Cool News
Herc Has Entered HBO’s HOUSE OF SADDAM!!
SPOILER ALERT !!
I am – Hercules!!
Depicting the career of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, “House of Saddam” is a four-hour BBC/HBO miniseries directed by Alex Holmes from a teleplay by Holmes (the BBC TV-movie “Dunkirk”) and Stephen Butchard (the British detective series “Vincent”).
Its big star is Shohreh Aghdashloo, the Iranian actress who kept screaming “Behrooooooooooz!!!” on “24” a few years ago, and who plays Sajida Khairallah Talfah, the first Mrs. Saddam.
As history lessons go, “Saddam” is painless, an interesting glimpse into a not-so-fundamentalist Arab territory in which men swill whiskey, dance in discos, wear double-breasted suits and covet the blonde wives of other men – and the wife of the nation’s president never dons a burkha. Saddam’s inner circle even boasts a profane Christian fellow.
At times this family saga feels almost ridiculously evocative of the Corleones, full of Fredos, Connies, Toms, Sonnys, Paulies and Michaels. Powerful men arrange to assassinate supposed allies and members of their own families. Cars are ambushed on well-traveled roads and riddled with a shocking number of bullets. An enemy is dispatched by trapping him in a revolving door.
Even the dispute with the Kuwaitis reeks of a turf war with the Tattaglias. (One has to substitute oil for gambling and narcotics, but you get the idea; the story begins subsequent to the release of the first two “Godfather” movies – perhaps the Iraqis are fans?)
The Los Angeles Times says:
… above average as docudramas go, but as docudramas go, "above average" is still something short of essential. … for all the time it spends on Hussein, the film doesn't communicate a theory of the man inside the monster that feels exciting, revelatory or useful. …
The Washington Post says:
… "House of Saddam," properly grim and even horrific, earns its time on the air. … a chilling and riveting essay on the evils that men do and continue doing, year after year, century after century, millennium after millennium. …
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says:
… offers a fascinating but limited portrait of the Iraqi tyrant. It also reminds viewers that America was once allied with Hussein against Iran. … Although somewhat structurally flawed, "House of Saddam" still manages to tell a complicated, historical story as an entertaining, political melodrama. It's "Dallas" in the desert with oil as the common commodity. …
The Boston Globe says:
… lugubrious style makes "House of Saddam" a slog, even while it is precisely paced and seamlessly directed. … avoids the pitfalls of most TV biopics, which skip ludicrously from big moment to big moment. But it repeatedly asks viewers to trudge through static, angst-filled sequences in which Hussein, his family, and his generals seethe with aggression, betrayal, and self-destruction. None of the many murders in the miniseries shock; the script marches toward each like the grim reaper in lead shoes. …
Variety says:
… too episodic to be fully engaging, providing a sporadically interesting glimpse into how cheap life was under Hussein's brutal rule. …
The Hollywood Reporter says:
… as much drama as it is documentary. It crackles with palace intrigue, family rivalries and the unpredictability of an amoral strongman with an unquenchable thirst for power and absolutely no qualms about snuffing out the lives of friend and foe alike. …
9 p.m. Sunday. HBO.
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FIRST, and how come i see reviews from the Pittsburgh newspaper on this site so often?
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Dunno if he ever eliminated his enemies Corleone-style but it would be intriguing if he did.
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Dec 07, 2008 5:47:08 AM CST
So you mean it's not an Arrested Development spin-off?
by derlanghaarige
http://tinyurl.com/2d3gev
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whats in sadaams bowling ball bag?
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So women didn't have to wear burkhas. Iran was also secular once with a free and fair democracy too. Until the UK and US overthrew it and replaced it with a dictatorship (the Shah). Which then opened the door to the ayatollahs to overthrow the Shah.
Well, we all know what happened after that, with the Iran-Iraq War, the West supplying Iraq with weapons, arms, chemical weapons precursors etc etc.
So you could say everything that happened since the 1950's were all our fault then.
I'll get off my soapbox now. -
This was broadcast a few months ago on BBC and it ends with Saddam potentialy being executed then fades to black . . . dammit . . . I wanted resolution . . . does he die? . . . does he twat his captors and make an exciting escape?
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Giggety
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Also was nominated for an Academy Award. Some *might* rate this higher than appearances on '24'.
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Seriously, I don't think anybody can play Saddam Hussein like that guy.
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Just like 'Saddam's Tribe' the year before. they don't know how to handle the story so practically the whole story is about Uday going frothy-mouth crazy. It's totally pointless. The story's ripe for the picking but they don't want to tell it.
Why make a drama about Saddam and try to turn him into Tony Soprano? don't these TV Drama people have anything to say? -
Some might consider an Oscar nom to be a little more prestigious than 24 but Herc likes to think he's funny by listing an actors least prestigious moment as his/her credit rather than giving us information that might help inform our decisions. I'm surprised House of Sadam doesn't somehow tie into SNL ratings.
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I was hoping that this was some kind of show like CRIBS where they would tour dictators' opulent mansions.
Also, burqas have never existed in Iraq except maybe on Afghan tourists. -
Must say that I was appalled by the lack of refrences any kind of the help given to Saddam by the west. Bearing in mind that we in the west helped saddam fight Iran. in the Iran-iraq war. Were Hbo so scared by the incompetent bush administration, that they left that all out. that was a huge blunder on thier part and it would have filled in blanks. the west gave all the stuff that he used against his own people. Programme makers cannot that. Hbo did that is why there docudrama was useless.
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Not a bad show. The title says it all.....it's a family saga. Stepped up a gear towards the end. At least it's better than most crap on TV these days.
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Now that sounds more like a sex-filled HBO show...
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It's not whiny teen girls that catch Herc's. It's whiny teen girls who converse like 40-year-old comedy writers.
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If we had only had Herc's type of shows in the 70s/80s.
Heather Locklear would have gone around making jokes about Jackie Mason & Don Rickles.
Truly a missed classic. -
I loved that part.
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You see the Post-Gazette so often because Rob Owen does such a good job covering TV.
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...the house of Al Swearengen. HBO=ASS
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was thinking that also.
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I was thinking that also.
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not fast enough to catch that typo.
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I thought it was excellent. I kinda got the sense watching it that Saddam did the same things as leader of Iraq that the American forces do to control terrorism and bombings and stuff - basically just scare the shit out of people.
I'm glad they also adressed the Kuwaiti's fucking over Iraq by slant-drilling into their oil fields - which is what set off Iraq's invasion. That's hardly ever talked about.
Overall I'm left thinking that Saddam is what he is (or was) - a brutal, bloodthirsty paranoid dictator who had a reason to be a brutal, bloodthirsty paranoid dictator - it's pretty much the only way to gain and hold on to power in an arab country that's as fractured and secretarian as Iraq. Not to praise him, but just stating the reality now that we're trying to put the same amount of control into Iraq that it had when Saddam ran things.
There's a reason Reagan supported the guy. -
Read Saaid aburish book. Oh and Hosney Muhbarak has been in power for nearly three decades. and on each election got 95% and he is considered a friend of the west. and yet here is the really funny thing. When bush came to power under very dubious circumstances. people who questioned that were called american haters. Even though we voted down the lisbon treaty in june. It looks like we are going to get another vote. that is the way they do it in brussels. well keep sending you back to the ballot box untill we get the result we want.
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