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by Bruce Dazzling » Sun Nov 04, 2012 11:20 pm
No, it looks exactly like it was hit by a giant fucking hurricane. The next person who compares it to a "war zone" loses their goddamn spleen.
by MinM » Mon Nov 05, 2012 1:17 am
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
News on Tom Hanks movie "Parkland"
Paul Giamatti, Billy Bob Thornton, Jacki Weaver join JFK feature "Parkland"
LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Paul Giamatti, Billy Bob Thornton, and Jacki Weaver have signed on to the John F. Kennedy feature film "Parkland," the filmmakers announced on Tuesday.
Playtone partners Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman are producing the film in association with Exclusive Media, who will also be financing. The movie is based on Vincent Bugliosi's 2007 book, "Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy."
A former L.A. County Deputy D.A. Bugliosi was best known for prosecuting Charles Manson. A three-time Edgar Award winner, he also wrote the number-one New York Times bestsellers; "Helter Skelter," based on the Manson case; "And The Sea Will Tell"; and "Outrage."
The adapted screenplay for "Parkland" is written by Peter Landesman, who will also make his directorial debut with the film, which recounts the chaotic events that occurred at Dallas' Parkland Hospital on the day Kennedy was assassinated .
http://justiceforkennedy.blogspot.com/2 ... kland.html
Pat Speer wrote:I just read that Peter Landesman has been hired to write the screenplay. How appropriate that someone hired to write a story loosely based on fact be someone with such little regard for the facts.
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index ... ntry262307
Doubting Landesman
I'm not the only one questioning the TimesMagazine's sex-slave story.
By Jack Shafer|Posted Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2004, at 7:19 PM ET
Click here for links to all of Slate's pieces about Landesman's sex-slave article, New York Times Magazine Editor Gerald Marzorati's defense of the article, and Daniel Radosh's blog entry.
Upon rereading Peter Landesman's New York TimesMagazine cover story, "The Girls Next Door," viewing the transcripts of his appearances on NPR's Fresh Airand CNN's American Morning, and corresponding with readers, I've got several new observations and questions to add to yesterday's "Press Box" column ("Sex Slaves of West 43rd Street"). For those who've joined the parade late, yesterday's column rained a shower of doubt on Landesman's descriptions of the American sex-slave trade and his view that it is pervasive, with perhaps tens of thousands enslaved...
On Fresh Air, Landesman damages Andrea's status as a source when he mentions that she "suffers from multiple personality disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder," facts not contained in his Magazine piece. If this is the case, how much of Andrea's story should we believe? Were his editors aware of the mental condition of one of his primary sources? Has Landesman corroborated any of her testimony or is he taking it all at face value?
In his piece, Landesman vaguely alludes to the locations of operating "stash houses" that hold sex slaves, and on American Morning he broadcast the location of yet another, saying:
And let me throw you one more address that I couldn't get into the story for legal reasons. But try the Upper East Side of Manhattan in the East 80s, a brownstone nine blocks from where my parents live, actually.
Why on Earth he's giving vague directions to a slave den to CNN viewers instead of phoning them to police, he doesn't explain. And if it's such a hot tip, why didn't the Times publish it? ...
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... esman.html
Yesterday, Naomi Klein. Today, Kevin Kline. hmmm.....
Post by Hugh Manatee Wins » Thu Sep 20, 2007 12:30 am
Hmm. I heard Naomi Klein on the radio yesterday and was mistakenly writing 'Kline' before I caught my mistake. But today, gosh! - here is an actual real Kline as a featured story promoting a movie based on an article written for...TIME Magazine. aHA! Now there's a magazine that's been a CIA rag since the days of Henry Luce so I think, yees, I've caught another one here.
http://www.themoviebox.net/movies/2007/ ... e/main.php
Based On:
Time Magazine article by Peter Landesman...
viewtopic.php?p=130798#p130798
Universal developing Gary Webb film
Post by American Dream » Thu Apr 03, 2008 5:10 pm
Peter Landesman will write the screenplay, based on the two books the studio optioned: "Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion," by Webb, and Nick Schou's "Kill the Messenger: How the CIA's Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb." ...
viewtopic.php?p=177298#p177298
Do you own a firearm?
Unread post by 82_28 » Mon Nov 28, 2011 12:35 am
Arms and the Man
Peter Landesman • New York Times Magazine • August 2003
The author sits down with notorious (and recently convicted) arms dealer Viktor Bout, Bout’s brother, and a close friend:
“Bout, who is 36, six feet tall and somewhat expansive in girth, nimbly made his way through the crowded lounge. He didn't shake my hand as much as grip it, with a firm nod. Icy blue eyes like chips of glass punctuated a baby face. We sat on one of the lounge's dingy couches, and he placed a thick folder of papers on his lap...
viewtopic.php?p=436683#p436683
by JackRiddler » Mon Nov 05, 2012 10:02 am
by JackRiddler » Mon Dec 24, 2012 2:39 pm
JackRiddler wrote:Some things are obvious - no analysis is necessary to make the connection here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aot0tPvoQI
It doesn't even matter that in the plot, the US military (as opposed to relatively sophisticated CIA) is stupid and hostile to the mutants, and at the end acts in concert with the Soviets in an attempt to murder them all. This stuff works on a more visceral level. Coopting maturity as a ritual of entry into a fighting elite. Find out how good you really are!
by JackRiddler » Mon Dec 24, 2012 2:47 pm
by Wombaticus Rex » Tue Dec 25, 2012 11:58 am
Describing his childhood as that of a typical Air Force brat and the oldest of 2 brothers and a sister, Kevin Reynolds graduated from Baylor University in Waco, Texas with a B.A. and then a J.D. (law degree) in the early 1970s. His father was a tenured psychology professor and University vice-president, who later became the school's president and present (as of February 2000) chancellor. After law school, Reynolds practiced law in Austin for a couple of years but decided that his love for movies was too strong to allow him to continue be a lawyer.
by DrVolin » Tue Dec 25, 2012 3:30 pm
by streeb » Tue Dec 25, 2012 4:08 pm
by Canadian_watcher » Tue Dec 25, 2012 11:27 pm
by Spiro C. Thiery » Wed Dec 26, 2012 6:55 pm
TONY SCOTT'S SUICIDE NOTE
2012.10.7
The Scott brothers, Ridley and Tony, lived in the north of England at the time of the Vietnam War. So did I. Britain didn't send troops to Vietnam and so Ridley, Tony and I didn't have to worry about being drafted and sent to die. But that vicious and immoral conflict played nightly on our televisions: it was the only non-sanitized war of our lifetime. It left many people - me included - with contempt for the CIA - which ran assassination and torture operations such as the Phoenix Program - and for the whole political/military/industrial machine.
My reaction was not uncommon. The United States and Europe are quite different in that in the US there is a nominal culture of respect for the military (though in practice it is the employment option only of the poor, invariably avoided by the rich and middle class), whereas in Europe armies and uniforms are widely disliked. Most of my generation grew up distrustful of governments, opposed to the military and to the creeps and provocateurs who spied on the peace movement. Remember The Clash song, The Call Up? It is an overt call to refuse to serve in anybody's army. Remember Strummer singing Straight To Hell? "There ain't no need for you..."
The Scotts went down a different path. They made commercials, and when they moved to the States became absorbed intothe Pentagon's Hollywood cheer-leading machine. The bros created glossy, highly dynamic recruitment propaganda like TOP GUN and BLACK HAWK DOWN, and - in the case of Tony - torture propaganda in the form of MAN ON FIRE.
So I wonder as to the contents of the various suicide notes Tony Scott left before jumping off that bridge. For a police force famous for leaking celebrity gossip, the LAPD has been close-mouthed about the matter. Perhaps the notes were merely tender messages to his family. Perhaps they were long screeds condemning the Hollywood studios for being a duplicitious, blacklisting mafia cartel. Or - and this is what I hope - perhaps they have been kept secret because they are a mea culpa: an apology for the years Scott wasted his talents working for the Pentagon and the CIA, promoting torture and war.
David Robb's Operation Hollywood is still the key text regarding the entertainment industryand the Pentagon. It is an important book, citing numerous examples of how studio producers, directors, and writers changed the content of their scripts in order to gain free tanks, battleships, and marines. Recently, three other books have appeared which begin to give a picture of how the CIA has shaped the cinema, and the careers of filmmakers.
The best of these books is the most general: Frances Stonor Saunders' Cultural Cold War (in England its title is Who Paid The Piper?). This is a broad look at how CIA money was used to influence the arts. It explains how the work of a talentless boozer, Jackson Pollock, found its way into museums owned by the Rockefellers, and thence onto gallery walls all over the US. Pollock's slap-dash canvases were bought and sold - at US taxpayers' expense - to show that American art was "better" than the crude naturalism which Russians supposedly preferred. Unfortunately, most Americans prefer crude naturalism, as do I: given a choice between a Pollock or a Norman Rockwell I would gaze on the Rockwell any day. Heck, I'd rather spend an afternoon in the Thomas Kinkaide store.
But intel influence didn't end with paintings. For some reason the spooks hated the writer Howard Fast, and managed to get him blacklisted by the American publishing industry. FBI agents visited Little, Brown and seven other publishers to persuade them not to publish Fast's great popular novel, Spartacus. Alfred Knopf sent the manuscript back unopened, saying he wouldn't read the work of "a traitor". Fast, a Jew, was no traitor: he served time in jail rather than "name names" to the House Un-American Activities Committee. And when Kirk Douglas made a film of Spartacus, he gave the screenwriting assignment to Dalton Trumbo, another blacklisted writer who had been jailed rather than betray his friends.
Nevertheless, buoyed by the blacklisting of Fast, the CIA went all out on a massive book-burning binge. A terrified State Department was obliged to remove from American libraries in foreign countries the work of Fast, Dashiell Hammett, Langston Hughes, John Reed, Tom Paine, Thomas Mann, Albert Einstein, and many other authors: Herman Mellville's Moby Dick, magnificently illustrated by Rockwell Kent, was also deemed unAmerican, and removed from the shelves. As Saunders observes, many of the books banned by the State Department had been burned by Hitler's Nazis, too. Some writers became active, witting agents of the CIA - including Peter Matthiessen and James Michener, "who used his career as a writer as cover for his work in eliminating radicals."
But, as Allen Dulles - head of the CIA till he was fired by John F. Kennedy - said, "nobody reads". So the spooks threw a wider net - arranging concerts and art exhibits, coming up with a $20,000 poetry prize for the fascist Ezra Pound (who at the time was in a hospital for the criminally insane), and quickly turning their attention to the propaganda possibilities of film.
According to Saunders, a secret campaign was undertaken by the CIA and Pentagon in 1955, called "Militant Liberty". This was designed to insert the theme of "freedom" into American movies, and to remove any elements which were critical of the United States. In June and July of 1956, representatives of the Joint Chiefs of Staff met with a group of Hollywood acolytes which included John Ford, Merian C . Cooper, John Wayne, and Ward Bond, to promote the illegal domestic propaganda program. A producer named C.V. Whitney, not coincidentally the cousin of CIA agent Tracey Barnes, signed on and made THE SEARCHERS (in the light of which we might view the film as an anti-Communist parable, with "redskins" standing in for "reds").
Saunders also observes that when, in 1946, Ford and Cooper set up their independent production company, Argosy, the principal investors were all intelligence men: William Donovan (former head of the OSS), Ole Doering, David Bruce and William Vanderbilt. C.D. Jackson, a CIA agent and vice president of Time, listed as helpful "friends" Cecil B. DeMille; Spyros P. Skouros and Darryl Zanuck at Fox; Nicholas Shenk, president of MGM; producer Dore Schary; Barney Balaban, president of Paramount; Harry and Jack Warner; James R. Grainger, president of RKO; Milton Rackmil, president of Universal; Harry Cohn, president of Columbia; Herbert Yates, head of Republic Pictures; and, inevitably, Walt and Roy Disney.
If Jackson's claim is true, then all the studios except United Artists were in the CIA's pocket by 1954. But CIA influence didn't stop with studio heads. A CIA agent, Carleton Alsop, worked undercover at Paramount, where he prepared lists of actors and technicians to be blacklisted, ordered script changes, and shut down films of which he disapproved. Alsop was quite powerful: he killed the project GIANT at Paramount because it was unflattering to rich Texans and depicted racism against Mexicans.
How many other studios had in-house CIA censors isn't clear: but it's unlikely that Carleton Alsop worked all alone.
Daniel J. Leab's Orwell Subverted deals with the first feature fully-funded by the CIA, ANIMAL FARM. As anyone who has seen it knows, ANIMAL FARM is an unsuccessful movie. The animation is reasonable, but the end - in which the animals rise up and overthrow their Soviet-Pig oppressors - contradicts Orwell's novel and the purpose of the parable. Reading Leab's book one cannot help but note how like studio executives the film's CIA "investors" were: they had no concept of filmmaking, or storytelling, but they were certainly full of ideas, demanding new scenes in which "a sheepdog, walking beside a kindly farmer, hears word of the revolt and laughs it off; so also does a plough horse, driven by another kindly farmer."
Leab has actually unearthed the stupid notes the CIA execs gave to their underlings: like David Robb he has found real material showing exactly how the spooks went about constructing their propaganda film. Years later, does it matter? ANIMAL FARM did not do well. But the filmmakers - John Halas and Joy Batchelor - were paid by the CIA to make a feature, something no other British animators could afford to do. Thereafter they received work from the BBC and the commercials industry. When I was young, animation from the Halas and Batchelor studio dominated British television. There was no other notable British company in the business till Ardman came along. That the CIA "set up" Halas and Batchelor as feature filmmakers, and that the BBC continued to promote them, gave them an incredible advantage over other animators, and set the rather mediocre tone of British animation for twenty years.
Per Saunders, the CIA was also behind the production of NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR, pumping at least $100,000 into the picture via the "US Information Agency". Again, Orwell's bleak vision didn't satisfy the spooks, and the end had to be changed: in fact two endings were shot, one for American audiences, and another for the British - in which Winston Smith is gunned down shouting, "Down with Big Brother!" Ironically, the film starred Michael Redgrave, one of 125 people Orwell had shopped to the British secret service for crimes such as Communism, Jewishness, or being gay.
Tricia Jenkins' CIA in Hollywood isn't as comprehensive as one might like. Partially this is due to the spooks' inherent secrecy and refusal to reveal the details of the deals they make with Hollywood filmmakers. But it's also due to a certain authorial naivete regarding the CIA. Jenkins refers to five aspects of the public's perception of the CIA: 1) that the Agency assassinates people, 2) that it is staffed with rogue operatives, 3) that it fails to take care of its assets, and 4) that it is morally ambiguous, and 5) that it is marked by buffoonery and ineffectiveness.
This is an incomplete list. The fact that the CIA assassinates people is not in any doubt: CIA-directed drones perform extra-judicial killings for us on a weekly basis. But what about the DRUG DEALING? After assassination and torture, the biggest complaint, made consistently against the CIA since the Vietnam War, is that it is involved in the international drug trade, and uses the traffic and resale of illegal drugs to enrich its operatives and fund its "black" operations. The reader may consult Alfred McCoy's Politics of Heroin in South East Asia, or Henrik Kruger's The Great Heroin Coup (for chapter and verse detail of CIA involvement in the heroin trade), or Cockburn and StClair's Whiteout, or Gary Webb's Dark Alliance (for the same on CIA complicity in the importation and sale of cocaine). The CIA inspector general, Frederick Hitz, was unable to disprove any of Gary Webb's reporting (the unfortunate Webb was fired from his job, and committed suicide).
Even if Jenkins doesn't believe that the CIA smuggles drugs, the accusations are there, they've been there for a long time, and they're backed up with evidence. A book dealing with the reputation of the Agency and its manipulation of the media should address the issue of alleged CIA drug dealing. This is not done.
This is strange, as it was with Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes - a supposed history of the CIA which also ignored the Agency's "drug problem". This is a re-writing of history, in which some of the worst blowback from US intelligence activities is simply ignored. The Hollywood movie AIR AMERICA - based on a book about CIA drug dealing operations - airbrushed the drugs out, but not all pictures dealing with US intelligence have done likewise. What about that highly intelligent thriller WHO'LL STOP THE RAIN, in which a merchant marine played by Nick Nolte is pursued by CIA agents who want their cut of his drugs operation? Not worthy of mention? It is a good fiilm.
CIA in Hollywood also suffers from an incomplete index, which covers only a handful of the names and motion pictures cited, and an incomplete bibliography, which doesn't contain all the books the author cites.
Jenkins makes an excellent point that by choosing to support certain films and to deny other filmmakers assistance, the CIA is violating the First Amendment to the Constitution. And since the Agency is not allowed to propagandize domestically, its support of Hollywood films and TV shows like 24 is a violation of its own Charter. Not that the CIA is all that worried, I suspect. As Robb observed, the Pentagon, the FBI, the Secret Service and numerous other federal agencies breach the First Amendment in exactly the same way. And Hollywood - an illegal cartel - is unlikely to utter any protest. The CIA has even acted as a TV distributor - pumping episodes of DYNASTY into East Germany during the Cold War "in order to sell those residents on capitalism and the luxury life it could afford."
For your edification, here follow the actors, directors, writers, producers and studio execs who the author links to the CIA, usually found 1) visiting CIA headquarters to party with the spooks, 2) taking instructions from CIA, or 3) actively helping to encourage CIA recruitment. Tony Scott heads the list: Jenkins reports that CIA was particularly fond of his masterpiece TOP GUN, "the single best recruiting tool the navy - and specifically naval aviation - ever had" and "was looking for a project that could help them do something similar."
Tony Scott, RIP; John Ford; John Wayne; Cecil B. DeMille; Darryl Zanuck; Luigi Luraschi (head of domestic and foreign censorship at Paramount in the 1950s); Joseph Mankiewicz; John Chambers and Bob Sidell (studio makeup men); Jack Myers; David Houle; Scott Valentine (VP of Sony Pictures); Jack Gilardi (ICM agency); Rick Nicita (CAA agency); Ron Meyer (COO of Universal); Matt Corman; Chris Ord; Kristy Swanson; Tim Matheson; Roger and Robert Towne; Tom Berenger; Ron Silver; Michael Frost Beckner; Jennifer Garner; Jeff Apple; Roger Birnbaum; Colin Farrell; Ben Affleck; Phil Alden Robinson; Lawrence Lasker; Mark Bowden; Mike Myers; Kevin and Michael Bacon; Mace Neufeld; J.J. Abrams; Paul Attanasio; Doug Liman; David Arata; Kiefer Sutherland; Tom Cruise.
(Not all Hollywood actors are thus inclined. Post 9-11, some have spoken out against CIA and government spying: Jenkins lists Al Pacino, Martin Sheen, Hector Elizondo, Richard Dreyfuss, Holly Hunter, Kristin Davis, Samuel L. Jackson and Jake Gyllenhaal as standing up for the American Civil Liberties Union in a series of advertisements.)
by barracuda » Wed Dec 26, 2012 8:48 pm
Alex Cox wrote:It explains how the work of a talentless boozer, Jackson Pollock, found its way into museums owned by the Rockefellers, and thence onto gallery walls all over the US. Pollock's slap-dash canvases were bought and sold - at US taxpayers' expense - to show that American art was "better" than the crude naturalism which Russians supposedly preferred. Unfortunately, most Americans prefer crude naturalism, as do I: given a choice between a Pollock or a Norman Rockwell I would gaze on the Rockwell any day. Heck, I'd rather spend an afternoon in the Thomas Kinkaide store.
A producer named C.V. Whitney, not coincidentally the cousin of CIA agent Tracey Barnes, signed on and made THE SEARCHERS (in the light of which we might view the film as an anti-Communist parable, with "redskins" standing in for "reds").
If Jackson's claim is true, then all the studios except United Artists were in the CIA's pocket by 1954. But CIA influence didn't stop with studio heads. A CIA agent, Carleton Alsop, worked undercover at Paramount, where he prepared lists of actors and technicians to be blacklisted, ordered script changes, and shut down films of which he disapproved. Alsop was quite powerful: he killed the project GIANT at Paramount because it was unflattering to rich Texans and depicted racism against Mexicans.
by JackRiddler » Wed Dec 26, 2012 9:13 pm
barracuda wrote:Statements like this just discredit the entire essay for me.
If the CIA made The Searchers, they're responsible for creating one of the finest films ever produced.
But somehow that didn't stop Jack Warner from making this great film, and keeping the anti-racist scenes intact throughout.
by justdrew » Wed Dec 26, 2012 9:35 pm
and raygun's still on tv http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Searchers_%28TV_series%29
The Searchers (Persian: جستوجوگران ) is an Iranian TV series broadcast in 2009. It is written and directed by Mohammad Ali Sadjadi. The theme of the series is about two Inspectors from Iran's General Inspection Organization (Persian:سازمان بازرسی کل کشور) searching for economic crimes and corruptions among Iranian corporations and manufacturers. The series is produced episodically. It is on Iranian TV every Wednesday.
The cast
Masoud Rayegan
by barracuda » Thu Dec 27, 2012 12:38 am
JackRiddler wrote:barracuda wrote:If the CIA made The Searchers, they're responsible for creating one of the finest films ever produced.
I suppose I should watch it again after all these years but I remember it as pretty atrocious for valorizing a murderous monster. The landscape photography didn't make up for that.
However, even if on second viewing I end up agreeing with your opinion of The Searchers (I just added it to my Netflix queue), would that change anything? Please don't make a joke out of something outrageous. The CIA should not be covertly subsidizing films, not as psyops on the American people or on any other people. It doesn't matter whether the resulting works turn out to be good, or are ineffective as propaganda and therefore irrelevant, or subvert the intent. The intent is wrong in itself.
Alex Cox wrote:According to Saunders, a secret campaign was undertaken by the CIA and Pentagon in 1955, called "Militant Liberty". This was designed to insert the theme of "freedom" into American movies, and to remove any elements which were critical of the United States. In June and July of 1956, representatives of the Joint Chiefs of Staff met with a group of Hollywood acolytes which included John Ford, Merian C . Cooper, John Wayne, and Ward Bond, to promote the illegal domestic propaganda program. A producer named C.V. Whitney, not coincidentally the cousin of CIA agent Tracey Barnes, signed on and made THE SEARCHERS (in the light of which we might view the film as an anti-Communist parable, with "redskins" standing in for "reds").
If you think a film like The Searchers needs government support (it obviously could have been made without it, but obviously that's not true of every movie) then lobby for the government to open up a proper film subsidy office, like in France or most any country other than the US. (Hereabouts instead we see states and cities give tax credits to any piece of crap long as it's filmed in their jurisdiction.)
Paramount didn't make the movie. Warner Brothers did. So if the CIA really did intervene to kill the project at Paramount, it's as Cox describes. (Never saw it. Also added to queue.)
(I want to read all of these books now)
by Nordic » Thu Dec 27, 2012 5:48 am
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