Images "Redacted"

[Jolie Rouge]

Brian De Palma is tediously consistent if nothing else.

His Vietnam war fiction "Casualties of War" portrayed American soldiers as rapist thugs merely bidding their time for the opportunity to commit inhuman acts against a bucolic population.

Unlike "Casualties," which was filmed decades after the war in Southeast Asia, De Palma's new film, "Redacted" is an admitted attempt by De Palma to sway world opinion against Americans soldiers while they are actively engaged in combat. http://ca.today.reuters.com/news/new...archived=False

A new film about the real-life rape and killing of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl by U.S. soldiers who also murdered her family stunned the Venice festival, with shocking images that left some viewers in tears.

"Redacted," by U.S. director Brian De Palma, is one of at least eight American films on the war in Iraq due for release in the next few months and the first of two movies on the conflict screening in Venice's main competition.

Inspired by one of the most serious crimes committed by American soldiers in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, it is a harrowing indictment of the conflict and spares the audience no brutality to get its message across.

De Palma, 66, whose "Casualties of War" in 1989 told a similar tale of abuse by American soldiers in Vietnam, makes no secret of the goal he is hoping to achieve with the film's images, all based on real material he found on the Internet. "The movie is an attempt to bring the reality of what is happening in Iraq to the American people," he told reporters after a press screening.

"The pictures are what will stop the war. One only hopes that these images will get the public incensed enough to motivate their Congressmen to vote against this war," he said.

As noted above, De Palma's film is propaganda to which he proudly admits:

"The pictures are what will stop the war. One only hopes that these images will get the public incensed enough to motivate their Congressmen to vote against this war," he said.

I wonder how this country would have responded if Director John Ford had released a film showing American servicemen raping and killing an innocent Japanese girl in 1943 and murdering her family, instead of the propaganda film December 7.

In 1944, Ford was a commander in the USNR, and watched the June 6, 1944 invasion of Normandy from the USS Plunkett as the destroyer screened troop transports off Omaha Beach, and later landed on sands tinged red with the blood of American soldiers. To this day, most of the film Ford's team of combat cameramen shot on "Bloody Omaha" has never been seen. One may wonder how De Palma would have reacted in such a setting. Would his reaction have been to have noted the sacrifice of America's soldiers, or to vilify them for shooting fair-haired soldiers of the Wehrmacht as their lines collapsed and were overrun?

It seems almost certain that if De Palma covered the battle for Okinawa in 1945, his predilection for vilifying the American military would no doubt have led him to tell the story of the noble schoolteacher who led her classroom of children over the cliffs to their deaths at Humeyuri-no-to, and the bloodthirsty Marines they escaped from into death.

Of course, De Palma isn't making movies during World War Two vilifying America’s soldiers; he's making movies during a current war vilifying Americans soldiers.

What would once have been quickly identified as treasonous or seditious in past conflicts is now something that appears to be quite fashionable among certain aspects of our society.

De Palma and like-minded souls in Venice, Cannes, and Santa Barbara, of course, feel brave for making a film that portrays the young Midwestern privates and southern specialists and street-smart second lieutenants from Jersey on the frontlines as savages, capable and yearning to unleash unbearable cruelty.

As sweat drips in the eyes of soldiers and Marines as they attempt to bring peace to a land that has rarely known it, their enemies will be watching pirated and crudely-dubbed bootlegs of Redacted in training camps in Syria, in mosques in Saudi Arabia, and in homes throughout the Arab world, who already take a suspicious view of the American soldier in Iraq.

We will not see the pictures that would actually win the war, of an Iraqi father wrapping his arms around a suicide bomber to keep him from entering a mosque, or of the Iraqi interpreter who proudly dreams of becoming an American Marine. We won't see American ssaving Iraqi lives, or Iraqis saving American lives, or the brutality of those we fight.

Those, you see, are the pictures that Brian de Palma has redacted.


Blast From the Past: I'd almost forgotten. Venice was a pretty smart choice for De Palma, as the Italians have quite the fetish for dishonest anti-war propaganda. http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/133955.php


Is it just me or does DePalma have a penchant for films involving the rape of young girls? I bet poor John Ford is turning over in his grave.

It's despicable to see what De Palma is doing. It's totally irresponsible and only for political gain on his own part. He would be happy if we left now, Al Qaeda moved back in killed and terrorized the iraqi people with their taliban style rule.

What he's doing is sick and wrong.

Out of the 1000s of atrocities committed in Iraq on a daily basis- the mass murders, the car bombs, the assassinations, the rapes, the beheadings, the tortures, the 10s of thousands slaughtered by jihadis and ex-baathist thugs,

Only when the atrocity is done by an AMERICAN SOLDIER does it get his attention, and justify dumping millions into a feature film

Yeah, he cares about Iraqis.

His selective outrage is laughable if it wasnt disgusting

He isnt against America. He's for the other side.

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[Jolie Rouge]

Venice films look at Iraq war horrors
By COLLEEN BARRY, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 3 minutes ago

VENICE, Italy - Two Hollywood films that take up the politics of the Iraq war grew out of the conviction that the American public was not getting the full picture of the violence.

Oscar-winning director Paul Haggis' "In the Valley of Elah," starring Tommy Lee Jones and Charlize Theron, focuses on the psychological scars that haunt returning soldiers and provides a powerful commentary on how society is treating veterans and their families.

Brian De Palma says he wants to stop the war with his film, "Redacted" by exposing a wider audience to images of horror that he says are not being delivered by the mainstream media.

With Vietnam, "we saw pictures of the destruction and the sorrow of the people who were traumatized. We saw the soldiers ... being brought back in body bags. We see none of that in this war," De Palma told a news conference Friday. One of his previous films, "Casualties of War," dealt with the Vietnam war.

The title, "Redacted," is a term meaning edited that is often used when sensitive material is expunged, or blacked out, from a document.

De Palma's film, inspired by material he found on the Internet, is shot on video to present the film as though it were a series of clips that could be downloaded to your computer. Inspired by actual events, the movie tells the fictionalized story of a group of young soldiers who rape a 15-year-old Iraqi girl, kill her family and then shoot her.

De Palma said he wanted to examine how the soldiers had gone so wrong. The movie doesn't present the judicial resolution, but it does show one soldier who came forward being treated with hostility by the military, in contrast to the more comfortable interrogations of the two main perpetrators.

In reality, four soldiers have been convicted in the case that inspired the film and handed sentences of up to 110 years in prison. A fifth man, who left the Army before being charged, faces a federal death penalty trial. The case has received wide media coverage.

The filmmakers had to negotiate a "legal minefield" to present real events as fiction, De Palma said, and the film opens with a disclaimer, which is slowly blacked out. The final scene is a montage of real-life photographs of Iraqi war dead, including maimed and dead women and children, their eyes blacked out on the advice of lawyers because the film used actors and is not a documentary.

"The irony of 'Redacted' is that it was redacted," De Palma said.

While De Palma said he wants the film to help stop the war, Haggis said he tried to keep his own well-known anti-war politics off the screen.

"I felt I owed it to the audience to put that aside, to tell the story ... and let them decide," Haggis told reporters Saturday ahead of his movie's premiere.

Haggis said he also was driven by an absence from the Iraqi war of the sort of images that shocked the public into opposing the Vietnam war.

"I think that when that doesn't happen, it's the responsibility of the artist to ask those questions," said Haggis, who won an Oscar for 2002's "Crash."

In the film, Jones plays Hank Deerfield, the father of a U.S. soldier who disappears just days after returning from a tour in Iraq. A former soldier himself, he drives across the country to find out what happened to his son and learns hard truths about his son's Iraq tour, while challenging some of his own long-held ideals. Charlize Theron plays a New Mexico police detective drawn into the investigation.

Both movies explore how exposure to war — both its horrors and its endless tense hours of patrol and manning roadblocks — desensitizes soldiers to violence, and how that triggers even more tragedy.

Haggis' film takes a very hard look at how society is responding, including in a tight subplot. Early on, the wife of an Iraqi veteran reports to local police her husband's violent drowning of the family's Doberman in the bathtub. Theron's detective refers the woman to the local U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, saying "crimes against dogs are particularly hard to prosecute."

Later, she answers a call where the woman, too, has been drowned in the bathtub.

Inevitably, the film is political, acknowledged Haggis. "All films are political when your country is at war," he said.

"Redacted," which opens in the United States in December, premiered Friday here, and "In the Valley of Elah," making its U.S. opening in coming weeks, premiered Saturday.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070902/...kOD2I.ZbKs0NUE



While Promoting Anti-war Movie, Brian De Palma Claimed Rapes by Military 'Reality' in Iraq
By Lynn Davidson
September 1, 2007

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/lynn-da...apes-military-

Brian De Palma wants to stop the war, and he thinks his new movie about an Iraqi girl's rape can help, regardless of the consequences or the rights and privacy of Iraqis. In a Friday August 31 Reuters article, De Palma asserted “The movie is an attempt to bring the reality of what is happening in Iraq to the American people. Sky News online picked up the thread that he hoped his film "Redacted" will alert people about “these horrible things things that are happening, this horrible war that I am financing as an American citizen.” http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/...282351,00.html

De Palma's comments were made Friday, at the Venice Film Festival, after showing the movie that is supposedly based on the rape of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl from Mahmudiya who was then killed and her house set on fire. You know, every day stuff in the military.

“Redacted” is a do-over for De Palma, who made the same movie back in 1989 when it was called “Casualties of War” and starred Michael J. Fox. This is De Palma's second try at the “American military rapes indigenous girl and everyone laughs, but the sensitive guy feels sorry and tells; someone has nightmares, and the military is still bad” storyline. At least it wasn't “The Bonfire of the Vanities 2.”

Reuters noted De Palma's belief that if only people could see the real war photos and hear the real stories that aren't censored by the “corporate establishment,” people would simply turn against the war, thus ending it. No thought to Al Qaeda in Iraq and the insurgents or even Iran—apparently it will all just “stop” (emphasis mine throughout):

The pictures are what will stop the war, and if we can get these pictures in front of a mass audience, and get these stories in front of a mass audience, maybe we'll have some effect.

Reuters laid out a series of statements that showed how stupid and ill-informed he thinks Americans who support the war are by claiming they don't know the “truth” and just need his help to understand:

“It's all out there on the Internet, you can find it if you look for it, but it's not in the major media. The media is now really part of the corporate establishment," he said.

Right, everything on the Internet is true, in fact, there's a Nigerian prince who needs my help right now.

De Palma claimed that the mainstream media are not telling the whole story by withholding graphic images and in the process divulged his storyline isn't as “real” as he claimed:

"When I went out to find the pictures, I said (to the media) give me the pictures you can't publish," he said, adding that because of legal dangers he too had to "edit" the material.

"Everything that is in the movie is based on something I found that actually happened. But once I had put it in the script I would get a note from a lawyer saying you can't use that because it's real and we may get sued," De Palma said.

"So I was forced to fictionalize things that were actually real."

The media ignored this telling statement that he “fictionalized” the “things that were actually real” in a movie that is supposed to be the “reality” of what's going on in Iraq What does that leave?

Also, lawyers tend to worry more about being sued for libel and slander than factual events. They worry about Hollywood movies making claims that are not true. The truth is a defense against lawsuits, but random Internet rantings and the Jesse MacBeths and the Scott Beauchamps of the world make lawyers sweat.

Now De Palma showed that he is an Ugly American who doesn't care about the rights and privacy of people in a foreign country and the law:

The film, shot in Jordan with a little known cast, ends with a series of photographs of Iraqi civilians killed and their faces blacked out for legal reasons.

"I think that's terrible because now we have not even given the dignity of faces to this suffering people," De Palma said.

Because nothing says dignity like a Brian De Palma movie.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femme_Fatale_(film)

Other "sensitive' films by De Palma :
Murder a la Mod • Greetings • The Wedding Party • Hi, Mom! • Get to Know Your Rabbit • Sisters • Phantom of the Paradise • Obsession • Carrie • The Fury • Home Movies • Dressed to Kill • Blow Out • Scarface • Body Double • Wise Guys • The Untouchables • Casualties of War • The Bonfire of the Vanities • Raising Cain • Carlito's Way • Mission: Impossible • Snake Eyes • Mission to Mars • Femme Fatale • The Black Dahlia • Capone Rising

[Jolie Rouge]

Pat Dollard spotlights the man behind “Redacted.”
http://patdollard.com/2007/09/02/the...-in-harms-way/

Billionaire Mark Cuban has decided to put all of his weight behind a campaign to smear US troops in Iraq as “monsters’. Cuban has decided that De Palma’s film “Redacted” must be seen as the cornerstone of his and De Palma’s self-declared anti-victory campaign against America and her troops fighing in Iraq. Cuban’s company Magnolia Pictures will be bringing this propganda campaign to a theater near you this winter. According to a source close to Cuban, the decision for Magnolia to develop, finance and distribute the film was personally made by Çuban. Cuban has a full producer credit on the film, and DePalma shot it on HiDef video at Cuban’s request, in order for it to qualify as fodder for Cuban’s hi-def cable channel. So far neither he or DePalma have explained how they can be “bringing the truth of the Iraq war to the American people”, as Louie DePalma has said, when neither of them have ever been to Iraq, filmed any of “Redacted” in Iraq, or spent one minute with any soldier in Iraq. Clearly they are only bringing you their imagined propagandists’ reality of Iraq. Both had the opportunity to go, both declined. They have chosen the coward’s path in a quest for legitimacy as spokesmen for the Iraq war, and as such both have failed in that quest. Indeed, they are left standing as laughingstocks. Their reach has exceeded their grasp. Cuban is a jet-set, armchair “Iraq Truther” who made sure not to have his private jet stop anywhere near Iraq. But he and DePalma are more than anxious to bring you the “reality of the Iraq war”. LMFAO.

(In case you haven’t heard of him, billionaire Cuban owns the Dallas Mavericks and supports the campaign against Global Warming by travelling in his private Gulf Stream V jet. He also decided to distribute the 9-11 paranoid conspiracy “Truther” film, “Loose Change”.)

DePalma said that going in it was his intention to make a film that would nauseate the American people, and thereby lead to a US withdrawal from Iraq. Well the only way for him to pull that off is if his film makes the case that the anomolous rape it fictionalizes is not actually an anomoly, but a “typical” snapshot of the US military’s behavior. In short, he would have to make his “troops-as-monsters” conceit appear to be typical of the troops, not atypical. This reveals a desire to create something that is nothing short of a willful and intentional smear built upon a lie. It also means that he decided not to look at Iraq for what it was, but to find something - anything - in it that would allow him to advance his propaganda campaign. Well Louie DePalma gave the game away when he confessed his excitement at his initial discovery of the rape story: “I knew I had a story!”. Now if that doesn’t mean “A story to suit my propaganda interests!”, then what does it mean?

The best defense DePalma has been able to muster about the lack of direct military reality in his film is “I had plenty of real stuff to put in but I didn’t put it in, and can’t show it to you to prove it, because my lawyers won’t let me”. That kind of bullshit pr spin may fly in Hollywood, but it isn’t flying here on earth. If you’ve got the goods, Louie, show them. It would appear quite clear why you haven’t already.

None of the troops in Mr. DePalma’s film are real. They are as imaginary as he and Mr. Cuban’s balls.

Close to a year ago, Daily Kos ran a featured post declaring that it was time to attack the troops if the anti-victory movement was to succeed. Clearly DePalma and Cuban took the cue.





Debbie Schlussel has more.
http://www.debbieschlussel.com/archi...e_directo.html


Jack Murtha gives the troops-as-monsters movie two thumbs up.
http://today.reuters.com/news/articl...rpc=22&sp=true


You want reality? Don’t go to Hollyweird.

Watch this instead: a rough cut of former Marine/blogger/documentarian/embed J.D. Johannes’ newest documentary giving you “a taste of what it is like when Al Qaida attempts to over run a small outpost.”

http://www.outsidethewire.com/blog/o...ger-close.html

[Jolie Rouge]

Redacted features a recycled plot?
September 5, 2007

Let’s play a trivia game: I’ll give you the plot, you tell me the movie. Here’s the plot:

During war, a girl is taken from her village by five American soldiers. Four of the soldiers rape her, but the fifth refuses. The young girl is killed. The fifth soldier is determined that justice will be done. The film is more about the realities of war, rather than this single event.

If you answered Redacted, the controversial new film by Brian DePalma and Mark Cuban, you’re half right. It turns out that Cuban, who financed and produced the DePalma-directed film, might want to have a word with his director for coughing up a recycled plot from 1989’s Casualties of War. That film starred Michael J. Fox as a sergeant in Vietnam who stood up to his evil superior, played by Hugo Chavez’s biggest fan, Sean Penn, after the latter led a group of rogue US troops on a rape and pillage quest reminiscent of the armies of Jenjis Khan. Here’s a clip, with the appropriate language alert.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltAgb4Hda-Q&eurl=

Here’s Redacted’s plot summary:
http://www.comingsoon.net/films.php?id=22892

Inspired by real events and the ever-emerging realities of an on-going war, “Redacted” explores the consequences of placing a group of young American soldiers into a morally ambiguous universe. Pushed to their very limits, the film portrays the tragic events surrounding a US army squad that targets and persecutes an innocent Iraqi girl and her family, culminating in a brutal rape and murder. The film addresses the innocent casualties of war and reveals the general helplessness surrounding the war in Iraq. A fictional version of the truth, “Redacted” forces the viewer to question the filters through which we see and accept events in our world.

Ultimately, “Redacted” begs the question: Once we know the truth, what is the value of war and the worth of all its tragedies?

And Casualties of War:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097027/plotsummary

During the Vietnam war, a girl is taken from her village by five American soldiers. Four of the soldiers rape her, but the fifth refuses. The young girl is killed. The fifth soldier is determined that justice will be done. The film is more about the realities of war, rather than this single event.

Unpopular war, soldiers raping and murdering local girl, one troops stands up to all the bad ones around him: That describes both Redacted and Casualties of War. They’re basically the same film, made by the same director, 18 years apart and set in different wars. The aging DePalma has become such a hack that he’s now stealing from his younger, more talented self.


What was that famous William Randolph Hearst quote about the Spanish-American War? Oh yeah — “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” Brian DePalma has flipped that around a bit — “You furnish the war, and I’ll furnish the enemy agitprop.”

http://hotair.com/archives/2007/09/0...recycled-plot/

[Jolie Rouge]

Dennis Miller on Redacted
posted at 1:15 pm on November 16, 2007

http://hotair.com/archives/2007/11/1...r-on-redacted/

This is from The O’Reilly Factor Wednesday. Dennis Miller tears Mark Cuban apart for financing and distributing the troop-smearing Brian De Palma film, Redacted. He also makes a great point about Hollywood’s loyalty. It isn’t to outsider moneybags like Cuban: Hollywood is only loyal to their money, and only as long as it’s useful to be loyal to that.

“Mark Cuban is in too deep now. They’re gonna lay the First Amendment on him if he tries to roll this back, if he tries to redact Redacted. And the fact is, he has enough zeros after his name that these guys are gonna befriend him like Mr. Drysdale throwing a dinner party for Jed Clampett. But when it serves their purposes they’re gonna throw him under the wheels and I hope he gets ready for that. De Palma will turn on him in a second.”

Redacted is scoring terribly on Rotten Tomatoes and is losing money faster than a Kennedy in a strip joint. If nothing else gets Cuban’s attention, maybe that last fact will.

If Mark Cuban really is interested in depicting the war in Iraq fairly, he ought to finance a film about the al Qaeda slaughterhouses that US troops found and documented during the battle of Fallujah. Those have been redacted from the mainstream press for years. http://junkyardblog.net/archives/200...ress-is-hi.php

[Jolie Rouge]

Beheaded for wearing “western-style trousers”

A husband and wife. Beheaded in front of their children in Iraq. No, not by American soldiers. By jihadis outraged that the coule did not pray and that the father wore “western-style trousers.”

Hey, why doesn’t Hollywood make movies about atrocities like this:
http://www.reuters.com/article/gc05/...62541420071123

Three suspected al Qaeda militants, including two sisters, beheaded their uncle and his wife, forcing the couple’s children to watch, Iraqi police said on Friday.

The militants considered that school guard Youssef al-Hayali was an infidel because he did not pray and wore western-style trousers, they told police interrogators after being arrested in Diyala province northwest of Baghdad.

The three cousins executed Hayali and his wife Zeinab Kamel at the all-boys school in Jalawlah in Diyala province, village police chief Captain Ahmed Khalifa said.

No further details were available.

Sunni Arab communities across Iraq have been turning against al Qaeda because of its indiscriminate killings and strict interpretation of Islam, which includes a ban on smoking in public and forcing schoolgirls to wear veils.

Sunni Arab tribal sheikhs have been organizing their young men into neighborhood police units to drive out al Qaeda, a practice which U.S. and Iraqi officials say has helped bring down violence levels across Iraq.

Maybe Brian DePalma will consider this a story that deserves to be told?

[ilovecats]

Beheaded for wearing “western-style trousers”

A husband and wife. Beheaded in front of their children in Iraq. No, not by American soldiers. By jihadis outraged that the coule did not pray and that the father wore “western-style trousers.”

Hey, why doesn’t Hollywood make movies about atrocities like this:
http://www.reuters.com/article/gc05/...62541420071123





Maybe Brian DePalma will consider this a story that deserves to be told?

Maybe Brian DePalma will consider this a story that deserves to be told?
After what I just read(must have missed this thread)I doubt it.