Wanna see something really GROSS? Here are just a few of the disgusting items on the Cineplex Entertainment website wildly promoting the crummy Paul Gross pro-war film HYENA ROAD + links to Greg Klymkiw's reviews of HYENA ROAD and the brilliant "Making of" Documentary by Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson which is light-years better than Paul Gross's film itself. Enjoy!

Here's something GROSS!
Win a Trip to Ottawa in honour of
the pro-war film HYENA ROAD
Visit the Nation's Capital
Governed by RACIST FASCISTS
You paid for a good chunk of this
with your tax dollars under the aegis
of the aforementioned RACIST FASCIST
government, so ENJOY!!!

The Unbearable Promotion of War:
Buying Grosses for Wasteful Gross Film

Editorial Commentary By Greg Klymkiw

The new Canadian war film Hyena Road tries to mask itself as anything but a pro-war film, but as it extols the virtues of Canada's involvement in a war which killed, maimed and shell-shocked too many of our nation's soldiers for reasons that had everything to do with buttressing the financial goals of corporate pigs, it's clearly one of the most foul pieces of garbage foisted upon us courtesy of several million Canadian taxpayer dollars.

When writer-producer-director Paul Gross sallied over to Afghanistan for a morale-boosting "meet and greet" with our fighting men and women a few years ago, he realized it was necessary to make a film about Canadians and for Canadians. Rather than focusing upon the war machine and America's perverted desires to lie to its people about extremist Muslims being the real threat, he chose instead to give us some good, old rah-rah with oodles of war pornography.

He decided to tell of a joint Canadian-American initiative to build a road through hostile territory to ensure safe back-and-forth passage through hostile "enemy" territory. Make no mistake, Canada was the enemy in Afghanistan. Gross, however, clearly had no interest in the agendas of the New World Order, the 1% of the wealthiest, who used terrorism as the excuse to murder its own soldiers and Afghans.

According to a sampling of the reams of promotional bumph on the Cineplex Entertainment website:

"...Gross felt a calling to present a very real slice of the Canadian military’s efforts in Afghanistan. This wasn't just to use film as a means of educating those who don’t really understand Canada’s role in the war. [Our role was a spurious one, but Gross has no interest in this.] It was also to give a voice, and humanity, [Humanity! Hah!] to not only the soldiers risking their lives every day to protect the sanctity of freedom [Sanctity of FREEDOM! Who the fuck are they trying to kid?], but the Afghan warriors typically villainized. [Another yeah right! The film shows one "good" Afhghan warrior and most of the rest are the typical Snidely Whiplash villains, especially a sleazy two-faced Afghan villain.]

Here's the real GROSS part to all this. The amount of promotional support for this film on the Cineplex website and in its theatre lobbies and on its screens is huge. On top of this are all the millions of dollars from Federal and Provincial coffers to produce, market and distribute this film. I have no problem with Canadian films receiving this - not even Hyena Road. However, how many Canadian films get this kind of promotional support? Not many. How many Canadian films are supported to such a degree by Cineplex Entertainment? Not many. In fact, how many Canadian films does Cineplex Entertainment bother to even show? Not many and it's getting worse, not better.

Enjoy 300 SCENE Loyalty Points from
Cineplex Entertainment when buying
a ticket to the Canadian War Pornography
HYENA ROAD during its first week!!!

What's essentially happening with Hyena Road and a handful of other "anointed" Canadian films is that both the government and corporations like Cineplex Entertainment are buying grosses to put bums in seats. This allows everyone to pat themselves on the back, publicize big grosses (which usually aren't that big to begin with) so that a whole whack of folks can save face by backing these few horses. And then, based on these spurious numbers, the producers of said pieces of garbage are giving green lights to keep gobbling from the troughs and make more shitty movies.

In addition to the hilariously pathetic Cineplex Entertainment contest to send two - count 'em - two lucky people to Ottawa, they're also offering Scene loyalty card bonus points if people see Hyena Road during the first week. 300 points to be exact. This represents almost one third of an eventual free ticket to see a movie. Again, I have no problem with this. It offers a decent promotional incentive to patrons and if it works, it assists in top-loading the first week of release with more paying viewers. However, how many Canadian films are afforded this great promotion? Uh, not too many.

The amount of promo material for Hyena Road on the Cineplex Entertainment website is staggering. Just for fun, here is another ludicrous quotation taken directly from Cineplex.com:

These are stories that are often overlooked, as Canada’s participation in the war is not something that is often depicted on film. The cast discuss their respect for Gross, who is telling important historical stories that our nation deserves to have heard.

Excuse me, did I just read that correctly? The cast of Hyena Road "discuss" on the Cineplex Entertainment website "their respect for [Paul] Gross"? Why, pray tell? For "telling important historical stories that our nation deserves to have heard."

You know, what our nation deserved to hear is not the war porn bunkum Gross craps onto the screen. We don't need this propaganda. We need to know the truth behind what our veterans from Afghanistan and every other war have had to suffer because they were duped into fighting for freedom.

If Paul Gross had any concern at all about the bravery of Canada's armed forces, he might have thought to tell the stories of how our fighting men and women have been treated like shit by our own government. How about stories of Canadian soldiers and their applications for assistance to the Department of Veterans Affairs taking 5 years or more? How about stories of same said veterans being denied assistance after waiting for so many years? How about the fact that this mean-spirited incompetence directed at these members of our armed forces are a result of the Canadian Fuhrer closing nine Veterans Affairs offices across the country, firing 900 Veterans Affairs staff members, not using one billion dollars earmarked for veterans' assistance, ignoring a detailed and damning Auditor General report condemning the Harper Reichstag for doing virtually nothing to help our veterans?

How about Der Fuhrer Stephen Harper removing the right of a maimed, injured, shell-shocked veteran to a lifetime pension?

These are the real Canadian stories of war that have been swept under the rug by our government and even the media to a large degree. What the fuck is Paul Gross, Cineplex Entertainment and various levels of the Canadian government doing making propaganda and ignoring the war stories that really matter?

Sadly, for Canada, not even American filmmakers have ignored the maimed, the mad and the disenfranchised thanks to Oliver Stone (Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July), Francis Coppola (Apocalypse Now). Michael Cimino (The Deer Hunter), Samuel Fuller (Steel Helmet, The Big Red One) and, well, I could grind out a few thousand words just listing them. Even worse, for Canada, is that Gross has, with two pictures, burned through millions upon millions of dollars to make films that not only have much to say, but range from incompetence to borderline incompetence.

So go. See the movie this week. You'll get loyalty card points and contribute to supporting lacklustre filmmaking and lies. I hope Gross and anyone responsible at any level for this wad of nothingness are proud of themselves.

We can all feel proud. Hyena Road is what "we stand on guard for thee" for.

Lies, lies and more lies. And cruddy filmmaking also.

The link to my review of Hyena Road is HERE.

The link to my review of Bring Me The Head of Tim Horton, The Making of Hyena Road is HERE.

"Stay tuned. We're going to go beyond the scenes."
- Michael Kennedy, Executive Vice-President,
CINEPLEX ENTERTAINMENT

RED ARMY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - American Doc on Soviet Hockey Ignores Canada

RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA

AMERICAN PROPAGANDA

Red Army (2014)
Dir. Gabe Polsky

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Gabe Polsky’s feature length documentary Red Army is as much about the propaganda machine (of Cold War Russia/Soviet Union) as it is pure propaganda unto itself, by placing undue emphasis upon the rivalry between America and the Soviet Union on the blood-spattered battleground of ice hockey competition. Polsky has fashioned a downright spellbinding history of the Red Army hockey team, which eventually became a near-juggernaut of Soviet skill and superiority in the world.

In spite of this, many Canadians will call the film a total crock-and-bull story.

I wholeheartedly admit, however, the bias of growing up intimately within the universe of world competition hockey. My own father, Julian Klymkiw, played goal for Canada’s national team in the 1960s, a team that was managed by Chas Maddin (filmmaker Guy Maddin’s father). Guy and I eventually became the respective director-producer team behind Tales from the Gimli Hospital, Archangel and Careful. Maddin went on to immortalise a ‘non-professional’ team from the wintry Canadian prairies in the Jody Shapiro-produced My Winnipeg. Maddin even featured a beefy lookalike of yours-truly wearing a uniform emblazoned with the name ‘Julian Klymberger’ (the surname being one of my own nicknames in years past and to represent my Dad).

To say Maddin and I were both well aware of the true rivalry in international hockey would be an understatement.

But one didn’t need to actually grow up in hockey families intimately involved with various Team Canada hockey leagues to realise that the United States was a blip on the Soviet rivalry-radar. The only famous match-up between the Soviets and America happened during the 1980 Olympics, when a team of veritable untested ‘kids’ hammered the Soviets (immortalised as the 2004 Walt Disney Studios feature film Miracle starring Kurt Russell).

Polsky’s film uses this match as the film’s primary structural tent pole, and completely ignores the historic 1972 Canada-USSR Summit Series, which has gone down in most histories (save, perhaps, for America’s) as the greatest display of hockey war of all time. His film also ignores, though pays passing lip service, to the fact that the real rivalry throughout the 1970s and 1980s had virtually nothing to do with America and everything to do with Canada and Russia.

I know this all too well.

My own father eventually became the Carling O’Keefe Breweries marketing guru who brokered huge swaths of promotional sponsorship to Team Canada over 15-or-so years and, in fact, worked closely with hockey agent/manager/promoter and Team Canada’s mastermind Alan Eagleson. Dad not only spoke a variety of Slavic languages fluently, but his decades as an amateur and pro hockey player all contributed to making him an invaluable ally to both administrators and players of Team Canada. To the latter, famed Canadian sports reporter Hal Sigurdson reported, ‘Big Julie [Klymkiw] often rolled up his sleeves and got his hands dirty behind the Canadian bench.’

I’m not, by the way, arguing the absence of my Dad in this film – he did his thing, promoting beer to promote hockey and hockey to promote beer, which allowed him to travel the world and be with all the hockey players he loved – but what I’m shocked about is how Red Army can ignore my Dad’s old pal and colleague. The film includes ONE – count ’em – ONE off-camera sound bite from Alan Eagleson.

Polsky appears to have made no effort to even interview the man himself or include the reams of historic interview footage of Eagleson that fills a multitude of archives to over-flowing. Eagleson, for all the scandals that eventually brought him down, including imprisonment for fraud and embezzlement convictions, was the game’s most important individual on the North American side to make Soviet match-ups in the Western world a reality, and to allow professional North American players to go head-to-head with the Soviets. (Though Eagleson went down in flames, my Dad always remarked straight-facedly, ‘The “Eagle” never screwed me.’)

How, then, can a documentary about Soviet hockey so wilfully mute this supremely important Canadian angle to the tale? Where are the interviews (new or archival) with such hockey superstars as Gordie Howe (including sons Mark and Marty), Bobby Hull, Bobby Orr, Marc Tardif and all the others who battled the Soviets on-ice? Why are there only mere blips of Wayne (‘The Great One’) Gretzky, most notably a clip in which he sadly refers to the Soviets’ unstoppable qualities? Why are there not more pointed interview bites with the former Soviet players discussing the strength of Canadian players? It’s not like archival footage of this doesn’t exist.

There’s only one reason for any of these errors of omission: all the aforementioned personages and angles are Canadian. Ignoring the World Hockey Association’s (WHA) bouts with the USSR is ludicrous enough, but by focusing on the 1980 Olympic tourney and placing emphasis on the National Hockey League (NHL), the latter of which is optically seen as a solely AMERICAN interest, Red Army is clearly not the definitive documentary about the Soviet players that its director and, most probably American fans and pundits, assume it is.

America? HAH! Canada! YEAH!

As a sidenote, there's an excellent series of DVDs produced by the visionary Canadian producer-distributor Jonathan Gross and available through his company Video Services Corp. (VSC). The titles include Canada Cup ‘76, Team Canada 1974: The Lost Series, The WHA Chronicles, Canada Cup '84 and Canada Cup ‘87 and they ALL address this important aspect of Soviet-Canadian Hockey. I wonder if Polsky bothered to watch any of them? Only his hairdresser, or rather, conscience would know for sure. Full ordering info on the titles below review.

Even if one were to argue that the story Polsky was interested in telling didn’t allow for angling Canadian involvement more vigorously, ‘one’ would be wrong. The story of Soviet hockey supremacy has everything to do with Canada – a country that provided their only consistent and serious adversary, a country that embraced hockey as intensely as the USSR and a country, by virtue of Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau’s official policy of Canadian multiculturalism, that reflected the vast number of Canuck players who had Eastern European blood and culture coursing through them.

It’s also strange how Polsky, the son of Soviet Ukrainian immigrants, ignores the fact that a huge majority of great Soviet players were ethnically Ukrainian. I vividly remember meeting so many of those legends as a kid and listening to them talk with my Dad about a day when maybe, just maybe, Ukraine would have its independence and display Ukrainian hockey superiority over the Russians, never mind the rest of the world. (Given the current struggles between Russia and Ukraine, this might have made for a very interesting political cherry-on-the-sundae.)

Ultimately, Red Army is American propaganda, or at the very least, is deeply imbued with American propagandistic elements. Given that it’s about Soviet hockey players, I find this strangely and almost hilariously ironic, which in and of itself, gives the movie big points.

All this kvetching aside, Red Army is still a solid film. Focusing on the historic and political backdrop of Joseph Stalin and those leaders who followed him, all of who built up one of the greatest, if not the greatest series of hockey teams in the world, this is still a supremely entertaining movie. Polsky’s pacing, sense of character and storytelling is slick and electric. The subjects he does focus upon, the greatest line of Soviet players in hockey history, all deliver solid bedrock for a perspective many hockey fans (and even non-hockey fans) know nothing or little about.

Polsky even interviews a former KGB agent who accompanied the Soviet players to North America in order to guard against defection to the West. Here again, though, I’ll kvetch about a funny Canadian perspective. Dad not only played hockey, not only was he a marketing guy, but he even squeezed in a decade of being a damn good cop in Winnipeg, and when Team Canada went to Russia, Dad would go from hotel room to hotel room, find bugs (not the plentiful cockroaches, either) and rip the KGB surveillance devices out of their hiding places for himself, his colleagues, players and administrators from the West.

I’ll also admit to enjoying the interviews with the likes of NHL coach Scotty Bowman and Soviet goalie Vladislav Tretiak; however, the most compelling subject in Polsky’s film is the Soviet defenceman Slava Fetisov, who movingly recounts the early days of his hockey career, his friendship and brotherhood with the other players and his leading role in encouraging Soviet players to defect for the big money of pro hockey in North America. It’s also alternately joyous and heartbreaking to see the juxtaposition between the balletic Soviet styles of play with that of the violent, brutal North American approach.

Contrast is, of course, an important element of any storytelling, but in a visual medium like film, it’s especially vital. It’s what provides the necessary conflict. With Red Army, however, the conflict is extremely selective. It is, after all, an American movie, and as it proves, if Americans do anything really well, it’s propaganda. Us Canucks here in the colonies can only stew in our green-with-envy pot of inferiority. We know we’re the best, but we have no idea how to tell this to the rest of the world, and least of all, to ourselves.

Kudos to Polsky and America are unreservedly owed.

They show us all how it’s done.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

Red Army is currently in theatrical release via Mongrel Media in Toronto and Vancouver, followed by a February 27 release in Montreal and a rollout in the rest of Canada later in the year. It previously screened at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2014).

To read a full version of my essay Canada vs. America: The Politics and Propaganda of Sports in Gabe Polsky's RED ARMY and Bennett Miller's FOXCATCHER, feel free to visit my column: Greg Klymkiw's COLONIAL REPORT (on cinema) from the DOMINION OF CANADA at the ultra-cool UK-based magazine electric sheep - a deviant view of cinema by clicking HERE.

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ORDER ANYTHING
FROM AMAZON BY USING THE LINKS BELOW.
IN SO DOING WILL ALLOW YOU TO  SUPPORT
THE ONGING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER 

In Canada - BUY VSC's The WHA Chronicles HERE, eh!
In Canada - BUY VSC's Canada Cup The Lost Series 1974 HERE, eh!
In Canada - BUY VSC's Canada Cup 1976 HERE, eh!
In Canada - BUY VSC's Canada Cup 1984 HERE, eh!
In Canada - BUY VSC's Canada Cup 1987 HERE, eh!

LONE SURVIVOR - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Racist War Propaganda Poses Dilemma of Being Superbly Made

Fact-based tale of Navy Seal Marcus Luttrell (played by Mark Wahlberg), the only American survivor of an Afghanistan mission gone wrong and leading to the deaths of 19 soldiers at the hands of Taliban forces.

Lone Survivor (2013) **1/2
Dir. Peter Berg
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch, Ben Foster, Eric Bana, Ali Suliman

Review By Greg Klymkiw

It is virtually impossible to NOT be deeply moved seeing the deaths of 19 young American soldiers, but it's probably not for the reasons intended by the filmmakers. They want us to experience the honour and sacrifice made by these clearly brave young men. They want us to revel in the glory of their service to America, their deep camaraderie and their unwavering commitment to keep fighting to the death in the face of insurmountable odds.

This is what the filmmakers want and sadly, from many audiences, they'll get it.

What will move (I hope) most thinking, feeling people is how utterly senseless the deaths of these young men were (and by extension, ALL soldiers and civilians on both sides of the equation that is Afghanistan, and for that matter, the entire reprehensibly spurious War on Terror). Watching this picture we are pummelled by the utter futility of the mission these men were ordered to fulfill and the clear screw-ups on every level by the American command. We see this, but the movie takes no moral, political, thematic or, frankly, even dramatic position on this. There's a cursory nod to "war is Hell", but if the film takes any stance at all it is to extoll the virtues of the American tolerance for pain, hardship and death at any and all cost to themselves.

The movie's sole narrative purpose is to send the boys on a mission to assassinate a Taliban military leader who - HORRORS!!! - has killed many Marines and then to view how everything that could go wrong, indeed does. It's the war film equivalent to The Passion of the Christ. We know during the film's opening five minutes and from the title, that everyone in the film will die except one. All that seems necessary to spin the tale forward is when our soldiers make the right, but fateful decision not to kill civilian goat herders. This results in one of the lucky-to-be-spared Afghanis ratting out the presence of the Yanks to the Taliban armed forces.

Our brave American lads are quickly surrounded, then assailed by an unbeatable extremist Muslim juggernaut of strength and numbers. We spend about one hour of screen time watching the soldiers take repeated bullet-hits and incur rips, gashes, scratches, bruises and broken bones - many of the jutting-out-through-flesh variety.

The damage done to Uncle Sam's boys pretty much puts them in the hallowed position of equalling Jesus H. Christ Almighty's scourging, ascent to Calvary and brutal crucifixion.

As luck would have it, we experience a panoply of Taliban deaths so excessive that one suspects the Americans are responsible for the wholesale slaughter of a good chunk of Afghanistan itself. The blows to our American boys are treated with savagery by director Peter Berg, but savagery with indelible strength and honour. The Taliban, however, are dispatched by our boys with slam-bang, blood-spurting aplomb - all designed for us to cheer as if Rocky Balboa is scoring blows against Drago in Rocky IV.

Ah, but lest we forget, our American boys are flesh and blood. They have hopes, dreams, loves, wives, children and homes. According to this film, Afghanis do not. They are nameless, often faceless hordes of heathen who deserve spectacularly painful deaths for OUR edification.

At times this whole exercise is sickening.

However, director Berg and his long-time cinematographer Tobias Schleissler render dazzling visual flourishes to the violence. It's all so simply and classically structured, not unlike the pair's fine work on Battleship, in spite of its ludicrous screenplay, that we are witness to work of an exemplary nature. Berg knows how to stage action and in collaboration with Schleissler, still manages to dazzle us in ways that most contemporary filmmakers are woefully unable to do.

Aside from Eric Bana's sleepwalking impersonation through the film, there isn't a single cast member who delivers anything less than superb work and, in the case of Wahlberg, he's electrifying. It's also great seeing Ali Suliman, the great Israeli actor of Palestinian descent (he recently starred in The Attack and he's pretty much the only Afghani allowed something resembling a character. This is probably because Suliman's part is that of an anti-Taliban member of the Muslim persuasion.

Lone Survivor is one of the most reprehensible pieces of American war propaganda foisted upon us in quite awhile, but it's impossible to deny the craft and downright virtuosity of its filmmakers. As a director, Berg is the real deal. The man knows how to make a movie and dazzle us, but one wonders if he'll ever allow us a peek into his soul. Then again, maybe he doesn't have one.

"Lone Survivor" is in wide release from Universal Pictures.

PANDORA'S PROMISE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - YOU MUST SEE THIS FOUL,REPREHENSIBLE AND IRRESPONSIBLE "DOCUMENTARY" TO SOLIDIFY AND FURTHERPROMOTE THE FACTS BEHIND NUCLEAR ENERGY!!! This film is a slick,superbly crafted and extremely convincing portrait of nuclear power andits importance in providing a greener source of energy. The film isworth considering in the same breath as the finest propaganda from NaziGermany and the Communist Soviet Union. Let us respectfully ask thelate Miss Leni Riefenstahl to step aside. There's a new Master of Liesin the house. The -ahem- Academy Award nominated director RobertStone's new film is "The Triumph of the Will" of pro-nuclear interests.

Pandora's Promise (2013) ***
Dir. Robert Stone

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Nuclear power is cool. It's not dangerous. Well, not too much, anyway. Yeah, it's killed people and made many more very ill, but not as many as you would think - just a few, really. Nothing to get upset about. Let's all join hands and circle all the world's nuclear power plants in a nice, big group hug.

Why?

Robert Stone's new feature "documentary" Pandora's Promise pretty much suggests we should. Financed by a number of interests that have the most to gain from promoting the nuclear industry and more pointedly, acquired, co-financed and co-presented by CNN Films, a division of CNN, that paragon of propaganda - oops, I mean "news and public affairs".

First and foremost, it is a superbly made film. It presents its thesis clearly, then expertly (on a CRAFT-level) goes about the business of proving it by making use of well-conducted interviews with a clutch of very intelligent, persuasive and committed individuals, a huge whack of fascinating archival footage, gorgeously and sumptuously shot new footage (in addition to the aforementioned interviews), edited with skill and precision, structured with strong narrative, ideological and thematic arcs and brilliantly scored by Gary Lionetti with music that pounds home the needs of its filmmaker to provide the strongest visceral audience reaction to a perspective that is - due to a lack of any real journalistic integrity - aimed at those who can't think for themselves (and worse, the pseudo-thinkers, pseudo-liberals and pseudo-everything-and-everyone-else).

To say Stone has NOT crafted a fine piece of work would be a lie.

It is, however, fiction - in spite of being a documentary - or rather, it resembles its earlier cinematic bedfellows generated by the likes of Nazi Germany and the Communist (former) Soviet Union. That the film is American only serves to endorse its Totalitarian roots.

The narrative line is simple and compelling. In spite of all the high-falutin', intelligent "sounding" hyperbole shovelled down our throats like so much candy-flavoured raw sewage, one could almost be convinced of the film's pro-nuclear stance. The film starts off with some shaky-cam footage of anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott and a bunch of screaming radical protesters passionately taking aim at pro-nuke policies. This is followed immediately by gorgeously lit, composed and shot interviews with several intelligent, well-spoken individuals who discuss their environmental advocacy in terms of once being anti-nuke, but now being pro-nuke.

Not too subtle, but most viewers won't notice that. The movie isn't aimed at those who will notice such slanted approaches - it's aimed at the Great Unwashed (or worse, the Great Unwashed who think they're "clean").

And just who are the reasonable people interviewed in the film? Well, they're an impressive bunch.

Stewart Brand, is the founder and publisher of the Whole Earth Catalog. That's what the film tells us. It neglects to tell us that he's the author of the recent book "Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto" which extols the virtues of nuclear energy and genetic engineering and other controversial items to fight the impact of global warming. As a young man, he served his country in WWII in addition to studying design and biology at undergraduate levels. Oh yes, and he was engaged as a subject in early LSD experiments of the legitimately scientific variety. Tom Wolfe goes so far as to profile Brand in the early chunk of his famous book, "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test".

Mr. Brand is all for nuclear energy. Since the film does not show him dropping tabs of acid, it's safe to assume he didn't drop any prior to his interviews nor, for that matter, prior to his change of heart on the matter of nukes. (Personally, I would have to drop a few tabs of acid before I ever changed my mind on this issue, but shucks, as Jimmy Cagney oft-proclaims in the classic film Strawberry Blonde, "That's just the kind of hairpin I am.")

Richard Rhodes is the Pulitzer Prize winning author of "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" and self-proclaimed Liberal Democrat. That's what the film tells us. What it neglects to mention is that he prefers to label his non-fiction writings rather pretentiously as "verity". Later on in the film, Mr. Rhodes who, by the way, earned his undergraduate academic distinction with honours after four years at Yale University, explains his credentials as an expert in the field of pro-nuclear power.

Says Mr. Rhodes: "The only reason I changed my mind [from anti-nuke to pro-nuke] was that I talked to experts, physicists in particular, who were the pioneers of nuclear energy."

I think this is great! Don't you? He talked to experts about it. Let's not forget that Clint Eastwood's character talked "to the trees" in Paint Your Wagon and certainly, whilst Mr. Rhodes did not talk to the trees, he talked to physicists who are, by and large, more engaging conversationalists than Scotch Pines. I've talked to physicists too. I've even read some books by physicists. They seem to be very nice and smart people. I, however, am not an expert in the field of nuclear energy. Mr. Stone clearly feels Mr. Rhodes is by including him in this film.

Mr. Rhodes is all for nuclear eneergy.

The list of experts Mr. Stone has assembled continues:

Gwyneth Cravens is a pro-nuclear activist, novelist, noted fiction editor and the author of "Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy".

Mark Lynas holds a degree in history and politics from the University of Edinburgh and describes himself as an environmental activist and communicator. He authored "Gem Carbon Counter", "High Tide: The Truth About Our Climate Crisis", "Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet" and "The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans". In addition to nuclear power, Lynas was formerly against GMO food, but now he's all for it.

Michael Shellenberger, president and co-founder of The Breakthrough Institute, an environmental policy advisor, Public Relations firm magnate, co-editor of "Love Your Monsters" and co-author of "Break Through" and "The Death of Environmentalism". He's not a scientist, but he sure knows a lot about this nuclear stuff.

These are all reasonable human beings. Mr. Stone makes sure to present them as such.

Mr. Stone, however, makes sure to provide us with dollops of Helen Caldicott in shaky-cam all through his film as she shrieks into megaphones. In addition to being one of the world's leading anti-nuke activists, Ms. Caldicott is a doctor - a pediatrician to be precise. Not a single one of the aforementioned individuals are doctors or scientists. They are, however, experts - professional experts. You know, when I was a kid, and people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I'd always say, "I want to be an expert." But, I digress.

One of the only genuine experts used in the film, though his view would naturally be positive, is the brilliant nuclear engineer Len Koch who talks about his work at the world's first nuclear plant and some of the genuinely progressive work and experiments done in the field.

Top Left - A victim of Chornobyl - now dead.

Bottom Left - A nurse with the body of a deceased child

in a room where bodies of Chornobyl victims are kept.

Right- As the film uses "experts" to refute the devastating effects of the Chornobyl,

its "experts" might as well have utilized the likes of

Jethro ("Brain Surgeon") Bodine and "Doctor" Granny Clampett.

Alas, the film interviews so-called "experts", presents no other real side of the coin and gives us a Cliff's (Coles') Notes history of nuclear energy. While it briefly discusses the Three Mile Island disaster and the heinous use of nukes against the Japanese people in World War II, it soon dispenses with all that aberrant nonsense to paint a rosy picture of how anti-nuke types are wrong and how pro-nuke types are right. We also get a brief glimpse into Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster. Shucks, as the movie tells it, that sure was tragic, but you know - the Land of Nippon did, after all, have a tsunami and the radiation levels sure could be a whole lot worse.

One of the more truly offensive sequences in the film is when it focuses upon the Chornobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine. It tries to present the "facts" that the results of this tragedy were minimal and cites a number of backup documentation which, though the movie scoffs at the suggestion, are little more than studies cobbled together by conspiratorial forces linked to corporate interests.

The film completely ignores the fact that organizations like Greenpeace and Children of Chornobyl have done their due diligence. The latter organization, in particular, has linked with doctors, scientists and health professionals from all over the world to both prove and assist with the tragedies of this sad event that occurred April 26, 1986 and the horrific aftermath.

What the film chooses to ignore are the facts as outlined by the Children of Chornobyl organization:

"Chornobyl has directly affected the lives of over 3 million people, 1/3 of them children.
- 40,000 individuals who were involved in the clean-up of the reactor, most of them men in their 30's and 40's, have since died.
- the incidence of leukemia and other blood disorders has increased, especially in children.
- cardiac problems, chronic skin conditions and respiratory illness have increased.
- thyroid cancer is occurring in rates that are 80 times higher than normal.
- 50% of men between the ages of 13 and 29 have problems with fertility - this is the highest infertility rate in the world.
- chromosomal damage is 7 times higher in children born to men who were involved in liquidating the reactor, including Down's syndrome, cleft palate and other deformities.
- there is a high rate of miscarriages and birth defects have nearly doubled.
- infant mortality is twice that of the European average.
- Many families continue to live in lands contaminated by low levels of radiation and radioactivity is gradually seeping into the water table. So the consequences of Chornobyl are not yet over. Many cancers develop years after exposure to radiation, so the full medical impact of Chornobyl is still to be felt. Psychological consequences and the need for psychosocial rehabilitation are just starting to be recognized and addressed, including the high incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder, alcoholism and drug abuse in this population."

Stone and his so-called "experts" would like us to believe that the only consequences of this disaster are, comparatively, a drop in the bucket.

As an alternate source of power, the film goes out of its way to suggest that societies which consume the most power have a better standard of living. The movie completely and utterly dismisses the notion of the world learning how to regulate their use of power and to educate individuals on how to use less power. Even more egregiously, the film outright refutes the idea of solar and wind energy as a viable alternative and that these technologies only serve the interests of oil companies to provide backup sources of power.

The film furthermore insults and vilifies a truly great woman like Helen Caldicott while dismissing the work of Greenpeace to further the needs and interests of nuclear power corporations.

The Soviets used Sergei Eisenstein to extol the virtues of the butcher Joseph Stalin. The Nazis used Leni Riefenstahl to extol the virtues of the butcher Adolph Hitler.

Stone, however, is extolling the virtues of a whole new butcher, a whole new Totalitarian force - corporations. Thankfully and proudly, as a Canadian, I'm grateful to our country's fine filmmaker Charles Wilkinson for his stunning film Peace Out and its followup feature Oil Sands Karaoke that both offer powerful, persuasive, but also intelligently balanced explorations into the issue of power, power consumption and the environmental devastation that greedy power consumption is causing. Neither of Wilkinson's movies have the overall slickness and budget levels of Stone's disingenuous effort but they're generated - so to speak - with passion, integrity and artistry. Pandora's Promise, on the other hand, promotes evil and does so with a very high level of skill.

By all means, see Stone's film, but know that he might just as well have populated it with experts resembling such fictional characters as Jethro "I wants tuh be a brain surgeon" Bodine and Granny "She be the best at doctorin'" Clampett from The Beverly Hillbillies.

"Pandora's Promise" plays theatrically at Toronto's Hot Docs Bloor Cinema. Mr. Stone will participate in a Q&A on July 13, 2013. For tickets, playdates, showtimes at the Bloor click HERE. "Peace Out" can be viewed in the USA at Gaiam TV HERE and in Canada at IndieCan HERE. "Oil Sands Karaoke" is being distributed by Indie-Can Entertainment and will be released later in 2013.

WHITE HOUSE DOWN - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Magnificently Stupid American Propaganda Just 4 U

White House Down (2013) ****
dir. Roland Emmerich
Starring: Channing Tatum, Jamie Foxx, Maggie Gyllenhaal, James Woods, Jason Clarke, Richard Jenkins, Michael Murphy, Joey King, Nicolas Wright

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Gee whiz, I thought Olympus Has Fallen was stupid and entertaining. Well, leave it to SF-Action-Disaster specialist Roland Emmerich (Independence Day) to serve up an entire football stadium-sized trough of STUPID and deliver one of the best-directed and almost criminally entertaining action movies of the year. Though the former picture beat White House Down to the punch in terms of release dates for the terrorists-taking-over-the-American-symbol-of-might genre, Emmerich has little to worry about. His film wins the sweepstakes hands-down.

It's a potent cocktail.

A hunky loser (Channing Tatum) in need of redemption who's just turned down for a Secret Service job by the she's-got-eyes-for-him commanding officer (Maggie Gyllenhall) is wandering through the White House with his sullen, estranged 14-year-old daughter (Joey King) when terrorists attack. The Obama-like President (Jamie Foxx) is about to pull all the troops out of the Middle East and on the verge of a major peace accord, so he clearly has to be stopped. A rogue retiring Secret Service Chief (James Woods) assembles a crew of the most foul ex-military psychos-with-chips-on-their-shoulders led by everyone's favourite torture specialist from Zero Dark Thirty (Jason Clarke) and before you can say "BOOYAH!!!" all Hell breaks loose.

To make matters a bit worse, a toady VP (Michael Murphy) and a Right Wing House Speaker (Richard Jenkins) are both eager to seize the reins of power and restore the world to America's rightful place as a supporter of the war industry. Not only does Channing have to save the President and his daughter, but the entire world.

You'll never guess if he accomplishes ANY of this unless you see the movie, though you can probably lay down pretty even odds on the likelihood that he will. Tatum and President Jamie Foxx team up like some hybrid of Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon and those nasty terrorists wish they'd been cut-to-ribbons during their previous tours of duty in Afghanistan.

Carnage ensues.

Emmerich directs several phenomenal action set pieces with the skill of a true master. In spite of knowing where every second of this movie was going, I found myself on the edge of my seat several times thanks to Emmerich's solid, old-fashioned helmsmanship of the breathtaking action scenes. I will also admit to joining the audience in spontaneous applause when:

(a) the President hoists a rocket launcher and lets rip;

(b) when the President unloads several rounds of automatic gunfire into a terrorist;

(c) when Tatum commandeers the President's limo for a spectacular chase scene on the White House grounds;

(d) when Tatum and Jason Clarke go mano a mano in one of the best directed hand-to-hand fights in many years;

(e) when a character least likely to do so (even less likely than the President or the little girl) brutally bludgeons a terrorist to death with a very cool White House heritage relic and then brandishes high power firearms;

(f) and last, but not least, when the plucky little girl hoists a flag and - I kid you not - WAVES IT FURIOUSLY and with pride - to try and stop an air strike on the White House.

Like I said, this movie is stupid beyond belief.

And you won't want to miss it!!!

"White House Down" is in major wide release all over the world.

HARLAN: In the Shadow of Jew Süss - DVD Review by Greg Klymkiw - TV styled presentation disappoints, but there's no denying the power of this documentary about a brilliant filmmaker who directed one of the most hateful anti-semitic films of all time.

Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Süss (2008) **1/2
dir. Felix Moeller
Starring: Thomas Harlan, Christiane Kubrick (nee Harlan), Jan Harlan, Stefan Drosler

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Veit Harlan was the director of a dreadful picture called Jew Süss.

His movie is dreadful on two counts.

Firstly, it’s no good – awful, in fact. It creaks and groans with storytelling techniques from another age and renders melodrama in ways that allow detractors of the genre to level their knee-jerk criticism at even the genre’s best work because movies like Jew Süss are, simply and purely, BAD MELODRAMA.

Secondly, the picture is the vilest, most hateful, prejudicial anti-Jewish Nazi propaganda ever made. The picture was such a huge hit upon its first release that Jew Süss is credited with inspiring pogroms, became required viewing for the S.S. and took its rightful place in the Final Solution as the film equivalent of a murder weapon. The movie was commissioned by Josef Goebbels, the Minister for Propaganda under the Nazi regime. Released in 1940, this disgusting and poorly made piece of trash told the story of a Jew who rises to power, rapes a Gentile woman (instigating her suicide) until his actions eventually result in all the Jews of the region being run out on a rail - "triumphantly" , no less - by all the non-Jews. And I reiterate, the picture was a HUGE success at the box office in Germany.

And yet, perhaps because of the movie's success, one is shocked at how utterly execrable the picture is as a movie. If you could, for only a moment (God forbid) look past its anti-Semitism and try to assess it as a film, you'll find it works neither as fiction, nor does it APPEAR to even be good propaganda. Sure, bad movies have often been hits in all countries all over the world, but Jew Süss is not just bad, it's a total clunker of a movie. In spite of this, and sadly, even the most cursory analysis of the historical events surrounding the time this picture was made yields complete and total understanding of the picture’s power.

So many examples of propaganda, especially of the dramatic variety (not just in Nazi Germany), are inevitably replete with all the hallmarks of moronic incompetence. [It is, I think, worth mentioning that an earlier draft of this review bore a weird Spell-check-generated typographical error and produced the word “incontinence” rather than “incompetence”.] In essence, effective propaganda is, more often than not, the artistry of the obvious and aimed at the lowest common denominator. That said, Jew Süss, as cinema is in complete contrast to the work of another filmmaker who was working under the same regime, Leni Riefenstahl.

Jew Süss is clearly without the style, artistry and slow burn intensity of Riefenstahl’s great work, The Triumph Of The Will, which, no doubt, brought more than a few Germans on board Hitler’s bandwagon of evil as Der Fuhrer descended from the Heavens to deliver his evil plan to the masses at the Nuremberg rally.

Even now, though, unlike Jew Süss, Triumph still has the power to GENUINELY stun, shock, thrill and even (dare I say it?) enchant – simply and almost profoundly on the basis of its sheer cinematic virtuosity. Riefenstahl, the Adolph Mädchenname des Kinos of Nazi Germany was not simply a blonde, beautiful dancer and actress, she was one of the 20th century’s most dazzling filmmakers.

Under the mentorship of Dr. Arnold Fanck, the mad master of German mountaineering melodramas, Riefenstahl was, I’d say, a born filmmaker and a great one at that who, in spite of making Triumph should have been allowed to keep making movies with the same level of support Veit Harlan received – not just during the war, but AFTER, as well.

Riefenstahl’s pariah status after the war was truly lamentable – shameful, in fact.

Not so lamentable in Veit Harlan’s case. Jew Süss might well have been made by Ed Wood (if he’d been an inbred totalitarian nincompoop) as a sort of period Plan 9 From Outer Space, or if you will, Plan Jew From the Middle East.

Pariah? Yes. Working filmmaker? Veit Harlan? Absolutely yes! This is what's even more extraordinary. Harlan kept making movies. Then again, call me a Bleeding Heart Liberal if you will, but I must admit I've always been against the notion of blacklisting any artists for anything, and that includes perpetrating propaganda. So many American films include(d) hateful propaganda at various points throughout its history and in the former Soviet Union, Sergei Eisenstein extolled the virtues of a regime that butchered millions of people in the pre-Stalin era. Once Stalin was in power, Eisenstein, save perhaps for his last film, Ivan the Terrible II and the unfinished Ivan the Terrible III, continued - much like Veit Harlan in Nazi Germany - to strap on the kneepads before his totalitarian boss and extoll HIS "virtues". Stalin murdered many more millions in the former Soviet Union including the Ukrainian Holocaust - the forced starvation of millions of nationalist peasants. Stalin's purges murdered even more.

Certainly Riefenstahl should not have been blacklisted and, I'd argue that maybe even Harlan should not have been made a pariah - a laughing stock for just how dreadful Jew Süss is as a movie, would not have been out of line.

Harlan and his place in both the Nazi regime and in cinema always seemed like natural subject matter for a movie and it’s odd it took so long for a documentary on Jew Süss and its maker to materialize, but that it now exists, is cause for some kind of celebration.

Alas, Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Süss is in that horrible never-never land of “it’ll have to do for now“. Director Felix Moeller doesn’t seem to have a firm grasp on the story he wants to tell and by covering too much in too short a running time, the movie leaves one with far too many questions – not questions of the philosophical variety, but more along the lines of wanting to simply know more within the context of the material presented. Sadly, the movie lacks a clear focus.

There is, however, a fascinating tale buried in this flawed, half-hearted TV-style feature length documentary. The movie not only focuses on Harlan’s career as a filmmaker in the pre-and-post Jew Süss period, but it includes numerous interviews with his family – children (the great political filmmaker and author Thomas Harlan), grandchildren, nieces, nephews and, I might add, one fairly prominent niece, Christiane Kubrick, the widow of the great filmmaker Stanley Kubrick (and executor of his estate) and her brother, an equally prominent nephew, Jan Harlan, Kubrick’s long-time producer.

On one hand, Moeller seems intent on telling the story of a family and how they’re connected to a legacy of evil. On the other, Moeller seems equally interested in delving into the career of Harlan himself. Pick one, already, Felix - or if you want the whole boatload of bananas, choose that and do it properly. Oddly, the story of Jew Süss itself, feels almost like an afterthought in this documentary.

Moeller’s movie is a mixed bag.

This, of course, is what makes it the most frustrating type of documentary – its filmmaker has no voice. He has great subject matter, terrific interview subjects (the surviving family who run the gamut of defending, demonizing and being indifferent towards Harlan), carte blanche access to family home movies and photos, rare archival footage and scenes – not just from Jew Süss, but from all of Harlan’s films. While we watch with fascination because of all the elements listed above, the experience and overall impact of this documentary seems lacking.

Just as Harlan’s Jew Süss pales in comparison to Riefenstahl’s The Triumph Of The Will in the Nazi propaganda sweepstakes, Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Süss pales in comparison to Ray Muller’s brilliant documentary, The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl. With the latter film, Muller sought to provide balance to his cinematic perspective of Riefenstahl’s life and in so doing, he was compelled to infuse the picture with an epic scope. It is this sense of sweep and the presence of a filmmaker’s voice that makes it work. Moeller, on the other, has great material, but has no real idea what to do with it. The picture, and as its title asserts, seems to be more about a family living in the shadow of one picture.

Well I, along with Peggy Lee, must ask, “Is that all there is?”

There’s nothing wrong with the surviving family thrust, but their perspectives don’t have the power they need to because one feels there’s simply not enough focus placed on Harlan himself – his life, his work and finally, why he chose to remain unrepentant.

Perhaps, it was enough that he was the only filmmaker from Nazi Germany to be tried for war crimes (for making Jew Süss in particular) and that he endured two trials and was acquitted both times.

This, however, is one of many maddening aspects of Moeller’s documentary. I longed to get more details about these trials – clearly the materials exist as public record. As well, I wanted to know more about Harlan and what his state of mind might have been before, during, between and after the trials. Surely enough people have thoughts on the matter.

Interestingly enough, the clips used from Harlan’s other films that pre and post date Jew Süss look great – so great I want to see as many of them now as possible. The clips suggest Harlan was a master of melodrama – perhaps even an inspiration to Douglas Sirk – and weirdly, their use in the documentary serves to suggest that he was a great artist in his own right.

Even more weirdly, they lend credence to Harlan’s firm insistence that he was coerced into making Jew Süss and furthermore, my own assumption based upon the documentary’s use of these clips that Harlan perhaps intentionally made a bad picture.

Moeller's film, like so many documentaries these days, has not been created by a real filmmaker. It’s been cobbled together by a camera jockey with great subject matter and finally, he manages to deliver a picture that is still worth seeing because it addresses issues surrounding what might be the most notorious, evil and artistically lamentable film of the 20th century.

For me, Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Süss was and still is a must-see film. Even if it doesn’t quite do what it should, it’s better than nothing at all. And that is something.

"Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Süss" is available on DVD from Zeitgeist Films. It’s a fine transfer and includes a few superb extra features that certainly supplement what’s lacking in the film itself. Definitely worth renting for anyone interested in the subject matter and of special interest to any Kubrick fans in light of the major release of the Kubrick Blu-ray box set. Scholars of this material may be better off buying the film since it has some excellent footage in spite of the film's lack of clear focus.

6/15/11

ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S "BON VOYAGE" and "AVENTURE MALGACHE" - Review By Greg Klymkiw - KLYMKIW CHRISTMAS GIFT IDEA 2012 #13, Two Lost Hitchock Films from Milestone Film & Video (Milestone Cinematheque)

Milestone Film and Video presents two "lost" Hitchcock propaganda films made in Britain during World War II 

In this continuing series devoted to reviewing motion pictures ideal for this season of celebration and gift giving, here is KLYMKIW CHRISTMAS GIFT IDEA 2012 #13: A tremendous DVD for Hitchcock enthusiasts from Milestone Film and Video under their "Milestone Cinematheque" label - Alfred Hitchock's "Bon Voyage" and , , ,

 

"Aventure Malgache",

. . . two short propaganda films by Hitchcock never widely shown and sealed in Top Secret files of the British War Department since 1944.

In 1994 when Milestone co-founder Dennis Doros urged the the British Film Institute to rescue the works from oblivion these two curious and important works in Hitchcock's canon were finally made available to the world. 

Alfred Hitchcock's "Bon Voyage" & "Aventure Malgache"
dir. Alfred Hitchcock (1944) ****
Starring: John Blythe, The Molière Players

Review By Greg Klymkiw

On more than one occasion, Alfred Hitchcock was quoted as saying that "spying is a dirty business" and so it is - in both life and the movies. Hitchcock was so obsessed with the duplicity and furthermore, duplicities upon duplicities upon duplicities (and then some) of espionage activities, that many of his most suspenseful works deal with this dark world of lying and deception.

Most major filmmakers on both sides of the pond separating UK and USA were called into the active duty of creating propaganda films and assist in the war effort against the Nazis. It stood to reason that the Master of Suspense would also be enlisted in this worthwhile cause. He was, of course, but as his mission was to create two short dramatic works extolling the brave virtues of the French Resistance in their underground war against both the turncoat Vichy government and the Nazis during the occupation of France, nobody quite reckoned upon the force of genius that would never be capable of rendering straightforward propaganda.

What interested Hitchcock most were:

(i) the conflicting ideals within the Resistance movement;
(ii) human nature, its malleability under extreme stress & most of all;
(iii) the disturbing and controversial reality that so much of the espionage within the underground movement (and espionage period) was based upon a myriad of individual points of view - many of which did not always have first-person interpretations of the events, but even when they did, they were tempered by personal perspectives and assumptions.

These are things that should interest anyone on both dramatic levels and frankly in terms of presenting some reasonable cinematic approximation of what actually was going on in this strange situation when so many countries, beleaguered as they were by Nazi occupation forces, set up home bases in the UK and operated with fluctuating British interest levels in said resistance activities.

Hitchcock's real goals had almost nothing to do with propaganda. He admitted to giving it the old college try, but also acknowledged that he failed as a straightforward propagandist. Where he excelled with both films was in creating dazzling suspense, dark expressionistic moods and tales replete with considerable food for thought due to his attention to the notion of perspective.

Bon Voyage is a nail bitingly thrilling adventure that involves a young Scottish operative in France who rescues a Polish freedom fighter wanted by the Nazis. The story of escape from a world of backstabbing and betrayal is brilliantly told in flashback by the young Scotsman. Safely in Britain he delivers his verbal report of the danger-at-every-turn escape mission. The tale he tells his superiors involves sneaking about at night with his Polish charge and depending upon one complex piece of a resistance puzzle after another to eventually escape the clutches of the Vichy and Gestapo.

It's a thrilling tale with even a dash of potential romance. At the mid point of the film, however, something is thrown into the mix that creates a mystery far more duplicitous and perilous. An item the Scotsman's filed away as a personal matter turns into the key to unlock a far more insidious series of events that threaten the security of both England and the resistance movement.

As rendered by Hitchcock, the whole mystery becomes even more suspenseful as we're presented with a second and perhaps even third-hand recounting of what the young Scotsman's gone through - one that completely negates his story and suggests activities revealing a far more fragile, unstable architecture to the whole resistance movement.

Hardly the stuff of "acceptable" propaganda, though it's a lot more intriguing and thought provoking than if it had been.

The movie also features a couple of moments of unexpectedly brutal violence that not only render the tale topsy-turvy, but also fall in line with another oft-quoted Hitchcock belief that: "It is extremely difficult to kill someone." No matter what age or circumstances Hitchcock made his films in, he understood, perhaps more than any other director how to render violence in both a shocking and provocative fashion. There are two "kills" in the film that are as harrowing as any in his canon.

Aventure Malgache is a wily and clever movie that was borne out of Hitchcock's own experience with the powers-that-be who were presiding over the propaganda departments of both the British government as well as the exiled French Liberationist movement. The suspense factor is a tad overshadowed here by the trick pony wrap-around involving a group of Frenchmen living in exile in England who are acting in an amateur theatre company. One of the performers is having trouble nailing down the motivation for him to adequately play his role and another actor, once a respected resistance-tied immigration lawyer on the island of Malgache, tells him a tale of betrayal and smuggling political prisoners. In flashbacks, all the liberationists and Vichy are played by the actors who are in the play.

The film is definitely dark, but it appears to have more of an accent on satire rather than suspense. Like Bon Voyage it's crisply directed and edited. The story barrels along with panache and we're given a unique view into another time and place - albeit with Hitchcock's own political perspective on the situation that makes for interesting characters, but little in the way of simple, effective propaganda.

Both short films are superbly shot by Günther Krampf with decidedly noir-like lighting and Hitchcock's trademark compositions. As well, the films are performed by uncredited actors - many of whom were not professionals and lived in exile in the UK. John Blythe, who plays the Scottish operative in Bon Voyage is the only actor with an official individual credit. The others, a completely French-speaking cast living in exile in the UK are collectively credited as The Molière Players (to keep their remaining family members in France relatively safer from Vichy and the Gestapo).

The very clever use of flashback and point of view storytelling conceits are brilliantly employed to bridge gaps over elements of the tales that might otherwise have proven too cost prohibitive. Not only do they serve this practical purpose, but place far more effective emphasis upon the characters and Hitchcock's desire to explore HOW stories are told and are affected by individual points of view.

Both of these films are historically and cinematically significant works in Hitchcock's canon and all lovers of cinema and, in particular, Hitchcock fans will derive considerable pleasure from seeing two films that were buried for 50 years.

Alfred Hitchcock's "Bon Voyage" & "Aventure Malgache" are available in a very nice DVD volume from Milestone Film and Video.

In USA and the rest of the WORLD - BUY Alfred Hitchcock Bon Voyage - HERE!

ARGO - Reviewed By Greg Klymkiw - Propaganda 4 U & Me

In the hit film "ARGO", racism and ethnocentrism are both aimed squarely at Iranians with a vengeance. They are portrayed as savage, devious and, as a bonus, stupid grinning bozos too enamoured with American popular culture to do their jobs properly. The fact that the 1980 storming of the American embassy in Tehran and the subsequent hostage-taking was, in fact, brought about by America's greed, deception and need to control the rest of the world to serve the needs of its elite corporate rulers, is virtually ignored by the movie save for a tiny mention that's tossed up to please Liberals, then thrown away in the cacophony of raging Iranians, so those same Liberals can feel good about being on side with the movie - shoulder to shoulder with the Right Wing. Christ, this movie is reprehensible on every conceivable level.

ARGO (2012) **
dir. Ben Affleck
Starring: Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, John Goodman, Alan Arkin, Victor Garber

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Everybody loves ARGO.

Well, on the surface, there's no reason for anyone to hate it. Directed by Ben Affleck who affably plays CIA "extractor" Tony Mendez, it's a perfectly competent fictionalized portrait of the real life rescue of American embassy workers in Iran during the 1980 hostage crisis.

Personally, I have little use for the picture. I'll admit the movie has a clutch of fine performances (notably Affleck himself and a shamefully underused Victor Garber as the Canadian Ambassador who hides the American hostages in his own home) and that Affleck as a director handles a number of sequences with reasonable intelligence and some surprising flair. In particular, I was impressed with the entire unique set-up of the rescue, a tense scene in the Tehran Market and the final 15 minutes or so during the "escape" - especially when some Iranian border guards get bamboozled by the magic of movies - a scene that's as tense as it's vaguely offensive.

Still, I am indifferent to the picture on one hand and a bit disgusted with it on the other. My indifference has much to do with where the emphasis of the rescue is placed and my disgust is with the fake Liberalism used to mask the intentional (or, possibly unintentional) propagandistic elements and its racism (or at best, I'll allow ethnocentrism and/or intolerance) towards the Iranian people.

The emphasis upon Tony Mendez is, for me, a surprisingly dull and easy approach to the story. Much time is spent developing Mendez, a brilliant CIA operative who specializes in rescues. Frankly though, I could care less about someone who - no matter how good he is at his job - still works for one of the most evil entities on the planet. Secondly, the piddling problems Mendez encounters with his marriage and, by extension, the lack of physical proximity to his son, seem pathetically limp compared to those Americans who are hiding in Iran, those who are held hostage and in particular, the Canadian diplomat and his wife who risk their lives hiding the American embassy workers in their own home.

A much better, but probably less commercial movie exists where more emphasis is placed on the trapped Americans than Mendez. Affleck and his writers spend some time with them, to be sure, but the movie that will probably never be made would have immersed us wholly in the terrifyingly claustrophobic situation they found themselves in, but most importantly it would have thoroughly involved us in these people as human beings rather than the Syd Field 101 paintbrush swipes of "character" they get in the current movie.

What's especially disingenuous (and kind of insulting to the survivors) is how the movie expects us to FEEL for them BECAUSE they are AMERICANS rather than people. They're character types with only one extra thin layer of flesh. But, Good Goddamn, they is 'Murrikins and they need sum reskoo'in, y'heah?

Why should this surprise me? A somewhat rhetorical question, I fear, since the movie has been skilfully crafted as entertainment designed to reel in as much revenue as possible and generate boxoffice legs with its jingoistic (albeit more insidiously subtle) propaganda.

The Canadian protectors, the Ambassador and his wife, are given considerable short shrift in this affair. I'm not just saying this because I was born on Canadian soil and far more proud of the role Canada played in the whole affair, but part of me thinks the Canadian ambassador and his wife had a whole lot more to lose than Mendez. He's worrying about his stupid marriage and whether or not his brilliant scheme will have the rug pulled out from under it by the bureaucrats. Worse yet, poor Mendez wins an award from the CIA for his actions, but for security reasons, nobody will ever know save for himself and a small group of colleagues (at least until the sealed files are opened long afterwards).

Do I hear violin strings?

Hark, I do.

Cry me a fucking river.

Let's look at our Iranian brothers and how they're portrayed. There's nary a one of them who go beyond type (though we're shown ONE "good" Iranian who doesn't betray the Canadian Ambassador and his American "house guests"). During Argo's opening scenes we're plunged into that day in 1980 when thousands of angry Iranians marched upon the American embassy and eventually set foot on "American" soil to take Uncle Sam's workers as political prisoners. In an admittedly skillful blend of news, archival and recreated dramatic footage, we see the good, decent, terrified, clean and well-dressed Americans quivering, but ultimately maintaining a professional calm while thousands of screaming, jabbering "Ay-Rabbs" foam at the mouth with anger and blood-lust.

This is how the movie opens.

As the racism and ethnocentrism in the picture progresses, the Iranians are portrayed as evil, devious or worse, stupid bozos more enamoured with American popular culture than doing their jobs.

The fact that this situation has been brought on by America's greed and deception (that began 30 years BEFORE the events of this film), is virtually ignored by the movie (save for a tiny nod that's revealed early on, then thrown away in the cacophony of raging Iranians).

Pardon me all to Hell, but I find this utterly reprehensible.

Will there ever come a time when we'll see a mainstream American movie unapologetically point fingers directly at its own country's subservience to wealth and oligarchical rule as being the real cause of this strife and, in fact, where we find ourselves now? The ignorance and fundamentalism of the Middle East is frankly no worse than that which exists in America (and throughout much of the West). As well, on both sides of the fence there are reasonable, intelligent, caring people, but in Hollywood, the notion that they exist in Iran is snubbed entirely.

The 70s, once again, was a period in American film history when mainstream Hollywood was more than happy to scrutinize the relationship between corporate rule and politics in the good old U. S. of A. The list of harrowing, intelligent, entertaining and even commercial films that ploughed into this territory is almost without limit. The films, as they rightly should, acknowledged the decency of the American people, but condemned those Americans who pulled the strings for personal wealth of a very small minority. (Let's not forget, for example, Cimino's brilliant, powerful and audacious ending to The Deer Hunter that manages to have its cak and eat it too by expressing both love AND disgust for America in one fell swoop.)

Yes, Mendez had a great idea - to pretend he and the trapped Americans were a Canadian film crew scouting locations in Iran for a trashy science fiction exploitation movie. Yes, Affleck delivers a great, commanding performance as Mendez, as do John Goodman and Alan Arkin as the Hollywood guys who secretly and selflessly assist with this ruse to free the Americans in Iran. But that's not what the film is lacking. It has no moral centre - especially not within a more balanced political context.

At the end of the day, ALL cinema is political (to varying degrees). Hell, even a Pauly Shore comedy is "political". ARGO is a rescue film, to be sure, but one that is set against a political backdrop - a political backdrop in which America has wreaked considerable havoc upon (to this very day). To ignore this (or worse, pay brief lip service to it as Affleck's film does before flushing it), as 95% of the critics polled on Rotten Tomatoes have done speaks as much about the dying art of film criticism as well as how American Cinema, more than ever before, is linked almost inextricably to the New World Order that really controls America.

Examining the film by using the strict definitions of the word "racism", ARGO is, as a story, completely and utterly discriminatory with respect to Iran (and the Middle East in general). Other than Mendez, the film's script simplistically glosses over every other character - any of whom are far more interesting than Mendez. This is where the script errs as "art", but as "industry", it's perfect. Alas, the best films strive for a balance or a bit of ambiguity which, interestingly enough, can actually up the dramatic stakes and tension rather than muting them. Affleck is probably a bit too single minded for that. What he ultimately delivers is a modestly successful (in artistic terms) rescue story. End of story.

Granted, Affleck has been influenced by the memoirs of Mendez himself. No offence to Mendez. He does what HE does which is, by all accounts, very well accomplished. He told HIS story from HIS perspective. He can't be blamed for the film's failure as art, only Affleck can be chastised for his poor choice.

That said, I'm certainly not looking for the BEST or most "accurate" rendering of the story anyway. I do, however believe, given all the elements one could choose to focus on within two hours, that the underlying material offers any number of compelling tales. Affleck chose the simplest, easiest and frankly, most susceptible route to promote neanderthal politics. It is perfectly acceptable to criticize his choice and by extension, to imagine one (of many) approaches that might have rendered a genuinely great film. It's not great, either. Not even close.

Even WITH the script AS IS, I wonder what Pollack, Lumet, Frankenheimer, Siegel or (especially) Pakula or Kaufman (think back on their gifts of creating paranoia of the highest order during the 70s) might have brought to the directorial table to strip away the jingoistic elements of the tale and examine, in an entertaining way, the completely fucked American belief that the country can do no wrong.

In spite of ARGO's occasional virtues, I still can't help but think that a better movie could have been made without the propagandistic sledgehammer and that subsequently (and I think, more harrowingly) could have brought us "in" to the story via the Canadian Ambassador and the trapped Americans themselves. What we're left with is a CIA lifer who, in spite of the brilliantly unorthodox methods he employs in this case (and presumably others), is that he's just doing his job and, as his character keeps repeating throughout the film, doing what he does best.

Sickeningly, in this day and age, what drives ARGO is someone who is just doing his job, and even though Mendez might well be a Schindler-like figure above all else within the CIA - especially for what he accomplished in Iran - he did it for a regime that asked for what it got in the first place, an agency which, in spite of the inherent goodness of those it purports to protect, the American people, is as evil as those throughout history whom we should never, ever forget.

God rest their souls, but I suspect both Leni Riefenstahl and Sergei Eisenstein are beaming as they look down from the celestial celluloid Heavens, waiting for Affleck's eventual ascension to join them in a Holy Trinity of using art to extol the virtues of butchers.

However, I ultimately believe ARGO is MEDIOCRE propaganda that contemporary audiences in these days of civilization's decline are gobbling up like hogs at a trough. That's extremely depressing to me. (Come to think of it, I'll take ONE of Leni Riefenstahl's pubic hairs or perhaps TWO of Eisenstein's nostril hairs over ALL that someone like Affleck has to offer at any given moment.)

ARGO is a watchable movie. It plays into the fears of those manipulated by the New World Order. Time, it seems, for Oscar to come a calling.

"ARGO" is playing in wide release all over the world. And yes, it's a hit. Hooray for Hollywood!