W/E Repost: Main Hollywood Trade Mag Trashes De Palma Film: “Nothing New”
Since there’s a good number of people who don’t/can’t check the site on weekends because they’re not at their office computer, I’ve decided to repost a story from Saturday that blends in perfectly with the the Dems’ smear of Petraeus in both the NY Times and during Petraeus’ ongoing testimony. “Smear the troops, smear the General, Lose The War To Save The Party”. Hollywood, the MSM and the Democrat Party are as guilty of treason as anyone has ever been. It’s time for this topic to be mainstreamed. Some elected official needs to call it for what it is - that’s the only way the notion will get mainstreamed and achieve the public traction that it should have.
Some bozo with a bald head doing a reportedly shitty job playing a soldier in “Redacted”, a film which Time Out magazine said degenerated into unintentional comedy
Brain De Palma may have just been awarded the Best Director trophy by decrepit French actress Catherine Deneuve and the rest of her Venice Film Festival jury, but the critics are already starting to trash it. ( Time magazine, however, spit in the face of the troops by praising De Palma as a “vet”. Yes, it was a reference to his increasingly regrettable filmmaking career, but the sly comparison to combat veterans is a pathetic attempt to award the same dignity and credibilty ( won in blood ) of our troops, to the long-irrelevant, burnt out hack Salieri ( apparently won by easy years in the director’s chair barking orders and blowing on cappucinos ). Just try to watch his most recent films, if you doubt my “burnt-out hack Salieri” charge… )
In the film, renegade soldiers leave their base of their own accord on a “private” night mission and commit the rape and murders. They also kill a pregnant woman at a checkpoint and show no remorse. I guess these two events are a display of Mark Cuban and Brian De Palma’s definition of “Pro-Troop” filmmaking. I guess the fact that one of these guys has a conscience attack and turns the others in is what ultimately makes the film a powerful “Pro-Troop” statement. Or maybe it’s just enough plausible deniability for them to get away with their “troops as monsters” smear.
From Variety:
“Redacted”
The bullet veers far off the mark in Brian De Palma’s “Redacted.” Deeply felt but dramatically unconvincing “fictional documentary” — inspired by the March 2006 rape and killings by U.S. troops in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad — has almost nothing new to say about the Iraq situation and can’t make up its mind about how to package its anger in an alternative cinematic form. HD-lensed item, largely using thesps with legit experience, feels more like a filmed Off Broadway play than a docudrama, and has trouble establishing a consistent dramatic tone. Curio biz looks likeliest for this Magnolia release Stateside.
From its title and intriguing opening (which shows words blacked out on a document by a censor’s pen), the film seems determined to explore the repackaging of actual events by official and corporate media. In fact, it does nothing of the kind. From the first sequence, of Latino grunt Angel Salazar (Izzy Diaz) recording his buddies on video camera for a docu (”Tell Me No Lies”) he hopes will get him into film school, “Redacted” is much more about the process and techniques of filmmaking than media distortion or coverups.
The breezy Salazar’s fellow soldiers in Alfa Company, Camp Carolina, Samarra, fall into the usual stereotypes: bookish Gabe Blix (Kel O’Neill), who spends his time reading John O’Hara’s “Appointment in Samarra”; soldier-with-a-conscience McCoy, a lawyer (Rob Devaney); and racist tree-swingers B.B. Rush (Daniel Stewart Sherman) and Reno Flake (Patrick Carroll). Their leader, Master Sgt. James Sweet (Ty Jones), is a motormouth hardass on his third tour of duty.
It’s soon clear De Palma intends to construct the whole movie from “found footage” — Salazar’s vid diary, security camera tapes, an Arab TV channel, websites (both U.S. and Islamic fundamentalist) or other docus and testimonials.
After Salazar’s opening, the first of these sources to show the outfit going about its daily routine at a checkpoint is a (fake) French docu, “Barrage.” Complete with Baroque music, finely shot closeups and a metaphysical commentary — as different from Salazar’s raw, emotional footage as possible — it’s unclear whether De Palma is parodying Gallic documentary style for its artiness or praising it for its detachment. Whichever is true, pic’s technique is already starting to deflect attention from any potential message.
Drama finally clicks into gear when a car driven by Iraqis doesn’t stop at the checkpoint, and Flake and Rush open fire. Even when it turns out the car contains a pregnant woman rushing to get to a hospital (where she subsequently dies), the two soldiers remain unrepentant. In dialogue that sounds too theatrically scripted, Rush contends, “You can’t afford remorse. You get remorse, you get weak; you get weak, you die.”Violence escalates when the locals take revenge on one of the group, in a well-staged shock sequence. After a night raid on a private house, seen from the p.o.v. of an embedded journalist, and the subsequent media hoo-ha, Flake and Rush pressure the rest of their group to return on a private mission. Secretly helmet-cammed by Salazar, this ends in the horrific rape of a 15-year-girl and the shooting of her and her family.
Shot in half-shadow amid general hysteria, this sequence does have a raw power, but its impact is diluted by the pic’s increasingly wobbly tone and the characters’ lack of depth. Dialogue simply checks off issues rather than developing arguments, and there isn’t the faintest trace of any moral or ethical complexity visible onscreen.
De Palma the technician and film buff too often gets in the way of De Palma the filmmaker with a cause. And there’s little here that he didn’t already say in “Casualties of War,” with which “Redacted” shares several character and story parallels.
Ironically, pic’s most powerful section is its final 10 minutes, as McCoy’s traumatic experience is reduced, back home, to a bar yarn that ends with friends cheering him as a hero. De Palma follows that with a photo montage of real-life Iraqi victims of violence, dubbed “Collateral Damage” — a harrowing couple of minutes that seems, alas, to be a coda to a better picture than “Redacted.”
Performances are of a piece with the material, with a slightly overplayed quality that’s more suitable to legit than docudrama. Locations in Amman, Jordan, do reasonable service for Iraq. Rest of technical package is high-quality HD level.
END
UNINTENTIONAL COMEDY - And right on Variety’s heels is a second slam by Time Out Magazine. They rip the film for its utter inauthenticity and ironic light-years distance from “the reality of the war in Iraq”. The critic says its so bad it at time ends up as unintentional comdey.
“The look of seemingly fly-on-the-wall footage can sometimes give a story a gritty immediacy — surely what De Palma is seeking — but it can also create an air of improvisation, playfulness and even comedy, and that’s what happens too often here — which isn’t very helpful when you’re trying to convey the real horror of a street-kidnapping or a decapitation. The greatest flaw is that the actors generally aren’t up to the task and so don’t convince as US soldiers — they play like actors playing US soldiers. Much of the film — bar a compelling episode at a reconstructed US army checkpoint where suspicious cars are checked or, too often, fired upon — has a rushed, unrehearsed air to it. One suspects that De Palma has mistook a lack of preparation with his actors for the path to convincing realism.”
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Alfa company?
September 8th, 2007 at 5:02 pm“…unconvincing fictional documentary”. That about says it all for me. I wonder how unconvinced Cuban or DePalma would be regarding their contribution to the enemy, if I or one of my fellow patriots walked up to them both and proceeded to whip their asses?
September 8th, 2007 at 5:11 pmThis from Yahoo financial, info about alfa company:
Alfa Corporation, through its subsidiaries, offers property and casualty insurance, life insurance, and financial services products in the United States. The company’s property and casualty insurance products include automobile, homeowner, farmowner, commercial, and manufactured home products; and life insurance products comprise whole life, term life, interest sensitive whole life, and universal life products, as well as non-qualified annuities. In addition, it engages in making consumer loans; operating capital lease activities; and the provision of underwriting, claims, actuarial, and financial services on behalf of its contracted carriers. The company was founded in 1946 and is headquartered in Montgomery, Alabama.
September 8th, 2007 at 5:20 pmF’ing idiots…
September 8th, 2007 at 5:25 pmI am hoping depalma loses his shirt on this movie-
I can’t believe he thinks that’s all soldiers do -they do a lot more than that. The soldiers involved all got long sentances from what I hear-can anyone confirm it for me?
September 8th, 2007 at 5:50 pm“won by easy years in the director’s chair barking orders and blowing on cappucinos.”
Too funny STOP!! your giving me stomach cramps.
September 8th, 2007 at 5:58 pmAlfa company? ROFLOL.
September 8th, 2007 at 6:11 pmYou guys are behind the curve. Everyone in the know knows that Alfa Company is short for Alfalfa Company, part of the Army’s new Vegan, All-PC, Green, mulitcultural, co-ed, exactly 50% gay, combat brigade.
September 8th, 2007 at 6:18 pmBreaking - Cuban get’s beat down in first round twice in same year by Golden State.
September 8th, 2007 at 6:38 pmThat’s going to leave a mark Cuban.
WatcherWTF:
ROFLOL
September 8th, 2007 at 9:20 pmI hope this film tanks like seriously.
September 8th, 2007 at 10:17 pmThis movie will become Iraq’s version of the Mohammed Al Dura photo which sparked the Palestinian Intifada which cause the deaths of thousands of people. That photo was later determined to most likely be staged and a fake. This movie will have the same consequences. However, the al Dura photo was just a photo, imagine the damage that a movie will have.
I hope De Palma and Cuban know how much blood will be on their hands. The frightening thing is that I’m guessing that they do.
September 9th, 2007 at 12:15 amRE: WatcherWTF
umm… we don’t call Alfalfa Company a “combat” brigade anymore. We prefer, “synergistic harmony collective.” SHC is actually replacing the previous name, “forward action groups” or FAGs.
We here in the Army are just a little more progressive than the rest of the country.
Keep a look out for the new bio-diesel hybrid APCs.
September 9th, 2007 at 12:24 amBrain De Palma may have just been awarded the Best Director trophy by decrepit French actress Catherine Deneuve and the rest of her Venice Film Festival jury
a remainder of professional deformation ? your quotation of Catherine Deneuve is a bit alike a cat claw hit that shows a certain biterness
BTW she is still great looking for her age, with no aesthetic operation, I would not say it for your hollywood misses
September 9th, 2007 at 2:56 amFrenchy:
“BTW she is still great looking for her age, with no aesthetic operation, I would not say it for your hollywood misses”
They aren’t OUR Hollywood misses. We don’t like Hollywood.
Catherine Deneuve, now that’s another story. Great looking lady, not much in the common sense dept.
September 9th, 2007 at 5:46 amI agree that the swipe at Catherine Deneuve was unwarranted. She may be “of a certain age,” but she could never truthfully be described as decrepit. If one is going to take the position that a performer’s politics cannot be taken seriously, one should not allow the disagreement with those politics lead to gratuitous insults. As for the movie, though I haven’t seen it, it sounds like a remake of “Casualties of War” set in Iraq with a “serious” photo montage tacked on at the end and a little more anti-Americanism thrown into the mix (it wasn’t as necessary in “Casualties” since that war was already lost). It sounds like yet another film made to make the “auteur” feel relevant and important rather than to entertain or move an audience. We have come so far from Hollywood’s Golden Age; we are probably witnessing something akin to a recycled aluminum age.
September 9th, 2007 at 7:37 amDan, your surprising me !
never watch a movie then ?
September 9th, 2007 at 7:51 amKeep your eye on the prize. This is another attempt by a no-talent-has-been to remain relevent. With the ultimate accolade being an Oscar for his M&M style filth which is bought and paid for with our soldier’s blood.
Keep the pressure on, on the capitalist front. E-mail their sponsors and pull the financial rug from under their feet!
September 9th, 2007 at 8:22 ambut wait… how could it be getting any bad reviews???? The shitwad got a standing O in Vienna…. and we all know how culturally superior they are….
September 9th, 2007 at 9:52 am[…] Main Hollywood Trade Mag Trashes De Palma Film: “Nothing New” […]
September 9th, 2007 at 10:28 amFrenchy:
Dan, your surprising me !
Me: Your English still sucks. The correct sentence is You surprise me not “your” surprise me. Your is used in a sentence as in “your house”. Your…as in belongs to you” Get it?
never watch a movie then ?
Only when they aren’t produced by leftists like Depalma.
September 9th, 2007 at 1:58 pmI used to bang Catherine Deneuve in the ass.
When we were done, she always asked me to piss in her mouth.
She has many wrinkles in her thigh and belly areas, and some really gross moles, a lot of them. She often smells like much of Paris, that sewer smell.
September 9th, 2007 at 3:10 pmwatcher, quel con !
September 9th, 2007 at 4:09 pmFrench whiner:
Yes, I was an idiot for going near a nasty french hag in the first place.
September 9th, 2007 at 4:45 pmDan, I know, but I used that form purposely : a kind of popular writing, I learnt that on “english speaking blogs
next time I’ll forget it
September 9th, 2007 at 5:39 pmFrenchy:
You used it wrong. Like I said your (correct useage of the word) sucks.
WatcherWTF:
ROFLMAO. French women are good in bed and make pretty babies…but they are stupid as shit….Best advice about French women that I ever got came from my French uncle who said to me when I was a young soldier: “Son, never marry a French girl. They’ll make your life a living hell. Marry a southern girl instead.”
Both of us took his advice. His wife is from S.C. A true southern belle she is. And mine is from Texas.
The Beach Boys were right. LOL….
September 9th, 2007 at 7:22 pmDan, I bet none of the french women wanted to marry you either,(otherwise you wouldn’t speak alike, right ?) ; how many beers did you have tonight ?
September 10th, 2007 at 1:38 amFrance the retour:
Try again sweet cheeks. I haven’t met a Frenchman yet who couldn’t do the deed with style…. ” All of us produced pretty children….
September 11th, 2007 at 10:30 amso you admit being french ? in deed
September 11th, 2007 at 10:37 am“One suspects that De Palma has mistook a lack of preparation with his actors for the path to convincing realism.”
Yeah, well…. that is one of the least harmful of the things that can happen when someone has no connection to reality.
September 11th, 2007 at 10:41 amI suppose somone thinks that the troops need some fun to have taken the topic back up
September 11th, 2007 at 10:42 amSheesh… The reason for the re-post is at the top of the page.
See what happens to people when they’re french…. or from Hollywood.
BTW, how are the aesthetics and phylosophy studies going?
September 11th, 2007 at 10:55 amSully, I am on the ethnical studies now
September 11th, 2007 at 11:19 amOh… I woulda thought that “ethnical studies” would have been part of grade school curriculum in France.
September 11th, 2007 at 11:37 amOh wait… how old ARE you?
Frenchy:
I got the genes and the pedigree, just not the allegiance.
September 11th, 2007 at 11:39 amMy allegiance is to the United States, first, last and always.
Dan, its always the “renegats” who are the radicals
Sully, it’s a joke, but in a way, not really, I am amazed how you in the whole react ; isn’t it better to view it on a place like this one rather from hollywood movies
September 11th, 2007 at 11:55 amscuse-me Dan, my orthograph still sucks
“…rather than, was ment
September 11th, 2007 at 11:57 amFrance the retour:
“I suppose somone thinks that the troops need some fun to have taken the topic back up”
Once again, you miss the point. Pat gave his reason for revisiting the topic. To wit:
“Since there’s a good number of people who don’t/can’t check the site on weekends because they’re not at their office computer, I’ve decided to repost a story from Saturday that blends in perfectly with the the Dems’ smear of Petraeus in both the NY Times and during Petraeus’ ongoing testimony. “Smear the troops, smear the General, Lose The War To Save The Party”. Hollywood, the MSM and the Democrat Party are as guilty of treason as anyone has ever been. It’s time for this topic to be mainstreamed. Some elected official needs to call it for what it is - that’s the only way the notion will get mainstreamed and achieve the public traction that it should have.”
September 11th, 2007 at 12:06 pmFrenchy:
Dan, its always the “renegats” who are the radicals
You mean like you? At least I’m not the Belgian collaborateur that you are?
Talk about obsessed? You always try to get in the last word …and do it so poorly.
Have you bought your burqua yet?
September 11th, 2007 at 12:15 pm“Sully, it’s a joke, but in a way, not really, I am amazed how you in the whole react ; isn’t it better to view it on a place like this one rather from hollywood movies”
Am I supposed to press 1 for English?
September 11th, 2007 at 12:19 pmsully:
ROFLOL…That was good
September 11th, 2007 at 12:56 pm
September 11th, 2007 at 1:01 pmhttp://img106.imageshack.us/img106/8021/louisdog20boom20jouet35ru6.jpg
September 11th, 2007 at 1:09 pmhttp://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j97/stars5501/trespassers.jpg
September 11th, 2007 at 1:16 pmIf it can be proved that just one soldier is killed because of this anti troop film. DePalma and Cuban should be charged as accomplices to murder.
September 11th, 2007 at 3:31 pm[… and racist tree-swingers B.B. Rush (Daniel Stewart Sherman) and Reno Flake (Patrick Carroll) …. Drama finally clicks into gear when a car driven by Iraqis doesn’t stop at the checkpoint, and Flake and Rush open fire. Even when it turns out the car contains a pregnant woman rushing to get to a hospital (where she subsequently dies), the two soldiers remain unrepentant. In dialogue that sounds too theatrically scripted, Rush contends, “You can’t afford remorse. You get remorse, you get weak; you get weak, you die.”Violence escalates when the locals take revenge on one of the group, in a well-staged shock sequence. After a night raid on a private house, seen from the p.o.v. of an embedded journalist, and the subsequent media hoo-ha, Flake and Rush pressure the rest of their group to return on a private mission. Secretly helmet-cammed by Salazar, this ends in the horrific rape of a 15-year-girl and the shooting of her and her family.]
I hope it’s not escaping anyone here that one of the “ugly American G.I.s” is named after the liberals’ favorite ugly American “Rush” (as in Limbaugh)… Intentional??? I’d bet on it.
September 11th, 2007 at 4:11 pmFNC’s Bill O. just trashed DePalma, and even called for vets of all wars to protest at any theaters who show the flick …
September 11th, 2007 at 5:19 pmyes this movie sucks major balls
September 11th, 2007 at 5:20 pmso when is the good one, aka young americans coming out
haven’t heard anything for awhile and looking for an update
Vietnam Memorial Wall Defaced This Weekend (September 7-9, 2007)
Vietnam Memorial Wall Defaced This Weekend (September 7-9, 2007)
Vietnam Memorial Wall Defaced This Weekend (September 7-9, 2007)
Vietnam Memorial Wall Defaced This Weekend (September 7-9, 2007)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1893742/posts
September 11th, 2007 at 7:48 pmDe Palma’s Redacted redacted
I am appalled to hear that Redacted has even itself been redacted. As if it were possible to further destroy the identities of the poor, maimed, dead Iraqis whose faces formed the background of the end titles in Brian De Palma’s film, now add the redaction of their images entirely. Are the cost benefit analysts working for the pharmaceuticals, automobile manufactures and the tobacco companies the only ones with any sense of risk or courage anymore? I prefer to think this has less to do with protecting the producers from legal action or the Iraqis from humiliation and invasion of privacy, than a monumental cowardice when it comes to confronting of the American moviegoer with a little too much reality. De Palma’s initial acquiescence to the insurers forced him to abandon the use of any actual documentary footage in the body of the film. This has already resulted in the Right Wing warmongers accusing him of “making it all up” because he restaged rather than using “real” footage. This colossal inability on their part to understand the difference between art and life is too outrageous to even deserve comment.
What this chronic failure of nerve on the part of underwriters will do to the future of actual documentary filmmaking I leave to cynical speculation. I am convinced however that eventually the entertainment industry, corporations and the insurance pencil pushers will so lobotomize the creative spirit in this country, that the only artists left in our culture will be members of the Britney Spears Ilk’s Club.
If you wish to see an unrepentant, unredacted piece of filmmaking that is not afraid of lawsuits and not afraid to show the real face of war, I recommend to you a moving three minute video on YouTube called “Kindertotenlied”.
http://youtube.com/results?search_query=kindertotenlied&search=Search
I hope that when the producers, whose footage was stolen for use in this video, finally get around to suing little old filmmaker (me), they will learn exactly how much blood can be squeezed from a rock (as opposed to Iraq). Abject poverty, ah my foes and oh my friends, does have its privileges!
Peace,
Bob Boldt
October 24th, 2007 at 2:23 pm