Category: Cold War Updates!

EXCLUSIVE: Libertas Reviews the Clint Eastwood-Leonardo DiCaprio J. Edgar Hoover Screenplay

Leonardo DiCaprio as J. Edgar Hoover in Clint Eastwood's "J. Edgar."

By Jason Apuzzo. • I had the opportunity recently to read Dustin Lance Black’s screenplay for the new Clint Eastwood-Leonardo DiCaprio film J. Edgar, set for release this October. Even though the film covers a fair bit of Cold War history, in terms of the FBI’s handling of communist infiltration, due to the fact that J. Edgar covers Hoover’s full professional story – from his rise in the late 1910s all the way through to the Nixon years – I’ve decided to talk about the screenplay outside the context of one of our regular Cold War Updates!. I would love to give the screenplay an even more exhaustive write-up, frankly, but due to my own time constraints I’ll have to keep things brief – and focus primarily on what the film will be saying about the anti-communist struggle.

I’ve decided to write about this screenplay publicly because it’s covering extremely important areas of history – 50+ years of it, in fact, dwelling on issues of law enforcement and privacy that still resonate with us today – and also because we’re dealing here with an actual historical figure, with a very public record. (I’ll also try to keep things here as spoiler-free as possible – with the understanding, again, that we’re dealing with Hoover’s long public record.) People should know, frankly, how the man who founded the FBI and shaped a large part of 20th century American domestic history is going to be portrayed.

Young Hoover arrives to investigate a bombing.

There’s a lot to like about J. Edgar in its first act. Hoover’s colorful rise is set against the struggle over communist infiltration of American society during the late teens and early ‘20s – a struggle rarely covered in cinema, as most people assume (mistakenly) that Soviet agents only first hit our shores during the 1930s. The screenplay actually begins with the bombing of Attorney General Mitchell Palmer’s home by communist/anarchist saboteurs in 1919, and we see famous figures like the young FDR and Dwight Eisenhower pour out onto the street in the aftermath – as a peppy, ambitious young Hoover arrives on a bicycle and begins piecing together clues over the bombing. In fact, if you’ve seen early set photos of DiCaprio as Hoover on a bicycle (see right), those images are likely from this opening sequence of the film – a sequence that sets the tone and mood of the film with America under a constant sate of siege (first from communist agents in the 1920s, then from criminal mobs in the 1930s, and finally from Soviet agents again from the late 1930s forward). We see Hoover and his maverick team take down Emma Goldman and a violent gang of communist-anarchist saboteurs, and Hoover begins to put the policies and procedures of modern criminal investigation in place.

The communist/anarchist saboteurs in this section of the film, incidentally, are not depicted as terribly pretty people. They’re made to look dangerous and deceptive – not as victims of a witch hunt, or martyrs. In fact, with their bomb-making factories, and attempted gamesmanship of the legal system, obvious parallels will be drawn with today’s Islamic terrorists. The message here couldn’t be more plain: a robust federal investigative force is needed to face down this threat, and ensure domestic security. Continue reading EXCLUSIVE: Libertas Reviews the Clint Eastwood-Leonardo DiCaprio J. Edgar Hoover Screenplay

Cold War Update: Michael Bay Rules the Summer, 007 Marries, Plus New Trailers for The Iron Lady, 5 Days of War & More!

Michael Bay & Co. premiere "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" in Moscow.

By Jason Apuzzo. • Libertas is about to break some major news regarding one very big, forthcoming movie related to the history of the Cold War, so stay tuned …

• .. although of course, the biggest Cold War-related news of late is the whopping debut of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, a film steeped in the lore and romance of the U.S.-Russia space race (see my review of the film here). Dark of the Moon had its huge, worldwide premiere just over two weeks ago in Moscow, and as of the writing of this post is already approaching the $500 million mark at the worldwide box office.

I’m liking this film even more as I ruminate over it – and over the entire Transformers series, which snuck up on me unexpectedly, in so far as I only ever saw the first two films on DVD. Some of you might ask, is it possible – or even healthy – to ‘ruminate’ on a Michael Bay film about giant toy robots? I’d say ‘hell yes’ it is, when the films are as well-crafted, warm and human as these are – not to mention freedom-loving. And although Dark of the Moon to some extent surrenders to its (admittedly fantastic) technology in the third act, it only feels that way because – once again – Bay does such a nice job setting up his characters in the film’s early sequences. This is the aspect of Bay’s work that is so consistently underestimated by critics: his ability to create sympathetic characters, who bring a human dimension to the mayhem that otherwise transpires in his films. Believe me, f this were an easy thing to do, more directors would do it.

Incidentally, it looks like Bay may actually complete the trifecta here. Both previous Transformers films were the top grossing films in their year (in part due to Avatar straddling 2009-10), and it looks like Dark of the Moon may complete the hat trick. I don’t think anybody’s done anything like this since the Lucas-Spielberg heyday. Dark of the Moon is also is tracking young, which has suddenly – and mysteriously – become Hollywood’s big problem this summer; plus, the film is also blowing up all of those silly, premature burials of 3D – most of which were based on bad 3D conversions.

In related news, Michael Bay talks-up the native 3D aspect of the film to The New York Times, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley talks about working with Bay, and Shia LaBeouf does this extremely colorful interview with Details. He apparently landed both Megan Fox and Isabel Lucas while making these films. That’s heroic. They’re not paying this kid enough. Continue reading Cold War Update: Michael Bay Rules the Summer, 007 Marries, Plus New Trailers for The Iron Lady, 5 Days of War & More!

Cold War Update!: Angelina Jolie to Hunt Communists in New Salt Franchise + ‘X-Men’ Fallout and The New ‘Call of Duty’!

By Jason Apuzzo. • So the fantastic news from yesterday is that the Angelina Jolie anti-communist thriller Salt, which we loved here at LFM, is likely to get a sequel. Deadline broke the story yesterday that Sony is moving forward on the project, with Jolie returning to star and Kurt Wimmer returing to write the screenplay. It’s not clear at the moment whether Phillip Noyce will be returning to direct, which is a key issue in my opinion – as Noyce is an old pro who really guides such projects masterfully. But nonetheless this is fabulous news, as Hollywood currently now has its own full-fledged communist-hunting franchise up and running. What could be better?

As LFM readers will recall, we were very enthusiastic over this film last year, not because the film was a masterpiece, but because it represented a return to the classic, Cold War anti-communist ethos that has been missing not only from mainstream Hollywood cinema – but also from the broader culture. Salt as much as any film was the reason we began doing Cold War Updates! – although other projects like MGM’s new Red Dawn (which we’d privately seen, way in advance) or Mao’s Last Dancer contributed to this Cold War Update! series being created, as well.

As we know, the communist threat has very much shifted from West to East, with China and North Korea emerging as potent threats to America – but Salt dwells on what has always been a great subject for spy cinema, which is the threat of communist infiltration here at home. (Specifically, Salt deals with Russian communist sleeper agents here in America left over from the Cold War, who are ultimately intent on returning Russia to its Soviet past.) Nowadays one might well ask whether communists need to even bother hiding themselves, anymore … incidentally, have I ever mentioned to Libertas readers that Van Jones is an old acquaintance of mine, and of Libertas contributor David Ross? … but perhaps that’s a story for another day.

What’s even more remarkable about the Salt ‘franchise’ – if we can call it that now – is that it’s emerging without the help of Fox News, talk radio, or the conservative blogosphere, all of whom appear curiously unaware of this film – even though Jolie is easily the biggest female star in the world, besides being daughter to Jon Voight. What gives? I often hear conservatives complain about ‘films that Hollywood won’t talk about’ or films that Hollywood is somehow trying to ‘suppress’ – such as Atlas Shrugged or American Carol, or a seemingly endless parade of conserva-documentaries – but box office hits like Salt (nearly $300 million worldwide) or even superb indie dramas like Mao’s Last Dancer ($22 million worldwide) or Peter Weir’s The Way Back ($20 million worldwide) seem to now be the films conservatives themselves won’t talk about.

Why is that? Is it because they’re not made by the ‘right’ people?

• The next Bond film (James Bond #23) now has a UK release date of October 12th, 2012 (the U.S. release is Nov. 9th), and rumors are swirling that the next Bond girl may be Naomie Harris.

Just for fun, by the way, I’d like to float an idea out there: that with Michael Bay concluding his work on the Transformers series, that the Brocollis consider giving him the Bond franchise … and Michael Fassbender the role of 007. Wouldn’t this be great? Feel free to comment below on the idea. You never know, after all, who might be reading this site.

• A boffo new trailer for the Call of Duty 3: Modern Warfare game is out, a game that will continue the Call of Duty storyline of a Russian invasion of America … this time involving Russian sponsorship of worldwide terror-attacks. The trailer is really something – absolutely epic in the scope of the villains’ all-out assault on the Western world – so be sure to check it out above.

You can also read this highly spoilerific summary of the game’s storyline, and you can catch some great footage of gameplay. This thing just looks superb, and quite intense. Continue reading Cold War Update!: Angelina Jolie to Hunt Communists in New Salt Franchise + ‘X-Men’ Fallout and The New ‘Call of Duty’!

The Cold War as Fashion Statement: LFM Reviews X-Men: First Class

She wears it well: January Jones as Emma Frost.

By Jason Apuzzo. I tend to approach comic book movies like someone working on a bomb-disposal squad: I dutifully suit up, say a fond farewell to my wife, head to the theater and pray nothing explodes in my face.

So for several months I’ve been eyeing X-Men: First Class, the latest entry in a franchise I’ve not generally liked, in hopes that this stylish-looking film – which mixes 60s spy chic, Cold War nostalgia and January Jones in a gravity-defying bustier – in hopes that the film would revive or at least agitate my interest in comic book fare.

Alas, it didn’t.

That’s not to say that X-Men: First Class doesn’t have its moments, or that the film isn’t entertaining.  A film that riffs so freely and enthusiastically off James Bond films (of the Connery vintage), 60s go-go/mod culture, The Avengers, Cold War military thrillers like Ice Station Zebra, and even Dean Martin’s cheeky Matt Helm movies can’t be all bad, right? No, it certainly can’t – and X-Men: First Class is a diverting, two-hour plus voyage back into the Kennedy era, a period in which the West seemed a bit more self-confident, stylish and cohesive than it does today.

But First Class is a voyage that carries so much baggage with it – so much 2-cent teen psychology, so many embarrassingly campy characters (Beast, Banshee, and some chick who flies around like Tinkerbell with exploding saliva), and so much equivocating about the relative moral weight of America and the Soviet Union, that I’m unable to say I really enjoyed it.

And that’s a shame. You really have to work to make me not like a film of this kind. You have to do things like: suggest that America’s military establishment (along with the Soviets’) during the Kennedy era was being manipulated by a sadistic ex-Nazi … who likes to quote lines (of the “for us or against us” variety) from George W. Bush. You have to depict the CIA and America’s military high command as bumbling and incompetent at best, corrupt and ruthlessly exploitative of innocent peoples’ lives at worst.

You also have to give Kevin Bacon a major starring role. Do we still need that in 2011? I thought the 1980s had taught us better.

Everybody wears great jackets ... but what's Jennifer Lawrence staring at?

X-Men: First Class is the fifth film to mine the seemingly inexhaustible lore of the original X-Men comic book series, and it’s a film that has taken the unusual step of going all the way back to the series’ origins in the early 1960s – bravely eschewing Hollywood’s fear of losing teen audiences in period detail. It’s so easy to imagine the Fox executives to whom this film was pitched nervously asking, “Will teenagers know who the hell Kennedy was? Will we have to explain to them who the Soviets were, and why they were the bad guys? Does anybody still remember that Nazis fled to Argentina?” We tend to forget that the younger generation nowadays isn’t taught any of this stuff, and so can’t be counted on to have the same emotional response to the sight of, say, a May Day military parade in Moscow. For this reason, I applaud the makers of this film – and Brit director Matthew Vaughn, in particular – for having the ‘courage,’ if that’s the right term, to ignore conventional wisdom and trust that the glamour and romance of early 60s Cold War culture would shine through. It did. Continue reading The Cold War as Fashion Statement: LFM Reviews X-Men: First Class

Cold War Update!: More on The X-Men, Bond, J. Edgar Hoover, The Iron Lady and Olga Kurylenko as a CIA Agent!

A Soviet warship approaches Cuba in "X-Men: First Class."

By Jason Apuzzo. • A series of new trailers for X-Men: First Class have been released, the key one (for story purposes) being the international trailer. This trailer really sets the tone for this film being situated in the Kennedy-era of the Cold War, right at the height of the Cuban missile crisis. The X-Men mutants are sent on a top-secret mission related to Cuba, and seem to be depicted as expendable pawns of the CIA in an effort to defeat the Russians, with the X-Men brooding over the general ingratitude of humanity – and, one senses, the American military establishment – toward their contributions.

Boo-hoo.

This type of storyline, which would be annoying under any circumstances, is seeming even more irritating to me after the events of this past weekend, when the CIA proved its tremendous value to America and the entire free world by helping to take out bin Laden. You’d think we could now take a breather from soft-pedaling our intelligence services and military operations … but no. Note the conspiratorial tone taken in the trailer toward the X-Men, as our military people refer to them as “collateral damage” and contemplate the extra-legal measures the government will take in controlling them. It’s the usual anti-military stereotype in play here, with distant cinematic relatives of Colonel Jack D. Ripper contemplating ways to eliminate the Soviet threat and mutant threat in one fell swoop. I was expecting to see Dick Cheney show up and water-board Jennifer Lawrence (preferably in a bikini).

The confluence of events here – between this film, and real-life events in the War on Terror – is quite telling. You really get a sense of how backward and behind the times contemporary Hollywood always is, constantly following yesterday’s Baby Boomer narratives, especially when they concern America’s place in the world. Why make a snarky now movie about the last war – which we won – just as we’re finally gaining ground in the new one?

I have to tell you: although the new X-Men trailers have a smooth, stylish look to them – a Cold War retro-chic that’s quite appealing – I’ve never really liked the X-Men films, and I’m approaching this new one skeptically. Basically I’ve never liked the whiny victimology the X-Men films peddle. The characters in these films are always a little too precious and narcissistic, and not especially heroic. And despite the filmmakers’ intentions, these films never strike me as adequate metaphors for the civil rights struggles of the 1960s – which were very much crusades of the powerless rather than of glamorous, power-enabled superheroes. (Incidentally, star Michael Fassbender – who looks compelling in the trailer – recently told The LA Times that the Magneto-Professor X relationship of the film is based in part on the Malcolm X-Martin Luther King relationship, underlining the film’s civil rights-era subtext.)

January Jones in "X-Men: First Class."

We just saw how real military heroes (not the comic book kind) acted in Abbottabad, Pakistan on Sunday: they went in, completed their mission, and moved on to their next task with a maximum of anonymity and a minimum of drama. Had our Navy SEALS completed the bin Laden mission, and then returned to Washington to conduct a rage-filled raid on the Pentagon, followed by a tear-filled recounting of their sad childhood on The View … you’d essentially have this new X-Men trailer. [Sigh.] What a bummer. The people who really fought the Cold War were so much cooler than this.

Btw, in other X-Men: First Class news, Michael Fassbender talks to The New York Times about the film here, and here are some new promo shots of the film.

• Thor is about to open, starring Chris Hemsworth, and based on what I’m hearing the film is likely to make Hemsworth a major star. This is also likely to have major ramifications for MGM’s Red Dawn, which still doesn’t have a distributor.

My sense is that distributors will be very eager to grab Red Dawn post-Thor, and that MGM will have significant leverage at that point … which makes the scrubbing of the Chinese threat from that film seem all the more cowardly now.

• Speaking of MGM and craven market pandering, the studio is apparently raising about $45 million toward the next Bond film – a full third of the film’s budget – by way of product placement. The Bond films have always done a lot of product placement – but that figure is nonetheless raising eyebrows for the epic scale of its cupidity. My personal recommendation is that when Bond is chasing the new villain, he should wear the new Nike Zoom Kobe VI, with its “Black mamba-inspired rubber outsole for excellent traction.” Just a thought. Continue reading Cold War Update!: More on The X-Men, Bond, J. Edgar Hoover, The Iron Lady and Olga Kurylenko as a CIA Agent!

Cold War Update!: New Ice Station Zebra, The Iron Lady, Moscow, Bond 23 + Communist China Bans Time-Travel Movies!

Publicity art from "Ice Station Zebra" (1968).

By Jason Apuzzo. • One of the biggest pieces of Cold War news recently is that Ice Station Zebra may be getting a remake! For those of you not familiar with the film (shame on you!), Ice Station Zebra was one of the greatest Cold War thrillers of them all – a Cinerama spectacular starring Rock Hudson, Ernest Borgnine, Patrick McGoohan and Jim Brown about a race to the Arctic Circle between the U.S. and the Soviet Union to recover the secret payload of a Russian spy satellite.

Although everyone shines in the picture, Patrick McGoohan – most famous for his work on The Prisoner TV series – really owns the film, and along with John Sturges’ direction (and the exceptional cinematography and production design) really elevates it to an elite level among thrillers. Among the big three movies adapted from Alistair MacLean’s novels – Ice Station Zebra, Where Eagles Dare and The Guns of Navarone – I probably would have to rate Zebra #3 (due to its somewhat slow pacing), but the film is most certainly a classic, and I’d do anything to see in its original Cinerama format.

What is completely horrifying, however, is that the person writing the screenplay for this remake is apparently writer/director David Gordon Green of Your Highness (?!), the new goofball epic featuring Natalie Portman and James Franco. How does this kind of thing happen?! Why can’t Warner Brothers do something sensible like have John Milius or Vince Flynn or Tom Clancy write it? Bloody hell.

I assume the new film would take place in the present day. Here’s hoping the screenplay goes through a few more hands …

• Communist China’s General Bureau of Radio, Film and Television has apparently decided to ‘discourage’ (i.e., ban) time travel movies! No, this is not a joke.

Their rationale? According to the Bureau, “[t]he time-travel drama is becoming a hot theme for TV and films. But its content and the exaggerated performance style are questionable. Many stories are totally made-up and are made to strain for an effect of novelty. The producers and writers are treating the serious history in a frivolous way, which should by no means be encouraged anymore.” Well! Based on this criteria, they should probably ban everything Hollywood sends them.

The folks over at MGM who are currently scuttling around LA post-production houses scrubbing the Chinese from Red Dawn should definitely take note of this and make sure no time travel films are currently in the MGM pipeline – or that any new time travel subplots are being added to Red Dawn! After all, we’ve learned from a recent interview given by one of Red Dawn‘s producers that the greatest minds in the world – geniuses, Bobby Fischer/Ernst Blofeld-types who spend their days working on game theory – have been devising amazing new plot scenarios for that film, even though it’s already in the can. Perhaps the Wolverines are now being sent back to The Battle of the Little Bighorn to fight at General Custer’s side? Who can say?

Milla fetes Gorbo.

On the positive side, hopefully this means Source Code won’t make it to China.

• Speaking of Tom Clancy, it looks like the Jack Ryan reboot Moscow starring Chris Pine has been put on hold as Pine gears up for Star Trek 2. In other Cold War spycraft news, the next James Bond film may be shooting in South Africa, for the first time in the series; and check out the new trailer for The Debt, the new Mossad-in-East-Berlin Cold War thriller starring Sam Worthington, Helen Mirren and Tom Wilkinson. It looks a little standard-issue for me; plus, I sense the film has an agenda, re: the Mossad. [UPDATE: It’s just been announced that Sony will be distributing MGM’s next Bond film, scheduled for Nov. 9th, 2012.]

• Behold Milla Jovovich to the right, at a special 80th birthday fete for Mikhail Gorbachev – held, for some bizarre reason, at the Royal Albert Hall in London. (Again I ask, what’s the matter with the Brits? It’s like they’re becoming a more expensive version of Lithuania.) I guess if you’re already Russian you can attend these things in good conscience. Or not. It’s funny, though, because I’m not sure Gorbo would’ve encouraged her to wear that dress back in the old Soviet Union. A little too much Western decadence, there.

• A clip of the Clint Eastwood/Leonardo DiCaprio J. Edgar (about J. Edgar Hoover) was recently shown at CinemaCon. In the clip, a young Hoover is testifying before Congress, advocating on behalf of creating a National Fingerprint Database. Here is a transcription of DiCaprio’s speech (as Hoover) to Congress: Continue reading Cold War Update!: New Ice Station Zebra, The Iron Lady, Moscow, Bond 23 + Communist China Bans Time-Travel Movies!