September 30, 2006
Newspapers Decline Death Of A President Ad
The publicity around Death Of A President is much better than the film itself, and this is what's generating the latest buzz: it's an ad for the faux-documentary that both our national newspapers declined to run. According to an article in today's Star, a modified version of the ad will run in that paper which will clearly indicate that it's a theatrical release. CanWest says that their ten other major dailies also rejected the ad. The Globe has yet to make an official comment, but the ad is allegedly against their editorial policy.
The film stirred-up strong reactions when it played in the UK and most recently in Toronto, where it won the International Critics Prize at TIFF. Centering on the fictionalized assassination of George W. Bush, the flick is structured as a typical PBS-type documentary, with talking heads, Photoshopped news photos and staged archival footage. The style is extremely well-executed but the concept is stretched thin over feature length. It also isn't even remotely anti-Bush as it's been consistently charged (primarily by those who haven't seen it). In fact, it's taking the middle ground that makes Death Of A President less brazen than it would seem.
Nevertheless, the concept is audacious and virtually publicizes itself. Following in the footsteps of films like The Last Temptation Of Christ, The Da Vinci Code and United 93, the degree of pre-release outrage should prove to be mostly unfounded. It should also make Death Of A President a minor hit.
As for running the ad, the question is not only whether or not it's inflammatory or in poor taste, but if a hard news publication should publish what intentionally looks like the President's obituary. We'd rather see the end of that ridiculous acronym.
Death Of A President opens in theatres on October 27.
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I can't be the only person who's thinking this...
D.O.A.P? Dead prez on a plane? Say what?!
I reviewed this on Twitch; the film is absolutely terrible. I also had a very long discussion with Norm Wilner about it, a FIPRESCI critic, in the comments thread here.
i would also have expected it to be fairly anti-Bush, so I am surprised.
also i think it was "passion of the christ" that generated so much controversy?
Yes, The Passion Of The Christ was one of the controversial ones, but it really was as violent as people said, whereas The Last Temptation Of Christ controversy was really over something extremely minor in the context of the film.
I thought it was going to be a damnation of the Bush adninistration, but it's trying to be so balanced in it's documentary format that it has no real bite or opinion. Plus, the "twist" isn't much of one at all, and you can see it coming right from the beginning.
The biggest problem is that it's boring. It's shot nicely; the recreations are done well; the acting is terrific -- but it would have worked much better as a 46-minute TV show.
In movie promo "banning" news, I saw the Borat trailer in a theatre today and it's been, um...revised. The shorts he's wearing in the ping-pong shot are blurred-out, and worst of all, the yellow string bathing suit has material added to it (around the hips, like a Speedo). All the gunplay, explosions, and flying bodies were still there in the Casino Royale trailer before it, so at least our morals are still safe. Phew!
I circled the four (out of five) on my People's Choice ballot, and I stick by that. Out of ten, it's a nine, but mostly for the audacity of its premise, the technical skill with which it was made, and the spectacular first twenty-five minutes leading up to the assassination.
What I think disappointed a lot of the people who actually got to see it was that it's not so much about the effects and fallout of the assassination of Bush as it is simply about the investigation into who did it, and only deals with the larger implications as they relate to the investigation. Because of this surprising angle, we all had to adjust our expectations while watching it in order to accept the movie that was made, rather than the one we'd rather have been made. Of course, many people have many other problems with the film, but I think that seems to be the one most commonly expressed by the non-critics who've seen it.
But yeah, Mathew, S&Man was a much better film, and one that's stuck with me more.
..ridiculous kerning on that acronym too :P
that's doap, yo.
Perhaps it was because I saw this film at 10:30 at night, after watching three other films. Or, perhaps it was just boring.
The film's premise was definitely controversial, however, this may be the only thing going for it.
Once the assassination occurred, it got tiresome. We had nothing emotionally invested in any of the characters. We didn't really care who did it. Poor writing in my opinion. They tried to interweave some of the other character subplots, but again, not very convincing. The dialogue was also very "on the nose" at times.
As Marc says above, the twist was really not that clever. Is this the kind of film that even needed a twist? I don't recall too many great real life documentaries with "twists" in them -- just interesting stories that unfold in a compelling way. A twist can be a nice addition to an already great story. However, without the foundation it kind of fell flat. Almost like polishing a terd.
I wish I was sitting at the end of the aisle for this one. I would have got to bed a lot sooner.