J Hoberman, Film after Film

A review by Louis Proyect on Counterpunch.com of a new book by J Hoberman, Film after Film, or What Became of 21st Century Cinema.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/10/19/cinema-after-911/

The book is a collection of articles by Hoberman, mostly from the Village Voice.

From Hoberman's review of Team America: World Police quoted in the review:

Often funny but seldom uproarious, Team America purveys a post–9-11 irony that’s founded on a combination of schoolyard insult, belligerent patriotism, and the absence of irony. The villains are Kim Jong Il, an irate little puppet who furnishes Arab terrorists with WMDs; Michael Moore, who appears outside Mt. Rushmore with a hot dog in each hand and a bomb strapped to his belly; and a gaggle of prominent Hollywood stars led by Alec Baldwin, head of the Film Actors Guild.

In the service of human interest, Team America recruits a replacement commando from the Broadway hit Lease. (He’s first seen singing “Everybody Has AIDS.”) His job is acting, something that intrinsically amuses animators Parker and Stone. Their marionettes vomit, bleed, and explode into organ parts. Indeed, these puppets show more guts than the filmmakers, who direct their fire at very soft targets: French and Egyptian civilians, a Communist dictator, and a bunch of Hollywood showboats. Despite some pre-release Drudge-stoked hysteria regarding an “unconscionable” attack on the administration, no American politicians appear in the movie. (The movie has since garnered Fox News’s seal of approval.) Nor do any media moguls. The filmmakers never satirize anyone who could hurt their career—not even Michael Moore enabler Harvey Weinstein.

According to the review:

The book is divided into three parts. The first deals with the film versus digital debate that provided the substance of this year’s superb documentary “Side by Side”, produced by and starring a remarkably informed and articulate Keanu Reeves. The second is a look at Hollywood blockbusters and a handful of documentaries and indie films that Hoberman investigates as commentary, often unintentional, on the war on terror following 9/11. The final section is a look at some fairly obscure films that would probably be of the most interest to Hoberman’s students at Cooper Union and NYU but the general reader might find it useful as a guide to the Netflix inventory on those occasions when you simply do not have the stomach for another Bruce Willis car chase/smash mouth extravaganza. 

J. Hoberman