My son Brendan returned from his trip to Germany via Scotland, where he got to visit my mother-in-law, who’s a very bright lady of whom I’m very fond. Returning home, he announced on several opportunities that his views are more “Liberal” than mine. Personally, I have no problem with this, as he is 16 and it’s not my business, even as his father, to prescribe what he thinks. However, he purchased a copy of the movie Lord of War on his return, and watched it with his mom, and both of them approved it to me. So, I watched it, and a bigger, more ludicrous pile of twipe I have seldom seen in my life.
The main character, played by Nicholas Cage, is a renegade arms dealer, who seduces supermodel Ava something, played by Bridget Moynihan, a remarkably incurious individual who seems not to notice, for example, that he doesn’t own the private jet that he claims to own at the beginning of their courtship. Her parents have been murdered with illegally obtained weapons, and eventually she’s recruited, in a moral awakening to which we are all invited, to turn in her husband, who has backslid on his promise to go straight. Obviously arms dealers, however wealthy they may be, do not deserve supermodel wives, in contrast with the virtuous viewers.
During the course of ridiculous events, the husband Yuri’s brother Vitaly (they’re Russians who grew up in the Bronx) is killed in Sierra Leone trying to prevent the weapons they’ve smuggled from being turned over to militia who are about to murder a camp full of displaced persons with them, yet Yuri continues the transaction, paid for with “blood diamonds.” At one point, the homicidal dictator of Liberia holds up a newspaper announcing the Supreme Court’s decision in the 2000 election and laughingly exclaims that the US no longer has the moral authority to criticise the conduct of elections in his country. The story ends with the revelation that the US is deeply involved in the illegal arms trade, depending on brokers like Yuri to do its dirty work, and a coda indicating that the story is based in truth–namely, that the US, Russia, China, France and UK are the biggest arms dealers on the planet.
I mention this because it ties in with the article by Carol Thatcher, Margaret’s daughter, in today’s Daily Mail, taking exception to the way the former Prime Minister is portrayed in a BBC movie, i.e. privately vengeful and profane. The author notes the BBC’s recent difficulties with libellous representations, including that visited lately on Her Majesty, and points out that portraits that have been more adulatory have been nixed by the network, as not supportive of “the narrative”–in this case politically motivated character assassination. Because, as always, if one thinks correctly, one must recognize that these representations are plausibly verisimilar, comporting as they do with one’s very correct presumptions.
So I suppose, as ever, Protein Wisdom’s criticisms are “niggling,” if that is something I’m permitted to say.
UPDATE: As Jeremy points out in the comments, the guy’s Ukrainian, not Russian. Assuming the accuracy of the information provided about Viktor Bout in the Wiki, he was born either in Turkmenistan or Russia. During the time depicted in the film, Bout resided in and conducted business largely from Belgium, rather than the US. He appears never to have been arrested or indicted in the US, though it appears he may have tried to strike a deal with the CIA after 9/11. He was not arrested and then released through Pentagon clout as depicted in the movie.
Heh! Sixteen-year olds don’t have views. They have glands.
How goes that old saw? “If you are not a socialist when you are sixteen, you have no heart; if you are a socialist at thirty, you have no head.”
“They have glands” is a bit pithier.
The writer, Tony Saint, has defended his script by saying the film “is a personal interpretation of how she might have been”.
BECAUSE OF THE TRUTHINESS!
Hollyweird politicking is a good thing, Dan. Like the hard left, by now it’s so farcical as to not be taken seriously except internally by its various mewling narcissists — it better stands for the rest of us as a useful marker where the road ends and madness begins.
Most viewers know it and so I say more, faster. It won’t stop their willing sacrifice of their freedoms in these late days of the Republic, but it has a useful place.
Along the lines of Hollywood politicking…have you all heard Pink’s new song? Hilarious.
No, I haven’t, MayBee. What’s it called?
Well, I don’t know about you, but I like to rub one out while I watch “Lord of War” with all those eeeeeeeeeeevil guns, and then I refresh myself with a bath. In sweet crude, of course. Mixed with the blood of the small brown children who displeased me by not working hard enough to enrich my bank account while exploiting third-world countries.
Or maybe that’s just a horrible caricature, much like 99.99999999% of the crap that comes out of Hollywood these days. I’ve been to one movie in the theater in the past three years, and that was the latest Harry Potter installment. Other than that, there’s no reason for me to give a bunch of worthless scumsucking bottom feeders my money.
PINK LYRICS
“Dear Mr. President”
(feat. Indigo Girls)
Dear Mr. President,
Come take a walk with me.
Let’s pretend we’re just two people and
You’re not better than me.
I’d like to ask you some questions if we can speak honestly.
What do you feel when you see all the homeless on the street?
Who do you pray for at night before you go to sleep?
What do you feel when you look in the mirror?
Are you proud?
How do you sleep while the rest of us cry?
How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye?
How do you walk with your head held high?
Can you even look me in the eye
And tell me why?
Dear Mr. President,
Were you a lonely boy?
Are you a lonely boy?
Are you a lonely boy?
How can you say
No child is left behind?
We’re not dumb and we’re not blind.
They’re all sitting in your cells
While you pave the road to hell.
What kind of father would take his own daughter’s rights away?
And what kind of father might hate his own daughter if she were gay?
I can only imagine what the first lady has to say
You’ve come a long way from whiskey and cocaine.
How do you sleep while the rest of us cry?
How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye?
How do you walk with your head held high?
Can you even look me in the eye?
Let me tell you ’bout hard work
Minimum wage with a baby on the way
Let me tell you ’bout hard work
Rebuilding your house after the bombs took them away
Let me tell you ’bout hard work
Building a bed out of a cardboard box
Let me tell you ’bout hard work
Hard work
Hard work
You don’t know nothing ’bout hard work
Hard work
Hard work
Oh
How do you sleep at night?
How do you walk with your head held high?
Dear Mr. President,
You’d never take a walk with me.
Would you?
[Thanks to swarner@bankexcel.com, Sweetsongstress14@comcast.net, Keir Lewis for correcting these lyrics]
These numbers show that Lord of War ended up with at least a $35M loss, though it looks like no one in particular took a major hit, aside from the opportunity cost involved in not producing or distributing a profitable film. Note from that list though – it was made with European money, and no American company took a major role in distributing it (and of the ones that were, they were bound to do so by contract). Links to follow – (did the spam filter get tweaked – I’ve been having a hard time getting links into comments…)
box office
production/distribution is at
imdb.com/title/tt0399295/companycredits
can’t get that one to take at all
You know what’s hard work? Getting through those lyrics.
Which should have ended with, “You are a scumsucking, fag-hating misogynistic and warmongering corporate-stooge robber baron, Mr President. And by the way, have you stopped beating your wife?”
You can say niggling, just don’t be niggardly with your opinions!
happyfeet–That requires a post of its own. What other projects hae been backed by the same production companies?
MayBee–Wow, that is execrable. I was unaware of the Indigo Girls’ impoverished background, because I’m sure they’re not among the chickenpoor.
“You know what’s hard work? Getting through those lyrics.”
No shit. There are alot of professional songwriters out here looking for gigs, Pink, how can you look them in the eye?
If you think the lyrics are a tough slog, you should hear it being sung. I think it’s up on YouTube.
I’ll bet Pink is also a chickenwalker. She would never take a walk with me, would she?
Odd, Pink’s lyrics look more like she’s working up to an excuse to not walk with George W Bush and then claiming he’s the one who would haughtily refuse to do so.
TW: painting 1798
Dan – I’ve played with this idea before, particularly when Viacom was on a pre-election 04 bender of producing incredibly slanted film and tv. You could add those up and show that they were willing to take a considerable loss in service to their bias, enough to raise the prospect of a shareholder suit, I thought at the time. But truth is, at the end of the day, these companies will always be insulated from a persuasive criticism by their ability to point to bona fide successes – The Daily Show, Michael Moore… So while it’s worth pointing out that Europe and Canada in particular have a track record of injecting Anti-American memes into the popcultural pipeline (remember Farenheit 9-11 was ultimately distributed by Canadians…), and you can note instances where the product involved was disastrous from a business perspective, it’s hard to elicit anything other than what we already know – the media, it is biased, and that bias extends beyond the front page of the newspaper – it’s pervasive.
What I think you could document, by the way, is the extent to which Japan tried its hand at this game to an extent, primarily through their Columbia Studios and MCA ventures). At the time it was possible to find evidence that they were looking to burnish the image of Japan (see here for an example) but ultimately they abandoned this sort of thing, though Sony is now of a piece with the more general lefty tilt to what gets produced.
What is more compelling I think is an analysis of the bias in film and television that demonstrates that so much of what BBC, NPR, and PBS produce is redundant, and not at all the sort of valuable “counterprogramming” they insist they are producing. Someone definitely should take a stab at that. Maybe someday. Tell you what – I’ll try to commit to tracking the fate of lefty productions released in 2008, up to the election, and we’ll see if we can figure how much this de facto campaign contribution harms or benefits the major studios. Probably would have to limit that to film, since I don’t have access anymore to the Nielsen data that would let you evaluate the success of tv with respect to the demographic delivery.
Oh – remember that at the time the Tom Selleck movie came out, it was MCA-Universal that was the corporate entity…
I don’t know if Dan will see this but aside from the details of the movie, and it was a movie not a documentary, Lord of War appears to be based on the life of Viktor Bout. I say appears because I’ve never read that it was explicitly based on his life, but reading (or watching) between the lines confirms it to me.
Bout is largely unknown but ranks up with bin Laden as a target of intelligence and law enforcement. For more details, I highly recommend “Merchant of Death” by Douglas Farah and some other dude whose name I’m too lazy to look up.
While Cage’s character (who is Ukrainian, not Russian) is a cartoon, his work is real and is carried out by a real person, with the same justifications that Cage employs in the movie and with the same covert complicity from the US government. Bout supplied arms to every single conflict in Africa in the 90s. He supplied both the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. HIs arms fueled the wars in Liberia, Sierra Leone, DRC, Angola…you name the war and his weapons show up. What does that have to do with the US? Nothing directly. But Bout was also paid by the US government to ferry supplies into Iraq.
Did you know the US was using lead bullets in Iraq? Was does that have to do with Hurricane Katrina? Nothing, but the bullets that killed John Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln? All lead.
J Howard and I got into a discussion many threads ago about “cartoon” political movies. The one we focussed on was “The Good Shepherd” which was nothing more than a 120 minute opportunity to trash the CIA and just about everybody who works there. I had heard about the content in “Lord of War” and, as a result, avoided it, having had my fill of cartoon geopolitics with “Munich,” “Syrianna” and “V for Vengeance” (I know, “V” really was based upon a cartoon.)
And yet non-cartoon movies about conflict can be made, even today. “Blood Diamonds. “Children of Men,” “We Were Soldiers” and “The Great Raid” come to mind. It should also be noted that except for “V” those other movies did not do well at the box office, earning less than Vin Diesal’s “Nanny” movie.
Moral of this story: US institution bashing at a cartoon level doen’t turn a profit. Unfortunatly this will be the one circumstance where Hollywood will push aside profit to serve The Narrative.™
And, boyo, I just can’t wait for Leo’s global warming movie to come out. Sorta like I can’t wait to be incontinent when I’m old and gray.
Red, White, and Blue – LYRICS
“Dear Ms. Progressiveâ€Â
(feat. Proud Americans)
(Coda)
Dear Ms. Progressive,
Come take a walk with me.
Let’s pretend we’re just two people and
You’re not smarter than me.
I’d like to ask you some questions if we can speak honestly.
What do you feel when you see innocent heads in the street?
Which of our enemies do you pray for before you go to sleep?
What do you feel when you look in the mirror?
Are you proud?
(Chorus)
How do you sleep while your countrymen and women fight and die?
How do you dream when an embryo has no chance to say goodbye?
How do you walk with your head held high?
Can you even look me in the eye
And tell me why?
Dear Ms. Progressive,
Were you a lonely girl?
Are you a lonely girl?
Are you a lonely girl?
How can you say
Any child is less than human?
We’re not dumb and we’re not blind.
They’re dying in the noise of your voices
While you stand proud, murdering them with your chioces.
What kind of mother would take her own babie’s rights away?
And what kind of mother might hate her own child for being in the way?
I can only imagine what the lady Speaker has to say
You’ve come a long way from Nam and cocaine.
(Chorus)
How do you sleep while your countrymen and women fight and die?
How do you dream when your babies have no chance to say goodbye?
How do you walk with your head held high?
Can you even look me in the eye?
Let me tell you ’bout hard work
Its long hard hours, not pretty speaches
Let me tell you ’bout hard work
Building your house, not activist screeches
Let me tell you ’bout hard work
Supporting your family, your country, your god
Not looking for handouts, or writing on blogs
Let me tell you ’bout hard work
Its first responders, Its troops in Iraq
Not self hating turncoats, that stab them in the back
(Bridge)
Let me tell you ’bout hard work
Hard work
Hard work
You don’t know nothing ’bout hard work
Hard work
Hard work
Oh
Being so smart is just so grand.
Spending you days, sticking it to the man.
Why build, when its so much joy
To raise some hell, less work to destroy
You don’t know nothing ’bout hard work
Hard work
Hard work
Oh
(Fini)
How do you sleep at night?
How do you walk with your head held high?
How do you call yourself an American
When you’re so filled with self-hate and spite?
Dear Ms. Progressive,
You’d never take a walk with me.
Would you?
Oh no, no, no, I understand
How could you, why would you.
Being smart, is ever so grand.
ever so grand….ever so grand…
[Concept and lyrics by D.Collins, R. Liff – All rights reserved – protein wisdom (C) 2007 ]
She first played ‘Dear Mr President’ to her dad on the day they recorded ‘I Have Seen The Rain’. Its politics didn’t fit with Dad’s.
‘My poor husband Carey!’ sighs Pink. ‘He’s such a sweet guy, he’s so passive. And he had to be there during a lot of interesting conversations between me and my dad. He’s not used to father and daughter being brutally honest. Meaning, “Go fuck yourself!” “No, you go fuck yourself!” And, “fuck you I’m not coming home!” And the whole thing…’
But in the end Jim Moore respected his daughter’s freedom to say what she thought. That, to Pink, was approbation enough. “It’s a questioning, provocative song. It’s not a flag-waving, ‘you’re a fuck up and you suck’ anthem. This is how I feel, these are some issues, they’re not theoretical questions, they probably could use some answers, for the whole world, and here you go.”
Just curious, why do you have “Bridget Moynihan” linked to Teri Hatcher’s tits? NTTAWWT.
Sorry, Token, but I couldn’t find any unobstructed views of Bridget Moynihan’s tits.
No worries, Dan. I couldn’t either.
That’s great stuff, Big Bang. I guess I’ll have to go listen to the Pink song, now.
In other words, this is my personal interpretation of what they may look like.
BMoe,
I don’t really know what your point is but I assume that, since it is similar to my comment about Bout, it is directed at me.
My comment, in no way, was aimed at any type of support or justification of anti-American sentiment that was in the film. I was simply trying to point out, in case Dan was not aware, that the concept for the movie was not created out of nothing for the sole purpose of bashing the US. The type of person that Cage plays in the movie does exist, does supply untold numbers of weapons, and, despite being a known arms trafficker, does get a blind eye from the US. Has Bout ever been arrested and then released, upon word of the US military? No and I never claimed he had. But, the fact remains that a guy the US uses when it is convenient, is also a guy who single-handedly, it seems, fueled and prolonged the misery of millions of people in Africa. A guy like the one portrayed in the movie does exist.
But if you got rid of the guy like the one in the movie, a guy like the one in the movie would still exist. It’s a niche. This is why no one bothers to kill tv anchorpeople.
For an amusing and relatively faithful picture of Vik Bout, see the Dick Francis novel Bolt. Apparently Francis actually met the guy as part of his research.
Regards,
Ric
Someone once said that Hollywood loves America the way Ike Turner loved Tina. Sure, he loved her. But he beat her every chance he got.
Because he loved her so much.
My favorite part of the movie is that he never would have been caught, if only he had invested in a cross-cut shredder.
I think the whole premise of “progressivism” – and so, this film – may be rendered as The Lard of Whores.
Bout is an arms trafficer and also owner of several small airlines who fly in and out of scary places, two occupations not unrelated. What I was poking fun at was your conspiracy-laced rhetoric tying the US usage of his airtransport service with complicity in his arms trafficing. The US most likely uses his service not just because it is convenient, but it is the only choice. How many air transport services do you suppose are flying in and out of your average third world insurrection?
Counting Fed-Ex and DHL, nine airlines currently serve The Portland International Jetport.
A film that seems to have found success yet plays on the very narrow edge of trutherism is the Bourne Ultimatum. Greenglass seems to have gone whole
hog to shake off the approval we had for his relatively balanced “Flight
93” It seems to have risen from the mind of Gleen and his Dalek minions; along with special collaboration from Ward Churchill. Tortureconditioned
‘dissident’ American agent, check; Hapless Guardian reporter; who is really based on New Statesman’s rendition author Stephen Grey; targeted by Echelon/TSP assasination team. Guilty CIA NOC targeted by Moroccan assassin
on loan from AQ; who else leaves a VBIED on a busy street in Tangiers. You could even envisage Julia Stiles character as a varsity Valerie Plame. The
whole operation is conducted from high rise towers on the Upper East Side;
and the program was set up pre 9/11; bows to Churchill’s “little eichmann’s
The guilty officials are indicted thanks to a fax to the NY Times by the other ‘dissident’ agent; played by Joan Allen; who spent the last film trying to target Bourne all over Europe. The real mastermind is a deputy
director; played Straithairn who echoes poor Dusty Foggo and the San Diego
US attorney flap. If the Rovester milieu were as efficient as he is portrayed in the HuffPo/Salon/Kosiad.
A production which takes a different tack is TNT’s The Company; about a multigenerational group of ex KGB/CIA men in the Cold War. There is a touch of moral equivalence suggested by Robin, Dr. Octopus,and the first
Batman vs. CSI’s Speedle and the standin for Philby. From Berlin to the Hungarian betrayal to the Bay of Pigs fiasco; all traduced by an American Philby; who ironically proves Angleton’s paranoid stance; although the book and film dissaproves of the waterboardish tactics used to secure his confession. Among the few critics of the work;Nancy D. Smith of the Wall Street Journal does point out that Iron Curtain scenesare in technicolor whereas as Washington D.C is noir issue grey; which suggests something. Subsequent interviews of Robert Littell suggest he’s been trending toward moderate moonbattism with regards to the war on terror; His latest vicious circle posits a radical Israeli preacher kidnapped by a Hamas splinter as the obstacle to a Hillary Clintonish grand peace treaty in the middle east.
Nevertheless the figures on our side are not portrayed as evil; that’s the
best that a screenwriter on Black Hawk Down can present today.
BMoe,
I agree with you. Sometimes, you have to make deals with bad people in order to achieve your aims. I’m just saying that the US conveniently forgets about all the other stuff right now because they need him. Remember from the movie, Cage states that he is under no illusion that his “get out of jail” card is permanent and that when he is not needed, he’ll be rolled up.
I probably wasn’t very clear about what I was trying to say. While the film is typical Hollywood tripe with digs at the US, the foundational premise, one of a guy who is breaking laws left and right to traffick in arms in some of the most hellish of holes but upon whom the US government relies for certain things, whether they like him or not, out of expediency.
I hate Pink, even the pinkest part of Pink.
Pink just wants to feel like what she’s doing means something.
Pink just wants to feel like what she’s doing means something.
It wasn’t and it still isn’t and more than likely never will.
I have visions of her greeting tour buses at some off-strip casino few yrs from now. “Welcome to the ____. We have a great lunch buffet folks and don;t forget to catch our all new Britney Spears Revue, featuring Britney Spears which will be the opening act for Yakov Smirnoff. Y’all enjoy.”
Maybe, but she’s global, Europe especially, and that can nurture her for a good while. She’s ambitious, not at all self-destructive. Also, she has taken pretty good steps so far getting into the moving picture bidness.
The Pink will always be with you.