Category: Articles

Happy Birthday Duke

Big Duke.

By Jason Apuzzo. Today is John Wayne’s birthday, and we would be most remiss if we didn’t remember The Duke for a just a few moments on his big day.  John Wayne was born 103 years ago today in the small town of Winterset, Iowa.  He went on to become the most enduring, popular movie star in history and an icon of American culture worldwide.

Several years ago Govindini and I had the pleasure of meeting the Duke’s family at a screening of the newly restored, 3-D version of Hondo.  They’re delightful people and are doing a wonderful job of preserving the Duke’s legacy for future generations – we wish them the very best, and congratulations to them on this day.

As I mentioned in a Classic Movie Update post from a few days ago, there’s a lot of Duke news to report:

• There’s a 50th anniversary benefit screening of The Alamo this week at John Wayne’s birthplace, with Wayne’s daughter Aissa in attendance.  The benefit event, a fundraiser for the John Wayne Birthplace Museum and Learning Center, takes place over 2 days – May 28th and 29th.  Wayne directed The Alamo himself (with spot 2nd unit direction from John Ford) – a huge, sprawling and satisfying epic, featuring an extraordinary musical score by Dmitri Tiomkin – and The Duke considered it his most important film.  Wayne considered the film a parable of America’s place in the world as the lone outpost of freedom.  The Alamo famously went up against Kirk Douglas’ left-leaning Spartacus at the 1960 Academy Awards.  If you’re anywhere near Wayne’s birthplace of Winterset, Iowa, you should certainly catch this wonderful-looking event – and feel free to purchase your own copy of The Alamo in the LFM Store below.

• In related news, The Criterion Collection has just put out a new, restored version of the John Wayne/John Ford Classic Stagecoach on DVD and Blu-Ray.  You can buy this version in the LFM store above.

• Since I’m in the mood for it, here’s my list of Duke Wayne’s Top 5 films, all available in the LFM store above:

  1. The Searchers
  2. Stagecoach
  3. Red River
  4. Hondo (particularly in 3-D)
  5. The Alamo

Sustainable Fred and the Green Lifestyle

[Editor’s Note: this film short contains some scenes of violence.  Viewer discretion advised.]

By Jason Apuzzo. Continuing on some themes raised by Govindini in her post below “Happiness Runs, Avatar & The Reality Behind Utopian Nature Cults,” we’ve decided to bring you “Sustainable Fred.”  This is a very amusing short by filmmaker Trevor Wild about a young man who’s having a little trouble changing the world through enlightened ‘green living.’  It’s too bad he doesn’t live in Pandora.

I’m not sure today’s environmentalists always realize what kind of impression they create in the midst of their ongoing efforts to dictate how the rest of us live our daily lives (one thinks here of the extremely creepy, unfunny, totalitarian-chic ‘Green Police’ ads run by Audi during the Super Bowl).  These endlessly snotty, moralizing, insufferable do-gooders are essentially whom “Sustainable Fred” is satirizing … and without giving too much away, it’s delicious to see Fred get his comuppance late in this film.

Enjoy.  Bravo to Trevor.

Shaping the War Narrative: Tyler Ginter’s “What is Combat Camera?”

[Editor’s Note: we were so taken last week by Tyler Ginter’s “Why We Fight” short that we decided to post another short video of his today.  It’s a video entitled “What is Combat Camera,” and we asked LFM Contributor ‘Max Garuda’ to comment on it.  ‘Max’ is a veteran of multiple UN-sponsored enforcement actions, and is an expert in the areas of new media and national security.]

“A well-focused Combat Cameraman can tip the scales in the battle for words, deeds and images. Combat Camera in most cases is the main effort.” -Maj. Matthew Yandura, 173rd ABCT Information Operations Officer

By Max Garuda. For a mini-doc/internal promotional piece, “What is Combat Camera” is great.  Excellent production values, nicely edited, and showcasing some great photography.  But since Ginter has distributed it via Vimeo to a wider viewership than its original, small, DOD (Department of Defense) – internal audience, it’s worth looking at for broader implications.

The most striking statement and image comes early in the piece.  The narrator, Major Yandura, commends the combat cameraman, stating that “combat camera soldiers think differently, but more importantly they see the battlefield differently”.  It’s this difference that makes them a force multiplier for unit commanders and grants them the basic toolkit to become effective strategic communicators.

The most striking image in the entire 4 minute video punctuates Yandura’s compliment:  a soldier in digital cammies rests on one knee in foreground, his back to the camera, facing a housing compound that fills the entire background of the photo.  The contrast of the grey-clad soldier and the monochromatic tan compound is striking, and highlights how out-of-place the soldier seems.  At the same time, this image shows a different battlefield than that which CNN or Al-Jazeera is likely to show.  No menacing bearded and robe-clad Al-Qaeda fighters training with automatic weapons and RPGs; no running, shooting and chaos.  Simplicity, calm and domesticity prevail, reminding us that there are everyday people trying to live their lives amidst the raging conflict around them. Continue reading Shaping the War Narrative: Tyler Ginter’s “What is Combat Camera?”

Hollywood + Indie Round-up, 5/25

Rosie Huntington to replace Megan Fox in 'Transformers 3.'

By Jason Apuzzo. I was kidding the other day when I said that “I’m sure [Michael] Bay’s people have a million Victoria’s Secret models on speed-dial that they can call on for the next  [Transformers] film” in the wake of the Megan Fox firing.  And it turns out … Bay has hired a Victoria’s Secret model.  She’s a lustrous Brit named Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.  THIS IS WHY YOU NEED TO READ LIBERTAS … WE PREDICTED IT HERE FIRST AND WE’RE ON TOP OF THIS STORY.  No word on whether Ms. Huntington-Whiteley has a personality.  We’ll see.  Fox News is also doing some speculation on the future of Megan Fox’s career.  She’ll do fine, but perhaps she should hold off on calling her directors ‘Hitler,’ and for safety’s sake confine her comparisons strictly to ‘Idi Amin.’

• The long, sad decline of 24 into left-wing drivel is now over as the show mercifully ends.  What this show has needed the past few seasons is not so much Jack Bauer as Jack Kevorkian.

• New Sex and the City 2 rumored to present “puritanical and misogynistic culture of the Middle East.” Glad to here they’re brave enough to go there; still not enough to get me to watch Sarah Jessica Parker.  [Aside: I’m having flashbacks of Jewel of the Nile here.  Didn’t that just hit Blu-Ray?]  Also: a Middle-Eastern guy who was an on-set extra in Sex and the City 2 gripes about the experience in the New York Times today.  He doesn’t mention whether he still cashed his paycheck.

• Orlando Bloom cast as the ‘villain’ in new Three Musketeers remake.  Wow – what could be more frightening?

• Dominic Cooper to play Iron Man’s father in Captain America – which will be shot in London.  Maybe Tony Stark’s dad could stop in on Sherlock Holmes while he’s in town.

• New, ‘modern’ take on the Nativity story coming down the pike.  (See here and here).  It’s set in the 70’s and apparently stars Bette Midler.  Rumor mill has Sally Field cast as Pontius Pilate.

"Actually, pre-modern Christians ALWAYS wore acid-washed jeans."

• Mindless historical revisionism fuels pot shots against Christianity in new film Agora starring Rachel Weisz. Film twists history and depicts angry, murderous Christian mobs destroying Library of Alexandria (?); peddles bogus analogy between radical Islam and contemporary Christianity.  I think Govindini will be posting on this later.  The only upside here is that the film is getting bad reviews (see here and here), and that no one will see it because Rachel Weisz isn’t a real star.

• In the wake of the Shrek disappointment, blogger Vadim Rizov asks ‘Are children’s movies made by people who hate kids?’ Good question.

And in more pleasant news …

"I'm out!"

• Filmmaker Jafar Panahi has been freed on probation.  Thank God.  (See here and here.)  He’s out on something like $20,000 bail, and there’s still going to be some farce of a trial.  Somebody please send him Dershowitz.

• A new documentary on the murderous communist thug Nicolae Ceausescu, called The Autobiography of  Nicolae Ceausescu, recently played at Cannes.  I’ve seen the trailer, and it looks interesting in a kind of arch/satiric way.  There’s a round-up of generally positive reviews of the film here today.  We’ll try to review it down the line.

• Our friend and LFM Contributor Joe Bendel has a nice review up today of a new Turkish film called The Breath that deals with terrorism along the Turkish-Iraqi border, so check that out.

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

“The Adventures of Obama Man,” Episode 1

[Editor’s Note: this film contains some adult humor. Viewer discretion advised.]

By Jason Apuzzo.  Almost 18 months into the Obama Administration, Hollywood has become a kind of no-fly zone with respect to satire directed at The One.  The idea around LA seems to be that Obama’s preternatural ‘cool’ and pseudo-revolutionary ambitions render him above normal satire.  How, in effect, does one satirize a bodhisattva?  There would appear to be no easy angle, no obvious comedic hook on Obama if you believe this line.  Barack’s genius is so manifest, one could no more satirize him than one could satirize Miles Davis while he was recording Kind of Blue. Right?

Not quite.  In the independent film world, where filmmaking is more adventurous than it is in Hollywood right now, the divine afflatus surrounding Obama is not so bright.  Witness this episode of “The Adventures of Obama Man” above.  “The Adventures of Obama Man” takes as its point of departure Obama’s early years in the 1980’s when he lived in New York City – years about which we know very little … until now.

Obama as lifestyle product.

What I enjoy about this little short film is its simplicity and understated humor.  The depiction of Obama as a plastic doll, I think, directly and elegantly captures what many of us think about Barack: that his zeal for radical reform is matched only by his vacuity – the sense that he is, basically, a plastic man.

More than that, though: ‘Obama’ has become a kind of fetishized object – like an iPad or an iPhone – around which people orient a more ‘progressive’ and ‘enlightened’ lifestyle for themselves. ‘Obama’ the Man long ago gave way to ‘Obama’ the lifestyle/fashion accessory, similar in function and tone to a Louis Vuitton bag (both are stylish carriers of what is usually, on closer inspection, clutter and junk).  It’s appropriate, then, that filmmaker Chilembwe Mason would depict ‘Obama Man’ here as a doll one can transport around like a totemic symbol – redolant of hipness, sophistication, ‘cool’ … with nothing really inside, other than a few pre-programmed phrases and a stiff finger pointing to an imaginary future.

Enjoy  the short.

The Golden Age of the Nerd

Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Jonah Hill, Michael Cera from Superbad.

By David Ross. Back in the day, all kinds of people were plausibly brainy society girls like Katherine Hepburn in Philadelphia Story, working girls like Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday – but in our day the mind itself has been knocked from its pedestal, and ostentatious braininess or even quick-wittedness has become a form of social disease. The socially acceptable posture is an easygoing indifference to little things like knowledge, logic, and consistency (“Dude, take it easy, what’s the difference.”). All of this is implicit in the evolution of the 50’s egghead (object of bemused respect) into the 80’s nerd (victim of locker-room sadism and prom-night ridicule). Continue reading The Golden Age of the Nerd