How can "audiences be saturated" when so few have gone to see these pictures? Saturated with what? Posters? Ads? Feature stories?

I think the general audience is sick of the war, period, and doesn't want any reminders of its continuing, troubling--but far away, not in my backyard--presence. And that is too bad. Whether or not you agree with its aims, it's happening, and it's not just going to go away. It's like a recurring toothache that bugs you, but not enough for you to go to the dentist, merely enough to hope that it will somehow take care of itself. NO END is an excellent corrective to this, and as the previous poster said speaks across party lines.

Did anyone else catch Jeffrey on "The Daily Show" last night??

Right behind Rob Reiner's big bald head!!

"But how can a war be out of fashion?"

There's something really callous about the frustration behind that statement. I wonder if some of these people looked at this war as their meal-ticket. Feel free to tell me I'm wrong and I should go fuck myself.

We are bored by Iraq. It's not a sexy war. There's no 14 year old Iraqi girls promising to "love you long time." There's no poetry to its desolate view. It's a wasteland that we don't want to spend too much time pondering for those of us lucky enough to not get shipped out.

You've seen Lawrence of Arabia, you've seen enough battles in the sand.

The Iraq War is an impossible "sell" as a movie. There are no glorious victories to be dramatized. There are no big-name heroes or heroines coming out of it, a la MacArthur or Patton, that merit epic biographical films (i.e. "Halle Berry is CONDOLEEZZA"). The human side of it so far is almost entirely downbeat: Mommy or Daddy came home missing an arm or leg, or with post-traumatic stress disorder -- or won't be back at all; marriages broken up because someone was shipped out and financial problems destroyed the family; Iraqi civilians accidentally caught in the crossfire; Americans watching the economy take a long, slow bath as inflation creeps upward, the dollar sinks and oil companies report record profits; tales of torture in foreign prisons, etc. The real story of the war lies in its anything-goes lack of planning, the daydreamy projections of the White House (remember when we were sure to be "hailed as liberators" and all that oil revenue from Iraq was going to easily pay all the bills?) and the string of lies, exaggerations and deceptions that have followed as those illusions fell apart. That material is covered perfectly in NO END IN SIGHT. Why don't audiences line up for LIONS FOR LAMBS, IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH and RENDITION? Because there was a lot of early support for the war and, now that reality has reared its ugly head and "Mission Accomplished" has turned into a punchline, no one wants to pay to sit through a two-hour lecture that basically says, "See? See?! We told you so."

Remember that, to qualify to vote in this category, the Academy voters will have had to sit through all 3 Iraq movies in a short period of time. As good as they are, and as varied as they might be, that is a cumulative effect very different than if they were spread out over 9 or 12 months. The thing about "cancelling" though is that 1 of the remaining 2 has to really deliver the goods, and I don't see either of the other 2 doing so. We'll see...