Posted on 11/16/2007 7:08:53 AM PST by 3AngelaD
Can a movie stop the war in Iraq? With "Redacted," director Brian De Palma hopes so. His new film recounts (and embellishes upon) an incident in which American soldiers...raped and killed a young Iraqi girl. De Palma has long held a reputation as a...copycat artist, a forger of second-rate goods who casually lifts from his cinematic betters. In..."Dressed to Kill," "Mission to Mars" and "Blow Out," he shamelessly appropriated motifs and narrative elements from respected directors like Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, and Michelangelo Antonioni.
He's also long exhibited a particular fascination with the confluence of violence and sexuality. So instead of simply paying tribute to his favorite films, Mr. De Palma's MO usually involves gutting his source material of thought and elegance and packing it full of gleefully grisly violence...savagery toward women.
Not content with being derivative, he seems compelled to lace his films with cruelty, gore and misogyny...his films trade smarts for shock and brains for brutality, prizing prurience and titillation above all.
...De Palma is in the midst of hyping "Redacted," which seems to involve highlighting its antiwar message. The film ...having recently won the best director award at the Venice Film Festival. Not surprisingly, the quality of the filmmaking rarely enters discussion of the movie's merits. Instead, it is being lauded primarily for its overt political stance...
In interviews about the film, De Palma's rhetoric has been equally blunt. He hopes the film will act as a catalyst to end the war by exposing Americans to its horrors...he seems to be playing a rather familiar game. Only this time, instead of poaching ideas from cinema's greats, he's skimmed from the antiwar movement...and reduced their many complex arguments to a single instance of violent, sexually charged spectacle.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
De Palma has body odor.
This incident happened at the hand of three thugs who managed to get into the military.
In an organization as large as the military, sometimes rotton apples slip through.
They all were prosecuted and received a worse punishment than they would have received in a civilian court.
Is this one of the Iraq films that were unattended by the public?
Lots of whinning going on...Drudge ..last week
“Redacted” was shown on HDNET Movies (Cuban’s network) Wednesday night...two “special” showings prior to the theater release, just for Hi-Def subscribers.
I watched the first few minutes, but couldn’t stand it. If I can figure out a way to cancel HDNET, I will do it.
Let Markey Cuban know you are doing that. His email is as follows:
and
He actually responds if you are polite in your disagreement with him.
“I shudder to think what his private life is like.”
Agreed. To revel in bloodlust and sensuality in professional life cannot help but have repercussions in the private life.
Actually I try not to look at private lives of entertainers (unlike politicians where their private lives might well impact me). I avoid gossip articles, gossip talk shows, gossip columns and People magazine and that ouvre because once I know about the private life, I make a judgment as to whether to continue supporting that entertainer with my hard-earned money.
Usually the only way I find out about those private lives is if they make their private lives or opinions a public issue in legitimate news sources (voluntarily or involuntarily by getting arrested, for example). If their reaction is they are proud their lifestyle choices or try to justify it somehow, I make my decision and whether to add that person or group to my private blacklist of those whose work I will not support. My list isn’t long and some have “redeemed” themselves off it by their later behavior, but I prefer not to know about their private lives if I can help it.
In “Mission to Mars” De Palma cast Tim Robbins and Connie Neilson as astronauts. They were so laughably bad that this movie is unwatchable, even if you want to have some laughs after a few drinks.
“He hopes the film will act as a catalyst to end the war by exposing Americans to its horrors...”
This assumes enough Americans will watch his movie. Not this American. Here’s a list of directors whose movies we should never watch:
All of them.
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