Is Matt still a cog in Capitalist systemIJ
Matt Damon’s politics owe a great deal to his mother. The first time Nancy Carlsson-Paige saw her son featured in a glossy magazine, she was appalled. “My beautiful boy is being used to sell products,” she told a newspaper. “He is just a cog in the capitalist system.” She’d never even read a magazine like Vanity Fair before, her son explains. “She’s a professor. If it’s not The Nation, she doesn’t read it.”
One would love to know what his mother makes of his latest film, Elysium, a big-budget sci-fi action thriller packed with set-piece fights and expensive pyrotechnic violence. “Hmm, well, my mom’s big on non-violent conflict resolution,” he grins. Damon has travelled a long way from the Boston commune where he grew up in the 1970s and 1980s among five other families who were, if not quite hippies, then firmly on the countercultural left. Today he is one of cinema’s all-time highest-grossing leading men, and voted World’s Sexiest Man by People magazine. (The Guardian)
Spielberg running out of ideas
Steven Spielberg must know what he’s doing. After all, he’s been nominated for 12 Oscars and won three. But at the age of 66 the veteran filmmaker, who has produced 140 projects, directed 51 and written 21, seems to be running out of ideas judging by the next two movies he is planning for his DreamWorks studio. Both are remakes, not of obscure films that could use an update and the Spielberg touch, but two genuine classics in their own right. First, 1940’s Rebecca. Based on the novel by Daphne du Maurier, it won two Oscars, and was directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Then there is his other planned remake, The Grapes of Wrath. Also made in 1940, remains one of the best movies ever to come out of the Fox studios.
Male-dominated Saudi Arabia gets a film directed by woman
It would be hard not to like Wadjda, a new film from Saudi Arabia and the first to be directed by a woman in the male-dominated kingdom. A rare cinematic glimpse of a barely known country, the film tells the story of an independent-minded, cheeky young girl, Wadjda, who wants to buy a bike so she can race with her neighbour, Abdullah (who she shouldn’t be playing with). Some of Saudi’s choking, all-encompassing controls over women are exposed: The prohibition on women driving or mixing with men; the taboos over talking in public, or riding bicycles as these might defile virginity.
In January, the Saudi monarchy announced that women would for the first time be appointed to the Shura council (the parliament) and soon be given the vote in municipal elections. last year, Saudi female athletes took part in the Olympics for the first time. Earlier this year, the kingdom lifted a ban on women working on supermarket checkouts, in lingerie stores and on cosmetics counters. Then, last month, it was announced that women could ride bikes — albeit clothed head-to-toe, accompanied by a male guardian, in restricted areas and for recreation only. (The Guardian)
Deep Throat lawsuit threatens to swallow lovelace biopic
Deep Throat was a notorious 1970s porn film about a sexually rapacious young woman who swallow all her suitors. Now, four decades on from its initial release, Deep Throat appears to be back to its old tricks. Its current mission: To swallow a major Harvey Weinstein-backed motion picture. Arrow Productions, which owns the rights to Deep Throat, has taken legal action to block the release of lovelace, a biopic of the porn star linda lovelace. The company claims that the new film uses more than five minutes of unlicensed footage from Deep Throat. It seeks an injunction against the distribution and marketing of lovelace, together with damages of $10m. (The Guardian)
How Hollywood Helped Hitler
The 1930s are celebrated as one of Hollywood’s golden ages, but in his new book, The Collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact with Hitler, Ben Urwand uncovers a darker side to Hollywood’s past. Drawing on a wealth of archival documents in the US and Germany, he reveals the shocking extent to which Hollywood cooperated and collaborated with the Nazis during the decade leading up to World War II to protect its business. Beginning with wholesale changes made to Universal’s 1930 release All Quiet on the Western Front, Hollywood regularly ran scripts and finished movies by German officials for approval. When they objected to scenes or dialogue they thought made Germany look bad, criticised the Nazis or dwelled on the mistreatment of Jews, the studios would accommodate them — and make cuts in the American versions as well as those shown elsewhere in the world.
Indeed, Hollywood would not make a notable anti-Nazi film until 1940. Hitler was obsessed with the propaganda power of films. (Hollywood Reporter)