WhyWeFight Tagged Articles at Cinematical
'Why We Fight' Director to Helm HBO Vietnam Film
Filed under: Documentary », Distribution », HBO Films », Cinematical Indie », War »
I was just re-watching Eugene Jarecki's terrific documentary Why We Fight the other day and wondering, "man, how did this not win an Oscar?" Both its ineligibility and the strength of the 2006 feature documentary category aside, it's a really great visual essay on the problems of the U.S. military -- particularly the allowance for the military industrial complex to grow so large -- since the mid-20th century. If you've never seen it, you should. It'll bring you up to speed right up to the Iraq War (and feel free to make it an informative double feature by following it up with Charles Ferguson's No End in Sight).For his next feature, Jarecki is sticking to the subject of war, though he's going back and focusing on Vietnam, specifically the evacuation of U.S. troops from Saigon in 1975 (maybe it can parallel an exit from Iraq? huh? maybe?). He and screenwriter Jesse Wigutow (It Runs in the Family) are basing the doc, titled Irreparable Harm, on former CIA agent Frank Snepp's book "Irreparable Harm: A Firsthand Account of How One Agent Took on the CIA in an Epic Battle Over Free Speech," which details the author's struggle with the federal government after he published his Saigon evacuation document, "Decent Interval."
Jarecki's film, which is being produced for HBO Films, will be more about Snepp than on the history, and hopefully that won't get him in trouble with the feds too. Also, here's hoping that Irreparable Harm at least makes Jarecki eligible to be nominated for the Oscar he deserves.
Writers Guild Announces Doc Nominees
Filed under: Documentary », Awards », Lionsgate Films », Sony Classics », Scripts », Oscar Watch », Miramax »
As long as the Academy gives separate screenwriting Oscars for original screenplay and adapted screenplay, they should also consider honoring non-fiction screenplays. Not all documentaries have writers, but many do -- according to the Writers Guild of America the number of docs with writing credit has increased by 50% in recent years. That is why the WGA began awarding non-fiction screenwriters two years ago; Super-Size Me was the first to be honored. I'm not sure why the WGA announced the doc noms separately from the rest, but in doing so the guild is allowing for the category to be given less attention. Of course, with the news that Borat is nominated for the adaptation prize, everything else about the WGA Awards is being overshadowed (I paid more notice to the Borat news, too). But I think it is important for documentary fans to know that the WGA does honor non-fiction writers. Maybe one day they'll even go and split up the category to distinguish between the original and adapted non-fiction scripts (there may not be enough of the latter, though).
The nominees for the 2007 Documentary Screenplay Award are: Deliver Us From Evil (written by Amy Berg); The Heart of the Game (written by Ward Serrill); Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos (story by John Dower and Mark Monroe; screenplay by Mark Monroe); Who Killed the Electric Car? (written by Chris Paine); Why We Fight (written by Eugene Jarecki).
Review: Why We Fight
Filed under: Documentary », Sony Classics », Theatrical Reviews », Politics »
What an anti-climax. Why We Fight premiered exactly a year ago at the Sundance Film festival, walked off with the festival's Documentary Grand Prize (over audience favorites The Aristocrats and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room), and was soon after snatched up by Sony's indie arm for domestic distribution. Think about how different the world looked in January of 2005: this was pre-Cindy Sheehan; pre-Valerie Plane/Judy Miller/Scooter Libby; pre-Katrina. The whole WMD charade had already been pretty much debunked, but the Bush administration didn't seem to be losing any collective sleep over ...well, much of anything. The time was ripe, last winter, for the Republican establishment to get hit with a classy, even-handed counter-point. So it's baffling that SPC bought Eugene Jarecki's film – the classiest, most even-handed contrapuntal maneuver in years – only to wait this long to release it. If it had hit screens last winter, Why We Fight would have at least felt a half-step ahead of the zeitgeist; this winter, it actually feels somewhat unnecessary.
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