Oh my God, how horrifying.

Inevitably with Kevin Spacey as Ulrich Mühe’s character? Which will be Clever, but will also NOT WORK because that movie fucking *belongs* to Mühe–he grabs it, he tucks it firmly under his arm, he runs away with it, he crouches in an alleyway with it and he EATS it. He inhabits it, he walks it around and he makes it talk. It would be (and apparently will) nonexistent without him, a mere Stasi soap opera.

S. may be a grumpy old man (in the Brujo, that to which I refer as his “Get offa my yard!” aspect); but apparently I am a grumpy old man too, like James Page in October Light, because I find myself applauding everything s/he says. The federal agencies have been out of control for decades and decades, and interestingly films never get made about this. Silkwood, maybe…Arlington Road, maybe…but not really. And I’m sure none of the big four studios is that eager to see if blacklisting still exists.

We often dismiss the secret police as being an Un-American, suspiciously foreign, “that couldn’t possibly happen here” phenomenon. But we must remember, the FBI, the NSA, the CIA, have a long history of spying on U.S. citizens. Sacco and Vanzetti, Alien and Sedition Acts (part 1 and 2), Hoover’s FBI, Watergate, the post 9-11 circumvention of FISA. In each instance, civilians spied on civilians with little oversight or accountability.

for example:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10454316/

We know of the East German stasi because, in the end, we won and they lost. We recoil in horror as the stories leak out. As the tales are told, we find that culture fascinating. We ask ourselves: “How did they put up with this wanton intrusion into their lives, this infringement on their civil liberties?” We pat ourselves on the back, and thank God, Allah, Jewish God, or Tom Cruise that we don’t live in that kind of culture. But our government authorized culture of spying is almost more pervasive. Granted, it happens on a much lower scale than what was happening in East Germany, the difference is, to people in Berlin, the stasi were an open secret. People accepted it, rebelled against it, ignored it, whatever, but it was a readily available fact that the government could be watching.

Here, most of us deny it’s happening, or, induced by the conceit of “protecting us from terror”, we welcome it.

As long as it doesn’t happen to us. And, it would never happen, right?

…..upon reflection, this post appears to reveal my not-so-latent conspiracy theorist, anti-military, grumpy-old-man side (that’s alotta dashes). And perhaps I should simply call a spade a spade and say that I am all of those things.

and an american production?? uh oh. could be good, could be terrible!