My Monday night plan involved watching Hustle & Flow and Flags of Our Fathers. They were both on television the previous week (BET and HBO, guess which was on which channel) so I had them saved on my DVR.
Admittedly, most of my curiosity for Hustle & Flow came from watching Three 6 Mafia on the Academy Awards. To quote Jon Stewart, "Three 6 Mafia, one. Martin Scorsese... zero." [Scorsese later wins for The Departed, which was essentially an English translation of Infernal Affairs. I felt offended on behalf of Asian film. Obviously Scorsese should have one, but still. Can't they posthumously award one for Taxi Driver? Yes, I'm aware 'posthumously' is not the right word here, but it still fits.] Terrence Howard brought a little bit of depth to a pimp/aspiring rapper, but that was about the extent of it. Also, there's just something about Luda's face that prevents me from taking him seriously. Even in Crash, it was hard.
I only half-watched Flags of Our Fathers. I've seen a bunch of war movies and as I started this one, it just didn't seem as though it warranted or really needed my full attention. Or maybe I've just had war-movie overload. The story itself follows the lives of the soldiers who put up the flag at Iwo Jima and was somewhat interesting. I ended up Wikipedia-ing the actual soldiers while I was watching the movie. Clint Eastwood did a pretty good job showing the chaos of war and the ability/inability to deal with those repercussions on an individual level, especially when you're so young.
I was glad that they touched upon the controversy behind the picture, however briefly. We discussed the issue of staging photographs in my journalism ethics class, and if that was ever okay. Especially with a photo that later ends up winning a Pulitzer Prize. The movie does make me somewhat curious to watch Letters from Iwo Jima. And it reminds me of a quote that I can't remember the source of: "Every good war movie is an anti-war movie.”
And then I watched The Hills.
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