Reuters:

A government watchdog group is suing the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency, claiming the agencies are refusing to release details of their alleged meetings and communications with director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal.

It has been alleged that Bigelow and Boal — in preparation for the script to their Annapurna Pictures movie about the killing of Osama Bin Laden — received classified information regarding his death.

Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act complaint — which was obtained by TheWrap — in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. The group says the DoD and CIA have not complied with its FOIA requests within the legally required 20 working days.

Judicial Watch sent FOIA requests to the DoD and the CIA on August 9, seeking records of alleged meetings and communications between government officials, the makers of the Bin Laden movie and employees of Annapurna Pictures, according to the group’s complaint.

The DoD and CIA acknowledged they received the requests but said they couldn’t release the alleged information, according to Judicial Watch. The DoD cited “unusual circumstances which impact our ability to quickly process your request,” the suit says. The CIA said the agency was inundated with FOIA requests and couldn’t respond within the legally required 20 working days, Judicial Watch claims.

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The filmmakers of the upcoming movie about the pursuit and capture of Osama bin Laden, set to open in the heat of the 2012 campaign season, released the following statement claiming that the film is “non-partisan”:

Our upcoming film project about the decade long pursuit of Bin Laden has been in the works for many years and integrates the collective efforts of three administrations, including those of Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama, as well as the cooperative strategies and implementation by the Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency. Indeed, the dangerous work of finding the world’s most wanted man was carried out by individuals in the military and intelligence communities who put their lives at risk for the greater good without regard for political affiliation. This was an American triumph, both heroic, and non-partisan and there is no basis to suggest that our film will represent this enormous victory otherwise.

So the “Obama Got Osama” film is not meant to boost the re-election chances of our beleaguered president?

Prove it.

If the slated Oct. 12, 2012 release date is merely a coincidence–as the statement suggests–or solely based on opening the film during “Oscar season” (which runs through December and even into early January), surely those responsible for the film will agree that it is obscene to politicize the triumph of our most heroic Americans by unnecessarily injecting them into the election cycle against their will.

So, we call on Oscar winning director, Kathryn Bigelow, and Oscar winning screenwriter, Mark Boal, to formally ask Sony Pictures to release the bin Laden film in late December — long after the 2012 election season is over, long after the film itself and the publicity surrounding it can have any kind of impact. (more…)

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Not much new here to report but make sure to hang in until the end when Rep. Peter King reveals that members of the intelligence community and the CIA, who agreed to participate with the making of Kathryn Bigelow’s upcoming bin Laden film, were blindsided when they learned that that the release date was just a few weeks prior to the 2012 presidential election — an obvious betrayal of their trust and goodwill. 

And why wouldn’t they feel betrayed? My guess is that most were eager to see this story told and to see their years of sacrifice and hard work given a positive bigscreen portrayal for a change. So there’s little doubt it must have felt like a slap across the face once they learned they had been conned into contributing to a “Barack Obama 2012″ campaign commercial.

If you think about it, this is really a two-track story. On one track you have the issue of the White House possibly giving classified information to friendly filmmakers prepared to create  that $75 million campaign commercial — something that obviously needs to be investigated. And on the other track you have Sony’s unforgivable decision to use the heroism and sacrifice of our military and intelligence personnel to boost a failed president’s re-election chances.

The word “disgraceful” really doesn’t do this situation justice.

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Politico:

DHD:

[Kathryn] Bigelow and Mark Boal, her collaborator on The Hurt Locker, have been mobilizing their film to go into production as their follow-up to that Best Picture Academy Award winner. Their movie as planned was based on an earlier unsuccessful mission to try to kill the Al Qaeda leader responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attack on America as he hid in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. But now they’ve certainly got a celebratory ending to that dramatic story with tonight’s announcement that the U.S. conducted a military operation that killed Bin Laden. …

[B]ack in 2006, Paramount Pictures optioned Jawbreaker, a book by U.S. intelligence operative Gary Berntsen about the December 2001 American-led military mission to hunt and kill Bin Laden right during the opening stages of the 9/11-prompted invasion of Afghanistan that the author as the CIA pointman had helped coordinate with Special Operations Forces. The heavily vetted book detailed how close those forces came to finding and executing Bin Laden in the rugged mountains of Tora Bora until they were pulled back after a decision was made to let Pakistan tribal leaders lead the search — a decision experts felt helped Bin Laden get away. The studio hired The Path To 9/11 scribe Cyrus Nowrasteh to rewrite a first draft by Berntsen’s co-author Ralph Pezzullo, and Oliver Stone had eyed it as a follow-up to his film World Trade Center. But the project stalled.

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It’s that time of the year again — Oscar time!  (Cue “Hooray It’s Hollywood!” music.)  I know it’s supposed to be uncool to care, but I grew up watching the Oscars with my mom every year, and just can’t kick the habit.

Like some grim tribal ritual whose original meaning is lost in the mists of time, I will most probably sit down in front of the tube at the appointed hour, and brace myself for the onslaught of awkward acceptance speeches, corny jokes, and interminable dance numbers (please, God, no dance numbers!).

The experts agree there are two main contenders for Best Picture.  (What would we do without experts?)  One is a movie about a peaceful, idyllic land invaded by an evil military force trying to steal their resources.  The other one is called Avatar.

The struggle between Avatar and The Hurt Locker has gone back and forth.  Avatar was an early favorite, but Hurt Locker seems to have enjoyed a late General Petraeus-like surge.

Then in the final days, an ugly controversy struck Hurt Locker as one of its producers had the gall to ask people to vote for his movie.  Imagine that!  Doesn’t he know that Hollywood is a respectable place where aggressive self-promotion and crass commercialism are strictly off-limits? (more…)

Now that we have your attention.

Andrew Klavan’s written a terrific piece for City Journal looking at Katherine Bigelow’s “Hurt Locker,” which tanked at the box office, is a frontrunner to win this year’s Best Picture Oscar and has generated debate among conservatives over whether the dynamic action-director’s visceral look at a U.S. Army Bomb Squad is just another Iraq War film or something a little more worthy.

It’s a good debate… Be sure to read the whole thing and then feel free to have at it in the comments…

City Journal:

[I]s The Hurt Locker yet another piece of idiot agit-prop that makes our soldiers’ jobs harder and our enemies’ lives easier? The filmmakers and the media are desperate to convince us otherwise. For weeks before Hurt Locker’s release, they loudly reassured the public that the movie was, in the words of Roger Ebert, “completely apolitical. It has no opinion on the war in Iraq, except that there is one.” Some conservative reviewers agreed. Mark Hemingway at National Review wrote that the film “is not a straight depiction of American heroism; but it is a revelatory examination of the experiences and motivations of U.S. soldiers.”

But John Nolte, the voice of reason who runs Andrew Breitbart’s indispensable Big Hollywood website, would have none of it. He condemned the film. (more…)