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.

Notes from the past few days.

What is a greater part of the popular culture – that which happens in society we all know, track, and follow – than 9-11? Nothing, anymore. As El-Producto puts it in his blog, “and nothing was ever the same. not ever again.”

But on Tuesday the 12th, we have the biggest release date for hipsters in recent memory. Even though we already know Justin Timberlake’s campaign to Bring Sexy Back will take the #1 slot on the record sales chart next week, I hope people will go to their local music vendors to support TV On The Radio, Junior Boys, The Rapture, Yo La Tengo, and The Mars Volta, all of these perennial hipster faves (maybe not TMV anymore) have releases this week.

My pick – and this will be no surprise to anyone who has heard me promote the record over the last god knows how many months since the early release leaked and the UK edition came out – is for TV On The Radio’s Return To Cookie Mountain. If only for the fact that Cookie Mountain is a Mario reference (Cookie Mountain is the third of seven worlds in Super Mario World) and the album is the best fucking thing I’ve heard in ages. Also, the US release features 3 bonus tracks, which include an El-P remix of “Hours.” Look at that fancy reweaving.

Oh, and not that I rely on Aaron McGruder’s The Boondocks to give me witty political commentary daily, this entry into the series does not cut it for an entry published on a 9-11 anniversary.

The Descent is the biggest movie theater mindfuck I’ve experienced in ages. It just makes you feel SO uncomfortable. Oh, and if anybody has seen it, would you care to comment on the rather simple corollaries to the 7th season of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer?

Finally, there’s more to Tuesday the 12th than just a shitload of music releases, this blogger is excited for whatever it is that Apple is going to announce at their “It’s Showtime” media event, which is most likely going to be where they announce their plan for selling feature length films via iTunes, a renaming of the iTunes Music Store (it’s been selling tv shows for so long now), and new iPods. This post/pic over at TUAW is the kind of falsified Mac Addict Pr0n that encourages the Apple rumor mill to churn oh so fast. The point of the photo was to make it seem like our new overlord, the widescreen video iPod, is finally here. Only time will tell.