[11/11/07]
[Streetsweeper]
12:05 am [permalink]
Streetsweeper's Cinema Sweepings: The Ugly Honesty of Gangster by George Will “American Gangster" opened last weekend and many of those who bought tickets - $43.6 million worth from Friday through Sunday - surely came away feeling as Mark Twain did when he said his memory was so powerful he could remember things that never even happened. Many moviegoers must have thought: I remember seeing this brand-new movie before.
They did. Its emulations of "The Godfather" are obviously intended to be obvious. But these genuflections to the archetype make "American Gangster" more, not less, interesting as a symptom of something permanent in the American mind - cynicism for sentimentalists. [more at New York Post]
[11/9/07]
[Streetsweeper]
12:05 am [permalink]
Streetsweeper's Cinema Sweepings: Gangster’s Paradise More from the Hollywood hood. By Peter Suderman Not too long ago, the world was treated to the news that some passionate reformer had developed a twelve-step program for gang members, a sort of “gangster’s anonymous” meant to help those burdened with lifelong addictions to gang culture find their way out. Whatever one thinks of the program’s virtues in the inner city, it may eventually find its home in the writing and pitching rooms of Hollywood movie studios — because clearly, they just can’t get enough.
For decades, Tinseltown has engaged in a torrid love affair with the gangster. And like so many love affairs, the allure was based as much in myth and fantasy as in truth — meaning that many of cinema’s greatest scoundrels and criminals have also been its greatest heroes. Murderers, drug dealers, thieves, corruptors — the silver screen has welcomed and celebrated them all, provided they supply they requisite style and gravitas.
American Gangster takes this notion to its logical extreme. Often dazzling, often gripping, always watchable, it exerts the sort of glamorous, high-gloss magnetism that comes from having the best Hollywood minds and star-power that money (about $100 million, in this case) can buy. Directed by Ridley Scott, the man behind Gladiator, Alien, and Thelma and Louise, written by Steve Zaillian, who previously scripted Schindler’s List and Gangs of New York, and, with A-list leading men Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe in the leads, featuring a supernova’s worth of star power, the movie is never less than entertaining. But despite the epic proportions to which its title aspires, it rarely rises above the level of entertainment. And its narrative implications, by any reasonable reading, are simply bizarre. It lionizes a man who was among the progenitors of inner-city drug culture, and weirdly implies, without any hint of irony or self-awareness, that the spread of addiction in black culture was a triumph of racial equality. [more at National Review]
[10/25/07]
[Joel
Rosenberg - novelist]
12:15
am [permalink]
HOLLYWOOD CONFRONTS RADICAL ISLAM Finally: someone in Hollywood has shown the guts to confront the evils of radical Islamic jihadists....Lynn and I saw THE KINGDOM last night and were stunned, frankly, by how brazenly director Peter Berg deals with the bloodthirstiness of the Saudi Wahabbis....the film certainly earns its "R" rating, and make no mistake: it is not for everyone....the violence is graphic, the language intense....it's not the kind of film we would normally see and I'm not sure if I could really recommend it....but it's worth noting because since 9/11 there has been almost nothing like it, a major motion picture taking viewers inside a U.S. operation to hunt down Middle Eastern radicals who believe "Islam is the answer and jihad is the way"....though the story is fictional -- think of it as CSI Riyadh -- it is loosely based on the jihadist bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996 in which 19 Americans were killed, one Saudi was killed, 372 people were injured, and in which U.S. investigators faced countless and infuriating roadblocks from Saudi officials as they tried to solve the crime and hunt down the perpetrators (the crime nover was solved and no one was ever prosecuted)....director Berg spent two weeks in Saudi doing research, though in the end he received no official help from the Saudis and was denied access to film there....nevertheless, he and his cast -- Academy Award winner Jamie Foxx as a lead FBI crime scene investigator, and Chris Cooper and Jennifer Garner (of Alias fame) as his Bureau colleagues -- weave a spell-binding tale of a "band of brothers" (and one sister) trying to hunt down bad guys "on Mars"....they examine the enormous cultural divide between the U.S. and the Saudis, from what we wear to how we speak to how we pray and ultimately what we believe about good and evil....the film-makes certainly aren't shy about shining a bright light on the thinking and actions of the radicals, but to their credit, they also effectively portray a reformer through the eyes of a fictional Saudi colonel who comes to sympathize with Foxx's FBI team and tries to help them succeed in their mission....will the film succeed?....it's struggling so far....in its first four weeks of release, it has earned just under $44 million and is only showing on 1,730 screens, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com, compared to, say, Disney's family-friendly football comedy, The Game Plan, which has earned nearly $70 million during the same period and is showing on 3,301 screens....still, it's really the first post-9/11 motion picture of its kind, so far as I can tell....perhaps there really are people in Hollywood who are beginning to get it and are finally finding the courage to portray it....as the New York Times put it: "For Universal, which spent more than $70 million to make the film and will invest tens of millions more to market it, the task will be to keep such ferment from overwhelming its own message: that even the most divisive situations can be served by a popcorn movie, if done right. 'We now accept the fact that this is the dynamic of the world we live in,' said Marc Shmuger, Universal’s chairman, speaking of the attempt by Mr. Berg and company to plant a genuine entertainment on top of an all-too real problem. 'I love that,' he added. 'I really respond to that.'"
