Word: filming
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...same Hollywood blackout.) But even when some directors grew a spine and attempted to dramatize the effects of the American adventure on its soldiers (In the Valley of Elah) and civilians (Lions for Lambs) or on U.S. foreign policy (Rendition), the response was tepid. No Middle East war film has earned even $50 million at the domestic box office, and the one that came closest, The Kingdom, was a gung-ho action picture. Nor has the public's apathy abated. The Best Picture, Director and Screenplay awards that The Hurt Locker won on Oscar night served only as a gigantic...
Maybe Green Zone will be the breakthrough. Set in the first months of the U.S. occupation, the film has a churning urgency and a fierce verisimilitude, courtesy of director Paul Greengrass (United 93) and cinematographer Barry Ackroyd (The Hurt Locker). Shot in Spain, Morocco and the U.K., the film straps you into a Baghdad state of mind. It's hell at 130°, with dust and dread tarping the streets as if to smother anyone who'd attempt to escape. Murderous intent abounds on both the U.S. and Saddam-loyalist sides; life is cheap, and the stakes are high...
...Greg Kinnear); gets mixed signals from Lawrie Dayne (Amy Ryan), a journalist who fed her readers government misinformation about WMD; and finds an ally in Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson), a grizzled old CIA hand. He also gets help from a reluctant Iraqi informant named Freddy (Khalid Abdalla, playing the film's richest character) in pursuing an elusive Saddamist general, al-Rawi (Igal Naor), who may hold the secret to the mystery. The viewer is free to infer that Poundstone is L. Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, and Dayne is the New York Times' Judith Miller. (Brown...
Greengrass might say you have to twist the facts to tell the truth, and his film does get to the heart of obfuscation in the early occupation of Iraq. Besides, in movies, entertainment trumps ethics. Green Zone has a fullness of character, a density of detail, a cunning mystery plot and so much stuff blowing up that audiences might not realize they're seeing an Iraq-war film. They'll be too scared stiff enjoying themselves...
...phrase on Twitter's real-time "trending topics" list. When an unidentified woman Kanye'd the Best Documentary Short director, barging onstage and taking the mike as he gave his acceptance speech, viewers were baffled - unless they were following Twitter, whose hive mind quickly deduced that she was the film's producer, kept from accepting the award after a falling...