Category: News/Opinion

New Anti-Soviet Film Farewell Depicts Spycraft That Won the Cold War

Fred Ward as Ronald Reagan.

By Jason Apuzzo. According to The New York Times today, the Cold War is back.  Have they been reading Libertas?

Not only is the Angelina Jolie Russian spy thriller Salt opening later this month – a film which, incidentally, has already been banned in China; not only is the Red Dawn remake being released later this year (presumably); not only is Mao’s Last Dancer coming out later this summer, but so too on July 23rd is a new French Cold War thriller called Farewell being released starring (among others) Willem Defoe, and Fred Ward as Ronald Reagan.  The film deals with one of the crucial Cold War espionage coups that delivered vital intelligence to America and the West.  The film opens July 23rd in New York and Los Angeles, spreading to other markets all the way through September.  Farewell showed at the Toronto and Telluride film festivals earlier this year, and has already received glowing reviews from Todd McCarthy (formerly of Variety), as well as Stephen Holden of The New York Times and Jeff Stein of The Washington Post.  You can watch the trailer to the film below.

Farewell tells the true story of a disenchanted K.G.B. colonel named ‘Sergei Grigoriev’ (the real colonel was actually named Vladimir Vetrov)  — eventually code-named ‘Farewell’ by Western spy agencies – who decides that he can no longer serve the Soviet state, and consequently chooses to funnel classified information to French intelligence agents.

This intelligence apparently included information on what the Soviets knew about our air defenses, how much the Soviets were spending on defense, what defense technologies they were stealing from the United States, and also a list of highly placed K.G.B. agents who’d infiltrated government and industry in the West.  The leaking of this information, when later combined with President Reagan’s public commitment to create the ‘Star Wars’ missile defense system, were crucial elements in the winning of the Cold War.

The French angle on this story is twofold: the courier for the secret information was Pierre Froment, an otherwise innocent employee of a French multinational corporation.  And the information itself was eventually transmitted to Ronald Reagan by then-French President François Mitterrand.

The trailer for the film certainly looks compelling.  Here’s some of what Todd McCarthy said about the film while he was with Variety: “A harrowing, richly human and well-acted espionage tale. … It’s juicy, fascinating stuff, well orchestrated, and finely thesped.  [Director Christian] Carion keeps things simmering on medium-high heat throughout.” Continue reading New Anti-Soviet Film Farewell Depicts Spycraft That Won the Cold War

The Mixed Blessings of Foreign Aid: Good Fortune

From "Good Fortune."

By Joe Bendel. According to filmmaker Landon Van Soest, $2.3 trillion (with a “t”) worth of western foreign aid has flowed into Africa over the last fifty years. What has been the result of these enormous outlays? Mostly ill-will and corruption according to the average Kenyans whose daily struggles Van Soest documents in Good Fortune, which airs this coming Tuesday on PBS’s POV.

UN program manager Sara Candiracci does not exactly have the common touch. The poverty of Nairobi’s Kibera slum personally offends her, which is laudable. Partnering with the Kenyan government, the UN is launching an ambitious redevelopment project for Kibera. However, she admits up front: “the strategy to move people and to bring them back is still not clear” – yet the residents should welcome the project anyway.

Kibera might be an eyesore to Candiracci, but it represents a better way of life for midwife Silva Adhiambo. Finding ample work there, she happily calls it home. In one telling scene, she perfectly illustrates why Kibera is so skeptical of the UN’s plans. The so-called slum is actually surrounded by three modern housing developments. One high-rise estate was billed as low income housing during construction, only to become home to well-connected government officials when completed. Another neighboring housing project remains unfinished due to litigation stemming from government embezzlement. A third development was allegedly built by Kenya’s First Lady with western aid money earmarked for AIDS programs – and then sold for a tidy profit. Indeed, having gone down this road before, the Kibera neighborhood is dead-set against the UN project, but Candiracci and the Kenyan government are not listening. Continue reading The Mixed Blessings of Foreign Aid: Good Fortune

Hollywood Round-up, 7/9

Aaron Eckhart, from "Battle: Los Angeles."

By Jason Apuzzo. The Social Network has a new teaser trailer. It’s pretty good, actually – although it’s still feeling like it’s all about lawsuits and female groupies.  Is this about Facebook, or is this the Phil Spector story?  The film will also be opening The New York Film Festival.

• Someone has posted an early review of Battle: Los Angeles, another big-scale ‘invasion of America’ flick (this time aliens).  The review is a little tepid on this film, which seems to be a kind of Cloverfield take on Independence Day.  Battle: LA apparently features Michelle Rodriguez as … a crusty-yet-benign Latina soldier!  When have we seen that before?  Maybe they should call this Battle: Pandora.

• … which reminds me that Michelle Rodriguez is also featured – wearing an eyepatch – in the new Machete trailer.  It’s a terrible, straight-to-video-quality trailer, and Robert Rodriguez better re-cut it fast if he still wants his tax credits.

• The title of the next Jack Ryan movie will be Moscow. I guess that’s because Kiev wasn’t available.

• Ian McKellen says he’s just “marking time” until production on The Hobbit begins. If that’s the case, then I’d like to invite Sir Ian to review Salt for Libertas because I don’t feel like sitting through that film right now.

• James Cameron apparently made $350 million off Avatar, but don’t worry – he’ll gamble it all on whatever he’s shooting next.

• On the Christopher Nolan front, word comes today that Batman 3 may start shooting in April, Warner Brothers is having trouble marketing Inception, Nolan’s Inception cast members are bad-mouthing Palin and Dick Cheney, Nolan would love to do a Bond film, and Nolan also took a great deal of trouble (including filming certain scenes in 65mm) to properly convert Inception into the IMAX format.  Nolan’s also thinking of joining the Miami Heat on a sign-and-trade deal, once he clears waivers.

• The Mel Gibson situation is growing so out of control (see here and here) that it almost defies belief.  Porn stars, racist rants, death threats, Russian mistresses, child custody lawsuits, secret recordings … why can’t Mel’s films be this entertaining?  Edge of Darkness is looking like such a bore right now.

And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood …

Posted on July 9th, 2010 at 6:46pm.

Space Nazis Invade in Iron Sky + Crowd Funding of Films

By Jason Apuzzo. Recently here at LFM we’ve been showing you some examples (see here and here) of up-from-the-bootstraps indie film productions that are taking advantage of low-cost VFX software to tell large-scale stories.  We’ve also noted how several of these films seem to be picking up on the ‘invasion of America’ theme, a theme that will no doubt be kick-charged in a big way when MGM’s Red Dawn remake is eventually released.

Today we wanted to mention another such production, a science fiction comedy that’s been getting hyped lately (see articles in Wired and in the Hollywood Reporter’s HeatVision blog), called Iron Sky.  Iron Sky is an example not only of what low-budget filmmakers can accomplish using high-end visual FX packages, however, but is also the latest example of how to finance a film through “crowd funding.”

First, the premise.  Let me quote from the film’s website:

Towards the end of World War II the staff of SS officer Hans Kammler made a significant breakthrough in anti-gravity.  From a secret base built in the Antarctic, the first Nazi spaceships were launched in late ‘45 to found the military base Schwarze Sonne (Black Sun) on the dark side of the Moon. This base was to build a powerful invasion fleet and return to take over the Earth once the time was right.  Now it’s 2018, the Nazi invasion is on its way and the world is goose-stepping towards its doom.

So there you have it – goose-stepping Nazis from outer space.  Iron Sky is being co-produced by companies in Finland, Germany and Australia.  Currently they’re in pre-production, with shooting set to begin in October in Germany and Australia, and this will apparently be followed by a year in post-production.  And here’s the kicker: the budget of the film is actually $8.5 million, with at least some of the money being raised from the public.

Nazi invaders from outer space.

So how did the filmmakers pull this off?  Basically, in 2008 they released the slick, cheeky teaser trailer below (at the very bottom of this post) – which by now has had almost 2 million views on YouTube.  They simultaneously began soliciting on-line donations from fans, using the “crowd funding” strategy that is becoming increasingly popular as a way to boostrap indie film productions outside the studio pipeline.  Then, twelve indie financiers got involved to close the funding gap. Continue reading Space Nazis Invade in Iron Sky + Crowd Funding of Films

NASA and Our Endangered Tradition of Heroic Aspiration

From 1950's "Destination Moon."

By David Ross. President Obama’s hostility to NASA has now become a subject of wide comment, and for good reason. It reveals, perhaps more than anything else, his resentment of everything that implies heroic possibility (the military, capitalism, Israel, etc.). The heroic quest to expand knowledge – to enrich consciousness – has nothing to do with his mindset or task, which remains that of the leftwing community organizer. Harold Bloom uses the phrase ‘school of resentment’ to describe the academic enemies of Shakespeare. In my opinion, the same psychopathology explains the enemies of NASA. This ‘resentment’ is directed against anything that suggests human beings transcend their social, economic, and biological context, and that they are irreducible to a formula of animal needs. Robert Zubrin, who has for decades lobbied for a mission to Mars as head of the Mars Society, makes precisely my own point in the June issue of Commentary (subscriber only):

The values championed by the Obama administration are comfort, security, protection, and dependence. But the frontier sings to our souls with different ideals, telling stirring tales of courage, risk, initiative, inventiveness, independence, and self-reliance. Considered as a make-work bureaucracy, NASA may be perfectly acceptable to those currently in power. But for mentalities that would criminalize the failure to buy health insurance, the notion of a government agency that celebrates the pioneer ethos by risking its crews on daring voyages of exploration across vast distances to terra incognita can only be repellent.

In a recent interview with Al Jazeera, NASA administrator Charles Bolden illustrates the extent of the Obama administration’s departure from the “right stuff.” Bolden told Al Jazeera: Continue reading NASA and Our Endangered Tradition of Heroic Aspiration

Hollywood Round-up, 7/8

He's de-friending David Fincher.

By Jason Apuzzo. • Delicious irony: David Fincher’s new Facebook movie The Social Network (about Mark Zuckerberg) won’t be able to advertise on Facebook. Not surprisingly, Zuckerberg isn’t too thrilled about the project, and so this film will just have to resort to … My Space?

• The new Mad Max reboot is looking more interesting all the time.  Shooting on the 2 new films has apparently been delayed until February, but today word comes that George Miller will be lensing the films in some new, exotic form of 3D – and that Weta will be involved in creating the film’s FX.  Of course, the original films got a lot of their energy from the fact that the dangerous action sequences were real, rather than a digital construct.  As a side note, Miller has been tilling in the 3D fields for as long as James Cameron, and it’s exciting to consider what action sequences in the wide open Australian deserts will look like in this new film series.  It’s probably also a good thing that Mel Gibson isn’t involved anymore.

• MGM’s debt restructuring has meant that the James Bond franchise is on hold, but not gone.  In related Brit superhero news, Sherlock Holmes 2 may shoot as soon as early fall.

• Avatar: Special Edition will be released in theaters on August 27th, with 8 new minutes of footage. There were apparently a few more American soldiers Cameron thought he could kill.

Bar Refaeili.

• Ridley Scott and Leonardo DiCaprio may team up for The Wolf of Wall Street, about (need we ask?) Wall Street Corruption. (Did these guys miss Wall Street 2?)  Probably this won’t happen, though, because they’re both booked up with other projects.  Still, it’s interesting to imagine how dull this film might have been.

• The Emmy Nominations have been announced, and if you care here’s the list.

• Fanboy obsessiveness with Inception continues apace (“Nolan joins the company of Coppola … Lean”), and has spread to critics, and really at this point there seems to be no point in even watching the film since the fix is in.  I’m not trying to be cutely contrarian here, it’s just that the decibel level is so high among Mr. Nolan’s admirers that I’m wondering whether anyone will even listen to a contrasting opinion?

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … Bar Refaeli’s back!  After we reported on this extraordinary story yesterday (in which Ms. Refaeli waxes philosophical, as it were, on her own beauty), we learn that the Gilad Shalit march she’s participating in in Israel (estimated at 15,000 strong) just entered Jerusalem on the last leg of its two-week journey.  This cross-country march is designed to keep the case of kidnapped soldier Sergeant Gilad Schalit in the public eye.  This 23-year-old Israeli sergeant has not been seen since he was captured by Hamas during one of their raids in 2006, and Refaeli has joined thousands of supporters and other Israeli celebrities on the walk.  Good for her.

And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood …

Posted on July 8th, 2010 at 12:26pm.