By Jason Apuzzo. The new Ten Commandments Blu-ray comes out this Tuesday, March 29th (see the trailer for the Blu-ray at the bottom of this post). Paramount will be releasing a 2-disc Blu-ray set of the classic film, and also a Limited Edition 6-disc DVD/Blu-ray Combo set, that features both Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 and 1923 versions of the film – and a host of goodies, including a handsome archival booklet that may be worth the price of the set on its own.
The Ten Commandments is a special favorite of mine. Not only is the film one of Hollywood’s greatest epics of the 1950s, the film is also a timeless and enduring ode to human freedom – and one which seems to grow only more timely and urgent as the years go by. The Ten Commandments is a film that will always remain powerful and ‘relevant’ so long as there are souls yearning for freedom – even, as we’ve seen recently, in contemporary Egypt and North Africa where so much of The Ten Commandments was filmed.
We had the pleasure of showing what was then the best existing print of The Ten Commandments at our first Liberty Film Festival in 2004, when we invited cast member Lisa Mitchell to talk about her recollections of Mr. DeMille – and how influential he was in her life. Several years later Govindini and I spent time with Cecilia DeMille Presley, granddaughter of Cecil DeMille and a caretaker of his legacy – who shared some wonderful memories of her grandfather with us. Most special, however, was the opportunity Govindini and I had years ago to meet Charlton Heston himself at The Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, when he introduced a special screening of The Ten Commandments. (We actually sat right behind him during the screening – and watched his reactions to the film, which he still seemed to take great delight in so many years later.) It was an extraordinary thrill to meet him; even late in life, he was still handsome and rugged, with a biting wit – but also a warm and generous spirit. He was the consummate gentleman.
Charlton Heston in "The Ten Commandments."
The Ten Commandments is without a doubt one of the best films Hollywood has ever produced, and a carrier of important ideas about freedom, so I thought we’d take a little look back at it today. It also happens to be a magnificent showpiece for the Blu-ray medium – with the film’s rich, saturated colors, beautiful costumes and production design, endless desert vistas, and iconic visual effects sequences. To put it mildly, The Ten Commandments is not only an emotional spectacle of the heart … it’s also an eyeful.
Interestingly,The Ten Commandments happens to be the fifth highest-grossing film of all time, adjusted for inflation. When the film was released in 1956, theater tickets cost about 50 cents – and the film still grossed over $65 million. What this means is that at today’s ticket prices, The Ten Commandments would have grossed over $1 billion at the domestic box office. In the history of American moviemaking, only Gone With the Wind, Star Wars, The Sound of Music and E.T. have fared better at the box office than did DeMille’s extraordinary film.
I don’t mention The Ten Commandments‘ box office success because that denotes anything in particular about the film’s merits – success at the box office can always be misleading – but to suggest the kind of powerful bond this film has with the public. The Ten Commandments is, as it turns out, a beautifully written, directed, acted, photographed and scored film – a majestic and emotional voyage into one of the primary myths of Western religious life. It’s also the crowning achievement of one of America’s greatest moviemakers. At the same time, The Ten Commandments is something else: it’s a part of American popular mythology, as important to America’s filmic conversation about freedom and individual dignity as Casablanca, Gone With the Wind or On the Waterfront. Continue reading For Easter & Passover: A Review of The Ten Commandments on Blu-ray
By Jason Apuzzo. I come to praise Sword & Sandal movies – not to bury them.
But with Wrath of the Titans and the Sword & Sandal/sci-fi mash-up John Carter not exactly setting the world on fire – along with recent disappointments like Immortals and Conan – it’s getting more difficult by the day to believe that the Sword & Sandal movie can survive the recent fumbling of this otherwise great genre.
And that’s a shame, because the Sword & Sandal movie – known for its gladiatorial games, pagan orgies, depraved emperors, and the occasional snarling cyclops – may represent the most colorful and enduring movie genre of all time.
Like its cousin the Biblical epic, a Sword & Sandal movie – or ‘peplum,’ named after a type of ancient Greek garment – is typically set in the ancient Mediterranean world, and dramatizes the fight for freedom. Think of Kirk Douglas fighting to free slaves in Spartacus.
Sam Worthington as Perseus in "Wrath of the Titans."
The hero of a Sword & Sandal movie is usually muscle-bound (think Steve Reeves) and able to deliver passionate speeches about freedom (think Charlton Heston). The villain is normally a wicked tyrant, preferably played by a silky British actor (think Christopher Plummer) – and the hero typically has a few slave girls, wicked queens or curvy sorceresses thrown his way before he settles down with his true love, often played by an Italian brunette (think Sophia Loren).
From as far back as 1914’s Italian epic Cabiria – the first movie ever screened at the White House – Sword & Sandal movies have been delivering huge entertainment value with their muscle men, exploding volcanoes, sacrifices to Moloch and marching Roman armies.
Cecil B. DeMille and D.W. Griffith took the genre to its early heights from the 1910s-1930s, with spectacular films like Intolerance (1916) and Cleopatra (1934). In the years before the Production Code, these films often pushed the boundaries of sex and carnivalesque violence. In DeMille’s infamous The Sign of the Cross (1932), for example, Claudette Colbert takes a sexy milk bath (see below), and the film wraps with a lurid finale featuring Amazon women fighting pygmies, and nubile Christian martyrs (including one played by burlesque queen Sally Rand) served up to gorillas and crocodiles.
Hail Caesar!
Claudette Colbert in "The Sign of the Cross."
The genre’s heyday, however, was in the 1950s and early ’60s – the era of ‘Hollywood on the Tiber,’ when the studios decamped to Rome to recreate the ancient world. This period was dominated by American-made Biblical epics and Italian-made serials about Hercules or other burly, mythical heroes like Maciste. Lavish spectacles like Ben-Hur, The Robe and Quo Vadis saved Hollywood from the economic encroachments of television, and minted a new generation of masculine stars like Charlton Heston, Kirk Douglas and Richard Burton. And the movies themselves got bigger, with new formats like CinemaScope and VistaVision filling movie houses with sumptuous panoramas of ancient lands.
Capping off the era was Elizabeth Taylor’s magnificently grandiose Cleopatra (1963), a movie so big that today it would’ve cost over $330 million to produce – possibly because the film’s dubious Italian accountants claimed Liz Taylor ate twelve chickens and forty pounds of bacon each day for breakfast.
Nothing about peplum movies – not even their catering – is small.
Russell Crowe (right) in "Gladiator."
After a long drought, broken by only a handful of films like Ray Harryhausen’s magical Clash of the Titans (1981) – and Conan the Barbarian (1982), featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger as the bone-crushing Cimmerian warlord – the Sword & Sandal genre was revived splendidly in 2000 by Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe in Gladiator. Gladiator took advantage of new digital technology to convincingly recreate the ancient world in telling a blood-soaked tale of Rome’s slide into imperial tyranny. Frank Miller’s 300 then ‘modernized’ the genre in 2006 – recreating the Battle of Thermopylae with video game-style action, post-9/11-style speeches about the value of freedom, and Gerard Butler providing the most impressive display of abs since Franco Columbu was Mr. Olympia.
Fortunately, although recent projects like Wrath of the Titans and John Carter are doing little to build off the momentum of those films, Hollywood still seems to have confidence in peplum movies. Brett Ratner and The Rock are plunging ahead with their adaptation of Hercules: The Thracian Wars, and Russell Crowe recently signed to star in Darren Aronofsky’s Sword & Sandal-esque movie about Noah. The 300 prequel Battle of Artemisia still moves forward, and Wrath of the Titans director Jonathan Liebesman wants to direct movies about Julius Caesar and Odysseus. Plus Mel Gibson’s Maccabee movie is still in development (a bit awkward, that one), Ridley Scott and Paul W.S. Anderson are both doing Pompeii projects, Angelina Jolie is still circling around an expensive Cleopatra film – and Steven Spielberg is even considering directing Gods and Kings, an epic telling of the life of Moses.
While it’s heartening that these projects are still going forward, no one wants them to suffer the same fate as John Carter or other recent, lackluster efforts. Audiences probably deserve better than what they’ve been getting, so with that in mind it’s time to take an unflinching look at what’s working – and not working – about this latest crop of Sword & Sandal movies.
Kronos gets fired-up in "Wrath of the Titans."
WHAT’S WORKING ABOUT THE NEW SWORD & SANDAL MOVIES:
1) Boffo Digital Creatures
Movie creatures haven’t been quite the same since Ray Harryhausen retired, but his legacy is still alive and kicking (and growling) into the digital age. Recent creatures like Wrath of the Titans‘ Kronos or the club-wielding cyclops, or the White Apes in John Carter, are awesome beasts to behold – especially in IMAX 3D and 7.1 channel sound. And whereas back in the 1950s and ’60s only Harryhausen’s movies had credible creatures (even the wonderful Italian peplum movies so often got dragged down by paper mache dragons and rubber lizards), nowadays most Sword & Sandal flicks can be expected to feature a decent mythical beast or two.
2) Great Use of Weaponry
Today’s Sword & Sandal stars like Conan‘s/Game of Thrones‘ Jason Momoa or Immortals‘ Henry Cavill (who’s also the next Superman) really look like they can fight, or at least like they’re trained and know their way around weaponry. And while that isn’t a prerequisite for peplum heroics – Tony Curtis never needed it – the ability to use a sword, spear or hammer axe convincingly is one of the key selling points of any Sword & Sandal hero.
Wild costume and production design in "Immortals."
3) Bold Costumes & Production Design
Tarsem’s Immortals featured some wildly imaginative costume and production design, blending North African, Indian, Persian and Greek influences that enlivened the look of Sword & Sandal cinema for the first time in years. Plus, Disney’s John Carter managed some fabulous retro/19th century sci-fi designs, for the few people in the audience still awake after the first hour.
4) British Accents
Let’s face it: the Brits, along with the Aussies and the Irish, just sound better doing this stuff right now than their American counterparts, and are saving a lot of otherwise sub-par films. In Wrath of the Titans, for example, stodgy dialogue is routinely rescued by the redoubtable Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes – both of whom could probably make an ad for shaving cream seem portentous.
5) 3D & IMAX
When it comes to Sword & Sandal movies, size really does matter. And while today’s 3D/IMAX-sized movies can’t compare in scale to films like Howard Hawks’ 1955 CinemaScope epic Land of the Pharaohs (one scene in that film featured over 9,000 extras), new films like the IMAX 3D version of John Carter still offer a reasonable facsimile of what those widescreen spectacles of old were like.
WHAT’S NOT WORKING ABOUT THE NEW SWORD & SANDAL MOVIES:
Sophia Loren in "The Fall of the Roman Empire."
1) Where did all the Love Goddesses go?
Easily the biggest problem with today’s Sword & Sandals movies – although this is less of a problem on cable TV shows like Spartacus or Game of Thrones – is the lack of good female characters. The wicked queens, love goddesses and slave girls that once made peplum movies so famous (and scandalous) are almost completely gone – leaving little for the men in these films to do other than chop each other to pieces. No more dancing girls, pagan orgies, or virgin sacrifices – what fun is that? In the ’50s and ’60s, tantalizing (and usually Italian) women like Sophia Loren, Rossana Podesta, Gina Lollobrigida and Sylva Koscina appeared routinely in Sword & Sandal epics and made life exciting for the gods and mortal men who coveted them – or feared them. They should be welcomed back.
2) Spoiled Heroes with Super-powers and Abs
The big new trend nowadays – from peplum films to comic book movies – is to have annoying, demigod heroes with abs who fret over their supernatural powers. Petulant guys like John Carter or Perseus in Wrath or Theseus in Immortals who can’t decide whether the world is cool enough for them to save. It’s tiresome. Kirk Douglas didn’t fret over his ‘powers’ or his abs in Spartacus, Ulysses or The Vikings, probably because he didn’t have any – he just had courage (also the cinema’s best chin). Today’s peplum heroes should have fewer powers and flabbier abs (like Victor Mature), and more backbone. They should be more stoic, and stand for something beyond their own narcissism – like freedom.
Another fake digital army in "Immortals."
3) Fake Digital Armies
You know the kind I’m talking about, because they’re in every new Sword & Sandal film: the fake digital armies, with endless rows of digital soldiers wearing digital armor – marching and grunting into battle as one. They always appear in a scene that’s supposed to be ‘awe-inspiring,’ but that instead comes across as software-driven and phony. Memo to Hollywood: spend the money and hire some real extras.
4) Characters Who’ve Never Taken a Bath
In an effort to create ‘edgier,’ more ‘realistic’ Sword & Sandal movies, some filmmakers have come up with the idea of populating the ancient world with guys who’ve never bathed, shaved, or washed their clothes. Wrath has one such guy, an unshaven dude with matted hair named Agenor, who looks like he spent the last six months occupying Zuccotti Park. He actually gets more on-screen time than actress Rosamund Pike (seemingly the only female cast member), who plays the film’s pretty blonde heroine. A related idea in today’s peplum cinema is to have everything – buildings, armor, vegetable stands – sprayed with mud and dirt for that ‘authentic,’ antediluvian feel. It may come as a shock to some filmmakers to learn that people in the ancient world actually had access to water, and were able to wash themselves.
5) Movies That Skimp on the Big Themes: Freedom, Romance, Religious Faith
Here’s the key to a good Sword & Sandal movie: it wears its heart on its sleeve. Classics like Robert Wise’s Helen of Troy, Kirk Douglas’ Ulysses or Anthony Mann’s The Fall of the Roman Empire not only had more intelligent, literate scripts; not only were they better researched, and more faithful to the spirit of their original stories. There was also an element of sincerity and passion to them in how they depicted the big Sword & Sandal themes of freedom, romance and religious faith. In more recent years, for example, a film like 300 took the theme of freedom seriously, and cleaned-up at the box office. By contrast, I read recently that in Disney’s early meetings on John Carter, the first things executives discussed about the film were … the merchandizing and the sequels. It showed.
Chalton Heston in "Ben-Hur."
THE BOTTOM LINE:
While today’s 3D/IMAX-sized Sword and Sandal movies have modern technology and other advances going for them, they don’t always understand the human element that made classics like Ben-Hur or Spartacus work. Of course, assuming Hollywood doesn’t want more $200 million write-downs on its books, perhaps that will start to change.
The good news is that when Sword & Sandal movies are done right, people still love them. Movies about the ancient world stir our imaginations, and give us a sense of continuity with the past. They also speak to our most cherished values of liberty and faith – often while providing scandalous fun. Hollywood is right to believe in these projects – Cecil B. DeMille did, and made a career out of them for 40 years – so let’s hope filmmakers can up their game over the next few years, and make the ancient world as exciting as it used to be.
Review: HBO’s Game Change is like Days of our Lives for Republicans
By Jason Apuzzo. It used to be that a politician had to be a Kennedy to get a juicy, tell-all movie made about them.
On the odd chance that you can’t get enough of this year’s colorful Republican primaries – if lurid accusations of Newt Gingrich’s ‘open marriage’ or saucy rumors of Herman Cain’s romantic conquests haven’t been enough for you – or if you think all the pizazz went out of the campaign once Michelle Bachman left the race (can anyone else say “Obama is a socialist” with such a winning smile?), then HBO’s frothy Game Change, which debuts this Saturday March 10th, may be the remedy for you.
Game Change is pure political soap opera, and in fleeting moments it even makes for compelling drama – though to be fair, Game Change is probably not an accurate view into the behind-the-scenes dynamics of the 2008 McCain campaign, or into the personality of its megawatt star, Sarah Palin.
Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin.
What the movie is, however, is a gossipy and occasionally colorful look at how much changed – at least in the world of Republican politics – when John McCain made the decision to select Sarah Palin as his running mate for the 2008 election.
And as the roiling 2012 campaign continues to make clear: a lot changed from that point forward.
There was an era, seemingly a lifetime ago, when the Republican Party appeared to be the quieter, more straight-laced of the two parties. Most people over 30 remember what that was like, back before Republican officeholders were expected to be celebrities.
Traditional Republican candidates were war veterans and businessmen, successful lawyers, sober Congressmen with dark suits and smiling families, genial chairmen of the local chamber of commerce. Think Mitch Daniels crossed with Phil Mickelson.
They were the type of person you’d want to buy real estate or aftershave from, or to lead your nephew into combat – but not necessarily build a Broadway show or rock opera around.
That, of course, was before the Palins came to town.
Game Change is HBO’s adaptation of the book of the same name about the 2008 Presidential election, penned by journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. Crucially, that book depicted both sides of the 2008 campaign – dwelling mostly on the epic Democratic Party primary battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, something left out completely from HBO’s movie. Continue reading LFM’s Jason Apuzzo Reviews HBO’s Controversial Game Change at The Huffington Post and AOL-Moviefone
[Editor’s Note: The article below appears in its entirety today at The Atlantic.]
Putin’s Kiss, Khodorkovsky, and Target question tyranny, capitalism, and their country’s future.
By Govindini Murty & Jason Apuzzo. As Russians head toward their presidential elections on March 4th, a trio of new films sheds light on a contemporary Russia veering between hope and cynicism, democracy and authoritarianism. The documentary Putin’s Kiss depicts a young Russian woman who becomes disillusioned with her role as a leader in Vladimir Putin’s nationalistic youth group Nashi in the wake of a brutal beating of a journalist. The chilling documentary Khodorkovsky examines the fate of the jailed Russian billionaire turned democracy activist Mikhail Khodorkovsky. And the science-fiction epic Target depicts the moral collapse of a wealthy elite in an authoritarian, near-future Russia.
On the brink of what may be another six years under Putin’s rule, these three films reveal a deep anxiety about Russia’s future—and a faint glimmer of hope for more genuine democratic freedom.
Masha Drokova is the young heroine of Danish director Lise Birk Pedersen’s documentary Putin’s Kiss (2012), a selection of the 2012 Sundance and Berlin Film Festivals and currently playing in limited release. Born in 1989, Masha is part of the first generation to grow up in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. At the age of 16, Masha joins Putin’s nationalistic youth group Nashi; by age 19, she is already a spokesperson and leading commissar of the youth group, and Putin himself awards her a medal of honor. By age 21, the bright, ambitious Masha has everything thanks to Nashi: a prestigious spot in a top Moscow university, a new car, an apartment, her own TV talk show, and access to the highest echelons of Russia’s power elite.
As briefly mentioned in the film, Nashi itself was founded in 2005 by Putin supporters to counter the rise of pro-democracy youth groups in the wake of the Ukrainian Orange revolution. Although purportedly “democratic and anti-fascist,” Nashi bears a striking resemblance to the Soviet youth group Komsomol. Like Komsomol, the well-funded Nashi provides a route for many young people into official advancement.
In Putin’s Kiss, Nashi founder Vasily Yakemenko is shown exercising a Svengali-like control over his young charges, exhorting them to discipline and promising them a new life if they will dedicate themselves to Putin and the Russian motherland. As Yakemenko says to the Nashi faithful: “I want everybody to understand: There is no authority for the movement except for the policy of Putin and Medvedev … Being part of the movement means going out into the streets. It means to tell a villain he’s a villain.” As depicted in the film, a major part of Nashi’s efforts are directed toward vilifying Putin’s opponents as “enemies of Russia.” By way of example, the film shows some particularly crude attacks directed at opposition figures Boris Nemtsov, Ilya Yashin, and Garry Kasparov.
Masha is initially drawn to Nashi out of patriotism and ambition. She sees Nashi as a way for young people to get involved in helping advance Russia, and she considers Putin a force for strength and stability. Masha is such a fan of Putin that she becomes known as “the girl who kissed Putin” for impetuously pecking him on the cheek when he presented her with a medal.
Yet Masha’s curiosity about the larger world leads her to make friends with a group of opposition journalists. Masha’s chief friend in the group is the gregarious Oleg Kashin, a liberal journalist who writes for the Kommersant newspaper.
Things take a dark turn one night in 2010 when assailants brutally beat Oleg Kashin …
[For the remainder of this article, please visit The Atlantic.]
By Jason Apuzzo. Celebrities will invade Los Angeles this weekend for the 84th Academy Awards ceremony. Searchlights will blaze and flashbulbs will pop as Hollywood stars will descend from the heavens — or maybe just the Malibu hills — to touch the ground that regular Angelenos walk on each day.
They’ll smile and snarl our traffic. They’ll toss their hair and forget to thank their husbands. They’ll praise each other for their bravery, while collecting $75,000 gift bags.
L.A. is accustomed to such strange invasions, of course. If you’re a movie fan, you already know that L.A. has been invaded over the years by everything from giant atomic ants (Them), to buff cyborgs (The Terminator), to rampaging 3D zombies (Resident Evil: Afterlife). So Angelenos take invasions from movie stars in stride.
But this weekend marks an anniversary of an invasion you might not know about: L.A.’s first alien invasion.
A surviving image from The Battle of Los Angeles.
This February 24th-25th is the 70th anniversary of The Battle of Los Angeles, also known as The Great Los Angeles Air Raid, one of the most mysterious incidents of World War II — and also one of the key, oddball events in U.F.O. lore that’s still inspiring movies and TV shows to this day.
Between the late evening of February 24th, 1942 and the early morning hours of February 25th, the City of Angels flew into a panic as what were initially believed to be Japanese enemy aircraft were spotted over the city. This suspected Japanese raid — coming soon after the Pearl Harbor bombing, and just one day after a confirmed Japanese submarine attack off the Santa Barbara coast — touched off a massive barrage of anti-aircraft fire, with some 1400 shells shot into the skies over Los Angeles during the frantic evening.
Oddly, however, the anti-aircraft shells hit nothing. Despite the intense barrage, no aircraft wreckage was ever recovered.
Indeed, once the smoke had cleared and Angelenos calmed down (the public hysteria over the raid was mercilessly satirized by Steven Spielberg in 1941), no one really knew what had been seen in the sky or on radar. Were they weather balloons? German Zeppelins? Trick kites designed by Orson Welles?
Many people believed the aircraft they’d seen were extraterrestrial – one eyewitness even described an object he’d seen as looking like an enormous flying ‘lozenge’ – and some accused the government of a cover-up. Conflicting accounts of the incident from the Navy and War Departments didn’t help clarify matters.
As if to confirm public fears of extraterrestrial attack, one famous photograph emerged (see above) from the incident showing an ominous, saucer-like object hovering over the city. This much-debated photograph, which even appeared in some trailers for Battle: Los Angeles last year, inspired America’s first major U.F.O. controversy — a full five years before Roswell.
To this day, no one knows for sure what flew over Los Angeles that night and evaded the city’s air defenses. (The raid itself is recreated each year at Fort MacArthur in San Pedro.) But since it’s more fun to assume that it was aliens than weather balloons, we’ve decided to honor The Battle of Los Angeles by ranking the Top 10 movies in which aliens attack L.A. (See below.)
To make this list, a film must feature aliens on the warpath — no cuddly E.T.’s here — and their attacks must take place in L.A. proper, rather than out in the suburbs or desert (eliminating films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers).
As the list demonstrates, no city — other than perhaps Tokyo — has suffered more on-screen calamity at the hands of extraterrestrials than Los Angeles. At the same time, there’s no apparently no other city that’s easier for aliens to hide in.
From George Pal's "War of the Worlds."
1) The War of the Worlds (1953)
Producer George Pal’s adaptation of the H.G. Wells’ novel is the granddaddy of ’em all, and still the best L.A.-based film about alien attack. Gene Barry plays Dr. Clayton Forrester, a natty scientist at ‘Pacific Tech,’ who along with his girlfriend Sylvia van Buren (a perky USC coed, played by Ann Robinson) struggles to prevent Martian invaders from destroying human civilization. Highlights of the film include a boffo attack on downtown L.A. (which Pal initially wanted to film in 3D) by the graceful, swan-like Martian ships, and an Air Force flying wing dropping a nuclear bomb on the Martians. Filmed in vivid Technicolor, The War of the Worlds was a huge hit, broke new ground in visual effects technology, and helped kick off the 1950s sci-fi craze.
Best exchange of the film: “What do we say to them [the aliens]?” “Welcome to California.”
2) Independence Day (1996)
Director Roland Emmerich’s funny, exhilarating and patriotic summer hit from 1996 borrows key elements from The War of the Worlds, but adds a few of its own: 15-mile-wide flying saucers, a president who flies fighter jets … and Will Smith. In the role that made him a megastar, Smith plays a trash-talking Marine fighter pilot paired with an MIT-trained computer wiz (played by Jeff Goldblum, channeling Gene Barry) who fights an alien saucer armada out to demolish humanity. ID4 is easily the best of Emmerich’s apocalyptic films, largely due to its tongue-in-cheek humor. Watch as ditzy Angelenos atop the Library Tower cheerfully greet an alien saucer, only to be zapped into oblivion a moment later. Only in L.A.
Best line of the film: “Welcome to Earth.”
3) Transformers (2007)
There’s mayhem, and then there’s Bayhem. Michael Bay’s Transformers redefined sci-fi action cinema in 2007, featuring a spectacular climax in downtown Los Angeles — a riot of colossal urban warfare and aerial strikes as the U.S. military and Autobot robots unite to fight Decepticon robots out to enslave Earth. A key sequence showcased Autobots and Decepticons ‘transforming’ at 80 mph on a busy L.A. freeway, swatting aside cars and buses while fighting each other — living out the fantasy of every aggressive L.A. driver. Unlike the stately saucers of ID4, or the graceful war machines of War of the Worlds, Bay’s Decepticon robots are fast-moving, anthropomorphic and nasty. Like certain Hollywood celebrities, they trash talk, strut and propagandize as they smash through buildings and otherwise inflict as much collateral damage as possible. The film that made stars out of Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox, Transformers delivers heaping doses of humor, curvy women and robot carnage; it’s Bayhem at its best.
Best line: “You didn’t think that the United States military might need to know that you’re keeping a hostile alien robot frozen in the basement?!”
From the NBC miniseries "V" (1983).
4) V (1983)
These alien ‘Visitors’ look just like us, and they come in peace … except that underneath their false skins they’re actually lizards and want to eat us. That’s the premise of Kenneth Johnson’s apocalyptic NBC miniseries from 1983, a show that leans heavily on references to Nazism, communism and other pernicious forms of group-behavior. V is also the show that first gave us gigantic motherships hovering over major cities, years before ID4. The best part of V, however, is the scene-chewing performance by Jane Badler as the alien leader Diana; somebody should put that woman in charge of GM. Otherwise, in V the human resistance movement against the aliens centers around Los Angeles — possibly because it’s hard to cop a tan while saucers are blocking the sun.
By Jason Apuzzo & Govindini Murty. His documentaries have been among the most provocative films featured in the Sundance Film Festival over the past several years. Bolder even than Sacha Baron Cohen, he’s punk’d both the North Korean communist government and now, in his new film The Ambassador, the Central African Republic and the corrupt diplomatic culture that supports it.
He’s one of Europe’s funniest and most controversial filmmakers, although most Americans haven’t heard of him — yet.
The name of this lanky, cerebral enfant terrible is Mads Brügger.
In Brügger’s previous film The Red Chapel (read the Libertas Film Magazine review of the film here), winner of Sundance’s 2010 World Cinema jury prize for documentaries, the filmmaker pulled off one of the most dangerous and politically provocative stunts in cinema history by infiltrating North Korea as part of a fake socialist comedy group. Operating under the watchful (and vaguely confused) gaze of the North Korean government, Brügger’s cameras proceeded to document the bizarre, Orwellian nether-world of today’s Pyongyang and its frightening cult of the ‘Dear Leader.’
In his new film The Ambassador (read the Libertas Film Magazine review of the film here), which recently screened at Sundance, Brügger now attempts an even more complex and daring stunt by purchasing a Liberian diplomatic title and infiltrating one of the most dangerous places on Earth — the Central African Republic (CAR) — as an ersatz Ambassador. His purpose? To expose the illegal blood diamond trade — and the corrupt world of CAR officials, bogus businessmen and shady European and Asian diplomats that it benefits.
Like a tragicomic version of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, The Ambassador takes viewers into a rarely-seen world of European influence-peddlers who exploit the African continent — and the amoral retinue of African officials, petty businessmen and hangers-on who are complicit in the exploitation.
Along the way Brügger and his hidden cameras have close encounters with everything from an obese ex-French Legionnaire heading the CAR’s state security (who is assassinated shortly after talking to Brügger), to armed militias in the middle of Africa’s ‘Triangle of Death,’ to a diamond smuggler with a secret child bride and potential terrorist ties, to a tribe of inebriated pygmies organized by Brügger to staff a match factory.
Mads Brügger talks with Jason Apuzzo at Sundance.
It all makes for a potent, carnivalesque and politically incorrect experience — and one that exposes the mutual racism (of Europeans toward Africans, and Africans toward Europeans) that makes central Africa such a hotbed of corruption and violence.
In the midst of all this is Brügger himself — a tall, soft-spoken Danish journalist (and son of two Danish newspaper editors) with an ironic sense of humor and an uncanny ability to transform himself into the kind of diffident European grandee that African officials are accustomed to exploiting — and being exploited by — well into the 21st century.
Along with my Libertas Film Magazine co-editor Govindini Murty, I sat down with Brügger at the Sundance Film Festival to talk about his funny, horrifying and highly controversial new film. With a shaved head, and wearing a skull ring from DC Comics’ The Phantom, Brügger arrived looking very much the part of an experimental European director.
Apuzzo: What got you interested in [corruption in the Central African Republic] as subject matter for a film?
Brügger: I like doing films that divert from their own genre. I wanted to do an Africa documentary without all the usual semiotics and codes of the generic Africa documentary. You know — NGO people, child soldiers, HIV patients, and so on. But also I wanted a film where you would meet all the people you usually don’t get to see – you know, the kingpins, the players, the ministers who live a very secure and comfortable life away from the scrutiny of the media. So I thought that if I could purchase a diplomatic title, I could gain access to this very closed realm of African state affairs and politics. It’s pretty much a ‘let’s-see-what-happens’ project. Once we set off to do this, who will we meet? What kind of people will I run into?
Mads Brügger talks with Govindini Murty at Sundance.
Apuzzo: How did you prepare to become a corrupt European diplomat?
Brügger: [Laughs.] I prepared for almost three years, because I wanted to really go into detail with my persona. I would go to receptions, embassies in Copenhagen, especially the Belgian embassy because they have a lot of African diplomats coming there. I noticed all the telltale signs, the do’s and don’ts of how diplomats behave and carry themselves. For instance, when they’re having cocktails they like to fold their napkin into a triangle and then wrap it around the glass. I think it’s because they don’t want to leave fingerprints, but I don’t know for sure. [Laughs.]
