception.  The latest today comes from Nolan’s own backyard in the UK Guardian.  The title of their article on Nolan says it all: “The Emperor Has No Clothes.” Money quote: “Christopher Nolan’s films are full of big ideas hinting at deep profundities. But are we investing meaning where it isn’t?”  Answer: yes.

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … with Russian spies and Russian mistresses all over the media, we thought we’d take a quick look at Olya Zueva, the Russian model appearing in the new spy thriller, Salt.  We try to stay on theme, here.

And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood …

Posted on July 20th, 2010 at 7:08pm.

David Soul (left) with Fred Ward as Ronald Reagan in "Farewell."

By Joe Bendel. Instead of the man who knew too much, he was the spy who knew everything.  Codenamed “Farewell” by the French, Colonel Vladimir Vetrov was charged with reviewing the intelligence the KGB gathered on the free world—every speck of it, including the extent to which each western intelligence agency had been compromised.  He also knew the Soviet government had failed to live up to its promises.  President Ronald Reagan called the resulting L’Affaire Farewell: “one of the most important espionage cases of the 20th century.”  It also inspired Christian Carion’s espionage drama Farewell (trailer below), which opens in Los Angeles and New York this Friday night.

Like the real-life Vetrov on whom he is based, Colonel Grigoriev was once stationed in Paris, where he rebuffed the advances of the French and American intelligence services.  However, by 1981, the Colonel had come to the conclusion the Soviet Union needed drastic reform – so he approached the DST, the French equivalent of the FBI (the only western intelligence agency the KGB had not bothered to infiltrate) through Pierre, a French businessman with no formal involvement in the world of espionage.

Out of his element, Pierre wants to extricate himself from the affair as soon as possible, but Grigoriev insists on dealing only with him, considering the professionals untrustworthy.  Partly in recognition of the value of Grigoriev’s intel and partly out of a sense of budding friendship, Pierre becomes the Colonel’s amateur handler, passing a wealth of information on to the DST.

While Pierre and Grigoriev meet in parks and train stations, another alliance in being forged between President Reagan and Mitterrand, France’s newly elected socialist prime minister.  The President is less than thrilled at the prospect of Communist ministers in the new French cabinet, but Mitterrand has an olive branch to offer: “Farewell.”

Farewell’s portrayal of these influential world leaders is quite fascinating and surprisingly even-handed.  Philippe Magnan’s Mitterrand is intelligent but aloof, coming across like more than a bit of a cold fish.  Refreshingly, Pres. Reagan is not depicted as a doddering bumbler, but as an engaged and commanding leader.  Yes, there are scenes of Reagan using classic film as a metaphor with his National Security Advisor (played by an almost unrecognizable David Soul), but never in way that calls his judgment into question.

Yet, there is something about Reagan’s distinct mannerisms that are hard to emulate without lapsing into caricature.  American actor Fred Ward takes a good shot, but he still sounds more like a Saturday Night Live impersonation than a real flesh and blood individual.  Frankly, Ronald Reagan remains such a commanding presence in the national consciousness it makes any dramatic representation problematic.

Not too friendly: Vselovod Shilovsky as Gorbachev in "Farewell."

Fortunately, Farewell’s primary leads are uniformly excellent.  Though he looks appropriately rumpled, Emir Kusturica plays Grigoriev sharp as a tack, keenly aware of his own personal contradictions.  As Pierre, Guillaume Canet’s performance is also smart and understated, avoiding the headshaking “what-did-I-get-myself-into” histrionics.  As a result, viewers believe the unqualified trust Grigoriev places in him.

Technically well produced, cinematographer Walther Vanden Ende and designer Jean-Michel Simonet effectively capture the oppressive drabness of the Brezhnev era.  Yet ideologically, Farewell resists easy classification.  While it certainly conveys the repressive and corrupt nature of Soviet Communism, the film sometimes suggests a John Le Carre-like equivalency, at least between the rival spy masters.  However, the shrewd conclusion again challenges the audience’s conceptions of faith and loyalty, within the context of the preceding “L’Affaire Farewell.”

Considering how long it has been since a brainy spy film sneaked into theaters, Farewell is quite welcome indeed.  Featuring two compelling lead performances and a meaty story that intrigues on several levels, it is an engrossing film.  It also might be the fairest shake Pres. Reagan has gotten on screen since his inauguration in 1981, ironically coming by way of France.  Definitely recommended, Farewell opens Friday (7/23) in both Los Angeles and New York, expanding to other cities the following week.

Posted on July 20th, 2010 at 9:13am.

LFM was invited to visit the set of an important and much-discussed new film last week.  We had a wonderful time – and the cast, crew and production team could not have been friendlier.

We’ll be reporting on this in coming days … and breaking some news.  So stay tuned.

Posted on July 19th, 2010 at 6:02pm.

Jolie vs. re-born Russian communists ... or is she one of them?

By Jason Apuzzo. • In his review today, Todd McCarthy (formerly of Variety, and author of a very fine biography of Howard Hawks) confirms that re-born Russian communists – in the form of a long-dormant Soviet sleeper cell – are indeed the villains of the new film Salt. The goal of these Reds? To kill the current Russian president on American soil, and – I’m guessing here – take advantage of the resultant chaos to seize control back of Russia? The suspense in Salt apparently consists in the question of whether CIA agent Angelina Jolie, who was apparently captured and brainwashed in North Korea (shades of The Manchurian Candidate here), is part of the sleeper cell or not.  I’m guessing not.

All of this may also suggest why, as we’ve reported here previously, Salt has already been banned in China.

I’m loving the sound of this, frankly, although I assume in penance for this neo-Cold War scenario the filmmakers will feel the need to take gratuitous pot shots at the CIA, and make them the ‘enemy lite’ of the piece. Still, you take what you can get, right?

Don't get in her way.

We’ll be keeping an eye on all this.  Here at LFM we’ve been documenting the return of Cold War fever (see here, here, here, here and even here), and I’m certainly looking forward to this latest outbreak. Jolie does an interesting interview on the film today, as does director Phillip Noyce (who did the early Jack Ryan films).

It’s hard not to have mixed feelings about Jolie at this point.  What is undeniable, however, is that Jolie’s baroque, decadent personality in public is something that can work to her advantage on-screen in over-the-top-roles like this one.  So few ’stars’ nowadays actually have personalities; that’s obviously not a problem here.  The question is whether middle America is really interested in following her any more.  [By contrast, I expect this film to go gangbusters overseas.]  We’ll find out, starting Friday.

The funny thing is how universally acknowledged it is (including by me) that Jolie is probably better at this stuff than 90% of the male action stars.  That’s both a credit to her, and to some extent a rebuke of what passes for male action stars these days.  I mean, I’ve been kidding a lot here lately about Adrien Brody being in Predators (he was also in King Kong, of course) – but this is the whole problem, isn’t it?  Adrien Brody should not be battling aliens, unless you’re eager to have the aliens win. I’d feel more confident about Jolie under such circumstances.  Wouldn’t you?

Oh, and one other juicy tidbit about the film from today: apparently Salt was originally intended for Tom Cruise … who opted instead for Knight and Day. Ouch.

Posted on July 19th, 2010 at 5:20pm.