(Due to recent site changes, if you’re looking for Bob Cohen’s piece on Blowin’ in the Wind, please click here.)

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The newly opened film “Stop Loss” is described by box-office watchers as “dead on arrival.”

Although the drama from MTV Films was the best-reviewed movie opening this weekend, Paramount wasn’t expecting much because no Iraq war-themed movie has yet to perform at the box office. “It’s not looking good,” a studio source told me before the weekend. “No one wants to see Iraq war movies. No matter what we put out there in terms of great cast or trailers, people were completely turned off. It’s a function of the marketplace not being ready to address this conflict in a dramatic way because the war itself is something that’s unresolved yet. It’s a shame because it’s a good movie that’s just ahead of its time.”

Well, I think that’s a disingenuous way of characterizing the situation at best. A few weeks ago in this space, anticipating the film’s release, I wrote:

On a tangential note: In a few weeks, a major motion picture called “Stop Loss” will be released. It’s clearly enough another Hollywood attempt to spread cynicism and defeatism regarding what is going on in Iraq. None of these agenda-driven films of late have done too well at the box office, and, please God, this one will bomb big-time as well. What I’d like to know is: Where are the films telling the many stories of genuine heroism that have taken place in this war, from the Afghan front in late 2001 up to this very day? Making a film that sought to uplift spirits, and pay worthy tribute to authentic heroes of the kind that have been fighting and dying for the past 7 years, would not only be the right thing to do, but a well-made film of that nature would clean up at the box office. Doesn’t Hollywood even want to make money anymore? Or is it more important to spread the creed of “blame America first and always” than to make films that ordinary people would like to see?

Well, that there is what you call a rhetorical question, I guess.

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