• This charming-looking film above, Racing Dreams, just opened and is playing in select theaters nationwide. Racing Dreams follows three kids on the Go-Kart circuit who each have big dreams of making it to the Big Show, NASCAR. The film hasn’t hit LA yet, so we haven’t seen it – but the reviews have been good and it won the Best Documentary prize at Tribeca.
• The Autobiography Of Nicolae Ceausescu, a new documentary about the Romanian communist tyrant, is currently making some waves at Cannes. You can check out the film’s drily amusing trailer here.
• Another new indie film, After the Cup, begins hitting New York and Los Angeles theaters this week and next. This sports film, that’s gotten fantastic reviews, is about an Arab-Jewish soccer team that’s been simultaneously winning titles and unifying Israel. Very heartening, humanistic stuff. You can check out the trailer below.
• With firing of Megan, Hollywood wonders whether Shia’s next to be fired after Shia trashes Indy 4 at Cannes (see here and here). Shia initiating new quality-control measures in his work, along with a special 1-800 complaint line.
By Jason Apuzzo. An exceptional documentary called The Surge: The Untold Story debuted at The G.I. Film Festival this past Sunday. Now that the film has shown at that festival, we’re screening the film here in its entirety at LFM.
Let’s begin with the title of this film. Why, first of all, is the extraordinary success story of our ‘surge’ in Iraq an ‘untold story’ to begin with? This story is ‘untold’ because the people primarily entrusted with shaping our national narrative – the mandarins of Hollywood – have been telling an entirely different story of late. They have been telling what might be termed the ‘Avatar-Green Zone story’ of defeat and demoralization in Iraq, the kind of story whereby the very conceptualizing of war in terms of ‘victory’ is regarded as fatally naive.
The Surge: The Untold Story dispenses with such fatalism – which is easy to do, since the film focuses on the actual facts on the ground. The Surge tells the story of how General David Petraeus, General Raymond Odierno, American troops and (the importance of this cannot be overstated) the Iraqi people themselves rallied to rescue their nation from the brink of utter barbarism. In a crisp, succinct 34 minutes, The Surge tells the story of how General Petraeus’ advanced counter-insurgency strategy – combined with the grit, bravery and sheer labor of his troops – helped rid Iraq of the ruthless terror networks that ruled the streets of Bagdad in 2006.
As I sat watching this film recently, what amazed me was how poorly the news networks had covered The Surge back in 2007. What, for example, was Petraeus’ particular genius in terms of his strategy for coping with Al Qaeda in Iraq? From The Surge we learn that Petraeus and Odierno devised a plan whereby American troops fought their way into terrorized areas, then erected mini-fortifications (like something out of Fort Apache) from which to protect and hold their areas. Then, American troops did something extraordinary … they went out and got to know the Iraqis themselves, went into their homes, made friendships, integrated themselves into their lives. From this position of rapport and trust, they rallied the Iraqis themselves to push Al Qaeda out of their midst.
The Surge does not dwell on the political aspects of the story back here in America – and the film is actually better for it. You will find no political pundits in this film – just the military men and women (and diplomats) who made this tremendous success story a reality. Their story is told in a tight, cohesive fashion – supported by extraordinary (and sometimes harrowing) documentary footage of the carnage Al Qaeda had wrought on Bagdad. And although Avatar has taught us to view our military leaders as sadistic and venal, Generals Petraeus and Odierno come across as sophisticated and sympathetic – their only interest being in restoring some measure of normality to the everyday lives of Iraqis.
The Surge should be mandatory viewing for anyone who wishes to have an intelligent opinion about the war, rather than merely an opinion. We hope you enjoy it.
By Jason Apuzzo. A web series I’ve taken to recently is called “Grass Roots.” “Grass Roots” is a comedic series about an inept pair of grass roots political operatives working for an aspiring Democrat candidate.
The humor in this series is pitch-perfect and dry as a martini. “Grass Roots” is the brainchild of writer-director-actor Aaron Hiliard, who really brings the episodes to life with his smarmy, impossibly self-satisfied characterization of the hack political operative ‘Miles.’ In the episode above, titled “The Black Vote,” Miles and his partner conduct some decidedly ham-fisted ‘outreach’ toward a hapless black Republican.
It would be an understatement to say that the source of “Grass Roots'” humor is the utterly crass, cynical attitude of today’s political classes – and particularly Democrats – toward the micro-targeted demographics (once quaintly known as ‘citizens’) who make up their voter constituencies. Writer-director-actor Aaron Hiliard (who reminds me a lot of Mo Rocca) captures this perfectly, yet does so without rancor; his character ‘Miles’ is really just a benighted careerist who accepts all the inane wisdom he’s been fed about how to ‘rise’ in politics. [Miles is uncomfortably similar, actually, to the kind of guests who pass through Rachel Maddow’s show each day – smarmy, low level agitators and opportunists, each with a career to peddle.]
Congratulations to Aaron Hilliard and his crew. We’ll be showing more of “Grass Roots” down the line. Enjoy!
This past March was the twentieth anniversary of the death of Germaine Lefebvre (1931-1990), better known as Capucine (French for nasturtium). Cinéastes will remember the particular feline charm she brought to Henry Hathaway’s North to Alaska (1960) and Blake Edward’s The Pink Panther (1963).
She was the inamorata of Darryl F. Zanuck, Peter Sellers, and William Holden, and the dear friend and Lausanne neighbor of Audrey Hepburn, whom she met while modeling during the early 1950s. The sight of the two impossible beauties strolling arm in arm down the spring boulevard must have seemed to passersby a mirage or beatific vision. Tormented by chronic depression, Capucine threw herself from her eight-floor penthouse in Lausanne.
If her film career was minor, she herself was the embodiment of Europe in its last stage of cosmopolitan glamour and elegance – the Europe of Maxim’s, and Givenchy, and Ophüls, of all that was swept away in 1968. Here’s a tribute to a lost age.
The press release covering yesterday’s launch of Libertas Film Magazine (LFM) was picked up by USA Today, Forbes, Yahoo, Jim Cramer’s The Street and over 200 media outlets – and more links are coming our way. Many thanks to those outlets for picking up on us. And a special thanks to John Miller at National Review who linked to us, and sent a lot of readers from The Corner our way. Welcome.
[As a result of this, we had a lot of traffic yesterday and the site went down briefly a few times – and otherwise slowed things down. We apologize for the inconvenience. We think we’ve fixed the problem.]
We also want to thank our readers for all the kind emails they sent in to us yesterday – especially all the notes from filmmakers. We’re very glad to be back, and look forward to what’s ahead.
