In 2013 there were no less than two films about Somali hijackings of merchant ships. “Captain Phillips”, the better-known one, is now playing at Cineplexes everywhere. The other is a Danish film called “A Hijacking” that played at art houses in June. In both the Somali pirates are like zombies in a George Romero film—symbols of unrelenting violence who crave money rather than flesh. I saw the two to stay abreast with the kind of films being considered by my colleagues in New York Film Critics Online for the December 2013 awards meeting, but with the added incentive of getting up to speed on what has been happening in Somalia. This was the push I needed to do a little research on the country’s recent history even if it meant being forced to look at Tom Hanks’s earnest puss for two hours—not to speak of the predictable Western civilization under siege message.
full: http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/11/22/zombies-on-the-high-seas/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
