Is This the Dawning of the Cinematic Age of Obama?
Not if Liam Neeson and Clint Eastwood have anything to say about it.
Some film critics couldn’t wait to declare the dawn of the Age of Obama even before the new president got to know the Oval Office. Too bad audiences had something else in mind.
The new action film Taken, which seems stripped right out of the Reagan era, is the surprise smash of the new year. It’s already hauled in $95 million in four weeks, and last weekend it pushed its way back up to the number two position on the list of top 10 grossing films. Not bad for a film built around an older actor, Liam Neeson, who’s never been confused for box office catnip.
And let’s not forget Gran Torino, Clint Eastwood’s old-school drama about a Korean War veteran who sets aside his racist views to defend a group of immigrants on his block. The film showcases the kind of rugged individualism and refusal to bend to popular will that would have made President Reagan — or President George W. Bush, for that matter — proud. Gran Torino stands as the biggest box office smash of Eastwood’s illustrious career, even if some critics cringed over the movie’s politically incorrect hero.
But let’s get back to the so-called cinematic Age of Obama. That’s what Entertainment Weekly critic Owen Gleiberman declared in his loving tribute to the Oscar-nominated Rachel Getting Married. Gleiberman writes: “The fact that it’s an interracial marriage, and that no one makes even a tiny deal of it, is part of the texture: This may be the first Age of Obama movie, a spectacle of ‘difference’ melted away by the rich, teeming jumble of a family trying to make peace with itself.”
Needless to say, Rachel Getting Married’s box office bounty currently stands at $12 million.
Not to be outdone, the British newspaper, the Guardian, chimed in with this report on the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire: “But the influence of Slumdog Millionaire could be felt well beyond this year’s Oscar ceremony. Indeed, I wonder whether, in coming years, we shall not regard it as the first emblematic film of the Barack Obama era.”
Slumdog Millionaire’s box office bounty — after a whirlwind of Oscar buzz, film festival accolades, critical raves, and countless media articles — stands at $98 million so far. Imagine what Taken might haul in with that kind of support system.
Taken stars Neeson as former government operator whose job was to prevent bad things from happening. Now retired, Neeson focuses his energy on his estranged daughter who travels to France and almost immediately gets kidnapped by Albanian thugs. Neeson pummels, shoots, and does a whole lot worse to anyone who gets in his way. He makes no apologies for his actions. He just gets results. And audiences are cheering him every step of the way, even though the film’s connection to reality becomes gossamer thin at times.
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Christian Toto is a freelance writer and film critic for The Washington Times. His work has appeared in People magazine, MovieMaker Magazine, The Denver Post, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and Scripps Howard News Service. He also contributes movie radio commentary to three stations as well as the nationally syndicated Dennis Miller Show and runs the blog What Would Toto Watch?
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35 Comments
1. SAF:In the end of the day much of Hollywood is about money. As more people lose control of their lives because they are unemployed, retirement has gone up in smoke and the inevitable death of many small businesses they will seek entertainment where the hero has control and decisively beats the bad guys.
For the vast majority of the country interracial marriage isn’t important. What plays is an America who defends itself. Almost on a daily basis we get slurred by Iran and others. Not a peep out of the state department about that. Of course they have no problem beating up on allies like Israel.
A fictional politically incorrect film about an American president that tells the Iranians up yours would gross hundreds of millions. Obama certainly won’t do that.
Annette Bening was told this week in Tehran that Hollywood must apologize to Iran for all its wrong doings. She should have brought a film crew to capture the moment of her kissing some butt. Sure that would be a big hit.
Mar 2, 2009 - 2:49 am 2. CharlieSays:Don’t forget “Taking Chance.” The HBO audience responded quite positively. The lib-crits? Take a wild guess.
Mar 2, 2009 - 4:57 am 3. locomotivebreath1901:BRAVO! Christian Toto. You deftly outlined why there is no ‘conservative’ Hollywood: liberal ideology, an ideology the ideologues won’t even admit they promote. But promote it they do with attacks on its antithesis: conservative ideology, an ideology those ideologues proudly embrace!
So where does the money come from? This dissonance pays off at the foreign box office. Hollywood grossed a record overseas box office in 2008.
It maybe the ‘Age of Obama’, but even a thick skull like Spicoli knows an old axiom is still true: “Follow the money.”
Mar 2, 2009 - 6:26 am 4. windy blow:So let me get this straight: we can now expect that in Hollowood a movie-maker (or makers) will see a script or get pitched an idea and, being in the Age of Obama, won’t think as they did six months ago that here is something that can make money. They will now weigh up whether this new movie will fit in with the A of O doctrine.
Really? No, I didn’t think so either.
Take no notice of the wittering media. The guy babbling about Rachel Getting Married and the awful Grauniad’s burblings about Slumdog Millionaire are just hacks casting round for something to, er, witter about. Boyle went and made his film in India irrespective of who won the US election. He didn’t rush out there and think, this one’s for the Big O.
Mar 2, 2009 - 7:00 am 5. Peg C.:We rarely go to the theatre, but saw both “Gran Torino” and “Taken” in the last 8 days, and saw the latter just yesterday. Due to a family tragedy, “Taken” has great significance for us and yes, we were cheering loudly with the killing of every bad guy. Interestingly, the creators did not shy away from making some of the very obvious bad guys very obviously Muslims. Extremely cathartic and were there a sequel (with Neeson’s character a so-called retired special operator of some sort, there can always be a sequel) we would rush to it. The only thing I want to see anymore is bad guys getting crushed by the good guys. Neeson has a straight and sincere persona on a par with Eastwood, Nicholas Cage, and Keanu Reeves. Most of the rest of the Hollywood metrosexual pretty-boy pretenders should just hang it up (Cloony, Pitt, et. al. I’m talking to you).
The Bush era brought out the BDS in every single filmmaker and actor possible. No one wanted to see that mountain of America-hating trash. It will be interesting if there is a resurgence of muscular, pro-good guy stories now that the era of the Panic President is upon us.
The Recovery Starts When Obama Loses His Job.
Mar 2, 2009 - 7:37 am 6. Delia:5. Peg C.:
“The Recovery Starts When Obama Loses His Job.”
~
Exactly.
-And, Zero is more of a ‘youtube’ star than big screen material… Bleh. If I had to see that bozo on the big screen my eyes would bleed along with my ears that are sick of listening to him.
Mar 2, 2009 - 8:09 am 7. Ian Thorpe:As a regular reader of The Guardian (though I missed that film review) I can report the comment threads on the paper’s Comment is Free blog reveal readers are getting sick to the back teth of certain journalists bgging up everything obama says or does. The consensus is The Obamesiah is neither a good speaker nor a rhetorician. His delivery is too clipped, too monotone, too one paced and his diction is poor. The content is a banal assemblage of cliches and banalities.
We are sick of being told how he will change the world and the way we all live as if one man could ever do that. His economic plans (we have sen nothing else from him yet) are simply a rehash of the tax and spend economics of every Labour Party government in the UK since the 1920s.
Every UK Labour government since the 1920s has made a total mess of the economy.
If Obama ever turns his attention to Hollywood, all films will be politically correct versions of Heaven’s Gate.
Mar 2, 2009 - 8:19 am 8. Bruce:Wow — today’s film critics are a bunch of gutless twits! Who saw that coming??
Mar 2, 2009 - 8:53 am 9. Delia:7. Ian,
“His delivery is too clipped, too monotone, too one paced and his diction is poor.”
~
You nailed it. I swear…listening to 0blather speak has caused my ears to learn how to cry. You can also discern his over-sized ego in his verbal inflections…it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. He’s so full of himself I want to stick a pin in him so he’ll deflate some. I really need to market an 0bama v00d00 doll.
“Needles and pins. Needles and pins… A happy man is a man who grins.”
Mar 2, 2009 - 8:55 am 10. Lieberman Dem:What’s this poop about the Age of Obama meaning so much? What, every white person was a card carrying Klan member until the Halo’d O showed the evil of their ways? Come on!!
And THIS is coming from a black female card-carrying lib who wrote in Lieberman/Feingold for pete’s sake!!!
doggone gauche caviar (look it up)
Mar 2, 2009 - 9:22 am 11. Roland:The only reason why they keep saying the “Age of Obama” is to pat themselves on the back for voting for a black guy while they hide away from people like him
Slumdog Millionaire? What a joke…compare that to Ben Hur (1959 version starring Charleton Heston) and see which one will stand the test of time. Most of America yearns for the latter or at least not the tripe that Hollywood is putting out today. I haven’t been to the theater in 2 1/2 years because frankly, I have better use for my money than watching anti-American crap. I may reconsider and actually go watch Grand Torino and Taken.
Mar 2, 2009 - 10:01 am 12. Mike:Why is it that it takes foreign filmmakers to make great ‘American’ action movies? Taken was co-written and produced (and held for over a year, I don’t know why) by Luc Besson of La Femme Nikita, The Professional and The Fifth Element fame and directed by Pierre Morel from District 13. These guys know American-style action. Don’t forget John Woo. His last Hong Kong picture, Hard Boiled, had more action in it’s first half-hour than all of Die Hard. Sergio Leone brought action back to the Western after years of ‘introspective’ gunslingers (Okay, I still love The Gunfighter. It’s a classic.) Besson and Woo have both talked about being influenced by Arthur Penn and Sam Peckinpah, great American directors. Not to smash current American action directors, they’re still the best in the world. But anymore, all Hollywood wants to put out are big-budget Sundance movies that lecture to their audiences. Hollywood is not money-driven, it is message-driven. When something like Passion of the Christ or Vantage Point makes money, they don’t understand how it could work because it does not fit their narrow image of the world. Did you see very many copy-cats of Passion? No. How many copy-cats did you see of Fahrenheit 9/11. I can’t count the number of no-budget, we-will-catch-America-doing-something-bad, documentaries that are out there. So there will be no copy-cats of Taken. Studios need to remember that for a long time, escapist entertainment paid their bills. Look at the recent box office figures. If it wasn’t for summer tent pole movies, Hollywood would be out of business. Sometimes, it takes a foreigner to stand up and say how much they love American cinema.
Mar 2, 2009 - 10:16 am 13. Andy:“The Recovery Starts When Obama Loses His Job.”
Best line I’ve heard all day.
Mar 2, 2009 - 10:20 am 14. Peg C.:Ian,
I second your critique of the Panic President’s speaking style. With teleprompter, he is a droning mega-bore. He also tailors his accent to the audience, a Hillary affectation that is supremely condescending and off-putting. Without teleprompter, he is an astonishingly poorly spoken, inarticulate, fumbling fool. I am embarrassed and ashamed for the legions of fools who buy his con-artist schtick. He is a fraud and a charlatan.
Mar 2, 2009 - 10:41 am 15. Peg C.:Andy,
I wish I could take credit for the line but I think I first saw it on a poster at one of last week’s tea parties. Since then I’ve seen it on a number of blogs and shamelessly appropriated it.
If I could credit the inventor, I would. It’s priceless!
Mar 2, 2009 - 10:42 am 16. Peter Lake:One of Hollywood’s conventions re crime-fighters is that the hero isn’t afraid to draw outside the lines. (Serpico, Dirty Harry, 24, Bullitt etc.) The message being that the system is so corrupt that the only way the toughest criminals/spies/traitors can be caught is to ignore the conventional methods.
Mar 2, 2009 - 10:53 am 17. Seamus:Of course, when it comes to real-life situations, unconventional water-boarding gets you into trouble, even if it’s just alleged (Guantanimo, Abu Ghraib).
We’re a schizoid audience.
Huzzahs! My wife and I, both in our 70’s, have eschewed most movies for years, but we took a chance on both “Gran Torino” and “Taken” and were rewarded with the unambiguous triumph of good over pure evil. It’s nice to see the good guys winning again without all the angst and self loathing…no psuedo psychiatry or moralizing over how the bad guys were abused as children, or abandoned by one or both parents, or enviornmentally enticed into crime. Here we have blatant depravity dealt with succinctly, commensurately and irretrievably without the lawyers
Mar 2, 2009 - 10:58 am 18. Bill Perron:John Wayne, your country needs you, now !!!
Mar 2, 2009 - 11:03 am 19. momof3:I ADORED Taken. It was so satisfying to see good and bad in black and white. No apologists, just kill the bad guy. I also loved Gran Torino, although it would have been more satisfying had the bad guys died in the end instead of gone to jail. How many politically correct liberals would have cringed at the racist language, yet done nothing to help the immigrants? Most, I’d say.
Movies like this will ALWAYS get my money, and that’s saying a lot given I get to see maybe 3 movies a year in the theatre, what with babysitters so costly.
Mar 2, 2009 - 11:06 am 20. Dave D:@roland
Ben hur isn’t that good of a film, considering Hitchcock’s North by Northwest was also in that oscar year. No idea if slumdog will be remembered, but Ben Hur isn’t the thing that will beat it.
@Mike
it depends. John Woo made hardboiled, but then he also made the idiotic mission impossible 3. Luc Besson made Nikita, but otherwise his films have been forgettable.
I think its because the action genre has fallen out of favor, with only really the bond and the bourne films keeping it alive.
@OP
Mar 2, 2009 - 1:13 pm 21. Dave D:Sorry, hit the submit button by accident:
@OP
I don’t really see an age of obama mattering. What matters is if the films are good or not, and taken and gran torino are mediocre. Don’t make the mistake of elevating a film because it jibes with a conservative mindset: that leads to people making crap conservative movies like an american carol.
Mar 2, 2009 - 1:15 pm 22. newguy40:I admit that I have seen neither Taken nor Gran Torino.
I want to mention that I rewatched the LOTR movies this past weekend. They are chock full of good old fashioned lessons. Evil must be faced and fought even at the expense of one’s life. Freedom matters. Self sacrifice for the good of the community or “squad”:) Each group has it’s own strengths that add to the whole effort.
I would hope for more movies like LOTR. Evil does exist. One needs only read history or watch the news.
Mar 2, 2009 - 1:59 pm 23. Alex R.:I’m really surprised people go the movies as much as they do in the new century. Sure, they a few things people want to see, but it seems there’s less and less of it. ANd now everything is downloadable from music to bootleg movies, it just doesn’t compute. And 9/11 really made Hollywood seem impotent, they didn’t know what to do or how to feel, it was all PC politness. The hell with that, I don’t care what they feel about how bad the Iraq war went but it seems that it’s ‘them’ not us in the film industry and the rich gave the poor Indian film a bone at the Oscars and who watched that? I don’t get it. I watched Star Wars last night and felt ‘wow, this is still great’ but you’ll never see anything like that again. There’s no bite anymore.
Mar 2, 2009 - 2:31 pm 24. seansarto:I’m an American in China tryin’ to complete a film on an Irish Laborer who falls in love with a Chinese prostitue during the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad…My “Lady from Shanghai”…the hero ends up a pile of unidentified bones with the Chinese laborers at the massacre of Snake River.I been workin’ on this film awhile..my last film was about the son of a Korean War vet searching for the truth about his father’s acts in that war in the contemporary world of info an’ spin…Let’s see if any of them see the light of day…or at least the light of a projector.
Mar 2, 2009 - 2:47 pm 25. Peg C.:newguy, I have the LOTR extended version full set and watch it fairly frequently, esp. I and II (III somehow is not nearly as satisfying). Could not agree with you more.
Dave, Gran Torino and Taken to you may be mediocre. To some of us they are excellent for various reasons and what you would consider great (and pray tell what would that be?) we would not.
I appreciated nuance, relativism and shades of gray when I was young. I no longer appreciate any of that; we live in a different world.
Mar 2, 2009 - 4:03 pm 26. davod:“His delivery is too clipped, too monotone, too one paced and his diction is poor.”
~
I also agree. He is about the worst I have seen. I have no idea why even Republican commentators compliment Obama on his speaking ability.
It is almost The Emperor has no shoes. Is everyone so enamored that they cannot see reality?
Mar 2, 2009 - 4:04 pm 27. Kirly:Gleiberman writes: “The fact that it’s an interracial marriage, and that no one makes even a tiny deal of it, is part of the texture: This may be the first Age of Obama movie, a spectacle of ‘difference’ melted away by the rich, teeming jumble of a family trying to make peace with itself.”
right, ‘cuz there’s never been an interracial marriage before. oh, wait, the obamessiah’s own mother had one. idiot.
racists are those like this glieberman who sees only the color of skin, hair, eyes. when i see people, i see beautiful shades of brown from the lightest cream to the darkest ebony, i see beautiful eyes of blue-grey, green, brown, and even what seems black, i see beautiful shades and textures of hair from the blondest of the blond to red, brown and black from the straightest hair to wavy, curly, and kinky.
these are all beautiful creations of God.
Mar 2, 2009 - 6:45 pm 28. Lynn B.:So, we’re all agreed, the honeymoon is over, metrosexual is out, and the majority think we have the winner of the “Worst President in History Award”. Jimmy is going to be so happy
Mar 2, 2009 - 7:33 pm 29. CapitalistForChange:I’m no sure about the “Cinematic Age of Obama”…I think the author may be looking too hard for the conspiracy theory here…I’ll look in other areas to determine if there’s an “Age of Obama”…If Barack Obama inspires some people to work harder at their marraige..If he encourages some parents to take a more active role in their children’s education; I’ll consider his Presidency an “Age”, indeed….In that event, I’ll gladly support all of the “Ronald Reagan era movies” that you can roll out. In fact, I’ll spring for a 2009 re-mix of “Dirty Harry” to be shown at CPAC 2012!…
Mar 2, 2009 - 9:00 pm 30. bs:Kirly @ 27, you have inadvertently touched on an important truth. There is such a great variety of beauty; blonde, ginger, auburn, brown or black hair, straight, wavy or curly; eyes of blue, grey, violet, green, hazel, brown…
Yes, white women are undoubtedly the most beautiful in the world. Other races are so monochromatic.
And that is only one reason why interracial marriage is such a tragedy. Beautiful white women should be making beautiful white babies. Because nobody else can do it. And if they don’t do it, pretty soon there will be no more beautiful white women.
A world without blondes? Thank God, I won’t live to see it.
Mar 2, 2009 - 10:16 pm 31. TomJW:“Slumdog Millionaire”? The commercials make it look like “High School the Musical in India”. No matter what it is I will pass on it.
My son said Liam Neeson was like Jason Bourne’s dad, only more brutal and aggressive. Killing muslem types you say? I will see that one. Clint, of course I’ll watch anything he does that the critics don’t like.
Mar 3, 2009 - 3:11 am 32. Peg C.:#12 Mike, you’re right, the foreigners lately have a much better handle on America than our homegrown Hollywood twits have. Did you see “United 93″? Superb and it was directed by Paul Greengrass, a Brit (who also directed 2 Bourne flicks). “United 93″ is an excellent, straight-up recreation of the chronology of events the morning of 9/11. Pretty pitiful, really, when foreigners do a much better job of dramatizing our most serious American events way better than we can. Maybe it requires perspective from a distance.
Mar 3, 2009 - 4:58 am 33. Jones:Hollywood producers, screenwriters, directors, etc are all inside one big bubble, where everyone agrees on exactly how the world looks. They end up making movies for each other’s gratification.
Occasionally someone like Eastwood slips one by the moneymen, but that’s only because Eastwood is such a towering presence in Hollywood, that he doesn’t hear ‘no’ during pitches.
Mar 3, 2009 - 5:37 pm 34. view from afar:the french were positive about Gran Torino, it made the Sunday night news headlines…can’t wait to see it, may take my kids to it (the teen ones, the littlest is three). On #7 my 15 year old can not stand to hear That One speak, he shivers and walks out of the room, and that is being voiced over…
Mar 4, 2009 - 1:13 am 35. Gene Lalor:And not if Stephen Baldwin has any say!
Stephen Baldwin Takes on Hollywood, (Sort of)
Stephen Baldwin, the good brother in the Baldwin clan, thinks Hollywood sucks.
He didn’t quite put it that way but that’s essentially how he seems to feel regarding the excessive violence and sexual themes prevalent in movies produced in Hollywood: http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=44591.
That’s really not news to anyone who lays out ten bucks or more at their local movie house or to people who rent their flicks from Blockbuster or Netflix. What is a revelation is Baldwin’s allegations as to why the crap fills so many of America’s big screens and home theater screens.
I should qualify that comment. Many of us are fully aware of the reasons Hollywood consistently churns out violent and trashy garbage, and it’s not because they are moneymakers. In actuality, family fare films return far more profit to movie studios.
What then is the rationale for refusing to film more family flicks if not the almighty dollar? Asked a question specific to the Oscar awarded to Milk and whether, like Brokeback Mountain, which won 3 academy awards in 2006, Milk won because of its homosexual theme, Baldwin says it’s because, “Hollywood and the Academy has [sic] an agenda every year.”
Good gracious! Is he charging that there is a conspiracy on the Left Coast? Is he alleging there is some kind of “moral issue” driving producers to turn out more and more films featuring graphic sex and violence? Is he contending that there’s a Hollywood cabal that is interested more in corrupting the minds and souls of moviegoers, especially young moviegoers’ minds and souls, than in producing wholesome films?
Baldwin’s answer is, yes, to all of the above.
Baldwin forthrightly says, “I think that a small core group of individuals that make a lot of the decisions about what that content is going to be are in charge.” He adds that, “80 percent of [that content] is negative and violent and immoral and 20 percent of it is positive and happy and friendly and joyous and family [and] that’s an imbalance.”
No kidding, Stephen, an imbalance that greed can’t explain since that 20 percent adds far more to the bottom line per picture than the 80 percent.
Baldwin went on to explain…
(Read the rest of this article at http://genelalor.com/.)
Mar 7, 2009 - 2:53 pm