Is the Media Trying to Kill V For Vendetta?

V For Vendetta just dropped out of the no. 1 spot, & that new Denzel Washington film took it over. I really wonder about this, because I haven't seen very much publicity for V, & yet I have seen tons of publicity for the new Denzel film. I wonder if the media is purposely trying to keep V For Vendetta from becoming a hit? Let's not allow this to happen. It's important to see this film more than once & spread the word. I am sick of our sellout media.

Thanks.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/v_for_vendetta/

This is a pretty well written movie review from what rotten tomatoes brings up.

http://filmfreakcentral.net/screenreviews/vforvendetta.htm
V FOR VENDETTA (2006)
***1/2 (out of four)
SUPPORT FILM FREAK CENTRAL:
starring Natalie Portman, Hugo Weaving, Stephen Rea, John Hurt
screenplay by The Wachowski Brothers, based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore & David Lloyd
directed by James McTeigue

V for Vendetta
As documents for the opposition go, V for Vendetta may be the ballsiest, angriest picture of the current administration, flashing without apology images of naked prisoners of the state, shackled in black hoods and held in clear acrylic boxes while a febrile talking head and his cloistered intimates (called "fingers") form a closed fist around them. It surmises a future where the government plants stories in centrally-owned media conglomerates, controlling groupthink by providing just one point of view. Woe be unto those with a critical mind because what, after all, is more dangerous to a dictatorial theocracy than a question? But more, the picture is an impassioned plea for alternative lifestyles, exposing the melodrama of Brokeback Mountain to be embarrassed, even polite, when the struggle for equal regard is something that should be undertaken with passion and brio--it's life and death, and V for Vendetta presents it as such. There are no half measures in a film that takes as its hero an eloquent monologist in a Guy Fawkes mask (Hugo Weaving), his erstwhile, reluctant sidekick a young woman, Evey (Natalie Portman), transformed through the government-sanctioned abduction of her parents and a period of torture and imprisonment into not an avenging angel, but a voice of reason. How fascinating that the reasonable solution in the picture is the destruction of Britain's Parliament on the Thames.

It gives hope that thoughtful, adult-themed, long-form comics ("graphic novels") can yet be translated to the screen as intelligent, topical, pulp-entertaining films (see also A History of Violence), with Alan Moore's The Watchmen awaiting adaptation and Neil Gaiman's near-canonized "The Sandman" in perpetual turnaround. V for Vendetta works--like the best literature, the best art--as a mirror to the audience, thus what some individuals might perceive as an attack on their value systems (ones based on mysticism, intolerance, and exclusion, granted) may have others basking in a self-righteousness that, better than George Clooney's aggressively dry but well-intentioned platforms, indicts an apparent attack on common decency. It's a polarizing film, and I confess that I'm too far to one side politically by now to see it in anything other than a ideologically gratifying light, but as a film it's also well-made: slick, exhilarating and outrageous. It reminds a lot more of Fight Club than of screenwriters the Wachowski Brothers' own The Matrix, and I do wonder if, like Fight Club, it won't lose esteem as it drifts away from that extreme topicality. Still, it's useful to remember that today, V for Vendetta feels like a slap in the face and a kick in the shorts; damnit if, when the Old Bailey loses its head, I didn't feel a little like whooping with that pleasure of destructive juvenile resistance. Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.

Already scourged in some corners as an apologia for terrorism, V for Vendetta is instead a cautionary tale about how monolithic governments create revolutionaries from ordinary people when they intimately violate them. The equation couldn't be simpler, nor could the affection V has for Rowland V. Lee's The Count of Monte Cristo be a clearer brand that our beloved anarchist is something of a vengeance-driven whack-job. ("I'm sad for Mercedes," says Evey, revealing in that moment to V that she might be the more suitable instrument of rapprochement in his grand schemes. "Dantes loves revenge more than he loves her.") The seeds of the formation of our own country can be traced to being mad as hell and not taking it anymore, our beloved USA transformed in the picture into a barely-glimpsed wasteland embroiled in a civil war after a badly-contained (self-inflicted?) plague decimates its population. The "Ulcerated Sphincter of Asserica" as foaming Rush Limbaugh-esque talking head Prothero (Roger Allam) calls it, receding in the background as the Wachowskis transform Moore's treatise on Thatcher's England into a still-scathing commentary on the toll of totalitarian thought on a public reared on democratic principles. Unlawful wire-tapping made lawful, secret prisons, all-pervasive media saturation, the avian flu, philosophy as science, legislating the bedroom, and the pushing of fear as at once the latest, greatest thrill-drug and the most effective opiate of the people... There is a focus on the suppression of art (and John Hurt as the film's arch villain reminds us that he was Evey prototype Winston Smith in Michael Radford's Nineteen Eighty-Four) as the first step towards the death of individual thought--there are, in fact, so many hot-button topics wired into the piece that it's something like a miracle it doesn't collapse in on its own outrage.

But what's wonderful about V for Vendetta is that it is, itself, artful. It plays Tchaikovsky next to Cat Power next to a wistful WWII croon while Portman provides her first truly great performance as an adult. Somehow, the British accent--a stumbling block for so many actors--has freed her to indulge in her waifishness, spiced with that hint of resolve that made her child-actor turn in Leon: The Professional ever so tantalizing a(n unfulfilled) promise. By never allowing its hero a face, and by further obscuring him behind a storm of gilded words, V becomes as slippery a signifier as Thomas Pynchon's Zelig-esque heroine of the same name, reminding of some combination of that literary gadfly and Britain's own King Arthur, thought to return whenever his country needs him most. In a period in our history when the cinema is caught emulating the golden endings of the fifties while constructing the tortured, misanthropic narratives of the seventies, V for Vendetta has the big brass ones to make its main characters arrested, criminal (what is Evey doing out after curfew?), and invested in the overthrow of the government for, of all things, personal reasons. It's an utterly humanist picture in that sense--and a hopeful one ground in the idea that not every epoch-shattering event growing from one person with one idea has to be the World Trade Center. Sometimes they can be Bastilles.-Walter Chaw

See the film and buy the DVD when it's released.

Most of the reviews have been positive. Media focuses on the movie that's out that weekend. Last week was V. This week it's Inside Job.

I wouldn't read too much into it.

It's just normal

I saw it twice this weekend. The first time I saw it I was on line behind about six people. All six were going to see that Denzel movie. When I went into the theater to see V - there were maybe 15 people in there.

Granted, it was a matinee showing at noon, but still.

I think V will be a hit, but its hard for movies to stay at the top spot for very long. If people really want to see a movie nowadays, they'll see it in the first two weeks of release, otherwise they'll wait three months and see it on video.

theater. I thought there might be more since the local school districts are on spring break this week.

My reaction to V? I thought it was OK, a reasonably interesting and entertaining movie. I did appreciate the anger in the movie, but I also thought, swell, they're packaging anger as just another consumer good to market -- for all the kids to think they're making a difference merely because they've chosen to consume this mass-marketed entertainment instead of that one. Yet, I was very glad at the positive portrayal of gay characters, and the equation of homophobia with fascism. Every kid who sees this movie might be one less kid to buy into the bullshit they're getting at their local megachurch from Focus on the Family.

and it opened at #1. So did the Inside Man. That's the way the industry works. Lots of hype before the release, opens at #1 then drops off. Unless the first week of a movie breaks some huge record or is a total come from behind surprise, it doesn't usually generate much hype past week one. Just the nature of the industry, not some insidious plot.

And I seriously doubt that promoting a Spike Lee movie is on the agenda of the mainstream conservative media.

I saw it Sunday in a theater that was about 1/2 full.

Seriously?

You couldn't escape the advertising for that movie. Although it also strikes me as one of those movies that people who don't normally go to movies or watch tv, but because this one is labeled as a particular thing (liberal movie, conservative movie, etc.) they will go even though they don't partake of enough pop culture overall to see how prevalent the advertising is/was.

Not saying this was the case with you, but I've heard several people say this so....

I don't watch a lot of mainstream media anymore, so I guess I missed a lot of the hype. But because a lot of the things I like don't seem to catch on, I tend to get angry when yet another one doesn't make it. It's so frustrating.

Tammy

with the creepy mask and Natalie Portmans bald head. Also, I have heard that the Denzel film is pretty good.

I loved "V" and I plan to see "Inside Man" as well.

I also will probably see "V" in the theaters again. Did I mention I loved it?

and Ebert and Roper gave it 2 thumbs up...

On the other hand...I hadn't even heard of the Denzel Washington movie until it was listed as the #1 movie for this weekend :shrug:

for "Inside Man". I read the reviews for both, I'd seen the trailers for both.

When I went to the theater yesterday, I saw "Inside Man". It was a really good film.

I'll probably be waiting for cable for "V for Vendetta"; that's just my choice.

Pretty close.

And Rotten Tomatoes gave it a very high rating (around 75%) which means the media is giving it a good rating.

year, there has been only 1 week to week repeat #1 at the box office and that was "Madea's Family Reunion".

12/30 - The Chronicles of Narnia
1/6 - Hostel
1/13 - Glory Road
1/20 - Underworld: Evolution
1/27 - Big Momma's House 2
2/3 - When a Stranger Calls
2/10 - The Pink Panther
2/17 - Eight Below
*** 2/24 & 3/3 - Madea's Family Reunion
3/10 - Failure to Launch
3/17 - V for Vendetta
3/24 - Inside Man
(source: http://www.imdb.com/boxoffice/)

Next week's "winner" will probably be "Ice Age 2".

Not sure how the lack of publicity ads or preview airtime can be blamed on the media, it's all about the level of promotional dollars were allocated to the movie, nothing else. V was no 1 last week and it's not the type of 'blockbuster' that you'd really expect to be there week after week. All in all it had a great first week and still a strong second week, even with the less promotional dollars. So not sure what you're so down about. :)