Movie: Frost/Nixon

>During this last election, pundits likened the candidates to Lincoln, Kennedy, Nixon, Truman and so on. Whatsername even got a fifteen-minute shot till she became a post-election celeb known more for her daughter’s sex life than anything else. McCain lost Obama lost, history was made, and the world became hopeful. Barak Obama’s election was the best thing to happen to George W. Bush. I came to this conclusion in the midst of Ron Howard’s terrific film Frost/Nixon, which depicts the 1977 interview British presenter David Frost (Michael Sheen) did with Richard Nixon (Frank Langella) after the president quit the White House following his involvement in Watergate.

Frost was not a journalist, but he was backed by intrepid researchers—-journalist James Reston Jr. (Sam Rockwell), producer John Birt (Matthew MacFadyen), and journalist Bob Zelnick (Oliver Platt)-—who desperately wanted Nixon to confess on air and had limited time and resources to make it happen. Seemingly born for the tube, the TV talk-show host was up against a man who decidedly was not. Nixon, however, was an old-school manipulator who simply needed the right management for television. And for the first three interview segments, he presided beautifully.
The film ably tells the story of the Frost-Nixon interview, depicting it as a verbal fencing match, which is a little clichéd but accurate. It also shows how a president of the United States got away with a criminal act and had to live with the shame for the rest of his life (Nixon died of a stroke in 1994). A moral ending.

Ah, but for the helicopter.

There was nice little scene of Nixon flying from the White House in a military chopper. Much like the one Bush flew away in January 20, 2009, after Obama’s inauguration; when we all sat glued to the TV to watch (on stations worldwide) the first black man sworn in; when we all breathed a collective sigh of relief.
As did Bush and Cheney and Rove.

See, Nixon was impeached and the office of the president was subsequently filled by Vice-President Ford, who served a less memorable term. George W. Bush and his string pullers served two official terms, picked up (“urgently” in Cheney’s case), and were whisked away.

The nation and its media turned its weary eyes and lenses to a new president who offered change and hope. We focused on the economy and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the greedheads on Wall Street.

And turned our attention away from the scoundrels who were responsible for it all.
Are there dogged researchers and journalists who will set their sights on the crimes of the Bush administration how that it cannot be impeached? A president and vice-president who inflicted an illegal war on at least two countries and thereby devastated both of its economies? Will there be a Frost/Nixon anytime time soon? The optimist in me thinks yes. The realistic in me knows no. And the sceptic in me thinks no one will care.

>Movie Version of "The Kite Runner" Delayed

>Maybe it’s my cold, maybe it’s my experience from working in the film business, but something about this story stinks.

From the New York Times:

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 3 — The studio distributing “The Kite Runner,” a tale of childhood betrayal, sexual predation and ethnic tension in Afghanistan, is delaying the film’s release to get its three schoolboy stars out of Kabul — perhaps permanently — in response to fears that they could be attacked for their enactment of a culturally inflammatory rape scene.

… The boys and their relatives are now accusing the filmmakers of mistreatment, and warnings have been relayed to the studio from Afghan and American officials and aid workers that the movie could aggravate simmering enmities between the politically dominant Pashtun and the long-oppressed Hazara.

In an effort to prevent not only a public-relations disaster but also possible violence, studio lawyers and marketing bosses have employed a stranger-than-fiction team of consultants. In August they sent a retired Central Intelligence Agency counterterrorism operative in the region to Kabul to assess the dangers facing the child actors. And on Sunday a Washington-based political adviser flew to the United Arab Emirates to arrange a safe haven for the boys and their relatives.

…In interviews, more than a dozen people involved in the studio’s response described grappling with vexing questions: testing the limits of corporate responsibility, wondering who was exploiting whom and pondering the price of on-screen authenticity.

…The producers dispelled one fear, that the filmmakers would use computer tricks to depict the boy’s genitals in the rape scene. But Ahmad Khan’s parents also pressed for more cash, the producers said.

On the advice of a Kabul television company, the boys had been paid $1,000 to $1,500 a week, far less than the Screen Actors Guild weekly scale of $2,557, but far more than what Afghan actors typically receive.

So what exactly did Hollywood film execs think was going to happen? That filming “authentic” rape scenes of two boys in an Muslim country (in any country)didn’t bear consequences? How far in the sand did they bury their heads? This isn’t just an American attitude, but also an artistic one; that to produce “good art” one must make it “real”. Well, the translation of director Marc Forster’s vision was lost, if it was ever properly conveyed at all.

Great spin, though boys. The book will continue to sell and its readers are frothing to see the flick.

>Once

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I’m adding Irish indie film Once to my to-see list. Why? Well, it looks good, and stars Glen Hansard, he of the film The Commitments and the band The Frames.