With his latest film Savages, the acclaimed Us director turns his vision to the murderous narcotics-fuelled conflict in Mexico
A man steps across the floor of what seems to be a basement or dungeon, on a film shot by a wobbly, handheld camera. Blood, sticky underfoot, runs beneath his boots – and the camera catches what seems to be a severed head. The scene is being played on a computer screen, watched by an intense young man, transfixed. A beautiful girl looks also, over his shoulder. "Is that Iraq?", she asks, squirming at the degenerate and apparently gratuitous cruelty. "Mexico," replies the man with a grunt, clearly terrified himself. Welcome to the latest film by Hollywood's – even America's – heretic-in-chief, Oliver Stone. Unsurprisingly, this brief exchange is charged with greater meaning than it appears at first sight, and the film's director has come to elaborate.
The physical presence of Oliver Stone is...
A man steps across the floor of what seems to be a basement or dungeon, on a film shot by a wobbly, handheld camera. Blood, sticky underfoot, runs beneath his boots – and the camera catches what seems to be a severed head. The scene is being played on a computer screen, watched by an intense young man, transfixed. A beautiful girl looks also, over his shoulder. "Is that Iraq?", she asks, squirming at the degenerate and apparently gratuitous cruelty. "Mexico," replies the man with a grunt, clearly terrified himself. Welcome to the latest film by Hollywood's – even America's – heretic-in-chief, Oliver Stone. Unsurprisingly, this brief exchange is charged with greater meaning than it appears at first sight, and the film's director has come to elaborate.
The physical presence of Oliver Stone is...
- 9/24/2012
- by Ed Vulliamy
- The Guardian - Film News
Director Oliver Stone and writer Tariq Ali talk about their new documentary, South of the Border, and tell us how they got involved with the project and the experience of getting it made. Plus, Stone talks about spending time with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, and what taste he has in films.
There’s a revolution underway in South America, but most of the world doesn’t know it. Oliver Stone sets out on a road trip across five countries to explore the social and political movements as well as the mainstream media’s misperception of South America while interviewing seven of its elected presidents. In casual conversations with Presidents Hugo Chávez (Venezuela), Evo Morales (Bolivia), Lula da Silva (Brazil), Cristina Kirchner (Argentina), as well as her husband and ex-President Nėstor Kirchner, Fernando Lugo (Paraguay), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), and Raúl Castro (Cuba), Stone gains unprecedented access and sheds new light upon...
There’s a revolution underway in South America, but most of the world doesn’t know it. Oliver Stone sets out on a road trip across five countries to explore the social and political movements as well as the mainstream media’s misperception of South America while interviewing seven of its elected presidents. In casual conversations with Presidents Hugo Chávez (Venezuela), Evo Morales (Bolivia), Lula da Silva (Brazil), Cristina Kirchner (Argentina), as well as her husband and ex-President Nėstor Kirchner, Fernando Lugo (Paraguay), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), and Raúl Castro (Cuba), Stone gains unprecedented access and sheds new light upon...
- 7/27/2010
- by helen.cowley@lovefilm.com (Helen Cowley)
- LOVEFiLM
Director Oliver Stone and writer Tariq Ali talk about their new documentary, South of the Border, and tell us how they got involved with the project and the experience of getting it made. Plus, Stone talks about spending time with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, and what taste he has in films.
There’s a revolution underway in South America, but most of the world doesn’t know it. Oliver Stone sets out on a road trip across five countries to explore the social and political movements as well as the mainstream media’s misperception of South America while interviewing seven of its elected presidents. In casual conversations with Presidents Hugo Chávez (Venezuela), Evo Morales (Bolivia), Lula da Silva (Brazil), Cristina Kirchner (Argentina), as well as her husband and ex-President Nėstor Kirchner, Fernando Lugo (Paraguay), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), and Raúl Castro (Cuba), Stone gains unprecedented access and sheds new light upon...
There’s a revolution underway in South America, but most of the world doesn’t know it. Oliver Stone sets out on a road trip across five countries to explore the social and political movements as well as the mainstream media’s misperception of South America while interviewing seven of its elected presidents. In casual conversations with Presidents Hugo Chávez (Venezuela), Evo Morales (Bolivia), Lula da Silva (Brazil), Cristina Kirchner (Argentina), as well as her husband and ex-President Nėstor Kirchner, Fernando Lugo (Paraguay), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), and Raúl Castro (Cuba), Stone gains unprecedented access and sheds new light upon...
- 7/27/2010
- by helen.cowley@lovefilm.com (Helen Cowley)
- LOVEFiLM
Eighteen months ago, Tariq Ali got a call from Oliver Stone: could he help with his new film? The result was a powerful documentary about Latin America – and a new friendship
Almost a year and a half ago I received a phone call from Paraguay. It was Oliver Stone. He had been reading Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope, my collection of essays on the changing politics of Latin America, and asked if I was familiar with his work. I was, especially the political films in which he challenged the fraudulent accounts of the Vietnam war that had gained currency during the B-movie years of Reagan's presidency.
Stone had actually fought in that war as a Us marine, which made it difficult for others to pigeonhole him as a namby-pamby pacifist. Many of his detractors had avoided the draft and were now making up for it by proclaiming...
Almost a year and a half ago I received a phone call from Paraguay. It was Oliver Stone. He had been reading Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope, my collection of essays on the changing politics of Latin America, and asked if I was familiar with his work. I was, especially the political films in which he challenged the fraudulent accounts of the Vietnam war that had gained currency during the B-movie years of Reagan's presidency.
Stone had actually fought in that war as a Us marine, which made it difficult for others to pigeonhole him as a namby-pamby pacifist. Many of his detractors had avoided the draft and were now making up for it by proclaiming...
- 7/26/2010
- by Tariq Ali
- The Guardian - Film News
HollywoodNews.com: It’s the 3rd round of what could turn out to be a 12 round fight between filmmaker Oliver Stone, and Leopoldo Lopez, Venezuela’s most prominent opposition leader. He is the architect of a powerful new movement that promises to unite Venezuelans behind an alternative vision of democracy, free enterprise, and social change. The 38-year-old Harvard educated leader is the face of a new future for Venezuela: Democratic, inclusive, and solution-oriented.
The Associated Press calls Lopez “the man who is challenging President Hugo Chavez’s grip on power.” According to the “Washington Post,” he “represents a fresh generation” of Venezuelan leaders. “Caracas Chronicles” calls him “an early front-runner for the 2012 opposition Presidential nomination.”
Lopez was mayor of Chacao from 2000 to 2008. He won Transparency International’s Award for the most transparent municipality in Venezuela. In 2009 he founded Voluntad Popular, a social organization with the goal of promoting democracy and human rights.
The Associated Press calls Lopez “the man who is challenging President Hugo Chavez’s grip on power.” According to the “Washington Post,” he “represents a fresh generation” of Venezuelan leaders. “Caracas Chronicles” calls him “an early front-runner for the 2012 opposition Presidential nomination.”
Lopez was mayor of Chacao from 2000 to 2008. He won Transparency International’s Award for the most transparent municipality in Venezuela. In 2009 he founded Voluntad Popular, a social organization with the goal of promoting democracy and human rights.
- 7/23/2010
- by HollywoodNews.com
- Hollywoodnews.com
There's no let-up for Hollywod's most controversial director – the sequel to Wall Street, a documentary about Hugo Chávez and his most ambitious and personal project to date, the secret history of America
Oliver Stone is a man's man. Of this I have no doubt before meeting him. Not just because of his status as a sort of latter-day Ernest Hemingway, an action man with a reputation for women and drugs who won the Purple Heart for bravery in Vietnam, and then an Oscar for reproducing his experiences on celluloid. But because the most compelling sequences from his latest film, a documentary called South of the Border, show him hanging out with Venezuela's president, Hugo Chávez, chewing the cud about politics and war, talking very much mano a mano.
It's an impression that's reinforced moments before I meet him in his Los Angeles office when the photographer appears and shows me...
Oliver Stone is a man's man. Of this I have no doubt before meeting him. Not just because of his status as a sort of latter-day Ernest Hemingway, an action man with a reputation for women and drugs who won the Purple Heart for bravery in Vietnam, and then an Oscar for reproducing his experiences on celluloid. But because the most compelling sequences from his latest film, a documentary called South of the Border, show him hanging out with Venezuela's president, Hugo Chávez, chewing the cud about politics and war, talking very much mano a mano.
It's an impression that's reinforced moments before I meet him in his Los Angeles office when the photographer appears and shows me...
- 7/21/2010
- by Carole Cadwalladr
- The Guardian - Film News
Chicago – Oliver Stone, bless him, still has a fire in his belly to tackle controversial subjects and shine a light into the dark corners that the American media skitters away from on a daily basis. Part travelogue, part enlightenment and all Stone, “South of the Border is eye-opening documentary on the South American people revolution.
Rating: 4.0/5.0
Focusing primarily on the vilified (in this country and elsewhere) Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez, Stone digs into the American interests and involvement in the Chávez movement, where Venezuela’s rich oil fields are the goal, oil that capitalist interests can’t get their slick hands on due to the nationalization of the product by Chávez.
Going into the Chávez history, a history that includes the military, a media that was decidedly against his initial quest for power and a failed coup backed by the Bush administration, Stone shows the other side of how a...
Rating: 4.0/5.0
Focusing primarily on the vilified (in this country and elsewhere) Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez, Stone digs into the American interests and involvement in the Chávez movement, where Venezuela’s rich oil fields are the goal, oil that capitalist interests can’t get their slick hands on due to the nationalization of the product by Chávez.
Going into the Chávez history, a history that includes the military, a media that was decidedly against his initial quest for power and a failed coup backed by the Bush administration, Stone shows the other side of how a...
- 7/9/2010
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
Hugo Chavez, Oliver Stone, South of the Border The letter below was posted at the Center for Economic Policy and Research‘s website under the heading "Oliver Stone Responds to Attack from the New York Times‘ Larry Rohter." Rohter’s original piece on Stone’s just released (via Cinema Libre) South of the Border, "Oliver Stone’s Latin America," can be found here. South of the Border‘s chief focus is Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, but it also features interviews with several South American presidents, among them Argentina’s Cristina Kirchner, Paraguay’s Fernando Lugo, and Brazil’s Luiz Inacio da Silva, in addition to Cuban leader Raul Castro. Mark Weisbrot and Tariq Ali are South of the Border‘s screenwriters. More on the Rohter vs. Stone issue here. Oliver Stone, Mark Weisbrot, Tariq Ali Letter to the New York Times, June 27, 2010 Larry Rohter attacks our film, “South of the Border,...
- 6/28/2010
- by Anna Robinson
- Alt Film Guide
Knight and Day I've reviewed it and I mentioned it again yesterday so I think you know where I stand, but if you don't... go see it, it's fun.
This film is rated PG-13 for sequences of action violence throughout, and brief strong language. Click Here For The Gallery Of 10 Pictures My Review / Get More Info
Grown Ups This week has been a busy one and it got to a point Wednesday night where it was either go see Grown Ups or sit at home and relax for a couple of hours. Considering I don't have a review for this one online I think you know what my decision was.
This film is rated PG-13 for crude material including suggestive references, language and some male rear nudity. Click Here For The Gallery Of 36 Pictures Get More Info
Dogtooth I just finished watching this only a few hours ago and will...
This film is rated PG-13 for sequences of action violence throughout, and brief strong language. Click Here For The Gallery Of 10 Pictures My Review / Get More Info
Grown Ups This week has been a busy one and it got to a point Wednesday night where it was either go see Grown Ups or sit at home and relax for a couple of hours. Considering I don't have a review for this one online I think you know what my decision was.
This film is rated PG-13 for crude material including suggestive references, language and some male rear nudity. Click Here For The Gallery Of 36 Pictures Get More Info
Dogtooth I just finished watching this only a few hours ago and will...
- 6/25/2010
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
Before American audiences can get their greedy eyes on Oliver Stone's long-anticipated sequel "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" this fall, the three-time Oscar winner will release an even more politically minded film, if you don't mind Hugo Chávez standing in for Shia Labeouf. As genial as it is revealing, "South of the Border" sees Stone on a road trip in the titular direction, conducting humanizing interviews with presidents who -- as is the refuting point of Stone's doc -- have been unfairly maligned by the American government and media.
Stone gets up close and personal with the aforementioned Venezuelan leader, Bolivia's Evo Morales, Brazil's Lula da Silva, Paraguay's Fernando Lugo, Ecuador's Rafael Correa, Argentina's Cristina Kirchner (and her husband, ex-President Nėstor Kirchner) and, most predictably from the director of "Comandante" and "Looking for Fidel," Cuban top dog Raúl Castro.
Stone mentioned to me that the film was partly shot...
Stone gets up close and personal with the aforementioned Venezuelan leader, Bolivia's Evo Morales, Brazil's Lula da Silva, Paraguay's Fernando Lugo, Ecuador's Rafael Correa, Argentina's Cristina Kirchner (and her husband, ex-President Nėstor Kirchner) and, most predictably from the director of "Comandante" and "Looking for Fidel," Cuban top dog Raúl Castro.
Stone mentioned to me that the film was partly shot...
- 6/23/2010
- by Aaron Hillis
- ifc.com
Oliver Stone has demonstrated his South American left-wing sympathies since his 3rd film, 1986’s Salvador – a drama about an American journalist (played by James Woods, who was also nominated for his performance by the Academy) in El Salvador covering the Salvadoran civil war.
So, him making a documentary titled South Of The Border, about South America’s political and social movements, shouldn’t be a surprise.
Shot across five countries, Stone’s reported intent with the film is to challenge North American mainstream media misperceptions of South America, via personal interviews with seven of its elected presidents, including Hugo Chávez (Venezuela), Evo Morales (Bolivia), Lula da Silva (Brazil), Cristina Kirchner (Argentina), Fernando Lugo (Paraguay), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), and Raúl Castro (Cuba).
Stone gained “unprecedented access” to each president and region, in making the documentary, which is said to shed new light on the “exciting” transformations in South America.
Indie distribution company,...
So, him making a documentary titled South Of The Border, about South America’s political and social movements, shouldn’t be a surprise.
Shot across five countries, Stone’s reported intent with the film is to challenge North American mainstream media misperceptions of South America, via personal interviews with seven of its elected presidents, including Hugo Chávez (Venezuela), Evo Morales (Bolivia), Lula da Silva (Brazil), Cristina Kirchner (Argentina), Fernando Lugo (Paraguay), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), and Raúl Castro (Cuba).
Stone gained “unprecedented access” to each president and region, in making the documentary, which is said to shed new light on the “exciting” transformations in South America.
Indie distribution company,...
- 6/8/2010
- by Tambay
- ShadowAndAct
Buenos Aires -- American director Oliver Stone deflected criticism that his film about South American presidents provided a glossed-over picture of the region's political landscape and its controversial leaders.
In a packed auditorium at the University of Buenos Aires' Law School, Stone presented "South of the Border" with a public interview alongside producer Fernando Sulichin and scriptwriter Mark Weisbrot. Moderated by local journalist Jorge Lanata, the dialogue would later turn into a press conference that included an open microphone for the public.
The interview was the final event in his promotional tour through the region, which had started last week in Caracas with the premiere of his film, which is based on a series of interviews with Latin American presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner of Argentina, Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva of Brazil, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, and Raul Castro of Cuba.
In a packed auditorium at the University of Buenos Aires' Law School, Stone presented "South of the Border" with a public interview alongside producer Fernando Sulichin and scriptwriter Mark Weisbrot. Moderated by local journalist Jorge Lanata, the dialogue would later turn into a press conference that included an open microphone for the public.
The interview was the final event in his promotional tour through the region, which had started last week in Caracas with the premiere of his film, which is based on a series of interviews with Latin American presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner of Argentina, Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva of Brazil, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, and Raul Castro of Cuba.
- 6/4/2010
- by By Agustin Mango
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Cinema Libre Studio acquired the North American rights to South of the Border, the documentary from Oliver Stone, which chronicles his travels to South America in the winter of 2009, and his conversations along the way with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales (Bolivia), Lula da Silva (Brazil), Cristina Kirchner (Argentina), as well as her husband and ex-President Néstor Kirchner, Fernando Lugo (Paraguay), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), and Raúl Castro (Cuba). The film premiered at the 2009 Venice Film Festival, then screened at the New York Film Festival. Cinema Libre will premiere ...
- 3/29/2010
- by twhite
- International Documentary Association
Merciless dictator for some, political "Robin Hood" fighting against the power of the United States for others, the head of the Venezuelan government attended the world premiere of the movie about him by Oliver Stone. During press interviews after the screening of "South of the Border", the American director announced that what the world needs is tens of politicians like Hugo Chavez, people who keep their promises, citing the discipline and honesty of the Venezuelan leader. The maker of "Wall Street" snd "JFK" strongly criticized the American media, saying it goes out of its way to shed a negative light on the South American politician. In his film, Oliver Stone was able to interview other left wing Latin American heads of state, such as Argentina's Cristina Fernández, Bolivia's Evo Morales, Brazil's Lula, Paraguay's Fernando Lugo, Ecuador's Rafael Correa and Raúl Castro, brother of the seemingly immortal Fidel, while avoiding the...
- 9/8/2009
- by Constantin Xenakis (Cineman)
- Cineman.ch/en
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