Word: nam
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...weeks. It has captivated intellectuals, movie buffs and urban grunts -- astonishing, across-the-board appeal for a hellacious sermon. It has ignited a fire storm of debate, from political swamis and Viet vets, on its merits as art and history. It is the fountainhead for a freshet of Viet Nam exploration: We Can Keep You Forever, a BBC documentary about the mystery surrounding MIAs, will be aired Wednesday in 21 U.S. cities, and this spring will see two new movies set in Viet Nam, The Hanoi Hilton and Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket. In a movie season of Trekkies...
...children on their shoulders -- G.I. Joes, big brothers to the kids whose village they have just destroyed -- and the soldier who bashed a man's head takes a tourist snapshot of the holocaust. More than any other film, Platoon gives the sense -- all five senses -- of fighting in Viet Nam. You can wilt from the claustrophobic heat of this Rousseauvian jungle; feel the sting of the leeches as they snack on Chris' flesh; hear all at once the chorus of insects, an enemy's approaching footsteps on the green carpet and Chris' heartbeat on night patrol. The film does...
...opened, Hollywood had thought the picture a matter of indifference. It had taken Stone ten hungry years to get the project going. "For two years in the late '70s," says Producer Martin Bregman, "I banged on every door in California to get it done, but at that time Viet Nam was still a no-no." Tom Berenger, the film's showcase psychopath, imagines that "it must have made Stone feel like an old man, carrying the project around for so long. He said it broke his heart." Then something interesting happened: people went for Platoon. Most critics were impressed, many...
...industry, Stone's old colleagues and fellow directors have laid on their benedictions. Woody Allen calls it a "fine movie, an excellent movie." Says Steven Spielberg: "It is more than a movie; it's like being in Viet Nam. Platoon makes you feel you've been there and never want to go back." James Woods, who starred in Stone's previous film, Salvador, calls him an "artist whose vision transcends politics. Everyone from the ex-hippie to the ex-grunt can be moved by Platoon. And his passion isn't bogus -- he doesn't play Imagine...
...Platoon. In the far-right Washington Times' Insight magazine, John Podhoretz castigates it as "one of the most repellent movies ever made in this country." The film, he says, "blackens the name and belittles the sacrifice of every man and woman who served the United States in the Viet Nam War (including Stone)." Politicians are eager to return the salvos. Former Senator Gary Hart, aware of the electorate's fondness for presidential candidates with movie credentials, campaigns for the film by urging that "every teenager in America should see Platoon...