LFM Co-Editor Govindini Murty was on Lars Larson’s national radio show tonight, talking about the big new movie releases this weekend – including Machete, The American, and also Mao’s Last Dancer.

Special thanks, as always, to Lars and his staff for inviting Govindini on. 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.

Posted on September 3rd, 2010 at 7:30pm.

[Editor's Note: Recently I came across this striking video above, by New York-based filmmaker Richard Mosse. At first glance, I was shocked by what appeared to be a shahid-style terror video made by a Western filmmaker. Watching the video through, however, it occurred to me that this likely was not an actual terror video, so much as a kind of 'genre' piece or riff on terror videos. My thoughts then moved to the question of what an expert in this area might think of it. Fortunately I was able to turn to LFM Contributer 'Max Garuda,' who works in the field and has access to Arabic translation.]

“A short terror video made in Gaza. Possibly the only such video ever made by non-Palestinian producers. As a result, the representation breaks with the conventions of the Palestinian suicide video genre. In Arabic, ’shahid’ means martyr, or witness.” - Filmmaker/photographer Richard Mosse, describing his video Shahid.

By ‘Max Garuda‘. The artist’s commentary above alerts the viewer to the existence of a ‘terrorist video genre,’ and that Mosse’s creation breaks with that category. This assertion raises two questions: what is the ‘terrorist video genre’ and what conventions does Mosse’s video contest? (An argument can be made that any film belongs in any genre if anyone can make a compelling argument for inclusion. Or, said differently, film/video genres are not fixed sets of criteria by which categorizations are easily made. Rather, they are fluid, evolving bodies of work, responding to artistic practice, distribution/marketing strategies and audience expectations.)

That being said, why does Mosse desire to characterize his video within the ‘terrorist video genre’ or by comparison to it – especially when the differences that do exist are so significant enough to make a strong argument that his video doesn’t break from the genre, but rather has nothing to do with the genre. But first, a little background on the ‘terrorist video genre.’

The 'theater of terror.'

As the title might suggest, the most obvious distinguishing characteristic of the genre was originally the provenence of the video followed by content. Generally speaking, only terrorists made ‘terrorist videos,’ which were used to showcase the terrorizing act or transmit a message requiring some expression of authenticity. The terrorist act depends on shock and a visceral reaction by the ‘public’ of the terrorized. A beheading that occurs in the forest is just a beheading; a beheading captured on video and spread globally by broadcast news or the Internet is an act of terror. Videos showing murders, explosions and other deadly acts were created to broaden the impact of the terrorist act. The ‘theater of terror’ is a common framework for understanding terrorism, in which the terrorist’s act must have the paralyzing effect of fear – because the scope of the actual violence is quite limited. Even the 9/11 attacks, with their relatively high death toll, depend on the ‘theater of terror’ effect for their power–changing how Americans (and other countries and their citizens) conduct their daily lives, from intrusive security measures to a simple constant state of fear. Many early terrorist videos operated in this domain.

The other common example of early terrorist videos were simply video-based messages. Whether VHS tapes smuggled out of remote bivouacs to eager news outlets or digital videos posted to websites, the form of the terrorist video was targeted primarily at followers of the movement, to ensure them that the leadership was still alive and in control. Hence, the periodic release of a video of Osama bin Laden exhorting his followers or Ayman al-Zawahiri expounding on a facet of Islamic exegesis that fits his extremist goals. The target of these videos was generally the faithful, and secondly the ‘contested populations’ or those that don’t openly support the extremists but aren’t too convinced of the piety, competence and forthrightness of local government.

Strategic messaging.

More recently, though, we see a fusion of these two goals (theater of terror and strategic messaging) into the genre of the ‘terrorist video’ that Mosse and his collaborators purport to produce. In this newer class of terrorist videos, we usually see direct address of the camera by the producing group, images of their heroes (Bin Laden, Al-Zarqawi, etc.), and sometimes images of their terrorist acts or types of acts the video implies are imminent. Because these newer videos are not as gruesome as the beheading type video, and because they are frequently hagiographic in their treatment of extremist heroes and martyrs, their access to the ‘theater of terror’ is less about instilling fear in a subject population, but rather in making a spectacle of the process of terrorism and thus improve recruitment within the contested population (particularly disaffected youth). Continue reading »

LFM Co-Editor Govindini Murty was on Lars Larson’s national radio show yesterday, talking about the big new movie releases this weekend – including the Avatar re-release.

Special thanks, as always, to Lars and his staff for inviting Govindini on. 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.

Posted on August 28th, 2010 at 8:04am.

By Jason Apuzzo. I’m curious as to what people think of this preview (above) for NBC’s forthcoming series, The Event.  Here are the main elements I’m getting from this trailer:

• Heroic, charismatic young black President.

• CIA conspiracy involving illegal detainees.

• A secret detention facility in Alaska?

• Some sort of 9/11-type event.

I believe this is what is referred to as ‘on the nose’-style filmmaking.  And we apparently now have the Obama Administration’s own version of The West Wing.

Somehow you knew this was coming, didn’t you?

[Special thanks to LFM's Patricia Ducey for tipping me off about this.]

[Special thanks to Hot Air for linking to this post.]

Posted on August 24, 2010 at 2:20pm.

By Jason Apuzzo. As many of you are aware, we’ve been highly critical of late of Sylvester Stallone’s new film The Expendables, which features an extremely nasty caricature of a CIA agent, as played by Eric Roberts.  [See our thoughts on the film here and here.]  Our criticism of the film in fact recently made The LA Times.

All of this is of note because in a recent interview Stallone did on Fox News with Bill O’Reilly on Thursday, August 19th, Stallone responds to unnamed critics who have taken him to task on his depiction of the CIA and of ostensible ‘imperialist’ American overreach overseas.

Since I’m not aware of any other film site that’s taken Stallone to task on these issues as we have, I will proceed under the assumption that he’s responding to Libertas – or has otherwise been made aware of our criticisms.

Watch the segment of the interview between 3:05 – 3:30 for Stallone’s remarks on this subject.  His denials of our criticism are, unfortunately, difficult to square with what is actually depicted in his film – in which a druglord/ex-CIA operative collaborates with the brutal regime of a South American country in order to exploit that country’s cheap labor and resources.

One final note here: we like and respect Bill O’Reilly here at LFM.  In fact, LFM’s own Govindini Murty has appeared as a guest on Mr. O’Reilly’s show twice.  Unfortunately, however, Bill did not bother to actually see The Expendables before conducting this interview – something he admits at the outset.  Had he actually seen the film, it’s unlikely he would have agreed with the characterization of the film by Stallone and others as being benignly ‘patriotic.’  It isn’t.  The only flag Stallone waves in this film is his own.

Posted on August 21, 2010 at 11:56am.

LFM Co-Editor Govindini Murty was on Lars Larson’s national radio show yesterday, talking about the big new movie releases this weekend – including Mao’s Last Dancer, Salt and the upcoming Avatar re-release.

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.

Posted on August 21st, 2010 at 11:53am.

LFM Co-Editor Govindini Murty was on Lars Larson’s national radio show yesterday, talking about the big new movie releases this weekend, and also Salt.

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.

Posted on August 14th, 2010 at 1:01pm.

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; the feature film remakes of The Thing and The Outer Limits; Robert Evans’ feature film remake of Gerry Anderson’s influential British TV series UFO; Spielberg’s forthcoming TV series Falling Skies; the ongoing alien invasion series V; 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), Gareth Edwards’ Monsters, 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.

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 »

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 »

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.

Endless proliferations of self.

By Jason Apuzzo. Yesterday’s LFM post on Michael Moore being voted to the Motion Picture Academy’s Board of Governors was mentioned yesterday in Patrick Goldstein’s LA Times piece on the controversy.  We want to thank Patrick for his regular readership of our site.

I also wanted to respond to one point made in Patrick’s article:

Inside the industry, reaction was more muted, with one screenwriter musing: “If the academy has any brains at all, they’d better frisk Moore before every meeting to make sure he doesn’t try to bring a hidden camera. If you thought Wall Street and General Motors were fat targets for muckraking, that’s nothing compared to the academy.”

This is actually the first thing I thought of when I heard about Moore’s election – not so much that he would bring a camera into board meetings (a droll idea, by the way), but that he would grandstand in public over matters that might otherwise be kept in-house.  The basic métier of people like Moore is to turn everything into a public, political controversy – essentially a circus spectacle, with him as ring master.  It’s all too easy to imagine this sort of thing happening in the case of, say, the awarding of honorary Oscars.  An acquaintance of mine on the Board, for example, was involved some years back in the controversial decision to give Elia Kazan an honorary Oscar.  What would Moore have made of that?  Would he really have kept his mouth shut?

The ironic thing here is that Moore’s career has basically been on the slide since Fahrenheit 9/11, and all this sort of thing does is reanimate him like some shambling vampire from an Ed Wood movie.

Beyond this, it’s come to my attention that certain on-line conservatives are actually praising this election of Moore on the basis of him being a gifted documentarian. What a farce.  Moore has absolutely destroyed documentary filmmaking, turning it into a cheap vehicle for filmmaker narcissism and half-assed propagandizing.  Moore has absolutely reversed all the advances that Richard Leacock and D. A. Pennebaker (Primary, Monterey Pop, The War Room) or Albert and David Maysles (Gimme Shelter, Grey Gardens) brought to documentary filmmaking from the 1960s forward, in terms of letting the documentary camera tell stories without the intrusiveness of narration or editorializing.  This is what American documentary filmmaking represented at the height of its influence on the world cinema stage – when filmmakers as diverse as Jean-Luc Godard, George Lucas, Francis Coppola and Martin Scorsese cited the American documentary school as their chief influence.

D.A. Pennebaker's famous shot of Jimi Hendrix from "Monterey Pop."

As Pennebaker said back in 1971:

“It’s possible to go to a situation and simply film what you see there, what happens there, what goes on, and let everybody decide whether it tells them about any of these things. But you don’t have to label them, you don’t have to have the narration to instruct you so you can be sure and understand that it’s good for you to learn.” Continue reading »

By Jason Apuzzo. As reported at Deadline Hollywood, Michael Moore (along with Kathryn Bigelow, and Lawrence of Arabia editor Anne Coates) has been elected to the Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Board of Governors.

Forgive me, but the election of this Riefenstahl-in-a-fat-suit is repulsive.  Utterly contemptible, divisive – and richly evocative of the climate of fear that currently pervades an industry in which dissent from the left-liberal line is not tolerated.  I could not be more disgusted by this.

What most people don’t know is that at least one of the Motion Picture Academy’s Board of Governors is a conservative.  But I can’t say who it is – because of course, I don’t want this person getting in trouble.  That’s the way this town really works.

I don’t even know where to begin on this one, folks.  The ongoing ruination of what was once a special institution continues unabated, apparently with no adults around to stop it.

[Update: The LA Times' Patrick Goldstein links to this post today (7/7) in his own piece on Moore's election.  I'd like to respond to one point in Patrick's article:

Inside the industry, reaction was more muted, with one screenwriter musing: "If the academy has any brains at all, they'd better frisk Moore before every meeting to make sure he doesn't try to bring a hidden camera. If you thought Wall Street and General Motors were fat targets for muckraking, that's nothing compared to the academy."

This is actually the first thing I thought of when I heard about Moore's election - not so much that he would bring a camera into board meetings (a droll idea, by the way), but that he would grandstand in public over matters that might otherwise be kept in-house.  The basic métier of people like Moore is to turn everything into a public, political controversy - essentially a circus spectacle, with him as ring master.  It's all too easy to imagine this sort of thing happening in the case of, say, the awarding of honorary Oscars.  An acquaintance of mine on the Board, for example, was involved some years back in the controversial decision to give Elia Kazan an honorary Oscar.  What would Moore have made of that?  Would he really have kept his mouth shut?]

Posted on July 7th, 2010 at 12:55pm.

[Editor's Note: A special thank you to Lars Larson for having me on his national radio talk show to discuss the Twilight series.]

By Govindini Murty. The entertainment industry has been amazed these last few years by the runaway success of the Twilight movies.  Based on the best-selling novels by Stephanie Meyer, the Twilight Saga has already grossed more than $1.2 billion dollars worldwide on a combined budget of approximately $150 million – and it looks like the latest film, Eclipse, will be adding several hundred million more to that total.  But is it so surprising that the doomed romanticism that the Twilight series revels in – with its dangerous, brooding hero and its imperiled, virginal heroine – should be so popular with millions of emotionally vulnerable young girls?

This sort of stuff has been popular since the late 18th century, when the Romantic movement in literature – and its subset of the Gothic romance novel – titillated young women with tales of innocent damsels falling into the hands of dark, Byronic heroes with mysterious pasts and supernatural attributes.  Such novels as The Castle of Otranto, The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Monk featured mysterious settings – castles, dungeons, and dark woods – swirling in atmospheres of madness and occultism.  Later, talented writers like Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice), Emily Bronte (Wuthering Heights), and Charlotte Bronte (Jane Eyre) would tone down or remove altogether the horror elements of the Gothic romance novels and make the key conflicts psychological rather than supernatural.  Other writers – like Dr. Polidori with Vampyr, and Bram Stoker with Dracula – chose to play up the supernatural horror elements instead.  Stephanie Meyer updates it all today in her Twilight novels with a slick, easily digestible form of Gothic Romanticism that keeps all the emotional hot buttons of the genre, but removes the psychological complexity.  Meyer’s novels also whitewash the genuinely disturbing moral overtones that creatures like vampires and werewolves traditionally have, and romanticizes them instead.  Much the same can be said of the Twilight movies themselves.  Since so much of the third Twilight film Eclipse (opening this week) depends on what happens in the first two films, I am covering all three films of the Twilight Saga in this review.

I liked the first Twilight film and thought it was fairly entertaining.  Catherine Hardwicke did a credible job directing it, and certainly captured the emotional dynamics of teen love.  Twilight tells the story of Bella Swan (played by Kristen Stewart), a young woman who feels alienated from normal society – like many teenage girls going through the awkward pains of growing up.  Bella’s parents are divorced.  Her remarried mother wants to follow her minor-league baseball player husband around the country, so she sends Bella to live with her father in the small town of Forks, Oregon, where she will supposedly have a more stable existence.  Instead, one day at school Bella meets a handsome, pale young man named Edward Cullen (played by Robert Pattinson).  Edward, in the best Gothic novel tradition, is surly, brooding, and mysterious – and a vampire.  In short order, Bella and Edward fall in love and begin a forbidden romance.

Edward and Bella in their flowery bower.

I should mention that this romance is only possible because the vampires in Twilight have been removed of most of their troubling aspects: they can venture out in daylight (but not direct sunlight), and they don’t have to sleep in coffins or even drink human blood.  Edward is removed of that unpleasant trait by the fact that he and his vampire clan the Cullens drink animal blood, not human blood, and thus are known as “vegetarians.”

Bella and Edward’s romance plays out in the dark, cloud-swept woods of the Pacific Northwest, with the towering trees, steep mountains, and dramatic river gorges taking the place of the turrets, castles, and moats of the traditional Gothic novel.  (The film pays tribute to this Gothic heritage in a fantasy sequence where Bella imagines Edward looming over her as she swoons on a couch; the shot is directly lifted from Henry Fuseli’s famous 18th century Romantic-Gothic painting “The Nightmare”)  It is here that I liked best how Catherine Hardwicke handled the material of the first Twilight movie.  The sequence of scenes as Bella finds out that Edward is a vampire, confronts him in the dark woods, and then follows him into a sunlit meadow filled with flowers – is wonderfully handled by Hardwicke.  The sequence ends with the mutually infatuated pair of Bella and Edward simply lying in the meadow of flowers looking at each other.  The setting is reminiscent of Tristan and Isolde’s flowery bower where the lovers secretly meet to consummate their love.  Only in Twilight, the two lovers don’t consummate their love – in fact they don’t even kiss at first – but only chastely look at each other.

Vampire Adonis.

What is interesting about the first Twilight film is also what is interesting in general about the chivalric romances of the Middle Ages and the Gothic/Romantic tales of the 18th and 19th centuries.  In all these tales, the love of the two young lovers may be forbidden by society and even by God, but it is shown to be in accord with nature – which is held up as an alternate source of allegiance.  The medieval chivalric romances in particular flourished at a time when organized religion was felt to be stultifying the demands of the individual human heart.  The church had become so powerful, its officially-sanctioned religion (with its network of giant cathedrals, enormous bureaucracies, and elaborate rituals) so pervasive and yet so apparently empty of real faith, that many in the Middle Ages saw Europe as a faithless wasteland.  Hence one sees in the numerous medieval “Grail” romances knights such as Parzifal, Lancelot, and Gawain venturing through the wasteland – the symbol for a land without faith – to search for the Holy Grail, a timeless symbol of individual integrity and true belief in God.

Along the way, though, many of these knights – such as Lancelot and Tristan – fall prey to the temptations of human love and steal away into nature to be with their beloveds.  They will never see the Holy Grail as a result – that is only for the pure of heart – but they will realize their human capacity for love and will thus fulfill nature’s design, if not God’s.  This is where the Twilight films pick up.  There is no reference to God or morality or organized religion in the Twilight films.  Nature, of which the vampires are visually portrayed as a part, is the overwhelming, mystical force that governs all.  Thus, in a strange sense, the Twilight movies inhabit the same pantheistic ground as the nature-worshipping Avatar – though without that latter film’s obnoxious politics.

To carry forward the forbidden-love-as-union-with-nature metaphor, the vampire Edward in Twilight is depicted not as a loathsome, ghoulish thing of the night, but as a pale white perfect being who glitters like diamonds in the sunlight, as if he is made of some rare mineral – a glittering, crystalline Carrara marble – that is created by nature itself.  Edward may as well be one of the many martyred young gods – Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis, St. Sebastian – who has been loved by women since antiquity, but is here loved by a teenage American girl.  The glade full of flowers in which Edward and Bella meet reinforces this mythic imagery: Edward’s appearance coincides with the flowering of nature – just as other beautiful young men who die young – Adonis, Narcissus, and Hyacinthus – are associated with the blooming of the aenenome, narcissus, and hyacinth flowers.  When Bella returns to the forest glade on her own, it is a dry, withered place without Edward.  Bella herself does not get nearly as interesting a mythic imagery, but that is only to be expected since she is the place-holder for the audience – and her awkward, stumbling humanity is necessary to keep the audience’s focus on the mythic love object, Edward. Continue reading »

Jason Apuzzo

Fred Thompson

We want to thank Senator Fred Thompson for having LFM Co-Editor Jason Apuzzo on his national radio show today to talk about MGM’s forthcoming Red Dawn, and other issues we’ve been covering here at LFM.

We want to welcome Fred’s listeners to LFM.  Fred is a warm, engaging person whose extraordinary career has encompassed both Hollywood and Washington – and we thank him for his interest in what we’re doing here at LFM.

To hear the show, and for more information on Fred’s program, please visit the Fred Thompson Show’s official website.  To see Fred in action on-screen, LFM recommends two classics from early in Fred’s career: The Hunt for Red October, and Die Hard 2 …

Posted on June 18th, 2010 at 11:12am.

We want to thank Lars Larson for having LFM Co-Editor Govindini Murty on his national radio show yesterday to talk about MGM’s forthcoming Red Dawn, and other issues we’ve been covering here at LFM.

Lars is a fun and intelligent guy who runs one of the best talk shows on radio, and we hadn’t even known that his father appeared in the original Red Dawn …

To hear the show, and for more information on Lars’ program, please visit the show’s official website.

Posted on June 12th, 2010 at 7:21pm.

"We all read Libertas ... so should you!"

By Jason Apuzzo. Our recent post about MGM’s forthcoming remake of Red Dawn (see here) has gotten quite a bit of attention around the internet.

First of all, we want to thank Patrick Goldstein of The LA Times who just did an entire piece today on our reaction to Red Dawn.  We especially want to thank Patrick for his kind words about LFM:

“… Libertas Film Magazine, a newly revived version of the blog that set the standard for smart conservative film writing and in its first weeks of new life has already easily surpassed Andrew Breitbart’s Big Hollywood, if for no other reason than that Apuzzo and his film-loving cohorts (including the always provocative Govindini Murty, who recently weighed in with a stirring defense of “Sex & the City 2″) don’t spend all their waking hours simply bashing all the usual lefty Hollywood suspects.”

That’s very kind of Patrick, and we want to thank him for stating, in just a few words, what we feel makes us unique.

Also, since our initial post, we’ve spoken to an executive at MGM about the new Red Dawn, and he provided us with some exciting details about the film.  Additionally, he confirmed a few basic points about the film: 1) the negative cost for the film is actually around $42 million; 2) Red Dawn as yet has no release date due to the complex situation at MGM; 3) Connor Cruise appears in the film, but is not actually the film’s main star.  However, the great news is that the film is apparently going to be as hardcore as it seems, and based on what we’ve already been told conservatives will be electrified by this film.

We’ll have a lot more to report about Red Dawn down the line.

Posted on June 10, 2010 at 11:32am.

By Jason Apuzzo. A $75 million movie from MGM about a Chinese communist invasion of the United States. A brazenly patriotic smack-down of Obama-era socialism.  Centering around an Afghanistan war vet.    Starring Tom Cruise’s son. Featuring music by Toby Keith. With a plot devised with help from the RAND Corporation.

A hard-core remake of Red Dawn.

I know what you’re thinking – because it’s what I’ve been thinking since I first heard details about all this several days ago.  This is all some sort of gag, right?  Hollywood doesn’t do this sort of thing.  This isn’t the 1980’s anymore.  Wake up!  This is the era of Avatar, of Fahrenheit 9/11, of Sean Penn hanging with the mullahs in Iran.  The communist Chinese aren’t our enemy – they’re our friends!  They make our TVs and T-shirts and disposable ink cartridges.  Our real enemies are American corporations, environmental polluters, and all those blonde chicks on Fox News.  Get your head in the game, Apuzzo.  You’re daydreaming again!

Apparently not.  Difficult as this is to believe, MGM is indeed now in post-production on what appears to be an extravagantly hardcore remake of John Milius’ 1984 film, Red Dawn.  Details of the project are starting to emerge from people who’ve read the script (see Latino Review’s synopsis of the plot here, or The Awl’s account here), and to say that the new film’s creators are ‘pulling no punches’ would be an understatement.  The new Red Dawn looks to be one of the most intensely anti-communist films since My Son John from 1952. Yet it’s set in the world of today.

First, let’s back up a bit.  If you’re not familiar with the original Red Dawn – a minor film in its day that’s become something of a cult classic – the film depicted an all-out invasion of the United States at the height of the Cold War by the combined forces of the Soviet Union and communist Cuba.  We never really see much of the invasion, however, or learn a great deal about its immediate provocation.  Almost the entirety of the film is spent following a spirited resistance group made up of high school kids played by then up-and-coming stars Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson and Jennifer Grey.  Basically, the kids get hold of some weapons, fight the Russkies in the Colorado hills, kick a lot of commie-Spetsnaz ass, and otherwise shout “Wolverines!” (their high school mascot) about every 5 minutes when they aren’t speeding away in a pickup truck.

Meet your liberator.

The film came out while I was in high school, and I thought it was a hoot – although one sensed at the time that the filmmakers were struggling somewhat against their modest budget.  Like a lot of high school guys at the time, I had the hots for Lea Thompson – I was a lot more interested in her than in the AK-47s and RPGs, frankly – but still I liked the concept of fighting commies on American soil, and Red Dawn delivered on that score like few films I’d ever seen.  [Chuck Norris' Invasion U.S.A. raised the ante on that scenario  the following year - the 80's were really something.]

In the new Red Dawn, the invading Chinese army apparently uses the pretext of America’s current economic decline to invade.  Here’s how AOL’s Daily Finance site summarizes the plot:

Set against the backdrop of contemporary politics, the film begins with an American withdrawal from Iraq. The President decides to redeploy troops to Taiwan, where escalating Chinese militarism is threatening America’s ally. At the same time, he also welcomes the former Soviet republic of Georgia into NATO, unleashing Russian worries that America is spreading its sphere of influence deep into Eastern Europe. Having destabilized relations with two of the world’s largest powers, the President then claims that the U.S. is only partly to blame for a global economic meltdown, further escalating tensions with China and ultimately leading to the invasion of the Pacific Northwest.

The RAND Corporation apparently had some input on this scenario.  And as invasion scenarios go, this is a reasonably plausible one – for a Hollywood thriller, at least.  What’s more interesting to me are the actual details of the Chinese-communist occupation.  While details are still a bit sketchy, a lot is given away from behind-the-scenes photographs from the set.  I’ve put together a little collage below of what are apparently propaganda posters spread by the film’s Chinese invaders:

Are we getting the picture here?  Is it just me, or is there something distinctly Obama-esque about these posters?  What these posters reveal is that the Red Dawn remake may actually go where the original film did not go (largely due to the fact that the original was made during the Reagan Administration), which is in equating certain tendencies in contemporary American liberalism with Chinese-style communism (!). That would be an extraordinary thing for a Hollywood studio to do nowadays. The UK’s Guardian reports, for example, that the Chinese have American ‘collaborators’ who help them in their occupation.  [Shades of V here.]  I wonder who those ‘collaborators’ would be?

To reiterate, I’m still stunned by all this.  I’m expecting to wake up and find it’s all a dream – that I’ve been floating in one of those alternate-reality tanks from Avatar, believing that I’m still living in 1985 and reading a Tom Clancy novel after football practice.  I have a million questions, all of which boil down to: how did this movie get greenlit?  How did this one slip by?

All the right people are getting angry about this film: specifically, the state-controlled Chinese press, and The New Yorker.  The Awl is absolutely furious over the film, and you can sense the familiar rhetorical patterns forming: that the film is ‘racist,’ ‘paranoid,’ ‘Sinophobic,’ ‘provocative,’ etc.  Of course, it might be interesting for someone to ask the Tibetans or the Taiwanese what they think of all this.

For more details about this film, visit the MGM website or this Red Dawn fansite, and we’ll otherwise keep you updated on all this as more information becomes available.  Here is some behind-the-scenes footage of the film’s shoot in Michigan.  The film will be released November 24th, 2010. It’s being directed by Dan Bradley, a stunt coordinator and second unit director who’s worked on some of Hollywood’s biggest productions (Independence Day, the Bourne films, the Bond films, the Spider-Man films, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, etc.) The film will star Connor Cruise (son of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman); Chris Hemsworth of Star Trek, and Isabel Lucas of Transformers.

Final footnote: the one time I met John Milius a few years back, we spent about three hours talking about the White Rajah of Sarawak … and about Mao.  Although John wasn’t involved in writing this new film, I’m wondering what he thinks of all this.

[UPDATE: Special thanks to Michelle Malkin's site for linking to this post.]

[UPDATE #2: I just spoke to an executive at MGM, and he provided us with some exciting details about the film.  Additionally, he confirmed a few basic points about the film: 1) the negative cost for the film is actually around $42 million; 2) Red Dawn as yet has no release date due to the complex situation at MGM; 3) Connor Cruise appears in the film, but is not actually the film's main star.  We'll have a lot more to report about Red Dawn down the line.]

[UPDATE #3: Special thanks to the LA Times' Patrick Goldstein for linking to this post, and for his very kind words about our site.]

[UPDATE #4: And thanks to our old friend Greg Pollowitz at National Review and Kyle Smith for linking to this piece.]

"I agree, Admiral - blockade the Straights of Hormuz."

By Jason Apuzzo.  • Paris Hilton signs on as celebrity ambassador for the USO, vows to visit troops overseas. Good news!  Taliban responds by unfriending her on Facebook.

• Even in 2010, enlightened-progressive Hollywood still casting white people as ethnic minorities, says LA Times.  Jake Gyllenhaal as a ‘Prince of Persia’?  Sure!  While we’re at it it, let’s cast Joe Biden as Flava Flav.

• Miss USA explains recent photos – and her stance on illegal immigration – on Fox News.  Fox News still waiting to grill her on the GATT tax and Elena Kagan.

• Crave Online posts 5 ways to improve the next season of V.  My advice?  Set the show in the 80’s and bring back Marc Singer.

• Ken Loach pops off about the Iraq War at Cannes.  I thought he was dead.

• Shrek overdose now official as sequel disappoints at box office.  Plus: Dreamworks stock drops as a result. Dreamworks begs Christopher Nolan to reboot franchise.

• Robert Rodriguez’s pseudo-controversial Machete looking for Texas tax incentives.  Doesn’t Rodriguez know?  It’s still cheaper to shoot in Mexico, and the beer’s better.

Juliette Binoche at Cannes.

• Christian mega-churches are the new training ground for American Idol singers.  I also read somewhere that Christian mega-churches are the new training ground for NFL defensive backs.  Is there a connection?

• Michael Caine speaks out about promoting the UK’s Conservative Party.  They should get him to a Tea Party rally dressed as Harry Palmer.

• AND IN MORE SERIOUS NEWS … Cannes Film Festival announces its prize winners (see here and here) under cloud of ongoing Jafar Panahi jailing.  Juliette Binoche accepts her best actress prize holding “Jafar Panahi” sign.  Panahi reportedly may be granted parole by Iranian government.  The noted filmmaker has reportedly begun a hunger strike.  Read this 2006 interview with Panahi, in which he declares that his films are not political. Sign the petition to Free Jafar Panahi.

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

ALSO: Special thanks to ‘John Boot’ and Pajamas Media for their article today on the re-launch of Libertas. Welcome to Pajamas Media readers.

UPDATE: Special thanks to Lars Larson today for having LFM’s Govindini Murty on his national show to talk about LFM.  Welcome to all of Lars’ listeners.