Dreamworks "Megamind" poster to the left, Olivia Wilde ACLU ad to the right.
By Jason Apuzzo. Obama adulation in Hollywood has apparently not yet waned completely. Some are still apparently holding out hope … trying to resuscitate the dream, as its embers fade in the cold wind of Obama’s own narcissism. Note above-left the new Dreamworks Shepard Fairey-inspired poster for Megamind, with the villain depicted as an opponent of Obama-style hopefulness.
Perhaps more depressingly, since such partisan nonsense is to be expected from Dreamworks, is Tron’s Olivia Wilde (above-right) in a new Shepard Fairey-inspired ad for the ACLU. Is this the kind of activism we can expect from Ms. Wilde when Tron debuts in December, with what may be some subtle political messaging already embedded in that film?
I think it’s the smugness of these posters that bothers me most, their basic triteness, beside the fact that they feel like they’re about two years behind the times. Who is actually persuaded by this nonsense anymore – other than the young, poorly educated and easily impressionable … oh, right, that’s quite a lot of people these days. [Sigh.]
By Jason Apuzzo. As we’ve been reporting a great deal to you recently, many new filmmakers are emerging in the indie filmmaking scene who are challenging the reigning Hollywood narrative by which the Islamic world is depicted simplistically as a supine victim of American imperialism – rather than as a complex society, struggling to emerge out of punishing religious intolerance into a Westernized, middle class future. [See the Living with the Infidels web series below as an example.] A interesting example of this new wave appears to be London filmmaker Hammad Khan’s Slackistan, which Variety reports just got picked up for distribution in the UK, and which will be opening the forthcoming Raindance Film Festival.
Slacker babe from Hammad Khan's "Slackistan."
Since we obviously have a lot of new UK readers here at Libertas, we encourage you to go see the film when it’s released later this year, and come back to us with reviews. The film reminds me somewhat of a film coming out later this year here in the States called The Taqwacores, which showed at Sundance and which we’ve talked about previously here at Libertas. [Another film that comes to mind: No One Knows About Persian Cats, which showed at Cannes and which we reviewed here.] From a cultural standpoint, if you’re looking for signs of hope in the Islamic world, these films would seem to be it – although this ‘hope,’ of course, comes wrapped within the irony that young Islamic youth are becoming more like us in the West every day.
Are we happy about that? Is Fast Times at Islamabad High just around the corner? I can hardly tell whether this film is set in Pakistan or Encino.
• Mao’s Last Dancer continues to do nicely at the indie box office. The film recently expanded to 102 screens, and has now taken in over $2 million. These are great numbers, given how the film is being completely ignored by the media outlets who would presumably appreciate its message the most.
• My friend Patrick Goldstein at the LA Times has a wonderful piece out about Werner Herzog’s new 3D documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a film covering the 32,000 year old cave paintings at Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc. I will freely say that I am green with envy at Patrick’s opportunity to see 30 minutes’ worth of this film before it heads to Toronto! I worship the ground Herzog walks on, and volunteer to carry his shoes the next time he travels underground, or to the Arctic, or out into Loch Ness or grizzly country, or wherever he next makes a film. In related news, Carla Bruni and her husband recently made a splash in Montignac where they were commemorating the 70th anniversary of the discovery of the Lascaux cave paintings.
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … Battleships’s Brooklyn Decker tells The New York Post today that she’s not anorexic enough, or grungy enough, to be a runway model. “I have boobs. I’m very all-American.”
I’m puzzled by this fixation on her looks, because I thought she landed the Battleship role as Liam Neeson’s daughter due to her idiosyncratic, off-Broadway turn as Anya in The Cherry Orchard. Shows you what I know!
And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood.
By Jason Apuzzo. • Actor Kevin McCarthy of Invasion of the Body Snatchers fame has died, at age 96. You can read about his life and career at The Washington Post and at The LA Times. McCarthy was a very fine stage and television actor, but he will certainly be best remembered for his role as Dr. Miles Bennell in Body Snatchers. His performance in that film – which modulates from warmth and good humor, to the outer edges of hysteria and terror – may actually be the iconic performance of 1950s sci-fi cinema, and is in large measure what gives that film its dramatic credibility. The ‘invasion’ works so well in that film in large measure because of how, as an actor, he sells it. He will be greatly missed, and we pass along our condolences to his family and friends.
Kevin McCarthy.
I had the pleasure of meeting Kevin McCarthy years ago at a party hosted by the Russian dissident poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Oddly enough, Mr. McCarthy and I spent much of the evening in conversation together over by the punch bowl(!). He was every bit as warm, gracious and amusing in private as he appeared in public. Mr. McCarthy was quite old at the time, yet robust, and he had a boyish charm and impishness to him even in advanced age; I had the sense that if I asked him to step out on the lawn and throw a baseball around, he’d happily do it. He was quite unpretentious, and drily amused by the unexpected success of Body Snatchers.
As you can imagine, I asked Mr. McCarthy about the controversy over the years regarding the ‘meaning’ of Body Snatchers. Was it an anti-communist metaphor? Was it about anti-communist paranoia? Or just small town life? He politely demurred, and said that the intention of everybody involved with the film was chiefly to make a good thriller.
At the same time, I could not help but notice his presence at the party we were both attending – held in honor of a prominent anti-Soviet dissident. His attendance at this event quietly spoke volumes.
For those of you, by the way, who enjoyed Kevin McCarthy’s turn in Body Snatchers, make sure to check out his guest appearance on the old Invaders TV series, in the 1978 Body Snatchers remake, on Hawaii Five-O, and in Joe Dante’s original Piranha. Those are some of my personal favorites. He also gave a nice performance in Raquel Welch’s Kansas City Bomber, and does a nice (if brief) turn as Marilyn Monroe’s husband in John Huston’s The Misfits. We’ll miss him.
By Jason Apuzzo. A few weeks ago we reported to you about a new Australian film called Tomorrow, When the War Began, that was set to unspool for distributors at the (ongoing) Toronto Film Festival. The film is a kind of Australian Red Dawn, based on the hit novel series Tomorrow, When the War Began by Australian novelist John Marsden. The film was written and directed by Stuart Beattie, whose screenwriting credits include Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Collateral, Australia and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.
Caitlin Stasey of "Tomorrow."
A lot of Australian readers wrote in after that post and offered their own thoughts on the film. I encourage everyone to check out the comments section of that post for some very interesting discussion and background on that project – not to mention some of the more interesting reviews of the film that I’ve read.
Word now comes today from the Hollywood Reporter’s HeatVision blog that plans are already underway for two sequels to the film, based on its early success at the Australian box office. This certainly makes sense, given the overall length of Marsden’s original novel series – which I believe extends to seven books.
Based on what’s in the comments section of our original post, all of this should excite our Australian readers … and hopefully North American distribution rights for this film will be settled in the near future so the rest of can see it. The movie was just screened for distributors in Toronto yesterday.
By Jason Apuzzo. A few weeks ago we posted about NBC’s new series The Event, which seems to feature a variety of narrative elements with political overtones. Specifically, we analyzed the extended trailer for the series (above), and picked out these prominent elements from it:
• Heroic, charismatic young black President.
• CIA conspiracy involving illegal detainees.
• A secret detention facility in Alaska
• Some sort of 9/11-type event (i.e., world-changing, clash-of-civilizations-type encounter)
• A 9/11-type suicide attack with a plane targeting the President
Since that time, there’s been a considerable amount of on-line speculation on the series. Much of this has to do with the fact that NBC showed the pilot episode of The Event at Comic-Con. See reviews of the pilot episode here, and a review of the pilot screenplay here.
***SPOILERS AHEAD***
'Sophia Macguire' from NBC's "The Event."
The most interesting thing that’s been ‘spoiled’ about the series is that The Event may be another of the many sci fi invasion projects we’ve been posting about here all summer. New York Magazine recently let the cat out of the bag on this one (see here and here). The key element tipping everybody off to the sci-fi component of the series seems to be that the airplane seen hurtling, kamikaze-style toward the President at the end of the trailer above (and at the end of the pilot episode) apparently vanishes into thin air, ostensibly as a result of some advanced/alien sci-fi-type technology. This mid-air vanishing of the plane, however, is not the series’ ‘event’ itself according to the show’s producer, but merely indicative of things to come. For more details, you can find out a lot about the show at a new site called The Event Log.
We’ve been talking all summer here at Libertas about how science fiction projects are currently becoming the ‘accepted’ medium by which filmmakers in both Hollywood and the indie world are dealing with our current wars, and domestic political anxieties. Indeed, I had what I considered to be a very interesting exchange recently on this subject with my friend Patrick Goldstein over at the LA Times. It appears that The Event may be continuing this overall trend of ‘politicized’ sci-fi.
NBC flacks handing out 'secret dossiers' about "The Event" at Comic-Con.
One of the really interesting bits of speculation on the new series concerns the nature of the ‘detainees’ in the series’ Alaska detention center – the same center that our heroic young President fights the CIA in order to open. [I’m trying to image where NBC got that plotline … but I just can’t think of any real world examples. :)] Much of the speculation centers around whether the detainees are either: human visitors from the future, aliens, or human visitors from the future who’ve had contact with aliens.
The leader of this group of detainees is a sober-looking, middle-aged woman named ‘Sophia Macguire’ (played by actress Laura Innes; she’s in the trailer above). Here’s a little insight, from someone who’s written a few screenplays: whenever you have a sober-looking, middle-aged female character named ‘Sophia’ (a name meaning ‘wisdom’) you can rest assured that this character will be used within the storyline to impart some choice nugget of wisdom to the main hero – in this case the President. It’s usually a sure thing in these types of stories.
So expect The Event to present a scenario for its viewers in which the ‘wisest’ character in the show, who knows the most, is a detainee at a secret CIA facility. Well! Isn’t that an interesting plotline in our post-Guantanamo world?
The facility at Mount Inostranka remains a top priority to our national security. Recent events surrounding the facility must be remedied immediately.
Handle the first with extreme urgency. A breach of protocol has resulted in the escape of …….. The Agency must seek and extract the escapee to trade for information. The Mission allows for acceptable collateral damage.
Ever since 1944, ……. them, The Agency has maintained complete secrecy surrounding the detainees and the facility;….survivors that were apprehended, one demonstrated to be their leader and is……….. Sophia Macguire can not be allowed to communicate with anyone from outside the facility and must be monitored at all times. She must be questioned about the disappearance of……
Even though we have suspected substantial differences…..the source……have we been able to pinpoint to believe the detainees are…..leads the Agency……but we need further information. For this cause,…….
Valid information is still required to confirm……must not allow any further information to be leaked.
Execute orders immediately. A team led by General Whitman will be joining you in Alaska tomorrow.
No action is to be taken in updating the President. This information is on a need-to-know basis and the President should not be briefed on the existence of the facility. This must remain a matter for the intelligence services, which have been managing this without interference for decades. And as you know, we have our reasons.
These recent developments are all unquestionably related to increased activity among the detainees. The Agency needs you to address this, immediately.
By authority of: Blake Sterling
Signature: B. Sterling
Note that this Sophia character “can not be allowed to communicate with anyone from outside the facility” and “must be questioned about the disappearance of” something/someone. In other words: she knows a lot.
Blair Underwood as The President.
My guess here? Looking beyond the series pilot, my sense is that Sophia Macguire and her fellow detainees, who have apparently been in captivity in Alaska since 1944, are some sort of human time travelers who’ve had alien contact. [I assume they’re human because if they were aliens they presumably wouldn’t let themselves be captive for 60+ years!] As a result of this contact, they have insight into advanced technologies that allow them to do things or comprehend things like … planes vanishing, and perhaps the extending of lifespans.
So what we have here, ultimately, is the following: the mythologizing of people in a CIA detention facility, who might actually be ‘wiser’ than we are, and who are possessed of esoteric insights we cannot fathom – i.e., how planes vaporize in thin air, so to speak. And the heroic Obama stand-in is there on the spot to free them.
What a charming gift NBC’s giving us, just on the heels of the 9/11 anniversary. Thanks, NBC, but I think I’ll be watching V instead.
