“Land of the Blind” (2006) is a British-American political satire directed by Robert Edwards and starring Ralph Fiennes, Donald Sutherland, Tom Hollander and Lara Flynn Boyle. The story is set in an unnamed place and time where an idealistic soldier named Joe strikes up an illicit friendship with a political prisoner who involves him in a coup d’etat. But in the post-revolutionary world, Joe and his former friend have a bitter feud which escalates until Joe’s co-conspirators conclude they must erase him from history.
“The President’s Analyst” (1967) is a political satire written and directed by Ted Flicker. James Coburn stars as Dr. Sidney Schaefer, a psychiatrist recruited by the U.S. government to serve as the president’s private psychoanalyst. Overwhelmed by stress and paranoia, he goes on the lam and is promptly hunted down by foreign and domestic intelligence agents as a pawn in a technocratic plot to control the world. The film’s comedic sensibility is at times dated but features themes which are even more relevant today such as the conflict between power and ethics, transhumanist aspirations of Big Data corporations, the ever-encroaching surveillance state and resultant loss of privacy.
“Mars Attacks!” (1996) is a satirical alien invasion film directed by Tim Burton and starring a surprisingly large cast of familiar actors. It’s easy to forget that Burton, now a friend of the establishment, once made films with a misanthropic subversive element. This is in full view in Mars Attacks! which (similar to Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers) embraces its inherently xenophobic premise and pushes it over-the-top to skewer society’s most cherished institutions (ie. government, media, religion, and business). The movie bombed when first released but perhaps it was just a little ahead of its time?
Watch the full film here.
Welcome to Terminal City-one of only five livable places left on Earth.
Telegenic Mayor Ross Glimore (Peter Breck, The Big Valley, Shock Corridor), is king of all media, and rules as a virtual dictator. To maintain his grip on power he must stage an election, and for that he needs fresh fear. Enter Alex Stevens (Mark Bennett), a fed-up, cynical newspaper delivery boy who happens to witness Glimore run over one of his own supporters in his car, and leave the scene of the accident.
Glimore and his Rove-wellian henchman Bruce Coddle (Jello Biafra) hatch a plot to brand Alex “the #1 terrorist threat” (based on his connection to rock’n’roll music which, along with meat, is banned) to cow Terminal City into submission and steal another tabloid election.
Alex flees underground, where he stumbles into a resistance movement led in part by his newfound friend Beatrice (Lisa Brown), and a fugitive brain-damaged goalie from the Glimore-owned hockey team, unforgettably portrayed by two-time Genie Award® winner Germaine Houde (Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role, Les bons Débarras 1980, Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role, Un Zoo la Nuit 1987).
Alex finds himself caught up in a plot to bring Glimore down, with the not-so-secret police (D.O.A.’s Joe Keithley and pro-wrestling legend Gene Kiniski) hot on the trail.
“The Day the Fish Came Out” (1967) is a Greek/British co-production written and directed by Michael Cacoyannis (who also designed the film’s bizarre costumes). The film is a satirical sci-fi take on an actual incident in which two military aircraft collided over Spain causing four hydrogen bombs to rain down amongst the debris. Two of the bombs partly detonated similarly to a dirty bomb creating radioactive contamination in the area that persists to this day. In the film version, when a deadly payload called “Container Q” is dropped over a Greek resort island Americans disguised as tourists and real estate developers race against time to recover it in a dark comedy of errors reminiscent of Dr. Strangelove.
Lately I’ve been enjoying the program “Double Standards” on the Press TV YouTube channel. It’s a London-based news and satire show hosted by Afshin Rattansi. While it may not be as consistently funny and polished as “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report”, it is on occasion more fearless in its choice of targets and strength of its critiques, as shown in this clip from a recent program on bankers and government lackeys:
Their interviews are also usually more politically substantial, such as this clip from last year featuring Patrick Henningsen of 21st Century Wire discussing the European Commission and UK’s Ofcom regulator’s decision to ban Press TV from European satellite and cable broadcasting:
I found a VHS tape of an odd and prescient 1982 Sean Connery film called Wrong is Right at a yard sale shortly after 9/11 and was planning a review drawing parallels between it and different aspects of the war on terror. However, I just discovered E.R. Torres wrote a post similar to what I had in mind last year at his interesting Random Thoughts blog. excerpt:
So, one wonders, might there be another director out there who, upon looking at the events surrounding 9/11 and the second Iraqi war, might not also look at the myriad tragedies involved, from the thousands upon thousands dead, the loss of national treasure, the inept leadership, the media manipulation, and the very questionable motivations for engaging in the conflict in the first place…and decide that this too might be good material in the creation of a black comedy? Thing is, someone already did, and they did it a whopping 20 years before the events of 9/11 and the subsequent Iraqi War. I’m talking about 1982′s Wrong Is Right. As directed by Richard Brooks, the movie features Sean Connery in the role of Patrick Hale, an intrepid, world famous reporter who, in the process of criss-crossing the globe, comes to realize he’s landed himself smack dab in the middle of machinations involving the CIA, an Arabian leader whose land is filled with oil, a weapons dealer, a terrorist intent on getting his hands on two mysterious suitcases, and a U.S. presidential election. The various parties involved actively try to manipulate the story Hale perceives and tells, and ultimately what may appear “true” becomes a matter of convenience. To go into too much debate about the story’s plot would be a disservice. Having said that, this now 30 year old film is incredibly prescient. With some minor modifications, this could easily be a black comedy “take” on the buildup to the Iraqi War. The most eerie element of the whole thing is that the movie’s climax takes place on the roof of the World Trade Center.
After the Crash 