Soderbergh’s ‘Che’ and Historical Accuracy, Part II

Part I of this series can be found here.

Steven Soderbergh made certain his new movie, “Che,” about the life of revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, couldn’t be attacked — at least on a factual level. (CNN Entertainment, January 1, 2009)

“I didn’t mind someone saying, ‘Well, your take on him, I don’t really like,’ or ‘You’ve left these things out and included these things.’ That’s fine,” Soderbergh said. “What I didn’t want was for somebody to be able to look at a scene and say, ‘That never happened.’ “(CNN Entertainment, January 1, 2009)

Well, Mr Soderbergh (and CNN), pull up a chair.

Soderbergh’s movie shows Che Guevara steely-eyed and snarling with defiance during his capture. Why, only seconds before, Che’s very M-2 carbine had been blasted from his hands and rendered useless by a fascist machine gun burst!

Then the bravely grimacing Guevara jerks out his pistol and blasts his very last bullets at the approaching hordes of CIA-lackey soldiers!

The (typical) viewer gapes at the spectacle. His eyes mist and lips tremble at Soderbergh and del Toro’s impeccable depiction of such undaunted pluck and valor.

(more…)

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Tags: Benicio Del Toro, Che, Che Guevara, CNN, communism
Posted Mar 10th 2010 at 10:51 am in Politics, Reviews | 31726285 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/hfontova/2010/03/10/soderberghs-che-and-historical-accuracy-part-ii/Soderbergh%E2%80%99s+%27Che%27+and+Historical+Accuracy%2C+Part+II2010-03-10+18%3A51%3A57Humberto+Fontova

REVIEW: ‘Wolfman’ Remake Delivers A Bloody Good Time

In 1941, Universal Studios released the horror film, The Wolf Man, depicting the tragedy that befalls men when the animal inside is unleashed. In 2010, Universal partnered with Relativity Media to recreate the 1941 classic. 

The Wolfman is far darker than the original. Where once random chance turned Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) into a werewolf, fate turns his modern remake, Lawrence (Benicio Del Toro), into the stuff nightmares are made of. 

In The Wolf Man, Larry Talbot returns home to visit his father after spending years away from home. While there, he meets a town beauty, Gwen (Evelyn Ankers). When he tries to defend one of Gwen’s friends from a werewolf, he is bitten. In turn he becomes a werewolf himself. Not long after, it becomes apparent that both his human, and animal side, are after Gwen. 

In its 2010 reboot, Lawrence Talbot, a Shakespearian actor and the second son of Sir John Talbot (Anthony Hopkins), is returning from a long absence in America to Talbot Castle in Blackmoor, England. But from the start the film’s focus is much darker. Lawrence is returning because his elder brother’s body was found mutilated by a terrible beast—the third finding of its kind. He returns to a castle laid waste by time, adorned with the heads of African beasts, trophies of Sir John’s. Upon arrival he meets his late brother’s fiancée, Gwen (Emily Blunt), who he slowly falls for. But his investigation into his brother’s death, and a bite he sustains when trying to find the raging creature haunting the forests nearby, reveal a darker side to himself and his past—from which he can’t escape.  (more…)

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Tags: anthony hopkins, Benicio Del Toro, emily blunt, The Wolf Man, The Wolfman
Posted Feb 13th 2010 at 3:04 pm in Featured Story, Film, Reviews | 30861836 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/dmiller/2010/02/13/review-wolfman-remake-delivers-a-bloody-good-time/REVIEW%3A+%27Wolfman%27+Remake+Delivers+A+Bloody+Good+Time2010-02-13+23%3A04%3A02Darin++Miller

REVIEW: Good Performances, Atmosphere Lift ‘Wolfman’

As the central figure in the new horror film “The Wolfman,” Lawrence Talbot has suffered through what you might call a rough life. He’s stumbled across his parents just after dad brutally killed mom in the middle of the night, was banished to an asylum before getting shipped to America from his posh English countryside home, and now his brother has been eviscerated by a mysterious creature lurking in the woods outside his childhood home.

Determined to find, capture and kill whatever beast offed his brother, Lawrence has not only traveled back to his birthplace and its haunting memories, but now has to confront his father head-on for murdering his mother and ward off area townspeople who fear he’s become a beastly ‘wolf man’ himself after surviving a a vicious bite from the monster. Through it all, his primary battle is to maintain his strong sense of decency and underlying humanity from slipping away forever.

Sounds like a heady mix of action and emotions, doesn’t it? Thankfully, “The Wolfman” largely delivers on its promises – particularly through the moving performance and powerfully expressive eyes of Oscar-winning actor Benicio del Toro (“Traffic”), who rebounds from a mostly hitless past decade to sink his teeth (ok, pun intended) into the role of Lawrence Talbot and add genuine gravitas to a tragic character. It also features a strong, yet slightly oddball, performance from Anthony Hopkins, who has also suffered more than his share of box-office setbacks in the last few years but digs into the role of Lawrence’s father Sir John Talbot with the menacing glee of his famed Dr. Hannibal Lecter enjoying a dinner of Chianti and fava beans. (more…)

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Tags: anthony hopkins, Benicio Del Toro, emily blunt, Joe Johnston, Lawrence Talbot
Posted Feb 10th 2010 at 2:16 pm in Film, Reviews | 30734644 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/ckozlowski/2010/02/10/review-good-performances-atmosphere-lift-wolfman/REVIEW%3A+Good+Performances%2C+Atmosphere+Lift+%27Wolfman%27+2010-02-10+22%3A16%3A41Carl+Kozlowski

Fidel Castro: Hollywood Screenwriter

“Che” film gets thumbs up in Cuba,” ran the headline from CNN’s Havana Bureau last December 8. Benicio Del Toro, who stars as Che, was being feted as the Castro regime’s guest of honor during the Havana Film Festival while presenting the movie he co-produced. “The lengthy biopic of the Argentinean revolutionary won acclaim from among those who know his story best,” continued the CNN story.

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Tags: Benicio Del Toro, Che, Cuba, Fidel Castro, Steven Soderbergh
Posted Dec 28th 2009 at 1:03 pm in Celebrity News, Featured Story, Film | 28368275 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/hfontova/2009/12/28/fidel-castro-hollywood-screenwriter/Fidel+Castro%3A+Hollywood+Screenwriter++2009-12-28+21%3A03%3A54Humberto+Fontova

New Trailer: ‘The Wolfman’

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Tags: anthony hopkins, Benicio Del Toro, emily blunt, Hugo Weaving, The Wolfman
Posted Aug 21st 2009 at 1:52 pm in Entertainment, Video | 20950647 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/bighollywood/2009/08/21/new-trailer-the-wolfman/New+Trailer%3A+%27The+Wolfman%272009-08-21+20%3A52%3A42Big+Hollywood

No Oscar For You: Matt Damon’s Iraq Critique Moved to March

Why would a company interested in making money (so they say) make yet another film trashing the Iraq War? By my count (narratives and documentaries), 13 have already flopped miserably and yet Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass team up for number 14, this one a big-budget studio critique of a war that successfully liberated 25 million innocent people.

Companies truly interested in making a profit don’t behave this way, which is why there’s never been a New Coke 2, much less a New Coke 14. And yet, Universal doubles down on more anti-Americanism using the fig-leaf of “based on a true story” to hide their malicious intentions which — to anyone paying attention — are always exposed by which “true stories” they choose to drop in theaters all over the world.

Here’s the New Yorker description of the book “Green Zone” is based on: (more…)

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Tags: "Green Zone", "Wolfman", Benicio Del Toro, Iraq, Matt Damon
Posted Jul 31st 2009 at 11:11 am in Film, Politics | 195334189 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/07/31/no-oscar-for-you-matt-damons-iraq-critique-moved-to-march/No+Oscar+For+You%3A+Matt+Damon%27s+Iraq+Critique+Moved+to+March2009-07-31+18%3A11%3A28John+Nolte

Part II: “Che:” Bad Movie About A Bad Guy Gets Worse

“How I would like to rise to power just to unmask cowards and lackeys of every sort and squash their snouts in their own filth.”

Che Guevara, Bolivia, September 8, 1967.

“No rapport had been established with the locals…” Anderson, p. 722

As I said in part one of my review of Soderbergh’s “Che,” The film gives us no idea of what happened after the Cuban Revolutionary government took power. Quite a lot did happen. We all know about the Bay of Pigs invasion, which deserves its own four-hour movie, hopefully directed by someone other than Soderbergh. We also all know that hundreds of thousands of people left Cuba in the early 1960s. People have never stopped leaving.

What’s less known to outsiders is that under Castro’s command, the Cuban Revolution began, very early on, to eat its own. The highest rank in the Revolutionary army was then the rank of “Comandante.” Here’s what happened to a few Revolutionary Comandantes:  In October 1959, Comandante Huber Matos, who is omitted from this film, criticizes the influence of Communists in the Revolutionary Government, and tenders his resignation. He is arrested, and serves twenty years in prison, during which time he endures severe torture. The dashing Comandante Camilo Cienfuegos is killed in an airplane crash within a week of the arrest of Huber Matos. The wreckage has never been found. Matos, who along with Camilo flanks Fidel in the famous photographs of Fidel’s entry into Havana, is among many who have never accepted the plane crash story. In March of 1961, Comandante William Morgan, of Cleveland, Ohio, also omitted from this film, is arrested and executed.

(more…)

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Tags: Benicio Del Toro, Che Guevara, Cuba, Fidel Castro, Steven Soderbergh
Posted Jan 13th 2009 at 5:01 pm in Entertainment, Media Criticism, Reviews | 1802945 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jlima/2009/01/13/part-ii-%e2%80%9cche%e2%80%9d-bad-movie-about-a-bad-guy-gets-worse/Part+II%3A+%E2%80%9CChe%3A%E2%80%9D+Bad+Movie+About+A+Bad+Guy+Gets+Worse2009-01-14+01%3A01%3A41Joe+Lima