TOP 5 AT THE OSCARS

1. See above.

2. Also not deserving: Meryl Streep, “The Devil Wears Prada,”

3. Also not deserving: Eddie Murphy, “Dreamgirls.”

4. Actually, anything related to “Dreamgirls.”

5. “An Inconvenient Truth,” must win best documentary.

This is a protest film, and I don’t know what “24″ is anymore.

I watched Flags of Our Fathers today, and was left wanting a hell of a lot more. I got that “more” when I saw Letters from Iwo Jima later in the day, which I’ll discuss tomorrow.

So, Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers, it’s the most palatable protest film the American public will recieve. The soldiers respect their fellow soldiers, and grieve with the widows of those lost in battle. The politicians are doing their best (albeit without any class) to raise money with war bonds to support the troops.

But the soldiers, especially Adam Beach’s Marine Private First Class Ira Hayes, have grave cases of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

The soldiers are angry that they’re being used as propaganda material for a war being lost.

The goverment characters in the film almost make a case for morale being worth lying for. They’re also racist bastards when it comes down to Native Americans. In a way it’s portrayed as the way things were, but those people are not the heroes of the film by a long shot.

They’re not the villains, either. The villain here, is war. I don’t think, especially for WWII films, corporately funded movies can ever portray any American in a negative light as any kind of a true villain.

All of the soldiers are good men, who never commit atrocities. Not the way it is right now, but what we all want to believe.

This is a palatable protest film. The only kind of protest art that an economically comfortable public will accept. God damn, I’m glad Clint Eastwood made it.

Will we ever get a portrayal of the evil that American troops do in a format that the public will watch? It goes without saying that many of our troops are doing amazing things, but it goes all too unsaid that they are doing horrendous things.

I doubt it, sadly. We get, what is almost as important, the vilification of the goverment, as in Gregory Itzin’s Nixon/Bush character President Charles Logan, who was the evil mastermind behind Day 5, and is now being reintroduced in Day 6.

The problem with only vilifying the government is that … well … Americans already distrust the goverment. It’s too easy. If, somehow, Jack Bauer’s lifetime of torture and Geneva Conventions ignoring behavior actually damaged the safety of the country, then, and only then, would 24 be the accurate portrayal of society that it’s real-time premise makes it out to be.

Americans need every reminder they can get that violence and war are horrible things. Supposedly troops out in the field are using gung-ho torture methods and styles that show influence of 24, a show that is itself still coming to grips with it’s own obsession with torture, and the physical and mental scars of torture. Don’t believe me? The scars on the hands off Jack Bauer, which he accrued from 2 years of torture from the hands of the Chinese goverment, are a sign of a changing time.

Much is made of the fact that Joel Surnow is a crazy dickbag who really dreams at night of a secret police to kill undesireables. It’s a big deal that he’s practically the only openly conservative fatcat in Hollywood. What’s more concerning to me is that he’s not only making the occasionally entertaining 24 now. He’s also a producer for FOX News’s horrible answer to The Daily Show, the ridiculous and unfunny, The 1/2 Hour News Hour. And yes, I don’t get that title either.

I trust Clint Eastwood a billion times more than I do Surnow, thankfully, it’s well known that 24 isn’t made and created soley from Surnow troubled head. Kiefer has publically stated that his views lean towards a socialist envrionment, he’s either lying about this, or he’s an amazing actor.

RIP J Dilla 2/14/2006