I love the combination of the old and the new in it, no high tech gadgets except the hand scanner, obviously going back to Bond’s first 00 assignment, but a contemporary setting… still got Dame Judi as M, but hes driving the DB5. Watch it here.
Okay, new concept time here. You guys see movies. You love movies. Okay, maybe you don’t have the time or inclination to do a whole podcast, but that’s doesn’t mean you can’t play on OUR podcast, does it?
Special Guest host Scott Sherman, host of TPN’s Gay Parenting Show, joins me today to talk about the big gay cowboy movie that everyone is upset didn’t get Best Picture.
Sorry folks, it’s been a little crazy here at TPN HQ. Ewan’s on a junket in the US attending 14 back-t0-back conferences and I’m flying all over Australia chasing my tail. The Movie Show will be back soon. Keep your aggregator burning…
I finally saw SYRIANA today and I couldn’t wait for the next Movie Show podcast (Ewan’s getting ready to head to the US to cover the Razzies and I’m travelling as well) to tell you about it.
This film is the crowning achievement so far in Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney’s Section Eight production company. If the rumours are true, then it could also be one of the last films we see out of Section Eight, which in the last couple of years has produced such excellent titles as:
Good Night and Good Luck
The Jacket
Criminal
Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind
Okay, they were also behind the Ocean’s Eleven series (with Ocean’s Thirteen scheduled for 2007), but I can forgive them this big budget fluff if it funds everything else.
So, on to SYRIANA. This is the second film to be directed by Stephen Gaghan, his directorial debut being the little-seen ABANDON from 2002. He’s best known for having written the screenplay for Soderbergh’s film TRAFFIC, for which both guys won an Oscar.
Like TRAFFIC, SYRIANA is a very serious film. Instead of the drug business, this time Gaghan focuses his attention on the dirty aspects of the oil business and the geo-political machinations of the USA and the Middle East that keep the oil flowing - to the USA.
There are several complex plotlines interwoven in this story but, as Roger Ebert pointed out (hell, I’m agreeing with Ebert??? what has the world come to?!), you aren’t supposed to follow the plot - you’re supposed to be surrounded by it, overwhelmed by it.
If you don’t walk away from this film bothered as hell about we are going to do to divorce ourselves from our addiction to black gold, then I disown you. I’ll talk about it more when we do the next show. In the meantime, go see it. Now.