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Is “Olympus Has Fallen” anti-Obama?
A black president fails to prevent an attack from extremists tied to North Korea. Interesting
In the new film “Olympus Has Fallen,” a black man is acting president, Ashley Judd is (for a time) the first lady and paramilitary forces with North Korean ties overwhelm the White House defenses. The president, vice president and secretary of defense barricade themselves in a bunker deep underneath 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue — good thing, because the White House is a burning shambles.
Get used to seeing the president’s home under attack. This summer brings “White House Down,” a film starring Jamie Foxx as the president in a seat of power under siege. Later this month, the “G.I. Joe” sequel is to feature black flags flown over the White House as a mysterious supervillain impersonates the president and takes over the country. The “Iron Man 3? trailer reaches its climax at a shot of Air Force One getting shot out of the sky.
So what is it we thrill to about watching our national landmarks destroyed on the big screen? And at a time when real North Korea nuclear threats are in the news, what’s so entertaining about watching them score a direct hit on Washington? ...
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/19/is_olympus_has_fallen_anti_obama/
In the new film “Olympus Has Fallen,” a black man is acting president, Ashley Judd is (for a time) the first lady and paramilitary forces with North Korean ties overwhelm the White House defenses. The president, vice president and secretary of defense barricade themselves in a bunker deep underneath 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue — good thing, because the White House is a burning shambles.
Get used to seeing the president’s home under attack. This summer brings “White House Down,” a film starring Jamie Foxx as the president in a seat of power under siege. Later this month, the “G.I. Joe” sequel is to feature black flags flown over the White House as a mysterious supervillain impersonates the president and takes over the country. The “Iron Man 3? trailer reaches its climax at a shot of Air Force One getting shot out of the sky.
So what is it we thrill to about watching our national landmarks destroyed on the big screen? And at a time when real North Korea nuclear threats are in the news, what’s so entertaining about watching them score a direct hit on Washington? ...
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/19/is_olympus_has_fallen_anti_obama/
13 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
Black is "bad". 
What will kill this for me? Is if there is any black female in the movie that fits hollysucks 4 stereotypes of us. They do that - and I'm going to get mad. 
cooperate with some films...
...The explicit imagery of the White House burning or burning American-flag motifs are no accident: “We’ve ripped this flag, and it’s being thrown off the side of a building, so that you feel something,” said Fuqua.
Perhaps Fuqua’s stated patriotism helped the “Olympus” production gain access to former Secret Service agents, who consulted on the script so that the events following the North Korean invasion played out as true-to-life as possible. The director even suggested he had top-secret information: ”Some things I can’t say,” he said cryptically. “There are some things they told me that I had to leave out.”
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/19/is_olympus_has_fallen_anti_obama/
Perhaps Fuqua’s stated patriotism helped the “Olympus” production gain access to former Secret Service agents, who consulted on the script so that the events following the North Korean invasion played out as true-to-life as possible. The director even suggested he had top-secret information: ”Some things I can’t say,” he said cryptically. “There are some things they told me that I had to leave out.”
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/19/is_olympus_has_fallen_anti_obama/
but not others.
General Curtis LeMay: You're in a pretty bad fix, Mr. President.
President Kennedy: What did you say?
General Curtis LeMay: You're in a pretty bad fix.
President Kennedy: Well, maybe you haven't noticed: You're in it with me.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=1418900
...There was a movie called “Air Strike” by a guy named Cy Roth. Now, Ed Wood is often credited as being the worst director in Hollywood history, but Cy Roth would really give him a run for his money. Roth decided around 1953 that he’d made a Western, he’d made a space movie, now he wanted to make a war movie. This movie was set on a World War II aircraft carrier, and the lead characters were a young Jewish flyer and a young black flyer who are constantly being subjected to anti-Semitism and racism on the ship.
The military said, “No, we don’t want to show any kind of racism or anti-Semitism in this picture, you’ve got to change that.” They also said, “We don’t want a World War II-era picture, we want a movie set in the modern jet age.” And Roth went nuts. He called his congressman, he wrote a letter to President Eisenhower -- and the day after the White House got his letter of complaint, they sicced the FBI on him to see whether he was a Communist or not. Well, he finally caved in; he made the picture the way they wanted. So it was no blacks, no Jews, no propellers. If you look at this film, it’s so bad, it looks like a home movie shot on an aircraft carrier. So this film was completely changed...
http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2004/09/operation-hollywood
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=1445551
TONY SCOTT'S SUICIDE NOTE
2012.10.7
...
According to Saunders, a secret campaign was undertaken by the CIA and Pentagon in 1955, called "Militant Liberty". This was designed to insert the theme of "freedom" into American movies, and to remove any elements which were critical of the United States. In June and July of 1956, representatives of the Joint Chiefs of Staff met with a group of Hollywood acolytes which included John Ford, Merian C . Cooper, John Wayne, and Ward Bond, to promote the illegal domestic propaganda program. A producer named C.V. Whitney, not coincidentally the cousin of CIA agent Tracey Barnes, signed on and made THE SEARCHERS (in the light of which we might view the film as an anti-Communist parable, with "redskins" standing in for "reds" .
Saunders also observes that when, in 1946, Ford and Cooper set up their independent production company, Argosy, the principal investors were all intelligence men: William Donovan (former head of the OSS), Ole Doering, David Bruce and William Vanderbilt. C.D. Jackson, a CIA agent and vice president of Time, listed as helpful "friends" Cecil B. DeMille; Spyros P. Skouros and Darryl Zanuck at Fox; Nicholas Shenk, president of MGM; producer Dore Schary; Barney Balaban, president of Paramount; Harry and Jack Warner; James R. Grainger, president of RKO; Milton Rackmil, president of Universal; Harry Cohn, president of Columbia; Herbert Yates, head of Republic Pictures; and, inevitably, Walt and Roy Disney.
If Jackson's claim is true, then all the studios except United Artists were in the CIA's pocket by 1954. But CIA influence didn't stop with studio heads. A CIA agent, Carleton Alsop, worked undercover at Paramount, where he prepared lists of actors and technicians to be blacklisted, ordered script changes, and shut down films of which he disapproved. Alsop was quite powerful: he killed the project GIANT at Paramount because it was unflattering to rich Texans and depicted racism against Mexicans.
How many other studios had in-house CIA censors isn't clear: but it's unlikely that Carleton Alsop worked all alone.
...
Tony Scott, RIP; John Ford; John Wayne; Cecil B. DeMille; Darryl Zanuck; Luigi Luraschi (head of domestic and foreign censorship at Paramount in the 1950s); Joseph Mankiewicz; John Chambers and Bob Sidell (studio makeup men); Jack Myers; David Houle; Scott Valentine (VP of Sony Pictures); Jack Gilardi (ICM agency); Rick Nicita (CAA agency); Ron Meyer (COO of Universal); Matt Corman; Chris Ord; Kristy Swanson; Tim Matheson; Roger and Robert Towne; Tom Berenger; Ron Silver; Michael Frost Beckner; Jennifer Garner; Jeff Apple; Roger Birnbaum; Colin Farrell; Ben Affleck; Phil Alden Robinson; Lawrence Lasker; Mark Bowden; Mike Myers; Kevin and Michael Bacon; Mace Neufeld; J.J. Abrams; Paul Attanasio; Doug Liman; David Arata; Kiefer Sutherland; Tom Cruise.
(Not all Hollywood actors are thus inclined. Post 9-11, some have spoken out against CIA and government spying: Jenkins lists Al Pacino, Martin Sheen, Hector Elizondo, Richard Dreyfuss, Holly Hunter, Kristin Davis, Samuel L. Jackson and Jake Gyllenhaal as standing up for the American Civil Liberties Union in a series of advertisements.)
http://www.alexcox.com/blog.htm
2012.10.7
...
According to Saunders, a secret campaign was undertaken by the CIA and Pentagon in 1955, called "Militant Liberty". This was designed to insert the theme of "freedom" into American movies, and to remove any elements which were critical of the United States. In June and July of 1956, representatives of the Joint Chiefs of Staff met with a group of Hollywood acolytes which included John Ford, Merian C . Cooper, John Wayne, and Ward Bond, to promote the illegal domestic propaganda program. A producer named C.V. Whitney, not coincidentally the cousin of CIA agent Tracey Barnes, signed on and made THE SEARCHERS (in the light of which we might view the film as an anti-Communist parable, with "redskins" standing in for "reds"
.
Saunders also observes that when, in 1946, Ford and Cooper set up their independent production company, Argosy, the principal investors were all intelligence men: William Donovan (former head of the OSS), Ole Doering, David Bruce and William Vanderbilt. C.D. Jackson, a CIA agent and vice president of Time, listed as helpful "friends" Cecil B. DeMille; Spyros P. Skouros and Darryl Zanuck at Fox; Nicholas Shenk, president of MGM; producer Dore Schary; Barney Balaban, president of Paramount; Harry and Jack Warner; James R. Grainger, president of RKO; Milton Rackmil, president of Universal; Harry Cohn, president of Columbia; Herbert Yates, head of Republic Pictures; and, inevitably, Walt and Roy Disney.
If Jackson's claim is true, then all the studios except United Artists were in the CIA's pocket by 1954. But CIA influence didn't stop with studio heads. A CIA agent, Carleton Alsop, worked undercover at Paramount, where he prepared lists of actors and technicians to be blacklisted, ordered script changes, and shut down films of which he disapproved. Alsop was quite powerful: he killed the project GIANT at Paramount because it was unflattering to rich Texans and depicted racism against Mexicans.
How many other studios had in-house CIA censors isn't clear: but it's unlikely that Carleton Alsop worked all alone.
...
Tony Scott, RIP; John Ford; John Wayne; Cecil B. DeMille; Darryl Zanuck; Luigi Luraschi (head of domestic and foreign censorship at Paramount in the 1950s); Joseph Mankiewicz; John Chambers and Bob Sidell (studio makeup men); Jack Myers; David Houle; Scott Valentine (VP of Sony Pictures); Jack Gilardi (ICM agency); Rick Nicita (CAA agency); Ron Meyer (COO of Universal); Matt Corman; Chris Ord; Kristy Swanson; Tim Matheson; Roger and Robert Towne; Tom Berenger; Ron Silver; Michael Frost Beckner; Jennifer Garner; Jeff Apple; Roger Birnbaum; Colin Farrell; Ben Affleck; Phil Alden Robinson; Lawrence Lasker; Mark Bowden; Mike Myers; Kevin and Michael Bacon; Mace Neufeld; J.J. Abrams; Paul Attanasio; Doug Liman; David Arata; Kiefer Sutherland; Tom Cruise.
(Not all Hollywood actors are thus inclined. Post 9-11, some have spoken out against CIA and government spying: Jenkins lists Al Pacino, Martin Sheen, Hector Elizondo, Richard Dreyfuss, Holly Hunter, Kristin Davis, Samuel L. Jackson and Jake Gyllenhaal as standing up for the American Civil Liberties Union in a series of advertisements.)
http://www.alexcox.com/blog.htm
What's next, Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist
Times ten plus one!
