Posted by
Doctor Poddy on Sunday, August 10, 2008 8:24:45 PM
George Clooney loves Obama.
So according the the
UKTelegraph:
“'George is pro-Palestinian. And he is also urging Barack to withdraw
unconditionally from Iraq if he wins,” the source told the Mail on Sunday.
“His hope of becoming America’s first black President depends heavily on
winning over conservative voters and it would be suicidal for him to be
perceived as a tool of a Hollywood Leftie, which is how they regard George.”
Mr Clooney, who once famously declared that he could not go into politics
himself because he had “slept with too many women, done too many drugs and
been to too many parties” has been said to be giving Mr Obama image advice
and tips on public speaking.
One of Mr Clooney’s trusted acquaintances said: “George is a master at
crafting his own image and he is helping Obama to hone his image both
domestically and abroad,” adding: “He has tried to keep the true extent of
their involvement out of the Press because he is frightened of alienating
voters.”
Then there are the news stories that Clooney plans to hold a "fund raiser" in Switzerland with the Hollywood Elites.
And the story that he plans to make a movie about Osama Ben Laden's driver.
Yet the anti war movies have been bombs, and those that stress honor and fighting evil tend to be fantasy films. Is this because fantasy films are a more accurate way to frame the eternal questions of good and evil, or is it because only those that do oppose evil become hits?
Klavan in the WSJ writes:
There seems to me no question that the Batman film
"The Dark Knight," currently breaking every box office record in
history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral
courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror
and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting
terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes
has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency,
certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency
is past.
And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral
equivalence between a free society -- in which people sometimes make
the wrong choices -- and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The
former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must
be hounded to the gates of Hell.
But where are the films about the good guys?
There is an old Pauly Shore comedy In the Army, about a bunch of California dudes who become "water boys" in the National Guard, and then get called up in a war. It's full of profanity, and jokes, but the point of the movie is that the dudes actually do become heroic in the end...
Yet one cannot envision a similar film being made today. why not? Because the thought that people can suffer terrible things but manage to cope is taboo. The thought that ordinary people can do heroic things is taboo. And of course the thought that there are bad guys worse than the US is also taboo.
Yet the isolation of Hollywood from the mainstream suggests that they are digging their own graves (hint to investors: Don't invest there).