[Q:] What are your five favorite movies of all time?
[A:] My favorite movies are “Atlas Shrugged,” “American Dreamer,” “Pretty Woman,” “Singing in the Rain” and “Some Like it Hot.”
Atlas was founded to distribute three films based on Ayn Rand’s novel, Atlas Shrugged and, since those movies were released, the company has shifted to acquiring other films.
Director Werner Herzog’s Queen of the Desert starring Nicole Kidman and James Franco has been picked up by Atlas Distribution Co., marking the first time the entity will distribute a movie without Atlas Shrugged in the title. …
The Atlas Shrugged movies, of course, were based on Ayn Rand’s novel of the same name that is infused with individualistic themes that [Harmon] Kaslow says are present in Queen of the Desert as well.
“Gertrude Bell was a real-life Randian hero,” Kaslow said. “This is exactly the type of film we hope to bring to the masses with Atlas Distribution – an incredible heroine who thought for herself, took orders from no one and had a lasting impact on the world.”
…so far specialized mainly in fundamentalist Christian and right-wing political films, from “Atlas Shrugged: Part One” (2011)…
[U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Alex Kozinski] has appeared unpaid as himself in several documentaries and as a judge in the movie “Atlas Shrugged: Part II.”
Rand’s belief is that, if we just got rid of essentially all laws and regulations, freedom would blossom and humanity would flourish. The next two chapters are her argument for this principle. But in fiction, utopia can be conjured into being by authorial fiat, which glosses over or ignores all the myriad problems that would inevitably arise if someone actually tried to build a society along these lines.
This isn’t just armchair speculation. In the real world, people in various times and places – remote wildernesses, isolated islands, ships at sea, even the dark reaches of the internet – have tried to create a libertarian utopia…
Ayn Rand, in her 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged she depicted an America with stark similarities to what we are now experiencing in our nation. While we’re not convinced her “solution” was what we need today we think her analysis of the problem is right on.
On Thursday night a group will assemble to watch the movie “Atlas Shrugged” and discuss what it means for America today. The public is invited.
The Payson Tea Party invites community members to attend a screening of the DVD of “Atlas Shrugged” based on Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel by the same name. … The film is the classic story of “a hero who exemplified the joy of individual achievement and therefore, the joy of life.”
…RZA’s vision of a grand kung fu trilogy with him at the center seems to come to fruition. It’s just that it’ll wind up limping to completion ala Atlas Shrugged.
…one of his most unpleasant showbiz experiences — directing 2011’s Atlas Shrugged: Part 1, the first of a proposed movie trilogy based on Ayn Rand’s dense celebration of capitalism. It was for good reason he has declined to discuss it until now, said Johansson, whose disputes with the film’s producers prevented him from talking. “As an actor of 30 years, I had some issues with a story that wasn’t making sense if I were to shoot it as-is,” said Johansson, who walked off the critically reviled project during post-production. “I refused to do press, because they were adamant about certain things. The financier was rewriting dialogue — Ayn Rand’s words! — and it didn’t work structurally,” Johansson said.
This is an enormous thematic change, and I wonder whether the filmmakers did this deliberately or whether they even realized they were doing it. It’s tempting to speculate that it was intentional, that the stark and brutal message of Rand’s original – if you don’t agree with all her political opinions, you deserve to die and it will be your fault – was too much even for them to swallow. Alternatively, they might have worried that putting something so bloodcurdling on the screen would wipe out any possible sympathy the audience might have for their message, whatever their personal opinion.
For anyone familiar with the Atlas Shrugged trilogy, adapted from the classic Ayn Rand novel, that cast has been changed for each film. Hopefully, Tron 3, or Tron Ascension will not share this malady.