"Oliver Stone, 'Savages' Director, On Graphic Sex Scenes, The War On Drugs And Barack Obama" (with video) (Updated)

UPDATE: Here's a political angle in the story

you can pile it on to Obama but, you know, he’s done some very intelligent things. I think the latest immigration act -- I applaud it. I mean there is a brain there, but he doesn’t seem to be willing to confront real issues and take them on. I think he has bad advice. I think by putting Hillary Clinton back in the State Department -- I don’t think that’s helpful. When you continue the old regime like with [Robert] Gates in Defense or James Sternberg in the State Department for a long time. They were against any kind of movement, reform movement, in any of these countries.

Michael Hogan (HuffPo) with video (02:32) from SavagesMovie:

Don Winslow's Savages is a sexy, ultraviolent page-turner about two Laguna Beach pot dealers and their shared girlfriend, who find themselves in a world of trouble when a Mexican drug cartel targets their business. It's not exactly literature (ain't that a relief?) but it does raise a host of disturbing questions about the drug war and its corrosive effect on just about everything we claim to hold dear.

So when Oliver Stone, America's premier practitioner of over-the-top moviemaking, announced that he was adapting the novel for Universal Pictures, it was clear that this could go one of two ways: he could go big with the story, or he could go big with the politics. Fortunately, he chose the former path. Taylor Kitsch, Aaron Johnson and Blake Lively are glistening sun (and sex) gods, forced to confront and revise their personal codes as events spin way beyond control, while Salma Hayek, Benicio Del Toro and John Travolta chew the scenery and spit it in every direction in an all-star competition to see who can be the most endearingly ruthless villain on either side of the border. MORE...

Howie P.S.: READER ALERT- Merriam-Webster offers this definition of "savages"

A member of a people regarded as primitive and uncivilized.

Oliver Stone Tackles Latin America’s Political Upheaval in "South of the Border" (with video/audio)

Democracy Now! with video/audio:

Academy Award-winning filmmaker Oliver Stone has taken on three American presidents in JFK, Nixon and W. and the most controversial aspects of the war in Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July. He looked at the greed of the financial industry in the Hollywood hit Wall Street and its forthcoming sequel. In South of the Border, his latest documentary out this week in the United States, Stone takes a road trip across South America, meeting with seven presidents about the revolution sweeping the continent. The leftist transformation in the region might be ignored or misrepresented as nothing but "anti-Americanism" in the corporate media, but this film seeks to tell a different story. Stone joins us along with the film’s co-writer, the Pakistani British author and activist Tariq Ali. [includes rush transcript–partial]