Back in September, Kathryn Bigelow told SpoutBlog that there’s a misconception regarding the failure of movies dealing with the Iraq War because so far we’d really only seen dramatic films about soldiers coming home. We hadn’t exactly seen any war movies about the ongoing conflict. “I mean, war is inherently dramatic, look at Black Hawk Down,” she explained, picking a film released a year prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Now it should make more sense that she referenced that specific title, as a new international trailer for Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker almost makes this film appear to be Black Hawk Down reset in Iraq. There seems to be a lot of similarly chaotic action involving an ensemble of talented actors running around a war-torn metropolis. The main difference is all the stuff with Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD), which actually makes it potentially even more appealing to the action movie crowd, they who never tire of the “which wire do I cut?” cliches.
So why are we only seeing an international trailer, with no domestic release date for The Hurt Locker in sight (Summit Entertainment’s 2009 preview only mentions a Spring opening)? …Read more
Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing is calling it “a masterful takedown” of “the right-wing myth that Hollywood keeps making anti-war movies that flop, proving how out of touch the Liberal Elite are with the will of the peeepul.” This post from Leverage creator John Rogers may be that, but it also points to something I’ve brought up many times before: the whole “Liberal Hollywood will spend untold sums of money to make sure we lose the war in Iraq and turn your children into godless eco-communists!” hysteria only floats when buoyed by willful ignorance of the stratification of the film industry. Different kinds of films are made, distributed and marketed in different kinds of ways, thus lending their ultimate market performance different kinds of expectations. I know when infidel propaganda like Taxi to the Dark Side doesn’t quite do the same business as good ol’ entertainment like Hannah Montana Topless With the Jonas Brothers in 3D, it’s tempting to say that America hates Alex Gibney. Except that America doesn’t know who Alex Gibney is.
…Read more
