Argo

[PopeyeJones]

Great flick. Fucking loved it. Anyone else fuck with this yet?

Shit like Arbitrage and Argo just makes me kind of about how far away Hollywood has moved from making movies in the 50 million dollar range. It seems like most of the movies with real staying power from the mid 80s through mid 90s were those flicks in the mid-budget range (e.g. goodfellas, fight club, usual suspects, shawshank, pulp fiction, out of sight, etc., etc.), and Hollywood has basically given up on 'em. Argo and Arbitrage would have been good but not anything special 15-20 years ago, but are kind of all we have left from that era. Bullshit.

Sorry for nerd diversion. Argo. Let's talk about it.

[The Afronaut]

I agree about the movie. I thought it was great. I had no idea about this event having happened at all.

Well acted all around.

[PopeyeJones]

^^^ Word. Another +1 is that my wife (who is Iranian) and all of her Iranian friends and family have really liked the movie also, and been recommending it.

They're all of course always a little bit on edge about Iranians being portrayed as swarthy, frothing animals, but were all pleasantly surprised by the portrayal in this movie (no small feat, given the subject matter), how contextualized everything was, and a bunch of little details about place, time, language, etc. they got really right.

Not the type of shit that most viewers really have reason or knowledge to care about, but it does speak to the quality of the flick, IMO.

[TeenageMoustache]

That's because Ben Affleck and Matt Damon were indoctrinated by Howard Zinn and his ilk in their youth.

I liked it well enough. Good flick. I thought there were some cliche dramatic moments -- him standing at his wife's door and the silent embrace, or drinking from the bottle of wine in his hotel room -- shit like that. I wanted this to be more like Carlos, but it was a tad too Hollywood for that.

[The Ivy League Nigga]

Great movie. So simple and clean. The directing and suspense really shined.

[Psychosis]

Bryan Cranston and especially Alan Arkin were awesome in this.

[Tweak Da Leak]

Affectless Affleck
by ARMOND WHITE on Oct 12, 2012 • 1:09 pm
Argo fakes political commitment

At this point in Ben Affleck’s directing career, I’d rather have him back simply as an actor (provided he’s well directed by someone who knows what the job entails). Affleck the auteur chooses worse material than Affleck the actor. And he lacks the skill and seriousness to make the stories believable.

Argo, Affleck’s newest job, is another of those based-on-a-true-story gimmicks: the CIA’s 1980 plan to rescue six Americans hiding in Teheran, a background event to the Iranian hostage crisis. Exfiltration specialist Tony Mendez (played affectlessly by Affleck) concocts a plan involving Hollywood pros to rescue the Americans by pretending to scout locations in Iran for a sci-fi movie titled “Argo.”

Affleck directs the story like a TV show–not a good one like Irvin Kershner’s 1977 TV-movie Raid on Entebbe but with no sense of place, suspenseful timing or feel for character that distinguishes a cinematic vision. (Zhang Yimou’s splendid Flowers of War is this year’s best rescue movie.) Argo’s script by first-timer Chris Terrio features TV brashness, full of sub-par Aaron Sorkinisms: “It’s standing room only for beheadings in the square” and “Exfiltrations are like abortions. You don’t wanna need one but when you do you don’t want to do it yourself.” George Clooney could blurt all this snark. Indeed, Clooney co-produced this film with Affleck which explains its rickety drama and flimsy comedy.

Miscalculated as a tale of showbiz heroism, Argo lacks conviction. Its trifling mix of action and sarcasm demonstrates no respect for history. The Hollywood scenes mock industry vulgarity and venality but ignores what motivated the middle-aged bizzers (Alan Arkin and John Goodman as Hollywood vets who are likely military veterans) to risk their reputations and protect others‘ lives–now bygone virtues. Affleck and Clooney are part of the elite who have never served their country and can’t fathom that kind of patriotism and so smirk at it. It’s a Joe Biden kind of movie. Ironically, Argo fakes a political story in an era when Hollywood is politically irresponsible.

Follow Armond White on Twitter at 3xchair

[The Afronaut]

Its trifling mix of action and sarcasm demonstrates no respect for history.

I thought they did a pretty good job of contextualizing how and why the event took place in a fairly quick and neat way.

[PopeyeJones]

LOL @ Armond White trolling.

[Blockhead]

Do you think White believes what he writes? He's a fascinating asshole.
Haven't seen this yet but it's next on my list.

[Cash Rulz]

Really???? Ok, might have to check this out then.

[jamrage]

Thought this was a very good, but not great movie.

I pretty much hated all of the hostages which is a problem when the audience is supposed to care about them getting out.

Affleck did a very good job at both acting and directing the film. I agree that it's a tight film that flows along really well, and they brought the audience up to speed very quickly early on. They sold it as a period piece very well, and I loved the grainy look of the film. You can tell they went to great lengths to make the look as accurate as possible.

Arkin and Goodman were highly entertaining, I wish we'd had more screen time with them.

I wish they'd done a bit more with the other hostages in the embassy. The scene where they lined them up and "fired" empty guns at them was insane.

Overall, this is a welcome addition to the 80's setting spy genre film and another win for Affleck.

7 outta 10.

[Andvil]

really really liked this movie

the ONLY thing I had a problem with was everyone celebrating on the plane when they got out of Iranian air space. All I could think about was everyone else on that plane -- most if not all Iranians -- probably being like "fuck these assholes" at this group of white dorks running around the plane hugging and crying because they just left Iran. Like, I get it, but fucking control yourselves

I also thought it was funny how the end credit sequence was just a bunch of gloating like LOOK HOW GOOD WE DID RECREATING EVERYTHING (and to their credit, they did do a damn good job, especially casting people that looked pretty similar to their real-life counterparts)

[Employee]

Fucking terrible.

The entire airport scene is fucking absurd (not to mention that it shits all over Canada's far more prominent role in the operation).

Two thumbs down.

[ardamus]

I saw it and thought it was good. Surprised it won. As long as that overrated-ass, over-promoted-ass fuckin' movie, Les Miserables didn't get movie of the year, I'm fine with that.

[Spartan]

I'm actually proud we haven't done an Oscars thread this year.

[Random Sample]

I only saw three of the movies that were nominated for Best Picture. Django, Zero Dark Thirty, and Argo.

Out of the three that I watched, Argo was the best IMO.

[Truth.]

Zero Dark Thirty should of won

[Hayzoos]

This movie is awesome and anyone who says otherwise is a nitpicky contrarian faggot

[the dead poet]

watched this last night. Good movie.

[Thun]

Super shitty movie filled with factual inaccuracies so jarring they amount to a projection of the US's bureaucratic-security cruelties onto others, Oscar presented by the 1st Lady backed by weird military procession, hot garbage.

[PopeyeJones]

^^^ Point me to a scripted 90 minute movie that's fully historical accurate and I'd by more sympathetic to that complaint (no Battle of Algiers).

That a mainstream American movie literally begins with a historically accurate summary of the situation (that the revolution was largely fomented by a U.S. and & U.K sponsored coup d'etat that installed a puppet government that jailed and tortured political prisoners for decades), and one that American media (mainstream and not) is nothing if not entirely fucking silent about during the preposterous war frenzy that's now being targeted on Iran, buys Argo a fuckload of leeway in my book.

[battlecatmeowstab212]

^^^ Point me to a scripted 90 minute movie that's fully historical accurate and I'd by more sympathetic to that complaint (no Battle of Algiers).

[Thun]

^^^ Point me to a scripted 90 minute movie that's fully historical accurate and I'd by more sympathetic to that complaint (no Battle of Algiers).

That a mainstream American movie literally begins with a historically accurate summary of the situation (that the revolution was largely fomented by a U.S. and & U.K sponsored coup d'etat that installed a puppet government that jailed and tortured political prisoners for decades), and one that American media (mainstream and not) is nothing if not entirely fucking silent about during the preposterous war frenzy that's now being targeted on Iran, buys Argo a fuckload of leeway in my book.

You're taking this a little personally, so let it be known in advance: I don't give a flying fuck about your Iranian wife. I mean I wish you guys the best of luck, but yeah.

Let me get more into my view of the film, since you seem to believe that we are diametrically opposed, which we are not. Posturing about rap music notwithstanding, I don't usually take a Manichean view of things, for real for real.

There is great potential in this film, as you've noted. At its outset, the film does attempt to piece together a history of CIA involvement in Iranian affair in the post-War years, and paints a picture of US intervention as an enabler of anti-democratic despotism that isn't usually told in mainstream US cinema. No doubt. I have little problem with this opening.

My problem lies more in a certain set of details (though I don't buy into an idea that a mainstream movie can't be criticized for irresponsibly promoting public fears, I am not taking the film to task for every error ever committed in a "historical drama" so kill that noise) and their implications.

http://www.accuracy.org/release/argo-fa ... -yourself/

The Americans never resisted the idea of playing a film crew, which is the source of much agitation in the movie. (In fact, the ‘house guests’ chose that cover story themselves, from a group of three options the CIA had prepared.) They were not almost lynched by a mob of crazy Iranians in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, because they never went there. There was no last-minute cancellation, and then un-cancellation, of the group’s tickets by the Carter administration. (The wife of Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor had personally gone to the airport and purchased tickets ahead of time, for three different outbound flights.) The group underwent no interrogation at the airport about their imaginary movie, nor were they detained at the gate while a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard telephoned their phony office back in Burbank. There was no last-second chase on the runway of Mehrabad Airport, with wild-eyed, bearded militants with Kalashnikovs trying to shoot out the tires of a Swissair jet.
“One of the actual hostages, Mark Lijek, noted that the CIA’s fake movie ‘cover story was never tested and in some ways proved irrelevant to the escape.’ The departure of the six Americans from Tehran was actually mundane and uneventful.

You can't explode everything into non-distinction. This is a film about a historical event that affects real people while claiming that "it's all true", and takes a dominant position in public discourse about very real fears of an Iranian Threat that were covered at length even in the presidential debates in a fantastically sensationalist way ungrounded in history or fact. Treating this as art with license that exists in its own world, and presuming that the American masses are morally and politically responsible for recognizing fantasy's departure from fact in the film while the film bears no responsibility? Not my thing.

[PopeyeJones]

^^ Just for clarification, not taking the disagreement personally, not super invested in it, and agreed that we're closer than our two "sides" might present on this stuff. And we can certainly agree that media can and should be criticized for promoting public fears, or contributing to moral panics by creating folk devils (e.g. all the anti-Russia war frenzy in American actioners through the 80s, 24 and Homeland these days, white savior teacher movies, tales from the hood "high art" carnival barking,etc., etc.).

I think we might just feel differently about Argo, though. With regards to the historically inaccurate details you quoted, for me they're mostly incidental, and all pitched toward the same thing: working within the genre of a thriller.

Does it make the US look good to pretend that the US government almost abandoned folks from its consulate at the last second? I personally don't think so.

Does it make the Iranian government look bad to pretend that they caught on to the ruse and were much more on the ball about Americans sneaking out than they were? I don't personally think so.

All of this is taking something that happened and translating it into the context of the genre being worked in. As for the chase down the tarmac, I was personally more offended by the use of a hamfisted idiotic movie trope than the historical inaccuracy of it.

The minutia and details of this are personally just MUCH less important to me than the broader historical context, which is why I'm admittedly giving them a pass on details that get translated when turning history into a story. Taking the first three minutes of your popcorn thriller and using them as a documentary-style testimony about the really fucking horrible U.S. meddling and control that sparked a revolution in a Middle Eastern country is really impressive to me. That's a decision. It's not an obvious one or one that had to be made. Tacking that on to the front of your thriller also reaches and incredibly wider audience than the people who already know that there's quite a deep back story to all the countries we currently insist "hate America" and "don't share our values" (namely that almost essentially all of these countries have a long history of U.S. installed and backed puppet regimes throughout the 20 Century that were deeply, deeply fucking with these people in these places). Just personally, that's the part that matters to me. I don't give a fuck if passports were really checked closely or not.

As for the Presidential debate, agreed it's bad timing, but I don't think you can really fault Argo for Republicans using the bombing of Iran as a casual talking point to drum up support from their vengeful base. The movie had been in the can for a year when Republicans decided to act like fucking idiots about Iran. Again, it's unfortunate that the release of the flick coincided with that, but I don't blame the movie. And likewise, I think it's a fair question: does lying about how closely passports were checked feed into that, or does truth-telling about the U.S. installing a puppet government that led to disaster temper that? IMO it's probably wholly unrelated either way, but if it's anything it's the latter.

[Cash Rulz]

Good movie. Did not deserve Oscar at all tho'.

[Reason]

good movie, have no desire to ever watch it again

argo fuck yourself

[Philaflava]

Good movie. Did not deserve Oscar at all tho'.

how i felt. i was kinda bored with the hostages until they got to the airport. very unlikeable who ever said that, i agree.

arkin was as great as usual.

[PopeyeJones]

Good movie. Did not deserve Oscar at all tho'.

Agreed with this, and already said that IMO Argo would have been a dime a dozen in the mid 90s.

That said, of the movies nominated, I certainly wouldn't put my foot down saying that any of them were more deserving. More than anything, I think Argo benefited from a pretty weak selection of choices.

[Thun]

I think we might just feel differently about Argo, though. With regards to the historically inaccurate details you quoted, for me they're mostly incidental, and all pitched toward the same thing: working within the genre of a thriller.

Does it make the US look good to pretend that the US government almost abandoned folks from its consulate at the last second? I personally don't think so.

Does it make the Iranian government look bad to pretend that they caught on to the ruse and were much more on the ball about Americans sneaking out than they were? I don't personally think so.

The idea that the US Government can be simultaneously an evil/incompetent bureaucracy as well as the police chief of exceptionalist military adventurism is hardly something that reactionaries have a difficult time reconciling. Nor is the idea that the Iranian threat can be both savage and menacing and coldly calculating -- hell that's been employed so many times in cinema it's practically a convention of the genre thriller in addition to being a cornerstone of anti-Islamic fears.

The examples I cited seem minor if you presume that any one detail at any point in this movie has equal resonance; if we're talking about the the generic conventions of a thriller than the little details of the most suspenseful scene do matter a great deal even if you find their incongruity with reality to be personally unimpressive.

All of this is taking something that happened and translating it into the context of the genre being worked in. As for the chase down the tarmac, I was personally more offended by the use of a hamfisted idiotic movie trope than the historical inaccuracy of it.

If you're looking for someone who takes offense to generic conventions or cinematic portrayals, you're barking up the wrong tree. I'm simply calling things as I think they are: shitty inaccurate depictions that promote a particular ideology.

The minutia and details of this are personally just MUCH less important to me than the broader historical context, which is why I'm admittedly giving them a pass on details that get translated when turning history into a story.

Meh. I think you're underestimating the extent to which the details I've mentioned shape an interpretation of that historical context.

Taking the first three minutes of your popcorn thriller and using them as a documentary-style testimony about the really fucking horrible U.S. meddling and control that sparked a revolution in a Middle Eastern country is really impressive to me. That's a decision. It's not an obvious one or one that had to be made.

I feel like maybe you are easily impressed.

Tacking that on to the front of your thriller also reaches and incredibly wider audience than the people who already know that there's quite a deep back story to all the countries we currently insist "hate America" and "don't share our values" (namely that almost essentially all of these countries have a long history of U.S. installed and backed puppet regimes throughout the 20 Century that were deeply, deeply fucking with these people in these places). Just personally, that's the part that matters to me.

So it reaches them, permanently transforms them, and then ... the details of the rest of the movie do not matter because they have undergone the rock solid Pauline conversion that the neolib Hollywood elite insist directs their every decision?

I don't give a fuck if passports were really checked closely or not.

Cool. How about the fact that the movie starts out declaring the CIA to be the cause of the problem then spends the rest of it lionizing them (plus Hollywood!) as the ingenius saviors?

As for the Presidential debate, agreed it's bad timing, but I don't think you can really fault Argo for Republicans using the bombing of Iran as a casual talking point to drum up support from their vengeful base. The movie had been in the can for a year when Republicans decided to act like fucking idiots about Iran.

So much for the broader historical context?

Again, it's unfortunate that the release of the flick coincided with that, but I don't blame the movie.

Well I wasn't exactly blaming the movie for the coincidence.

And likewise, I think it's a fair question: does lying about how closely passports were checked feed into that, or does truth-telling about the U.S. installing a puppet government that led to disaster temper that? IMO it's probably wholly unrelated either way, but if it's anything it's the latter.

Well that actually is what we're arguing over and there's probably no real resolution to that.