Posted 9:13 PM by Floyd

In places like Afghanistan and Iraq we are running out of people to shoot at. How come there are no shortage of asshats like this:

Not-so-special effects
FILMMAKER: GIMMICKS, VIOLENCE PUT BAD FACE ON U.S.
By Philip Kennicott
Washington Post

WASHINGTON - Americans, who are protective or even prickly about the meaning of what happened Sept. 11, 2001, may find filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi's view disconcerting:

When you're reading a book or watching a movie, it may be appropriate to look for meaning of symbols. September 11th was not a work of fiction; it was historical fact. A group of Muslim fanatics murdered several thousand people, and their leader videotaped his reasons for doing so. People who go on about the "meaning" of September 11th are passive-aggressive whiners who have the outlook of a conspiracy theorist but lack the conspiracy nut's courage to be mocked for his stupidity.

``You can be 100 percent sure that if these Hollywood films were not being disseminated throughout the rest of the world in such a way that everyone can see these special effects . . . that September 11 probably wouldn't even have happened, it would not have become part of the imagination of the people.''

Uh huh. It's Pixar's fault. And those Star Wars scenes where the Death Stars got blown up gave me the idea to build a missile to blow up the moon.

I got the fucker in my basement.

I wonder what film Guderian was watching that gave him the conception for Achtung Panzer?

This is not an ``America's to blame'' argument but an argument about the power of images, made by a Kurdish Iranian film director for whom images are sacred.

And if a woman gets raped and I tell her the clothes she was wearing were too sexy, that's not a "victim to blame" argument but an argument about the power of fashion.

...

He has a strong distaste for American special effects and the sheer density of violence in American films, and he warns, ``The films coming out now are probably the worst advertisement of and PR for the American people.''

Did Ghobadi speak out against any actual violence? I must have missed it.

Ghobadi was against the war and against Saddam; he wanted only to see Saddam finished.

Well what do you know: In a world where cannibals roam around the Congo at will, hacking limbs off people and roasting them, where an Arab dictatorship has children's prisons and children's graves, Ghobadi chose to speak out against one specific act of violence, the liberation of Iraq. What were the odds?

But let's not lose sight of how Ghobadi was "against Saddam". He wanted to "see Saddam finished". Ghobadi just wasn't willing to approve of any specific action to do so. Apparently Saddam was supposed to vanish in a cloud of, well, special effects.