Beginning in June 2007, filmmaker Tim Hetherington and war correspondent Sebastian Junger embedded themselves with a U.S. Army platoon in the truly God-forsaken Korengal Valley of Afghanistan near the Pakistan border. A companion piece to Junger’s new book War, Restrepo is their feature-length documentary centered on a fifteen-man outpost in one of the most remote and dangerous war zones on earth. 

Trailer is NSFW

Its cinema verité style, interspersed with commentary from soldiers interviewed after the deployment, puts you in the center of the action – and inaction – alongside a half dozen or so principal characters. It captures the chaos and the boredom, the courage and the fear, the tension and the playful abandon of their stretch in Outpost Restrepo, named after their young medic, a Korengal casualty.

In between IED attacks, firefights, digging in on a cliff-side, negotiating compensation with the villagers for a dead cow, mourning dead comrades, rooting out arms caches in the village, and general horsing around, these soldiers, painfully young but becoming men before our eyes, offer honest and revealing emotions about these experiences. One soldier says he can barely get his head around it all; he just hopes that “one day I’ll be able to process it differently.” (more…)

It’s no secret that the good ol’ stars and starlets of tinseltown have no respect for the men and women of our military. Much like our president, however, they’re smart enough to know that they should act as though they do.

It’s exactly why every now and then a Hollywood celebrity will say that they “support our troops but not the war” or that “these men and women shouldn’t be dying in vain.” Is anybody still fooled by those one-liners anymore? Similarly in our president’s case, it’s why he continually says that he supports our troops without giving them so much as a shred of his time. I’m sure that the men and women putting themselves in harms way will understand though. After all, he’s got a meeting with one Mr. David Letterman.

For those who haven’t yet heard, Obama has met with General Stanley McChrystal (the good man in charge of leading our honorable troops to victory in Afghanistan) only once, yes, ONCE in the last seventy days. So it seems apparent that while Obama has no time to devote to the men and women of our armed services (the same people who ultimately make him look good), he has plenty of time to devote to promoting himself.

As Barack Obama devotes more time to personal press than any other president in history (in record time to boot), it’s becoming more and more glaringly apparent… Our president is more Paris Hilton than General Patton. (more…)