It’s got everything against it:

1) It’s a silent movie 2) in black and white 3) with no-name lead actors, 4) no special effects, 5) a title that oozes pretension, 6) … and it’s French! And now the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has to come along and drive the final nail in the coffin, nominating it for 10 Oscars.

Add up all these ingredients and you have the perfect recipe for the dullest, snootiest movie ever, right? That’s the trouble with selling people on “The Artist.”

Normal, non-pretentious people, that is, who don’t think sitting through a black and white movie is a badge of honor, like an artistic Purple Heart (the snob’s version of “taking one for the team”: watching a long, boring movie so you can tell your friends about it).

And that title?  It should have been called “The Comedian.” Or “The Entertainer.” Anything but “The Artist” (that’s “Artiste” in French — mon Dieu!). (more…)

Mike Flynn recently wrote a cri de coeur on Big Government asking why conservatives have failed to move back the needle on government spending despite the profusion of conservative think tanks, foundations, policy shops, grass-roots organizations, and sundry other pointy-headed groups, mostly based in Washington, DC (although every state now has their equivalents, usually in the state capital.)

Why? It’s the culture, smarty-pants.

By “culture,” I don’t mean Washington, DC culture. I mean pop culture.

While the brightest and most talented conservatives pour into DC and pump out one study after another, endlessly debating arcane policy with a handful of other pinheaded intellectuals, the left has been busy consolidating their iron grip on the real reins of power — movies, TV, music, art.

If half the conservatives who pine to work at Heritage or Cato would only turn their ambitions to moviemaking and showrunning, conservatism might have a fighting chance.

As it is, you can move the musical chairs in DC around all you want, but if you don’t recapture the culture — or even a healthy slice of it — you may win a political battle or two now and then, but you’re destined to always play catch-up in the war long-term.

(more…)

If you could control the culture or the government, which would you choose?

It’s kind of a trick question.  Because if you control the culture, the government will follow.  (And no, the converse is not true – unless your government is a totalitarian state and your tastes run toward socialist realism.)

Anybody who believes movies and TV shows have no impact on our behavior ought to go tell the $800 billion advertising industry, because they’re just wasting their clients’ money.

For too long, supporters of a freer society have done little but grouse about the messages infused in our entertainment, while Hollywood has just calmly gone about its business, making the culture we all consume.

Well, if you want to influence the culture, you’ve got to create it.  Nobody should understand that more than those who champion free markets and individual liberty.

(more…)

I don’t know about you, but for me, the Fourth of July goes with war movies — you know, like Al Gore and happy endings.

Maybe it’s the “bombs bursting” in the Star Spangled Banner, or the evening fireworks, or simply that the smell of barbeque in the afternoon reminds me of napalm (actually, it’s either victory, or lighter fluid).

—–

So when the wiener hits the grill, I’m hankering for some Heartbreak Ridge.  I’m weak-kneed for a little Where Eagles Dare.  I’m jonesing for a piece o’ that… Johnny Tremain.  (You try and find a good war movie that starts with a “J.”)

Most of all, I pine for Patton.  Few celluloid moments can top that iconic opening scene for patriotic bliss.  First off, you’ve got that humongous American flag backdrop.  And you’ve got the general himself in full fruit-salad regalia, delivering the greatest pep talk since Henry V’s St. Crispin’s Day speech. (more…)

Fox News’ Red Eye has established numerous firsts for a cable news program:  First talking newspaper, first intergalactic correspondent, first openly gay host.

But the show’s most ground-breaking achievement, the one that will rank it right up there with The Cosby Show, Ellen, and Joanie Loves Chachi, is that Red Eye is the first genuinely funny conservative show.  (Albeit more libertarian than traditional conservative.) 

—–

Never heard of Red Eye?  Maybe because it’s on at 3 AM EST.  Whether you’re an early-bird or an insomniac hooked on Poker After Dark, Red Eye will make you thank Al Gore for inventing the DVR.

Astonishingly, despite the witching-hour time slot, Red Eye has more viewers than any show on CNN, including its primetime lineup.

Red Eye’s affable host, Greg Gutfeld, was a longtime magazine editor whose posts included popular “lad” mags like Stuff, Maxim UK, and Blueboy.  He made the normally rocky transition from hard-bitten, ink-stained wretch to pixel-dusted, blow-dried blowhard without breaking a sweat (or a nail). (more…)

“At last the Dodo said, ‘everybody has won, and all must have prizes.’”
- Alice in Wonderland

On Wednesday night American Idol aired its season finale.  The true star of the evening wasn’t the endless parade of aging music groups trotted out to croak medleys of their ancient hits.  Nor was it either of the two finalists anxiously hoping to be crowned the newest American Idol.

No, it was Simon Cowell, the most popular judge on the panel, who is leaving the show.  So integral is he to its success that fans and producers alike worry the show won’t be the same without him.

When American Idol first premiered, nobody would have predicted that Simon Cowell would become its favorite judge.  Instead, they might have pointed to the cloyingly supportive (and creatively medicated) Paula Abdul, who never had a negative word to say to any contestant.

The reason is very simple:  Simon Cowell is the most conservative personality on primetime network TV.  And America is a center-right country, fertile ground for Simon’s point of view. (more…)

Before Season 6, my wife was a die-hard “Lost” fan.  For five years, during the appointed hour, I wasn’t allowed to so much as breathe.  And heaven help me if I had to walk past the TV screen.  Suddenly, my normally mild-mannered wife could hurl the remote with notable precision and ferocity.

Five years of secret hatches.  Ancient four-toed statues.  Teleporting cabins.  A string of lottery numbers popping up everywhere.  Weird pseudo-science. Steampunk technology.  The Dharma Initiative.  (Remember that?)  And what the heck was a polar bear doing on a tropical island?

“Lost” was a major brain tease, too.  Naming so many of the characters after philosophers (Locke, Rousseau, Hume, etc.) was a stroke of genius – paper-thin genius, I later learned, as few of the characters had much to do with their namesakes.  (My favorite character name was Charlotte Staples Lewis, i.e., C. S. Lewis – incidentally, his middle name really was Staples.)

As the show’s intellectual promise faded, my interest flagged, but it really took a tumble during Season 5, when time travel, the last refuge of a desperate sci-fi writer, reared its inevitable head. (more…)

It’s that time of the year again — Oscar time!  (Cue “Hooray It’s Hollywood!” music.)  I know it’s supposed to be uncool to care, but I grew up watching the Oscars with my mom every year, and just can’t kick the habit.

Like some grim tribal ritual whose original meaning is lost in the mists of time, I will most probably sit down in front of the tube at the appointed hour, and brace myself for the onslaught of awkward acceptance speeches, corny jokes, and interminable dance numbers (please, God, no dance numbers!).

The experts agree there are two main contenders for Best Picture.  (What would we do without experts?)  One is a movie about a peaceful, idyllic land invaded by an evil military force trying to steal their resources.  The other one is called Avatar.

The struggle between Avatar and The Hurt Locker has gone back and forth.  Avatar was an early favorite, but Hurt Locker seems to have enjoyed a late General Petraeus-like surge.

Then in the final days, an ugly controversy struck Hurt Locker as one of its producers had the gall to ask people to vote for his movie.  Imagine that!  Doesn’t he know that Hollywood is a respectable place where aggressive self-promotion and crass commercialism are strictly off-limits? (more…)

An extraordinary film just came out on DVD which couldn’t be more timely.  It’s about a fiercely outspoken, beautiful woman trapped in a country rapidly descending into socialism, with the government steadily ratcheting up control over all aspects of life.

No, it’s not The Ann Coulter Story.

The movie is We The Living, based on the Ayn Rand novel of the same title.  Rand said that We The Living “is as near to an autobiography as I will ever write.”

Conservatives and libertarians have long lamented the scarcity of movies that depict the evils of communism.  Let’s see, there’s Doctor Zhivago, The Killing Fields, The Lives of Others, and… and, well, now there’s We The Living — a long-lost classic filmed in 1942, and now available on DVD for the first time ever.

WTL takes place soon after the Bolshevik takeover of Russia (which Rand experienced as a young woman).  The stunning Alida Valli plays Kira, a fiery college student who detests the communists ruining her country.  (Valli is perhaps best known to American audiences for her indelible performances in The Third Man and The Paradine Case.) (more…)

September 10, 2010

The Nobel Prize Committee announced today that it is awarding the Prize in Medicine to Jimmy Duncan, a senior at Horace Greeley High School in Chappaqua, New York, for getting a 97 on his bio-chem final.

“The Committee felt that Master Duncan has shown great promise with his outstanding grades,” said Dr. Leif Quisling, chairperson of the Nobel Prize Committee.  “It is our fervent hope that this award encourages him to do great things in the future, such as find a cure for cancer.”

The committee was first alerted to Jimmy Duncan when they came across a YouTube clip of Duncan’s class presentation on his career goals.

“We were particularly struck by his unbridled optimism,” said Dr. Quisling. “Duncan closed his passionate talk with these inspiring words:  ’And we can end cancer in our lifetimes if we all work together really, really hard!’  It is exactly those kind of empty platitudes that impress this committee. Far more so than anything so gauche as actual achievement.” (more…)

“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!” – Michael Corleone, Godfather Part III

True story:  As a young man just out of law school, I was consumed with politics.  I even went to work on the Hill (Capitol, that is, Washington, DC) and in journalism.  But at some point in the ’90s, my interest faded away.

Francis Fukuyama wrote a then-notorious book called The End of History, published in 1992, shortly after the Soviet Union’s collapse.  He argued that the age-old ideological struggles over what constitutes the best form of government were over, and the undisputed universal champion was Western liberal (in the classic, free-market sense) democracy.

I grew up during the latter stages of the Cold War, when the existential threat of nuclear war hung over and colored almost everything.  It made politics seem vital to one’s very survival.  And I found the debate between capitalism and communism hugely compelling. (more…)

In 1987, Andres Serrano submerged a small plastic crucifix in a glass jar of his own urine and called it Piss Christ. Not to be outdone, Chris Ofili daubed elephant dung on a painting of the Virgin Mary.

While some narrow-minded philistines complained, the artistic establishment heaped praise (and money) on these and works like them. The National Endowment for the Arts was so impressed with Serrano’s work they granted him $15,000 courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer. For his effort, Ofili was awarded the Turner Prize, Britain’s most prestigious art award.

Other recent Turner Prize honorees include Damien Hirst, whose works feature livestock suspended in formaldehyde, and Tracy Elmin, whose nominated work was an unmade bed. The Turner Prize is named in honor of J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851), renowned as the original “painter of light” (pace Thomas Kinkade). (One of the Stuckists, a group of anti-conceptual figurative painters who demonstrate annually against the Prize, puckishly said, “The only artist who wouldn’t be in danger of winning the Turner Prize is Turner.”)

Art and Popular Culture defines “transgressive art” as: “art forms that aim to transgress; i.e., to outrage or violate basic mores and sensibilities.” (more…)

So, John Nolte didn’t much care for the new “Harry Potter” movie. If memory serves, he didn’t care for movies 1-5, either. He admits, however, to never reading the books. This is a fatal error in appreciating the “Harry Potter” films, in my opinion.

John is like Charlie Brown and the football — forever doomed to dislike these movies, but he keeps coming back for more. Because the “Harry Potter” films are made for the books’ readers, period. In fact, you might say it’s a unique genre unto itself.

Let me attempt to head off the expected response to this: a movie should stand on its own, without requiring familiarity with the source material. Ordinarily, I agree with this. And I agree that the “Harry Potter” movies would probably be better off if they tried harder to satisfy this rule.

But it seems as though the filmmakers made a conscious or semi-conscious decision at some point early on to make these movies for the readership, not for the general public. They’re really cult films. And with such lavish budgets, if they were based on any other source material, they’d be a financial debacle. (more…)

If you’re a history buff and you’ve got HBO, then have I got a movie for you: Into the Storm. (And if you’re cable-less, add it to your NetFlix queue.) Yes, it’s made-for-HBO, but it’s from the John Adams/Band of Brothers wing, not the Recount/Angels in America department.

It’s a sequel of sorts to The Gathering Storm, known informally around my home as the Greatest Churchill Movie Ever Made. And in answer to the first question on your mind right now, no, the new HBO/BBC co-production is not quite as good as Gathering Storm. (But then, we just have to resign ourselves to the fact that nothing ever will be.)

Partly it’s Albert Finney’s fault. They say nobody’s perfect, but they haven’t seen Finney play Winston Churchill. (He most deservedly won both an Emmy and a BAFTA.) You’ve heard the phrase “tears of joy”? A largely alien experience to me, a pretty stoic, manly guy. Alien to me no more, my friends, once I watched Gathering Storm for the first time.

I regret to report that Brendan Gleeson, who essays the role in the sequel, gives it a yeoman’s try, but can’t quite measure up. There are simply more and richer layers to Finney’s performance, perhaps due to nothing no less unfair than a longer and more experienced life, even (dare I say it, oh what the hell) more talent. Janet McTeer, who plays wife Clemmie in the new movie, fares better, nearly matching Vanessa Redgrave’s marvelous performance in Gathering Storm. (Why, they even look alike.) (more…)

A frequent cavil by participants in the Angels & Demons debate is, “It’s just a movie!” (Or, “It’s fiction!”)

The implication is that the filmmakers made this movie just so they could tell a ripping good yarn. Stipulating for the moment that it is a good yarn, there’s no way to show that the filmmakers were indeed fully cognizant of their movie’s cultural impact. There’s no way we can get inside their minds, right?

Hassassin Assassin

Well, I’ve figured out a way to do just that. No, I don’t have ESP or a special mind-reading device. But I do have common sense (pace my wife).

Now, whenever someone adapts a book into a movie, it’s instructive to examine where the movie differs from the book. If the movie version alters a key detail in the book, you can’t blame the original author for that decision. It’s clearly a deliberate choice on the part of the filmmakers. (more…)

People do not believe lies because they have to, but because they want to. – Malcolm Muggeridge

I’m a fan of Ron Howard. I’m also a Roman Catholic. So when Howard recently defended his upcoming film, Angels and Demons, on the Huffington Post from criticism leveled by William Donohue of the Catholic League, I sat up and took notice.

Here’s an understatement for you: Not everybody likes William Donohue. Whereas some admire him as a passionate defender of the faith, others view him as a hectoring, self-righteous censor, with a tendency to get red-faced and a bit shouty when locking horns on one of the ubiquitous news talk shows.

Howard, of course, is always calm and collected. Besides, he’s Opie; and who doesn’t like Opie? So I enter this fray with the greatest trepidation, fully expecting to regret every minute of it. (more…)

People are still buzzing about Barack Obama’s apparent “dis” of Gordon Brown last week, when the British prime minister paid his first official visit to the new president at the White House.

Brown presented Obama with the following gifts: (more…)

Mickey Rourke is thinking right now: If only my wrestler character was gay….

Well, it was a good run while it lasted.

“Courageous artists” in the Hollywood context is an oxymoron.