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My New York Times Review of Munich (please FReep) CLOSE ENCOUNTER OF THE WORST KIND January 9, 2006 Reviewer: miat22 (Mia T) ... to borrow a phrase, perversely, from a Spielberg flick about benign intelligence. Munich, with its false premises, phony pieties and outright lies -- Spielberg fantasy wrapped in sober documentary -- is a verisimilitudinous contrivance that is pernicious, especially now, especially here, especially if we understand Spielberg's real motivation. Truth matters not at all to Spielberg, and courage matters even less. To advance his fallacious argument, he has Golda Meir speak words she never said, never would have...

AFTERWORDMUNICH: A CLOSE ENCOUNTER OF THE WORST KIND by Mia T, January 8, 2006 If Act I was a thinly veiled allegory about naked clintonism, then Act II is a parable about the plan for world domination by the Establishment, aged hippies in pinstripes all, with their infantile, solipsistic world view amazingly untouched by time.4 Alien Abductions, Flying Saucers + Other Weird Phenomena, c.1992-2000 Mia T, January 3, 2006THE ALIENS Mia T, June 9, 1999     orrowing a phrase, perversely, from a Spielberg flick about benign intelligence, to watch Steven Spielberg's Munich is to have a close encounter...

            Munich is deeply and disturbingly dishonest  Around the globe — but particularly in the Arab world — anti-Semites whine that the Jews “control” Hollywood. It’s true that there are many prominent Jews in the movie business, but as Steven Spielberg’s Munich amply demonstrates, it little profits the Jewish people. Munich is a well-crafted movie, but it is a deeply and disturbingly dishonest one. Many moviegoers were not even born in 1972, and many who were alive will scarcely remember the details. Do moviemakers owe nothing to them? Do they owe nothing to the truth? This is not Oliver...

As I write, 1,576 days have passed since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and still there has been no subsequent terrorist assault on American soil. Every day, 130 domestic and 118 foreign airlines serve the United States. Air traffic controllers handle 20 million flights a year -- without a terrorist incident. In fact, the past three years have been the safest in aviation history. The United States remains the most open nation in the world. Since 9/11, scores of millions of sealed trailer-size containers have entered U.S. ports, and 6 million legal international immigrants have joined the American population....

he only thing that's going to solve this," Steven Spielberg told Time magazine, "is rational minds, a lot of sitting and talking until you're blue in the gills." This, I suppose, is what goes for heavy thinking in Hollywood. Imagine Dreamworks negotiating with Paramount if the latter were continually shooting up the former. So maybe before the Israelis and Palestinians sit down with each other--as they've done innumerable times over the years, at Camp David and Oslo and secret hideouts for very long periods, even producing hopes that many credulous folk took for real--the Palestinians should sit down just with...

THE 'MUNICH' ALLUSION:THE DANGER OF SPIELBERG AND THE AMERICAN LEFT by Mia T, January 4, 2006     Funny that the Movie is called "Munich" since, until about 20 years ago, the very word "Munich" was a synonym for appeasement of evil-doers and moral equivalency, the result of Chamberlain's famous "scrap of paper" in which Hitler promised, in Chamberlain's words, "Peace in our time." Is Speilberg aware of the background of "Munich? --cookcounty   unich,' Steven Spielberg's new movie, is less about Golda Meir avenging the 1972 Munich massacre than it is about George Bush waging the War on Terror,...

Spielberg's Munich and me January 3rd, 2006 I had deep misgivings about seeing Spielberg’s Munich. The tragedy was too close to my heart. I was supposed to be with the 1972 Israeli Olympiads as a member of the Israeli women’s basketball team. At the last minute, the International Olympic Committee decided against including a women’s basketball event. (It did not become a regular event until the 1976 Olympics.) I didn’t go to Munich, but I spent years training with the athletes who did go. We developed a close camaraderie, as people do at training camps where tensions and hopes are...

HISTORY REVISITED -- OR HISTORY REVISED?THE ISSUE: Steven Spielberg's provocative "Munich" recounts the '72 Olympics murders.   Lou Lumenick starts his gushing review of "Munich" by noting that Steven Spielberg dares to present "Palestinian terrorists as human beings with possibly legitimate gripes" ("Tragedy's Wake," Dec. 20). Spielberg is wrong to suggest that the murderers at Munich had some plausible justification for what they did. The Arabs refused to live in peace with Israel and invaded them four times between 1948 and 1973. The world made a mistake in 1972 when most people reacted to the Olympic massacre, not by...

Israel: Spielberg "Munich" Dangerous; Rationalizes TerrorismThere is no excuse for terrorism, no rationalization for the murder of innocent civilians.By Joel Leyden Israel News Agency Jerusalem----December 28......Steven Spielberg has made a very big mistake. And rather than admitting it: "you know it was an error, I overreached, I am going to pull it - my movie on the Munich Massacre," Spielberg hires a spin doctor from Israel. But Steven, no amount of PR spin will pull you out of this mess. You cannot ask Israel to hesitate for one tenth of one second on our war against terrorism. Many in Israel...

So whom did Steven Spielberg tap to bring a brainy foreign policy perspective to the marketing of his controversial new film, “Munich?”Try Mike McCurry, former State Department and White House press secretary. He met with Spielberg in early 2004 and outlined the issues. “Anytime you’re dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian question, it tends to be a zero-sum game,” McCurry said. “People believe if one side wins, the other side loses.”The Washington Post said he told producers the movie required “unique positioning and a nontraditional launch.” To that end, McCurry recruited Middle East peace negotiator Dennis Ross for a series of high-brow...

Hollywood's misunderstood terrorists By Victor Davis Hanson When terrorism goes to the movies in the post-Sept. 11 world, we might expect the plots, characters and themes to reflect some sort of believable reality. But in Hollywood, the politically correct impulse now overrides all else. Even the spectacular pyrotechnics, beautiful people and accomplished acting cannot hide it. Instead, moviegoers can anticipate before the opening credits that those characters who work for the American government or are at war with terrorists will likely be portrayed as criminals, incompetents or people existing on the same moral plane as killers. Take this fall's "Flightplan,"...

Why won't AIPAC--the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the self-styled pro-Israel lobby in America, take a stand against Steven Spielberg's new film Munich or even take any stand at all? You would think a group that claims to be pro-Israel and also claims to be American would have two reasons to denounce this fictional movie that morally equivocates terrorists and victims and denounces the war on terror: 1) as Americans AND 2) as supporters of Israel. But you would be wrong. AIPAC refuses to make a statement about Munich. It's an outrage that a group that markets itself, using a...

Once again, Steven Spielberg transforms a serious subject—an historic act of Arab terrorism—into a skillfully arranged horror show, trivializing another example of 20th century barbarism. Recalling the terrorist attack at the 1972 Munich, West Germany, Olympic Games, in which 11 Israeli athletes were seized and murdered, Munich tracks besieged Israel's response. It makes for a slow motion wreck.

I received my copy of the VHS tape from Amazon (link above) and watched it last night. I have not seen the Spielberg movie, and may never. I did want to give my review of this documentary, because if any of you haven't seen it, it provides a chilling look into both the continued ruthlessness of Arab terrorists over these decades and into the utter corruption and sickening capitulation of the German government to terrorists. This has not changed; just this week Germany negotiated with Zarqawi and got that Muslim German woman released from captivity in Iraq. As the film...

Steven Spielberg's "Munich" is not so much about war as about war's smallest, most inevitable and ugliest component: killing. It's about the psychological and political meaning of pointing the gun, pulling the trigger and watching -- through the recoil and the muzzle flash -- as a penetrated human begins to squirt blood, stagger, stumble and fall toward eternal stillness. What then? A feeling of triumph? Exaltation at the slaying of the enemy? We win, we win, we win! Chalk up another one, boys. A good meal? A hoedown? According to Spielberg, the consequence is quite the opposite: despair, self-doubt, self-loathing,...

SPOILERS BELOWA major controversy has emerged as to whether Steven Spielberg’s Munich is anti-Israel - a kind of pacifistic rejection of the ‘cycle of violence,’ a simplistic cri de coeur about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by a West LA liberal. Many conservative critics are rejecting the film on this basis - while left-leaning film critics are smugly embracing the film, largely for the same reasons. All of these people apparently saw a different film than I did. Steven Spielberg’s new terror-themed thriller Munich may be many things, but it’s not Woodstock, Coming Home or Born on the Fourth of July -...

GAZA (Reuters) - The Palestinian mastermind of the Munich Olympics attack in which 11 Israeli athletes died said on Tuesday he had no regrets and that Steven Spielberg's new film about the incident would not deliver reconciliation. The Hollywood director has called "Munich," which dramatises the 1972 raid and Israel's reprisals against members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), his "prayer for peace." Mohammed Daoud planned the Munich attack on behalf of PLO splinter group Black September, but did not take part and does not feature in the film. He voiced outrage at not being consulted for the thriller and...

GAZA(Reuters) - The Palestinian mastermind of the Munich Olympics attack in which 11 Israeli athletes died said on Tuesday he had no regrets and that Steven Spielberg's new film about the incident would not deliver reconciliation. The Hollywood director has called "Munich", which dramatizes the 1972 raid and Israel's reprisals against members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), his "prayer for peace". Mohammed Daoud planned the Munich attack on behalf of PLO splinter group Black September, but did not take part and does not feature in the film. He voiced outrage at not being consulted for the thriller and accused...

According to Yahoo's latest estimates Spielberg's "Munich" scored 11th place in the weekend box office Dec 23-26

Spielberg defends his 'Munich' December 25, 2005 BY ROGER EBERT Film Critic 'I knew the minefield was there," says Steven Spielberg, describing the storm of controversy over his new film "Munich." He has been attacked on three fronts, for being anti-Israeli, being anti-Palestinian, and being neither -- which is, those critics say, the sin of "moral equivalency." "I wasn't naive in accepting this challenge," he says about his film, which begins with the kidnapping and murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympiad, and follows a secret Israeli team assigned by prime minister Golda Meir to hunt down...

When you see who is backing Spielberg's Munich the most, you see whose agenda Spielberg is serving.

ST. JOHN, U.S. Virgin Islands. -- The camera always lies. That is one of my most dearly held beliefs, and an early screening of Steven Spielberg's "Munich," which I saw last week, provides me with more evidence. The camera always lies -- and Steven Spielberg lies quite a lot too, at least when he uses a camera in his Art. Not long ago he did a movie, "Shark Tale," in which all the bad guys spoke with Italian accents and were supposed to summon up visions of the Mafia. This movie was for children. Mr. Spielberg covers himself on this...

In their turgid, sermonizing anti-thriller Munich, Spielberg and Tony Kushner (Angels in America) look in history's rearview mirror and aim for the same effect. Their movie is ostensibly about the aftermath to the Palestinian terrorist slaughter of 11 members of the Israeli Olympic squad during the 1972 Summer Games. But from the moment the Israelis decide Munich has changed everything to the final shot of the World Trade Center, the whole picture says, "Munich may be closer to 9/11 than it appears."...

Spielberg's not so subtle commentary about our post 9-11 world is the ultimate obscenity

When Steven Spielberg began filming Munich in June 2004, he set the tone for his fictional movie about Israeli agents who hunted down the Palestinian terrorists responsible for the slaughter of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Spielberg abruptly stopped filming and closed up shop. Why? Because the 2004 Summer Games were happening in August, and Steven Spielberg didn’t want to upset the terrorists. That’s what Munich is about: not upsetting the terrorists. And rolling over while they attack and kill us. In Steven Spielberg’s world, not going after terrorists brings peace. In the real world, not going after...

Steven Spielberg and an army of well-paid consultants and spinmeisters are pulling out all the stops to promote Munich and fend off damaging criticism of the movie about the murder of Israeli Olympic athletes and the effort to track down the crime's masterminds. The campaign has even included courting family members of the slain men for endorsements to blunt a gathering storm of negative commentary from the likes of David Brooks in the New York Times, Leon Wieseltier in the New Republic and Andrea Peyser in the New York Post.Briefly, the movie presents, via pulse-pounding scenes of kidnaping, death, stalking...

Without the bullwhip and hat, but with his camera, his moviola, and his trusted young sidekick, Tony Kushner, Steven Spielberg has set out to do what no great head of government alone or in concert, no statesman, not even Winston Churchill, not even the United Nations when it was still shiny, hopeful, and had clout, has been able to do since the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire -- solve the riddle of the Middle East. Befitting such an heroic undertaking, Time magazine has put Spielberg on its cover and given him eight pages of copy and pictures with which to...

This hour's discussion is focused on Steven Spielberg's film "Munich" and how the film, via Tony Kushner ("Angels in America") suggests not only that the terrorists are sympathetic characters, but that they may even have been innocent. Peyser of the NY Post equates Spielberg with the president of Iran. Is this going too far? Kushner, the writer, says Israel is a mistake that "f-ed people over." Why is it that Hollywood's (and English theater's) apparent agenda is decidedly anti-Israel?

Every generation of Americans casts Israel in its own morality tale. For a time, Israel was the plucky underdog fighting for survival against larger foes. Now, as Steven Spielberg rolls out the publicity campaign for his new movie, "Munich," we see the crystallization of a different fable. In this story, the Israelis and the Palestinians are parallel peoples victimized by history and trapped in a cycle of violence.... This is a new kind of antiwar movie for a new kind of war, and in so many ways it is innovative, sophisticated and intelligent. But when it is political, Spielberg has...

Spy vs. spy: The morality of "Munich" December 14, 2005 Steven Spielberg's political spy thriller "Munich" opens next week, but it's already come under fire from some who think... well, I can't really tell what they're thinking. These attacks don't really seem to be about the film, but are more precisely framed as paranoid fantasies about Spielberg himself, or reactions to comments he made about the film in an exclusive TIME magazine interview. Roger Ebert will review "Munich" -- the actual motion picture -- when it goes into nationwide release December 23. I'm sure I'll have a lot more to...

December 14, 2005 -- WHEN did Steven Spielberg turn into Barbra Streisand? That's what springs to mind after seeing "Munich" — the director's startlingly anti-Semitic rumination on Arab terrorism and the state of Israel. In 2 1/2 excruciating hours, Spielberg's film about the 1972 Olympics massacre of Israeli athletes by Islamic butchers sets out to solve Middle East violence while providing a blueprint for world peace. Instead, Spielberg proves two things in his film, due in theaters just in time for Hanukkah:

WHEN did Steven Spielberg turn into Barbra Streisand? That's what springs to mind after seeing "Munich" — the director's startlingly anti-Semitic rumination on Arab terrorism and the state of Israel. In 2 1/2 excruciating hours, Spielberg's film about the 1972 Olympics massacre of Israeli athletes by Islamic butchers sets out to solve Middle East violence while providing a blueprint for world peace. Instead, Spielberg proves two things in his film, due in theaters just in time for Hanukkah: Steven Spielberg is too dumb, too left and too Hollywood (or is that redundant?) to tackle such complex and polarizing themes as...

Steven Spielberg's next movie tells the touching story of two male Palestinian suicide bombers who fall in love and engage in graphic on-screen sex before detonating themselves at a Natany shopping mall. Tentative title: Blowback Mountain. I made that up, of course, but more than happenstance links Ang Lee's gay cowboy film Brokeback Mountain with Spielberg's Munich, the subject of the cover story in this week's Time magazine. It isn't only that gays have a thing for cowboys (remember the Village People?), not to mention Arabs (wasn't Lawrence of Arabia a gay flick?). The American left sympathizes with Palestinians for...

TEHRAN 14 Dec. (IPS) One of Iran’s most influential ruling cleric called Friday on the Muslim states to use nuclear weapon against Israel, assuring them that while such an attack would annihilate Israel, it would cost them "damages only". "If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession, the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic bomb would not leave any thing in Israel but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world", Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani told the crowd at the...

Israel LA envoy criticizes new Spielberg film 'Munich' Israel's consul-general in Los Angeles levelled criticism Sunday at Steven Spielberg's "Munich," saying that the new film drew an incorrect picture of the Mossad's hunt for the PLO terrorists of the 1972 Olympic massacre, and taking the legendary director to task for morally equating the Israeli agents and their Palestinian terrorist targets. Ehud Danoch, Consul General of Israel in Los Angeles, said Spielberg had addressed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with "a certain pretentiousness" and "quite superficial statements." The film follows a Mossad hit squad assigned to track down and kill the Palestinian Black...

It remains to be seen, literally, if Steven Spielberg has switched sides, from kosher ("Schindler's List"), to treyf. His movie, "Munich," will be opening in a few days and early word has it that he has indeed gone "Hollywood." This means that he's joined the trend to the Left, and that's the way to go if you want to do lunch in that town again. If advance screenings prove accurate (the movie is set to open December 23), Spielberg has used the Olympic Massacre of 1972 to send a message that brings to mind the words of MGM tycoon Louis...

Media Monitor: Spielberg’s Munich Massacre By Jason Maoz As the Monitor noted back in July, “alarm bells went off like crazy when Steven Spielberg hired Tony Kushner last year to rewrite the script of a movie about Israel’s clandestine — and lethal — response to the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.” The Monitor found cause for concern because Kushner is a radical leftist whose views on the Middle East are hardly distinguishable from the hateful screeds found on the most rabidly anti-Israel websites. In an interview with the Times of London, Kushner declared: “I deplore the...

Michael said he saw the film but he isn't reviewing it yet. He said that "Munich" is brilliant filmmaking, but that it definitely attempts to be sympathetic to terrorists, and to Palestinian terrorists in particular. That's what some of us were afraid of. According to Medved, Spielberg will probably get a pass from people who would normally object to this kind of trash because he's Spielberg, but I disagree.

I don't know which is more amazing: that Steven Spielberg managed to make the best movie of the year in just four months or that it's his second huge film of 2005. Either way, "Munich" is a poignant political masterpiece that will no doubt be very controversial. It's the best movie of 2005, coming in at the last minute to best other terrific entries including "Walk the Line," "Match Point," "Capote," "Mrs. Henderson Presents," "Good Night, and Good Luck," "A History of Violence" and even "Memoirs of a Geisha." "Munich" is "inspired by real events," those being the 1972 murders...

LOS ANGELES, California -- Director Steven Spielberg said his new film "Munich," the story of Israel's revenge for the killing of its athletes by Palestinian guerrillas at the 1972 Olympics, is "a prayer for peace," Time magazine reported on Sunday. Leaders of Jewish and Muslim groups as well as diplomats and foreign policy experts will preview the film before its Dec. 23 U.S. opening but Spielberg has shied away from the media hype and costly promotional campaigns that typically precede a big-studio movie. The magazine said its interview was the only one the Oscar-winning director planned to do before the...

Snap Judgment: Dear Steven Spielberg By CALEV BEN-DAVID I hope you will not think me presumptuous, but given our long relationship I feel entitled to offer you some unsolicited advice regarding Munich, your new movie scheduled to premiere later this month. Our relationship began of course back in 1971 when I saw your first feature film, the thrilling made-for-TV movie Duel, and later enthusiastically described it in detail to my friends. It continued during my years at the NYU film school, when I defended Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. - and yes, even 1941 - as the...

There will be no press junket, no premiere and, most importantly, no Oscar marketing campaign beyond trailers and posters for Steven Spielberg’s movie Munich, I have learned. This dicey decision to have no traditional publicity for the film before and after it opens December 23 is the director’s alone. He will not even be giving press or broadcast interviews. “The official strategy is for the movie to speak for itself,” an insider told me this week. “All they’re going to do is just show the movie to people. You have to be Steven Spielberg to get away with that.”

Steven Spielberg has been criticized by the only surviving Palestinian terrorist behind the massacre at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany, because the director failed to consult him over his new movie dramatization of the tragic events. Mohammed Daoud was a member of terror group Black September in the early 1970s and was responsible for the deaths of 11 Israelis in Munich's Olympic Village. He has been on the run ever since. But Daoud is so angry with Spielberg's supposedly pro-Israel stance in new film Munich, he contacted news agency Reuters to put forward his side of the story. He...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 31, 2005 — Is there a future Steven Spielberg hidden among the Army's ranks in Iraq? Walk into 1st Lt. John Prettyman's room and you might start to think so. You won't find the normal pictures or calendars hanging on the walls. Instead, Prettyman, with the 70th Engineer Battalion, has news articles that have captured his interest neatly taped to the white fiberboard wall. Piled on a cot, there's a computer, editing decks and perhaps the latest issue of Moviemaker magazine. You'll also find a camera, which can fit in the palm of a hand. This is...

Director Steven Spielberg has infuriated the residents of Budapest, Hungary with his disrespect of their daily lives, while filming new movie Munich. PageSix.com reports fuming locals have faced an array of irritations since Hollywood came to town, including having their cars, which were in Spielberg's way, towed with barely any notice, endless traffic jams and severe warnings should they attempt to take pictures of the proceedings. And city-dwellers are particularly amazed by the Americans' arrogant attitude - as they assume Budapest should be honored to be the Oscar-winning director's chosen location. A source tells PageSix.com, "The best part is (Spielberg's...

Back to the Future Part IV / Time After Time 2By J. Neil SchulmanA movie I would love to see but am never going to be allowed to write.--JNS While traveling through the American southwest, Sherlock Holmes1 is hired by the railroad to investigate the hijacking and destruction of a locomotive that was deliberately crashed, apparently senselessly, off an unfinished railroad bridge into Shonash Ravine 2, Hill County, Texas. During his investigation Holmes sees a flying locomotive engineered by a white-haired man and a dark-haired woman2, which Holmes initially attributes to a cocaine-induced hallucination3. However, further investigation of forensic...

My Pitch Meeting With Steven Spielberg by J. Neil SchulmanHere's a picture of Steven Spielberg with E.T. (Spielberg is the one on the right.)In 1982, when E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was released, six-year-old Brian Herzlinger first got a crush on its young co-star, Drew Barrymore. Twenty-three years later, with a video camera obtained under morally ambiguous circumstances and $1,100 prize money he won on a game show, Brian decided to make the charming, inspirational, and laugh-out-loud funny movie, My Date with Drew, in which he documents his campaign to get a date with his crush. Strategic to Brian's campaign to...

NEW YORK — Could the director of "Schindler's List" find himself in trouble with some Jews? That's the speculation as Steven Spielberg (search) prepares "Munich," (search) which may become his most controversial film. "Munich" tells the true story of the secret Israeli squad assigned to track down and kill the Palestinian terrorists who planned the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany. In addition to showing Israel's retaliation, "Munich" depicts the Israeli operatives' doubts about what their mission will achieve -- two factors that could ignite the Jewish community.

It's time for your regular Hollywood update — in which people who earn and lose and gross hundreds of millions of dollars figure out ways to trash America, democracy and freedom.... Yes, well, God forbid anyone should question the motives of the terrorists. Not while Hollywood is so busy questioning the motives of the United States.... The actress Maggie Gyllenhaal... believed America was in "some way responsible" for the 9/11 attacks. She said this during interviews for a film she made called "The Great New Wonderful," which dealt with 9/11. Her shocking views were certainly less shocking to those who...

Writer says attacks in his film represent slaughter of IraqisA screenwriter for the blockbuster film "War of the Worlds" says the malevolent Martian attackers represent the American military randomly slaughtering Iraqi civilians. Dave Koepp voiced his controversial explanation of the movie script to an obscure Canadian horror magazine titled Rue Morgue, "apparently thinking no one would notice," writes U.S. News columnist John Leo. Meanwhile, the screenwriter gave the same jarring analysis to USA Weekend, noting 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...