Death Of A President

[MacGuffin]

President Bush 'assassinated' in new TV docudrama
Source: DailyMail.co.uk



This is the dramatic moment when President George Bush is gunned down by a sniper after a public address at a hotel, in a gripping new docudrama soon to be aired on TV.

Set around October 2007, President Bush is assassinated as he leaves the Sheraton Hotel in Chicago.

Death of a President, shot in the style of a retrospective documentary, looks at the effect the assassination of Bush has on America in light of its 'War on Terror'.

The 90 minutes feature explores who could have planned the murder, with a Syrian-born man wrongly put in the frame.

Peter Dale, head of More4, which is due to air the film on October 9, said the drama was a "thought-provoking critique" of contemporary US society.

He said: "It's an extraordinarily gripping and powerful piece of work, a drama constructed like a documentary that looks back at the assassination of George Bush as the starting point for a very gripping detective story.

"It's a pointed political examination of what the War on Terror did to the American body politic.

"I'm sure that there will be people who will be upset by it but when you watch it you realise what a sophisticated piece of work it is.

"It's not sensationalist, or simplistic but a very thought-provoking, powerful drama. I hope people will see that the intention behind it is good."

The film will premier at the Toronto Film Festival in September and was written and directed by Gabriel Range.

[Pubrick]

President Bush 'assassinated' in new TV docudrama
Source: DailyMail.co.uk



President George Bush is gunned down by a sniper after a public address at a hotel

A bloody end for Homer Simpson... is just one of several possible
outcomes according to our computer simulation. Now, here's how
it would look if the police killed him with a barrage of baseballs.

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

They had me at assassinated.

[polkablues]

They had me at assassinated.

That knock you just heard at the door?  That was the Secret Service.

Enjoy your Cuban vacation.

[grand theft sparrow]

Who are you talking to?  Walrus is an unperson.

If this really happens, I can see this guy getting implicated.  You know, for putting an idea into people's heads that no one in the world had ever had before.

Personally, I'm more concerned with the administration using the word "fascism" in reference to terrorists now.  So the mid-term election stance for them will be "Vote for us if you hate fascism."  They're stealing it right out from under the dems.

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

^ lol @ haxpacd

[MacGuffin]

Bush film: Original or outrageous?
'Death of a President' lights up the blogosphere in advance of its Toronto Film Festival premiere.
Source: Los Angeles Times

This column explores the intersection between celebrity and politics.

A new film mixing archival footage and computer-generated special effects to portray the fictional assassination of President George W. Bush will premiere Sept. 10 at the prestigious Toronto Film Festival — and is already kicking off a firestorm of controversy.

British filmmaker Gabriel Range said "Death of a President" — which is done in a retrospective documentary style that has been described as eerily real — is intended to be a thought-provoking critique of the current political landscape.

"It's a striking premise," Range conceded in a statement. "But it's a serious film which I hope will open up the debate on where current U.S. foreign and domestic policies are taking us."

In the film, President Bush prepares to deliver a speech to business leaders in Chicago, where he is confronted by a massive antiwar demonstration. Unperturbed, Bush goes ahead with the visit, but as he leaves the venue, he is gunned down by a sniper. While the nation mourns, the hunt for his killer — a Syrian-born gunman — swings into action. Range said he reviewed hundreds of hours of footage of Bush to make the film as realistic as possible.

A call to the White House for comment was not immediately returned. Festival officials were unavailable for comment Thursday, but festival director Noah Cowan praised the film in a posting on the festival's website: "This is easily the most dangerous and breathtakingly original film I have encountered this year."

And it may be the year's most hotly debated film as well: The public relations firm representing the movie has been flooded with calls from media around the globe, and blogs are already lighting up with debate about the appropriateness of the subject matter.

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'Death of a President' Comes to Britain
The controversial film that depicts the fictional assassination of President George W. Bush will air on British cable.
Source: Los Angeles Times

A British cable network plans to broadcast a controversial new film that depicts the fictional assassination of President George W. Bush.

The head of More4 says it will air "Death of a President," by British filmmaker Gabriel Range, on Oct. 9. The film makes its premiere at the prestigious Toronto Film Festival on Sept. 10. So far, no one has picked up the rights to show the 90-minute movie in the U.S. The film combines archival footage of Bush as well as computer generated images, and does so in a way that, some say, makes the assassination scene look shockingly real.

"It's an extraordinarily gripping and powerful piece of work, a drama constructed like a documentary that looks back at the assassination of George Bush as the starting point for a very gripping detective story," Dale told reporters in London. "It's a pointed political examination of what the war on terror did to the American body politic." He said the movie is "not sensationalistic or simplistic but a very thought-provoking, powerful drama." Dale added: "I hope people will see that the intention behind it is good."

News of the movie, however, was greeted this week with a barrage of criticism.

Thomas Lifson -- editor of the political blog, "The American Thinker" -- called the movie "political pornography." "We are moving down a slippery slope, and our civilization is getting less civilized," Lifson wrote Friday.

White House officials, meanwhile, declined to discuss the matter. "We won't dignify this with a response," according to a statement. Toronto Film Festival officials did not return calls for comment on Friday.

[MacGuffin]

Controversial "Death of a President" film debuts

The controversial British film "Death of a President," a fictional documentary showing the assassination of President George W. Bush, had its first public showing on Sunday, receiving mild applause from an audience that seemed more interested in how it was made than why.

The 93-minute film, whose subject matter outraged many Americans, had its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival before an audience of about 1,000 people.

After a short burst of applause at the movie's end, about half the audience left the theater quickly while the other half stayed around for a question-and-answer session with producer/director Gabriel Range, 32.

Range complained there had been a rush to judgment about his film, spurred by both its subject matter and by a still photo from the movie that superimposed Bush's head on an actor being shot.

Many of the questions for Range concerned how he managed to make the film so realistic and whether authorities in Chicago, where it was filmed, knew what he was doing.

"We got permits to film. They knew the movie was called 'Death of a President' and it was about the death of a president," he said, adding that former FBI agents served as consultants on the project.

He added that he used archival material and digital special effects, as when he shows "footage" of newly sworn-in President Dick Cheney giving the eulogy at Bush's funeral.

Despite the sensationalism of its subject matter, the film tries to be a low-key and sober look at the effects of Bush's post 9/11 policies on U.S. society, especially on civil liberties.

Movie-goers left with mixed feelings, with one American tourist calling it overhyped but interesting.

The movie opens with demonstrations against Bush as he visits Chicago in 2007. As he leaves a hotel after delivering a speech, he is shot by a sniper in a nearby building. A police hunt leads to the arrest of a Palestinian man on flimsy evidence. Later the man is convicted of the assassination and kept in prison even as evidence points to another man as having committed the crime.

"I hope we portrayed the horror of assassination. There have been plenty of fictional films about assassination and I don't think anyone would get the idea of assassinating Bush from this film," Range said.

[MacGuffin]

Newmarket backing Range's 'President' in U.S.

TORONTO -- Newmarket Films has picked up all U.S. rights to "Death of a President," the most controversial film at this year's Toronto International Film Festival because of its realistic depiction of an imagined assassination of President Bush. The distributor paid $1 million for the film, and Maple Films paid $500,000 for all Canadian rights. Newmarket is expected to give "President" a wide release within the next few months. Financed by Film 4/Channel 4, it will air on U.K. television next month. Foreign sales, totaling around $3 million, have been completed to a consortium of distributors including France's Hart et Court, Italy's Lucky Red, the Netherland's A-Film, Belgium's Cineart and Switzerland's Frenetic. Director Gabriel Range's $2 million faux-documentary mixes real footage and dramatized segments to depict the aftermath of an October 2007 Bush assassination and its impact on U.S. civil liberties. The director was reportedly the subject of death threats just days before its Sunday world premiere, though sources close to the production said the reports were exaggerated.

[MacGuffin]

Staging a Bush 'Assassination'
Patrick Goldstein talks with Gabriel Range, the British filmmaker behind the explosive new drama, "Death of a President."
Source: Los Angeles Times

TORONTO -- When I spoke Monday with Gabriel Range, the 32-year-old British filmmaker behind the explosive new drama "Death of a President" looked a bit shellshocked — his phone buzzed so often that he finally turned it off. As is often the case, his film (billed here simply as "DOAP") has been denounced by all sorts of people who haven't seen it. If they met Range, they would be in for quite a surprise. He is studious and carefully spoken, pretty much the polar opposite of a Michael Moore-style bomb thrower. Having given up medical school for journalism, the filmmaker has spent a considerable amount of time in America, including a stint in Los Angeles in 1998 doing TV news pieces about the juvenile justice system.

The film, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival on Sunday night, has been the subject of breathless media speculation for several weeks. Although most of the film — shot in the style of a fictional documentary — deals with the aftermath of the shooting and the search for the presidential assassin, it has caused an uproar because it portrays President Bush as the victim of the assassination.

Those of us who saw the film Sunday night at the Paramount Theatre had to wade past a thicket of TV news cameras. After the screening, news teams were still there, cajoling moviegoers to offer opinions about the film, whose U.S. rights were acquired late Monday by Newmarket Films, an independent distributor best known for "The Passion of the Christ" and "Memento."

Range is known in England as the filmmaker behind two similar speculative documentaries, most notably "The Day Britain Stopped," a TV film about the collapse of the British transportation system. But this subject has hit a raw nerve. When I spoke to filmgoers after the screening, even some liberals who had little love for Bush seemed unsettled by the whole idea of showing a real president murdered.

"I can understand how some people will find the premise offensive," he told me in one of only three interviews he's given so far. "But I think it's absolutely justified. The whole point is for the film to be about America today. And it couldn't be about America today — not the real America — if it didn't involve the real president. You just react differently to this as an audience than you would if it were, say, the president on '24.' "

Range pointed out that "The Sentinel," a Hollywood thriller released this spring by 20th Century Fox, features archival footage of the assassination attempt on President Reagan. "I can't see any justification for that at all, to use real assassination footage purely for entertainment. It completely trivializes a serious event. I don't believe that our portrayal of an assassination will incite anyone to do it. In our film, there's a real sense of horror to the event — it's not trivialized at all."

For Range, the real subject of the film is not the assassination, which happens in the blink of an eye. The clear point of the film is that America's war on terrorism has undermined the country's liberties by giving the government increased secret powers. As the wife of an alleged Muslim assassin in the film who is imprisoned without charges says at one point, "We came here for freedom and this is the freedom you give us?"

"While I think that the intent of a lot of the responses to 9/11 was clearly good, the execution of it has had a really corrosive effect in America," says Range. "The NSA wiretapping is very alarming for a lot of regular people, not just ACLU types."

Apparently this scrutiny doesn't extend to filmmakers. I was astounded to discover that Range and his crew received official White House press credentials to film Bush simply by proving they were affiliated with a legitimate foreign media organization, in their case Britain's Channel 4, which will air the film later this fall.

When Bush gave a speech before the Economic Club of Chicago earlier this year, his visit was recorded by dozens of news media outlets. But what the White House didn't realize was that his arrival on the tarmac and subsequent speech in downtown Chicago were being filmed by Range.

The director also spent six months in the city, where he filmed antiwar rallies and staged rallies of his own without attracting any press attention. The footage is stitched together in the film using everything from Super 16 to digital video, with some scenes even filmed on cellphone cameras.

He staged a 14-car presidential motorcade sequence with hundreds of extras posing as protesters, shouting antiwar slogans as the motorcade swept by. I couldn't help but ask: Didn't anyone ever know what you were doing?

"We called the film 'DOAP,' and very few people ever asked us what it stood for," he replied. "To those who did ask, we said it stood for 'Death of a President' and it was a fictional film, the small distinction being that the president wasn't exactly fictional."

Range said he chose Chicago in part because it was the site of protest clashes at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Some of the film's footage is reminiscent of Haskell Wexler's "Medium Cool," which was shot at that convention, blending real and fictional footage. "We do much the same thing with our film, putting our characters into real demonstrations. Chicago has had a lot of huge antiwar protests, so it gave us a lot to work with."

[Ravi]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/5353448.stm

Novice director wins at Toronto

First-time Mexican director Alejandro Gomez Monteverde was the main winner at the Toronto Film Festival with his movie Bella winning the audience award.

The critics' best film prize went to the controversial Death of a President, a mock documentary imagining the assassination of George Bush.

"I really hope that this is not a dream and that I don't wake up at film school," said Monteverde.

"This festival is my first. It's my first film. It's my first everything."

The Canadian festival, which has been running for 10 days, played host to hundreds of premieres, with many independent films among the offerings.

The annual awards place an emphasis on audience favourites, with the critics' opinions taking a back seat.

Last year's People Choice award winner was South African film Tsotsi, which went on to win the best foreign language prize at the Academy Awards.

This year's winner, Bella, is a tale of two people who meet in New York and how they go on to make an impact on each others' lives.

Director Monteverde, 29, has previously made one short film, Waiting for Trains. His wife, Ali Landry, takes one of the lead roles in his first feature film.

Death of a President, which received largely negative reviews, won the Prize of International Critics "for the audacity with which it distorts reality, to reveal a larger truth," the jury said in a statement.

British director Gabriel Range's film is set in 2007, amid protests over the Iraq war, and mixes archive footage with digital trickery. The film, funded by Channel 4, will be shown in the UK on 9 October.

[Pubrick]

Novice director wins at Toronto

Alejandro Gomez Monteverde 

His wife, Ali Landry

according to imdb: Ali met her husband Alejandro at a Bible study at church.

previously married to: Mario López (24 April 2004 - 12 May 2004) (annulled -- after she found out he was cheating since before the marriage)

met Mario López when he emceed the 1998 Miss Teen USA pageant and she was a commentator.

[MacGuffin]

Trailer

(admin-edited to include working trailer link)

[MacGuffin]

Major chains refuse to play Bush death film
Source: Hollywood Reporter

Newmarket Films set itself an unusual challenge when it decided to release the controversial faux investigative documentary "Death of a President" just six weeks after acquiring the movie at the Toronto International Film Festival last month.

But it might face an even more formidable obstacle because several major theater chains are refusing to play the film, which mixes real news footage with dramatized segments depicting the fictional 2007 death of President Bush.

Newmarket, the 12-year-old Los Angeles-based film financing, production and distribution company, plans to open the film October 27, just in time for the November 7 election.

"Yes, it's controversial," Newmarket co-founder Chris Ball said. "It's quite a compelling political thriller. In many ways it is sympathetic to George Bush. It talks about a rush to judgment. In no way is it a call for violence."

But the country's largest theater chain, Regal Entertainment Group, has passed on playing the film, citing the subject matter as the primary reason. "We would not be inclined to program this film," Regal Entertainment Group CEO Mike Campbell said. "We feel it is inappropriate to portray the future assassination of a sitting president, regardless of political affiliation."

Texas-based Cinemark USA also has declined to play the indie film, corporate spokesman Terrell Falk said. The circuit, which recently completed its acquisition of northern California-based Century Theatres, will not allow the regional player to book the film either. "We're not playing it on any of our screens," Falk said. "It's a subject matter we don't wish to play. We decided to pass on the film."

Boston-based National Amusements, controlled by Viacom Inc. chief Sumner Redstone, still is in negotiations as to whether it will play the R-rated film from director Gabriel Range, who reportedly was the subject of death threats before the film's debut in Toronto.

"We're currently in discussions with the distributor of the film," said Wanda Whitson, director of corporate communications at National Amusements. "The availability of the film in our markets is an important factor affecting this discussion. Our film department does consider all films, and we've run controversial films in the past."

Newmarket distribution consultant Richard Abramowitz insisted he was having no trouble booking the film, which initially will open in several hundred locations. "Every day during a busy time we are picking up plenty of screens," he said, citing the Landmark Theater chain as being supportive.

Abramowitz declined comment on problems with theater bookings. "We're getting a good reception in a lot of places. No matter how tight the screens are, once a film has success, it's always easier to get more screens."

Although a consortium of distributors led by Miramax Films' Harvey Weinstein pushed the politically polarized "Fahrenheit 9/11" into theaters very quickly in summer 2004, and Paramount Vantage took only four months to open Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," it is rare that a film goes from acquisition to release so quickly.

One distribution executive questioned the wisdom of rushing "President" into cinemas in advance of the election. "In the midst of all the backlash and controversy it seems to make sense to ride the moment," he said. "The film is so topical and incendiary, you'd think that to wait is to waste it. But the film may not have enough time to gestate and get the best theaters booked. They are finding out how difficult and crazy this timing is."

"President" marks Newmarket's bid to reclaim its title as a champion of product other distributors deem untouchable. The distribution arm was built from the ground up in 2000 surrounding the release of Christopher Nolan's "Memento" when other distributors passed on the film. It eventually took the movie to a $25 million North American gross and went on to a winning streak with "Whale Rider," "Monster" and Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ."

[The Sheriff]

who saw it? i got into it in the second half. i wouldve liked seeing it go more outrageous, it had a sens eof humor but it wouldve been cool to push it more.