One comment I read put it best: Too bad Frank Sinatra isn’t alive to kick his ass.

ABC News:

[On his radio show, Howard] Stern then asked Bennett about how America should deal with terrorists, specifically those responsible for the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.

“But who are the terrorists? Are we the terrorists or are they the terrorists? Two wrongs don’t make a right,” Bennett said.

In a soft-spoken voice, the singer disagreed with Stern’s premise that 9/11 terrorists’ actions led to U.S. military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“They flew the plane in, but we caused it,” Bennett responded. “Because we were bombing them and they told us to stop.”

Following seconds of silence, Stern said that his guest was “making some good points.”

Before leaving, Bennett recalled an evening in 2005 when he was honored at the Kennedy Center. Meeting President George W. Bush at the event, the singer said that the commander-in-chief shared his opinion about the Iraq War.

“He told me personally that night that, he said, ‘I think I made a mistake,’” Bennett said.

Bennett believed that the president made this revelation because “he had a special liking to me.”

Bush told a lib crooner he made a mistake in Iraq?

Looks like Bennett also left his credibility in San Francisco.

Yeah, this will sell albums.

Director Jonathan Flora frames the film around Gary Sinise, an actor and director with a long, intimate history with soldiers and veterans, though he himself has never served. From his brother-in-law, who was killed in Vietnam, to current bandmate Kimo Williams,  a ‘Nam veteran who started jamming with Sinise after they met on a production of A Streetcar Named Desire in the mid-90s, his career has always seemed to providentially intertwine with the military. Following the jihadist attacks of 9/11, Sinise felt compelled to help those directly affected by the Twin Towers’ destruction, volunteering in campaigns to benefit the FDNY. This spirit of volunteerism, in concert with his ever more frequent band practices with Williams,  materialized into a USO tour in 2003. Despite his diverse résumé, Sinise was universally associated with his Oscar-nominated performance as “Lieutenant Dan” from Forrest Gump, so as the group expanded, Sinise named it the “Lieutenant Dan Band,” and the rest is history.

It’s tempting to think this is a vanity project for Sinise, now better known for his long-running role on CSI: New York–that like other celebrities, he’s got a pet cause designed to make him look like a good guy. It’s certainly clear the producers ask virtually every interviewee their opinion of the man, but any doubts the viewer entertains about his sincerity quickly evaporate as the film reveals a level of determination and effort that would be noteworthy from anyone, celebrity or no. We see him orchestrate an increasingly elaborate stage show, drawing on his experience running Chicago’s Steppenwolf theatre. We see his family silently bear the burden of his prolonged absences; they miss him but recognize his time away as tours of duty. We realize Sinise and co. aren’t ego strokers reading a PSA script for a check, whipping up crocodile tears over the ozone layer so they can lecture flyover country and feel morally superior. They’re hard-working entertainers willing to put their lives on hold and travel to war zones all to display their gratitude to our servicemen and women.

Aside from the warm fuzzies it’ll put in your heart, For the Common Good is an entertaining and exhaustive documentary. We’re treated to a brief history of the USO, Gary’s young introduction to both music and acting, musical numbers by the Lt. Dan Band switching seamlessly from one concert’s footage to the next, and plenty of interviews with soldiers and veterans. We get to meet members of the band as well, and it becomes rather apparent why Kimo and Gary gravitated toward each other; both are natural storytellers and performers. One of the film’s highlights is Kimo revealing how he almost got shot playing a concert (while still a soldier) at a fire base in Vietnam. Other notable sequences include a view and discussion of the inside of one of Saddam Hussein’s mansions, a “Snowball Express” concert for the children and other family members of deployed soldiers, and a few cameos from other celebrities such as John Ratzenburger, Robert Duvall, Gary Cole, and Jon Voight.

The film’s title comes from an Abraham Lincoln quote that perfectly sums up its themes: “Honor to the Soldier and Sailor everywhere, who bravely bears his country’s cause. Honor also the citizen who cares for his brother in the field, and serves, as best he can, the same cause. Honor to him, who braves for the common good.” In any other context, I know the phrase “for the common good” would cause many here to blow a gasket over its collectivist implications, but in this documentary we see the concept in its noblest form. Our soldiers sacrifice themselves not to prop up dependents but to protect independence, and we see how one man’s thankfulness for that protection plays its own part in carrying our troops forward in their mission.

Lt. Dan Band: For the Common Good is available through On Demand nationwide, or  you can view the film directly through its website.

This is NOT a propaganda piece – Jaker shows just how difficult the job of counterinsurgency is, and how successful and rewarding it can be. The 1st Battalion 5th Marine Regiment’s Regimental Combat Team 3, the 1st Combat Engineer Battalion, Combat Logistics Battalion 8 and the unit’s highly motivated civil affairs teams took over Patrol Base Jaker in the almost deserted Taliban controlled town of Nawa-l-Brakzayi in Helmand Province. The British unit that was relieved had been so under manned that they had to over depend on air support that sometimes killed and wounded local civilians.

Enter Jaker’s commanding officer Colonel William McCollough, a scholar-warrior of the best type who commands through example, intelligence and understanding. McCollough’s officers, NCO’s and enlisted personnel not only push back the Taliban from Nawa but implement a large number of successful civil affairs missions, ranging from rebuilding and resupplying local schools, clearing irrigation ditches and providing wheat seed to replace the poppies that help fund the Taliban. They also reinvigorate the abandoned market place, gradually getting the locals to bringing back almost 80 merchants and do their best to help reform the corrupt local governmental hierarchy and police. This is a film about gaining trust, one uneasy step at a time.

It’s a huge job, but the Marines of Patrol Base Jaker are more than up to it thanks to civil affairs professionals like Gus Biggio, who gave up a successful career on Wall Street to serve his country. The success in Nawa is in a big part due to getting to know and understand the local Afghani people, who grow poppies and let their son’s fight for the Taliban, because they’ll wind up dead if they don’t. Afghani governmental and police corruption is not shied away from. McCollough and his officers listen to the complaints and observe the locals confront Afghani officials right on camera.

One of the film’s biggest strengths is that the viewer gets to know average Afghanis, young and old as real people, in many ways vastly different from us, but still wanting peace, education and self determination. School kids and parents yearn for the reopening of the first school and merchants and farmers are anxious to get back to their trades. Even local tribal leaders are shown now not afraid to stand up and speak their minds in public, gradually coming to trust the Americans, not as conquerors but as allies. The Marines in Nawa are not trying to turn these Afghanis into Americans they’re just trying to give them a chance to live their normal lives.

The successes in Nawa didn’t come without a bloody price tag, during filming four Marines, including a highly regarded 34-year-old NCO and recent first time father lost their lives trying to bring peace to the region. One of the most affecting scenes is the ceremony honoring that sergeant with members of the battalion in formation as his helmet is place a top his M-4 carbine commemorating his sacrifice. David Scantling’s Patrol Base Jaker captures the spirit, intelligence and compassion of the modern American fighting man, whose contributions are not always won at the end of the muzzle of a weapon, but often with a bulldozer and a school book.

Mitty Griffis Mirrer’s Gold Star Children is an inspiring look at how the children of service men and women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan are coping with their losses. And it is told through the eyes and words of many of those children and surviving parents including Ms. Mirrer, who lost her own father in Vietnam when she was only 16 hours old. Mirrer doesn’t appear to have any previous film credits, but this film is not only as professional as any top PBS documentary, but also so emotional that hardly anyone in the audience could back a tear or two, myself included.

The spouses and kids of Gold Star children aren’t blaming the U.S. Government for their losses. They are all incredibly proud of their parents or spouses service and are learning to cope through a wonderful mentoring program called TAPS, the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors. At TAPS older children and adults who have lost loved ones go through extensive training to help the younger kids deal with the loss in a positive fashion. In the process the adults learn as much from the kids as the kids do from the adults. The maturity and decency of the youngest surviving family members is incredible to see. Nine-year-olds talk openly about how they are dealing with dad or mom’s death while mothers strive to regain a positive sense of normalcy for their children. Mirrer has captured the children and adults of TAPS on camera in a poignant and compassionate style that was not easy to accomplish.

One dignified Hispanic-American mother tells how as a child she lost her father in Vietnam and now has to deal with the death of her officer husband in Afghanistan. She has two bright and decent teenaged boys who are a true tribute to their dad’s memory and the family works with each other one day at a time in a fitting memory to a loving husband and father.

Gold Star kids are brought to the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington to help clean it and are then told the stories behind some of the 50,000 names chiseled there. During the annual Rolling Thunder biker rally of Vietnam Vets these tough looking former soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen are shown giving kids rides on their bikes and talking with them quietly about their own war time friends and experiences. One nine-year-old girl from Texas trains and then runs a children’s TAPS marathon as a tribute to her late father, learning about, while also teaching others, how to deal with the loss while on her own emotional journey.

The quietly gripping content of this film that director Mirrer so deftly gives to her audience makes any one viewing it feel sadness, pride and wonder, all at the same time, at how everyone from grownups to three-year-olds are dealing with their grief. This is not a film that is easy to explain, it is far more a film that has to be felt. Gold Star Children should be mandatory viewing for all high school students so they can see just how real the phrase “Freedom isn’t free,” truly is.

Translation? Sitting on our hands as untold thousands of civilians are butchered in the Middle East will help rebuild the trust the people in the Middle East have in us.

—–

I’m always impressed by how compassionate the likes of a Michael Moore can sound as he speaks evil. To him the Pentagon taking a ”time out” takes precedent over saving thousands of innocent lives. Moore can lie all he wants, he can say the French should have taken the lead in Libya, but he knows full well that the French are incapable of summoning the kind of military might necessary to do what needed to be done last week. There’s plenty to criticize regarding Obama’s stunning lack of leadership, clarity and commitment, but the idea of America standing helplessly by as a potentially historic Middle East uprising is gunned down and butchered, is unthinkable.

It was the same with these people and the war in Iraq. I had no problem with those who opposed the war before we went in. But once we were there, once the Iraqi people stood up and voted for our side, we had and have a moral obligation to stand with them until they can take over the security of their country. And yet, knowing the consequence of an American withdrawal on the Iraqi civilian population, knowing what the death squads and terrorists would do to  millions of innocents who trusted us, wicked people like Michael Moore and, yes, Barack Obama still did everything in their power to make that happen.

At least as president Obama can be shamed into taking action, as he obviously was by Hillary Clinton and Europe, but there sits Moore again — a human monster in a baseball cap — pretending that the best thing for the America he just loves so darn much is for us to stand in the corner of shame for a “time out” as another human monster goes house to house cutting down innocent women and children.

What a guy.

There is no argument that Gellman’s book casts a very dark and negative shadow over Republican Vice President, Dick Cheney.  His own website describes the book as taking on “the full scope of Cheney’s work and its consequences, including his hidden role in the Bush administration’s most fateful choices in war: shifting focus from al Qaeda to Iraq, unleashing the National Security Agency to spy at home, and promoting ‘cruel and inhuman’ methods of interrogation.”  If you didn’t know any better, you might think that description fits a member of the KGB, or even the Gestapo.

The Dark Side, not to be confused with the UK horror film publication or as the general concept of evil in the Star Wars universe or the anthology horror TV series produced by George A. Romero or the DC comics super-villain, no The Dark Side is a documentary produced by David Fanning and Michael Kirk of Frontline.  The title of the documentary perverts a quote from Cheney a few days after the 9/11 attacks in which he stated that in order to defend America against future Osama bin Laden and al Queda attacks, we would have to work “sort of the dark side, if you will,” because, “That’s the world these folks operate in…” and depicts the struggle between the CIA and the vice president and how Cheney was the chief architect of the war on terror and invasion of Iraq.

HBO optioned the book for the mini-series, which should air just before the 2012 election.  Naturally, David Fanning and Michael Kirk of Frontline are slated as Executive Producers.  Also, listed as Executive Producers are Jeffrey Levine and David Kennedy of Fair Catch Productions, a company the California Secretary of State currently shows as “suspended.”  Who are the rest of the players?

Eric Kessler (Co-President of HBO) – Gave $2,300 to Obama for America

Richard Plepler (Co-President of HBO) – Contributed over $15,000 to Democrats in 2008, including $2,300 to Obama for America and another $500 to Obama for America

Sue Naegle (President of HBO Entertainment) – Gave $2,500 to Al Franken for Senate and $1,150 to Friends of Rahm Emanuel, who would later be Obama Chief of Staff

Len Amato (President of HBO Films) – Gave $500 to Obama for America in 2008

Paula Weinstein  (Executive Producer) –  Donated over $20,000 to Democrat candidates and organizations including John Edwards, Barbara Boxer, Barack Obama, MoveOn.org and the DNC in just the last three years.

Barton Gellman  (Writer) – $500 to Democrat Bruce Babbitt in 1987; Writer of Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency

Rick Cleveland  (Screenwriter) – $500 to Howard Dean in 2003 and $1,000 to John Kerry in 2004; worked with Aaron Sorkin, an ardent Democrat who has donated nearly a quarter million dollars in a little over a decade to Democrats and their committees.

This is not much different from HBO’s team on Game Change, where there was not one Republican among the whole bunch.  How can they possibly be trusted to make an unbiased political film that is set to air right before the 2012 election?  Quite simply, they can’t.

Frankly, HBO is quickly becoming the MSNBC of premium television.   What’s next from the network that brings you Bill Maher?  I wouldn’t be surprised if in two more weeks they greenlit John Wilkes Booth: An American Hero.

In the meantime, I suggest you cancel your subscription to HBO.

Let’s be clear – Battle: Los Angeles is a terrific action film that makes no bones about its pro-American, pro-military agenda.  And that fact has invited carping from the usual suspects, lefty movie critics who work themselves up into a lather over the portrayal of better men than they will ever be.   

And note that when I use the term “men” here, I include the fighting women of the US armed forces – don’t worry, critics:  Heroines like Sergeant Leigh Ann Hester will protect you . . . just move to the rear with the children and try not to get in the way. 

The fact is that science fiction has long been a tool to comment on the present, including the relationship between our warriors and our society.  Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers was a fascinating depiction of military life as well as what the author saw as a degrading, decaying culture.  The Paul Verhoeven film of the same name, though different in tone, had its own insights into military vulture, including coed showers and a machine gun-packing Doogie Howser.

The Forever War mirrored Joe Haldeman’s Vietnam War experiences.  Aliens, back before James Cameron decided that American troops were an enemy to be exterminated, has a solid take on military life.  Even the popcorn flick Independence Day, superficially similar in theme if not tone, demonstrated the military values of courage and honor – plus it featured a 9mm M9 Beretta-firing Adam Baldwin.

As awesome as Battle: LA is – and it is awesome – it is also sad that the only way Hollywood will depict the brave men and women of our modern armed forces is in the context of a fantasy.  There’s no need to create hideous villains – they exist.  Too bad the people who greenlight movies can get behind zapping space bugs from Venus but dare not depict the struggle of our troops against the buddies of the scumbags who flew planes into our buildings a decade ago.

There is nothing wrong with Battle: LA itself.  It is highly entertaining and visually spectacular, especially to those of us who live in Los Angeles and know the area – I drove through one of the battle locations this very afternoon.  And, most importantly, it gets the troops right. 

The tough sergeant is dead on in many ways, while each of the characters is a distinct individual that anyone who has served in uniform will recognize.  The critics’ whining about “cardboard characters” is simply nonsense – the fact is most of these limo liberals probably don’t know any warriors.  If there was any doubt their “criticism” is simply agenda-fueled cheerleading, their “Eek, a mouse!” reaction to Battle: LA proves it.  Frankly, its characters (thanks in no small part to a team of talented young actors I look forward to seeing again in the future) were more authentic than the hipster smartasses of the insufferable Juno or the fake cowpokes of Brokeback Mountain.  But then, it might take a little courage to stand up at a Manhattan cocktail party and say “You know, I really felt the camaraderie of the Marines in Battle: LA…wait, are you ok?  Someone call a doctor!”

—–

It hit me personally as well, especially in the form of the young lieutenant taking his unit into theater for the first time – because twenty years ago that was me during Desert Storm.   Here’s a special shout-out to actor Ramon Rodriguez as Second Lieutenant Martinez – he got it.  The desire to accomplish the mission, the responsibility for his platoon, the knowledge that as a lieutenant he really didn’t know anything – and further props to Aaron Eckhart as Staff Sergeant Nantz, who helps train his lieutenant  as generations of noncommissioned officers have trained their officers (including this one). 

What’s interesting too is how the Marines learn and adapt to fight the invaders.  In an early scene, they are nearly routed in an ambush sequence so well-directed that I almost shouted “Get that %$#&%$ machine gun firing!” at the screen when everyone went to ground.  But the unit pulls together and they do what US troops always do – they adapt, improvise and overcome. 

The end scene is particularly welcome – let’s just say that Kumbayah ain’t on these guys’ iPods.  Battle: LA, in a way, commits two acts of Hollywood sacrilege.  It shows American troops as heroes, and it proudly says that our country is worth fighting for.  No wonder Roger Ebert is spazzing out on Twitter; this kind of thoughtcrime is a million times more transgressive than all the pretentious “Let’s freak out the bourgeois squares” art film nonsense he’s defended over the years.

Also appreciated – the scene where the Marines link up with a Soldier who announces he’s part of the 40^th Infantry Division – the California Army National Guard unit whose patch I wore for nearly two decades.

As exciting and fun and welcome as Battle: LA is, it’s just too bad that the only time American fighting men and women seem to get treated with any respect in Hollywood is if the war that’s being depicted happened a half-century ago, or if the enemy has tentacles.  Well, there is a real enemy out there, one who wants us enslaved or dead.  When is Hollywood going to display even one one-hundredth of the courage of America’s warriors and dare to tell that story?

The takeaway from this interview is that Jon Stewart is really upset that while the administration obviously deliberated at great length behind the scenes, they did not hem and haw over whether or not to go to war with Iraq in public. And at the very end of the interview, “The “Daily Show” host sure doesn’t want to hear or acknowledge how close Saddam was to reconsituting his WMD program — this monster of a man determined to have and willing to use chemical and biological weapons.

Stewart does what he can to press his point of view, but for the most part he’s stuck on stupid and arguing with the facts. To suggest that it would’ve been a good idea for an adminstration to publicly express doubts about the reasons behind a war or over the outcome is beyond absurd, and to paper over the fact, as though it doesn’t matter, that Saddam was never far away from being a chemical or biological menace is equally absurd.

Something Rumsfeld doesn’t touch upon that Stewart would also have a hard time wrist-flicking is that under a very real threat of death, the Iraqi people themselves came out to vote in favor of self-determination and for the war. At that point the Iraq War became their war as much as ours and the United States had a moral obligation to ensure we protected the millions who bravely and publicly sided with us on that day. Unless it’s the number of dead, war critics like Stewart never talk about the will of the Iraqi people to be free or their willingness to fight and die for that freedom. Who is Jon Stewart or anyone to say the war wasn’t worth it or didn’t make the world a better place? 25 million people obviously disagree and their steady travels to the voting booths in the years since prove it.

There’s something a little off about those who only find the Iraqi dead useful to their argument and ignore the living.

Never forget that the Iraqi people chose freedom over opression and had the anti-war monsters had their way, we would’ve abandoned those innocents to the holocaust of a terrorist/death squad meat grinder. Instead we chose, at a terrible cost, to stand and fight. And those who fought were Americans from every walk of life who had volunteered to run towards danger when everyone else ran away and to risk their lives for those they had never met. In the end, as messy and as costly as it was, the liberation of 25 million people was a selfless and noble act.

Stewart does deserve credit for two things. First, he let’s Rumsfeld have his say. Second, while the full interview wasn’t broadcast (which wouldn’t have been practical), he did release the full interiew online.

You  can watch the full interview here.

Why it’s a left-wing film

Writer/director Michael Moore’s paranoid pack of audaciously demagogic lies dropped on the world in the heat of an American presidential election and an ongoing war in Iraq. Just for starters, the film says outright or insinuates that Iraq under Saddam was some sort of paradise, George W. Bush won the presidency in 2000 after thousands of black people weren’t allowed to vote, Bush covered up for the bin Laden family after the 9/11 attacks, and the Bush family’s friendship and business ties in the Middle East were a large part of the motivation behind waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan. After that, fill in your own blanks using the left’s greatest crazy hits: Diebold, Halliburton, WMD, Mission Accomplished, “My Pet Goat,” and then wrap it all in the hard candy shell of a whole lot of troop-bashing through the insidious use of anecdotal evidence.

No wonder Moore received a 20 minute standing ovation at Cannes.

It was the summer of 2004 and for argument’s sake let’s say that Moore attacking a sitting president with provable lies is the price of an open democracy. However… Let us never forget that in 2004 Iraq was a country where the civilian population had already turned out to vote (under a very real threat of violence and at a percentage higher than our own presidential election) for the American plan of self-governance. Therefore, and I don’t say this lightly, Moore’s calculated use of the awesome power of cinematic sound and fury to undermine the war was an act of outright evil. In fact, I have no doubt that Moore is so morally twisted that when Osama bin Laden seemed to quote “Fahrenheit 9/11″ in a video dropped just days before the 2004 presidential election, the Oscar-winner took some pride in the recognition.

For those of you who haven’t seen today’s pick, imagine a film widely released next year into 868 theatres that receives overwhelming critical praise, grosses an astonishing $222 million, receives all kinds of awards love (Moore’s unquenchable ego screwed his own Oscar chances),and all kinds of mainstream political support, but… Puts forth the theory that President Obama is a Manchurian candidate — a foreign-born Muslim terrorist-sympathizer in league with the likes of Bill Ayers and Louis Farrakhan to bring down the United States from within.

That’s what a “Fahrenheit 9/11″ equivalent would look like today.

Except that the same vermin who gushed over Moore’s stridently obvious anti-American/anti-Bush lies, the same elites who found thoughtful an unforgivable piece of propaganda and character assassination based on what barely qualifies as innuendo, would scream bloody murder today. Furthermore, there’s simply no way any kind of documentary attacking Obama in the same scurrilous way would make even a tenth of the “Fahrenheit 9/11″ box office. Unlike Leftists, most conservatives don’t have some barren hole in their humanity impossible to fill and that forces them reach out to the likes of a Michael Moore for comfort and affirmation.

Thankfully, while a landmark piece of documentary filmmaking, like everything else touched by the diseased soul of Mrs. Moore’s baby boy, “Fahrenheit 9/11″ was an abject failure in the arena where it most wanted to succeed: in bringing down George W. Bush, embarrassing the United States, and ushering in a holocaust upon 25 million innocent Iraqis. 

In the end, “Fahrenheit 9/11″ only appealed to those who already hated the President and might have actually helped Bush by stirring up voters on his side. By the time the dust settled, Bush not only won a second term that allowed him to double down in Iraq and win the day, but what sweet irony that we now have the most liberal President ever carrying on in Iraq and Afghanistan as though Bush never left.   

Why it’s a great film

Not being a film writer at the time, it was only after the 2004 election, only after the feckless John Kerry was safely placed back in the Senate and George W. Bush back in the White House, that I decided to stomach a look at “Fahrenheit 9/11.” The post-election schadenfreude factor seemed the only way to tolerate what I already knew was Leni Riefenstahl-lite. The end result was that the two hours that followed were everything I expected politically, but cinematically I was blown completely away.

There are very few documentaries (even those I like) that feel like bona fide cinema. Most feel like “60 Minutes” segments stretched to 90 minutes. There are notable exceptions, but those exceptions prove the rule. This doesn’t mean that these documentaries aren’t important, well-crafted, or impactful. But it’s just a fact that the Academy has nominated and handed Oscars to documentary filmmakers whose work would seem more at home on the Discovery or History Channel than up on the big screen.

“Fahrenheit 9/11,” however, is cinema. Big, bold, audacious, spell-binding cinema.

Michael Moore sucks at persuasion, but the man knows how to put on a show and for the entire 121-minutes I was completely caught up and thoroughly entertained by the paranoid fantasies and byzantine conspiracy theories that command the synapses of a non-thinking, left-wing mind driven only by hate, prejudice and emotion. And I was moved, as well. The story of Lila Lipscomb, the woman who lost her son in Iraq and the very real rawness of her anguish, is unforgettable.

And it’s this kind of footage that separates Moore from many of his counterparts. Somehow, Moore finds footage most of us have never seen, even of big events we’re already familiar with. And while the context of this footage is always manipulated, we’re glued to it because it’s brand new.

The second key to “Fahrenheit’s” success is its perfectly seamless structure. When it comes to the classic three-act structure, documentary films are no less a slave to it than narratives. The problem for many documentary filmmakers, though, is that not everything in real life contains the necessary crisis point at the end of act two followed by a third-act triumph. In many cases, directors are forced to manipulate these moments into being, last year’s Oscar-winner “The Cove,” being a perfect example. In that wildly overrated save-the-dolphins screed the third act triumph was cast and crew congratulating themselves over the secret footage they filmed.

In “Fahrenheit” you neither see, sense, or feel any of the structural gears turn, an achievement few narrative films match as effectively.  

Finally, you cannot overstate the lasting impact of Moore’s blockbuster. Though I doubt it’s the legacy he was hoping for.

For starters, “Fahrenheit 9/11″ inspired legions of filmmakers, including some very good ones, to get into the business of documentary filmmaking. Best of all, many of these newcomers are conservatives who might not have otherwise considered such a thing had the double-shot of Moore’s lies and success not motivated them. For the first time since the Left grabbed the levers of power in Hollywood we now have a grassroots movement of pro-American, pro-liberty filmmakers learning through doing the difficult and painstaking process of telling stories though picture and sound. The fruits of this labor have only begun to bloom.

“Fahrenheit 9/11″ is also the Godfather of a Supreme Court case the left hates more than any other in recent memory, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission — a landmark decision in favor of free speech that all but overturned McCain-Feingold. Citizens United, led by David Bossie, got into the documentary filmmaking business with 2004’s “Celsius 41.11,” a direct rebuttal to “Fahrenheit 9/11.” The success of that film led to others, including “Hillary: The Movie,” which was the impetus for the Supreme Court case after the FEC refused to allow Citizens to advertise the film on television, claiming it violated McCain-Feingold.

So, please, while you’re chuckling with the taste of irony in your mouth, feel free draw a straight line from “Fahrenheit 9/11″ to a Supreme Court decision so loathed by the left that it led to President Obama chastising the Supreme Court and embarrassing himself over it during the last State of the Union address. Without “Fahrenheit 9/11″ the appallingly unconstitutional McCain-Feingold might still be the law of the land.

Finally, I had originally intended to place Moore’s film in the top 10, but watching it again over the weekend brought the realization that it is very much a product of its time — of what was happening in 2004 — and lacks the bigger themes necessary to have a timeless impact. What struck like a lightning bolt six years ago still plays perfectly well, but lacks urgency and relevance; a problem that will only get worse as the years pass. 

What’s not on the list

Hopefully the very fact that I’m compiling this list means that I can criticize the quality of some left-wing films without being accused of slamming them for political reasons. The following just weren’t good enough to rank in the Top 25:

Avatar (2009): This movie sucks. Here’s my Big Hollywood review..

Philadelphia (1993): Tom Hanks is impressive and won his first of two consecutive Best Actor Oscars playing an AIDS sufferer whose dying act is bringing a discrimination lawsuit against the big corporate law firm that fired him after discovering his illness. Denzel Washington is even better as the homophobic ambulance-chasing trial lawyer who takes his case. Unfortunately, neither is good enough to salvage the film as a whole. Director Jonathan Demme gives us a too-good-to-be-true protagonist with a too-good-to-be-true family, a number of obnoxiously self-conscious camera moves, and a story that starts out strong but eventually devolves into a preachy, shallow afterschool special.

As someone who was sympathetic to ACT UP, a militant (and frequently stupid) AIDS advocacy group that was tireless about moving the government to fund AIDS research and, most importantly, pushing, for access to experimental drugs like AZT, the overall message of “Philadelphia” didn’t strike me as partisan. But the film’s pieces, the cigar-smoking rich white bad guys, and the like, all reek of liberal piety. And it’s just not a very good movie.

Bulworth (1998): Warren Beatty plays the title character, a sitting United States Senator just a few days away from losing to his Democratic opponent in the California primary. Despondent, he arranges for his own assassination and suddenly finds himself liberated and unafraid to speak his mind. Beatty directed and came up with the story, the problem is that what sounds like an intriguing concept quickly wears thin and then disappears altogether as Beatty confuses talking the same nonsense Democrats always talk as something new and brave. Even in 1998, liberals were railing against health insurance companies, corporate media and the like — so what’s the big deal again?

NOTE: Today on Big Hollywood we praised George Clooney, Barbra Streisand, ACT UP and “Fahrenheit 9/11.” Let this be remembered as our Day of the Apostasy.

—–

Alvi has a running under-commentary about the on-going ubiquitous Iraq war, which was strangely (and refreshingly) undefined and unfocused. Certainly a critical view of America’s actions underscored the shots of bombed out hotels, of guard checks, and most of all, of the stories told by the band members. “Firas” (who knows if these were real names, given security issues) the bass player, spoke the best English and thus became the central character; “Tony,” the lead guitarist, though hyped as a spectacular talent, was barely average by western standards. “Marwan,” the drummer, and “Faisal,” the second vocalist that Alvi talked to (the first having fled to Syria) offered occasional pity comments. According to Marwan, “if you can teach every prisoner to play drums . . . you’re gonna have good citizens. . . .” (Here in the United States, I think we have tried that by having them do laundry or make license plates. Not sure if that’s worked yet.)

Band members addressed the extreme difficulty they had in even practicing in a city in which every block had either a check point or was controlled by one militia or another. Then there was the electric power issue: during the one concert Alvi filmed (in front of perhaps 20 people, all males), the electricity went out after a few songs. Alvi himself quickly experienced the impossibility of carrying normal western-style interviews in war-torn Baghdad. His crew paid $1400 U.S. dollars a day for two drivers, two shooters, a translator, an armored SUV and a second vehicle, which he thought was a steal under the circumstances. Most of the filming came from hand-held cameras; much of it from the windows of the SUV or in isolated apartments or alleys. Even getting from one block to the next in 2006—before the surge—was difficult, and Alvi found that talking to ordinary Iraqis at that time was impossible. They trusted no one, and the western reporters hid in the hotels, sending Iraqi camera crews out to get footage and report back, whereupon the brave journalists would do voice-overs as if they were there.

The most amazing aspect of “Heavy Metal in Baghdad” is that, however representative or unrepresentative Acrassicauda was, they were hardly a jihadist anti-western band. Under Saddam, merely “head-banging” could land you in jail! Acrassicauda sported “Metallica” and “Slipknot” t-shirts; learned their music from American and British metal bands (whom they loved); listened to bootleg American tapes; and flat-out admitted, “we’re not a politic [sic] band. . . . we stay out of politics . . . .” Firas noted “I don’t give a f –k about the news. . . . I’m trying my best to get out of the country [to where] I can have peace.” When Alvi first contacted the group, Saddam Hussein was still in power, and the band members recalled that they were only allowed to play a concert if they wrote a special song to Saddam, which they did. It had “shit lyrics” they agreed: “Following our leader Saddam Hussein, we’ll make them fall, drive them insane.” Come to think of it, the lyrics in Van Hagar weren’t all that terrific, either. By the way, the band’s name, Acrassicauda, is Latin for “black scorpion.”

Indeed, the absence of a jihadist or even Islamic tone to anything was stunning. Instead of praying before playing (as many Christian bands do), Acrassicauda gave a rousing football-type cheer: “Acrassicauda—let’s go!” Firas observes “I’m Sunni, my wife is Shiite,” and suspected “someone else” was causing the violence in Iraq,” though he didn’t name the U.S. “I got nothing against religion,” he said, “I’m a Muslim but I’m not that straight.” During the entire movie, there was not a single Allahu Ackbar or discussion of jihad, paradise, the Great Satan, or holy war. Firas also observed that “people” came into Iraq from “Turkey, Iran, everywhere,” by which he meant al-Qaeda terrorists.

In the end, Alvi’s would-be story of an Iraqi heavy metal band ends up like that of most American rock bands. Unable to practice or play (or, in the U.S., pay the bills), Acrassicauda goes to Damascus where they eventually break up. Perhaps one lesson of “Heavy Metal in Baghdad” is that without the USO, it’s damned tough to have “normal” entertainment in war zones, regardless of the style of music being offered. But Alvi perhaps could have gone much deeper with the more important theme of how these Muslims looked so much like American Christian youth who had fallen away from the church for secular pursuits. And still more important, there is an unexplored question of whose culture is more powerful—the fundamentalist Islam of the mullahs or the freedom, in whatever its lyrics and musical form, embodied in the West.

Heavy Metal in Baghdad (2008), Produced by Eddie Moretti and Suroosh Alvi, directed by Eddie Moretti and Suroosh Alvi, VBS/Vice Films (148 minutes).

Oh, it’s not because the content of CN9 will be vacuous, foul and outright evil, though it is.  It’s because no one in Tinseltown thinks the movie will make any money.

So what is CN9 about?  Well, it appears to mix condemnation of the Iraq War, a healthy dose of gay sex, naturally, a plot to assassinate George W. Bush.  Sounds less like a hit movie than the agenda for a Daily Kos staff meeting.

According to New York Magazine, which apparently got a copy of the script, a future archeologist finds video that tells the story of – get this – “Butch,” a studly, kill-crazy Army soldier in Iraq who falls in love with an Iraqi dude and then consummates said love in graphic fashion.  Butch and his special friend then decide to kill President Bush for some reason. 

I think smell an Oscar. 

Now, if a council of renowned idiots had gathered together with a mandate to conceive a project of the least possible interest to the American movie-going public they could not have come up with a more potent combination of box office poison.  Well, maybe if it starred Ashton Kutcher. But CN9, with its apparent advocacy of murdering the President because the Wachowskis don’t like his politics, is simply vile, and we are not going to simply pretend that’s A-okay.

Perhaps the Wachowski Siblings are trying to make a point instead of a buck, though it’s not clear what that point is.  They are known for their, um, unique sensibilities.  Larry, who now goes by “Lana,” fell in with a dominatrix named – wait for it – Ilsa Strix and apparently decided that being a dude wasn’t quite cutting it anymore.  There’s some controversy about how far s/he’s gone in s/his quest, but from the available photos of the reclusive artist it certainly seems that s/he’s gone from being an ugly straight man to an ugly lesbian. 

Let’s explore the Wachowski oeuvre for a moment.  They first worked on – shock! – comic books then made a movie, Bound.  This deadly dull lesbian-themed crime flick is vastly over-praised, mostly by lonely dudes who think that stumbling onto a late-night Cinemax nudie flick after their mom goes to bed qualifies as “getting some.”

Of course, they are best known for The Matrix, which was terrible but watchable if you turn the sound off so the inane, portentous dialogue couldn’t ruin all the pretty gunfights.  Look, The Matrix is about the dumbest movie ever made, but it’s sure fun to watch, not least for the unbelievable seriousness with which it takes itself.  They get props for making a flick that you gotta finish watching if you come across it on AMC on a Sunday afternoon and are too hung-over to stretch out and grab the remote.

Then they made the sequel, The Matrix Reloaded.  TMR is pretty bad, and less fun than the original, but it’s not the cinematic war crime that is The Matrix: Revolutions.  How bad is Revolutions?  Just behold the unspeakable rave scene – “Hey, the alien monsters are coming!  Quick, turn up the techno and let’s dance!  Badly!” 

—–

With V For Vendetta, they took the next step in indulging in their delusions of oppression by an all-powerful society that just doesn’t “get” the hip non-conformist heroes.  You know, like the Wachowski’s themselves, who have suffered unendurable repression by a society that, well, gives them all the fame and money anyone could ever ask for.

In Vendetta, their solution is to blow up Parliament.  In CN9, it’s to kill President Bush.  It’s a wonder that in their Speed Racer movie the climax didn’t feature Dick Cheney being run over.  Or Chim Chim getting it on with Racer X.

According to NYMag.com, “One rep we spoke to tells us that the Iraq movie will ‘never, ever’ be made by a studio — but points out that with the money the Wachowskis pocketed from the Matrix films, they could easily self- or co-finance CN9 independently.”  Maybe they should contact the NEA about a grant, since apparently no one in Hollywood wants to put up a chunk of the $20 million estimated budget for what promises to be the Ishtar for a new generation.  

Regardless, you can be sure that it’s not because the Hollywoodoids don’t want to be associated with a movie that trashes American troops as violent, horny lunatics and sanctions the murder of the Commander-in-Chief.   That’s all fine and dandy.   No, they won’t fund it because they know that we – the people who buy the tickets – don’t want to be associated with that kind of movie.

In liberal Hollywood, that’s what passes for principle.