BAGHDAD DIARY: Your intelligence insulted, as usual
History Channel aired Baghdad Diary, a retold tale of the military's rush on the city in the backslapping days of the invasion.
The Los Angeles Times gave it a gentle but tepid review, indicating it was a boring and pointless slog.
"['Baghdad Diary'] is a slightly awkward combination of two compelling stories, chronicling the experience of NBC News cameraman Craig White -- who was initially embedded with the late correspondent David Bloom -- and Fadil Kadom, an Iraqi taxi driver who let his camcorder roll in the run-up to and aftermath of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion," wrote Variety magazine.
"Compelling" is in the eyes of the beholder.
Video news journalist Craig White comes off as someone trying to be handwringingly sincere and a war correspondent he-man at the same time. By evidence, he sucked at both.
The film featured very little framing of combat. One sees columns of US armor, a dust storm, burning supply trucks under a concrete overpass somewhere near Baghdad, incinerated Iraqi tanks and pickup trucks.
Almost all of it is recognizable from previous air time. None of it is illuminating.
Look at Ahmad Chalabi's rig jobbers and the Marines tearing down the statue of Saddam Hussein!
Look at all the looting starting up!
Along the way, White's colleague, David Bloom dies of an embolism. That's off camera. OK to show our military in the process of destroying a weak foreign country but not OK to show an embedded reporter breathing his last.
In a better country, those responsible for stuff like this would be shunned and run out of their profession. As part of the general glee over a glorious war and in a position to do more about it than just be embedded journalists along for the ride, they deserve a rolled-up newspaper to the head, at the least.
Through most of Baghdad Diary, the journalists come off as those waiting in line to get their ticket punched as war correspondents. Think of the career opportunity: Be a Hemingway at the front with the troops. Eat MREs and miss showers. Dodge shells and bullets. Smell the cordite and burning things. And apple-polishing ticket-punchers they certainly were, liked by one of the commanding officers of the 3rd Infantry Division.
Baghdad Diary received its just desserts.
It was sent off to the backwater of the History Channel on a Saturday night. The documentary lacked even the standard extended cable promotion juice given to shows about white trash urban tattoo parlor employees and Orange County machine shop thugs who build the same custom chopper over and over while shilling for Lugz work boots.
About half of "Baghdad Diary" is shot from the point-of-view of an Iraqi taxi driver with a handheld camera. Even his footage is not particularly absorbing.
As usual, the stumbling point with Iraq war film-making is that everyone knows how it ends. The once strutting American president now almost universally loathed for his dogged pursuit of war at the cost of country's once good reputation, the general who engineered the walkover of a patsy military and retired leaving others to hold the bag, the journalists who made it entertainment for a few weeks and citizens who were ecstatically for war.
"He's my man." -- GWB
Yes, that Baghdad Bob was a funny guy! Buy the DVD.
If you had a magical machine with a red push-button, one that could reach anywhere and give the producers, the print journalists, the TV men, the politicians, the president and Tommy Franks electric shocks, not enough to really hurt them, just enough to let 'em know what you thought, you'd push that button without hesitation. And you'd keep pushing it.
War Book/War Movie Deals.
History Channel aired Baghdad Diary, a retold tale of the military's rush on the city in the backslapping days of the invasion.
The Los Angeles Times gave it a gentle but tepid review, indicating it was a boring and pointless slog.
"['Baghdad Diary'] is a slightly awkward combination of two compelling stories, chronicling the experience of NBC News cameraman Craig White -- who was initially embedded with the late correspondent David Bloom -- and Fadil Kadom, an Iraqi taxi driver who let his camcorder roll in the run-up to and aftermath of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion," wrote Variety magazine.
"Compelling" is in the eyes of the beholder.
Video news journalist Craig White comes off as someone trying to be handwringingly sincere and a war correspondent he-man at the same time. By evidence, he sucked at both.
The film featured very little framing of combat. One sees columns of US armor, a dust storm, burning supply trucks under a concrete overpass somewhere near Baghdad, incinerated Iraqi tanks and pickup trucks.
Almost all of it is recognizable from previous air time. None of it is illuminating.
Look at Ahmad Chalabi's rig jobbers and the Marines tearing down the statue of Saddam Hussein!
Look at all the looting starting up!
Along the way, White's colleague, David Bloom dies of an embolism. That's off camera. OK to show our military in the process of destroying a weak foreign country but not OK to show an embedded reporter breathing his last.
In a better country, those responsible for stuff like this would be shunned and run out of their profession. As part of the general glee over a glorious war and in a position to do more about it than just be embedded journalists along for the ride, they deserve a rolled-up newspaper to the head, at the least.
Through most of Baghdad Diary, the journalists come off as those waiting in line to get their ticket punched as war correspondents. Think of the career opportunity: Be a Hemingway at the front with the troops. Eat MREs and miss showers. Dodge shells and bullets. Smell the cordite and burning things. And apple-polishing ticket-punchers they certainly were, liked by one of the commanding officers of the 3rd Infantry Division.
Baghdad Diary received its just desserts.
It was sent off to the backwater of the History Channel on a Saturday night. The documentary lacked even the standard extended cable promotion juice given to shows about white trash urban tattoo parlor employees and Orange County machine shop thugs who build the same custom chopper over and over while shilling for Lugz work boots.
About half of "Baghdad Diary" is shot from the point-of-view of an Iraqi taxi driver with a handheld camera. Even his footage is not particularly absorbing.
As usual, the stumbling point with Iraq war film-making is that everyone knows how it ends. The once strutting American president now almost universally loathed for his dogged pursuit of war at the cost of country's once good reputation, the general who engineered the walkover of a patsy military and retired leaving others to hold the bag, the journalists who made it entertainment for a few weeks and citizens who were ecstatically for war.
"He's my man." -- GWB
Yes, that Baghdad Bob was a funny guy! Buy the DVD.
If you had a magical machine with a red push-button, one that could reach anywhere and give the producers, the print journalists, the TV men, the politicians, the president and Tommy Franks electric shocks, not enough to really hurt them, just enough to let 'em know what you thought, you'd push that button without hesitation. And you'd keep pushing it.
War Book/War Movie Deals.
posted by George Smith at 1:32 PM
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