August 5, 2004
ISN'T TERESA MORE LIKE ANGELA? (via Robert Duquette):
'Manchurian' typifies anti-Bush bias (James P. Pinkerton, August 3, 2004, Newsday)
The "Manchurian" message is, overwhelmingly, that the U.S. government is stoking fear at home - and jacking up military spending - by fighting wars abroad. An oft-heard slogan in the movie is "compassionate vigilance," an obvious play on Bushite "compassionate conservatism."Highlighting the movie last month, The New York Times' Frank Rich, no conservative himself, wrote, "I cannot recall when Hollywood last released a big-budget mainstream feature film as partisan as this one at the height of a presidential campaign." Lofted by positive reviews - 83 percent "fresh," according to the Web-compendium Rottentomatoes.com - the film looks to be financially, as well as politically, satisfying to its makers.
So here's a question: Which is more real, the prospect that right-wing corporate warmongers will try to steal the 2004 election through murder, or the prospect that liberal-left activists will seek to influence the election using their preponderance in the news and entertainment media?
Meanwhile, the reason the mainstream, media is having to become more partisan to try and advance its agenda is because it's losing its monopoly. In a world with Fox News Channel folks finally have alternatives to the liberal brainwashing of decades past. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 5, 2004 8:50 AM
RottenTomatoes also loved F911. I don't recall Hollywood putting out political hit jobs like this in an election year either.
Then again I believe Manchurian Candidate is also about a candidate with a falsified/exaggerated war record which doesn't sound like Bush to me.
Remember that bit in Kerry's acceptance speech where he recounted that as a child he got lost while bicycling and wound up in East Berlin? What really happened Mr. Kerry? Are there secret Stasi files held in a vault in the Kremlin that could shed light on this? The American public deserves to know! ;-P
Posted by: MB at August 5, 2004 9:54 AMThe KerrySpot over at NRO has a note where at first you think this film is slamming Bush but when you sit back and think there are more similarities to Kerry than to Bush.
Posted by: AWW at August 5, 2004 10:32 AMI just think it's funny that Meryl Streep has spent most of the publicity tour for the film denying her character is supposed to resemble Hillary Clinton. While the script is strictly a none-too-subtile attack on Bush, for those of don't see the movie but do watch the TV interviews, it appears as if the former first lady is the one targeted as the chief evil schemer in the plot.
Posted by: John at August 5, 2004 10:39 AMRottentomatoes.com is a great resource for all kinds of information about movies, including straight to video ones...
But, as AWW points out, with their reviews it's caveat emptor.
In the original (which was shown on local PBS station last Friday night), Raymond Shaw was apolitical. Shaw is also an assassin, who commits mutliple murders throughout the film. His mother was the puppetmaster running his stepfather, a dimwitted Joe McCarthy knockoff. (There's a scene where Iselin wants an easily remembered number of communists in the defense department, and they settle on 57 after looking at a bottle of ketchup.) At one point Senator Jordan (father of Shaw's wife) talks about successfully suing her for slander.
Sounds to me like the rule for remakes still applies-- avoid them, or better yet, pass the time by playing a game of solitaire.
The Heinz ketchup can't be a coincidence can it?
Posted by: oj at August 5, 2004 11:27 AMCorporations pay big bucks for that kind of 'advertising' in movies.
Posted by: Uncle Bill at August 6, 2004 3:23 PM