Who would have figured that Hollywood would suffer another slap in the face by crapping out another in a series of anti-military movies begging soldiers to turn their backs on their country in a time of war?

Most soldiers don’t buy this crap and neither does middle America. Thus when your target audience is parked outside of recruiting stations in Berkeley or fire bombing them in New York City we probably could have predicted that the much touted (in moron circles) anti-military screed “Stop Loss” would suffer a typical dismal opening; coming in at 8th place at a time when most theaters filled seats on releases from earlier weeks.

Good riddance. The word is out.

Movie Phone’s user community gave it 4/5 stars. Of course only 12 people bothered to review the movie. The “Stop Loss” friendly community of movie goers over at rotten tomatoes only gave it a 60% favorable rating. Good for most movies until you figure out that the only people going to see Stop Loss are the same people still wetting their pants in mourning over Abu Ghraib.

Keep it up Hollywood. With this track record you’ll likely chase newspapers into the dustbin of obscurity until you get a clue and change your tune.

See Also: Libertas

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Over the weekend I rented The Reef for my 2-year-old. She was attracted to the cover of cartoon fish that looked a lot like a Nemo type of adventure. Unfortunately, that’s where the Nemo comparisons end. Whereas Finding Nemo is a wonderful, family-friendly, movie with lots of laughs and good times, The Reef is an insipid, inappropriate, boring, piece of garbage.

The description on Amazon says,

After losing everything, a young fish, Pi, goes to live with his family on the Reef. There he meets the love of his life but finds that she already has the unwanted affections of a bully shark. He must follow his destiny to save her and rid the Reef of this menace for good.

Here’s the real story. First we start off in the disgustingly dirty Boston Harbor. Complete with three-eyed fish and mercury jokes. Then, Pi leaves to find this pristine reef after losing his parents to evil fishermen. When he gets there, he is overcome with lust for this “supermodel” fish, who resembles Lisa Rinna with her overstuffed lips. It’s all rather boring and uneventful until the scene with the unquestionably gay hair and makeup fish. One of them says,

“I wish I had 2 boys fighting over me.”

Replies another fish “What did he say?”

This was the moment I turned it off. I can put up with the environmental garbage but I cannot allow movie producers to push homosexuality on my toddler.

Here’s what bothers me the most about it. As a parent, I believe you are entitled to teach your child whatever your values are regarding sexuality. It’s none of my business if you want to give your son dolls and your daughter trucks. And I don’t care if you read them Molly has two Daddys or whatever mind-melded crap you want to. You will have to explain your parenting methods when you meet your Maker face-to-face. So I don’t care what you teach your family in your home. However, the minute you start trying to teach my child depravity disguised as cartoon fish, that’s when I get angry.

Toddlers, even kindergartens and above are not ready to discuss adult topics like sexuality! Homo, hetero or other! What is the rush to “educate” our babies into adulthood so quickly? I hear people say that they knew they were gay at the age of 5. I don’t believe it. Every 5-year-old thinks “girls are yucky” or vice-a-versa. There is no sexual interest or understanding at that point. (And if there is, that child has definitely been sexually abused.) And to pretend that a baby needs to be apprised of the complications of this life at such an early, unspoiled time in their lives is an abomination to common sense and an abomination to the very thing we call childhood.

If you should find yourself at the Blockbuster soon, avoid The Reef and rent Finding Nemo instead.

[Discuss this article with The Intolerant Fox...]

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Oh I forgot to mention, on the subject of the globular wormening…when they remake this classic, at the end when Klaatu lectures us silly earthlings on the evils of war and weapons and violence and what-not, they’re going to drop all the peacenik stuff and instead the smarmy alien is going to give us a lecture about ManBearPig.

Keanu Reeves, who stars as the film’s intergalatic messenger, Klaatu, tells MTV Movies that in Scott Derrickson’s remake of the sci-fi classic, his voyage to Earth is prompted by more than just humanity’s endless thirst for war:

“The first one was borne out of the cold war and nuclear détente. Klaatu came and was saying cease and desist with your violence. If you can’t do it yourselves we’re going to do it. That was the film of that day. The version I was just working on, instead of being man against man, it’s more about man against nature. My Klaatu says that if the Earth dies, you die. If you die, the earth survives. I’m a friend to the earth.”

That’s right, gang — Klaatu has gone from pacifist weenie to tree-hugging hippie. (Or, more precisely, pacifist weenie and tree-hugging hippie; as Reeves puts it, “We’re trying to reach beyond the idea of [just] environmentalism.”)

It’s impressive that Hollywood was already indulging in this nonsense about “we’re so stupid we need someone external to show up and tell us how stupid we are” fake humility back in 1951. The “we”, of course, is lowercase-w; it means the we sans me. Everyone who worked on the 1951 classic understood war was dangerous, it was everybody else who needed to be lectured by Klaatu. That’s two years before Shane, four years before Gunsmoke. So before Father Knew Best, we were already marching off, gathering momentum, on this other hot new fad where father did not.

This is significant. It shows we have a deep-seated, timeless psychological need to externalize wisdom. We want to envision ourselves as dysfunctional. Which snotty lecture Klaatu flies in to give us, is secondary; we need him. So I don’t fault Keanu and crew for swapping out one lecture for another. The story is really all about Planet Earth lacking any common sense until someone flies in from elsewhere to import it. The message could be about anything.

In fact, if they want to remake this a few more times, I have some more ideas.

We could start with the highest-level ideas. Klaatu could fly in to tell us to stop being liberal. We’ve been watching you from afar and you never seem to learn. It just doesn’t work, okay? Get rid of your liberalism, or we’re going to come back and do it for you.

He could address some issues more specifically. We see you are a dishonorable race, incapable of keeping covenants to your own kind. You have ratified this document called the Second Amendment, freely and of your own free will, and a couple hundred years later you’re outlawing guns in the cities where people need them the most.

Klaatu could arrive as a messenger from a doomed planet, dying out because they tried universal, socialized health care. Don’t make the same mistake we did!

Or Klaatu could point to Jeremiah Wright and say, you earthlings love to talk about prejudice and bigotry but don’t you know it when you see it?

Stop wasting time arguing about weapons of mass destruction. You know Saddam had the Anthrax, you know he was up to no good, and by the way there are about eleven other dickheads out there you’d better start invading. If you knew what we knew you’d get started by noon tomorrow. Oh and by the way, the United Nations shouldn’t even have anything to say about this because the defense of a nation is a national, not international, issue. They’ve bolluxed up the whole issue more thoroughly than George W. Bush ever will. But if you must keep them involved, take away France’s veto power for heaven’s sake. Honestly, getting permission from some foreign nation to defend yourselves? How’d you get to this point.

You shouldn’t be listening to anyone warn you about global warming unless they drive something that gets at least 35 miles a gallon. That Klaatu from the other movie put out six quadrillion carbon tons just to get to you. Oh and by the way, carbon dioxide doesn’t cause global warming. Agricultural emissions contribute much more potently to any greenhouse effect than any techno-industrial component ever will. I mean, c’mon, we know you earthlings love a good scam but this one has worn out its own welcome. Move on.

Stop being so hostile to capitalism. Capitalism is good.

The military is good too. On my planet, we tried to do away with war by getting rid of the military. Big mistake. Soldiers don’t make war; soldiers make peace. You have an all-volunteer military here in America. Don’t wait until November 11 to thank them; thank them whenever you can.

Stop your petulant hostility toward masculine things. Men are good. Now and then, they have good ideas. Admitting it once in awhile, doesn’t “set the clock back.” There’s nothing wrong with letting men look at good lookin’ women in bathing suits. And don’t stop making James Bond movies. On my planet, we think it’s the best thing to come out of here. The Barbra Streisand concerts, you can keep.

Play with your kids. Television shows and video games have a very long shelf life. They won’t rot.

Don’t treat your son as a freak, or a weirdo, or a mental patient, just because he acts like a typical boy. Stop medicating the bejeezus out of your kids. We’ve gotten used to pointing and laughing at how you earthlings behave, and we’re afraid in another generation you’ll all be so doped up we won’t even know what earthling behavior is anymore.

We have been shaking our alien heads in sadness at how easily you let illegal aliens invade the United States. I, Klaatu, am a respectful visitor. When my visit is done, I’m outta here. I’m not going to pretend to be a citizen when I’m not, go driving without a license, get drunk and kill people. We’re upset that you tolerate people who do these things. Do your own laws, and your own children, mean so little to you?

When the morning news is showing you how cute a dog looks in a Halloween costume, or that an ink pen is really cool because it has a highlighter concealed inside, it isn’t news anymore.

If you get insight on life and tips on how to live it, from shows like “Desperate Housewives” or “Six Feet Under,” there is something terribly wrong with you. Get help.

Even better, don’t. Stop telling each other to “go to counseling.” Especially your spouses. We aliens are particularly embarrassed for you when we see how earthlings treat marriage lately. If you’re married, and you have some friends who encourage you to be hostile to your spouse, stop talking to those friends. If you’re a wife, and a feminist, but your brand of feminism makes you an angry and bitter wife, stop being a feminist. Ditto for the men. If you have a “buddy” and you’re a lousy husband because you have that buddy, stop talking to him. Being a spouse is not a pass-fail thing. If you are one, take pride in how good you are at being one, and get better at it every day.

When a corporation is taxed, it passes the tax on to the consumer. Stop taxing businesses, or electing politicians who pledge to tax businesses, because of your own shoddy economic circumstances. You has met the enemy and he is you.

If you’re watching me give this speech on a digital television, or on your iPhone, thank a nerd. Be nice to nerds. You earthlings are using high-tech gadgetry all over the world, even in what you call “third-world nations.” Everything you have that you want to keep, you got from nerds. But you work so hard at being hostile to nerds, and making sure your kids won’t grow up to be nerds. It’s like you’d rather have your kids grow up to be spoiled brats, than nerds. If you have a daughter, and you catch her being snarky or mean to the nerds just because they’re nerds, take her cell phone away until she figures out how it came to be. She’ll thank you later.

That brings me to another point: Dogs weren’t built to be carried around in purses.

Stop smoking pot. You are at your silliest after you’ve been smoking pot. You should hear the things you say. But when you outlaw pot, outlaw it in your state, not the entire nation. Even better, outlaw it in your county. It’s a neighborhood quality-of-life issue. Stop telling people how to live, in places you’ve never been. From my planet, we can see you in New York telling people in Montana how fast they should be driving…and that makes us very sad. You have a Tenth Amendment. Use it. Local control is good.

Um…and on THAT note, fittingly, my speech is done since I’m not from here. I am Klaatu. I’m here to point out what you’re doing wrong, not tell you what’s right.

Just use some simple common sense, earthlings. Ever since you voted for Bill Clinton, you’ve been on a steep decline. Gort is upset. Straighten up and fly right, or face the wrath of Gort. We’ll be watching.

[Discuss this article with MkFreeberg...]

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Cloverfield is the latest monster movie to hit the big screen and it easily smashed records for weekend opening box office gross with a 3 day $46 million take.

Following months of hype and anticipation, Paramount’s monster flick Cloverfield arrived and generated monster sales grossing an estimated $41M in its first three days of release. Directed by Matt Reeves and produced by J.J. Abrams, the PG-13 film averaged a brutal $12,020 from 3,411 theaters and broke the eleven-year-old record for the biggest opening weekend gross for a film debuting in January. The Special Edition re-release of Star Wars held that record since 1997 when it launched in 2,104 locations to the tune of $35.9M and a scorching $17,066 average. At today’s ticket prices however, those figures would be more than $53M and $25,000, respectively.

Which makes it all the more important that I get an honest review; especially considering that the movie was hyped to the hilt. They liked it on Rotten Tomatoes with a 77% cumulative rating. So I wondered about how much of the gross was based on the hype and how much was based on the actual lack of quality offerings being offered up by the big Hollywood studios. We won’t be able to make that call until the next couple of weeks as the word of mouth affect takes hold.

However, I hold Libertas in high regard when it comes to telling it to me straight. Jason Apuzzo presented perhaps the best single sentence wrap up that I have read in years.

Maybe it’s because there were a lot of people there, but I’ve never before heard the word “sucked” muttered so often as a theatre emptied. These were teenagers, first dayers, excited, eager, ready for it (probably skipping school).

This is my kind of review. If the teenagers truly don’t like a movie targeted specifically for their demographic then we can rest assured that few else will. However, the bar is pretty low nowadays. I’ll let you know after it comes to Comcast.

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Someone, my brother-in-law to be exact, showed my daughter Happy Feet over Thanksgiving and since then, I’ve heard nothing but “feet! feet! feet!” from her. So, not having seen the film myself but trusting my family’s judgment, my husband went and bought the dvd for the little one. I sat down to watch it with her the other day. Now, I must preface this and tell you that I had heard from Rush how liberal Happy Feet is, BUT, he said he bought it for his nephews and nieces to watch at his house because they love it so much. So I figured, if the Maha Rushie allows it on his TV, how bad can it be?

Unbelievably bad. What assaulted my senses was a barrage of overt sexuality, wacko environmentalism, pro-illegal immigration propaganda and plenty of Christian-bashing sprinkled on top.

The very first number is a Prince song! Imagine penguins gyrating to these lyrics:

“Don’t have to be beautiful to turn me on. I just need your body baby, from dusk till dawn…give it to me!”

My thoughts: uh….WHAT?

Then, one rapping penguin breaks out into “Lets talk about X baby, let’s talk about you and me!” But of course we all know the lyrics are “let’s talk about sex baby” not X. Later on, there are penguins juking (for those of you oldies out there, juking, according to the urban dictionary means “dancing with a girl’s butt on a boy’s crotch area”) complete with butt-slapping. This is the result of the sexual education over-kill regime. Hollywood is now getting into the game of educating preschoolers about sexual behavior with gyrating, gesticulating penguins.

Moving on to the environmental angle, one of the penguins gets his neck stuck in a six pack plastic holder. This leads the penguins to discuss the elusive “aliens” that could be responsible for the garbage and for a fish shortage. The elder penguins, however, believe it is because the penguins have displeased God. They berate the younger penguins for doing outrageous dance moves and tell them to pray harder. These elder penguins are always calling the lead penguin a “backslider” and eventually they kick him out of the fold. It is juvenile in it’s transparency. I’m surprised the elders weren’t named Jerry Fallwell and Pat Robertson.

Then there’s the South American penguins that the elders don’t want. They speak with thick Mexican accents and are very short. (Why the Hispanic community isn’t suing, I have no idea.) The elders talk about them as though they are a blight on the penguin community while the rest of us can clearly see that they are fun and funny and a delight to have around. But since the elders are intolerant and blinded by hatred, they kick out the illegal immigrant penguins with the juking backslider.

They then embark on a journey to find the “aliens” to reason with them about the fish shortage. On a non-political note, the movie at this point just becomes very depressing. For a children’s film, there’s way too much suffering. The journey is so hard and so long, and the weather is terrible and when they get to where they’re going they’re attacked by killer whales, then one of the penguins is captured and put in a zoo where he goes insane with loneliness and the list goes on. There is nothing “happy” about Happy Feet.

I won’t go on and describe the entire movie. I think you get the point. Happy Feet is a liberal fairytale where humans are aliens who don’t belong on the planet, Christians are old and tired and should be dismissed, and everyone should get their juke on whenever they feel like it with whomever they feel like it.

[Discuss this article with the Little Fox...]

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Rotten Tomatoes is an aggregator that assembles movie reviews and then, depending on the number of positive or negative reviews, assigns any given film a “freshness rating. “ The higher the rating, the more favorable the majority of reviews are.

For example, as of today (11/25 at 18:06 PST), Enchanted gets a 93% freshness rating (which is a percentage point higher than yesterday). In other words, there’s a fair degree of critical unanimity that Enchanted is a really nice movie. That unanimity carries over to the non-professionals too. At the bottom of each movie’s Rotten Tomatoes page, non-professional critics can add their two cents, either by writing a review or simply by voting for the movie. The non-professional critics give the movie a 92%, while the user rating is 8.4/10 — pretty high. And if you get away from the rarefied world of professional critics or people who take the time to contribute to sites such as Rotten Tomatoes, the news is still good. By voting with their feet, film-goers gave the movie a $50 million opening, which is nothing to sneeze at.

Things are a little different for famed director Brian de Palma’s Redacted, both in terms of box office revenues and, most strikingly, in terms of the way the professional critics see the movie and the way the rest of the world sees the movie. In this last regard, it is, once again, a striking reminder that our media is populated by people who are very anti-War — which, as I always say, is their prerogative, if only they didn’t pretend to some Olympian objectivity.

So, back to Rotten Tomatoes, this time to the Redacted page (again, as of 11/25 at 18:06 PST). Generally, the movie hasn’t been well-received. What’s fascinating is that, the more “important” the publication (in a declining scaled from the New York Times down to the Podunk Review, and yes, I made that last one up) the more likely it is that the critic approves of the movie. Thus, while the critical average for the movie is 47% (that’s aggregating all professional critics) the top critics (or, as they’re called, “the cream of the crop”) gave it a 54% rating. Even more strikingly, some of them acknowledge that it’s a lousy movie. They just like the message so much, they really think you ought to see it. For example, David Edelstein, who reviews movies both for NPR and New York Magazine, has this to say:

Critics have called the movie crude and punishing. All right, the defense concedes all that, but the movie does a harrowing job of depicting the psychological toll of the occupation on both Iraqis and U.S. soldiers. Despite the presence of two American sociopaths (one named Rush, perhaps in honor of the radio commentator who likened torture at Abu Ghraib to frat-house antics), this is not an unsympathetic portrait. In the film’s best scene, we watch a car approach a checkpoint from the Americans’ point of view. It takes a long time, and who knows who’s inside it? All at once, you understand the corrosiveness of living all the time with that threat. And is it unpatriotic to point out that soldiers on their third tours of duty in a place where they have little knowledge of the culture, where they can’t tell who is on their side and who wants to blow them up, stand a good chance of losing both their moral compass and their minds?

If I read Edelstein correctly, he’s saying that Redacted is a lousy movie, but you should see it anyway, because it shows that our soldiers are going insane in Iraq. Okay. He may have framed it in the guise of compassion (those poor babies at the checkpoints), but I think the underlying message is pretty unmistakable, don’t you?
While the faux-intellectuals may be impressed, the public is not. The bottom of the Rotten Tomatoes page starts to give the game away. Non-professional reviewers give the movie only a 30% approval rating, which is enough to drive anyone away from the box office. Likewise, those who merely vote (without a written review) give it a 3.4/10 — again, a singularly uninspiring showing. But that’s the world of words. How about the marketplace? Therein lies the real story (H/T Power Line):

IT’S hard for Hollywood pacifists like Brian De Palma to capture the hearts and minds of America if Americans won’t see their movies. While the public is staying away in droves from “Rendition,” “Lions for Lambs” and “In the Valley of Elah,” audiences are really avoiding “Redacted,” De Palma’s picture about US soldiers who rape a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, then kill her and her family. The message movie was produced by NBA Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who insisted on deleting grisly images of Iraqi war casualties from the montage at the film’s end. Cuban offered to sell the film back to De Palma at cost, but the director was too smart to go for that deal. “Redacted” - which “could be the worst movie I’ve ever seen,” said critic Michael Medved - took in just $25,628 in its opening weekend in 15 theaters, which means roughly 3,000 people saw it in the entire country. “This, despite an A-list director, a huge wave of publicity, high praise in the Times, The New Yorker, left-leaning sites like Salon, etc. A Joe Strummer documentary [of punk-rock band The Clash] playing in fewer theaters made more in its third week,” e-mailed one cineaste. “Not even people who presumably agree with the movie’s antiwar thesis made the effort to see it.” (Emphasis mine.)

It kind of gives you hope for America, doesn’t it? We may be bombarded by intellectually superior people urging us to do our moral duty by seeing a movie that implies — heck, that says straight out — that American troops are so morally and psychologically weak that serving in Iraq has turned them into monsters, but we, the People, ignore that type of crap. Good for us!

[Discuss this article with Bookworm over at Bookworm Room...]

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Attacks on the 9/11 conspiracy film Loose Change are nothing new. Anyone with half a brain can intelligently attack the mad theories underlying that film. And if you want not just intelligent opinion attacking the film, but actual scientific analysis, you can read the wonderful Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can’t Stand Up to the Facts, in which Popular Mechanic’s editors carefully explain why the conspiracy theories are the products of paranoid delusion, not fact and science.

What is unusual, therefore, isn’t an attack on that movie, it’s an attack from the Left on that movie. And yet that is precisely what has happened, as Richard Baehr noticed:

The British paper, the Guardian, is the paper that the New York Times strives to emulate. Like the Times, it despises George Bush, America’s war in Iraq, Christian religious believers and Israel, and is captivated by the wonders of multiculturalism. But even the Guardian can smell an overcooked turkey, and it has found one in the moonbat offering in the 9/11 conspiracy annals, the film: Loose Change.
J.R. Dunn has dealt with a number of these conspiracy theories in the pages of American Thinker. But the Guardian taking a skeptical position is much bigger news. It is from their side of the political spectrum that these contentions issue.

Not only has the Guardian sought to distance itself from the film’s lunacy, it’s chosen a good writer to take on that task. From the first paragraph, Monbiot’s prose is accessible, lucid and, to help things along, amusing:

There is a virus sweeping the world. It infects opponents of the Bush government, sucks their brains out through their eyes and turns them into gibbering idiots. First cultivated in a laboratory in the US, the strain reached these shores a few months ago. In the past fortnight, it has become an epidemic. Scarcely a day now passes without someone possessed by this sickness, eyes rolling, lips flecked with foam, trying to infect me.

The disease is called Loose Change. It is a film made by three young men that airs most of the standard conspiracy theories about the attacks of September 11 2001. Unlike the other 9/11 conspiracy films, Loose Change is sharp and swift, with a thumping soundtrack, slick graphics and a calm and authoritative voiceover. Its makers claim that it has now been watched by 100 million people.

[Read more and discuss over at the Bookworm Room...]

Others:
Michelle Malkin

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Mr. Bookworm still finds troubling my political transformation, which is actually something I understand. After all, when we stood under the chuppah so many years ago, he knew what he was getting — a stalwart Democratic life partner. It was bad enough when his siblings, after 9/11, betrayed him by going conservative, but his wife! I ask you!? He’s fighting a rearguard action by bringing DVDs into the house that he presents to me without comment, in the hopes that I will rethink my new ideas and return to the fold. I’m stubborn as an old pig, though, so I don’t think he’d better hold his breath.

In any event, as part of his effort, we watched two DVDs this weekend. The first had no effect on me at all; the second, I think, was a disappointment to him, as tending to prove my case more than his.

The first DVD was Outfoxed : Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, a movie made right before the 2004 election. The movie’s basic premise was that Fox News, despite it’s “Fair and Balanced” logo actually has a conservative slant. Were you ever more shocked? I think the guys and gals who made the movie really think that members of the American public watch people like Bill O’Reilly, Neil Cavuto, and the other regulars, and are hornswoggled into thinking that these commentators aren’t biased. In fact, O’Reilly, Cavuto, et al are a blessed breath of fresh air in the media in that they’re so absolutely up front about their biases. The Fox News audience, unless it’s really as dumb as the liberal establishment thinks it is, knows precisely what it’s getting and, judging by the numbers, that’s precisely what it wants: commentary that doesn’t pretend to be balanced, all the while hiding a profound agenda.

In any event, the main “horror” and “scandal” shaming Fox (that it supports the President) could just as easily be applied in mirror image to the other 90% of the broadcast media (they all hate the President). The shame, though, is greater for the latter, because they don’t have the decency to admit that bias. I’d read the NY Times with much more interest and pleasure if it would stop hiding in the closet about its biases.

The second DVD, which also dates from 2004, was much more impressive than the above piece of hysterical polemic. Mr. Bookworm and I just finished watching Voices of Iraq, a movie by and about the Iraqi people. The gimmick is that the producers shipped 150 digital video cameras into Iraq in 2004, and let the Iraqi people film themselves. The movie is about 95% footage by and about Iraqis, but it does include, at rare intervals, (i) American newspaper headlines that seem to be at odds which or exaggerations of the story on the ground; and (ii) videos of staged riots and Hussein era torture.

What was fascinating was how different the story the Iraqis tell about themselves is from the American media talking head version. Once the handheld videocams found their way out of Fallujah, where they were hostile to Americans, and Baghdad, where they were understandably resentful of the great hardships imposed on their previously urban lives, you heard from people who were grateful to have Hussein gone, regardless of the hardships.

These grateful ones were the people who had survived Hussein era torture, and who laughed at the idea that being stripped naked and having your genitals fondled could be considered torture.* They were the Kurds who have living memories of Hussein’s slaughter of almost 200,000 Kurds, as well as his poison gas attacks on their villages. They were the Marsh People, who live at the heart of the ancient Fertile Crescent (Ur), who were displaced and almost destroyed when Saddam deliberately drained their swamps. The list of people grateful for Saddam’s downfall, and willing to put up with almost any hardship as long as he was gone, was phenomenal.

It was also amazing to see the liberality of thought so many Iraqis displayed — a fact daily obscured by the evening news. Somehow it seems timely to point out in this regard that one of the biggest attacks the Outfoxed movie makers had against Fox News was that it had the temerity to show good news coming out of Iraq. Lies, lies, lies, the movie makers implied.

I’m not so naive that I think things are wonderful in Iraq. God knows that, if my home were reduced to intermittent moments of electricity and water, I’d be disconsolate. I’d be even more unhappy if IEDs plagued my City. But, on balance, I might still be happy to see the last of a man who led my country in an eight year war that saw 400,000 of my fellow citizens dead;** a man who committed genocide against hundreds of thousands of Kurds (including using chemical weapons against them); a man (and his sons) who routinely used unimaginable torture against those who merely disagreed with him; and a man who thought it was good public policy to behead people on street corners. The film says that the low estimates for the Iraqi deaths under Saddam’s watch are one million people, with the highs coming in at about six million. Freedom with limited electricity has to be preferable to life in that kind of nationwide torture chamber.

[read more and discuss with Bookworm]

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I hope this film doesn’t become a train wreck before it even gets on the tracks.

Steven Spielberg is co-producing and Paul Haggis is writing the screenplay for a Clint Eastwood film on Iwo Jima survivors called Flags of our Fathers. (There is no word on whether or not the filming will be delayed due to Castro’s health, but that is another issue that Spielberg will have to sort out.)

Paul Haggis is the director of the 2005 movie Crash. He appears to be some sort of celeb in International A.N.S.W.E.R. circles and apparently makes his way to speak at anti-Iraq war rallies, etc… Nothing new for Hollywood here but I am a bit skeptical on this one.

Not that this should exclude anyone from making a movie mind you, but the mindset of the individual can often help shape the screenplays they write. Hence the red flag (no pun intended, or maybe it was!).

Haggis is also a signatory of a statement that circulated around from the anti-Bush group The World Can’t Wait. The group’s advisory panel includes such stand up people as Lynne Stewart. You may remember her from her stint as the lawyer for 1993 WTC bombing mastermind sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman.

What great company these guys keep!

The statement from The World Can’t Wait reads as follows:

“People look at all this and think of Hitler - and they are right to do so. . . . The Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come.”

Haggis has also been tapped on the shoulder to do a movie based on the Richard Clarke book “Against All Enemies”. The film will star none other than Sean Penn and is sure to be right in line with moonbat America.

So all in all I have some pretty low expectations for any screenplay about any American war that is written by Paul Haggis.

I looked up some information on the film and found the following synopsis.

The movie script for Flags of Our Fathers will try to show the difference between truth and myth, the meaning of being a hero, and the essence of the human experience of war.

I can only imagine what those truths and myths will entail or how close they will honor the story as told in the book. The synopsis is pretty much in line with that of the book that was written by James Brady whose father John Brady was one of the 6 men in that infamous picture.

The heart of the book centers around the tragic life stories of the six men who raised the flag that February day–one an Arizona Indian who would die following an alcohol-soaked brawl, another a Kentucky hillbilly, still another a Pennsylvania steel-mill worker–and who became reluctant heroes in the bargain.

Like the book, the movie is expected to focus on what happened to the men after the famous battle. The men in the photo–three were killed during the battle–were proclaimed heroes and flown home, to become reluctant symbols. For two of them, the adulation was shattering. Only John Bradley truly survived, displaying no copy of the famous photograph in his home, telling his son only: “The real heroes of Iwo Jima were the guys who didn’t come back.”

Only time can tell. Keep your eyes on this one. (h/t Liberatas)

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Looks like Al Gore’s magical mystery tour is cooling off at the box office. His mythical story about global warming came in 12th this past weekend. The gore-y film about the end of mankind because of excessive pollution caused by former politicians jetting around to promote movies is not as big a hit as it was.

Seems the attitude is, if it is getting warmer out I can get a good tan, so a lot of people decided to skip it. Though amazingly, a movie featuring animated characters other than Gore, was very popular. The movie Cars, about little vehicles that use fossil fuels and contribute to the inconvenient truth was number one at the box office.

Seems that people warmed up to the cartoon about cars more than the cartoon character talking about what cars do.

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