V For Vendetta Opens Today

[Balta1701]

Thanks to this "parable about terrorism and totalitarianism" (Roger Ebert) I have been "prodded to think" (The San Francisco Chronicle). And I now think that the Bush administration blew up the twin towers and tried to blow up two other U.S. targets on 9/11 in order to scare Americans into giving them more power. I think that conservatives hate art, literature, and music—especially jazz music—and want to lock it all away because, well, they’re just mean like that. 

Does anyone else completely get lost at that point in that piece? Yowza, now there's a jump.

[WCSox]

How many of these movies that you're railing against have you actually watched?

 

How much time have you spent in Iraq to actually witness the regime change that you're railing againt?

[GoSox05]

this was a kick ass movie. If you don't like movies that may make you think or brings up radical ideas than you should probably go check out "shaggy dog".

[bmags]

Not as silly as somebody who watches "Snakes on a Plane."

 

So, I guess it's just coincidence that movies like Syriana and Jarhead came out during the Iraq War?  :rolly  If you believe that, I have a bridge over in Brooklyn I'm looking to sell.

 

They didn't come out during the iraq war...the iraq war was in march 03 to april 03 they came out during the occupation of Iraq. And that is looking like it will be around for a while. I guess hollywood can't cover movies with current events for a long time. I guess we should just cover a bunch of stuff that happened in the nineties i guess...because WCsox has put a censor on anything with any relevance to today because america has troops in another country and a movie recognizing that is seditious!

[bmags]

How much time have you spent in Iraq to actually witness the regime change that you're railing againt?

 

HA, the same question could be restructured for you...

[NorthSideSox72]

this was a kick ass movie.  If you don't like movies that may make you think or brings up radical ideas than you should probably go check out "shaggy dog".

Just because a movie deals in a provocative subject matter doesn't make it a good movie. The subject, and some of the material, were very thought-provoking. I agree. But taken as a whole, this was just not a good movie. It was scatter-brained and lacked any sort of flow.

 

I've had similar discussions with people about movies like Philadelphia - another movie that dealt in a controversial and important topic, but felt the need to beat us over the head with its points instead of letting us think for ourselves. The Constant Gardener - same thing (though that movie had some truly excellent dialogue and characters to help soften the plot blows).

[bmags]

I haven't seen it, but here's a take from the other side...

 

V for vendetta, T for terrorist, and A for "that's a-okay"

Mar 20, 2006

Review by Megan Basham

 

I have seen the terrorist, and he is me. And you. And all of us. So says Evey (Natalie Portman), an acolyte of V (Hugh Weaving), the swashbuckling savior of future England who disguises himself as Guy Fawkes.

 

But don’t worry, because being a terrorist is now a good thing. As we've been told by the media, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter…or masked superhero as the case may be. 

 

In fact, according to The New York Daily News' critic, Jaimi Bernard, even the term "suicide bombing" is now relative. "One person's idea of social liberation through symbolic fireworks is another person's suicide bombing," she insists in her review of V for Vendetta. 

 

So even though V threatens to detonate a load of explosives strapped to his chest, killing dozens of innocent people at the BBC (oh, excuse me, BFC) if they don't give him air-time, just think of him as Batman — a little overly-dramatic and conflicted perhaps, but also sexy and an undeniable force for good.

 

 

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I can see him this way because of all the Wachowski Brothers have taught me. My eyes have been opened, and I am no longer an automaton of the Right-wing religious-military-industrial complex.

 

Thanks to this "parable about terrorism and totalitarianism" (Roger Ebert) I have been "prodded to think" (The San Francisco Chronicle). And I now think that the Bush administration blew up the twin towers and tried to blow up two other U.S. targets on 9/11 in order to scare Americans into giving them more power. I think that conservatives hate art, literature, and music—especially jazz music—and want to lock it all away because, well, they’re just mean like that. 

 

I think that Catholics are in league with Republicans, and that together it is they, and not radical Islamists, who would like to exterminate all homosexuals and execute anyone that produces material critical of the Church-State. I think it is Christians who persecute people for reading the Koran and not Muslims who persecute people for reading the Bible.

 

I think that the West's military personnel are the ones who place hoods over innocent people's heads then mercilessly torture and kill them, and that broadcasts of Islamo-fascists doing so are so much laughable propaganda. 

 

But most of all, in true V style, I think that documents, like buildings, are only symbols, and that burning them can change the world. Therefore, I propose that we storm the National Archives and torch the Constitution—the document responsible for unleashing the Great Evil that is America.

 

After all, that's what the Wachowskis want, isn't it? When [spoiler alert] the English masses gather and cheer as Parliament, that British symbol of representative government burns, aren't we too supposed to cheer? Aren't we supposed to want to run out of theater ready to don our Osama Bin Laden masks, ready to confront the world's biggest terrorist mastermind on the White House lawn?

 

Oh, but wait, the movie is "dystopian" and therefore has nothing to do with current events. The "yellow-alerts" the vile dictator employs are a coincidence. The campy television show in which vaudevillian Al Qaeda operatives torture busty blondes, suggesting that the threat of terror is as fictional as it is ridiculous, means nothing.  The balding talk show host with a pill-popping problem isn't intended to smear a real person. 

 

And the fact that the script takes glee in constantly referring to the "former United States of America" and "their war" that left them "the world’s leper colony?" Umm, okay, that's a little hard to explain…let's just call that comic justice.

 

I could go into more detail, but really, there is no point. The fact the film's release had to be postponed when V’s final heroic act of loading explosives onto a subway car in the London underground proved too realistic illustrates how in-sync the Wachowski’s are with actual terrorists. Forget not being worth the price of admission, this ode to Al Zarqawi and his ilk certainly wasn’t worth the price of pretty Miss Portman’s flowing mane of chestnut hair.

 

But the worst part of Vendetta isn't the anti-Bush/anti-Blair agenda it pushes so feverishly. It's the legions of film critics who have lavished that agenda with praise. 

 

To be fair, some admirers claim that it's only entertainment: "If you find a way to apply it to George Bush or Tony Blair, it’s only because the film's themes are so universal." (Cinema Blend) But most argue that the ideas it brings up are "important": "That it so cannily reflects specific concerns of this moment in history makes it an almost important movie." (Los Angeles Daily News)

 

The hangdogs can't have it both ways. Either the movie has nothing to do with the War on Terror and it's awful, or it has everything to do with the War on Terror and it's appalling. 

 

Incidentally, after reading the script, creator of the V comic book, Alan Moore, insisted Warner Bros. remove his name from the project. He told MTV, "[My comic] has been turned into a Bush-era parable by people too timid to set a political satire in their own country… [The film] is a thwarted and frustrated and largely impotent American liberal fantasy of someone with American liberal values standing up against a state run by neo-conservatives — which is not what "V for Vendetta" [the comic] was about."

 

Thankfully, cartoonish acting and a juvenilely self-reverential plot means no one except teenage boys (the ones in the row in front of me kept muttering, "Yeah, anarchy!" as London blazed) and crazed George Clooney disciples will take this movie's "important ideas" seriously.

 

Those are the people who are this very moment wailing, "Free speech! Free speech! The Wachowskis have every right to promote their beliefs!" To them I say, yep, they sure do. 

 

And I have the right to unmask them for the ignorant, irresponsible, paranoid filmmakers that they are.

 

man...and they cry about the PC crowd of liberals haha. Anyone that is in more Favor of a TOTALITARIAN REGIME than people trying to REGAIN their freedom - NOT BY TARGETING CIVILIANS - but by the very politicians who have controlled them and taken away their liberties. Jesus, if this movie was reorganized so it was the 18th century, britain was still britain but V was an american, I wonder how different this would look. You know what...the movie the Patriot was pretty pro-terrorist too!! Blowing up that ammunition ship!!! Sneak attacks!!! MEL GIBSON SHOULD BE TRIED FOR SEDITION!!!

[Controlled Chaos]

Does anyone else completely get lost at that point in that piece?  Yowza, now there's a jump.

Nope.

[WCSox]

They didn't come out during the iraq war...the iraq war was in march 03 to april 03  occupation of Iraq.

 

Which was right around the time the decision was made to fund and start production on them. What a coincidence!

 

I guess hollywood can't cover movies with current events for a long time.

 

They have the right to release whatever they want. And when it's obvious that they're pushing a political agenda, I have the right to call them on it.

 

I guess we should just cover a bunch of stuff that happened in the nineties i guess...because WCsox has put a censor on anything with any relevance to today because america has troops in another country and a movie recognizing that is seditious!

 

And I guess that I should just shut up while you and your liberal friends in Hollywood tell us what's good for America and what isn't? Talk about censorship. :rolly

 

FWIW, I never called for theatres to "censor" these movies. I'm simply calling out Hollywood on its movtives.

 

If you don't like movies that may make you think or brings up radical ideas than you should probably go check out "shaggy dog".

 

No, I think I'll wait until "Snakes on a Plane" comes out. That looks like a real top-notch flick.

Edited March 20, 2006 by WCSox

[bmags]

Which was right around the time the decision was made to fund and start production on them.  What a coincidence!

They have the right to release whatever they want.  And when it's obvious that they're pushing a political agenda, I have the right to call them on it.

And I guess that I should just shut up while you and your liberal friends in Hollywood tell us what's good for America and what isn't?  Talk about censorship.   :rolly

 

FWIW, I never called for theatres to "censor" these movies.  I'm simply calling out Hollywood on its movtives.

No, I think I'll wait until "Snakes on a Plane" comes out.  That looks like a real top-notch flick.

 

Calling out their motives? You are putting in a bush agenda where there isn't one. There is a think about the motives of your elected officials agenda. As there always has been, and always will be...there's no use in getting all soft just because the man you elected was in office. There were these types of movies during clinton, bush, reagan, carter, ford,nixon, johnson, kennedy, eisenhower, truman...half-o FDR likely, hoover, coolidge...and i'm not real familiar with cinema pre 20's so i'll stop there...

Edited March 20, 2006 by bmags

[WCSox]

There is a think about the motives of your elected officials agenda. As there always has been, and always will be...there's no use in getting all soft just because the man you elected was in office.

 

Wow, that makes absolutely no sense.

 

There were these types of movies during clinton, bush, reagan, carter, ford,nixon, johnson, kennedy, eisenhower, truman...half-o FDR likely, hoover, coolidge...and i'm not real familiar with cinema pre 20's so i'll stop there...

 

There were anti-war movies during the Kennedy, Eisenhower, Truman, and FDR administrations? Would you like to cite some examples? And could you provide examples of a time when three anti-war/fasicm movies came out within a year during the Carter and Clinton administrations?

[bmags]

Wow, that makes absolutely no sense.

There were anti-war movies during the Kennedy, Eisenhower, Truman, and FDR administrations?  Would you like to cite some examples?  And could you provide examples of a time when three anti-war/fasicm movies came out within a year during the Carter and Clinton administrations?

 

see, anti war? I don't know where you're finding these words in my posts...

[WCSox]

see, anti war? I don't know where you're finding these words in my posts...

 

I don't know how I'm making any sense at all of your poorly-worded posts.

 

I'm still waiting for your examples of "these types of movies" from the Kennedy, Eisenhower, Truman, and FDR administrations. And I'm still waiting for an example of a Syriana-esque movie during the Clinton or Carter administrations.

[bmags]

I don't know how I'm making any sense at all of your poorly-worded posts.

 

I'm still waiting for your examples of "these types of movies" from the Kennedy, Eisenhower, Truman, and FDR administrations.  And I'm still waiting for an example of a Syriana-esque movie during the Clinton or Carter administrations.

 

I said these types of movies are made to make us think about our government officials policies. as well as modern day institutions...and then you came to think that meant anti war...that statement encompasses far more than anti war. the V for vendetta comic books weren't anti war...syriana was more our middle eastern policies with oil ... jarhead was a best selling book adapted for a movie...and i saw it an i can't really say it was anti war...just the story of how boring it can be, a soldiers account - howeve sensationalized he made it... anyway these movies just raise issues to think about...no different than Traffic (war on drugs) Crash (Racism) North Country (women in the work place and such) Erin Brokovich (corporate responsibility) and these types of movies are prevelant throughout cinema history. They haven't all the sudden been created for the Bush administration. HOw about Wag the Dog, a claim of the diversionary tactic very similar to the balkans during the clinton administration? Primary colors - the sleeziness of campaigns? Full metal jacket came out in 78...an anti war movie.

[WCSox]

HOw about Wag the Dog

 

Wag the Dog was released well before Clinton bombed Iraq during his impeachment hearings. And you don't have very many other examples to back up your claim.

 

If you want to believe that the release of Syriana, V for Vendetta, and Jarhead two or more years after our invasion of Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with the Iraq War, go ahead. I know better.

[bmags]

Wag the Dog was released well before Clinton bombed Iraq during his impeachment hearings.  And you don't have very many other examples to back up your claim.

 

If you want to believe that the release of Syriana, V for Vendetta, and Jarhead two or more years after our invasion of Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with the Iraq War, go ahead.  I know better.

 

you know what you want to believe...i'm saying they are comments on our times not malicious attacks to turn the nation on bush, he's done that well on his own. Social commentary pieces aren't time specific to the dumbass policies of the current president.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wag_the_dog

 

"The film drew attention at the time for similarities to the Clinton sex scandal, although the movie also makes reference to the Persian Gulf War as an example of war used as an electoral tactic"

 

hmm...sounds familiar...written about a former politician but released at the time of a current politicians similar situation...Where have i seen this before...where o where...

Edited March 20, 2006 by bmags

[WCSox]

you know what you want to believe...i'm saying they are comments on our times not malicious attacks to turn the nation on bush, he's done that well on his own.

 

CBS tried to take down Bush right before the '04 election with a fabricated story. If you still want proof that the media has it in for him, there's your smoking gun.

 

although the movie also makes reference to the Persian Gulf War as an example of war used as an electoral tactic"

 

hmm...sounds familiar...written about a former politician but released at the time of a current politicians similar situation...Where have i seen this before...where o where...

 

So, Hollywood was against Bush 41 back then as well, huh? What a shocker!

 

How ironic that after it's release, the movie unintentionally depicted the actions of Clinton during his impeachment hearings. Talk about a gun backfiring!

[longshot7]

They didn't come out during the iraq war...the iraq war was in march 03 to april 03 they came out during the occupation of Iraq. And that is looking like it will be around for a while. I guess hollywood can't cover movies with current events for a long time. I guess we should just cover a bunch of stuff that happened in the nineties i guess...because WCsox has put a censor on anything with any relevance to today because america has troops in another country and a movie recognizing that is seditious!

 

the iraq war isn't over.

[Balta1701]

you know what you want to believe...i'm saying they are comments on our times not malicious attacks to turn the nation on bush, he's done that well on his own. Social commentary pieces aren't time specific to the dumbass policies of the current president.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wag_the_dog

 

"The film drew attention at the time for similarities to the Clinton sex scandal, although the movie also makes reference to the Persian Gulf War as an example of war used as an electoral tactic"

The movie was based on a ficticious war in the Balkans, btw.

[BigSqwert]

the iraq war isn't over.

Yes it is. I saw the president on an air craft carrier quite a while back. The banner behind him said 'Mission Accomplished'.

[BigSqwert]

The movie was based on a ficticious war in the Balkans, btw.

And V for Vendetta is a true story?

[bmags]

CBS tried to take down Bush right before the '04 election with a fabricated story.  If you still want proof that the media has it in for him, there's your smoking gun.

So, Hollywood was against Bush 41 back then as well, huh?  What a shocker! 

 

How ironic that after it's release, the movie unintentionally depicted the actions of Clinton during his impeachment hearings.  Talk about a gun backfiring! 

 

i don't think i can argue with a propoganda machine anymore. So, do you guys get like emails everyday with your daily GOP sheep catch phrases or is it a phone tree or what?

 

and That's not irony, thats intentional. You see, movies with older themes try and update them with some current themes facing people today to keep it fresh and interesting. That's not irony. BUt i bet a dictionary is too liberal for you to use.

[Rex Kickass]

Wow, that makes absolutely no sense.

There were anti-war movies during the Kennedy, Eisenhower, Truman, and FDR administrations?  Would you like to cite some examples?  And could you provide examples of a time when three anti-war/fasicm movies came out within a year during the Carter and Clinton administrations?

 

In 1964 Fail-Safe was released. An anti-nuke political statement.

In 1964 Dr. Strangelove was released. An anti-nuke political statement.

In 1930 "All Quiet on the Western Front" was released. An anti-war statement.

In 1946 "A Walk In The Sun" was released. An anti-war statement.

Frank Sinatra starred in the 1962 Anti-War statement, "The Manchurian Candidate."

1970's M*A*S*H was about as anti-war as it gets.

Stanley Kubrick released the anti-war Paths of Glory in 1957.

1978 saw the anti-war "The Deer Hunter" and the anti-war "The Boys in Company C" as well as "Coming Home," which is definitely not a Pro-War movie.

Then there was 1979's Apocalypse Now. I'd say anti-war.

[WCSox]

i don't think i can argue with a propoganda machine anymore. So, do you guys get like emails everyday with your daily GOP sheep catch phrases or is it a phone tree or what?

 

No, I just watched 60 Minutes and saw Dan Rather lie to millions of Americans with my own eyes.

 

and That's not irony, thats intentional. You see, movies with older themes try and update them with some current themes facing people today to keep it fresh and interesting.

 

Tell me again how "Wag the Dog" (released in 1997) was written about Clinton's bombing of Baghdad during his impeachment hearings (1999).

 

That's not irony. BUt i bet a dictionary is too liberal for you to use

 

And apparently only conservatives know how to use proper grammar and spelling.

[Rex Kickass]

Not to nitpick, but when the main focus of your argument is about your opponent's grammar and Dan Rather, especially when its about bias in film, you seem to be losing track of your point.