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Kurds vs Bone Spurs President (Original Post)
flying-skeleton
Oct 2019
OP
BlueMTexpat
(15,374 posts)1. As a reminder, it may be
a good time to watch the movie "Three Kings" once again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Kings_(1999_film)
And the Guardian recently revisited this war satire: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/oct/01/three-kings-at-20-david-o-russell
Three Kings at 20: the war movie where anything was possible
In David O Russells wild 1999 caper, action-packed comedy serves as a sneaky shell for a damning critique of American foreign policy
Are we shooting? Are we still shooting people or what?
Thats the opening line to David O Russells Three Kings and a thesis statement, too. Its March 1991 and the Gulf war has just ended, but Sergeant Troy Barlow (Mark Wahlberg) doesnt know whether the armed Iraqi soldier hes spied in his scope is a target or not. And the yokels behind him are no help, either: one of them has a grain of sand stuck in his eye. After Barlow takes the shot, the first action any of them have seen in the war, he and his men hover over the twitching body in a scene that recalls the felled sniper at the end of Stanley Kubricks Full Metal Jacket. In both instances, a piece of their humanity is lost, and in both instances not one of them could tell you why.
...
Its been 20 years since Three Kings, Russells confident foray into studio film-making after the indie comedies Spanking the Monkey and Flirting with Disaster, stormed into theaters. Since that time, theres been a bigger, splashier sequel to the Gulf war and a war in Afghanistan, but the rationale for both isnt much better than the urgent need to liberate a Middle Eastern country that most people couldnt locate on a map. Both of those wars were premised on a terrorist threat, an answer to an attack that happened almost exactly two years after Three Kings came out, but some of young men and women eligible to enlist in 2019 were only infants on 9/11. Their rationale for being there indefinitely has become as obscure as the path to victory. No doubt some of them are out there now, seeing how night-vision goggles work during the day.
Three Kings uncannily anticipated the mission drift, the refugee crises and the forever wars that have plagued the United States since it came out, but eight years after Operation Desert Storm ended, Russell just wanted audiences to know what the hell it was all about. Working from a story by John Ridley a whole screenplay, really, which led to an ugly attribution dispute Russell uses a thrilling update on The Treasure of the Sierra Madre to smuggle in a sophisticated treatment of the chaos and tragedy that filled the vacuum left by the US at the end of the war. Russell is pulling off two jobs at once here: just as his marauders use the postwar chaos to smuggle $23m in gold bullion (No, not the little cubes you put in hot water to make soup), his film uses an action-packed heist comedy to smuggle a damning assessment of American foreign policy.
...
Thats the opening line to David O Russells Three Kings and a thesis statement, too. Its March 1991 and the Gulf war has just ended, but Sergeant Troy Barlow (Mark Wahlberg) doesnt know whether the armed Iraqi soldier hes spied in his scope is a target or not. And the yokels behind him are no help, either: one of them has a grain of sand stuck in his eye. After Barlow takes the shot, the first action any of them have seen in the war, he and his men hover over the twitching body in a scene that recalls the felled sniper at the end of Stanley Kubricks Full Metal Jacket. In both instances, a piece of their humanity is lost, and in both instances not one of them could tell you why.
...
Its been 20 years since Three Kings, Russells confident foray into studio film-making after the indie comedies Spanking the Monkey and Flirting with Disaster, stormed into theaters. Since that time, theres been a bigger, splashier sequel to the Gulf war and a war in Afghanistan, but the rationale for both isnt much better than the urgent need to liberate a Middle Eastern country that most people couldnt locate on a map. Both of those wars were premised on a terrorist threat, an answer to an attack that happened almost exactly two years after Three Kings came out, but some of young men and women eligible to enlist in 2019 were only infants on 9/11. Their rationale for being there indefinitely has become as obscure as the path to victory. No doubt some of them are out there now, seeing how night-vision goggles work during the day.
Three Kings uncannily anticipated the mission drift, the refugee crises and the forever wars that have plagued the United States since it came out, but eight years after Operation Desert Storm ended, Russell just wanted audiences to know what the hell it was all about. Working from a story by John Ridley a whole screenplay, really, which led to an ugly attribution dispute Russell uses a thrilling update on The Treasure of the Sierra Madre to smuggle in a sophisticated treatment of the chaos and tragedy that filled the vacuum left by the US at the end of the war. Russell is pulling off two jobs at once here: just as his marauders use the postwar chaos to smuggle $23m in gold bullion (No, not the little cubes you put in hot water to make soup), his film uses an action-packed heist comedy to smuggle a damning assessment of American foreign policy.
...
Much more at the link.
Celerity
(43,587 posts)3. +10000
Magnolia to The Matrix: was 1999 the greatest year in modern cinema?
It was the year that brought us a feast of multiplex and arthouse pleasures and two decades on, its impact can still be felt in Hollywood
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/jan/10/magnolia-to-the-matrix-was-1999-the-greatest-year-in-modern-cinema
Idont know the future, shrugged Neo in 1999s The Matrix. I came here to tell you how its going to begin. With him, on-screen and off, as The Matrix plunged audiences into the future of cinema, which 20 years later, looks like the Wachowskis wildest dreams: 1s and 0s everywhere and Keanu Reeves still kicking ass.
The Matrix. Magnolia. Being John Malkovich. Fight Club. The Blair Witch Project. The Sixth Sense. Office Space. Man on the Moon. The Talented Mr. Ripley. Boys Dont Cry. Three Kings. Toy Story 2. The Iron Giant. Eyes Wide Shut. Cruel Intentions. Election. American Pie. Notting Hill and Runaway Bride. 1999 might be the greatest year of modern cinema. I think so. If you arent nutty about two-thirds of these films, do you even like movies?
Whats certain, however, is that 1999 is the most pivotal year of modern cinema the moment that Hollywood anointed the chosen ones who would become the heroes of the new millennium, from David Fincher to Spike Jonze to an ingenue named Angelina Jolie, who introduced herself to the public by winning best supporting actress for playing a sociopathic mental patient. Girl, Interrupted wasnt Jolies first film. But it was the movie that engraved her on the A-list, a pattern thats also true for Hillary Swank in Boys Dont Cry, Jude Law in The Talented Mr. Ripley, Reese Witherspoon in Election, Heath Ledger in 10 Things I Hate About You, and Russell Crowe in The Insider.
What explains 1999s extraordinary films? DVD sales began in 1997 and flooded studios with extra cash, especially in those first years as home viewers built their collection. Studios invested the windfall in a generation of upstart directors, predicting that audiences would buy a good film twice: once in the theater, and again for their shelf.
snip
(full disclosure, I was 3 years old in 1999, but I have watched almost all of the movies in this article, and I would agree that it was the best year for movies in the last multiple decades)
It was the year that brought us a feast of multiplex and arthouse pleasures and two decades on, its impact can still be felt in Hollywood
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/jan/10/magnolia-to-the-matrix-was-1999-the-greatest-year-in-modern-cinema
Idont know the future, shrugged Neo in 1999s The Matrix. I came here to tell you how its going to begin. With him, on-screen and off, as The Matrix plunged audiences into the future of cinema, which 20 years later, looks like the Wachowskis wildest dreams: 1s and 0s everywhere and Keanu Reeves still kicking ass.
The Matrix. Magnolia. Being John Malkovich. Fight Club. The Blair Witch Project. The Sixth Sense. Office Space. Man on the Moon. The Talented Mr. Ripley. Boys Dont Cry. Three Kings. Toy Story 2. The Iron Giant. Eyes Wide Shut. Cruel Intentions. Election. American Pie. Notting Hill and Runaway Bride. 1999 might be the greatest year of modern cinema. I think so. If you arent nutty about two-thirds of these films, do you even like movies?
Whats certain, however, is that 1999 is the most pivotal year of modern cinema the moment that Hollywood anointed the chosen ones who would become the heroes of the new millennium, from David Fincher to Spike Jonze to an ingenue named Angelina Jolie, who introduced herself to the public by winning best supporting actress for playing a sociopathic mental patient. Girl, Interrupted wasnt Jolies first film. But it was the movie that engraved her on the A-list, a pattern thats also true for Hillary Swank in Boys Dont Cry, Jude Law in The Talented Mr. Ripley, Reese Witherspoon in Election, Heath Ledger in 10 Things I Hate About You, and Russell Crowe in The Insider.
What explains 1999s extraordinary films? DVD sales began in 1997 and flooded studios with extra cash, especially in those first years as home viewers built their collection. Studios invested the windfall in a generation of upstart directors, predicting that audiences would buy a good film twice: once in the theater, and again for their shelf.
snip
(full disclosure, I was 3 years old in 1999, but I have watched almost all of the movies in this article, and I would agree that it was the best year for movies in the last multiple decades)
Celerity
(43,587 posts)2. here is the actual pic