Brokeback Mountain - today's dilemna

[Uncle Buck]

Yep the special effects in Schindler's List were great and as for Saving Private Ryan

It is a shame that he rewrote history for Private Ryan, as he has done for Munich.

 

[Easy 10]

Serenity is

So I've heard. Its the one I'm looking forward to the mostest.

 

[CHAPPERS]

I am in a fecking bad mood and in no frame of mind for your insults today

I haven't even insulted you.





















You LOP.

 

[HAMPSHIRE DAVE]

Big cinema fan + worked with a gay bloke for five years and have no grudge with him.
Seen the film last week after putting- off seeing it cause of all the fuss and plugs on radio.
Good acting,scenery etc but the film just did nothing for me.
Maybe it was seeing two blokes kissing each other that put me off?
Don't know really.
Good to see though a film like this is being shown+plus getting praise in America where you would have thought with all the bible bashers+narrow minded people would have been banned.
HAMPSHIRE DAVE

 

[Uncle Spielberg]

How has he re written history in Munich

 

[Easy 10]

Easy Wedding Crasher is quite funny and the Descent is good but not as good as Dog Soldiers.

Dog Soldiers was EXCELLENT. I like Brit horrors, they always feel a bit more gritty and realistic. If The Descent is half as good, then I'll only be mildly disappointed.

 

[Uncle Buck]

How has he re written history in Munich

Munich: fact and fantasy

Steven Spielberg's new film is based on the Walter Mitty tales of a former El Al gate guard

Yossi Melman and Steven Hartov
Tuesday January 17, 2006
The Guardian


In 1984 the blood of the Israeli intelligence operatives and the Palestinian terrorists they hunted in "the war of the spooks" was still congealing in the back alleys of Europe when a young Israeli named Yuval Aviv teamed up with the Canadian George Jonas, a budding journalist. Aviv claimed to be a freshly defrocked Mossad assassin with a true tale to tell, and the game began.
Their resulting bestseller, Vengeance, was a detailed account of Israel's response to the Munich massacre. In September 1972, PLO terrorists introducing themselves as the hitherto unknown group Black September stormed the Israeli dormitories at the Olympic village and took hostage a dozen members of the Israeli team. They demanded the release of their comrades from Israeli prisons. After two days of negotiation, a failed rescue attempt by German police left 11 Israelis and five terrorists dead. Israel's prime minister, Golda Meir, summoned General Zvi Zamir, the head of Mossad, and instructed him to kill all the PLO operatives directly and indirectly involved.


Article continues

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Seen through the eyes of "Avner", Aviv's undercover persona, the story told by the book seemed to marry well with factual newspaper accounts of how Israel eliminated the Black September killers. It was made into a film - Sword of Gideon - and Jonas and Aviv reaped substantial rewards for their "scoop".
However, our investigations show that Aviv never served in Mossad, or any Israeli intelligence organisation. He had failed basic training as an Israeli Defence Force commando, and his nearest approximation to spy work was as a lowly gate guard for the airline El Al in New York in the early 70s. The tale he had woven was apparently nothing more than a Walter Mitty fabrication.

How, then, did Steven Spielberg and his producer, Kathleen Kennedy, choose Aviv's tale as the source for their film Munich? Last July, when we approached the film's producers, the Spielberg PR machine denied any connection to Aviv. But the film's opening scene states that it was inspired by real events, and at the end it gives a credit to Jonas's book.

During shooting, numerous offers to provide the production team with the facts of the case were rebuffed. More than 30 years had passed since those days of deadly cat and mouse (which now seem quaint compared with the daily horrors of the war on terror) and participants on both sides were ready to talk. Yet the men who held the secrets were never contacted. The phone never rang at Zamir's house, though he could have clarified the myths in an hour. Mike Harari, who supervised the hit teams as head of Mossad's operations, did not receive an inquiry from Spielberg's team. The women who represent the families of the murdered Israelis were disappointed not to be approached. Even Mohammed Daoud, the former Black September chief widely accepted as one of the Munich masterminds, was dismayed no one spoke to him.

So far, reactions to Munich have been predictable and essentially emotional. Some find it balanced, while others view it as overly sympathetic to one or other side. But what we find disturbing is that it is substantially a fiction - which, given Hollywood's influence, may soon be regarded as a definitive account. The troubling question emerging from the film is whether there should be an obligation to historical accuracy in a work of art that portrays real-life figures such as Golda Meir and uses documentary footage to support its thesis. We believe that the answer is yes.

Fearing that influential US Jewish organisations and Israeli public opinion will criticise the film and brand it as anti-Israeli, Spielberg hired two prominent lobbyists: Dennis Ross, a former assistant secretary of state, is trying to persuade the Jewish community in America that Spielberg and his film are not hostile to Jewish and Israeli sensitivities; and Eyal Arad, a powerful PR man from Tel Aviv who works as a special strategist to Ariel Sharon, says that even if Aviv is a charlatan (Aviv himself refused to comment), the film is a piece of art and that's how it has to be judged, like Marc Antony's speech in Julius Caesar.

Spielberg is a man of artistic power, and with that comes responsibility. For a director who delivered such historical works as Schindler's List, his conduct in this case resembles that of a cub journalist who chooses to run a great story rather than confuse us with the facts.

· Yossi Melman specialises in intelligence affairs with the Israeli daily Ha'aretz; Steven Hartov is editor-in-chief of the US quarterly Special Operations Report

 

[Uncle Spielberg]

I see you have selected the 1 anti artcile against all the hundreds of positive artciles about the film and decided to believe the 1 negative article

Thanks for that

Check imdb - Munich, more balanced views of the film

 

[Easy 10]

All this "re-writing history" stuff is bollocks. If you want to learn the FACTS, then pick up a book or watch the Discovery Channel. If you want to be ENTERTAINED, then go and watch the film, but have in mind that every film director/screenplay writer will take an element of "artistic licence" with the subject in order to dramatise it for the audience.

 

[Citrus in Sheffield]

I thought it was crap.

 

[glasfryn]

Certainly not a cinema jobbie for me. I might have a sniff when its out on DVD I suppose, but I can't say its GRABBED me.

I'm having a bit of a DVD-fest tonight as it goes. First on the agenda is Serenity, followed by The Descent, and I might just round things off with either Dark Water or The Wedding Crashers. Bombay Mix and beer at the ready.

while you have all the DVD's try and get "kiss of the spider woman"
a very educating film.

 

[Man of Harveys]

All this "re-writing history" stuff is bollocks. If you want to learn the FACTS, then pick up a book or watch the Discovery Channel. If you want to be ENTERTAINED, then go and watch the film, but have in mind that every film director/screenplay writer will take an element of "artistic licence" with the subject in order to dramatise it for the audience.

They have these new things at the cinema and video shop called "documentary films". They're great and I've found it's actually quite possible to be gripped, entertained AND informed by them at the same time. In fact, there's a fine one on this very topic which I've gone on about on here before:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0230591/

 

[Easy 10]

I don't watch films to be educated. I just like explosions and stuff.

 

[Uncle Spielberg]

I think you are referring to the USA army doing the beach landings, they did refer to the British Army and much much more changing of facts happened in Braveheart and U571.

 

[Easy 10]

They have these new things at the cinema and video shop called "documentary films". They're great and I've found it's actually quite possible to be gripped, entertained AND informed by them at the same time. In fact, there's a fine one on this very topic which I've gone on about on here before:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0230591/

That link is 'websensed' for me. But are you talking about films such as Downfall ? (which I thought was excellent). Docu-dramas are fine by me. I was actually being a bit facetious in my earlier post. Of course I don't just like explosions and stuff.



I like guns and tits as well.

 

[Man of Harveys]

Hang on, I've got to break off discussing highbrow films to play Deal Or No Deal on the other one...

 

[Sonic]

Me and the wife went to see it last week. Both thought it was quite good.
Funny thing was the old couple in front of us who stayed for the bum fun, but left when the snogging action started. Strange.

 

[Goodfella]

Just shown it for 2 weeks at the 'Dukes'

If you get the chance, see it. Excellent film.

 

[Easy 10]

Me and the wife went to see it last week. Both thought it was quite good.
Funny thing was the old couple in front of us who stayed for the bum fun, but left when the snogging action started. Strange.

I'm not sure you should be behaving like that in a cinema, even if she is your wife. I think I'd have left as well.

 

[Skaville]

I saw it on Friday. It's a good film, but basically in the "chick flick" genre. At the end of the day it's a big blubby love story. It's beautifully shot, superbly acted and very sad.

I think the reaction to this film including male homosexuality is a bit pathetic. If a film about a couple of lesbians had won four golden globes people would be queing round the block.