PLEASE NOTE: Living with the Infidels Episode 4, “The Box,” features strong sexual innuendo. If that might offend you, please don’t watch the webisode. Otherwise, enjoy.
Here is Episode 4 of Living with the Infidels. We hope you enjoy the series. You might say that the series is moving toward its climax.
Posted on September 16th, 2010 at 12:20pm.
By Jason Apuzzo. As we’ve been reporting a great deal to you recently, many new filmmakers are emerging in the indie filmmaking scene who are challenging the reigning Hollywood narrative by which the Islamic world is depicted simplistically as a supine victim of American imperialism – rather than as a complex society, struggling to emerge out of punishing religious intolerance into a Westernized, middle class future. [See the Living with the Infidels web series below as an example.] A interesting example of this new wave appears to be London filmmaker Hammad Khan’s Slackistan, which Variety reports just got picked up for distribution in the UK, and which will be opening the forthcoming Raindance Film Festival.
Since we obviously have a lot of new UK readers here at Libertas, we encourage you to go see the film when it’s released later this year, and come back to us with reviews. The film reminds me somewhat of a film coming out later this year here in the States called The Taqwacores, which showed at Sundance and which we’ve talked about previously here at Libertas. [Another film that comes to mind: No One Knows About Persian Cats, which showed at Cannes and which we reviewed here.] From a cultural standpoint, if you’re looking for signs of hope in the Islamic world, these films would seem to be it – although this ‘hope,’ of course, comes wrapped within the irony that young Islamic youth are becoming more like us in the West every day.
Are we happy about that? Is Fast Times at Islamabad High just around the corner? I can hardly tell whether this film is set in Pakistan or Encino.
Posted on September 15th, 2010 at 9:46am.
PLEASE NOTE: Living with the Infidels Episode 3, “The Honey Trap,” features adult situations. If that might offend you, please don’t watch the webisode. Otherwise, enjoy.
Here is Episode 3 of Living with the Infidels. We hope you enjoy the series.
Posted on September 15th, 2010 at 8:06am.
PLEASE NOTE: Living with the Infidels Episode 2 – “Voracious Virgins” features raw language and salty situations. If that might offend you, please don’t watch the webisode. Otherwise, enjoy.
Here is Episode 2 of Living with the Infidels. We hope you enjoy the series.
Posted on September 14th, 2010 at 10:12am.
By Jason Apuzzo. Mark Joseph’s planned Reagan biopic, Reagan, is getting a lot of attention right now. James Brolin, who played Reagan in the Showtime miniseries The Reagans, is suddenly claiming that he loves Reagan (don’t tell Babs that); Mark Joseph is also telling Fox News that his film will deal with Reagan’s “plan to defeat the Soviets” (which certainly jibes with what he’s told me); and the film’s screenwriter talks today to the Wall Street Journal about the transformation of his own attitude toward Reagan.
I think all this discussion is great, and I very much wish the best for this film project – but I just want to caution everybody that Reagan has thus far not secured its financing yet, or a cast, or a director, or distribution. What this means, practically, is that this film is a long way from hitting theaters. I’m assuming that announcements about financing and cast/crew are imminent, but until then it’s hard to judge all this properly.
The irony here is that there’s actually quite a good film in theaters right now featuring Reagan called Farewell (starring Fred Ward as Reagan, and featuring Willem Dafoe, David Soul and others) – that depicts Reagan respectfully and intelligently – during one of the most decisive moments of his Presidency. Farewell deals with the famous Cold War spy case ‘L’Affaire Farewell,’ an episode which Reagan himself called “one of the most important espionage cases of the 20th century.”
We really liked Farewell here at Libertas, including its depiction of Reagan (see Joe Bendel’s LFM review here), and we encourage Libertas readers to go see it since it’s still being rolled out nationwide. The realities of the business are that the better a film like Farewell does, the more likely Reagan will actually get made – and receive the distribution it deserves.
As LFM’s Joe Bendel said about Farewell, “[I]t is an engrossing film. It also might be the fairest shake Pres. Reagan has gotten on screen since his inauguration in 1981 …” So go check it out. I’ve put the trailer below.
Posted on September 9th, 2010 at 3:33pm.
By Jason Apuzzo. I am very pleased to report that a movie we loved here at Libertas – Chris Morris’ Islamic terror satire Four Lions – has just picked up U.S. distribution. We’ve been covering the progress of this film for months, and we’re so happy that Alamo Drafthouse – a great cult movie distribution outfit (for DVDs) that will now be entering theatrical distribution under the banner of Drafthouse Films – has selected Four Lions as its first theatrical venture. Four Lions will apparently be kicking off a 10 city promotional screening tour with Chris Morris in mid-October, and the film is otherwise slated for release this fall in New York, Los Angeles and Austin – with other cities in following weeks. This is great news.
We got a chance to see Four Lions at the LA Film Festival a few months ago, and we thought it was fantastic. [Read my review of Four Lions here.] We also had fun meeting actor Kayvan Novak, who plays the clueless ‘Waj’ in the film. After Four Lions’ big debut at Sundance, the film closed the South by Southwest Film Festival, won the Independent Camera Award at Karlovy Vary – and was voted Best Narrative Feature by audiences at the Los Angeles Film Festival.
Having been at one of those LA Film Fest screenings, I can tell you that the place rocked. Why? Because Four Lions breaks all the rules and says things that need to be said about contemporary Islamic terror … but are never allowed to be said in current Hollywood cinema.
As we’ve been reporting here for months, Four Lions is part of a recent wave of narrative films that are finally starting to look honestly at the phenomenon of Islamic terror … and doing so through the subversive medium of humor. Joining Four Lions in this new wave are Omid Djalili’s absolutely hilarious new film The Infidel (see our review of it here), the popular British web series “Living with the Infidels” (see our review of that here), and … am I allowed to mention this? … my own film Kalifornistan, which will be opening the Free Thinking Film Festival on November 12th.
The most obvious thing to say about this phenomenon is that all of these are indie projects. Studios still won’t touch this subject. Frankly, I don’t expect that to change. My sense is that Hollywood feels the War on Terror winding down, and is simply going to sit it out on the sidelines and let the indies take care of this stuff.
That’s fine by me. We don’t need the studio people ruining our fun.
[UPDATE: You can read a great interview with Drafthouse’s CEO Tim League here. His outfit will be distributing Four Lions here in the U.S.]
Posted on September 9th, 2010 at 12:26pm.