Brian DePalma, wingnut prophet without honor.

Undeterred by my chastising (I really ought not bait the guy, lest he make fun of my traffic again), Instapundit Glenn Reynolds continues Redacted-related DePalma bashing with a "Factchecking DePalma" link that leads to...um, a Weekly Standard piece that doesn't actually dispute any of the content of Redacted. Because...I'm sounding like a broken record here...none of these people have actually seen it yet. I'm waiting for one of these yoyos to say that they don't have to see it in order to know it's bad, which in turn will give me license to call Indoctrinate U, which occupies the same place in Reynolds' universe as, say Celine et Julie vent a bateau does in my own, a pile of horseshit. Because I wouldn't have to have seen it to know it's bad.

But this dogpile on DePalma also reminds me that the neo-neocons are ingrates who fail to recognize one of their prophets. DePalma's 1978 The Fury contains a sequence that surely should have earned him some points with that crowd. It takes place at an indoor amusement park. The movie's awesome-psychic-power-wielder Robin Sandza (the ever-intense Andrew Stevens) has just won a stuffed animal for the woman he believes is his gal, and he's all bouncy and happy. But then he sees something that pleases him not.

Note how displeased he is. He thinks his dad, who's not really dead and is played by Kirk Douglas, was killed by a bunch of these guys. It's personal. Complicated.

I imagine this is how someone like, say, the anonymous blogger Ace of Spades likes to imagine he looks like when he glowers at a burka-wearer.

Sheiks have more fun!

Whee!

Robin works the forehead. The hammer of American justice is lifted.

Just as our missiles can pinpoint the teeniest targets, so too can Robin's psychic powers do amazing detail work.

E.g., only the evildoers' saucer breaks loose! No "collateral damage!"

Wham! And that's how you battle Islamofascism! How about a little love for Brian DePalma, peeps?

Comments

[Keith Uhlich]

Great scene. Great movie. Great director.

Hope to see you in Toronto, Glenn. Maybe at Rivette? I'm a still pretty depressed. :-)

[Charles Giacometti]

Well done again.

This brouhaha reminds me of when F911 came out and all the wingnut bloggers condemned, again without having seen it. I challenged some of them on this in comments, and they didn't seem to understand that you have to watch a movie to criticize it.

[RW]

Actually Robin mistakenly thinks his dad was killed by terrorists, when in fact the "terrorist attack" in the film's opening is staged by US intelligence. The whole point of this sequence is that Robin is running on aggression that is due to deception.