• 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.
By Jason Apuzzo. This is a melancholy weekend. The ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is upon us – and it is natural, I think, to reflect not only on the victims of that day, but on the people whose lives are continually put in the line of fire in order to prevent those sorts of attacks from happening again. So for this reason I want to tell you about a little documentary that recently came to my attention, called Pappy Boyington Field. You can see the trailer for the film above.
Who was Pappy Boyington? Pappy Boyington is what America was – and I dearly hope still is – made of. He is the sort of man who made this country the most powerful force for democracy and freedom this world has ever seen. If Homer walked our streets today, he is the kind of man the poet would likely write epic poems about. As it turns out, John Wayne more or less did play Pappy in the classic film Flying Tigers, and Robert Conrad certainly played Pappy in the famous TV series Baa Baa Black Sheep.
'Pappy' Boyington.
So in his lifetime, Pappy certainly got his due. And in our lifetime? Let’s just say that remains to be seen. Boyington’s present-day legacy is the subject of Kevin Gonzalez’s fine new documentary Pappy Boyington Field, and certainly Gonzalez’s film takes us great strides forward in understanding and appreciating this extraordinary American.
Gregory ‘Pappy’ Boyington was a Marine Corps fighter ace during World War II, who had the distinction of being awarded both the Medal of Honor and the Navy Cross. With between 22 and 28 kills (depending on the source) Pappy was not quite America’s top scoring ace – that distinction belongs to Air Force Maj. Richard Bong (with over 40) – but Pappy was likely the most brash and daring. Boyington initially flew with Claire Chennault’s Flying Tigers in China (often clashing with Chennault), and later commanded the famous Marine Corps Black Sheep Squadron. Boyington would later become a prisoner of war – a ‘guest of the Emperor’ – before returning home in triumph, after he’d more or less been given up for dead.
He was called ‘Pappy’ because during the War he commanded men who were, for the most part, about a decade younger than he was.
Part of the Boyington legend is that Pappy would actually goad the enemy into coming up to fight him and his men. Over the Kahili airdrome, for example, Pappy and two dozen of his fighters circled a Japanese airfield where 60 aircraft were based. The Japanese took the bait, and sent up a large squadron. In the battle that followed, 20 Japanese aircraft were shot down. Among the Black Sheep? None.
At one point during the war, Boyington’s Black Sheep squadron offered to shoot down a Japanese Zero for every baseball cap sent to them by baseball players playing in the World Series. They received 20 caps – and shot down 20 Zeros … and just kept going. At one point during the squadron’s first tour of combat duty, Pappy actually shot down 14 enemy fighter planes in 32 days. Boyington’s war record is studded with such colorful tales of bravado and triumph.
One of America's greatest heroes.
Flash forward to today. A group of Marine veterans in Boyington’s birthplace of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, wanted to rename that small town’s airport “Coeur d’Alene Airport–Pappy Boyington Field” in his honor. You would think this sort of thing would be a lock, a no-brainer. When you accomplish the sort of things Pappy accomplished, you would think that naming a small airfield in his name would sort of be the minimum his country might do for him. For all I’m concerned, they could’ve renamed Idaho ‘Pappy’ and I personally would’ve been fine with it.
But we don’t live in the World War II era any more, of course, and so the city fathers of Coeur d’Alene stalled and made excuses. They asserted that it might be ‘dangerous’ to pilots to change the airport’s name, because it might confuse them(!). They hid behind amorphous accusations of Boyington’s drinking and philandering. Essentially they stalled and evaded … for three years. They did so until a variety of media people got involved and took up Pappy’s cause. One key figure in this fight was Fox News’ Oliver North. I won’t tell you how the story panned out.
Pappy Boyington Field is a documentary that tells the story behind the effort to rename the Coeur d’Alene Airport in Pappy’s honor. In so doing, the film subtley tells the story of two Americas: the World War II America in which Boyington was a hero who received a hero’s welcome after his return from the Pacific theater (including a massive downtown parade in San Francisco, and receiving the Medal of Honor from President Harry Truman); and, of course, the America of today … when faceless, politically correct bureaucrats do everything imaginable to erase the memory of this genuine hero. So there’s a melancholy quality to Pappy Boyington Field that is unmistakable. How in hell has our country changed so much, in such a relatively brief period of time?
Receiving the Medal of Honor, from Pres. Truman
Kudos to filmmaker (and fellow USC Trojan) Kevin Gonzalez for putting together this compelling documentary about the fight on Pappy’s behalf. Pappy Boyington Field is a film about the type of old-fashioned, small town activism – precisely the sort of the fueling the current Tea Party movement – that is trying to halt the wholesale erasing of America’s freedom-loving heritage. Except in this case, the activism is coming from Marines, who were simply trying to honor a man whose valor in combat on behalf of his country is already the stuff of legend.
Please pick up a copy of Pappy Boyington Field and watch it. Take some time to learn something about an American hero, who put his life on the line for you. Once you’ve done that, pick up another copy for your local library – and make sure they stock it, so that young people can learn something about their country’s heritage. Demand that it be seen. Make some noise. Little acts like these will prevent our shared history from slipping away.
As a footnote here, I understand that John Woo will soon be doing a large-scale Flying Tigers movie, to be released in IMAX. I think that’s great … but I’m hoping there’s a character named Pappy Boyington in it – and that he gets the props he deserves. Men like Pappy are what made this country what it is – or what it can be, when we continue to live up to his example.
By Jason Apuzzo. • This weekend marks the 9-year anniversary of the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. The legacy of this horrific event is ongoing, of course – including in the cinema, over which the shadow of 9/11 continues to hover. We remember the victims of 9/11 this weekend, and honor the sacrifices of those who continue to keep America and her allies safe.
• Is Tron going political? I saw something recently that unnerved me, somewhat. In the middle of this interview with Tron star Bruce Boxleitner, Boxleitner (who played Tron in the original film, and who also appears in the new film) indicates that in the new film the software corporation ENCOM (from the original movie) has morphed into a weapons contractor, a development against which Jeff Bridge’s character Kevin Flynn will apparently be struggling. Oh boy. I’m hoping this doesn’t go where I think it might go … I will really go ballistic, so to speak, if this film bashes defense contractors who are currently helping us fight our war, and giving us the technological edge we need to fight the kind of cave-dwelling primitives who hit us on 9/11. Please Disney, do not go there.
• As I write this, I don’t know whether this psychotic Florida pastor is going to be burning any Korans on the anniversary of 9/11, but it’s worth mentioning in the context of this website that Angelina Jolie has strongly condemned the proposed conflagration while she’s in Pakistan helping with flood relief. Jolie seems to be playing the role that, as I understand it, Hillary Clinton was supposed to be playing as our Secretary of State. That’s fine with me, by the way – I prefer Jolie, although Hillary has a certain flinty resolve I’ve reluctantly come to respect over the years. Anyway, I’m hoping this guy doesn’t burn anything – other than perhaps Ron Artest’s driver’s license.
• Roger Ebert is relaunching his show. LFM’s own Govindini Murty was one of the many guests who substituted for Roger during his extended health struggles. We wish him the best.
