Is Zero Dark Thirty pro-torture propaganda? Despite fawning praise bestowed last weekend on Kathryn Bigelow’s hunt for Bin Laden thriller, that’s the growing consensus among left, and left-libertarian film commentators who were deeply disturbed by the film’s opening sequence.
The film’s opening act depicts the ‘enhanced’ interrogation of a CIA detainee believed to have information about Al Qaeda operations and possibly the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden. Sexually abused, subjected to horrific confinement, and the controversial “drowning” technique known as water-boarding, the prisoner cracks and gives key details that ultimately lead agents on a series of clues that eventually make the successful Seal Team 6 raid possible. The take away for a lot of people is that the film’s overall message ends up being “torture works.”
Is that a fair assessment of Zero Dark Thirty? That depends on how you view the responsibility of a filmmaker to tell the truth versus their responsibility to tell a great story.
First, it has to be said for the millionth time that we aren’t just talking about the film’s opening scenes in a vacuum. Since 2003, the United States has been locked in a protracted idealogical battle between people who rightly note that torture, including water-boarding, is banned by just about every treaty on human rights to which the US is a signatory nation, and those who believe that nothing should be off the table, no matter how morally deleterious, when it comes to tracking down those who would do us harm. For the bulk of the last decade the latter camp won this argument. The result was a network of secret prisons, a prison complex in Guantanamo Bay whose territorial ambiguity was cited as a reason the law didn’t apply, extraordinary rendition, and a host of other “I never…
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Also in Wednesday afternoon’s round-up of news briefs, Tribeca Film has nabbed North American rights to a SXSW premiere. A popular Austin, TX theater is San Francisco-bound. And China’s Wanda gets the final go-ahead to take over a top American theater chain.
Tribeca Warms to Somebody Up There Likes Me
North American rights to the deadpan comedy have been picked up by Tribeca Film, the distribution label of Robert DeNiro’s Tribeca Enterprises. Starring Keith Poulson, Nick Offerman, and Jess Weixler, the film centers on Max (Poulson), his best friend Sal (Offerman Parks & Recreation) and the woman they both adore, Lyla (Weixler, Teeth) who stumble through thirty-five years of seemingly mandatory but unfulfilling entanglements. The film features an original score from Vampire Weekend’s Chris Baio. Tribeca Film plans a theatrical Spring 2013 release day and video-on-demand offerings, as well as iTunes, Amazon Watch Instantly, VUDU, Xbox and Samsung Media Hub following a U.S. and Canadian film festival estival run.
Alamo Drafthouse Set for San Francisco
The popular Austin-based exhibitor will open a location in the Mission, and will feature five screens of new release movies. Alamo offers food and drink and noted its new location will be similar to the Alamo Ritz location in Austin with a mix of classic film programming, alternative content, live events, foreign films, independent films as well as some studio films.
Around the ‘net…
Alex Pettyfer Headed to Cali with Kristen Stewart
The Magic Mike star is in final talks to play Stewart’s love interest in Nick Cassavetes’ gritty action pic Cali. The film follows a couple who sell fake snuff and snatch the cash but Stewart “returns from the dead” years later to save her younger sister, Variety reports.
Vince Vaughn Picks Up The Risk Agent
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Three pretty young friends find themselves trapped by a shadowy stranger — in an ATM vestibule! — in David Brooks’ directorial debut, ATM. Get a glimpse of the single-location thriller, from the writer of Buried, in an exclusive clip and new images.
Josh Peck, Alice Eve, and Brian Geraghty star in ATM as a trio of co-workers who find their late-night stop off for cash interrupted by a menacing figure who stands between them and sweet, sweet freedom.
ATM debuts on March 2nd on VOD and select digital outlets (SundanceNOW, iTunes, Amazon, Xbox) before opening in theaters on April 6.
Want more? Check out three new images from the film and ponder how bad things will get for our intrepid heroes in that freezing cold vestibule…
Few films in recent memory traverse the urban terrain of Los Angeles as memorably as Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, the stylish, sublime (and yes, ultra-violent) September 16 “fairytale” starring Ryan Gosling as a soft-spoken stunt man who gets mixed up with vicious gangsters in the city of angels. Using practical locations from downtown to the Valley, Refn paints a portrait of L.A. seldom seen in even the best L.A. stories — and with nary a glimpse of glitzy Hollywood in sight. Dive into Movieline’s interactive Drive map and explore the landscape of Refn’s Los Angeles, in the director’s own words.
“One of the reasons why I wanted to do the film was because I wanted to live the life of a European filmmaker in Los Angeles, coming to a city that I didn’t know, that I only knew from cinema and mythology,” Refn recalled to Movieline. “So that was the idea — to create a movie about traveling into something I didn’t know.”
Refn rejected the glamorous side of L.A. in favor of a more realistic L.A. — downtown, Echo Park, Reseda, and beyond. Gosling’s quiet stunt driver, known only as Driver, similarly represents the practical side of the Hollywood fantasy machine. “I found the real and practical [Los Angeles] much more beautiful,” Refn explained. “I don’t like Sunset, that’s my least favorite place in L.A.; it’s like shooting Times Square in New York, it doesn’t do anything for me. I’m much more interested in what L.A.…
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From the minute Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale gave that possibly ill-advised press conference announcing the start of The Dark Knight Rises location shoot in Pittsburgh, a torrent of spy pics, videos and spoilers have run out of the Steel City like water from an open fire hydrant. Not that Team Nolan has any hard feelings; the Pittsburgh leg of The Dark Knight Rises shooting schedule has come to a close, prompting Warner Bros. to thank city residents for their cooperation. Click through for a look at the familiar ad.
Per Coming Soon, that newspaper ad reportedly ran in Pittsburgh this weekend. Classy! Wonder what Marvel will do to thank Cleveland for The Avengers? Skywriting?
[via Coming Soon]
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