Hacker Cinema
Poster for Live from Baghdad

Live from Baghdad

2002 · Film · 108 min

Directed by Mick Jackson

DramaWarTV Movie

A group of CNN reporters venture to the Iraqi capital to cover the Gulf War.

1 positive1 negativefrom 2 commenters

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2 comments on Hacker News

  1. Negativeaww_dangMar 11, 2022

    >The fraudulent story of Iraqi soldiers throwing Kuwaiti babies out of incubators during the occupation of Kuwait in 1990 is depicted as if it were true in Live from Baghdad, the HBO film premiering on the cable network this Saturday that purports to tell the story behind CNN’s coverage of the Gulf War. HBO and CNN are both owned by the AOL Time Warner media conglomerate.

    https://fair.org/take-action/action-alerts/hbo-recycling-gulf-war-hoax/

    "When contemplating war, beware of babies in incubators" (2002)

    https://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0906/p25s02-cogn.html

  2. PositivetritiumJul 5, 2017

    Generation Kill is unwatchable, in the sense that you'd rather see the characters die at the hands of Freddy Kruger or Jason Voorhees, than bother to care about, oh, i dunno, a plot line or whether it's based on real journalism?

    Same goes for The Hurt Locker, among others. So many, are simple emotional pandering, set against a dubious backdrop, without dealing with the premise of the backdrop. American Sniper simply feels like an effort to influence, even with Clint Eastwood's involvement (or perhaps even more so, with it).

    Live from Baghdad is a shade too early, and the wrong Iraq war, but captures the joke-like atmosphere of the post-hoc rationale for even going to war in the region.

    Similar era war movie, but different conflict, is Restrepo, which is a documentary. And, unfortunately, maybe it's accurate enough to be completely unflattering. No one appearing on screen is particularly charismatic or inspiring, and so too the story it tells is uneventful, no surprises.

    But these jingoistic movies suck because very nearly all movies in general mostly suck. Everything seems like long-form, substance-lacking music videos, or student exercises in cinematography and digital effects editing. Oh well. Keep waiting for any good movie, but don't hold your breath. They are few and far between, since the advent of digital production techniques.

    It's just how things are now. Now that all footage makes it make it past the film-developer-chemical bath, it's easy to undo, and selectively retry. It's too easy to make a movie, so it's very easy to make meaningless movies.