74 lines
4.7 KiB
Plaintext
74 lines
4.7 KiB
Plaintext
If Hollywood Were Really Brave
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<p>The Oscar night of 2006 brought us the unedifying spectacle of<br />
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George Clooney (whom I must say I truly admire when he shuts his yap<br />
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and <em>acts</em>) celebrating Hollywood’s bravery for being willing<br />
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to make movies like <cite>Brokeback Mountain</cite> and <cite>Good Night<br />
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and Good Luck</cite>.</p>
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<p>Conservative commentators have already pointed out<br />
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how hollow and laughable it is to suppose that left-wing political<br />
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correctness is in any way ‘brave’ in today’s Hollywood, so I won’t<br />
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re-plow that ground. Instead, I’ll propose eight movies I think<br />
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Hollywood would make if it were <em>really</em> brave.</p>
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<p><span id="more-273"></span></p>
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<p>############################################################</p>
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<h3>The Crescent’s Edge</h3>
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<p>This thinly fictionalized version of Salman Rushdie’s life on the<br />
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run stars Ben Kingsley as a beleaguered leftist intellectual forced to<br />
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question his own multiculturalist assumptions as he evades fanatical<br />
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mujahedeen who seek to kill him for having defamed the Prophet.</p>
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<h3>A Nightmare South of Market</h3>
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<p>Ray Liotta stars as an idealistic young doctor determined to halt<br />
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the spread of AIDS who crusades against the promiscuity and<br />
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needle-drug abuse endemic in San Francisco’s gay bathhouse scene.<br />
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Don’t miss Gary Oldman’s cameo as a homosexual Scoutmaster.</p>
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<h3>The Thin Green Line</h3>
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<p>Bruce Willis and Mel Gibson star in a gritty war film celebrating<br />
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U.S. special forces in Afghanistan, the men who took down the barbaric<br />
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Taliban regime. Audiences at Cannes and Sundance were deeply shocked<br />
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by its sympathetic portrayal of the modern American military.</p>
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<h3>The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress</h3>
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<p>This faithful adaptation of Robert Heinlein’s 1966 SF classic,<br />
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starring Nicholas Cage as Manuel Garcia O’Kelly Davis and Mira Sorvino<br />
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as Wyoming Knott, challenges viewers to imagine a libertarian future.<br />
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Gripping SFX of meteoroid bombardment contrast with searching questions<br />
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about the legitimacy of government as the Lunar nation struggles to be<br />
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born. (Rumor has it that Paul Verhoeven was at one point forcibly<br />
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ejected from the set of this film.)</p>
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<h3>Never Again</h3>
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</p>
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<p>In this sprawling family epic, three generations of Israelis fight<br />
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to preserve the Middle East’s only democracy from implacable and<br />
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bloodthirsty enemies on every side. An ensemble cast of unknowns<br />
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struggles with war, terrorism, and tragedy in a film that unflinchingly<br />
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affirms Jewish identity and doesn’t fear to confront Nazi and<br />
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Pan-Arabist atrocities.</p>
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<h3>A Tree Grows In Harlem</h3>
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<p>Morgan Freeman and Halle Berry star as a father/daughter team of<br />
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neighborhood activists who decide blaming Whitey isn’t enough and<br />
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challenge ghetto blacks to take responsibility for solving their own<br />
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problems. Villains (and victims of this film’s wicked satirical edge) include<br />
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recognizable takes on Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Louis Farrakhan,<br />
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but the enemy the two must struggle hardest to defeat is the<br />
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government bureaucracy set up to ‘help’ their people.</p>
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<h3>Unintended Conseqences</h3>
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<p>Roy Scheider stars as a dedicated sport shooter who vows to seek<br />
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justice after his daughter is killed during a no-knock BATF/DEA raid<br />
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on their home. This searing expose of contemporary American<br />
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law-enforcement abuses takes on both the madness of the “War on Drugs”<br />
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and the random but brutal persecution of civilian gun owners.</p>
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<h3>The Venona Diaries</h3>
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<p>Eric Bana stars as an Iraq-veteran-turned-academic who discovers<br />
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that the shadowy networks of influence set up by the KGB during the<br />
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Cold War are not only still active on U.S. college campuses but<br />
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solidifying an alliance with Islamic terrorists. Heart-pounding<br />
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action ensues as Bana races to head off the act of mass murder that<br />
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will seal the Marxist/Islamist alliance in blood.</p>
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<p>############################################################</p>
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<p>When I say ‘brave’, I don’t mean ‘brave’ as in “it would lose<br />
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money”. Any of these films could easily be a huge hit with actual,<br />
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you know, <em>audiences</em>. No. I meant ‘brave’ as in “the<br />
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self-congratulating limousine-liberal elitists who brought us this<br />
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year’s Oscar nominees would be out for blood if any of <em>these</em><br />
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films ever got made”. It would be a fearless filmmaker indeed who’d<br />
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court their wrath.</p>
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