June 21, 2007, - 2:07 pm
American Movies in Our Embassies for Foreigners: My List & Yours
By
My friend Jaz McKay–on whose KNZR-Bakersfield radio show I appear every Thursday at 1:05 p.m. Pacific–sent me this editorial from Human Events:
Top Ten Movies We’d Like to Screen in US Embassies
A June 2 LA Times report says that Rep. Diane Watson (D-La La Land) wants to use your tax dollar to rescue America’s image abroad by stocking the libraries of our embassies abroad with movies about the United States and let the local population have access to them.
According to that report, Rep. Watson wants to ship only wholesome movies to our embassies, such as “Lassie Come Home,” “National Velvet” and “Meet Me in St. Louis.” . . .
Here’s the HUMAN EVENTS Top Ten list of movies we’d like to see US embassies screening. If foreign nations thought of us in terms of the characters portrayed in them, the world would be a better place. And we would like them to be dubbed in the language of the host country. If for no other reason than we’d like to find out who the State Department would hire to dub the voices of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood.
1. True Grit
2. 1776
3. The Blues Brothers
4. Smokey and the Bandit
5. Dirty Harry (Sudden Impact)
6. How the West was Won
7. Die Hard
8. Rocky
9. The Right Stuff
As I’ve said time and again, I don’t believe we need to put one second’s thought into worrying what nations around the world think of us. We’ve worried far too much about that. If we’re tough and worry about our country, not our enemies, then other countries will fear and respect us. Right now, they laugh at how we worry about how they will think of us.
I also disagree with Human Events on the State Department hiring Clint Eastwood, since he’s become a complete anti-war lefty and is no longer the guy who once played “Dirty Harry.” And I don’t get why they picked “Smoky” and “Blues Brothers.” But here’s my list (I cheated–because I couldn’t keep it to 10, I have 15 on my list):
1.
2. The Right Stuff
3. 1776
4.
5. Saving Private Ryan
6. The Ritchie Boys
7.
8. Red Dawn
9.
10.
11.
12. Brian’s Song
13. Manchurian Candidate (so they can see that not every democrat–small “d”–is really a democrat)
14. Not Without My Daughter
15. Delta Force (regularly panned, but highly underrated; don’t laugh–it’s a very accurate portrayal of what happened to and the way we should have dealt with it, instead of running out of Lebanon)
Here’s Jaz McKay’s list (he’s different, so he did it in descending order):
10) Red Dawn
9) True Grit
8) How the West was Won
7) We Were Soldiers…
6) Remember the Titans
5) Patton
4) Rocky
3) The Passion of the Christ
2) The Patriot
1) The Pursuit of Happyness
What movies would you pick or add to our lists?
Tags: America, Bakersfield, Blues Brothers, Clint Eastwood, Debbie Schlussel My, Delta Force, Department of State, Diane Watson, Dirty Harry, Hizballah, How the West was Won, How the West was Won 7, Human Events, John Wayne, LA Times, Lassie Come Home, Lebanon, Manchurian Candidate, Meet Me in St. Louis, National Velvet, Navy Diver, Robert Stethem, Smokey and the Bandit 5, St. Louis, The Passion of the Christ, The Passion of the Christ 2, United States
I’m a old movie nerd. I can not live without To Kill a Mockingbird.
MarySJ on June 21, 2007 at 3:03 pm