Hollywood has learned something effective about conservative women: If you play them convincingly enough to left-wing stereotypes, people will believe that the caricature is the real deal. We saw this with Tina Fey’s portrayal of Sarah Palin where so many young people actually seem to believe Palin said she could see Russia from her house.

Expect to see a similar nasty portrayal by Julianne Moore in HBO’s “Game Change.” Moore confesses that it was hard to find a good side to Palin, and the miniseries is candid that her ambition outstrips her capacity. Hollywood knows well that you only get one opportunity to introduce these figures of national or international import, and they intend to make it bad impression on their behalf.

So it is with Lady Thatcher in “The Iron Lady,” whose creators have ridiculously compared Meryl Streep’s Thatcher to a modern-day King Lear in their disgusting attempt to dance on Thatcherism’s memory.

“Iron Lady” producer Harvey Weinstein, director Phyllida Lloyd and screenwriter Abi Morgan are engaged in a caricature of conservatism, through a caricature of Lady Thatcher and all those around her. Weinstein has even claimed that Thatcher is a “social progressive,” as if being pro-choice, pro-gay, and pro-national health service were all there were to Thatcherism.

Alas Weinstein and Streep never show us Thatcher’s considerable economic and political successes, preferring to spend two-thirds of the film luxuriating on her old age. This is as fictional as it is slanderous. We simply do not know how Lady Thatcher is doing because she has lived a life far removed from the press.

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“The Walking Dead” is one of the finest graphic novels ever written; “The Walking Dead” on AMC is boring — and sanctimonious. For any other show it would be the kiss of death, but television’s “Dead” can count on a constituency of zombie lovers that will keep coming back, no matter how brain-dead the writing is.

Let’s face it: The writers are screwing it up — and after two seasons, we conservatives have lost patience.

Let’s address some of the criticisms that my conservative friends are making regrading the show. These are fair at times but often miss the point, because they seek to compare TWD to the films of zombie lore. In so doing, these critics misunderstand the purpose of Robert Kirkman’s “The Walking Dead” graphic novel.

It’s about the people, not the creatures.

Spoilers Ahead …

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“Kate, California is going down! Pack up the kids now!

It’s not just California. It’s the whole goddamned world that gone to shit.” (John Cusack, 2012)

It’s surprising to me how often it seems like Sacramento wrote the plot of its own disaster movie and is now acting the part it has written for itself of panicking, incompetent government.

John Nolte, editor of Big Hollywood, has joined that great mass of reverse Joads (of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath), in search of a better life anywhere but California. I imagine him, with his affects, trucking across the Mojave Desert in search of the better life that eluded him in California.

“The Mojave is a big desert and a frightening one. It’s as though nature tested a man for endurance and constancy to prove whether he was good enough to get to California,” Steinbeck wrote in Travels with Charley in Search of America. Now the desert, notwithstanding the government-induced drought in the Central Valley, is more metaphorical and all around us. There are no jobs but government jobs or the jobs the government has yet to destroy.

“You know what’s remarkable? Is how much England looks in no way like Southern California,” Austin Powers once said. But he was wrong. We are England, circa 1970. We’re still looking for our Thatcher. We hope if New Jersey can get Christie, maybe this state can come back, even if our last Republican governor merely played the part of a conservative. Indeed, the fattest governor in America could have taught the body builder a thing or two about trimming the fat. (more…)

Pro-Hugo Chavez propagandist, Oliver Stone, came to Pomona College to promote his film, “South of the Border.” Stone, fresh off making the 2010 list of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s top ten anti-Semitic slurs for his belittling of the Holocaust , continued to mispronounce Chavez as “Sha-vez” and to apologize for the Latin American tyrant’s pro-Iranian speech. Have a look here.

Stone was the guest of pro-Hugo Chavez, anti-tea party professor, Miguel Tinker Salas, according to the student newspaper. When answering a question about Chavez’s support for the Iranian dictatorship and Hezbollah, Stone curiously leaned over and whispered with Tinker Salas. I guess he was looking for the party line.

Even the left-wing newspapers think Stone’s film is propaganda. “South of the Border” was savaged in the New York Times. The Washington Post said Stone lobbed softball questions to Chavez. NPR said Stone treated Latin American leaders with “kid gloves.”

Stone, who says that he “liked what we saw” in Latin America, never met with any dissidents while there.

Here’s the transcript of an exchange with Stone and a Pomona college student. You can watch the exchange here…

Student: Chavez considers the dictatorship of Iran great for its people and fully supports the government. He also considers Hezbollah to be heroic and legitimate. Do you agree? And Danny Glover got money from the government of Venezuela; did you? And who financed this film?

[Leans over, and whispers to pro-Chavez professor Miguel Tinker Salas]

Stone: We did not get any money from the government of Venezuela for the film. We made this movie outside that domain, and we were critical, if need be, but we liked what we saw. As you can see from the movie, we were trying to balance what we see as an extremely negative picture, so we were not going to go into a ‘he-said-you-said’ kind of documentary because I think it would have taken far longer and we would not have been able to cover the general movement of change in South America. This is truly a first look, a 101 type course, on South America. On the issue of the Middle East, on Iran, I heard, and on Hezbollah, I’m not going to get into that argument, but I will say Chavez trades with us in oil and Iran is a standing member of OPEC and has been for quite a few years and all, not just Chavez, but Saudi Arabia, all the members of OPEC, Russia, and have quite a lot of [business dealings] to Iran, so does the United States, too, by the way.

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Up is Pixar’s most ambitious film yet. It teaches us the truth that Pixar knows well: Life isn’t a series of merit badges or experiences, but of relationships, well cultivated. The best relationships are love stories and this is no exception.

They teach all of this in one short scene – and then expound upon it throughout the film. But the point remains. We are meant to love and be loved and to let the soul go on its adventure of finding its counterpart.

Carl finds Ellie, his soul’s counterpart at a young age and they fall in love. They love the same things – adventure and the adventurer, Charles Muntz – and each other, and so they are married.

Part of being in love is making promises to one another and Carl makes a big one to Ellie. Some of these promises we keep; others we can’t. That doesn’t mean that the promises weren’t true, only that they were unfulfilled. We do it because we want to share a dream. Ellie and Carl dream together. Their decrepit playhouse becomes their dream house which they refurbish with hard work and imagination.

Along the way, they live the good life, even though the greatest adventure – having children – is denied them by biology’s naked unfairness. Instead, they return to the dreams of their childhood, such as going to South America’s Paradise Falls, “A Land Lost in Time.” They save up to go live the adventure but that too is denied them by the everyday little expenses that add up – a broken leg, a wrecked roof, a flat tire. And yet they keep saving, crossing their hearts, and telling one another that one day, they’ll go to Paradise Falls. Of course, life gets in the way. They forget their dreams and by the time Carl realizes it and buys the tickets, it’s too late. (more…)

Talent is rarely celebrated. In our culture of public mediocrity, talent becomes just another thing that the left despises. How often we hear, “Oh, so in so, is only good because they are rich/white/privileged.” Indeed, whole swaths of our society – from everyone-can-go-to-college cheerleaders to the welfare state itself – believe that success is the product of self-esteem, not effort. They tell us that notions of character just don’t work in a 21st century world. Seldom do we hear the truth: that talent is preparation meets love. Ratatouille is one film that gives it to us straight.

Set in the obscure French countryside, an aspiring chef, Remy, follows the televised culinary advice of his idol, Auguste Gusteau. Remy dreams of following him, but there’s just one problem: he’s a rat and rats don’t belong in the kitchen. Fate offers Remy an opportunity Separated from his family during a farmer’s raid, Remy falls into the sewage, traveling thousands of miles, until, at last he finds himself underneath Gusteau’s very Parisian restaurant!

 The choice of locale is deliberate, of course. Paris, long the home of big government and bien-pensant, is also the home of gourmands, haute cuisine, and critique, so Remy’s passion might yet find outlet. Alas, in France, the hopes of the entrepreneur are subordinated to the plans of others. The word for the French economic system, “dirigiste,” means to direct and the French love nothing more than to direct their citizenry, and that, of course, includes who is and who is not among the crème de la crème par excellence. While his keen sense of smell saves the family from rat poisoned garbage, but Remy knows it still stinks to be a rat who loves food amongst those who couldn’t care less. He is his family’s bête noire. Quelle horreur! (more…)

Is the incredible out of the reach of social planners?

The Founders believed that happiness is the object of government, by which they meant virtue, or the proper workings of the human soul. It was an ancient understanding, founded on a modern notion of equality of opportunity.

But the left has deracinated the language of opportunity from its roots, along the way to justifying their practice of conforming and normalizing. They tell us that a more equal society is a better society, even if its inhabitants were to prefer something else, but they never answer the real question: If everyone is equal, then everyone isn’t average and mediocre?

The Incredibles suggests that something else is possible, that excellence can breakthrough. Robert Frost put it best, “The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I’m against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.” (more…)

Pixar’s Finding Nemo is easily the darkest of the films.

Marlin, a clownfish, starts off promising his wife, Coral, the whole ocean:

Marlin: So, Coral, when you said you wanted an ocean view, you didn’t think you were going to get the whole ocean, did you? Huh?
Marlin: Oh, yeah. A fish can breathe out here. Did your man deliver, or did he deliver?
Coral: My man delivered.
Marlin: And it wasn’t so easy.
Coral: Because a lot of other clownfish had their eyes on this place.

Like many couples in love, they name their future children, without considering that life sometimes has other plans. Pixar treats these middle class dreams seriously, though, and that’s what makes the next scene all the more tragic. The very dream of giving his future children the gift of an inexhaustible horizon cuts short Coral’s life and that of most of his children when a barracuda eats them. (more…)

Pixar’s Monsters, Inc. depicts a country that has all but disappeared: blue-collar, ethnic America. It’s a scene that’s been vanishing from the American imagination for quite awhile. In part, this scene is economic, but partly, it’s because Hollywood treats blue-collar workers so dismissively – witness their portrayal as oafish in The King of Queens or John Goodman’s performance in Roseanne.

Treated most dismissively most of all are the men, whose every move is scrutinized by what can only be described as bitchy women. It’s the logical corollary of feminism. If women must rule, then men must suck. Men cannot be seen as nurturing. Working men cannot be seen as liking anything more than guns or beer.

And so, then, it is refreshing that Pixar chooses to depict everyday workers as they really are – human – even if it is as lovable one-eyed green and big, blue furry monsters. The working stiffs of Monsters City have soft hearts and pursue love and friendship, with each other. (more…)

In Toy Story 2, we find our toys just where they were left four years before. They haven’t aged a bit. Andy, though, has aged. Off to cowboy camp, he hopes to take Woody with him, but his arm, loosened from the last adventure, comes undone.

Andy wants to fix him, but as his mother reminds him, “I’m sorry, honey, but you know… toys don’t last forever.” Woody gets left behind for the summer and so, he naturally wonders, has he been left behind forever?

In this essential question, we probe Pixar’s philosophy. Like toys, we don’t last forever, either. We hope that we’ll be remembered in the work we do, the company we keep, or the children we raise, but will we be?

That’s the sort of question that has preoccupied the souls of writers since the times of Homer. How tempting it is to want to be rolled up and stored for all time! We can’t be frozen in place; we must go on. For us, the only time we stop moving is when we’re six feet under. Toys don’t suffer the same limitations. They can be passed from generation to generation. A child’s love is ageless, even if the children aren’t. (more…)

Pixar’s A Bug’s Life has shown that Disney’s old trick of retelling a fable can be made interesting and wholly new. For A Bug’s Life really is a retelling of Aesop’s The Ant and the Grasshopper, with a twist: The hero of the ants is an inventor or even, an entrepreneur, who, as the tag line notes, goes on an “epic of miniature proportions” to rescue his colony from the roving bands of grasshoppers who raid their island. With such a character, Pixar combines the patient dedication of the ant to his future with the wonder that belongs to the entrepreneur.

I am referring, of course, to Flik, an ant among ants. Flik is innovative while his fellow ants are staid. As with all innovators, Flik brings a bit too much creative destruction to the ant colony. (See Edison’s burning of his parents’ barn, for instance.)

His mechanical harvester could serve to liberate the ants from their drudgery, but instead, causes his exile when it malfunctions and forces the ants in further hock to the grasshoppers. (more…)

[Ed. Note: After reading Charles' insightful and convincing defense of "Wall-E" I asked him if he would do the same with each Pixar film. Themes are what give a story its emotional center and heft and are always the most fascinating part of any film discussion.]

There’s a lesson in Toy Story for James Cameron: cool technology does not a story make. It is the story that makes a legacy and Toy Story tells the story of Andy’s toys. And what a story it is! Jealousy! Betrayal! Redemption! It’s heady stuff, but it’s the stuff of great stories. (I hope Hollywood took notes.)

As every child can tell you, the story of toys is as limitless as the imagination, but all children wonder, “just what sorts of lives do the toys lead when I’m not around?”

Pixar’s real genius, then, was to depict the toys in a novel way. They couldn’t lie flat like the cartoons (or is it ghosts?) of Disney past. They had to appear entirely real. They had to create the world anew and populate it with souls.

One of those souls is Woody (Tom Hanks), who is equal parts sheriff and cowboy. He corrals a community of toys – a neurotic dinosaur Rex, a cynical Piggy Bank, Bo Beep and her sheep, a barrel of monkeys – into a real community where he is their uncontested leader, strong and true. (more…)

The Pixar movies have always had a special place in the heart of conservatives and libertarians because they show a commitment to human excellence without apology. While the films are directed at children, they are anything but childish.  Each of the Pixar films deserves celebration in its own right, but here are a few of my favorites.

In Ratatouille, in the obscure French countryside, an aspiring chef, Remy, follows the televised culinary advice of his idol, Auguste Gusteau. Remy dreams of following him, but there’s just one problem: he’s a rat and rats don’t belong in the kitchen. Fate offers Remy an opportunity Separated from his family during a farmer’s raid, Remy falls into the sewage, traveling thousands of miles, until, at last he finds himself underneath Gusteau’s very Parisian restaurant!

 The choice of locale is deliberate, of course. Paris, long the home of big government and bien-pensant, is also the home of gourmands, haute cuisine, and critique, so Remy’s passion might yet find outlet. Alas, in France, the hopes of the entrepreneur are subordinated to the plans of others. The word for the French economic system, “dirigiste,” means to direct and the French love nothing more than to direct their citizenry, and that, of course, includes who is and who is not among the crème de la crème par excellence. While his keen sense of smell saves the family from rat poisoned garbage, Remy knows it still stinks to be a rat who loves food amongst those who couldn’t care less. He is his family’s bête noire. Quelle horreur! (more…)

In WALL-E, we learn just what life would be like were the promise of the welfare state finally realized. Far from the schemes of Utopians, it seems downright hellish. Pixar animator and filmmaker Andrew Stanton told as much to the Christian magazine, World:

“What if everything you needed to survive—health care, food—was taken care of and you had nothing but a perpetual vacation to fill your time? What if the result of all that convenience was that all your relationships became indirect—nobody’s reaching out to each other? A lot of people have suggested that I was making a comment on obesity. But that wasn’t it, I was trying to make humanity big babies because there was no reason for them to grow up anymore.”

Wall-E then wasn’t meant to teach about environmentalism, for the trash that builds up isn’t nearly as important as the trashing of relationships. Wall-E depicts humans as bovine, blobs, plugged into television and seated upon hovercrafts, millions of miles away from the toxic earth aboard Big N Large (“BnL”)’s StarLiners. A commercial broadcasts its Faustian appeal. “Too much garbage in your face? There’s plenty of space out in space! BnL StarLiners leaving each day. We’ll clean up the mess while you’re away.” (more…)

My girlfriend and I drove the hour down to Beverly Hills to catch the education documentary, The Lottery. It ran for just seven days in the Los Angeles area, which boasts one of the least performing school districts in the country, with a fifty percent dropout rate in some parts of the district.

It was a bit ironic that the theatre would be in Beverly Hills, where the choices for parents seem to be what Lexus or BMW to buy their children for their first car. Beverly Hills High is among the best public schools in the country because it is effectively private, thanks to stratospheric the real estate prices. You can imagine their thinking: Lotteries are for poor people, thank you very much. 

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Beverly Hills High was the scene of a recent school reform battle, where Beverly Hills decided that those living adjacent to the town can’t attend the school system anymore.  A friend, former Sen. Feinstein intern, and editor of the far-left magazine on my campus found a way around it – her parents rented an apartment in Beverly Hills so that her younger brother could attend illegally. To her credit, she changed her position so that she could square being a Democrat and in favor of school choice.

I don’t blame her, but does indicate the kind of contorting that progressives do to escape the school system that their union allies run. It’s a contortion that some black Democrat politicians – notably Mayor Cory Booker of Newark – are making with increased regularity. In a shocker of shockers, Booker says that more money won’t solve the problem of failing schools. Good for him. (more…)

The movie of the summer won’t be in theatres, going instead straight to DVD on June 15.

That’s a shame, because Unthinkable, a ripped from the headlines suspense thriller, starring Samuel L. Jackson, Carrie-Ann Moss, Michael Sheen and Brendan Routh, asks the sorts of questions we should be asking in our era of terror. It has all the hallmarks of an excellent 24 episode, save one — the threat seems far too real and it isn’t clear that the FBI is tough enough to save us.

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The movie opens to grainy footage of Sheen in a warehouse.  The camera flickers on, Sheen stammers something, grows dissatisfied and the he turns the camera off. At first blush, these seem like outtakes, until he regains himself. “In the name of Allah, the merciful, and his Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him, my name is Yousef Atta Mohammed. My former name is Stephen Arthur Younger.”

It’s a scene we’ve seen before – on the news, but never from Hollywood. Younger is all American: ex-military, a Muslim convert, and a nuclear weapons specialist, who has placed three nuclear weapons in three American cities. Paid by Iran to smuggle fissionable material out of Russia, he went rogue, surfacing once more in America where he allowed himself to be captured. He is our very worst fear, a fear which seems all too plausible after Ft. Hood. (more…)

Sapphire, the author of Push, spoke at my college, Claremont McKenna on February 8. Her book was made into the movie, Precious – which is now a serious contender for the Oscars.

The question and answer period quickly descended into the kind of self-flagellation that white liberals and modern academia have come to demand whenever we discuss the issue of race in America. It’s important to fact check these types of speakers because they allow so much misinformation and disharmony into our culture.

Ask yourself: Why is an author of a book designed to empower black people so wrong about their accomplishments and history? Could it be that she is profiting off of showing a slanted view? I took a detailed recording of Sapphire’s talk, so that it could appropriately discusses and ultimately rebutted, if necessary. Among several of the ridiculous things that Sapphire blamed on the white man was the disintegration of the black family from slavery, but in reality, slaves actually had stronger marriages than Sapphire would have us believe: (more…)