[Editor's Note: This post appears today at The Huffington Post and at AOL-Moviefone.]
By Jason Apuzzo. He’s 89 years old, and his career is hotter than ever.
With hits like Thor, Captain America and X-Men: First Class dominating the box office in 2011, and upcoming films like The Avengers and The Amazing Spider-Man looking to light up the summer in 2012, you’d think that a man whose career in comic books began just prior to World War II might want to slow down.
Think again – because this 89 year-old dynamo is named Stan Lee.
This year’s Sundance Film Festival offered a smorgasbord of art-house delights, but its competitor across the street – the scrappy Slamdance Film Festival – presented one of Park City’s best events last week when it hosted comic book legend Stan Lee for a 2-hour master class associated with Slamdance’s screening of the new documentary, With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story. Just two days after receiving the Vanguard Award from the Producers Guild of America, Lee breezed into Park City to spend a special two hours with filmmakers and journalists prior to the With Great Power screening, discussing his extraordinary career as the creator of iconic characters like Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four.
And if anything was clear at the end of the master class and screening, it was this: the keys to Stan Lee’s ongoing success are his earthy humor, humanity, and incredible vitality. The man simply doesn’t know how to slow down. As Lee says in With Great Power about being the impresario of today’s comic book cinema: “I’m having fun! Don’t punish me by making me retire.”
Stan Lee at the Slamdance Film Festival.
A flinty and funny raconteur with a baritone New York accent, Lee spent much of his time at the Slamdance master class describing his colorful early days in which he was alternately a rebellious office boy for a trouser manufacturer (he made a mess of his store after being fired two days before Christmas), an obituary writer (he found the job morbid), and even a Broadway theater usher (he once tripped and fell flat on his face while escorting Eleanor Roosevelt to her seat at the Rivoli Theater in New York).
Lee finally got his big break in late 1941 when he became interim editor at Timely Comics, which would eventually evolve under his leadership into Marvel Comics. Then known as ‘Stanley Lieber’ (his name at birth, as the son of Romanian-Jewish immigrants), Lee was first given the chance to provide text filler for a May 1941 edition of Captain America Comics – and he hasn’t looked back since.
The language of "Thor" inspired by Shakespeare.
A passionate reader, Lee described in detail how literature fueled his imagination as a young person. “I read everybody when I was young – Charles Dickens, H.G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, [Edgar Rice] Burroughs’ Tarzan. I read everything I could get my hands on.” Lee also cited Shakespeare as an influence on the style of language for Thor, drily noting that Thor “was supposed to be a Norse god – I couldn’t have him talk like a guy who was born in Brooklyn. I loved Shakespeare, and I read Shakespeare when I was young. I probably didn’t understand most of it, but I loved the sound of it.” Lee’s fascination with Shakespeare continues to this day, with Lee and 1821 Comics collaborating on the new graphic novel Romeo and Juliet: The War, a sci-fi retelling of Shakespeare’s classic love story which debuted last week.
Lee also developed an early love of the movies. When I asked Lee what movies had influenced him, he was quick to cite Errol Flynn’s adventure films of the 1930s and ’40s.
“I watched everything that was adventure – anything that Errol Flynn was in. He was my idol, I wanted to be Errol Flynn! In fact, I would leave the theater when I was about 12 years old – I’d have a crooked little smile on my face the way he [Flynn] smiled, I had an imaginary sword at my side, and I was looking for some little girl that a bully was picking on so I could protect her. I wanted to be Errol Flynn so badly. And of course I liked King Kong, Dracula, Frankenstein – any of those big movies of those days. And I also liked the ‘real’ movies with Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable.”
"The Fantastic Four" from November, 1961.
Lee’s career would take off in the 1960s, beginning with the launch of the Fantastic Four series. Lee described what was arguably his most important innovation at that time: bringing realistic psychology and more recognizably human frailties to his superhero characters. When I asked him what he’d learned over the years about creating compelling characters like Peter Parker (Spider-Man) or Dr. Bruce Banner (The Hulk), he talked about the need “to make make the character empathetic and likable as best you can.”
“When you create a character, no matter how fantastic the character is, you try to make him in some way believable – as if there could be somebody like this. And then you try to make him likable so that the reader really hopes that the character succeeds at whatever he’s trying to do. Beyond that, I don’t know how to explain it. You do whatever you can to make that character appealing to a reader or to an audience. And you do that by the way you have the character talk, by the personality you give the character. What you’re doing is creating – you’re like a sculptor, you’re creating a being. And you can either make the being dull, or you can make the being interesting.”
Since the ‘Silver Age’ of comic books in the 1960s, Lee’s most vivid characters – Thor, Iron Man, the Hulk, the Silver Surfer, Spider-Man and others – have become part of American pop-mythology, similar to creations from Walt Disney, Mark Twain, Jim Henson or George Lucas. Not surprisingly, the highly erudite Lee – who can still quote long passages from Shakespeare – associates some of this with having steeped himself in mythology as a young man. “I read Greek mythology, Norse mythology, Roman – whatever I could find. I love mythology, I love fairy tales. I love anything bigger than life and imaginative and dramatic.”
When my Libertas Film Magazine co-editor Govindini Murty asked Lee whether he believed his characters are mythological figures for today, he smiled and became philosophical. “It would be nice if some day in the future they were thought of as our mythology,” he explained. “That would be great.”
Spider-Man, one of Lee's greatest creations.
Lee’s full cultural impact is explored in the new documentary With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story, which was picked up for distribution by the EPIX channel just prior to its screening at Slamdance. With Great Power is a comprehensive and heartfelt account of Lee’s life and career from his early days growing up in the Depression to his rise as the prime mover behind Marvel Comics and today’s comic book revolution at the movies.
Over sixty interviews were conducted for With Great Power, and the film features appearances from Samuel L. Jackson, Nicolas Cage, Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst and many of Lee’s colleagues. The film, a labor of love for its production team, also provides a rare, at-home glimpse into the man behind the Marvel phenomenon. With Great Power (which derives its title from a line in the original 1962 Spider-Man story: “With great power there must also come — great responsibility!”) is the result of over five years of work by a trio of directors – Terry Dougas, Will Hess, and Nikki Frakes – as well as a significant archival effort that unearthed Lee’s work on over 500 pop-culture characters.
Although Lee’s diehard fans will likely be familiar with Lee’s story from the 1960s forward, With Great Power also takes an in-depth look at many of his early challenges – including censorship battles waged against the comic book industry during the 1950s by psychiatrist Dr. Fredric Wertham. Wertham and his followers believed that comic books promoted youth ‘delinquency,’ and their lobbying and regulatory efforts nearly derailed Lee’s career before Lee mounted a major comeback in the 1960s.
Iron Man, one of Marvel's most popular characters.
With Great Power also documents Lee’s extensive efforts to give credit to his colleagues (particularly Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko) for Marvel’s success. Importantly, the film also introduces fans to Lee’s quick-witted and vivacious wife of almost 65 years, Joan Lee, and explores their touching relationship and the vital role she plays in inspiring her husband. With Great Power debuts on the EPIX channel on April 27th.
Of course, with huge successes over the past decade and a seemingly endless array of projects now in the pipeline (at the end of the master class, it took him almost 20 minutes to describe all of his current projects in development), Lee has made the full transition from promoter of ‘delinquency’ to national institution. His fans, once mostly teenagers, now include a worldwide readership of every generation, along with filmmakers, scholars and even Presidents. Indeed, With Great Power begins with Lee receiving the National Medal of Arts from President George W. Bush, and during the master class Lee proudly recollected how President Reagan had been an avid reader of Spider-Man.
But Lee clearly takes his greatest pride in his many characters, the imaginative creations that form his legacy. Of his many characters, Lee singled out the Silver Surfer as possibly his favorite. “I had the Silver Surfer make what I thought were philosophical comments about man, and where we’re going, and why we’re the way we are. [...] I tried to put all the things I think of into the Silver Surfer’s dialogue, so that’s why I enjoyed him very much.” (Lee’s favorite of his villains? Dr. Doom.)
To say that Lee’s plate is full these days would be a Hulk-sized understatement. On the immediate horizon he’s launching a new line of ‘reality’ comic books, a series of children’s books, a new YouTube partnership with Michael Eisner, a live rock opera, a new website, a new slate of international superheroes (hailing from India, China and South America), and he has two TV series and four new movies in development.
And, of course, Lee is looking forward to The Avengers and The Amazing Spider-Man this summer, along with Marvel’s forthcoming Ghost Rider sequel. Speaking about The Avengers, the voluble Lee nearly jumped out of his chair: “Wait till you see my cameo in that one! It’s the funniest one I’ve done yet. I can’t wait to see it myself. And it’s the same with Spider-Man – it’s unusual.”
Jason Apuzzo and Govindini Murty with Stan Lee at the Slamdance Film Festival.
When it comes to advice for young writers, Lee urged his audience to first and foremost write what they themselves enjoy.
“I write stories that I think I would like to read, and I hope there are enough people who have the same taste I do. I’m not that unique – I’m adorable, but I’m not that unique,” he quips. “I just write to please myself. [...] I have to confess: I am my biggest fan. I love everything I write, because if I didn’t love it, I wouldn’t write it.”
It’s fortunate that so many generations of Stan Lee’s readers love what he writes, as well.
Posted on February 1st, 2012 at 9:42am.
[Editor's Note: The post below appears today at The Huffington Post and the newly relaunched AOL-Moviefone site, where LFM's Jason Apuzzo and Govindini Murty will also now be blogging.]
By Jason Apuzzo. The Cold War is back – at least at the movies.
This weekend moviegoers can watch Meryl Streep portray ardent Cold Warrior Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady, Gary Oldman root out a dangerous Soviet mole from the British intelligence service in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and Tom Cruise race to prevent a Cold War-style nuclear exchange between America and Russia in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.
These films form part of a major Hollywood trend toward reawakening memories of the Cold War – an era that is suddenly returning with a vengeance on the big screen, with long-term implications for our popular culture.
Currently in the midst of an awards-season run, for example, Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar tells the story of legendary FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s decades’-long confrontation with Soviet infiltration of America. Also in the midst of an awards-season run is the ominous new documentary Khodorkovsky, which depicts how little Russia’s authoritarian governing style has changed since the dark days of the old Soviet Union.
Michael Fassbender in "X-Men: First Class."
And the trend doesn’t stop there. If Santa slipped new Blu-rays of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, X-Men: First Class, Apollo 18 or The Kennedys into your Christmas stocking, you just got another healthy dose of Cold War nostalgia from those films – because 2011 was a watershed year in Hollywood for reviving America’s long-standing rivalry with all things Russian and/or communist.
So, what’s going on here? Why is Hollywood suddenly reviving Russian communists, spies and autocrats as the go-to villains of choice?
The simplest answer may be that the old Soviet Union is gradually replacing Nazi Germany, Imperial Rome and space aliens as Hollywood’s favorite antagonists. In an industry still hesitant to make films about today’s War on Terror, and with memories of World War II fading, Russian authoritarians – including those of the present day variety – are on their way to becoming Hollywood’s safe, consensus villains of the moment.
This trend began in 2008, with of all things an Indiana Jones film. Set in 1957 at the height of the Cold War, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull featured Soviet communists as the villains, and despite grumbling from critics and internet fanboys the film played well in middle America – taking in over $317 million domestically (a figure even Ghost Protocol seems unlikely to match) and $786 worldwide. Perhaps just as significantly, the fact that the film had been made by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas seemingly gave the green light to other left-of-center filmmakers that depicting Reds as the villains was OK again.
Angelina Jolie in "Salt."
Soon Angelina Jolie was hunting sleeper Soviet agents in Salt (2010), Ed Harris and Colin Farrell were escaping a brutal Soviet gulag in Peter Weir’s extraordinary The Way Back (2010), and even Richard Gere and Martin Sheen were getting in on the act – smoking out a Russian mole in The Double (2011). Released here in the U.S. in 2010, Fred Ward played Ronald Reagan in the French Cold War spy thriller Farewell, and Renny Harlin’s action-drama 5 Days of War (2011) depicted the brutality of Russia’s recent invasion of Georgia.
To be fair, Russians haven’t been the only villains in this trend. MGM’s forthcoming remake of Red Dawn (read a review of an early cut of the film here) depicts a communist invasion of America by the North Koreans and Chinese, similar to the invasion of Australia depicted in Stuart Beattie’s recent thriller Tomorrow, When the War Began (2010). Bruce Beresford’s touching Mao’s Last Dancer (2009) recreated in heartbreaking detail the restrictions in Chinese communist society on artists. And perhaps no recent film captured communist tyranny more vividly than Mads Brügger’s gonzo documentary from 2009 on North Korea, The Red Chapel.
Sterling Hayden as Col. Jack D. Ripper in "Dr. Strangelove."
This movie revival of the Cold War – in its many Russian, Chinese and North Korean variations – has intriguing implications. For the past generation, many left-of-center filmmakers have been deeply invested in the notion that the Cold War was a kind of paranoid mirage, a tragicomic figment of Ronald Reagan and Whittaker Chambers’ imaginations. With few exceptions, the basic image created by these filmmakers of the Cold War – codified in films like Dr. Strangelove (1964), or more recently in Good Night, and Good Luck (2005) – has been one of an artificial conflict fueled by American militarism and bourgeois small-mindedness. The sardonic The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966) serves as perhaps the sine qua non of this genre.
This vision of the Cold War appears to be changing, however, among younger, less ideologically driven filmmakers. These filmmakers view the Cold War simply as a fertile field of storytelling possibilities about the struggle for freedom, in much the same way an older generation viewed World War II. Filmmakers today seem more eager to tell such stories about the Cold War, unearthing the past and depicting the sharp political divisions between East and West, perhaps because these filmmakers detect a continuity between communist tyrannies of the 20th century and similarly repressive regimes today.
After all, Brezhnev and Mao may be gone – but an ex-KGB man still runs Russia, and communists still run repressive regimes in China and North Korea. And America’s relationship with these nations sometimes seems no better than it was before.
After a 3D re-release, "Top Gun" is slated for a sequel.
Today’s Hollywood seems alive to these realities as never before, as reflected in a slate of new projects in the development pipeline that channel Cold War themes. Along with sequels to Salt, X-Men: First Class, Die Hard (with Die Hard 5 set to take place in Russia), and even Top Gun, work is also underway to re-boot the Jack Ryan franchise with Chris Pine in a new thriller called Moscow. Remakes of famous Cold War properties like Ice Station Zebra, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and even Colossus: The Forbin Project are also in development – along with adaptations of the books Londongrad, The Reluctant Communist, and the Red Star comic book.
On TV, HBO and FX are working on competing series about ’80s-era Soviet spies in the U.S., and HBO reportedly has another series in development about Cold War spies in Berlin.
As if that were not enough, Gerard Butler and Ed Harris will soon be trying to stop rogue Russian generals and KGB agents from starting World War III in Hunter Killer and Phantom, respectively. Or if your sensibilities run toward the art house, Andrzej Wajda is currently directing a biopic of Polish Solidarity leader Lech Walesa.
Granted, it shouldn’t be assumed that these films will express a uniformity of opinion about the Cold War, or about current international tensions. Indeed, several recent films like The Iron Lady, J. Edgar, and X-Men: First Class express a pronounced ambivalence about the Cold Warriors they depict.
Watching The Iron Lady, for example, you would hardly know why the Soviet Red Army newspaper labelled Margaret Thatcher “the Iron Lady” in the first place. The film is weirdly evasive of Thatcher’s vital role in ending the Cold War – barely alluding to it except in brief moments of Thatcher with Reagan and Gorbachev, or attending an event commemorating the end of the Cold War. The Iron Lady seems more concerned with Thatcher’s current state of physical fragility than in her momentous alliances with Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II and Lech Walesa in hastening the collapse of the Soviet state.
Still, the fascination that films like The Iron Lady or J. Edgar have with Cold Warriors of the past is obvious. And certainly none of these recent films bothers to romanticize the communist cause. Indeed, the days in Hollywood of dueling Che Guevara biopics (Che, The Motorcycle Diaries) – or of Katherine Hepburn wearing a frayed Mao jacket to the Oscars – seem long gone.
The Cold War is back in Hollywood, but this time the idea seems to be to support the winning side.
Posted on January 13th, 2012 at 5:24pm.
Dominic Cooper in "The Devil's Double," Michelle Yeoh in "The Lady," and Colin Farrell in "The Way Back."
[Editor's Note: this post appears today at The Huffington Post. Jason is very pleased to now be blogging at The Huffington Post.]
By Govindini Murty & Jason Apuzzo. Freedom is one of the most important prerequisites of artistic excellence. 2011 was distinctive for producing a number of critically acclaimed films that celebrated the history of the arts and of the cinema itself – from Martin Scorsese’s Hugo and Michel Hazanavicius’ The Artist, to Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris. Yet filmmaking never takes place in a vacuum, and these superb, literate films – which value knowledge, humanity, and civilization – are nonetheless the outgrowth of a free society, and would have had difficulty being made under circumstances of political tyranny.
It’s therefore worthwhile to celebrate the notable movies of 2011 that took the risk of advocating for democratic freedom, the political principle that makes so much film artistry possible. Some of these are foreign films created under the most difficult circumstances, while others are mainstream Hollywood productions made within the freedom of democratic society. Whether spectacular or intimate, tragic or comic, these films dramatized to audiences around the world the importance of liberty. With the revolutions of the Arab Spring, citizen protests in China, and the recent democracy demonstrations in Russia, 2011 was a remarkable year for democratic action and this year’s pro-freedom films often reflected this.
Given that many of these are foreign or independent films with multi-year releases, we thought it fair to include films that had their first theatrical or DVD release in the U.S. in 2011, or that screened in a U.S. film festival in 2011. Also, this is merely a list – not a ranking – so please consider each film on this list to have its own unique value.
Jafar Panahi in "This is Not a Film."
1. This is Not a Film – Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, Iran
This is Not a Film depicts in heartbreaking detail the house arrest of acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who was accused in 2010 of making a film critical of the Iranian government. Panahi vehemently denies the charges, yet he currently faces six years in jail and a twenty-year ban on filmmaking. Nonetheless, in This is Not a Film Panahi not only documents his own house arrest, revealing how the banal details of daily confinement can crush the human spirit; he also reveals how the creative impulse can survive even the most repressive circumstances, and inspire hope.
2. The Way Back – Peter Weir, U.S.
Starring Ed Harris, Colin Farrell, Jim Sturgess, and Saoirse Ronan and directed by Peter Weir, this epic and moving film based on real events tells the story of a group of Polish, American, and Russian political prisoners who escaped from a brutal Soviet gulag in 1941 and walked 4000 miles from Siberia to India and freedom. An extraordinary paean to liberty, The Way Back’s courageous protagonists repeatedly affirm their willingness to die in freedom rather than live out their lives in the slavery of Soviet communism. The film’s concluding montage depicting the events of the Cold War is a long overdue acknowledgment from Hollywood of how the fall of European communism freed millions of Poles, Czechs, Russians, and Eastern Europeans.
Jessica Chastain, Octavia Spencer in "The Help."
3. The Help – Tate Taylor, U.S.
The civil rights drama The Help reveals how the struggle for freedom is equally urgent when it comes to racial equality in America. With gripping performances from Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer and a powerful ensemble cast, The Help portrays the plight of African-American women who labored as house maids in the American South of the 1960s. The Help depicts the daily humiliations and injustices that grind down the human spirit and that form an ‘internal prison’ of despair that can be as destructive as any war, or act of violence. Taking place within recognizable domestic circumstances, The Help shows that our respect for civil rights in America is as important as our fight for human rights around the world.
4. Petition – Zhao Liang, China
A member of the ‘Digital Generation’ of independent Chinese documentarians, Zhao Liang depicts in Petition the Kafkaesque struggle of the Chinese people for justice from their own government. Petition follows real citizens, often poor and powerless, who travel from all across China to Beijing to petition the government for redress against local injustices. Zhao Liang goes into the petitioners’ shanty towns to hear their tragic tales of official malfeasance: unlawful imprisonment, confiscations of property, torture and death at the hands of local authorities. The petitioners wait months and sometimes years for their cases to be heard, and in the meantime eke out miserable existences in cardboard hovels on the sidewalks of Beijing. Following on Zhao Liang’s powerful Crime and Punishment, Petition is essential viewing for anyone who wishes to understand the abysmal state of human rights in communist China.
From "The Red Chapel."
5. The Red Chapel – Mads Brügger, Denmark
In one of the bravest films in recent memory, director Mads Brügger and Danish-Korean comedians Simon Jul Jørgensen and Jacob Nossell risk their lives traveling to North Korea to tweak/punk that nation’s tyrannical communist regime. Ostensibly visiting North Korea for the purpose of putting on a Danish socialist comedy show as an ‘inter-cultural exchange,’ the filmmakers’ true purpose is to document the censorship and inhumanity of the North Korean government. Referring to the communist dictatorship as “the most heartless and brutal totalitarian state ever created,” Brügger and his comedians repeatedly make fools of the authorities in this blackly satirical, poignant and insightful documentary. All the more relevant after the demise of Kim Jong Il, The Red Chapel follows on the heels of North Korea-themed films like Kimjongilia, Yodok Stories, and The Juche Idea in illustrating how the cinema can advocate for freedom by exposing tyranny.
6. Transformers: Dark of the Moon – Michael Bay, U.S.
Big summer popcorn movies are still some of the most effective (and entertaining) ways to convey the importance of fighting for freedom, as Michael Bay’s epic Transformers films have proven time and again. With a plot spanning the Cold War and America’s space race with Russia, this third film in the Transformers series features Decepticon robots scheming to enslave Earth – before Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf), his loyal Autobot friends, and the U.S. military come to the rescue. Much like Bay’s previous films, Dark of the Moon mixes spectacular action (here in breathtaking 3D) and cheeky humor with a celebration of America’s independent streak, fighting spirit, and passion for freedom. As Autobot leader Optimus Prime puts it, while defending his human allies from alien invasion: “The day will never come that we forsake freedom.”
From Michael Bay's "Transformers: Dark of the Moon."
7. The Devil’s Double – Lee Tamahori, Belgium/Netherlands
Starring Dominic Cooper in a career-making dual performance, The Devil’s Double tells the true story of Saddam Hussein’s villainous son Uday and his reluctant body double, Latif Yahia. Stylishly filmed by former James Bond director Lee Tamahori (Die Another Day), The Devil’s Double depicts the full tyranny of the Hussein family’s mafia-like reign in the ’80s and ’90s, dramatizing the plight of average Iraqis under their cruel and arbitrary rule. While taking not taking an overt position on the Iraq War, the film nonetheless depicts a brutal and ultimately doomed dictatorship that was a menace to the region – and to the human rights of the Iraqi people.
8. The Lady – Luc Besson, United Kingdom/France
Burmese democracy activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi has lived an extraordinary life, seemingly tailor-made for the big screen. The Lady tells the story of Aung San Suu Kyi’s (Michelle Yeoh) multi-decade struggle for democracy in Burma, now renamed Myanmar by its ruling military junta. The film depicts the poignancy of Suu Kyi’s struggle: leaving her happy marriage and family in England, she returns to her homeland of Burma to lead the struggle for democracy, with the party she founded (the National League for Democracy) ultimately winning the 1990 elections. The election results are invalidated, however, and Suu Kyi is placed under house arrest for much of the next twenty years. Besson depicts the tremendous sacrifices made by Aung San Suu Kyi as a wife and mother for the cause of Burmese freedom.
Emmanuelle Chriqui and Rupert Friend in "5 Days of War."
9. 5 Days of War – Renny Harlin, U.S.
Director Renny Harlin’s 5 Days of War is two things simultaneously: a crisp, high-octane action-war drama, and a heart-rending depiction of the brutal Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008. While largely side-stepping the initial cause of the invasion, 5 Days lingers on the human toll of the Russian assault, and on the courageous war reporters who struggled to get the story of war crimes out to the world. Featuring American stars like Val Kilmer, Andy Garcia, Dean Cain and Heather Graham, the film is as much an indictment of international indifference to human suffering as it is of the actual invasion. A stirring, emotional film that celebrates Georgia’s desire for freedom, 5 Days concludes with a moving postscript featuring real-life victims of the invasion describing atrocities committed against their families.
10. Battle: Los Angeles – Jonathan Liebesman, U.S.
American science fiction has always taken a keen interest in the struggle for freedom. An intense, stirring and patriotic ode to America’s fighting men and women, Battle: Los Angeles depicts a team of Marines – led by Aaron Eckhart as a rugged Marine staff sergeant – tasked with defending Los Angeles from a massive alien assault. Like an old-school World War II film, Battle: Los Angeles revels in the honor of military service, the basic code of fidelity to the mission and one’s fellow soldier – especially in the face of overwhelming odds. Against a backdrop of intense urban warfare, often resembling street fighting in Iraq, director Jonathan Liebesman captures the steadiness and quiet resolve of America’s soldiers as they defend civilians in an apocalyptic battle for human liberty.
Aaron Eckhart in "Battle: Los Angeles."
We’d like to thank our colleague Joe Bendel for helping us compile this list and for his work reviewing many of these films for Libertas Film Magazine. Other timely films from 2011 on the subject of freedom include: Khodorkovsky, the chilling account of the Russian mogul’s imprisonment by Putin; Cairo 6, 7, 8 and Scheherazade, Tell Me a Story, both portraying the struggle for women’s rights in modern Egypt; along with The Black Tulip and The Miscreants of Taliwood, about the efforts of average Afghans to resist Taliban rule.
Posted on December 31st, 2011 at 8:32am.
By Jason Apuzzo. The first trailer is now out for Sacha Baron Cohen’s forthcoming comedy, The Dictator, and for the most part I like it. Cohen has obviously thrown political correctness out the window, and at first glance it looks like this film could be hilarious. Take a look, and judge for yourself …
Posted on December 14th, 2011 at 12:38pm.
By Jason Apuzzo. We like to periodically put a spotlight on short films here at Libertas, and this recent short film above called “The Arab Spring” caught my eye over at Vimeo. The film is essentially an abstract representation of the historic events of the Arab Spring, and is quite polished in terms of its graphic design and sound. Take a look. We wish filmmaker Raoul Marks the best with it.
[UPDATE: The filmmaker has made the decision to remove the film from Vimeo. See the comments from filmmaker Raoul Marks in the comments section below.]
[UPDATE #2: The film is now back up, with a minor alteration.]
Posted on November 30th, 2011 at 11:40am.
Sam Worthington in a new ad for "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3." The game has grossed $775 million in its first 5 days.
By Jason Apuzzo. Since we first debuted Terror Watch as a series here at Libertas back on the weekend of September 11th, there have been a torrent of announcements regarding War on Terror-themed projects in Hollywood and in the indie film world – confirming that we have a major, bona fide trend in play here. The floodgates are obviously now open, and the War on Terror – interpreted as a traditional American fight for freedom – has suddenly become one of the hottest subjects in Hollywood.
What’s causing this trend? I have my theories, which are in order: 1) the weakening grip of the Baby Boomers on Hollywood; 2) the successful bin Laden raid; 3) Obama in the White House; 4) the astonishing success of video games like Call of Duty and Battlefield.
But actually I don’t particularly care what’s causing it any longer. All I know is that it’s about damn time.
• Among the big new projects announced recently, two really caught my eye: the Navy SEAL drama Rubicon, and the CGI Iraq War thriller Thunder Run. Rubicon will be written, directed and produced by Christopher McQuarrie – and the Rubicon story will serve as a platform for a movie, graphic novel and a videogame. Rubicon is set in Afghanistan and features the Navy SEALs as the heroes and the Taliban the villains. Fabulous! We’ve only been waiting for this sort of thing for what – 10 years? McQuarrie’s brother actually commanded a SEAL team, and the film will otherwise be co-produced with founding SEAL Team Six member Dan Capel.
As an added bonus: Rubicon will be a retelling of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, with the Navy SEALs taking the place of the samurai.
So am I looking forward to this project? Hell yes. The Seven Samurai connection in particular gives the storyline a kind of mythic overtone, elevating it above conventional action-thriller fare. Cineastes may recall, incidentally, that director John Sturges’ classic Western The Magnificent Seven had similar origins in Kurosawa’s film. Bravo to McQuarrie and team for having the ambition to try this, and we’ll root for this project getting fully off the ground in days ahead.
As for Thunder Run, that appears to be an even more unusual project – essentially a 3D CGI depiction of the heroic capture of Baghdad by American forces in April 2003. The film is based on the novel Thunder Run: The Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad, and Black Hawk Down screenwriters Robert Port and Ken Nolan are writing the adaptation. Amazingly, the film already has Gerard Butler, Sam Worthington and Matthew McConaughey attached, along with director Simon West (Con Air, Tomb Raider). In other words, this is a very hot property – and given the gigantic debut of Call of Duty this past week, expectations for this film could be absolutely off the charts. Also: Thunder Run already has a promo poster out. [Btw, I'm wondering if Sam Worthington is clearing all this stuff with James Cameron?]
"Seven Samurai"-inspired artwork (left) for "Rubicon."
As if that’s not enough, Brad Thor’s novel Takedown is now in development at Warner Brothers. Takedown deals with a butt-kicking former Navy SEAL Team 6 member who takes on an Al Qaeda plot to strike New York; think Jack Bauer on steroids
In other new projects: Michelle Monaghan (Machine Gun Preacher) will be playing an Afghanistan War vet in the indie drama Fort Bliss; Tom Hanks has been offered the lead in Patriot Down, about a U.S. President on the run after Air Force One gets shot down over Pakistan; Producer Frank Marshall (the Indiana Jones & Bourne films) will now be adapting some of Jeffrey Archer’s novels; Oliver Hirschbiegel will soon be directing Eye in the Sky about drone strikes; and Universal may be picking up a new comic book project called War Heroes – although that one looks vaguely annoying.
"The Devil's Double" hits Blu-ray.
• The Devil’s Double, which features an electrifying performance by Dominic Cooper in the dual role of Uday Hussein and his body double Latif Yahia, hits Blu-ray/DVD on November 22nd. If this film didn’t hit your area or you haven’t had the chance yet to check it out yet, this week will be your big chance. (Read Joe Bendel’s glowing review of the film from LFM’s coverage of Sundance.) Govindini and I were very impressed with the film and can’t recommend it enough.
• The big news, which came out just yesterday, is that the untitled Sony-Kathryn Bigelow ‘hunt for bin Laden’ movie has a new official release date of December 19th, 2012. Also: the movie apparently has its star, Jason Clarke (I’m not familiar with him), with prominent people like Tom Hardy (The Dark Knight Rises), Guy Pearce, Idris Elba (Thor) and Rooney Mara (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) circling other roles.
The initial rap against this film – in part – was that Sony had selected an October 2012 release date to capitalize on next year’s election and bolster Obama’s flagging re-election hopes. As I expressed in my initial Terror Watch, though, it didn’t seem very likely to me that Bigelow would even be able to make that date – and sure enough the movie has now been pushed off to mid-December, probably as late as Sony could go without dropping the film into January, a no-no for any film with award-season ambitions.
So what will the film be like? We simply don’t know yet. An interesting footnote, however: a competing Navy SEAL-bin Laden movie is already in the works called Code Name Geronimo, and yet another SEAL Team 6 project is currently being shopped around based on the new book SEAL Target Geronimo. Expect more of this sort of thing in the future. Someone might want to consider making a film, for example, called SEAL Team 6 Kills Code Name Geronimo bin Laden. Just a thought. Continue reading »
By Jason Apuzzo. It appears that we may have a new film movement afoot, inspired by the Occupy Wall Street protests: “Occupy Cinema.” For the moment this movement seems to be situated around just a few sites: Cine Foundation International, Occupy Cinema and Cinemas In Solidarity. However, I sense a trend growing – a filmic uprising that may change the cinema as we know it.
Or not.
A movement in the making?
I recently watched two of the film offerings at Cine Foundation International, and decided to embed their latest – a short film titled “#Occupy Cinema Untitled 1” – above, for LFM readers’ consideration. Frankly, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the film, so I decided to email my old colleague, Professor Jacques de Molay, Professor of Cinema & Neurosemiotics at the University of Northern California. I was very eager to seek out Jacques’ opinion about the film – as he’s always had a better feel for radical, transgressive cinema than I do.
As regular Libertas readers know, Jacques is a widely recognized Marxist intellectual, and last appeared on our site here to provide a guest review of Piranha 3D, which he liked very much – interpreting the film as a subversive parable on ‘consumerism.’ As Jacques put it at the time, reviewing Piranha: “after the Wall Street collapse, commerce in today’s capitalist society can only end in bloody apocalypse – a farrago of bikini tops, chewed limbs … and shattered ideals.”
With this in mind, I asked Jacques what he thought of the film above. He emailed me this reply, from his vacation home in St. Bart’s: Continue reading »
By Jason Apuzzo. A new trailer for Act of Valor is now out. Check it out above. Featuring active-duty Navy SEALs in action, Act of Valor opens nationwide on February 17th.
Posted on November 15th, 2011 at 12:26pm.
By Jason Apuzzo. While we’re on the subject of major figures of the Cold War era (see the J. Edgar review below), a new trailer has just arrived for The Iron Lady, about Margaret Thatcher.
So will this be the hit job many people are fearing, or something more complex and true-to-life? Judge for yourself.
Posted on November 14th, 2011 at 11:26am.
Leonardo DiCaprio & Armie Hammer in the lead roles.
By Jason Apuzzo. THE PITCH: Director Clint Eastwood and star Leonardo DiCaprio bring the colorful and controversial life of legendary FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to the big screen, in a sprawling and complex biopic covering some 50+ years of American domestic history.
THE SKINNY: Eastwood’s relaxed, naturalistic directing style combines with a charismatic performance from DiCaprio to create a mostly sympathetic portrait of Hoover, albeit one that traffics in shopworn clichés of ‘50s anti-communist ‘paranoia’ and Kinsey-style sexual repression. J. Edgar bites off far more history than it can chew in 2 1/2 hours, however, and suffers mightily from its slow pace.
WHAT WORKS: • Leonardo DiCaprio has finally begun to hit his stride as an actor, delivering a voluble, eccentric take on Hoover – treating him as a dapper, genial workaholic with an occasional tendency to overstep his bounds. DiCaprio’s enthusiasm for the character is palpable, however, and mitigates the film’s sporadic tendency to belittle Hoover’s accomplishments.
• Eastwood’s direction softens some of the sharp edges in Dustin Lance Black’s script, keeping the focus on the characters rather than on Oliver Stone-style political showboating. Ideologues of both the left and right will not get out of J. Edgar what they want; the film is much more a Citizen Kane-style character study (complete with flashback structure) than a referendum on the anti-communist cause or the legacy of the FBI and its methods. The film is far too fond of Hoover to be considered left wing, yet too ambivalent toward Hoover’s politics to be considered right wing.
• The question of Hoover’s sexuality is broached tastefully, basically depicting him as too tightly wound for relationships of any kind. In fact, throughout the entire film he receives a grand total of one kiss – forced on him awkwardly by his friend, Clyde Tolson. As presented in the film, Hoover’s greatest passion is quite obviously his work.
• J. Edgar otherwise features strong supporting performances by Armie Hammer as Hoover’s colleague and companion Clyde Tolson, Naomi Watts as Hoover’s long-suffering secretary Helen Gandy, and Judi Dench as Hoover’s mother – the steel in J. Edgar’s spine.
Arriving at the Lindbergh estate.
Henry Cavill in "Immortals."
By Jason Apuzzo. THE PITCH: Commercial and music video director Tarsem reinvents the ancient Greek Theseus myth in Immortals, featuring rugged Brit star Henry Cavill (the new Superman) and coming from the same producer, Mark Canton, who revitalized the Sword & Sandal genre with 300.
THE SKINNY: Jettisoning any actual Greek mythology from his story, Tarsem repurposes Theseus’ ancient heroics into a violent, vacuous cross-cultural mash-up for the video game/UFC generation – a stylized ballet of severed limbs, senseless plot devices and wild costuming. Immortals – which likely deserved an X rating – is a film neither for the faint of heart, nor the lively of mind.
"No, John Galliano didn't design my helmet!"
WHAT WORKS: • Although the film’s costumes and production design – which extravagantly blend North African, Indian, Persian and occasionally even some Greek influences – make little sense in the context of the story, they bring a visual novelty to the film that grabs one’s attention. The garb of the Olympian gods, and the armor of the Titans, deserve special praise.
• Years of bizarre behavior and dissipated living have made Mickey Rourke into a good hire to play a wicked tyrant. His King Hyperion, who bears no connection to any Theseus myth I’m aware of, is nonetheless a formidable and interesting villain – a kind of Colonel Kurtz of the ancient world, decked out in bronze bunny ears. As an interesting side note, the disjointed terrain of Rourke’s face has begun to resemble a Paul Klee painting – fascinating to look at (particularly in 3D), even for long spells of time.
WHAT DOESN’T WORK: • Having drained the story of any meaningful connection to Greek mythology or history (which, one assumes, he finds dull), Tarsem has nowhere to go with the Theseus story excerpt to turn it into a generic, head-chopping ‘hero’s journey’ like a thousand similar films before it. Immortals, trite in the extreme, shows less respect to the core cannon of Greek myth than your average comic book movie shows toward comic book lore.
• Outside of Mickey Rourke, Immortals features not a single noteworthy performance – including those of Henry Cavill and Freida Pinto, who make for a handsome but pitifully dull couple. And although Luke Evans is passable as a young Zeus, the rest of the Olympian gods are almost laughable, like something out of a high school performance of Godspell. Continue reading »
The Minotaur goes to work on Theseus in "Immortals."
By Jason Apuzzo. • Immortals is upon us, opening this Friday in 3D. As LFM readers know, I love the Sword & Sandal genre – it might actually be my favorite type of movie, among the many that we discuss here at Libertas – and so I’m looking forward to seeing the film. I grew up on films like Clash of the Titans and Jason and the Argonauts, the Steve Reeves Hercules films, and Ben-Hur – so it takes absolutely no effort for me to get revved up about a film like this. Especially when there’s a Minotaur involved.
At the same time, based on how Immortals is being marketed, I’m a very long way from believing it’s going to be anything other than a vacuous exercise in style, a kind of Chanel commercial in togas. Having watched/read recent interviews (see here and here) with the film’s director, Tarsem Singh, I have no sense that the film has any kind of personal meaning for him or anybody else involved. Nor do I sense as yet that the film is anything other than a cash-in on the ongoing popularity of 300, from which it obviously draws its inspiration.
Part of this, I confess, has to do with the cast – none of whom is really grabbing my attention. Henry Cavill, who is currently shooting the forthcoming Superman reboot, is someone I haven’t seen before except in 2002’s The Count of Monte Cristo, a film that did nothing for me. He doesn’t look all that interesting, frankly. As for the rest of the cast – Stephen Dorff, Luke Evans, Kellan Lutz – I barely even know who these people are. And as far as the women in the film, Isabel Lucas was appealing enough in Red Dawn, and in the second Transformers movie as a sexually aggressive alien robot … but having her play Athena? The goddess of wisdom? That seems like quite a stretch, like something you’d see in a high school play – along with cardboard swords and paper-mache busts of Caesar. As for Freida Pinto, my sense is that her 15 minutes of fame are rapidly dwindling – prior to her inevitable cash-out three years from now as a Bond girl.
And then there’s Mickey Rourke, wearing what appear to be bronze bunny ears. I’m still trying to figure that one out.
So to say that I’m skeptical is an understatement. Still, the film’s costumes look good, and a great deal of thought seems to have been put into the visual design of the film – so we’ll see. In the meantime, you can read this incredibly inane interview with Tarsem, the cast members are also out talking about the film (Cavill, Rourke, Dorff), you can catch photos of the film and also 8 new clips. Also: the film has new TV spots (here and here), and a graphic novel is apparently on its way; also, the NY Times has a new feature on the film’s stylized violence.
Mickey Rourke in bronze bunny ears as King Hyperion in "Immortals."
• One of the best rumors of late in the Sword & Sandal world – indeed, one of the best movie rumors overall, of late – is that Steven Spielberg may direct Gods and Kings, an epic revolving around the life of Moses. I think this is a fabulous idea, assuming it can be made to happen. Deadline Hollywood reported recently that Spielberg has already read the Gods and Kings script by Michael Green and Stuart Hazeldine, and that the film would be made by Warner Brothers – likely with involvement from DreamWorks.
Where to begin? To have the director of Schindler’s List and Raiders of the Lost Ark take on the life of Moses would seem to make perfect sense. Spielberg would bring an old-fashioned, humanistic warmth and sentimentality to the project that very few directors have anymore, while also bringing a sense of spectacle, adventure and showmanship into the mix, as well. So for what it’s worth, I love the idea of him doing this – although I hope he’d change the title; Gods and Kings sounds a bit too anodyne, for my taste – or maybe just too close to Gods and Generals, I can’t tell. And anyway, aren’t we really talking about ‘Prophets and Pharaohs’ here?
Charlton Heston as a young Moses.
Spielberg is also a major admirer of Cecil B. DeMille’s (watch any documentary on DeMille and you’ll always see Spielberg singing his praises), and I strongly suspect that Spielberg would love to have a DeMille-style religious/family epic of this sort under his belt to cement his legacy – the type of film that could be watched on holidays in perpetuity, much like DeMille’s Ten Commandments. Adjusted for inflation, incidentally, The Ten Commandments is still the #5 movie of all time at the box office, and would’ve made over a billion dollars domestically at today’s ticket prices.
Of course, I don’t know a lot about Gods and Kings; it could be that the screenwriters have opted for a less traditional take on the story than what I’m expecting. Be that as it may, it seems likely that with a project of this kind Spielberg would be swinging for the fences, trying to hit a major home run at the box office and also tell a story that would – in our increasingly fractious times – unite audiences worldwide.
Were I to guess, I’d say that he will likely do some kind of Moses film – although the script will need to match his personal agenda, more than the screenwriter’s. It’s conceivable that this project will remain in development for a while, if he doesn’t like what he sees initially, but I’d bet he’ll give the Moses story a try before too long.
By the way, do I dare mention the possibility of parting the Red Sea … in 3D?
