hahahahahahahaha

http://www.mediaite.com/online/eastwood-reacts-to-michael-moore-bill-mahers-american-sniper-criticism/

and in the process got lots of guys to sign up for wars that he just said he wouldn't want to go to.

Cha-Ching!

But feel free to pontificate on what you think it was about.

It did not glorify war. Quite the contrary.

War is great on film. In real life not so much.

http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/games/blog/screenplay/your-turn-truffaut-was-right-20111023-1me5d.html

Name an anti war film that is set in the middle of a war then?

often cited as a demonstration of an anti-war movie set in a war.

Oliver Stone, Vonnegut, Hemmingway and many other veterans have written works informed by their personal experiences with war. And they as combat veterans have a perspective that most of their audience does not.

Many audience members will say that they enjoyed a war movie because "it was realistic" but watching a movie is nothing like being in a war. It is over in 2 hours and you go on with your life. People pay admission to see the bombs and the gunshots.

I think Truffant's quote speaks to the frustration of trying to get people past their simple blood lust and need to have everything wrapped up and settled in that 2 hours.

Whatever Eastwood's own views and claims, the Tweets from some who saw American Sniper show this same effect.

https://storify.com/michaelgoodier7/american-sniper-box-office-hit-inspires-racism

Perhaps it is like alcohol -- a war movie pushes you a little further in the direction you are already headed. If you go in anti-war you come out saying 'war really wrecked that guy's life' but if you in to see heads busted open then it delivers that. But action and spectacle is what dominates a war movie and what sells the tickets.

The way movies work is if you are a good director the movie will suck the audience emotionally in to the characters actions on the screen. The audience will tend to root for the characters even if what they are doing is not ethical. The ethics become justified by the actions of the character. I think American Sniper has this exact problem as does say "Boys in the Hood" where at the end your hoping Ice Cube gets the bastard that killed his brother even though in doing so it is perpetuating pointless gang violence. Boys in the Hood is anti-gang movie but you can argue it fails for the same reason most anti-war movies fail. It is a trap in directing a anti-war movie in that the action will seem heroic even if that was not your intent. Other directors take this natural response to movies and plays with the audience. See Cross of Iron where Peckinpah uses a Nazi Germany army platoon as the protagonists. By using the Russians (at the height of the cold war) as the bad guys he tricks his audience into rooting for James Coburn or Hitchcock's Frenzy where the hero is an annoying unpleasant person and the killer is a charismatic pleasant person. He gets you to root for the killer to get that tie pin off the dead girl in the potato sack so he won't get caught even though when you think about it after it probably would have been better he hadn't gotten it. I think it was Ebert that used "Path's of Glory" as a counter argument that it wasn't impossible to make an anti-war movie. It is hard to watch Path's of Glory and think the movie made WWI seems fun, justified and exciting.

no one could watch those two films and think war is anything but horrible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_anti-war_films

How about 3 by 3 filmmakers as great as Truffaut. (and I am a great fan of Truffaut and French New Wave cinema in general.)

Platoon
Full Metal Jacket
Apocalypse Now

Hamburger Hill was a fairly effective anti-war film, though by no means a masterpiece. A simple low-budget film about a platoon of soldiers trying to take a meaningless hill that US forces have no means or hope of holding long-term in Vietnam. Nobody is trying to be a hero...they all know the hill is meaningless and just want to survive to go home, but they also know they have to take the hill because the REMF who make command decisions and never see combat aren't going to let them withdraw.

I think Truffant's point is that no matter what the storyline points to -- for example 'how much it sucks to be used as cannon fodder in WW1' -- the audience is drawn and wow'ed by the ballistics. The effects and the suspense is what most think they are paying admission for.

As others in this thread have pointed out, these movies don't seem to change anyones' mind on the subject because people on either side of the issue latch on to the parts they like or agree with. And we can be thrilled by movie war even if we are Gandhi. Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" is similar -- those who like the rah-rah chorus ignore the verses so "yes" he wrote an anti-war song but that part doesn't connect with those who aren't predisposed to that viewpoint.

Oliver Stone is interesting since he is one of the few who signed up for Vietnam and requested combat. He calls Platoon "the mythology of war." Keanu Reeves turned the film down because "he doesn't do violence." So again, there is a war is hell message in there but Stone made the film in 1986 to make money and he used some of that money to make "Born on the Fourth of July" (1989) which had an anti-war message that wasn't buried under action sequences. BOTFOJ struggled at the box office perhaps because it didn't have enough war action in it for those who go to war movies. Platoon did $138 mil versus BOTFOJ at $68 mil.

how about rotational tires, are those real?


What about green strawberries, are those real?

Francois Truffaut, made the 1966 film version of Farenheit 451. He once declared that there is no such thing as an anti-war film, because war, by its very nature, makes for exciting spectacle.

tell it to private Pyle

declared otherwise.

Jesus, this is getting into Freeperland ignorance people. We're better than that.

https://storify.com/michaelgoodier7/american-sniper-box-office-hit-inspires-racism

Are they wrong too?

I first stated that he didn't make the film to be a conservative cause.

That has not been refuted.

Second, were claims that there are no anti-wars movies which is a ridiculous and false statement.

Additionally, others who saw this movie didn't think it was pro war.

In other words war is a great setting for a movie because of the high stakes and the conflict. I'm not saying that there are no films which contain an anti-war message but rather that any anti-war message gets eclipsed in a war movie by action and by the plot structure which inserts justice and morality into something like WWI. Personally I had a fair case of PTSD for about two years because I lived through three days of automatic weapons fire, bombings and arson but people who think they saw it all on TV told me it wasn't that bad. That is the disconnect I'm trying to get to here. War on a movie screen is entertainment but no one in their right mind would pay $10 to live with nearly random violence and gunfire.

Using war as the basis of entertainment and profit is not anti-war -- it finds a use for war and makes money -- what is more conservative than that?

I saw the film and thought it depicted what a fucked-up thing war is. I think it depends on your perspective.

That's why he's a fanatical supporter of the party that always wants to get us into them.

that needed to be said.



peace,
kp

another war movie, "I love the smell of bullshit in the morning".

party that goes for that preemptive shit. Senile old sewn tight turd.

It was advertised to millions of Amurkin dumbasses as "Watch this war hero blow away a bunch of rag heads", and they responded accordingly, flocking to theaters to cheer as he did his thing.

I watched the film surrounded by a crowd of idiots. It was hard to separate my opinion of the film itself from my reactions to the ignorant viewers but I'd have to agree it was definitely not a pro war film.

IMO, Eastwood is somewhat disingenuous when he describes the movie as anti war. He knew perfectly well that the studio big shots would turn the thing into a flag waving imitation of a WWII John Wayne classic. Check out the poster



"The most lethal sniper in US history"? Anti war?

The reality based community is in no doubt of that. Feel free to join us at any time.

Yeah, I thought not. Screw Eastwood and his gains from this film.

Kyle absolutely loved what he was doing.