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REDACTED REJECTED
Mark Steyn on the powerful anti-war triumph of Brian De Palma’s Redacted:
Its flopperooniness is something to marvel at. In its first three weeks on release, the movie earned $60,456 at the box office. Which would be a disappointing take for your cousin’s summer stock production of Brigadoon in a leaky barn theatre in Maine, but is apparently a respectable haul for an award-winning motion picture ballyhooed for weeks on end in the national press. “The film traffics in, and clearly means to provoke, strong, unbalanced emotions,” declares A O Scott in his review for The New York Times. The strongest unbalanced emotion it provokes is a powerful visceral urge to say, “Well, I was thinking of going to the movies this weekend but I figured I’d stay home and wash my hair.” In the same period, Beowulf grossed $75,983,000.
It’s probably just a simple matter of the film being one-and-a-half steps ahead of public interest.
“In its first three weeks on release, the movie earned $60,456 at the box office…In the same period, Beowulf grossed $75,983,000.”
De Palma is scum. Serves him right.
Trying to tie a horrifying rape and murder to American policy in Iraq is as low as it gets. There were numerous cases of rape and murder committed by American servicemen in WWII, but that has absolutely nothing to do with the war policies of the United States government. Much as I despise Roosevelt and Truman, it’s not their fault that individuals committed rapes and murder…that happens in every war and in every peace too. Same principle applies now in Iraq. And what’s more people like De Palma know that that’s true.
The whole concept of the film is a lie, it’s anti-American propaganda and it works in favor of the despots and terrorists and terrorists we’re fighting against.
De Palma is a piece of garbage. The only difference between people like De Palma and Lord Haw Haw is is that the former haven’t been hung yet.
More’s the pity.
Posted by Dave Surls on 2008 01 13 at 12:21 PM • permalinkHeh, “Redacted” gets rave reviews while pulling in pennies. That says an awful lot about the value of the movie reviewers, not to mention the movies themselves.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2008 01 13 at 12:21 PM • permalinkYou’d think they’d learn, but no. 300, an unabashedly, even proudly pro-military film, raked in millions, and they make one anti-war movie after another, and every one tanks. We just saw the preview for yet another at the theater, Stop Loss, or something like that. The people in the audience booed it.
Posted by rightwingprof on 2008 01 13 at 12:44 PM • permalinkGetting out the trusty calculater, $60,456 divided by $8.00 equals 7,557. So roughly 7,500 people throughout the USA actually paid money to see Redacted.
I work part-time at our local sports arena. The My Little Pony show just came through town. They sold around 8,000 tickets, at $12 to $20 apiece, for three shows. And this is one stop on their tour. Brian DePalma needs to hang his head in shame.
Posted by David Crawford on 2008 01 13 at 12:50 PM • permalinkThe people in the audience booed it.
BUAWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2008 01 13 at 01:23 PM • permalinkMr. De Palma’s premise ..... is that the truth about Iraq has been edited and obscured, kept away from the American public.
Quite so. People should read Totten and Yon.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2008 01 13 at 01:23 PM • permalinkIn a rational society still in possession of a survival instinct, a film such as Redacted would have the producer, director, and all the actors, stage hands and otherwise employed in production, hauled out into a public square and hoisted until they quit kicking.
This was, 100%, a production of enemy propaganda. Those who were involved, in any way, with this production and/or financing are as much an enemy as the jihadi themselves.
Stoploss. Seen the trailer twice now. Both times I shot it the bird as high as I could in front of the screen and held it there the length of the trailer.
No complaints. And that was in Los Angeles.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2008 01 13 at 01:42 PM • permalinkI can only conclude that anti-American Hollywood bigwigs are making these movies for the anti-American overseas market, and couldn’t care less about the ordinary American audience. This is why Hollywood will be finished as the world center of the entertainment industry in the next five to ten years, and they absolutely refuse to see it coming.
#14 RebeccaH:
...Hollywood will be finished as the world center of the entertainment industry in the next five to ten years…
It has already happened. For many years, the only movies worth watching have come from Bollywood.
Just heard that the Golden Globe awards ceremony has been cancelled, purportedly due to the writers’ strike. The ceremony has been replaced by a press conference, at first invitational but now open to anyone who wants to come. Apparently no one was accepting the invitations.
The awards are going to be posted to the winners.$60,456 in three weeks? Surely that’s a typo. $600,456 would still be a complete flop.
So I checked. Anyway, it’s not $60,456 in 3 weeks that I found, but $65,388 in 5 weeks. Who’s did this film again? Anthony Lowenstein?
The appointment of Hugo Chavez’s US publicist, Sean Penn, as a judge at the Cannes Film Festival shows that film festivals are political rallies and nothing to do with good film. Steyn’s mention of the Venice Film Festival is not a throwaway line - it did win a “Silver Lion” award for best director. You would think the organisers of the Venice event will be embarrassed that their endorsement has failed to lift Redacted from being the least successful film ever produced. Bet they aren’t. The fact that no one wants to see their star choice will simply reinforce their view that they are superior to other people.
No indication of an Australian release but the ABC was quite excited about the prospect back in September. Imagine the cinemas won’t want it but the ABC or SBS will
Only 7,500 people watched this steaming pile of putrescence? Surely there are a couple orders of magnitude more rabid anti-military lefties in the country. I guess the thought of the movie being out there was comforting enough—no need to actually see it; message already internalized.
That said, I can see it doing quite well overseas in certain reliable anti-American markets.
Posted by Tommy Shanks on 2008 01 13 at 07:20 PM • permalink#17, skeeter, while I know that Bollywood has outsold Hollywood for a couple of decades now (and I, myself, have enjoyed the occasional musical romp in saris and dhotis), Bollywood movies just aren’t up to dramatic snuff yet. Give them time, though.
In the meantime, we’ll have to make do with indie producers who actually want to tell good stories.
Now and then Mark Steyn writes something that confirms him as the clearest conservative thinker in the world today.
How the Hollywood luvvies such as Clooney, Sarandon, De Palma etc must hate him.
He exposes their motives and their morality to be as empty as the skewed and contemptuous images they try to portray of America’s war on terror.
On a related topic, in Lost, a show I really enjoy, one of the characters, a torturer under the Saddam regime, is depicted as having learned how to torture by an American spook of some description during the first Gulf War.
As a plot device it is far beyond ludicrously unbelievable, yet the writers put it in and it’s presumably plausible in their worldview, and shows the depth of their reality inversion and moral bankruptcy.
#2 David Surls -
Trying to tie a horrifying rape and murder to American policy in Iraq is as low as it gets. There were numerous cases of rape and murder committed by American servicemen in WWII, but that has absolutely nothing to do with the war policies of the United States government.
There have been several highly controversial rape cases in Okinowa involving bad soldiers or Marines. This all proves that the US should never have gone to war against Japan.
Posted by wronwright on 2008 01 13 at 08:16 PM • permalinkphil_b
Kipling might have had something to say about that.
“..When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier…”Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2008 01 13 at 08:57 PM • permalinkArticle in the Age today sternly reporting on the number of murders committed by returned US servicemen. All sorts of facts a figures accompany it, except of course proportion of non-military people who murder or proportion of veterans who go on to lead balanced productive lives.
Posted by ooh honey honey on 2008 01 13 at 09:45 PM • permalinkI’d pay $15, and more, just to see the Director and reviewers faces when the audience started booing. Now that would be a show.
#12. Also to be fair you can’t blame the actors or crew. I’ve worked on films where I had no clue what the thing was about. It’s a job, I’m a contractor, so if the cheque clears I’m all yours.
Posted by Dean McAskil on 2008 01 13 at 11:01 PM • permalinkDean McAskil:
Good call, at least on the crew. You’re right. Actors though. They’ve got to read the script and have some clue what the program is about.
There’s no way someone could read through the story line and whatnot and remain clean.
Valley of the Wolves was another such propaganda piece. If that industry doesn’t figure how to start policing itself, at least somewhat, then it will be made to be policed. Unfortunately for all concerned, that policing will be after the rage break and there’s rarely any mercy in such events.
History is chock full of nice little lessons in what happens when a citizenry has finally had enough of those viewed to be betrayers during a time of war or crisis.
It’ll probably do better overseas where they love movies about EEEvil Americans. You know - the Middle East, Germany, and Canadian universities.
Posted by Sonetka's Mom on 2008 01 13 at 11:50 PM • permalinkGrimmy, minor point. Sometimes on a feature as a bit part player you are not given a copy of the full script or even allowed to see one.
That excuse doesn’t apply to the leads though.
#38 my thoughts exactly. De Plama will probably win a Légion d’honneur from France where surrender and disprespect for your own troops seems to be a virtue.
Posted by Dean McAskil on 2008 01 14 at 12:07 AM • permalink#30, those numbers were provided by the NYT and were debunked less than 24 hours later.
Posted by spot_the_dog on 2008 01 14 at 01:27 AM • permalink#30, those numbers were provided by the NYT and were debunked less than 24 hours later.
Excellent! I love debunkenism! We shall all bathe in the noble glare of an Age retraction on the morrow!
Posted by ooh honey honey on 2008 01 14 at 06:32 AM • permalinkAnother good example of why I visit steynonline nearly every day. The man could write a shopping list and it would be worth reading.
I particularly liked this -
Why have these films tanked? Roger L Simon, a screenwriter himself, made the point that these films are “essentially inauthentic”. “The filmmakers think they are supposed to be antiwar, but they don’t feel it in their guts,” he writes. “This feels to me like a cinema of ‘received wisdom,’ not based on personal experience or ‘emotional knowledge’ of any kind.”
On a similar note, is it just me or does much of the protest music now seem merely whiny or pissy, rather than angry and rebellious? It seemed to me that songs like, say, Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane” or CCR’s “Who’ll Stop the Rain?” are timeless. They’re actually taking a stand. On the other hand, take the Dixie Chicks “Not ready to make nice” (which is largely a ballad of posing self-pity) or Green Day’s “When September Ends” (which sounds to me like a perfunctory by-the-numbers dirge).
Still and all, those great sages Calvin and Hobbes, make me wonder whether this de-toothing of the rebellion isn’t actually a triumph for us conservatives!
Posted by Renegade Lawyer on 2008 01 14 at 07:35 AM • permalinkIt goes without saying that Roger Ebert loves it. He gives it 4.5 stars out of 5. He would.
Posted by walterplinge on 2008 01 14 at 07:55 AM • permalink42. Whatever minions were involved in setting that up, well done. The key to the mead store is on the way…
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2008 01 14 at 09:27 AM • permalinkSteyn lost me when he said Children of Men stinks because of all the cursing. But yeah, Redacted? Movie critics must be so depressed these days. They can’t even make or break an omlette.
Posted by Jim Treacher on 2008 01 14 at 10:04 AM • permalink
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Hey, de Palma should have gotten Scott Thomas as the screenwriter. Too late now, mind you, but Scott should be free a few months from now. I hope the writers’ strike is over by then.