Jew Crazed

The new craze with Hollywood seems to be exploiting, well that might be a slightly strong word for it, but using Jewish content in films as some kind of selling point. Before anyone accuses me of being racist, I'm not, I'm simply highlighting this point and seeing if anyone agrees, or something like that.

"Valkyrie", "The Reader", "Defiance" and "Inglourious Basterds" 2 of which have been released, Tarantino's Inglorious Basterd's which is set for release on 28th August, and Edward Zwick's Defiance set for a 09th January release, all focus round the Second World War, which gives the opportunity of bringing Jewish subtext into these films. This is probably one of those things that appears in cycles, every few years springing back into popularity and later disappearing into obscurity until the next time it's able to rear its withering head and entice people yet again. Taking into consideration that I'm only 17, I haven't been alive long enough to really know of these cycles, and even if I did have the motivation to become a child film prodigy at a young age, I don't think one of the things I would have noticed straight away was Hollywood taking on the topic of Jewish people inside the towering walls of the subject of the Second World War.

I would be forced to assume that there's something of those cycles going on, and usually I'm one for research on the kind of matter at hand, but I'm feeling lazy tonight, and hopefully I won't go blazing around writing completely irrelevant things for much longer than I usually tend to.

Personally I see the Second World War as something that's being used far too much by the media these days. It's clear to see it's still a favourite with the Video Game industry, and why wouldn't it be? People are ready and willing to throw money at them, and if people are stupid enough to throw it, I'm all for picking it up, so I'm not being critical of them...well, much. The film industry has a well thought out interest in the War, since there isn't huge amounts of footage taken from every given moment of every battle or skirmish, It's adequate to recreate these moments in films. Regardless of the public's continuing love for seeing the German's getting stepped on over and over, which ironically often earns Directors, Producers and Actors large amounts of money, whilst at the time the German's were losing much more money, I for one think that War films still hold an important cultural significance too the countries involved. After all, when you look back on it, it's not all that far back from the times we're living in now. For the record though, I'm more interested in films set in the Vietnamese War, like Platoon and Full Metal Jacket.

To me it seems that holiday bring out these films just for the feeling of; 'Yeah! Jew's killing Germans!' I mean that's what Tarantino's film is presumably going to mostly be about, I hope at least. I have great respect for the man, personally and for his work due to his unique viewpoint on things, and I hope Inglorious Basterds fairs just as well as his films. His film doesn't seem to be part of the Jew Craze cycle anyway, it doesn't come across as something he was told to do, more a film he wants to do.

Defiance is yet to surface fully, but is receiving positive reviews so far, and so it should be due to what I saw of the Cinematography earlier.

As for Valkyrie, it's receiving positive reviews mainly, the only criticism towards the film is Tom Cruise related, but what are you going to do?

The Reader seems to be fairly good from what I've seen in terms of reviews, only a handful of ratings on IMDB so far, even though it has been out for 5 odd days.

I suppose at some point I'm going to have to venture to watch all these films, Inglorious Basterds is already on my watching list just for the reason it's Tarantino, and it's bound to be of interest too me in terms of production and when it's set. Anyway, I'm not totally sure where I've gone with this blog or if I've said anything of any importance at all, but it has killed some time, so I think I'll leave it here.