I Heard This Yesterday But Thought It Too Stupid To Be True

[Corlyss_D]

The Twit Show

Is it any wonder that many Americans are suspicious of the political agenda of Hollywood films?

It turns out that the screenwriter for Steven Spielberg's new science fiction thriller "War of the Worlds" intended the film's blood-sucking, homicidal alien invaders to be a stand-in for U.S. military forces in Iraq. Writer David Koepp laid out his premise to the Canadian film magazine Rue Morgue: "And now, as we see American adventure abroad, in my mind it's certainly back to its original meaning, which is that the Martians in our movie represent American military forces invading the Iraqis, and the futility of the occupation of a faraway land is again the subtext."

Mr. Koepp's smear against the U.S. military isn't something that director Steven Spielberg should countenance. Two years ago, when CBS aired a docudrama on the rise of Adolf Hitler, its producer, Ed Gernon, said it was meant to warn viewers about the peril of the Bush administration by portraying a nation "gripped by fear" that chose to give up precious civil rights. Mr. Gernon was summarily fired by CBS. Mr. Spielberg, who produced the estimable D-Day drama "Saving Private Ryan" and has assisted veterans' groups, should make it clear where he stands on Mr. Koepp's lunatic, left-wing ravings.

-- John Fund

If it's true, Spielberg should stick to tributes to WW2 veterans and Shoa saviors.

[Ralph]

Interesting. I thought Spielberg's target was the fast food industry and the relentless destruction of human bodies its calorie and fat laden items produce.

[DavidRoss]

And I thought Supersize Me was much more entertaining than Spielberg's flick.

[Ted]

It turns out that the screenwriter for Steven Spielberg's new science fiction thriller "War of the Worlds" intended the film's blood-sucking, homicidal alien invaders to be a stand-in for U.S. military forces in Iraq.

Uh huh
And if you hold the Beatles Magical Mystery Tour Album up to a mirror you can see God’s unlisted phone number

[Haydnseek]

I think I read that "War of the Worlds" box office gross dropped 60% in its second week which usually indicates that people who saw it didn't speak favorably about it to friends and colleagues.

[Barry]

And I thought Supersize Me was much more entertaining than Spielberg's flick.

Especially the scene with the double quarter pounder super-meal!

[Ralph]

And I thought Supersize Me was much more entertaining than Spielberg's flick.

*****

But did it make you hungry?

[Corlyss_D]

I think I read that "War of the Worlds" box office gross dropped 60% in its second week which usually indicates that people who saw it didn't speak favorably about it to friends and colleagues.

My first instinct was to avoid it because it had Cruise in it and it was a remake of a really bad movie from the 50s. It would be hard for me to come up with a deadlier combination on the spur of the moment. I tend to start looking at my watch about 20 min into any Cruise movie. But I must admit some things I've heard on Batchelor made me curious about the movie.

I am leery of merely curious movies: I just watched Napoleon Dynamite, one of the stupidest movies I've ever sat thru entirely, and The Life Aquatic, another vapid European-wannabe that I just couldn't sit thru. If one really wants to see a movie about a guy's midlife crisis, see L.A. Story. After about 30 min. of Aquatic I skipped to the cast interviews and bagged the rest of the movie.

So should I go to see War of the Worlds? Should I wait for the DVD? Should I forget the whole thing and go back to my baseball books?

[Haydnseek]

So should I go to see War of the Worlds? Should I wait for the DVD? Should I forget the whole thing and go back to my baseball books?

Have you heard the famous radio version by Orson Welles's Mercury Theater? I've heard it a couple of times and it's quite good. My father heard the original broadcast in 1938.

Here is a link to it:

http://www.waroftheworlds.org/Default.aspx?tabid=105

I really should read the original H.G. Wells story sometime.

[Ralph]

So should I go to see War of the Worlds? Should I wait for the DVD? Should I forget the whole thing and go back to my baseball books?

Have you heard the famous radio version by Orson Welles's Mercury Theater? I've heard it a couple of times and it's quite good. My father heard the original broadcast in 1938.

Here is a link to it:

http://www.waroftheworlds.org/Default.aspx?tabid=105

I really should read the original H.G. Wells story sometime.

*****

I have it on several CDs including one packaged with a neat book on the whole 1938 broadcast. I listen to it a couple of times a year.

The original novel is quite good.

[Corlyss_D]

So should I go to see War of the Worlds? Should I wait for the DVD? Should I forget the whole thing and go back to my baseball books?

Have you heard the famous radio version by Orson Welles's Mercury Theater? I've heard it a couple of times and it's quite good. My father heard the original broadcast in 1938.

Here is a link to it:

http://www.waroftheworlds.org/Default.aspx?tabid=105

I really should read the original H.G. Wells story sometime.

Well, you're no damn help. Should I go see it or not?

[Haydnseek]

So should I go to see War of the Worlds? Should I wait for the DVD? Should I forget the whole thing and go back to my baseball books?

Have you heard the famous radio version by Orson Welles's Mercury Theater? I've heard it a couple of times and it's quite good. My father heard the original broadcast in 1938.

Here is a link to it:

http://www.waroftheworlds.org/Default.aspx?tabid=105

I really should read the original H.G. Wells story sometime.

Well, you're no damn help. Should I go see it or not?

Wait until it's on TV and you can punch the change channel button after you ask yourself the inevitable question, “Spielberg hasn’t directed a really enjoyable movie since ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ has he?”

[Ralph]

Oh go already!!!!!!!!!!!

We're going in an hour.

[Corlyss_D]

Oh go already!!!!!!!!!!!

We're going in an hour.

"You are?" she said brightly. "Good! I'll wait to hear what you have to say. I trust your judgment. Besides, I have ball games every night this week until Sunday."

[Ralph]

Ted and I just got back. We enjoyed the movie. It's a fun summer flick. Cruise is Cruise-nothing special, nothing offensive. Dakota Fanning as ten-year-old Rachel is really good-she has second billing, unusual for a child actor in an adult flick.Tim Robbins does a terrific job teetering on madness, something he's really good at (on the screen).

The movie more or less updates the H.G. Wells novel with the kind of special effects Spielberg does very well.

I don't think there's a political agenda behind the story. Actually it's a long, deep look at how kids fare when their parents divorce and the idea of a not too involved dad stepping up to the plate when things go wrong.

[Haydnseek]

WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT THE HOLLYWOOD BRAIN?

By John Leo

http://www.uexpress.com/johnleo/

David Koepp, who wrote the screenplay for "War of the Worlds," says the Martian attackers in the film represent the American military, while the Americans being slaughtered at random represent Iraqi civilians. I see it differently. I think the Martians symbolize normal Americans, while those being attacked are the numbskulls who run Hollywood. Perhaps the normals went a bit too far in this easy-to-understand allegory, but think of the provocation.

Among other things, Koepp made the "there is no Internet" mistake, carefully masking his analysis in U.S. interviews, but saying it flat-out in Rue Morgue, an obscure Canadian horror magazine, that he apparently thought nobody would notice. But as the movie makes clear, once the normals begin to track you with their newfangled technology, there is no escape. They can find you even in Canada.

Hollywood has grown eye-poppingly angry with the rest of the country, mostly over Bush and Iraq, but partly, at least, because the left-coasters apparently thought they were somehow entitled to a string of Democratic presidents after Clinton. The upshot is that even mild-mannered non-propagandists like George Lucas have come under pressure to display their lefty credentials with silly political touches. The first three, brilliant "Star Wars" had no such touches, but the last three, non-brilliant ones surely do. In the last of the epics, two anti-Bush lines showed up, "Only a Sith (a dark lord) thinks in absolutes" and "If you're not with me, you are my enemy." Lucas said the "enemy" sentence had been written before Bush's similar words after 9/11. Maybe so, but Lucas had three years or so to figure out the political impact of the line, yet left it in anyway.

Last May, at the Cannes film festival, natural breeding ground for excitedly anti-American prose, Lucas apparently said that his final "Star Wars" movie, featuring the rise of Darth Vader and the sinister empire, is a wake-up call to Americans about the erosion of freedoms under President Bush. (I say "apparently" because Cannes news reports, appearing only in various Canadian papers, had no direct quotes about a wake-up call, only paraphrases.) Paul Jackson of The Calgary Sun wrote: "(Lucas) now says the 'Star War' movies have a political message: Fight to free Americans from the evermore frightening dictatorial tyranny of the Bush administration."

The soft and squishy side of the Hollywood mind was on display in Ridley Scott's unintentionally hilarious movie about the Crusades, "Kingdom of Heaven." A Crusader is shown beheading a hostage, thus establishing moral equivalence with the monstrous terrorist tactics of today. Saladin's sister is executed by the Crusaders (in real life, as opposed to reel life, she was released). The famous Saladin picks up and admiringly fondles a Christian crucifix he finds on the ground.

Somehow I doubt this happened. Muslims had spent several centuries slaughtering Christians or converting them at sword point. The good-hearted Christian king of Jerusalem aspires to establish a tolerant, multicultural and apparently relativistic kingdom of Muslims, Christians and Jews that seems like a 12th-century version of Beverly Hills run by a studio head.

"There is a tremendous drive in Hollywood to exculpate Islamofascist terrorists," Michael Medved says. No movie has been made about the terrorists since 9/11, nothing on al-Qaida, the Taliban, Daniel Pearl, Saddam Hussein, the USS Cole, the embassy attacks, the daring and impressive attempts to track down terrorists. Nothing. Not even a movie about heroic action after 9/11 -- the firemen who ran upstairs to their deaths to save others in the twin towers, the people who drove all night from Texas and the South to help New Yorkers cope with the disaster.

But wait. Help is on the way. Hollywood is still reluctant to irritate terrorists, but a few movies about 9/11 heroes are on the way. And whom did Paramount pick for the highest-profile one? Oliver Stone, the unhinged director/screenwriter who refers to 9/11 as a justified "revolt" against the established order and the six companies he thinks control the world. At a panel after 9/11, Stone said that the Palestinians who danced at the news of the attack were reacting just as people responded after the revolutions in France and Russia. He thinks 9/11 may have unleashed as much creative energy as the birth of Einstein.

Internet commentators are going berserk over the idea of a wacky, pro-terrorist paranoid directing the first big 9/11 movie. It will focus on two American heroes, not terrorists. But it could well turn out badly. Besides, why pick Stone? What can be done about the Hollywood brain? And where are those Martian attackers when you really need them?

COPYRIGHT 2005 JOHN LEO

[Ralph]

We saw the movie last night. The invaders certainly aren't Martians who look quite differently and are not bellicose. The closest these Spielberg creations come to true aliens may be in their resemblance in terms of features and behavior of Alpha-710 denizens, a plant many solar systems away.

While there is no clear evidence that we have been visited fom Alpha-710, there's also little to comfort us that we haven't. A number of persons abducted from Earth and subsequently returned have related remarkably similar accounts of visiting Alpha-710 and it's logical that Spielberg and/or his staff are aware of this.

[Corlyss_D]

Damn good thing Spielberg made Pvt. Ryan before 9/11, because it would be impossible now. Hell, it would have been impossible on 9/12. In fact, I was shocked that the Pvt. Ryan was as respectful, true to life, articulate, bull crap-free, and yet not maudlin or juvenile as it was. At the time I thought it was the best war movie ever made. Now it's a tie with Black Hawk Down.

I'm still debating with myself about whether to go.

Re: the first 9/11 movie. I thought Ladder 49 was that.

[Ralph]

Don't understand-"Saving Private Ryan" would certainly be made after 9/11. There's been little negative impact on filmmaking because of the attacks.

The Spielberg movie celebrates American Army valor. That's definitely in season now and rightfully so.

[Corlyss_D]

Don't understand-"Saving Private Ryan" would certainly be made after 9/11. There's been little negative impact on filmmaking because of the attacks.

It most certainly could not be made after 9/11 - Hollowood will not make another movie as unambiguously pro-American again for decades. Drivel they can produce by the truckload, but not a quality film that pays tribute to America, American society, and the American fighting man like Pvt. Ryan did. I'll warrant that had it not been in the can already, Band of Brothers would not have been made either after 9/11.

The Spielberg movie celebrates American Army valor. That's definitely in season now and rightfully so.

Yes, but Ralph Hollowood wouldn't want to pander to that sentiment now. They will want to lecture us for years if they address the subject at all; otherwise, they'll produce drivel.

[Ralph]

What nonsense. You have a view of a monolithic Hollywood that is inherently anti-American and there's no basis for that. If Spielberg wants to make another film like "Saving Private Ryan" he can and will.

Your blinkers-on view of Hollywood is in its essence as off-base as the bigots who continue to insist that Hollywood is run by a Jewish cabal.

[Corlyss_D]

What nonsense. You have a view of a monolithic Hollywood that is inherently anti-American and there's no basis for that. If Spielberg wants to make another film like "Saving Private Ryan" he can and will.

Your blinkers-on view of Hollywood is in its essence as off-base as the bigots who continue to insist that Hollywood is run by a Jewish cabal.

[Ralph]

What nonsense. You have a view of a monolithic Hollywood that is inherently anti-American and there's no basis for that. If Spielberg wants to make another film like "Saving Private Ryan" he can and will.

Your blinkers-on view of Hollywood is in its essence as off-base as the bigots who continue to insist that Hollywood is run by a Jewish cabal.

*****

Poor Cor, one of the few who really wish for a re-make of "Birth of a Nation."

[Corlyss_D]

Poor Cor, one of the few who really wish for a re-make of "Birth of a Nation."

Me? I don't wish for a remake of anything.

[Ralph]

Poor Cor, one of the few who really wish for a re-make of "Birth of a Nation."

Me? I don't wish for a remake of anything.

*****

Not even "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes?"

[Haydnseek]

Roger Ebert once suggested that good movies didn't need to be remade, but bad movies that were good ideas should be. I think he gave "Bonfire of the Vanities" as an example.

[Corlyss_D]

Poor Cor, one of the few who really wish for a re-make of "Birth of a Nation."

Me? I don't wish for a remake of anything.

*****

Not even "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes?"

Especially not Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. If I want to watch early Steve McQueen, I'll watch Wanted: Dead or Alive.

[Ralph]

There's a sequel to "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" too.

[Corlyss_D]

There's a sequel to "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" too.