[Marxism] Catch A Fire

[Louis Proyect]

>Of course, one would only know that if one had SEEN the movie...
>
>
>Walter

Walter, I don't waste my time with mainstream, liberal pap 
particularly when I've made the mistake of enduring a prior film by a 
Paul Haggis or a Philip Noyce. I went to see Noyce's "Quiet American" 
only because I am the world's biggest Graham Greene fan. This was my 
take on Noyce's liberties with Greene's masterpiece--not much 
different with the "nuanced" Afrikaner cop:

Robert Schenkkan, one of the screenwriters, told the Boston Globe in 
February that he wanted to make Pyle more believable and more 
sympathetic. Since he is also involved with terror bombings that are 
blamed on the communists, this requires a certain amount of literary 
license. Brendan Fraser added, "He couldn't be capable of doing the 
awful things he does do. We had to show him some respect, to make him 
credible as someone who could take care of himself and have language 
skills." Ultimately this doctoring of Greene's prose yields an OSS 
agent who might be mistaken for a character on "Friends". With his 
dog and baseball cap, this Pyle seems more like a frat boy than a killer.

full: http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/culture/Quiet_American.htm

I should add that life is short. This means that Hollywoodiana goes 
to the bottom of my list and other more challenging films go to the 
top. Over the past two evenings I went to see a couple of Turkish 
films that I will be saying something about when I get a chance. As I 
have stated here in the past, the art of film-making is largely lost 
in Hollywood. I have a free pass to see just about anything and I 
tend not to use it.

If I were to write a screenplay about South Africa, I would use Gillo 
Pontecorvo's "Burn" as a model. The ability of the British 
imperialists to coopt the liberation movement through its agent Sir 
William Walker (played by Brando) would obviously help one write 
about the likes of Thabo Mbeki.