Don't Sell 'Em Short

James Wynn · 12 Apr 2007, 21:06 · from 2007-April.txt.gz

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From: crushtv at gmail.com (James Wynn)
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 16:06:19 -0500
Subject: (urth) Don't Sell 'Em Short
In-Reply-To: <163326.85361.qm at web32412.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <131691.95097.qm at web63911.mail.re1.yahoo.com>
	<163326.85361.qm at web32412.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <e8e9702e0704121406j30ed1dbdp4c04c4eb7e43313c at mail.gmail.com>

>"Starship Troopers"...is...
>for my money the best science fiction
> movie of the last 25 years, Blade Runner (which is
> also a far less than faithful adaptation) included.
> All my moderately humble opinion, of course.
>
[Silently judging Don's for his taste in scifi movies]
While ST was not especially faithful to the book IIRC it did
successfully capture the "tone" and "angle" of the book. The book was
one of those scifi stories (there were a lot of these in the 50s) that
were really just the author's memoir of military life with some
sociopolitical commentary thrown in. In every case, those stories
could more easily have been written in contemporary times.

Hmmm...I don't really see GWI in ST, but I could definitely see how it
could be seen as propaganda for the GWOT. I wish Hollywood would make
more war propaganda of the caliber of "Battleground" and "Invasion of
the Body Snatchers". Some of the best war and scifi movies of the 40s
and 50s were propaganda. I wouldn't put Starship Troopers in that
category, however.

(Best propaganda film I've seen in a long while is "Pan's Labyrinth".)

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