Flags of Our Fathers

[dws1982]

Don't know about Jeff Wells, but Poland is probably in his forties, based on his appearances on Ebert's show during the Siskel/Roeper guest host period.

[Sonic Youth]

This is turning flat weird. The guy over at Comingsoon.net -- not a tough critic by ANY standard -- gives the film a 5/10. Yet the published mainstream reviews, as we see here, continue to be very good/excellent. It's as if different films are being screened for the critics and for net-izens. Will any legit critic (Dargis/Scott? Edelstein? Denby/Lane?) take the skeptics' side?

Not the Village Voice. Foundas loved it.

I said earlier that it may be a generational divide because my impression is that the older critics work for print and the younger ones work online. But I say this with absolutely no knowledge of the ages of Jeff Wells and David Polland - or, for that matter, Scott Foundas. It definitely looks like a hierarchical divide between the two mediums, although to define it as such is veering dangerously into snob territory.

Or it could just be the luck of the draw.

[Mister Tee]

This is turning flat weird. The guy over at Comingsoon.net -- not a tough critic by ANY standard -- gives the film a 5/10. Yet the published mainstream reviews, as we see here, continue to be very good/excellent. It's as if different films are being screened for the critics and for net-izens. Will any legit critic (Dargis/Scott? Edelstein? Denby/Lane?) take the skeptics' side?

This is all making it VERY difficult to Oscar-handicap the film.

[dws1982]

Richard Corliss raved about it in Time Magazine, but I don't have the full article at my disposal right now.

A rave from Rolling Stone:

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If you like movies that spew clichés, Clint Eastwood will not make your day. Since winning his first directing Oscar, for 1992’s Unforgiven, Eastwood has been on a creative roll with the unsparing Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby (Oscar number two). At seventy-six, he’s doing risky work while his contemporaries retire or, worse, conform. Even when the plot of his new Flags of Our Fathers steers him toward Saving Private Ryan rah-rah and “Greatest Generation” sentiment, Eastwood holds the line.
Flags of Our Fathers is a film of awesome power and blistering provocation. An amazing feat, since Eastwood is tied to the nonfiction best seller that James Bradley wrote about his father, John “Doc” Bradley, the last survivor among the six soldiers who raised the flag on Iwo Jima.

The bloody 1945 battle on Japan’s volcanic island left 6,800 Americans dead, but the public was rallied by a photo, taken by Joe Rosenthal, that became an iconic emblem of World War II: five Marines and one Navy corpsman (Bradley) planting Old Glory on top of Mount Suribachi in the midst of the carnage. It was the second flag-raising that day, but the only one caught on camera. Eastwood hits you hard with that image. As the soldiers struggle to get the flag aloft, you can almost hear cheering.

Actually, you do hear cheering. The scene, a shocker, is a re-creation of the photo staged for an enthusiastic crowd at Chicago’s Soldier Field in the spring of 1945 as part of a fund-raising drive. As the camera pulls back, we see that the mountain is fake. The only reality is the men in the uniform: Doc Bradley (Ryan Phillippe), Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford) and Ira Hayes (Adam Beach). Since the other flag-raisers (Franklin Sousley, Harlon Block and Michael Strank) died in battle, the government exploits the surviving trio to drum up money and bolster flagging support for the war in its final months. No longer asked to be heroes in battle but to play heroes Hollywood-style, the men embark on a nationwide tour. It’s pure showbiz. Hide the truth, pump the myth.

It nearly destroys them. Gagnon, 19, adjusts better to fame than the others, mistakenly believing that being a good propagandist will win him jobs after the war. Bradford (Happy Endings) deftly uncovers the doubt lurking under Gagnon’s surface charm. As Bradley, Phillippe (building on strong supporting turns in Crash, Gosford Park and Igby Goes Down) provides the quiet emotional center the story needs. Eastwood wants the reticent Bradley to be our eyes into the film. Phillippe draws us in with a nuanced portrait of a man who bravely administers first aid to soldiers under fire but can’t find words for the horror he’s seen, including the death of his friend Iggy (Jamie Bell). Phillippe’s hauntingly implosive performance makes it clear why Bradley hardly spoke of the war to his family in later years, prompting his son to write the book.

As Hayes, Beach (Windtalkers) burns up the screen, finding the soul of his tormented character. He’s a lock for a supporting-Oscar nomination. Hayes, a Pima Indian bruised by racism in and out of battle, numbed his pain with booze. He died in 1955, at thirty-two. Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan both covered a song about him: “He died drunk one mornin'/Alone in the land he fought to save/Two inches of water in a lonely ditch/Was a grave for Ira Hayes.” Flags of Our Fathers needed to be a sprawling epic to take in all these stories. The ambitious script by William Broyles Jr. (Jarhead) and Crash Oscar winner Paul Haggis jumps back and forth in time in ways that could have been a jumble if Eastwood wasn’t so adept at cutting a path to what counts. That would be the ferocity of battle, edited by Joel Cox and shot in desaturated hues by Tom Stern to show what Eastwood sees as the brutal darkness of it. That would be the parallels to the Iraq War and the lies being perpetrated in the name of blind patriotism. That would be the honor due the soldiers who fight in the face of death on foreign shores and then face disdain at home.

Right at the start, before the first image, we hear a few bars of a 1940s song, “I’ll Walk Alone.” The voice is a whisper, but the lyrics (“If you call, I'll hear you/No matter how far”) resonate. Eastwood’s film, a fierce attack on wartime hypocrisy and profiteering, is also an indelibly moving salute to the soldiers who don’t deserve to walk alone for following their own sense of duty.

After Flags, Eastwood directed Letters From Iwo Jima, a feature that tells the story from the Japanese side. The film won’t be out till February, but one thing is for damn sure: Eastwood will do it his way. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the gold standard.

[dws1982]

Glenn Whipp from the LA Daily News is on the "Thumbs Up" side:


Saluting Clint Eastwood's 'Flags'

“We like things nice and simple. Good and evil. Heroes and villains. Most of the time, they’re not what we think they are.”

This line of timeless truth can be heard near the beginning of Clint Eastwood’s hauntingly soulful “Flags of Our Fathers,” which examines the mythology and personal costs of heroism. The movie follows the six men featured in the iconic flag-raising photo at Iwo Jima, one of the bloodiest battles fought by America during World War II, focusing on the three survivors and how they dealt with the mantle of “hero” during a subsequent bond-raising tour.

Eastwood’s astounding film, which arrives in theaters Oct. 20, works on a number of levels – it’s a history lesson, war spectacular and compassionate look at the horrors of battle and the how those horrors never leave those who witnessed them.

It’s also a look at how the United States government used Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal’s almost accidental photograph as a way to rally Americans into digging deep to buy bonds to keep the war machine oiled and funded. People who saw Rosenthal’s photo splashed across the front pages thought the flag planting meant victory. The reality: There was still another month of fighting ahead and three of the flag-raisers never made it home.

Eastwood and “Flags” writers Paul Haggis and William Broyles, Jr. don’t make any judgments on the government’s fabricating and myth-making. As one military P.R. guy put it to the flag-raisers: “You don’t want your buddies throwing rocks, do you?” At the same time, the filmmakers don’t shy away from showing the price families and soldiers pay when the truth is steam-rolled in service of a cause.

Talking to Eastwood last weekend, I asked him if he was prepared to have “Flags” connected to the current war in Iraq. “All wars have to be sold,” he replied. “It’s just easier to justify the hypocrisy sometimes.”

The experience of “Flags of Our Fathers” will likely only be deepened when its companion piece, “Letters From Iwo Jima,” comes out next February. “Letters” will tell the Iwo Jima story from the perspective of the Japanese soldiers forced to defend the island to their death. For these young men, the battle ended in one of two ways – being killed by an American or pulling the pin in a grenade and killing yourself.

On its own, “Flags of Our Fathers” continues Eastwood’s run of artistic brilliance. It is a masterpiece of tremendous power and spiritual beauty, a movie not to be missed.

[Sonic Youth]

Print critics love this. Web critics and Sabin, not so much. Could this indicate a generational divide?

Inside the Hero Factory
Clint Eastwood's 'Flags of Our Fathers' asks hard questions about the way governments sell our wars.
By David Ansen
Newsweek

Oct. 23, 2006 issue - Clint Eastwood's tough, smart, achingly sad "Flags of Our Fathers" is about three anointed heroes of World War II—three of the men who appeared, backs to the camera, in the legendary Joe Rosenthal photograph of six soldiers hoisting the American flag on Iwo Jima. It was an image that electrified a nation at war. The military wanted these men to be larger than life to raise desperately needed money for the war effort by selling war bonds. So the government, sensing, as one character says in Eastwood's film, "that a picture can win or lose a war," plucked them off Iwo Jima, where the 35-day battle was still raging (and where the other three men in the photo had been killed), and paraded them in front of cheering crowds. It was all for a good cause, but it was pure PR, and it ate away at the insides of these media-proclaimed heroes, who believed that the men who deserved the glory were the ones who had given their lives.

Watching Eastwood's harrowing film, which raises pointed questions about how heroes, and wars, are packaged and sold, it's hard not to think his movie is a commentary on today. Images of Jessica Lynch pop into your brain. And when Sgt. Mike Strank (Barry Pepper), the unit's leader, is killed by friendly fire, your thoughts turn to Pat Tillman, the ex-football star whose death was initially rewritten to suit the mythical role the military, and the media, had decided he must play. "When people ask me if this movie is applicable to today," Eastwood told NEWSWEEK, "I say, 'Well, you know, everything is ... Everyone's distorting things, just as they distorted them then'."

Eastwood wasn't thinking about Lynch when he re-created Iwo Jima's brutal battles on the black sands of Iceland, but he acknowledges the aptness of the analogy. "That poor girl. She was just a teenager. The military and their publicity people decided she had to be Wonder Woman, gunning down tons of people with her machine gun, when she didn't fire a shot. They desperately wanted her to be that." Eastwood, the former Republican mayor of Carmel, Calif., is no dove, but he does question the premise behind the American undertaking in the Middle East. "I'm not one of those idealistic people who think democracy has to be for everyone," he says. "That's naive on our part. I don't know if they want democracy."

"Flags of Our Fathers," an epic both raw and contemplative, is neither a flag-waving war movie nor a debunking. It's an investigation into the nature of heroism, real and manufactured, and of our deep-seated need to avert our eyes from the horror of war by gazing up at the more comforting vision of the heroic. It ponders the way images are used to manipulate reality. (Eastwood's "Letters From Iwo Jima," which will be released in February, follows the Japanese side of the battle—largely in Japanese, with subtitles.) Working from an intricately structured screenplay by Paul Haggis and William Broyles, Eastwood crosscuts between the present, where the survivors are still haunted by the war's deadliest fight, to the battle for Iwo Jima itself, where more than 20,000 Japanese and 6,821 Americans died, to the banquet halls and football stadiums where Navy Corpsman John (Doc) Bradley (Ryan Phillippe), 19-year-old Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford) and Native American Ira Hayes (Adam Beach) are wined, dined, celebrated—and ultimately discarded.

The most famous member of the trio, Hayes (whose life was made into 1961's "The Outsider," with Tony Curtis), was the most tragic. Subjected to the constant, casual racism of the day, tormented by guilt at being singled out when he believed he should be fighting alongside his buddies, he descends into alcoholism and self-destructs before our eyes. Eastwood's movie arrives at a complex conclusion about the blurry intersection of war and propaganda. Perhaps Winston Churchill expressed the ambivalence best: "In wartime truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies."

The practice of turning wartime exploits into convenient fictions (or warriors into gods) is hardly a recent invention. There's the Iliad, for one. But Achilles, as far as we know, didn't have PR handlers. The great American country-boy celebrity of World War I, Alvin York, was a true hero, but his sharpshooting exploits were wildly embellished in serialized magazine articles. (It's no coincidence that when Gary Cooper immortalized him in 1941's "Sergeant York" we were on the brink of another war.) The deeper into the bloody century we went—as photography, film and television increasingly entered into the equation—the more inextricably the war machine and the public-relations machine became entwined. But if the wheels meshed smoothly in World War II, they ran off the tracks in Vietnam, where the pictures flooding in—self-immolated priests, a naked girl fleeing from a napalm attack—turned a country against the war. The great lesson the military learned was the importance of controlling the images of combat. Hence the heavily sanitized aerial-view depiction of the gulf war, an "impersonal" videogame war waged by mythical "smart bombs." Then came the strategy of "embedding" journalists with the troops in Iraq, which both controlled the reporters' access and made them feel part of the military effort. Images of returning coffins were initially banned.

After the embarrassing revelations of the fictions surrounding Private Lynch—and after the mother of Pat Tillman waged her angry fight against a recalcitrant Pentagon to find out the truth about her son's death—the administration has retreated from the business of selling heroes. The iconic images that were meant to stir a nation, such as the toppling of Saddam's statue, had short shelf lives. Or, in the case of the president's "Mission Accomplished" strut across a battle-ship, they have been used against him.

It hasn't been a conflict in which photographers or network-news producers have captured the "picture that can win or lose a war" in Iraq. It was a shutterbug soldier who thought it would be cool to document the fun and games at Abu Ghraib. What the Pentagon didn't foresee, and couldn't control, was the rise of new media—the unfiltered images popping up on the Web, the mini-DV cams put in the hands of soldiers that emerge in the recent documentary "The War Tapes." We don't see much of the real war on network TV, but the unauthorized documentaries—"The Ground Truth," "Gunner Palace" and many more—come pouring out. Just as more people think that they get a straighter story from Jon Stewart's mock news reports than from traditional outlets, it's been the "unofficial" media that have sabotaged the PR wizards in the Pentagon. The sophistication of the spinners has been matched by the sophistication of a media-savvy public.

It was easier to control the way we looked at war back in the days of "Flags of Our Fathers." Eastwood himself was "raised on '40s war movies," most of which were propaganda. But that was a fight that united us as a nation. Now an administration that seems to create its own reality is discovering that reality bites back.

[Sabin]

Mike D'Angelo agrees with me...
...
...
...
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...54.

In all fairness, that's slightly lower than 'Million Dollar Baby' and slightly higher than 'Mystic River.'

[99-1100896887]

Re an Eastwood-Scorcese rematch:
It will likely be Condon, anyway, so they can split the vote.

[Sabin]

Snore.

I find myself barely able to address the story in 'Flags of Our Fathers'. It's such a "war movie". It could very easily have been made 50 years about by Fred Zinneman, and (at the risk of sounding like David Poland) it does NOT feel like an Eastwood movie. Or at least only in parts. His elegant staging is prevalent and (sole 'Ryan' comparison!) whereas Spielberg's movie is more focused on the battle, 'Flags' focuses on the campaign as a whole. I doff my hat to that decision, however the cost is that not occasionally do the battle scenes feel like 'Medal of Honor'. Impressive? Yes. Jarring? Oh yeah, though I don't feel I personally got much from the excursion.

'Flags of Our Fathers' is about the phyrric nature of heroism. No matter what the war. The real heroes are the ones who died. I know this because Eastwood tells me that at every turn. Eastwood, and Haggis. In a way, 'Flags' feels a lot like 'Crash' to me in that I cannot bring myself to entirely dismiss the thing but it's so ridden with cliché and pomp that I never want to sit through it again. There are maybe thirty quick flashbacks in 'Flags', and it feels like more flashbacks than some people have in a lifetime. Rather than the notion that these soldiers cannot escape the war, these characters feel boxed in by these graphic snippets to the point of overkill. It almost feels comical, like a game; "Spot the Audio Flashback Cue!"

Also, remember the old man in 'Saving Private Ryan'? In 'Flags', it's not just one. It's two (I think) and the degree of indulgence it reaches feels almost off the charts. It's not enough that they tell the narrator (who wrote the book) the stories, but they must validate him as well, as he plugs away at his MAC G5. I won't ruin a tear-jerking scene near the end, but I leaned over to my friend and said "OMIT". This film runs its course long before the end, and not really unjustly; I see its intentions in depicting post-war America's treatment of heroes, but the film's focus is completely torn between "war movie" and pseudo-testimonial tear-jerker.

I don't see this thing breaking even. Its cynicism feels fairly old-fashioned and its sentimentality seems a little tacked-on. I don't want to be too hard on the thing as it is a handsomely-crafted piece of work, but by the time of the Q&A, I and many others just snuck out. When a Paramount rep asked me if I wouldn't mind giving a few comments, I said I really didn't want to. There's really nothing to say. I don't know how many Oscars they think they're going to win, but I don't see it happening. I don't know where all of this Adam Beach hype is coming from but it's fairly lost on me. He's fine, but the movie paints him as far more of a victim than they even know what to do with. Delegating him to a supporting role undermines the man's pain and he comes across as another cliché; the film sees him as the same drunken Indian as the insensitive white men who ask if he killed the Japs with a tomahawk. For the most part, the acting is fine without any standout. Ryan Phillipe is quite good, I must say.

So, there ya go. It's not a bad film, just one that isn't especially intriguing. I blame the overly-reverent screenplay for taking us out of the narrative, rendering it like equiparts cynical commentary as genuine tribute. Oscar prospects? Unless I'm wrong, not much. I hate to refer to a great filmmaker's resurgance as a band wagon, but if it does roll on then it's possible. But my best guess is that the film will be received as something akin to a relic.

[Anon]

On the awards front, Eastwood is a beloved figure especially among AMPAS voters and could garner support for another Oscar nod, possibly pitting him again against Martin Scorsese (The Departed), who he beat out two seasons ago for best director.[See?]

Should we really be surprised that everyone is pitting Eastwood against Scorsese? Regardless of what you think of The Departed (highly entertaining but nothing deeper than that), I think we now have an overall sentiment of "Marty's due" and that will propel him in the race for Best Director (whether he's worthy or not). I mean, wasn't it just last year that Oscar host Stewart made the joke: "Three-6-Mafia = 1, Martin Scorsese =0"?

I think it will be unavoidable, even if some of you are already fatigued by this debate.

Besides, we all know several other Oscar winners who eventually won their trophies for lesser work (Denzel Washington, Training Day or Al Pacino, Scent of a Woman) for no other reason than that many felt they were "due."

[Sonic Youth]

Flags Of Our Fathers

Brent Simon in Los Angeles
Screendaily

Dir: Clint Eastwood. US. 2006. 131mins.

Rarely do words as stark as “heroism” get parsed in film-making - but that’s just what Clint Eastwood’s World War II feature Flags Of Our Fathers does. A diffuse and demanding picture that, as with most Eastwood films, takes a while to find its stride, it should nevertheless see good upscale market business, as well as make a deep critical footprint that will ensure awards consideration.

But mainstream domestic box-office appeal (it opens at home from Oct 20) on a par with Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby, Eastwood’s last two directorial films, which each rang up $90-£100m domestically and took several Oscars apiece, is not necessarily a given.

Nominally the film tells of the bloody fight between the US and Japanese forces for the Pacific island of Iwo Jima in 1945, and the events surrounding the iconic image of six soldiers hoisting an American flag. But in many ways Flags Of Our Fathers is also a de facto examination of battle-bred guilt and state-sanctioned manipulation and exploitation of image. Jumping indistinctly to and fro in time, it commingles bloody action and more conjectural passages in a manner that might induce fatigue in more restless multiplex crowds.

Despite the Eastwood name, prospects overseas are additionally hard to fix (it rolls out through October, November and December after opening the Tokyo International Film Festival on Oct 21), given that such a uniquely American image - the inspiration for the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Virginia - is at the core of the film’s inquiry into the machinations and complicity of media in war.

It’s also of significant note that Flags Of Our Fathers has a companion piece in the form of the concurrently shot Letters From Iwo Jima — which tells the events of the same siege from the Japanese perspective, and will see domestic release early next year 2007— further suggesting that this is a particularly canted narrative that will see its best returns Stateside.

Regardless, catalogue and ancillary value will be high, as the film continues Eastwood’s measured, thoughtful twilight renaissance.

On the awards front, Eastwood is a beloved figure especially among AMPAS voters and could garner support for another Oscar nod, possibly pitting him again against Martin Scorsese (The Departed), who he beat out two seasons ago for best director.[See?]

Cinematographer Tom Stern’s work behind the camera, meanwhile, similarly seems a shoe-in for Academy recognition. Of the cast, Adam Beach is a legitimate runner: other nominations could follow if the film enjoys (likely) early critical support throughout the autumn, smoothing a path for commercial success.

Flags Of Our Fathers opens with what could be construed as a pointed indictment of America’s current geopolitical morass and those that led its charge, as a gruff line of narration explains that “Every jackass thinks he knows what war is - especially those who’ve never been in one.”

It soon becomes clear, though, that Eastwood’s movie is a combat film by only half, and the old “war is hell” drumbeat isn’t necessarily part of the main narrative agenda here....


....Eastwood’s characteristic direction — with its unembellished style and perfunctory set-ups — drains affect or overt emotionalism from most of the performances. But Adam Beach manages to really make an impression as Ira, as he convincingly conveys the swallowed weight of the torturous conflict he feels. He’s done and seen things in war of which he’s not proud, but, like Rene and Doc, is told to put on a public face, if only to honor them. Ira’s the least suited to do this, and his self-destructiveness — both in the broader context of his increasing drunkenness and writ more subtly across his pained face — is compellingly rendered.

Eschewing a more straightforward and seductive dramatic arc, co-screenwriters William Broyles Jr and Paul Haggis use author James Bradley’s source book as a wraparound device for the movie, inserting scenes of him (played by Tom McCarthy) interviewing several of his father Doc’s fellow servicemen to learn more about his exploits and the events surrounding the flag raising. But these passages are backloaded and suffused with a timidity at odds with much of the rest of the feature, and they give the audience three discrete time periods with which to deal, which can be a problem for the movie.

Additionally, some of the editing and many of its points of intercutting feel somewhat arbitrary and disrupt its flow. Eastwood and editor Joel Cox seem caught midway between a more traditionally bifurcated tale with flashback elements and a more mosaic, impressionistic style, flush with vignettes of indeterminate time or location.

But technically, Flags Of Our Fathers scores high. The easiest point of comparison for the carnage of the battle sequences is co-producer Steven Spielberg’s storming of the beaches of Normandy in Saving Private Ryan, which had both a more natural order and emotional component to its jumbledness. With these scenes shot on Iceland, cinematographer Tom Stern captures black sand kicking in every direction, and delivers a monochromatic look in which only the occasional punch of blood is allowed to puncture washed-out hues of brown, grey, black and olive.

As a composer, Eastwood’s simple, spare score is not overly plaintive per se, but nevertheless quite evocative.

[The Original BJ]

I agree with Damien, and I HAVE seen The Departed. This is not the kind of film that wins Best Director Oscars.

And the idea that this film would win a make-up Oscar for Scorsese is complete b.s., IMO. Voters had two VERY easy opportunities to give Scorsese a make-up prize with Gangs of New York and The Aviator, and they shied away both times to honor pictures they liked better. If Scorsese ever gets one, it's going to be for a film they love, and I cannot see The Departed being that film by ANY means.

I'm very excited for Flags of Our Fathers, but I have a feeling that the Eastwood-Haggis overload of the past couple years will almost certainly diminish the film's chances to actually win top awards.

[Damien]

I haven't seen it yet, but it still seems to me that because of it is a genre piece, The Departed is not going to be a favorite among Oscar voters. I would suggest that it lacks the "nobility" of what the Academy tends to go for. (Yes, I know there are exceptions, but 1991 was a very odd year, and one can say that a certain nobility was at work in Chicago resuscitating the musical genre.)

I'd say that there is a pretty good chance that Scorsese will knock out one of the directors of a Best Picture nominee, but unless the critics' awards go across the board for Scorsese's picture, I think it will be like so many other movies that caused a bit of a splash in October only to be forgotten in January. (I also assume it will see quite a box-office drop in its second weekend.)

[flipp525]

And how reductive will this board get if Ang Lee and Paul Haggis were to go head-to-head with two strong frontrunners in a future year?

Geez, it was just two innocent words.

The Lee-Haggis showdown would be a welcome reprise, personally. With the undeserved best picture win for Crash, Lee’s gracious acquiescence of the inevitability of winning only the directing Oscar, there’s plenty of drama there. I’ve still got an axe to grind on that one so I wouldn’t mind that “re-match” so much.

There’s a time and a place for showdowns, but as Tee and Penelope have stated, it seems a bit premature to be marking them down in early October. Frankly, an Eastwood-Scorcese rematch has not been in the back of my mind.

Give me a Joan Fontaine – Olivia de Havilland type backstage drama any day of the week though.

[Mister Tee]

Penelope, I was all prepared to post a few points, when I read your post and realized you'd said almost exactly what I had in mind. Forgive me if this is redundant.

This is exactly the sort of thing I had in mind with my Peeves thread: hysterics at OscarWatch, and O'Neil, are jumping to pre-frame an Oscar race based on preferred narratives (rematch!) or genre expectation ("How can a patriotic war film/Jewish-friendly Munich movie lose?") -- instead of, you know, watching the movies as they come out and deciding at the end of the year which ones deserve to be honored. (Sonic, truly, I'm not meaning you here; I understand your comment was totally in reaction to the already-ginned up war at OscarWatch) It's not such things never happened in the old days -- lots of us early on in 1975 saw the possibility of another Pacino/Nicholson face-off -- but the insistence that every year be stuffed into the same old boxes is taking quite a bit of the fun out of things. (Fortunately, there are always startlers like The Queen to throw a wrench into the predictability)

I also am inclined to agree with Penelope that those two trade reviews may not be the whole story. The fact that three others, however untrustworthy individually, were so much less impressed, suggests to me this won't be a universally hailed, Schindler's List type of event. (And I say this despite the fact that I find the film's concept exceptionally intriguing)

It's October, for Christ's sake. We have lots of potentially solid films as yet unseen by anyone. Come December, it's possible Dreamgirls, The Good Shepherd, Notes on a Scandal, The Good German, even, god help us, Apocalypto, could wipe everything else off the boards (or Zodiac, per rumor, could sneak in as a surprise release). Why the insistence on calling the race over now?