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The Manchurian Candidate, Communism vs. Global Corporations, and the Bible
The Left Coast Report is a Hollywood watch newsletter of some type. I found this in the comments to a LMAO post about "The Manchurian Candidate". It brings up some interesting stuff.
The Left Coast Report.....
Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep Do Some Bible Bumping
Tinseltown is at it again -- changing classic plots to make them P.C., that is.
In the remake of "The Manchurian Candidate," rather than using communism as the source of villainy as in the 1962 original, a multinational conglomerate called "Manchurian Global" is used.
Angela Lansbury, who was nominated for an Academy Award in the original, made clear her feelings about the remake. She has said: "I'm so unhappy. I'm so sorry they had to mess with something that was so perfect."
Director Jonathan Demme and two of the stars of the retooled version, Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep, were out promoting the flick on "Dateline NBC."
Demme told interviewer Katie Couric that the story line of the film "suggests that the multinational corporations that profit on war may just be a huge ingredient of a great global threat today."
Politicizing things further, he said, "Now with the war in Iraq going on, we're reading about the misadventures of some of these multinational corporations. So I don't think we're making anything up in our movie."
Couric seemed taken aback by the anti-corporate rhetoric from this wealthy representative of corporate Hollywood. She asked whether the idea hadn't been "taken to the extreme."
In another interesting turn, she brought up Streep's comments of late about the president's faith, in which the actress says, "Through the shock and awe, I wondered which of the megaton bombs Jesus, our president's personal savior, would have personally dropped on the sleeping families in Baghdad."
This prompted a fascinating exchange between Streep and Washington regarding, of all things, Scripture.
Streep brought up the following sayings and teachings of Jesus Christ: "'If a man smite thee on the cheek, let you turn the other that he may smite it also.' And He says, 'He who lives by the sword dies by the sword.' And He says, 'Love thine enemy.' Jesus could have raised an army against the people that persecuted him. He didn't. So that's what I was pointing out in my speech, and ... I couldn't imagine how Jesus would vote. Jesus was the Prince of Peace. Would the Prince of Peace vote for a war president?"
Washington responded by saying: "It's open to interpretation. Jesus also went into the temple and kicked everybody out."
There was further debate between the two about money, with the multimillionaire Streep saying, "Money's bad," and Washington noting that "we all make money. So does that make us bad? Maybe he's talking about us?"
The Left Coast Report remarks that it's nice to see Hollywood stars debating the Good Book, but it would be even better if more of its principles showed up in the movies.
Belched up with tidings of comfort and joy by Joe
at
1:10:00 PM. |
