By Jason Apuzzo. The Hollywood Reporter has an article out right now about a planned Ronald Reagan biopic from producers Mark Joseph and Ralph Winter. According to THR:
The story of Ronald Reagan’s life — from boyhood to Hollywood actor to leader of the free world — is about to spill out on the big screen in a way quite different from the miniseries that caused such a stir seven years ago. The feature film, titled “Reagan” and sporting a $30 million production budget, is set for release late next year and will be based on two best-selling biographies of the 40th U.S. president by Paul Kengor: “The Crusader” and “God and Ronald Reagan.”
Mark Joseph, who optioned the books four years ago, is co-producing with Ralph Winter and Jonas McCord wrote the script. Winter’s producing credits include four “X-Men” movies, two “Fantastic Four” movies and the 2001 remake of “Planet of the Apes.” Joseph, a marketing and development executive, worked on “Ray,” “Holes,” “Because of Winn-Dixie” and “The Passion of the Christ.”
McCord, whose credits include “Malice” and “The Body,” said he wasn’t a fan of Reagan but was drawn to the project as he researched the former president’s upbringing. “I was of the opinion that at best he was a bad actor and at worst a clown,” McCord said.
Mark Joseph is an acquaintance of mine, and I first spoke to him several years ago about this project when he was initially trying to get it off the ground. Mark was very passionate about the project, particularly in terms of how he wanted to explore Reagan’s Christian faith and the role it played in the development of his anti-communist worldview.
According to THR, the film still doesn’t have all its financing, and does not yet have a director or cast attached – but I’m glad the project has gained momentum, and we’ll keep an eye on it as it develops.
I will confess to being somewhat discomfited that the screenwriter on this project initially thought of President Reagan as “at best … a bad actor and at worst a clown.” I know several screenwriters – with major credits – whose enthusiasm for President Reagan is of a much less qualified variety. In any case, we wish Mark and his team the best with this film.
[Footnote: Fred Ward starred as Ronald Reagan this summer in the taut Cold War thriller Farewell, which co-starred Willem Dafoe. Read the Libertas review of Farewellhere, and you can catch the trailer over in the right sidebar.]
Scenes from Wang Bing's anti-communist drama "The Ditch," surprise hit of the Venice Film Festival.
By Jason Apuzzo. • The surprise hit at the Venice Film Festival right now is a movie by Wang Bing called The Ditch, that apparently takes an unflinching look at the history of political persecution in Communist China. The film has been very warmly received thus far, and is in strong contention to win the festival’s top prize. Here’s a description of the film from Reuters:
“The Ditch” tells the little-known story of some 3,000 people deported for “re-education” to labor camps on the edge of the Gobi desert, in western China, and struggling to survive extreme climate and acute food shortages. Billed as right-wing enemies by the government for even mildly criticizing the Communist party or simply because of their background, many died of starvation, disease and exhaustion in the ditches that served as dormitories. Director Wang Bing spent three years tracking down survivors and wardens of the Jiabiangou and Mingshui Camps for the film, a surprise entry in the main competition line-up that was only revealed on Monday. “For 10, maybe 20 years, independent Chinese cinema has focused above all else on the social problems of the poorest working classes in contemporary China,” Bing says in the production notes. “The Ditch is perhaps the first film to deal directly with contemporary China’s political past, talking as it does about the ‘Rightists’ and what they endured in the re-education camps. It’s still a taboo subject.”
Needless to say, the film is unlikely to be released in China itself. We’ll be keeping a close eye on this one. And do I need to say it again? Please go see Mao’s Last Dancer if you haven’t already, because the better that film does, the more likely it is that The Ditch will get North American distribution. They really need a better title, though. [Sigh.]
• In the meantime, state-sponsored Chinese filmmakers are now embarking on the second half of a massive new propaganda film to glorify the history of the Communist Party. I don’t know why they bother funding these things, when 20th Century Fox (Machete, Avatar) would probably be happy to foot the whole bill.
Season 1 of "V" hits DVD on Nov. 2nd.
• The summer movie season is now over, and George Clooney’s The American and Robert Rodriguez’s Machete finished #1-2 at the box office this past weekend, closing the summer on a whimper. We didn’t even bother reviewing The American here, under the assumption that probably very few of you were going to spend your Labor Day Weekend watching Clooney. [Whereas I thought there was some risk of you fanboy-types seeing Machete, as I did.] On balance I think it was a weak summer. The most fun I had this summer was probably watching Piranha 3D – it was one of the few films that felt like a summer movie, although I was quite happy with Salt, as well. The biggest disappoint easily was Clash of the Midgets, which curiously got released under another title. I thought that the debate over Inception was possibly the most interesting event of the summer in terms of what it revealed about film critics. Beyond that, though, there won’t be much of long-term interest to come out of this summer other than the enormous wave of sci-fi projects greenlit in Avatar’s long wake.
• Will Robert Rodriguez’s Machete now be receiving tax credits from Texas? [It’s hilarious that the official page for film production tax credits at the Texas Film Commission website has a production still from Rodriguez’s own Spy Kids 3-D.] Apparently a project can be rendered ineligible if it violates Section 43.21 of the Texas Penal Code covering “obscenity.” Here is how obscenity is defined in Texas’ code. You lawyers out there – feel free to comment.
• On the European film scene front, Jean-Luc Godard and the late Oriana Fallaci experienced their share of controversy over the years. Now comes word that Godard won’t be showing up in Hollywood to pick up his honorary Oscar (standard procedure for Jean-Luc), and Fallaci’s memoir A Man has finally been optioned. I’m an admirer of Fallaci’s writings, although she was certainly a bit histrionic at times. Nonetheless, we have no journalists here in America of her eloquence, erudition, passion – or even physical bravery. Back in the day she was quite a fox, too. She is deeply missed.
By Jason Apuzzo. I had basically walked away from the whole issue of Stallone’s trashing of the CIA in The Expendables until a Libertas reader (we have great readers) named VW recently pointed out something extraordinary to me in the comments section of this recent post.
Check out this one particular exchange below [emphasis is mine]:
FAN: Are you having any problems with the studio about editing out some violence in ‘Rambo’ to achieve a lower rating or can you release the balls-out movie you promised with that (now legendary) trailer? You are simply the best and most entertaining movie star of all time. Thanks.
STALLONE: This film [Rambo] has its balls intact. The original premise was met with objections by certain powerful personalities in the studio because of the inherent violence. I told them to water this down to make a sugar free war movie, something that is diluted would be a true disservice to the millions of slaughtered Burmese. Then it was suggested that the tone of the film should be more about corruption within the system. For example, the ubiquitous corrupt CIA official or a film that deals with a “caper”, such as Rambo goes to Burma and finds Americans selling plutonium rods to the enemy or some other viral horse crap. I truly hate “caper” movies. I think if I ever developed a cancer, it’ll be a caper tumor lodged at the back of my brain. So, I said to the studio, “What’s wrong with doing a film about man’s inhumanity to man and sometimes God’s indifference to his loyal followers?” To their credit, they said, “Go for it.”
I will go so far as to say that this exchange constitutes a smoking gun. Let me explain why: Stallone admits here that he knows exactly the type of stereotype he’s peddling in The Expendables (i.e., “the ubiquitous corrupt CIA official”), and yet in the interval between Rambo and his new film he obviously decided to go forward with that type of stereotype anyway. And since he both wrote and directed The Expendables, he can’t claim ignorance.
I would not continue on with this subject, except for the fact that in certain media quarters Stallone continues to be treated as if he’s done America some kind of patriotic service by making The Expendables – as if Stallone had actually served in combat on behalf of his country, rather than having simply been a movie actor who made a so-so action movie.
In reality, Stallone is peddling an ugly stereotype of the CIA at a time when we can least afford it, changing his story about how he feels about such stereotypes, and is not even owning up to what’s in his own film. Some hero.
