« Kiss Kael Boom BANG!: imperiling Pauline | Main | Late and great and lasting: Ballhaus on work with Fassbinder »
November 25, 2005
Americans can handle only one genocide per Christmas: Syriana vs. Munich
Baltimore Sun's Michael Sragow considers how much serious can holiday audiences (and the Academy) stand? "We call the film 'Elf 2'," joked Stephen Gaghan, the creator of Syriana, with a hint of desperation.... Ambitious filmmakers have faced this paradox of timing year after year, with unpredictable results. Warren Beatty opened Reds on Dec. 4, 1981. He garnered mixed to rave reviews, earned 12 Oscar nominations, and won three statuettes: best director for himself, best cinematography for Vittorio Storaro and best supporting actress for Maureen Stapleton. Yet the movie didn't make its budget back... Spielberg's Munich opens Dec. 23. Although it has a wildly different focus - the massacre of the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics and the search for the killers by Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency - two movies that depict terrorism may be too much even for hearty appetites.... The situation is reminiscent of 1993, when Walter Hill's Geronimo: An American Legend opened Dec. 10 and Spielberg's Schindler's List opened Dec. 15. "I guess Americans can handle only one genocide per Christmas," Geronimo screenwriter Larry Gross joked to Sragow upon the film's release.
Posted by pride at November 25, 2005 01:16 PM
Comments
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)