http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118027763
Fri., Nov. 19, 2010
DiCaprio to star in JFK tale
Assassination story based on book 'Legacy of Secrecy'
Dave McNary
Leonardo DiCaprio will star in and produce the feature "Legacy of Secrecy," based on the book about the John F. Kennedy assassination by Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann.
DiCaprio will produce through his Warner Bros.-based Appian Way banner with his father, George, who brought the book to his son's attention. Appian Way's Earl Katz will exec produce.
Warners, which handled Oliver Stone's "JFK" in 1991, is eyeing a possible 2013 release of "Legacy of Secrecy" coinciding with the 50th anni of President Kennedy's assassination.
DiCaprio is expected to play FBI informant Jack Van Laningham. The book -- whose full title is "Legacy of Secrecy: The Long Shadow of the JFK Assassination" -- asserts that Mafia godfather Carlos Marcello confessed to Van Laningham to having ordered JFK's assassination. As part of a dangerous and long-secret undercover operation, the FBI positioned Van Laningham to become confidant to Marcello, who ruled organized crime in Louisiana and most of Texas for decades.
"Legacy of Secrecy" includes information from declassified FBI files from the National Archives which details the FBI's clandestine operation with Van Laningham and Marcello's JFK confession. The book also included information from FBI and Secret Service files showing that more than a dozen of Marcello's associates and family members were questioned or arrested by authorities in assocation with the JFK assassination. Marcello, who died in 1993, has not yet been the subject of a feature film. Marcello's name did not appear in the 1964 Warren Report, but the 1979 House Select Committee on Assassinations said mobster Santo Trafficante and Marcello "had the motive, means, and opportunity to assassinate President Kennedy."
As part of Warner's deal for "Legacy of Secrecy," Waldron is retaining documentary film and TV rights to the book, which also says the Mafia played a role in the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and in Watergate. Appian Way's Katz will produce one of the documentaries.
DiCaprio was last seen in "Inception." Appian Way's a producer on "Red Riding Hood," due out in March from Warners, and on the George Clooney-Ryan Gosling starrer "The Ides of March," currently in pre-production.
Contact Dave McNary at dave.mcnary@variety.com
Showing posts with label George Clooney. Show all posts
Showing posts with label George Clooney. Show all posts
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
List of 82nd annual Academy Award nominations
http://oscars.movies.yahoo.com/news/376-list-of-82nd-annual-academy-award-nominations-ap
List of 82nd annual Academy Award nominations
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Associated Press
Complete list of 82nd Annual Academy Award nominations announced Tuesday:
1. Best Picture: "Avatar," "The Blind Side," "District 9," "An Education," "The Hurt Locker," "Inglourious Basterds," "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire," "A Serious Man," "Up," "Up in the Air."
2. Actor: Jeff Bridges, "Crazy Heart"; George Clooney, "Up in the Air"; Colin Firth, "A Single Man"; Morgan Freeman, "Invictus"; Jeremy Renner, "The Hurt Locker."
3. Actress: Sandra Bullock, "The Blind Side"; Helen Mirren, "The Last Station"; Carey Mulligan, "An Education"; Gabourey Sidibe, "Precious: Based on the Novel `Push' by Sapphire"; Meryl Streep, "Julie & Julia."
4. Supporting Actor: Matt Damon, "Invictus"; Woody Harrelson, "The Messenger"; Christopher Plummer, "The Last Station"; Stanley Tucci, "The Lovely Bones"; Christoph Waltz, "Inglourious Basterds."
5. Supporting Actress: Penelope Cruz, "Nine"; Vera Farmiga, "Up in the Air"; Maggie Gyllenhaal, "Crazy Heart"; Anna Kendrick, "Up in the Air"; Mo'Nique, "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire."
6. Directing: James Cameron, "Avatar"; Kathryn Bigelow, "The Hurt Locker"; Quentin Tarantino, "Inglourious Basterds"; Lee Daniels, "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire"; Jason Reitman, "Up in the Air."
7. Foreign Language Film: "Ajami," Israel; "El Secreto de Sus Ojos," Argentina; "The Milk of Sorrow," Peru; "Un Prophete," France; "The White Ribbon," Germany.
8. Adapted Screenplay: Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell, "District 9"; Nick Hornby, "An Education"; Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche, "In the Loop"; Geoffrey Fletcher, "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire"; Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner, "Up in the Air."
9. Original Screenplay: Mark Boal, "The Hurt Locker"; Quentin Tarantino, "Inglourious Basterds"; Alessandro Camon and Oren Moverman, "The Messenger"; Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, "A Serious Man"; Bob Peterson, Pete Docter, Tom McCarthy, "Up."
10. Animated Feature Film: "Coraline"; "Fantastic Mr. Fox"; "The Princess and the Frog"; "The Secret of Kells"; "Up."
11. Art Direction: "Avatar," "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus," "Nine," "Sherlock Holmes," "The Young Victoria."
12. Cinematography: "Avatar," "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," "The Hurt Locker," "Inglourious Basterds," "The White Ribbon."
13. Sound Mixing: "Avatar," "The Hurt Locker," "Inglourious Basterds," "Star Trek," "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen."
14. Sound Editing: "Avatar," "The Hurt Locker," "Inglourious Basterds," "Star Trek," "Up."
15. Original Score: "Avatar," James Horner; "Fantastic Mr. Fox," Alexandre Desplat; "The Hurt Locker," Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders; "Sherlock Holmes," Hans Zimmer; "Up," Michael Giacchino.
16. Original Song: "Almost There" from "The Princess and the Frog," Randy Newman; "Down in New Orleans" from "The Princess and the Frog," Randy Newman; "Loin de Paname" from "Paris 36," Reinhardt Wagner and Frank Thomas; "Take It All" from "Nine," Maury Yeston; "The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart)" from "Crazy Heart," Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett.
17. Costume: "Bright Star," "Coco Before Chanel," "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus," "Nine," "The Young Victoria."
18. Documentary Feature: "Burma VJ," "The Cove," "Food, Inc." "The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers," "Which Way Home."
19. Documentary (short subject): "China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province," "The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner," "The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant," "Music by Prudence," "Rabbit a la Berlin."
20. Film Editing: "Avatar," "District 9," "The Hurt Locker," "Inglourious Basterds," "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire."
21. Makeup: "Il Divo," "Star Trek," "The Young Victoria."
22. Animated Short Film: "French Roast," "Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty," "The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte)," "Logorama," "A Matter of Loaf and Death."
23. Live Action Short Film: "The Door," "Instead of Abracadabra," "Kavi," "Miracle Fish," "The New Tenants."
24. Visual Effects: "Avatar," "District 9," "Star Trek."
List of 82nd annual Academy Award nominations
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Associated Press
Complete list of 82nd Annual Academy Award nominations announced Tuesday:
1. Best Picture: "Avatar," "The Blind Side," "District 9," "An Education," "The Hurt Locker," "Inglourious Basterds," "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire," "A Serious Man," "Up," "Up in the Air."
2. Actor: Jeff Bridges, "Crazy Heart"; George Clooney, "Up in the Air"; Colin Firth, "A Single Man"; Morgan Freeman, "Invictus"; Jeremy Renner, "The Hurt Locker."
3. Actress: Sandra Bullock, "The Blind Side"; Helen Mirren, "The Last Station"; Carey Mulligan, "An Education"; Gabourey Sidibe, "Precious: Based on the Novel `Push' by Sapphire"; Meryl Streep, "Julie & Julia."
4. Supporting Actor: Matt Damon, "Invictus"; Woody Harrelson, "The Messenger"; Christopher Plummer, "The Last Station"; Stanley Tucci, "The Lovely Bones"; Christoph Waltz, "Inglourious Basterds."
5. Supporting Actress: Penelope Cruz, "Nine"; Vera Farmiga, "Up in the Air"; Maggie Gyllenhaal, "Crazy Heart"; Anna Kendrick, "Up in the Air"; Mo'Nique, "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire."
6. Directing: James Cameron, "Avatar"; Kathryn Bigelow, "The Hurt Locker"; Quentin Tarantino, "Inglourious Basterds"; Lee Daniels, "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire"; Jason Reitman, "Up in the Air."
7. Foreign Language Film: "Ajami," Israel; "El Secreto de Sus Ojos," Argentina; "The Milk of Sorrow," Peru; "Un Prophete," France; "The White Ribbon," Germany.
8. Adapted Screenplay: Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell, "District 9"; Nick Hornby, "An Education"; Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche, "In the Loop"; Geoffrey Fletcher, "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire"; Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner, "Up in the Air."
9. Original Screenplay: Mark Boal, "The Hurt Locker"; Quentin Tarantino, "Inglourious Basterds"; Alessandro Camon and Oren Moverman, "The Messenger"; Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, "A Serious Man"; Bob Peterson, Pete Docter, Tom McCarthy, "Up."
10. Animated Feature Film: "Coraline"; "Fantastic Mr. Fox"; "The Princess and the Frog"; "The Secret of Kells"; "Up."
11. Art Direction: "Avatar," "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus," "Nine," "Sherlock Holmes," "The Young Victoria."
12. Cinematography: "Avatar," "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," "The Hurt Locker," "Inglourious Basterds," "The White Ribbon."
13. Sound Mixing: "Avatar," "The Hurt Locker," "Inglourious Basterds," "Star Trek," "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen."
14. Sound Editing: "Avatar," "The Hurt Locker," "Inglourious Basterds," "Star Trek," "Up."
15. Original Score: "Avatar," James Horner; "Fantastic Mr. Fox," Alexandre Desplat; "The Hurt Locker," Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders; "Sherlock Holmes," Hans Zimmer; "Up," Michael Giacchino.
16. Original Song: "Almost There" from "The Princess and the Frog," Randy Newman; "Down in New Orleans" from "The Princess and the Frog," Randy Newman; "Loin de Paname" from "Paris 36," Reinhardt Wagner and Frank Thomas; "Take It All" from "Nine," Maury Yeston; "The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart)" from "Crazy Heart," Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett.
17. Costume: "Bright Star," "Coco Before Chanel," "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus," "Nine," "The Young Victoria."
18. Documentary Feature: "Burma VJ," "The Cove," "Food, Inc." "The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers," "Which Way Home."
19. Documentary (short subject): "China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province," "The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner," "The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant," "Music by Prudence," "Rabbit a la Berlin."
20. Film Editing: "Avatar," "District 9," "The Hurt Locker," "Inglourious Basterds," "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire."
21. Makeup: "Il Divo," "Star Trek," "The Young Victoria."
22. Animated Short Film: "French Roast," "Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty," "The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte)," "Logorama," "A Matter of Loaf and Death."
23. Live Action Short Film: "The Door," "Instead of Abracadabra," "Kavi," "Miracle Fish," "The New Tenants."
24. Visual Effects: "Avatar," "District 9," "Star Trek."
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
'Hope for Haiti' raises $58 million and counting
http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/TV/01/23/haiti.telethon
'Hope for Haiti' raises $58 million and counting
January 23, 2010
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Amount is record for donations to disaster relief telethon
Album of performances topped charts in 18 countries
Public may continue to donate for six months
Celebrities answered phones, performed music
Los Angeles, California (CNN) -- Friday night's star-studded "Hope for Haiti" telethon has raised a record-breaking $58 million, with more donations continuing to pour in from around the world, the benefit's organizers announced Saturday.
The preliminary figure is a record for donations made by the public through a disaster relief telethon, according to a news release from telethon organizers.
Additionally, the "Hope for Haiti Now" album, a compilation of the night's musical performances made available on Apple's iTunes, was the No. 1 album in 18 countries Saturday. Sales figures for iTunes are still being calculated, and the preliminary figure of $58 million does not include donations from corporations or large private donors.
People will be able to make donations to "Hope for Haiti" via phone, Web, text messaging and regular mail for the next six months, according to the news release.
A moving performance by Alicia Keys opened Friday night's telethon, and actor George Clooney, serving as the Los Angeles host for the event, made the first appeal for donations to raise money for relief efforts after last week's devastating earthquake.
"The Haitian people need our help," Clooney said. "They need to know they are not alone. They need to know that we still care."
The show was one of the most widely distributed prime-time televised benefits in history, appearing simultaneously on more than 25 networks -- including CNN, where Anderson Cooper reported live from Haiti during the event.
More than 100 actors, musicians and other celebrities answered phones in New York and Los Angeles after professional operators first talked to donors.
"Thank you so much for your donation," actress Reese Witherspoon told one caller. "You can't imagine how much love and great, wonderful energy is here today. People are doing everything they can to make a difference in these people's lives."
Several other calls were aired live, including with Julia Roberts, Steven Spielberg, Taylor Swift and Stevie Wonder.
Swift and Wonder were among the evening's musical performers. Others included Bruce Springsteen, Bono, Jay-Z, Rihanna, Shakira, Beyonce, Mary J. Blige, Coldplay, Christina Aguilera, John Legend, Justin Timberlake, Kid Rock, Sheryl Crow, Keith Urban, Jennifer Hudson, Madonna, Dave Matthews and Neil Young.
Other celebrities appearing on the telethon included Jon Stewart, Brad Pitt, Tom Hanks, Morgan Freeman, Ben Stiller, Clint Eastwood and Denzel Washington.
Proceeds from the telethon will benefit Oxfam America, Partners in Health, the Red Cross, UNICEF, the U.N. World Food Programme, Yele Haiti Foundation and the Clinton Bush Haiti Foundation.
CNN's Alan Duke contributed to this report.
'Hope for Haiti' raises $58 million and counting
January 23, 2010
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Amount is record for donations to disaster relief telethon
Album of performances topped charts in 18 countries
Public may continue to donate for six months
Celebrities answered phones, performed music
Los Angeles, California (CNN) -- Friday night's star-studded "Hope for Haiti" telethon has raised a record-breaking $58 million, with more donations continuing to pour in from around the world, the benefit's organizers announced Saturday.
The preliminary figure is a record for donations made by the public through a disaster relief telethon, according to a news release from telethon organizers.
Additionally, the "Hope for Haiti Now" album, a compilation of the night's musical performances made available on Apple's iTunes, was the No. 1 album in 18 countries Saturday. Sales figures for iTunes are still being calculated, and the preliminary figure of $58 million does not include donations from corporations or large private donors.
People will be able to make donations to "Hope for Haiti" via phone, Web, text messaging and regular mail for the next six months, according to the news release.
A moving performance by Alicia Keys opened Friday night's telethon, and actor George Clooney, serving as the Los Angeles host for the event, made the first appeal for donations to raise money for relief efforts after last week's devastating earthquake.
"The Haitian people need our help," Clooney said. "They need to know they are not alone. They need to know that we still care."
The show was one of the most widely distributed prime-time televised benefits in history, appearing simultaneously on more than 25 networks -- including CNN, where Anderson Cooper reported live from Haiti during the event.
More than 100 actors, musicians and other celebrities answered phones in New York and Los Angeles after professional operators first talked to donors.
"Thank you so much for your donation," actress Reese Witherspoon told one caller. "You can't imagine how much love and great, wonderful energy is here today. People are doing everything they can to make a difference in these people's lives."
Several other calls were aired live, including with Julia Roberts, Steven Spielberg, Taylor Swift and Stevie Wonder.
Swift and Wonder were among the evening's musical performers. Others included Bruce Springsteen, Bono, Jay-Z, Rihanna, Shakira, Beyonce, Mary J. Blige, Coldplay, Christina Aguilera, John Legend, Justin Timberlake, Kid Rock, Sheryl Crow, Keith Urban, Jennifer Hudson, Madonna, Dave Matthews and Neil Young.
Other celebrities appearing on the telethon included Jon Stewart, Brad Pitt, Tom Hanks, Morgan Freeman, Ben Stiller, Clint Eastwood and Denzel Washington.
Proceeds from the telethon will benefit Oxfam America, Partners in Health, the Red Cross, UNICEF, the U.N. World Food Programme, Yele Haiti Foundation and the Clinton Bush Haiti Foundation.
CNN's Alan Duke contributed to this report.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Oscars 2010: expect an open field
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8359404.stm
Monday, 30 November 2009
Oscars 2010: expect an open field
By Neil Smith
Entertainment reporter, BBC News
With three months to go before the Academy Awards are held in Los Angeles, early indications suggest it will be one of the most open races in years.
Actor Alec Baldwin will co-host next year's Oscar ceremony
Indeed, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences seems to have anticipated this by opening the best picture category up to 10 movies, as opposed to the usual five.
That is not the only change either. In order not to coincide with the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, the 2010 Oscars will take place a fortnight later than this year's were.
It will also boast not one but two hosts, the comedian Steve Martin sharing the presenting duties with actor Alec Baldwin.
The 2010 Oscar nominations will not be announced until 2 February. Already, though, industry pundits are identifying potential runners, riders and also-rans.
Here, then, is a rundown of some of the stars, films and film-makers we may be hearing more of in the weeks and months ahead.
BEST PICTURE
You have to go all the way back to 1944 for the last time 10 movies were shortlisted for the best picture Oscar.
On that occasion Casablanca won the prize, picking up additional awards for its director and three screenwriters.
However, the decision to expand the field again is less to do with recognising more movies than with appealing to a wider audience.
The general perception is the Academy celebrates niche pictures aimed at an art-house crowd - a notion it hopes to challenge by adding more populist nominees to next year's line-up.
It is expected, for instance, that JJ Abrams's well-regarded Star Trek film will find a berth among this year's hopefuls.
James Cameron's ambitious 3D blockbuster Avatar may also feature, with some tipping District 9 - a science-fiction adventure about bug-like aliens who become refugees on Earth - as an outside bet.
Take away the District and you have another potential contender - Nine, the big-screen version of the Broadway musical inspired by Federico Fellini's 1963 Oscar-winner 8 1/2.
Director Rob Marshall has some previous in this department, having steered Chicago - another stage to screen transfer - to its best picture Oscar in 2003.
Clint Eastwood has become a regular fixture on Oscar night and is sure to be in contention again with the sport-based Invictus.
The drama - like District 9 - is set in South Africa and tells of how president Nelson Mandela united the country behind its World Cup-winning rugby team in 1995.
The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow's drama about three bomb disposal experts stationed in Iraq, is generating a lot of positive buzz.
Some optimistic pundits are also tipping another, rather different war movie as a best picture contender - Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino's flamboyant epic about commandos in Nazi-occupied France.
A safer bet might be Precious, the hard-hitting tale of a high school student coping with obesity, illiteracy, illegitimate pregnancy and sexual abuse.
No less gruelling is The Road, an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel that could muscle into the final 10.
McCarthy, you may recall, also penned No Country for Old Men, the book Joel and Ethan Coen adapted into an Oscar-winning hit.
The Coens are back this year with A Serious Man, a comedy drama based on their childhoods in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The Lovely Bones, Peter Jackson's adaptation of Alice Sebold's novel about a murdered child, is another book-inspired work that may make the shortlist.
And with Pixar's Up heavily tipped to win the best animated feature Oscar, some are expecting it to be in with a shout in the best picture category as well.
BEST ACTOR
For many years, Morgan Freeman battled to turn Nelson Mandela's autobiography, Long Walk To Freedom, into a film.
The fact he finally gets to play the South African icon in Invictus might therefore win him some consideration from the Academy's famously sentimental members.
Morgan Freeman is reunited with director Clint Eastwood in Invictus
George Clooney missed out on a best actor Oscar last year when Daniel Day-Lewis beat him to the coveted prize.
Their respective performances in romantic comedy Up in the Air and the aforementioned Nine opens up the possibility of a rematch.
Strangely enough, Viggo Mortensen was also nominated that year and may be so again for The Road.
Homegrown interest, meanwhile, is sure to focus on Colin Firth, considered a strong contender for his role as a grief-stricken gay academic in A Single Man.
Other possible nominees include Matt Damon, whose performances as an FBI whistle-blower in The Informant! and as South African rugby captain Francois Pienaar could conceivably see him cited in both the best actor and best supporting actor categories.
There is a chance Jeff Bridges might also make the cut for his role as a hard-drinking country music singer in Crazy Heart.
BEST ACTRESS
Last February Kate Winslet received this award for her portrayal as a former concentration camp guard in The Reader.
And early indications suggest Britain's best chances of Oscar success in 2010 will also be found in this hotly contested category.
Dame Helen Mirren, who received this award in 2007 for The Queen, is tipped to feature again for her role as Tolstoy's mercurial wife in The Last Station.
The smart money, though, is on newcomer Carey Mulligan, whose performance as a precocious 1960s schoolgirl in An Education has been tipped for glory on both sides of the Atlantic.
Australia's Abbie Cornish may also land a nomination for her role as John Keats's neighbour in the period drama Bright Star.
The endearingly full-figured Gabourey Sidibe, star of Precious, is another fresh talent who could be recognised.
Serial Oscar nominee Meryl Streep, meanwhile, will surely be up for an award for which she has been nominated a remarkable 12 times.
Will her next nod be for her portrayal of eccentric cookery guru Julia Child in Julie and Julia, however, or for her upcoming turn opposite Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin - yes, them again - in romantic comedy It's Complicated?
Monday, 30 November 2009
Oscars 2010: expect an open field
By Neil Smith
Entertainment reporter, BBC News
With three months to go before the Academy Awards are held in Los Angeles, early indications suggest it will be one of the most open races in years.
Actor Alec Baldwin will co-host next year's Oscar ceremony
Indeed, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences seems to have anticipated this by opening the best picture category up to 10 movies, as opposed to the usual five.
That is not the only change either. In order not to coincide with the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, the 2010 Oscars will take place a fortnight later than this year's were.
It will also boast not one but two hosts, the comedian Steve Martin sharing the presenting duties with actor Alec Baldwin.
The 2010 Oscar nominations will not be announced until 2 February. Already, though, industry pundits are identifying potential runners, riders and also-rans.
Here, then, is a rundown of some of the stars, films and film-makers we may be hearing more of in the weeks and months ahead.
BEST PICTURE
You have to go all the way back to 1944 for the last time 10 movies were shortlisted for the best picture Oscar.
On that occasion Casablanca won the prize, picking up additional awards for its director and three screenwriters.
However, the decision to expand the field again is less to do with recognising more movies than with appealing to a wider audience.
The general perception is the Academy celebrates niche pictures aimed at an art-house crowd - a notion it hopes to challenge by adding more populist nominees to next year's line-up.
It is expected, for instance, that JJ Abrams's well-regarded Star Trek film will find a berth among this year's hopefuls.
James Cameron's ambitious 3D blockbuster Avatar may also feature, with some tipping District 9 - a science-fiction adventure about bug-like aliens who become refugees on Earth - as an outside bet.
Take away the District and you have another potential contender - Nine, the big-screen version of the Broadway musical inspired by Federico Fellini's 1963 Oscar-winner 8 1/2.
Director Rob Marshall has some previous in this department, having steered Chicago - another stage to screen transfer - to its best picture Oscar in 2003.
Clint Eastwood has become a regular fixture on Oscar night and is sure to be in contention again with the sport-based Invictus.
The drama - like District 9 - is set in South Africa and tells of how president Nelson Mandela united the country behind its World Cup-winning rugby team in 1995.
The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow's drama about three bomb disposal experts stationed in Iraq, is generating a lot of positive buzz.
Some optimistic pundits are also tipping another, rather different war movie as a best picture contender - Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino's flamboyant epic about commandos in Nazi-occupied France.
A safer bet might be Precious, the hard-hitting tale of a high school student coping with obesity, illiteracy, illegitimate pregnancy and sexual abuse.
No less gruelling is The Road, an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel that could muscle into the final 10.
McCarthy, you may recall, also penned No Country for Old Men, the book Joel and Ethan Coen adapted into an Oscar-winning hit.
The Coens are back this year with A Serious Man, a comedy drama based on their childhoods in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The Lovely Bones, Peter Jackson's adaptation of Alice Sebold's novel about a murdered child, is another book-inspired work that may make the shortlist.
And with Pixar's Up heavily tipped to win the best animated feature Oscar, some are expecting it to be in with a shout in the best picture category as well.
BEST ACTOR
For many years, Morgan Freeman battled to turn Nelson Mandela's autobiography, Long Walk To Freedom, into a film.
The fact he finally gets to play the South African icon in Invictus might therefore win him some consideration from the Academy's famously sentimental members.
Morgan Freeman is reunited with director Clint Eastwood in Invictus
George Clooney missed out on a best actor Oscar last year when Daniel Day-Lewis beat him to the coveted prize.
Their respective performances in romantic comedy Up in the Air and the aforementioned Nine opens up the possibility of a rematch.
Strangely enough, Viggo Mortensen was also nominated that year and may be so again for The Road.
Homegrown interest, meanwhile, is sure to focus on Colin Firth, considered a strong contender for his role as a grief-stricken gay academic in A Single Man.
Other possible nominees include Matt Damon, whose performances as an FBI whistle-blower in The Informant! and as South African rugby captain Francois Pienaar could conceivably see him cited in both the best actor and best supporting actor categories.
There is a chance Jeff Bridges might also make the cut for his role as a hard-drinking country music singer in Crazy Heart.
BEST ACTRESS
Last February Kate Winslet received this award for her portrayal as a former concentration camp guard in The Reader.
And early indications suggest Britain's best chances of Oscar success in 2010 will also be found in this hotly contested category.
Dame Helen Mirren, who received this award in 2007 for The Queen, is tipped to feature again for her role as Tolstoy's mercurial wife in The Last Station.
The smart money, though, is on newcomer Carey Mulligan, whose performance as a precocious 1960s schoolgirl in An Education has been tipped for glory on both sides of the Atlantic.
Australia's Abbie Cornish may also land a nomination for her role as John Keats's neighbour in the period drama Bright Star.
The endearingly full-figured Gabourey Sidibe, star of Precious, is another fresh talent who could be recognised.
Serial Oscar nominee Meryl Streep, meanwhile, will surely be up for an award for which she has been nominated a remarkable 12 times.
Will her next nod be for her portrayal of eccentric cookery guru Julia Child in Julie and Julia, however, or for her upcoming turn opposite Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin - yes, them again - in romantic comedy It's Complicated?
Up In The Air gets four top awards
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8394545.stm
Friday, 4 December 2009
George Clooney movie Up In The Air gets four top awards
In the film, Clooney plays a man who fires people for a living
George Clooney's latest movie Up In the Air has been named best film by the National Board of Review.
The NBR - seen as the first major prize of the US awards season - also named Clooney best actor alongside Morgan Freeman for Invictus.
Up In The Air director Jason Reitman said he was "overwhelmed with gratitude" at the honour.
His movie also won best supporting actress for Anna Kendrick and best adapted screenplay.
'Anxiety and anticipation'
The film, about a man (Clooney) who fires people for a living, is already creating an Oscar buzz.
Previous NBR best film winners, such as No Country for Old Men and Slumdog Millionaire, have gone on to win best picture at the Academy Awards.
Reitman's father, Ivan Reitman - who directed Ghostbusters - is a producer of Up In The Air.
"I'm simply overwhelmed with gratitude for the many honours the National Board of Review has bestowed upon Up In The Air," Jason Reitman said.
"I'm thrilled for George, I'm thrilled for Anna, and of course, most thrilled for my father."
Freeman plays Nelson Mandela in Eastwood's film Invictus
Reitman went on to admit that the days leading up to his movie's release date are filled with "anxiety and anticipation".
He then thanked the NBR for "making today perfect".
The best director prize went to Clint Eastwood for Invictus, which tells the story of former South African President Nelson Mandela's embrace of the national rugby team.
There were also prizes for Carey Mulligan, who was named best actress for An Education and best supporting actor went to Woody Harrelson for The Messenger.
Best animated film went to Pixar's Up and The Cove, about the slaughter of dolphins in a Japanese village, won best documentary.
The NBR special filmmaking achievement award went to Wes Anderson for his stop-motion animated The Fantastic Mr Fox, which he co-wrote, directed and lent his voice to.
The judges on the National Board of Review, consist of film historians, students and educators.
The awards will be handed out 12 January during a a New York gala hosted by Meredith Vieira.
Friday, 4 December 2009
George Clooney movie Up In The Air gets four top awards
In the film, Clooney plays a man who fires people for a living
George Clooney's latest movie Up In the Air has been named best film by the National Board of Review.
The NBR - seen as the first major prize of the US awards season - also named Clooney best actor alongside Morgan Freeman for Invictus.
Up In The Air director Jason Reitman said he was "overwhelmed with gratitude" at the honour.
His movie also won best supporting actress for Anna Kendrick and best adapted screenplay.
'Anxiety and anticipation'
The film, about a man (Clooney) who fires people for a living, is already creating an Oscar buzz.
Previous NBR best film winners, such as No Country for Old Men and Slumdog Millionaire, have gone on to win best picture at the Academy Awards.
Reitman's father, Ivan Reitman - who directed Ghostbusters - is a producer of Up In The Air.
"I'm simply overwhelmed with gratitude for the many honours the National Board of Review has bestowed upon Up In The Air," Jason Reitman said.
"I'm thrilled for George, I'm thrilled for Anna, and of course, most thrilled for my father."
Freeman plays Nelson Mandela in Eastwood's film Invictus
Reitman went on to admit that the days leading up to his movie's release date are filled with "anxiety and anticipation".
He then thanked the NBR for "making today perfect".
The best director prize went to Clint Eastwood for Invictus, which tells the story of former South African President Nelson Mandela's embrace of the national rugby team.
There were also prizes for Carey Mulligan, who was named best actress for An Education and best supporting actor went to Woody Harrelson for The Messenger.
Best animated film went to Pixar's Up and The Cove, about the slaughter of dolphins in a Japanese village, won best documentary.
The NBR special filmmaking achievement award went to Wes Anderson for his stop-motion animated The Fantastic Mr Fox, which he co-wrote, directed and lent his voice to.
The judges on the National Board of Review, consist of film historians, students and educators.
The awards will be handed out 12 January during a a New York gala hosted by Meredith Vieira.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Facts Behind 'Men Who Stare at Goats'
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/111609a.html
Facts Behind 'Men Who Stare at Goats'
By Lisa Pease
November 16, 2009
Can people really influence the physical world with thought alone? And if so, dare we use that power for evil, instead of good? Or will the effort come back to haunt us?
That is the quandary posed by the film “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” and, even more so, by the book of the same name that inspired the film.
First, run — do not walk, do not pass Go — to the theater to see “The Men Who Stare at Goats.” Films that are both hilarious and intelligent, provocative yet madcap, are hard to come by.
And because this film teaches us, in a wildly entertaining manner, about recent military and intelligence history, I have a feeling certain people will work hard to rush this movie right back out of the theaters. So see it before showings of it, like some of the characters in the film, disappear.
The film presents a largely fictitious story based on all-too-real projects and programs conducted by various agencies of the government. Very little of it is literally true, yet many of the stranger events in the film happened in a manner similar to the one portrayed.
The film presents a story of a journalist, played by Ewan McGregor who – to prove his manliness to his ex-wife – finds a way into Iraq to cover the war there by hitching a ride with military man Lyn Cassidy, played by George Clooney.
Clooney claims to be on a military assignment. But Clooney’s mission turns out to have been self-assigned, due to a vision.
He felt a former mentor, a man who brought New Age religion to the post-Vietnam Army and helped spawn a wave of activity that unfortunately led to the “dark side” of new and improved ways to torture people and turn their minds to putty, had called him psychically. Cassidy doesn’t know his mission, but trusts he’ll figure it out when he arrives.
That through-line is entirely fictional. Journalist Jon Ronson, on whose book of the same name the film is loosely based, did not go to Iraq. George Clooney’s character is a composite. The character that Kevin Spacey plays is the nearly entirely fictitious.
And yet, there really was a man who stared a goat to death, or so it appears. There really was a project within the Army, called Project Jedi, to create soldiers with superpowers. There really is a device called the “Predator” which looks like a toy yet can be used to inflict incredible pain.
And there really was a man similar to the character portrayed by Jeff Bridges. His real name is Jim Channon.
Walking Through Walls
The film opens with a Major General trying to walk through a wall. According to Jon Ronson, the source of this incident was a real life Major General himself, Albert Stubblebine III.
We are, after all, simply a collection of atoms, and atoms are more space than mass. Why shouldn’t our mind have the power to rearrange, temporarily, those spaces to allow us to pass through walls?
But theory is not reality, and Stubblebine, for all his faith and concentration, did indeed smash nose-first into his office wall in 1983. You should know that, from 1981 to 1984, General Stubblebine was the head of the U.S. Army’s Intelligence and Security Command, with authority over some 16,000 enlisted personnel.
In that position, General Stubblebine inherited control of some of the Army’s “remote viewers,” defined as people with the purported ability to gather information about a distant or unseen target using paranormal means or extra-sensory perception.
According to one of the most highly regarded one of them, Joseph Moneagle, the remote viewers served clients in the CIA, DIA, Secret Service, Naval Intelligence Command, the NSA, the National Security Council, the FBI, the ATF, and the DEA, among others.
Despite the ever-present “giggle factor,” clearly, something of value was being produced, or at least some influential officials in the U.S. intelligence agencies must have thought so.
General Stubblebine became so convinced of man’s psychic nature that he appealed to the Special Forces program leaders at Fort Bragg to pursue programs in psychic healing (for teams without access to medical facilities). His suggestion was met with silence.
How about investigating the probability that time was simply another axis in space and that we should be able to travel through space in past and future time as easily as we traveled through space in the present time. More silence.
The General then suggested that soldiers could be trained to burst hearts with thought, and suggested experimenting on animals.
While overtly the Special Forces evinced no interest in General Stubblebine’s suggestions, they did, indeed, have a set of 300 goats in a shed just a few yards away that had been de-bleated, to keep their presence on the base covert.
At “goat lab,” the goats were de-bleated, apparently to hide their presence from the local ASPCA, as the goats were shot up and then surgically repaired there as part of a medical training program. And the lab really was originally called “dog lab”, but people became too attached to the dogs.
For whatever reason, people do not seem to form emotional attachments as easily to goats, hence their grisly fate. And, most amazingly of all, a man at Fort Bragg really did, it appears, eventually succeed in mentally downing a goat.
Hamster’s Death
In the film, one of the character shows the journalist a film documenting his staring his own hamster not quite to death. That incident actually happened. Guy Savelli showed Ronson a film of himself stunning, but not killing, his pet hamster.
And, as in the film, the reason Savelli says he didn’t show the tape of him actually killing the hamster was because his wife wasn’t sure how Ronson would react to seeing him kill a real animal.
Savelli also appears in the character of Lyn Cassidy, played by Clooney. According to Savelli, who really does run a dance studio, he did down a goat in this manner. He made one goat collapse by thinking strongly about it, and apparently killed another, goat #17 (out of 30) by accident while trying to kill goat #16 on purpose.
Or so Savelli claims. Col. John Alexander has countered with the story, sent to me and others by e-mail, that Savelli downed the goat with a karate chop, not psychically. However, given Col. Alexander’s background with covert operations, it’s also possible that Col. Alexander is either telling the truth as he heard it, which may not be the truth, or he is putting out a cover story to muddy the waters.
Not one but several people told Ronson that a man had killed a goat simply by willing it to die. So either a group was running an operation against Ronson (or people in the military) to convince him (or them) that goats were killed by mental power, or it really happened. I’m not enough of a conspiracy theorist to believe the former, so I am stuck contemplating the latter.
Whatever the truth about the goats, it’s no secret that Jim Channon (“Bill Django” in the film, portrayed by Jeff Bridges) really did envision a New Age-type army of warriors who used their powers for peace. Channon noted that in Vietnam, most of the soldiers were essentially good people who were not eager to kill another human being.
Could this humanitarian instinct be repurposed into a new kind of weapon?
In the wake of America’s utter failure in Vietnam, the military establishment genuinely considered alternative solutions to traditional warfare, and gave Jim time and money to explore other avenues for conquering the enemy.
Channon sat naked in hot tubs, took seminars at the Esalen Institute, experienced Reichian rebirthing, and talked to a man who composed subliminal message CDs to help people lose weight and find inner peace. (Ronson wrote that an evangelical church in America found its donations tripled after it blasted its congregation with subliminal sounds during the hymns.)
After these explorations, Jim wrote a confidential paper to his superiors in the Army that opened with this line: “The U.S. Army doesn’t really have any serious alternative than to be wonderful.”
Jim’s document was his “First Earth Battalion Operations Manual.” His recommendations included approaching enemy combatants with soldiers holding symbols of peace, like baby lambs in their arms, of greeting people with “sparkly eyes,” and hugging the enemy.
Channon was also the one who came up with the Army’s most successful recruiting slogan of all time: “Be all that you can be.”
‘Warrior Monks’
Channon proposed a set of “Warrior Monks” who had conquered personal lust, and designed his program to weed out sheer mercenaries. But Channon’s suggestions were not all peaceful. Channon also proposed the use of nonlethal weapons.
Or maybe that was the influence of the document’s co-author, the aforementioned Col. John Alexander.
One of Col. Alexander’s “nonlethal” inventions was “sticky foam,” designed to literally freeze the enemy in its tracks. This foam was featured in a recent incarnation of “The Incredible Hulk,” the latest Dan Brown novel The Lost Symbol, and America’s 1995 military engagement in Somalia.
Unlike the fictional application in the Hulk film, when the foam was used in the real world to create a barrier between food and a rioting crowd, the crowd simply waited for the foam to harden and then climbed over it.
The foam had also been used in an attempt to subdue violent prisoners before they were moved to a new facility, however, as Ronson reported, the practice was discontinued because the prison authorities found it impossible to move the prisoners once the foam had solidified (begging the question of what happened to the prisoners unlucky enough to be the first test subjects).
The foam was taken to Iraq for use on the expected Weapons of Mass Destruction, which were, of course, never found.
Another nonlethal weapon Channon/Alexander suggested was the blasting of combatants with “discordant sounds” designed to disorient, confuse, and sicken.
This technique was used at Waco, where the FBI blasted the Branch Davidians with discordant rock music, the sound of dentist drills, Buddhist chants (a move protested by the Dalai Lama), dying rabbit noises, and other strange noises that served no obvious purpose, but which may have carried subliminal sounds.
The FBI even tried to hire Dr. Igor Smirnov, who had, at the behest of the Soviet government, blasted subliminal messages to Soviet troops en route to Afghanistan in the 1970s telling them, “Do not get drunk before battle.” The FBI wanted to know if Smirnov could put the “voice of God,” directly into the mind of David Koresh.
God was to be played by — and I’m not making this up — Charlton Heston. Dr. Smirnov said it was possible, but when the FBI also wanted him to sign something effectively taking responsibility should the Branch Davidians end up killing themselves, Dr. Smirnoff refused to participate.
Sleep Deprivation
Yet some of these theories have been put into practice, often in sinister ways. For instance, repeated playing of songs over and over, sometimes accompanied by flashing lights, is a method of torture that was used in Iraq.
The media laughed when it was revealed that one of the songs used to torture captured Iraqis was the “I Love You” song from the popular icon of children, the purple dinosaur named Barney. The media totally avoided the far more serious fact that music, especially when played in ways that cause serious sleep deprivation, can be horrific instruments of torture.
Songs can even, as another children’s show composer learned, provably reduce knowledge. Ronson talked to Christopher Cerf, the longtime composer for the beloved children’s show Sesame Street. Cerf told how the Sesame Street team includes education researchers who test the results of his work to see if it really helps children learn.
In one case, a song he wrote provably helped kids unlearn something they already knew.
“So I figure if I have the power to suck information out of people’s brains by writing these songs, maybe that’s something that could be useful to the CIA for brainwashing techniques,” Cerf told Ronson.
I find it profoundly disconcerting that a man tasked with writing music to help educate children on a popular PBS show could also be interested in helping the CIA brainwash people.
Ronson’s book suggests that some of the torture methods used in the recent wars were more similar to the infamous Nazi experiments that tested human limits than any intelligence-gathering exercise, the standard excuse for this war crime.
Both the CIA and the military have sought to control minds — from within and from without — for years.
In the 1950s and early 1960s, the CIA conducted numerous mind-control experiments designed in some cases to break down people’s defenses so they would tell the truth when captured and designed in other cases to produce operational amnesia so that the truth could never be extracted if the agent was captured. (One wonders if the fact that these goals were mutually exclusive seemed to bother anyone.)
The CIA experimented with drugs, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, flashing lights, sleep deprivation, and other torturous techniques, sometimes in “terminal” experiments.
CIA scientists tried to completely control people’s behavior. They discussed fragmenting minds through trauma and then rebuilding the fragmented parts into multiple personalities that could be separately programmed, so that personality A would not know what personality B was doing even though both personalities shared the same body.
Mind Over Matter
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, studies proliferated showing that the mind was not something simply to be broken and/or reprogrammed, but could be used, by specially talented people, to influence the world in a physical way.
The best-selling 1973 book Supernature, by Lyall Watson, described, among many other examples, a Soviet experiment in which a woman was captured on film using nothing but the power of her mind to separate a yolk from an egg after it had been broken into a saline solution in a container six feet in front of her.
In America, at the Stanford Research Institute, scientists Russell Targ and Hal Puthoff used films of such Soviet experiments, along with other data, to convince the CIA to invest in their studies of psychic research. The program evolved into both remote influencing and remote viewing experiments.
The program showed conclusively that some people really do seem to have an ability to learn things they have no direct way of knowing. But since the results were never 100 percent accurate nor 100 percent reproducible on demand, the program was eventually phased out, only to resurface later from time to time under the auspices of agencies that included, among others, the Army, the CIA, the Air Force, and NASA.
One of these programs was exposed rather dramatically in 1995 on national television when Ed Dames, a remote viewer from these programs, discussed his work. One of the remote viewers speculated to Ronson that perhaps the program was exposed to publicize its “cancellation” while deeper, blacker operations continued.
Most people react to the thought of man being able to use psychic power (whether for good or evil) in one of two unfortunate ways: they either discount it entirely, or believe it uncritically. The truth, it appears, is likely somewhere between those extremes.
Whatever the truth, this “technology” of remote viewing and remote influencing, such as it is, has moved into the private sector. Most of the people involved in these programs have started their own private enterprises, selling their psychic services and offering training programs, at a price, of course.
It’s ironic that, at the same time this film has come to the fore, Dan Brown’s latest novel also takes on the topic of the power of thought. One of his characters describes how thoughts may actually have discernible, if beyond miniscule, mass, and that if enough people share the same thought, that thought attains somewhat of a critical mass, enabling it to exert a kind of gravity over other thoughts.
When you couple that with the research that shows most people appear to have at least some psychic ability, whether they realize it or not, perhaps we all have the power to pull this country out of its “means justify the ends” mindset regarding torture and to move our national mindset onto a path that enables us to more gracefully cohabitate this planet with others.
Now that’s a thought worth contemplating, with whatever power we have. Then perhaps we could, like Clooney’s character in the “The Men Who Stare At Goats,” experience a much needed redemption from our past.
Lisa Pease is a historian and writer who specializes in the mysteries of the John F. Kennedy era. She is also a movie buff.
Facts Behind 'Men Who Stare at Goats'
By Lisa Pease
November 16, 2009
Can people really influence the physical world with thought alone? And if so, dare we use that power for evil, instead of good? Or will the effort come back to haunt us?
That is the quandary posed by the film “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” and, even more so, by the book of the same name that inspired the film.
First, run — do not walk, do not pass Go — to the theater to see “The Men Who Stare at Goats.” Films that are both hilarious and intelligent, provocative yet madcap, are hard to come by.
And because this film teaches us, in a wildly entertaining manner, about recent military and intelligence history, I have a feeling certain people will work hard to rush this movie right back out of the theaters. So see it before showings of it, like some of the characters in the film, disappear.
The film presents a largely fictitious story based on all-too-real projects and programs conducted by various agencies of the government. Very little of it is literally true, yet many of the stranger events in the film happened in a manner similar to the one portrayed.
The film presents a story of a journalist, played by Ewan McGregor who – to prove his manliness to his ex-wife – finds a way into Iraq to cover the war there by hitching a ride with military man Lyn Cassidy, played by George Clooney.
Clooney claims to be on a military assignment. But Clooney’s mission turns out to have been self-assigned, due to a vision.
He felt a former mentor, a man who brought New Age religion to the post-Vietnam Army and helped spawn a wave of activity that unfortunately led to the “dark side” of new and improved ways to torture people and turn their minds to putty, had called him psychically. Cassidy doesn’t know his mission, but trusts he’ll figure it out when he arrives.
That through-line is entirely fictional. Journalist Jon Ronson, on whose book of the same name the film is loosely based, did not go to Iraq. George Clooney’s character is a composite. The character that Kevin Spacey plays is the nearly entirely fictitious.
And yet, there really was a man who stared a goat to death, or so it appears. There really was a project within the Army, called Project Jedi, to create soldiers with superpowers. There really is a device called the “Predator” which looks like a toy yet can be used to inflict incredible pain.
And there really was a man similar to the character portrayed by Jeff Bridges. His real name is Jim Channon.
Walking Through Walls
The film opens with a Major General trying to walk through a wall. According to Jon Ronson, the source of this incident was a real life Major General himself, Albert Stubblebine III.
We are, after all, simply a collection of atoms, and atoms are more space than mass. Why shouldn’t our mind have the power to rearrange, temporarily, those spaces to allow us to pass through walls?
But theory is not reality, and Stubblebine, for all his faith and concentration, did indeed smash nose-first into his office wall in 1983. You should know that, from 1981 to 1984, General Stubblebine was the head of the U.S. Army’s Intelligence and Security Command, with authority over some 16,000 enlisted personnel.
In that position, General Stubblebine inherited control of some of the Army’s “remote viewers,” defined as people with the purported ability to gather information about a distant or unseen target using paranormal means or extra-sensory perception.
According to one of the most highly regarded one of them, Joseph Moneagle, the remote viewers served clients in the CIA, DIA, Secret Service, Naval Intelligence Command, the NSA, the National Security Council, the FBI, the ATF, and the DEA, among others.
Despite the ever-present “giggle factor,” clearly, something of value was being produced, or at least some influential officials in the U.S. intelligence agencies must have thought so.
General Stubblebine became so convinced of man’s psychic nature that he appealed to the Special Forces program leaders at Fort Bragg to pursue programs in psychic healing (for teams without access to medical facilities). His suggestion was met with silence.
How about investigating the probability that time was simply another axis in space and that we should be able to travel through space in past and future time as easily as we traveled through space in the present time. More silence.
The General then suggested that soldiers could be trained to burst hearts with thought, and suggested experimenting on animals.
While overtly the Special Forces evinced no interest in General Stubblebine’s suggestions, they did, indeed, have a set of 300 goats in a shed just a few yards away that had been de-bleated, to keep their presence on the base covert.
At “goat lab,” the goats were de-bleated, apparently to hide their presence from the local ASPCA, as the goats were shot up and then surgically repaired there as part of a medical training program. And the lab really was originally called “dog lab”, but people became too attached to the dogs.
For whatever reason, people do not seem to form emotional attachments as easily to goats, hence their grisly fate. And, most amazingly of all, a man at Fort Bragg really did, it appears, eventually succeed in mentally downing a goat.
Hamster’s Death
In the film, one of the character shows the journalist a film documenting his staring his own hamster not quite to death. That incident actually happened. Guy Savelli showed Ronson a film of himself stunning, but not killing, his pet hamster.
And, as in the film, the reason Savelli says he didn’t show the tape of him actually killing the hamster was because his wife wasn’t sure how Ronson would react to seeing him kill a real animal.
Savelli also appears in the character of Lyn Cassidy, played by Clooney. According to Savelli, who really does run a dance studio, he did down a goat in this manner. He made one goat collapse by thinking strongly about it, and apparently killed another, goat #17 (out of 30) by accident while trying to kill goat #16 on purpose.
Or so Savelli claims. Col. John Alexander has countered with the story, sent to me and others by e-mail, that Savelli downed the goat with a karate chop, not psychically. However, given Col. Alexander’s background with covert operations, it’s also possible that Col. Alexander is either telling the truth as he heard it, which may not be the truth, or he is putting out a cover story to muddy the waters.
Not one but several people told Ronson that a man had killed a goat simply by willing it to die. So either a group was running an operation against Ronson (or people in the military) to convince him (or them) that goats were killed by mental power, or it really happened. I’m not enough of a conspiracy theorist to believe the former, so I am stuck contemplating the latter.
Whatever the truth about the goats, it’s no secret that Jim Channon (“Bill Django” in the film, portrayed by Jeff Bridges) really did envision a New Age-type army of warriors who used their powers for peace. Channon noted that in Vietnam, most of the soldiers were essentially good people who were not eager to kill another human being.
Could this humanitarian instinct be repurposed into a new kind of weapon?
In the wake of America’s utter failure in Vietnam, the military establishment genuinely considered alternative solutions to traditional warfare, and gave Jim time and money to explore other avenues for conquering the enemy.
Channon sat naked in hot tubs, took seminars at the Esalen Institute, experienced Reichian rebirthing, and talked to a man who composed subliminal message CDs to help people lose weight and find inner peace. (Ronson wrote that an evangelical church in America found its donations tripled after it blasted its congregation with subliminal sounds during the hymns.)
After these explorations, Jim wrote a confidential paper to his superiors in the Army that opened with this line: “The U.S. Army doesn’t really have any serious alternative than to be wonderful.”
Jim’s document was his “First Earth Battalion Operations Manual.” His recommendations included approaching enemy combatants with soldiers holding symbols of peace, like baby lambs in their arms, of greeting people with “sparkly eyes,” and hugging the enemy.
Channon was also the one who came up with the Army’s most successful recruiting slogan of all time: “Be all that you can be.”
‘Warrior Monks’
Channon proposed a set of “Warrior Monks” who had conquered personal lust, and designed his program to weed out sheer mercenaries. But Channon’s suggestions were not all peaceful. Channon also proposed the use of nonlethal weapons.
Or maybe that was the influence of the document’s co-author, the aforementioned Col. John Alexander.
One of Col. Alexander’s “nonlethal” inventions was “sticky foam,” designed to literally freeze the enemy in its tracks. This foam was featured in a recent incarnation of “The Incredible Hulk,” the latest Dan Brown novel The Lost Symbol, and America’s 1995 military engagement in Somalia.
Unlike the fictional application in the Hulk film, when the foam was used in the real world to create a barrier between food and a rioting crowd, the crowd simply waited for the foam to harden and then climbed over it.
The foam had also been used in an attempt to subdue violent prisoners before they were moved to a new facility, however, as Ronson reported, the practice was discontinued because the prison authorities found it impossible to move the prisoners once the foam had solidified (begging the question of what happened to the prisoners unlucky enough to be the first test subjects).
The foam was taken to Iraq for use on the expected Weapons of Mass Destruction, which were, of course, never found.
Another nonlethal weapon Channon/Alexander suggested was the blasting of combatants with “discordant sounds” designed to disorient, confuse, and sicken.
This technique was used at Waco, where the FBI blasted the Branch Davidians with discordant rock music, the sound of dentist drills, Buddhist chants (a move protested by the Dalai Lama), dying rabbit noises, and other strange noises that served no obvious purpose, but which may have carried subliminal sounds.
The FBI even tried to hire Dr. Igor Smirnov, who had, at the behest of the Soviet government, blasted subliminal messages to Soviet troops en route to Afghanistan in the 1970s telling them, “Do not get drunk before battle.” The FBI wanted to know if Smirnov could put the “voice of God,” directly into the mind of David Koresh.
God was to be played by — and I’m not making this up — Charlton Heston. Dr. Smirnov said it was possible, but when the FBI also wanted him to sign something effectively taking responsibility should the Branch Davidians end up killing themselves, Dr. Smirnoff refused to participate.
Sleep Deprivation
Yet some of these theories have been put into practice, often in sinister ways. For instance, repeated playing of songs over and over, sometimes accompanied by flashing lights, is a method of torture that was used in Iraq.
The media laughed when it was revealed that one of the songs used to torture captured Iraqis was the “I Love You” song from the popular icon of children, the purple dinosaur named Barney. The media totally avoided the far more serious fact that music, especially when played in ways that cause serious sleep deprivation, can be horrific instruments of torture.
Songs can even, as another children’s show composer learned, provably reduce knowledge. Ronson talked to Christopher Cerf, the longtime composer for the beloved children’s show Sesame Street. Cerf told how the Sesame Street team includes education researchers who test the results of his work to see if it really helps children learn.
In one case, a song he wrote provably helped kids unlearn something they already knew.
“So I figure if I have the power to suck information out of people’s brains by writing these songs, maybe that’s something that could be useful to the CIA for brainwashing techniques,” Cerf told Ronson.
I find it profoundly disconcerting that a man tasked with writing music to help educate children on a popular PBS show could also be interested in helping the CIA brainwash people.
Ronson’s book suggests that some of the torture methods used in the recent wars were more similar to the infamous Nazi experiments that tested human limits than any intelligence-gathering exercise, the standard excuse for this war crime.
Both the CIA and the military have sought to control minds — from within and from without — for years.
In the 1950s and early 1960s, the CIA conducted numerous mind-control experiments designed in some cases to break down people’s defenses so they would tell the truth when captured and designed in other cases to produce operational amnesia so that the truth could never be extracted if the agent was captured. (One wonders if the fact that these goals were mutually exclusive seemed to bother anyone.)
The CIA experimented with drugs, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, flashing lights, sleep deprivation, and other torturous techniques, sometimes in “terminal” experiments.
CIA scientists tried to completely control people’s behavior. They discussed fragmenting minds through trauma and then rebuilding the fragmented parts into multiple personalities that could be separately programmed, so that personality A would not know what personality B was doing even though both personalities shared the same body.
Mind Over Matter
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, studies proliferated showing that the mind was not something simply to be broken and/or reprogrammed, but could be used, by specially talented people, to influence the world in a physical way.
The best-selling 1973 book Supernature, by Lyall Watson, described, among many other examples, a Soviet experiment in which a woman was captured on film using nothing but the power of her mind to separate a yolk from an egg after it had been broken into a saline solution in a container six feet in front of her.
In America, at the Stanford Research Institute, scientists Russell Targ and Hal Puthoff used films of such Soviet experiments, along with other data, to convince the CIA to invest in their studies of psychic research. The program evolved into both remote influencing and remote viewing experiments.
The program showed conclusively that some people really do seem to have an ability to learn things they have no direct way of knowing. But since the results were never 100 percent accurate nor 100 percent reproducible on demand, the program was eventually phased out, only to resurface later from time to time under the auspices of agencies that included, among others, the Army, the CIA, the Air Force, and NASA.
One of these programs was exposed rather dramatically in 1995 on national television when Ed Dames, a remote viewer from these programs, discussed his work. One of the remote viewers speculated to Ronson that perhaps the program was exposed to publicize its “cancellation” while deeper, blacker operations continued.
Most people react to the thought of man being able to use psychic power (whether for good or evil) in one of two unfortunate ways: they either discount it entirely, or believe it uncritically. The truth, it appears, is likely somewhere between those extremes.
Whatever the truth, this “technology” of remote viewing and remote influencing, such as it is, has moved into the private sector. Most of the people involved in these programs have started their own private enterprises, selling their psychic services and offering training programs, at a price, of course.
It’s ironic that, at the same time this film has come to the fore, Dan Brown’s latest novel also takes on the topic of the power of thought. One of his characters describes how thoughts may actually have discernible, if beyond miniscule, mass, and that if enough people share the same thought, that thought attains somewhat of a critical mass, enabling it to exert a kind of gravity over other thoughts.
When you couple that with the research that shows most people appear to have at least some psychic ability, whether they realize it or not, perhaps we all have the power to pull this country out of its “means justify the ends” mindset regarding torture and to move our national mindset onto a path that enables us to more gracefully cohabitate this planet with others.
Now that’s a thought worth contemplating, with whatever power we have. Then perhaps we could, like Clooney’s character in the “The Men Who Stare At Goats,” experience a much needed redemption from our past.
Lisa Pease is a historian and writer who specializes in the mysteries of the John F. Kennedy era. She is also a movie buff.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Hollywood’s attention unwelcome
http://lasvegassun.com/news/2009/jun/15/hollywoods-attention-unwelcome/National Defense:
Hollywood’s attention unwelcome
Retired colonel expects film to give short shrift to military’s exploration of the paranormal
Retired Col. John Alexander of Las Vegas is loosely the basis for a character played by George Clooney in the upcoming movie “The Men Who Stare at Goats.”
By Joe Schoenmann
Mon, Jun 15, 2009
George Clooney portrays a character loosely based on Las Vegas resident John Alexander in a movie coming out this year. But being played by a Hollywood heartthrob isn’t enough to make the retired Army colonel happy with the film.
Alexander’s 32-year military career included a stint as an intelligence officer with an “X Files” mission: exploring the use of psychokinesis and psychic abilities to create better soldiers and enhance intelligence collection.
The movie, “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” is based on a book with the same title, a reference to a belief that some military researchers were experimenting with the use of the mind to kill or injure goats.
Alexander criticizes the 2004 book as “5 percent true and the rest extrapolated beyond belief.”
The movie, expected to be released in December, is being described as a “dark comedy.”
Moviegoers will likely see, for instance, a scene in which the commanding general of the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command tries to walk through a wall.
But for Alexander the areas the book touches upon — psychokinesis and psychic spying, or remote viewing — are no laughing matter.
“Reality is of no interest” to Hollywood, Alexander complains.
Exploring the mind’s potential has long drawn the interest of military and intelligence organizations. Much of the military’s experimentation with remote viewing has been declassified, and many of those who say they were involved in it have written books or been interviewed about it. In fact, many of those people will meet Friday through Sunday at Green Valley Ranch Station Casino for the 10th Anniversary Convention of the International Remote Viewing Association.
Las Vegas is home to many retired military and intelligence officers, but Alexander, 71, said that isn’t why the conference is held here. It started here because Las Vegas is convenient for everyone to fly into, and it has become tradition.
Alexander moved to Las Vegas in 1995 to be closer to Robert Bigelow, the millionaire founder of Budget Suites of America. Bigelow used some of his fortune to found the National Institute of Discovery Science, devoted to the study of the paranormal and UFOs.
Las Vegas is the retired colonel’s base for frequent travels around the world. As a senior fellow for the Joint Special Operations University at the U.S. Air Force’s Hurlburt Field in Florida’s panhandle, he conducts studies and writes position papers.
His books include “Future War: Non-Lethal Weapons in Twenty-First Century Warfare,” and “Winning the War: Advanced Weapons, Strategies and Concepts for the Post-9/11 World.”
In a September, he’ll make a presentation based on his essay, “Africa: Irregular Warfare on the Dark Continent,” to the Las Vegas chapter of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers at Nellis Air Force Base.
At this week’s convention, Alexander will be the only the only Las Vegas-based presenter, though he is hardly the only person in the area familiar with remote viewing.
A few years ago, remote viewing lessons were available from a woman in Boulder City. (This month she is giving talks about astral travel and telepathy at Aura Sutra, a shop that sells aromatherapy candles and other such wares.)
Alexander uses a sports analogy to explain that while everyone can probably do remote viewing, some can do it better than others.
“I can run all I want, but I’m never going to break a 4-minute mile. But some will. I see it as there are superstars in every endeavor, from art to athletics to science, and the same is true of remote viewing.”
It has been widely reported that in the 1970s, the U.S. Army actively sought psychic superstars to spy on the Russians. Over the next 20 years, the “Star Gate” program was developed with the Defense Intelligence Agency, the CIA and other governmental entities involved. The program was disbanded in the mid-1990s, Alexander said, because budgets were tighter and for a host of other possible reasons.
“There is a contingent who think it was so good that it must have gone ‘deep black ops,’?” or was erased from public and governmental view while secretly kept alive, Alexander said. “I argue that’s not the case because the talent pool is small and everybody knows each other.”
In the scores of books about remote viewing, some of the same declassified examples are brought up time and again as evidence of its effectiveness.
Paul Smith, a retired Army major who spent seven years with the Star Gate program, wrote in his 2005 book, “Reading the Enemy’s Mind,” about the discovery of a massive hangar near the Baltic Sea in the northern Soviet Union. A remote viewer was asked to investigate.
Psychic spy Joe McMoneagle described and drew a double-hulled submarine “bigger by a significant factor than any other submarine known to man.”
It also had missile tubes “in front of the conning tower ... (which) ran contrary to known submarine design standards.”
Smith wrote that analysts thought McMoneagle’s data “made no sense.” But months later, Smith noted, satellite photos confirming McMoneagle’s “viewing” as a Typhoon-class submarine, the largest in the world, were revealed.
“While scientists argued about the viability of any theory supporting remote viewing, U.S. Army intelligence was already employing it on successful operations,” Alexander contends.
Another question the scientists pondered was: Where does a remote viewer pull the information from?
Steven Schwartz, 67, one of the earliest proponents of remote viewing and one of the scheduled speakers at the upcoming conference, says “it’s rather like a daydream. It’s a part of your consciousness that you have available to you all the time. There’s nothing weird about it. It’s not rare. We call it a woman’s intuition, a man’s gut hunch.”
The problem is that remote viewing “has become enmeshed in occultism, supernaturalism ... but this is really just normal human functioning,” Schwartz said before launching into what sounds like a sales pitch: “It can make CEOs so much more successful. It can make investors better. It has many applications.”
If that’s the case, say critics such as Ray Hyman, University of Oregon psychology professor emeritus, then where are all the people who got rich using psychic abilities to, oh say, win big in Las Vegas? Where is the evidence?
Hyman was hired by the CIA in the mid-1990s to look at more than 20 years of remote viewing data to determine whether it works and whether it’s practical.
Hyman said no to both.
“It’s a matter of evidence and data,” Hyman says. “The evidence has never been very good.”
Now 80, Hyman spent his academic career studying “why people believe things that aren’t so.”
“And unfortunately, I spent a lot of my time debunking parapsychology.”
Believers in remote viewing, he said, “know it must be true but it’s very frustrating that their evidence will never withstand scientific scrutiny. As long as you don’t have good scientific control, it all looks good.”
Alexander says the real life examples abound. In Vietnam, for example, every platoon had one soldier who seemed to have an ability to sense danger before the platoon was attacked.
Alexander is convinced that what remote viewers do, or sense, is related to shamanism and near-death experiences. Shamans, whom he has studied all over the world, might tap into an information stream when they enter herb-induced trances that allow them to find game or locate enemies.
“Now to be able to quantify and make that a trainable skill and understand some of the premises behind it,” Alexander said. “That would be very valuable.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
