What would you do if you woke up and found yourself in a mansion atop the Hollywood hills, living with your superstar best friend, and suddenly have access to an endless amount of money? For the last eight seasons, this is what the HBO series Entourage dealt with. For the first time, however, the boys will not be back in town. The show became an interestingly light and usually fun portrayal of celebrity as well as a rags-to-riches story about the possibilities of the American Dream. Entourage had a good run, having its final episode this past Sunday. It is now time to look back at the series after fans of the show were forced to hug it out one last time, or will this be the last time?

I can’t say that I am pleased with the series finale. Sure, it ended happy and avoided the usual Hollywood downer ending. However, the final episode felt rushed as it tied up a few big stories in 30 short minutes. Ari (Jeremy Piven) got back together with his wife, Vince is leaving to marry Sophia (Alice Eve) and the boys helped Eric (Kevin Connolly) to get Sloan (Emanuelle Chriqui) back. In a final scene after the credit sequence we see Ari get offered the biggest job of his life, CEO of a major umbrella corporation. There is material left here for more seasons and the show didn’t even to give closure to the stories of Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) and Drama (Kevin Dillon), but I digress.

Regardless of my issues with the finale, all of Entourage’s spoiled brats grew into better people than those we first met in season one. Vince (Adrian Grenier) had many ups and downs, going from top grossing movie star to getting addicted to hard drugs and falling for porn star Sasha Grey. With the help of his friends Vince cleaned up and prevailed. Turtle and Drama grew up (ever so slightly) and slowly began to take responsibility for their lives. Eric remained the rock throughout the entire series. He was a sweet guy who always tried to do the right thing and kept all of the other characters in check. I will especially miss Eric’s verbal battles with Ari, another strong character.

Over the years, most of the character gave in to temptations that come with the fast and loose celebrity lifestyle. The difference is now Eric dealt with this, which is why he is such a pivotal character. Eric is the everyman that most of us would (hopefully) be if thrown into the Hollywood life, making mistakes but always striving to do good. Contrary to his friends, it is Eric that has a moral conscience, truly regretting all of his mistakes instead of laughing them off like the others do. The final season saw Eric giving up his agency in LA to live in New York to help his wife raise their child after she decided to move away.  It would be difficult to imagine Turtle, Drama or Vince doing that.

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When I first started film school, it was frustrating to see specific movies vaunted for political reasons and others ignored because they didn’t adhere to that professor’s political agenda. Even films that weren’t overly political were avoided for other’s that had a specific (generally radical) political message. I recall sitting through films like Bamboozled in a course on writing about film where we were also told to emulate Pauline Kael (I didn’t want to adopt her condescending view towards cinema). The sanctimonious view of Spike Lee, Bob Rafelson and Robert Altman got old when I wanted to learn about John Ford, Billy Wilder, Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock (oh you know – those guys who pioneered cinema as we know it).

Luckily, my experience in graduate school is a different story. My professors have been more concerned with historical relevancy and less about turning a film lecture into a civics lesson. One professor who does the field a favor by putting together a fair assessment is Drew Casper, the Alma and Alfred Hitchcock Chair of American Film at USC, with his latest book, Hollywood Film 1963-1976: Years of Revolution and Reaction. Casper takes on a time period of filmmaking very dear to him that he feels has been unfairly dominated by leftist praise that purposely ignores certain films. Exposing his frustrations, Casper says that “predictably, the [scholarly] discussions are rather obsessive, focusing on the same films time and again that fit the critically beloved template” (xvi). This is exactly what I went through as an undergraduate. Extra studying on my part had to be done to get a well-rounded view of film history.

This common template favors liberals, constantly overhyping films like The Graduate, Mash, and Five Easy Pieces with praise that is more suited for something like The Godfather. Casper’s problem is that in the usual  film history text, a film like the leftist McCabe and Mrs. Miller will take up an entire chapter while the conservative and more iconic True Grit (1969 version) goes overlooked. The pious view of some films like Dr. Strangelove will force the ignorance of an equally important film (even those with similar political leanings). This fidelity to the most radical films will create a predictable view of others, “sometimes a conservative film is noted, only to be vilified for its politics, such aspersion clouding any thoughts about its aesthetic merits” (xvii). This is the case with Dirty Harry, where the left loves to hold this film up as fascist (Casper describes the “self-righteous” vitriol spewed by Pualine Kael about this film).

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On April 21, 2010, Comedy Central aired episode “201” of South Park. The previous episode, “200,” which was a celebration of their 200th episode, sparked controversy from a radical fringe Muslim group who threatened violence on the show’s creators because of their use of the character Muhammed. After seeing the season 14 DVD of South Park, the cowards at Comedy Central continue to bow to the wishes of radical Muslims, showing that our free speech can be silenced by violence or the threat of it. Following this path, which runs contradictory to almost anything Comedy Central has done in the past, willingly provides a disturbing upper hand to any groups wanting to limit free speech and the power of our popular culture.

When a new episode of South Park airs, it is generally available for streaming shortly thereafter from South Park Studios. In the case of “201,” we got this message:

Following this message, there was a long list of people upset that the network, who has courageously stood by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone over the years, decided to cower in the corner and bleep important sections of episode “201.” In fact, Muhammed was shown in a bear suit, an obvious play on the fear of showing Muhammed on TV. Even that was censored out (important note: Comedy Central has allowed South Park to show Muhammed in the past). As the dust settled, many people (including myself) felt that the truth would be told and free speech will prevail, on some level, when the episode comes out on the season 14 DVD.

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John Wayne may be dead but the Western still lives on. We all have an idea in our head that pops up whenever we think of the Western. Certain characteristics come to mind such as horses, six-guns, cowboy hats, dusty streets or savage wilderness, all of which is usually set in the mid to late 1800s. Of course, this is what generally makes up the genre’s Golden Age but since then the tropes and ideologies have been altered and often inverted. Films by legendary Western directors like John Ford and Anthony Mann were transformed by filmmakers like Clint Eastwood and Don Siegel. Classic films like Stagecoach (1939) and The Man from Laramie (1955) led to revisionist films such as Unforgiven (1992) and The Shootist (1976). The Western has the largest classic period (arguably from late 1930s through the late 1960s) and has been subject to revisionist and nostalgic interpretations ever since. The Western is a perfect avenue to observe genre evolution because of the numerous ways it explores race, gender and identity.

One of the latest explorations of the genre is in The Philosophy of the Western (2010), edited by Jennifer L. McMahon and B. Steve Csaki. The book is an anthology of essays that deal with the Western in terms of the myths created in both history and cinema. This compilation deals primarily with the philosophy surrounding identity, ethics and gender that dominate the American Western. In addition, the authors incorporate the intersection of philosophy and Western myth, each at different lengths and depths. Co-editors McMahon and Csaki say that “while rooted in history, the myth of the American West quickly took on a life of its own” (2). The blurred line between fact and fiction of the Wild West has continually been carried by the American film industry since the early 1900s. This book shows that the famous line, “when legend becomes fact, print the legend,” from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (1962) still rings true. Hollywood continues to print (or revise) the legend to this day.

The academic field studying the Western is almost as large as the genre itself. Many of the original studies are still useful from Robert Warshow’s influential essay “Movie Chronicle: The Westerner” (1954) to Jim Kitses Horizon’s West (1969) and John G. Cawelti’s The Six-Gun Mystique (1970), (the last two have updated versions). The Western may get more notice recently due to the Coen brother’s 2010 Oscar nominated film True Grit. The Coen’s film is a true exploration of nostalgia (which they have done for numerous genres such as noir and gangster), but to understand their sentimental approach to the Western one must have a grasp of the films that founded the genre as we know it today. Thought of the Western will generally draw quick images of Ford’s Monument Valley or Mann’s rigid mountain tops or gunfighting protagonists like Shane (Alan Ladd in Shane, 1953) and John T. Chance (John Wayne in Rio Bravo, 1959). It is this legend/myth created by these films and characters that keep audiences and scholars interested.

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Last month I wrote about why conservatives embrace Turner Classic Movies over any current network that plays more contemporary films. The lack of graphic violence, abusive language while having sex and infidelity portrayed beautifully through metaphor plays a large role in growing audience interest in classic Hollywood. It was a different era, literally the polar opposite of what you see today. Sure, there were good and bad things during the Golden Age, but most dedicated movie buffs feel that films were superior before 1960 – because they were.

TCM recently aired a seven part documentary on the foundation of Hollywood through 1970 that covered about eighty years of film history. This impossible task was a nice change of pace for the network and hopefully will spark a follow up series. However, taking on so much history in such a short amount of time forced the show to grossly oversimplify certain elements and leave other crucial happenings completely out of the picture. Sure, there were more conservatives in Hollywood in 1940 than today, but the political landscape was different (conservatives and liberals joined against Fascism and Socialism, for starters).

Big Hollywood’s John Nolte, who certainly knows a thing or two about classic Hollywood, recently caught up on Moguls and Movie Stars and was not happy. His criticism was that the series dwelled on the idea that the Studio System, complete with a self-censoring office, held back the full potential of the film industry. Nolte makes a great point in telling us that this doesn’t mean that Hollywood’s full potential is necessarily better. The same reason I argued that conservatives love TCM is why so many people prefer classic films over the new garbage spewing from Tinsel Town. Nolte notes that the series constantly reminds us of why the moguls and their politics were in the way, which is far from the truth: (more…)

If you aren’t happy with the kind of films coming from Hollywood these days, don’t worry. Thanks to the wonderful technological advancements and restorations we can enjoy and rediscover some great films of years past. Think of how impressive The Searchers looks on Blu-ray, with the Technicolor monument valley as detailed and expansive as ever, showing new life never before displayed in previous versions. Blu-ray has the ability to reinvent classic films in a way that can leave even the most elitist film buff with his or her jaw on the floor. Below are a few suggestions of some of my favorite films that have made it into beautiful Blu-ray and would be a great Christmas purchase for the movie lover in your life.

‘The Bridge on the River Kwai’

David Lean’s films are famous for being beautiful and scenic, something that can make or break an epic film.  Lean, who was later to make Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, directed this film which starred such greats as Alec Guinness and William Holden. Like any other truly wonderful film, The Bridge on the River Kwai has stood the test of time. It is an epic action film that flows brilliantly from beginning to end and is exactly the kind of film that deserves a Blu-ray restoration.

Like The Searchers, The Bridge on the River Kwai was filmed in Technicolor and provides a glorious 1080p picture. The enormous landscape of this film was perfect for one of the early uses of widescreen and looks like it could have been filmed yesterday. The mountains, trees, wildlife and the roaring River Kwai all look breathtaking. If only David Lean could see the treatment his film was given, he sure would be proud of it.

Special features include a short film from USC introduced by William Holden discussing how the audience views The Bridge on the River Kwai, a making of feature, appreciation by filmmaker John Milius who calls Kwai “a Citizen Kane grade film.” One thing is for sure, this movie gets better with every viewing and the Blu-ray disk is a great way to rediscover the film and its excellent photography and characters all over again. (more…)

 What do you think of when looking at the Hollywood sign? For many, it represents hopes and dreams, the pinnacle of what we aspire to be. For others it could be a relic of the film industry’s history. The sign is one of the most recognizable images in the world; the sight of it ignites thoughts of today’s stars and America’s style of moviemaking. It is “what dreams are made of.” However, it is also what nightmares are made of. The world around the sign both physical and fantastical is represented by one word, Hollywood.

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Local filmmaker Hope Anderson set out to chronicle the beginnings of the Beachwood community, where the Hollywood sign resides on top of Mt. Lee. Throughout Under the Hollywood Sign we learn a great deal about how the land was settled, the origins of the film industry, and the local history in terms of the culture of its progressing community as told by residents of Beachwood Canyon. There is a lot more to “Hollywood” than meets the imagination. Below the sign is a small town, deep with history that only adds to the iconic image of the Hollywood sign.

In an area that was once owned by Mexico and was a place of vast orchards and was famous for its rural appeal, the community began to grow as a spiritual epicenter that reveled in alternative religions. For example, The Theosophical Society sought to combine many denominations but never took off on a large scale due to its tendency for cult-like practices. At the same time, the film industry was on the rise, and quickly. It didn’t take long before Beachwood became home to an emblem that is a celebrity all on its own. (more…)

During John Stewart’s recent “Rally for Sanity” there were all of the usual signs one would expect the Left wants us to forget about. Signs about “9/11 truth” and the popular “teabagger” slur to Hitler comparisons and references to McCarthy, it’s all terribly predictable and boring. If these people want to do some research about the real Senator McCarthy and what he did then maybe they would learn that many of today’s Democrats have incorporated similar tactics.

On September 10th and 11th, 2006, The Path to 9/11 aired to an audience of 28 million viewers gaining seven Emmy nominations. It was a major success for ABC and Disney. Everyone involved was proud of the unbiased portrayal they created about the lead up to 9/11 from the 1993 attack on the WTC to September 2001. However, the miniseries almost didn’t air when the leftists began to circle their wagons before even seeing the film.  It is eerily similar to when yellow journalist William Randolph Hearst rallied his troops in Hollywood to get all copies of Citizen Kane destroyed in 1941. Fortunately, you can still watch Orson Welles’ great film.

As chronicled in the great documentary, Blocking The Path to 9/11, the Clinton camp got wind of The Path to 9/11 after the first half of it aired for the National Press Club. Shortly thereafter, their machine began to chew away at the project. Pundits and policymakers who had not seen a frame of celluloid rallied against the film as some kind of right-wing propaganda. The silly accusations have been refuted on numerous occasions by people involved with the project. Cyrus Nowrasteh who wrote and produced The Path to 9/11 has commented about his approach to the film: (more…)

The internet is abuzz with praise for the new documentary that points out the many faults of public education, Waiting for Superman. With positive reviews from both the Huffington Post on the Left as well as the New York Post on the Right, it makes one wonder, how could this be? It appears that this film has single-handedly done what President Obama could not do to save his own life: bring the Left and Right together on a single issue.

Davis Guggenheim

It is refreshing that the film’s director, Davis Guggenheim (who directed An Inconvenient Truth), is able to put politics aside to see the destructive nature of teachers unions. Guggenheim put his own kids through private school but realizes that not everyone can afford such a luxury. Here, he sets out to tackle the real problems that have long plagued public school systems: teachers unions. Though, he is careful to say that he isn’t bashing unions in general.

Guggenheim sees that not everything has to be a political football, which is why we should applaud him for taking a bipartisan approach. However, some feel that the response to the film shows the true, negative colors of conservatives. Liberal Patrick Goldstein comments in the Los Angeles Times:

If you’re a documentary filmmaker, you’re happy to get rave reviews from any source, since you need all the good PR you can get. But I find it revealing, when it comes to the liberal vs. conservative partisan divide, that whenever Michael Moore releases a new documentary promoting a liberal cause, conservatives are quick to bash him for being a left-wing propagandist. But when Guggenheim makes a film offering wholehearted support for a conservative cause, liberal critics have written just as many glowing reviews as conservative ones. (The film has a sky-high 93 fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes.) What does that tell you about who’s got the most open mind here?

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I hate to say this, but Spike Lee was right. We need to “go off” about this oil spill. The slow response is unacceptable at best. Unfortunately, film critic Roger Ebert didn’t listen to Lee’s advice to Obama and is instead the latest apologist for the lack of government response in the Gulf.

Ebert appears to be comfortable with the idea of doing absolutely nothing. When you convince yourself that there is no answer and disaster is inevitable, I suppose it helps justify your lack of interest in the crisis. We are lucky that there are actually people who won’t give up and continue to desperately try to save the Gulf (see Bobby Jindal and Kevin Costner).

Like Obama did in his last address, Ebert shows little or no remorse for the environment at stake and instead uses this disaster to push a different agenda. This week in the Chicago Sun-Times Ebert expresses his frustration with criticism from the Right: (more…)

Ever since the hard boiled fiction of Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain was brought to the big screen, talk of film noir became something eternal. Thanks to notable noir scholars Alain Silver and James Ursini along with Elizabeth Ward and Robert Porfirio, we can look back at everything from “the stuff dreams are made of” to the “rules of fight club” all in one place.

Noir film has been around for a long time and last year I wrote a piece detailing my desire for a full on film noir revival. By paging through Film Noir: The Encyclopedia we can see that the genre has never gone away, but only moved in and out of mainstream popularity. Now is a great time to bring back what we’ve long loved about noir cinema, as I stated in my revival piece:

“Today’s cultural climate, with the economic downturn, soaring unemployment, and the looming threat of terrorism warrants a new desire for noir film.  It provides a perfect catalyst for a stylistically cynical and dark film movement.  Turbulent times often result in artistic genius, just look at German Expressionism.” (more…)

Anyone who has formally studied film certainly knows Robin Wood, who was a pioneer of the academic study of film as we know it.  One of his most famous essays, “Ideology, Genre, Auteur,” is one of the most important and influential essays in modern film theory.  In it, Wood provides a bridge between auteur theory (director is author of film and drives its content) and genre theory (genre characteristics drive film’s content) in a way that doesn’t try to disprove the other (which many theorists tried to do).  Wood lays out a good approach to both theories:

“One of the greatest obstacles to any fruitful genre is to treat the genres as discrete. An ideological approach might suggest why they can’t be, however hard they may appear to try: at best, they represent different strategies for dealing with the same ideological tensions.”

He provided a deep understanding for each school of thought and put them together in a way that continues to help students of the discipline over thirty years later. A good overview of his life and work can be read in this recent New York Times post. (more…)

“It’s one of those parties where if a girl is named Jill she spells it J-Y-L-L-E, ya know…that s**t.”  –Harry Lockhart

Those who have read my piece about a film noir revival and the film Brick know that I am an emphatic fan of the noir genre.  While I have a deep love for the classics that fell within the initial movement (arguably 1941-1959), there are still some neo-noir films that spark my interest (not enough, which is why I asked for a revival!).  One of these films is the extremely fun Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang.  It is a very different noir film that is funny and opposite the dark, desperate, lonely noir films of years past.

In a rare combination of coincidences, Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey Jr.) is a petty thief in New York City who finds himself auditioning for a role in a new detective film.  He goes to Los Angeles after being accepted as a potential candidate.  Harry is a fast-talking, chain smoking and delightfully sarcastic protagonist that makes this neo-noir film one of the best.

After getting invited to a party in the Hollywood hills, Harry meets Gay Perry (Val Kilmer).  Perry is an (ironically gay) quick-witted private investigator that asks Harry to participate in a murder investigation in preparation for his potential film role.  Perry’s homosexuality plays on the theorists of the 1940’s and 1950’s that psychoanalyzed many noir protagonists as being gay men (I know, those theories are a stretch at times). (more…)

Brendan Frye: “Your muscle seemed plenty cool putting his fist in my head. I want him out.”
The Pin: “Looky, soldier…”
Brendan Frye: “The ape blows or I clam.”

Fast and clever dialogue is one of the best things about hard boiled noir films of the past.  Tough guys didn’t need to be big and buff; all they needed was a quick tongue to get them out of the stickiest of situations.  Very few films are able to recreate this today.

Brendan Frye (in a sticky situation): “Throw one at me if you want, hash head. I’ve got all five senses and I slept last night, that puts me six up on the lot of you.” (more…)

Picture a quaint Victorian house in the Hollywood Hills overlooking Los Angeles.  A modest insurance salesman shows up at the door, it is opened by a maid.  There is a beautiful woman at the top of the stairs; the sultry Mrs. Dietrichson, dressed in nothing more than a towel.  She gets dressed after the salesman tells her their car insurance doesn’t have them “fully covered.”

The following conversation takes place:

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The fast, witty, and flirtatious dialogue in this scene gives us light into how a man could possibly get seduced into what was to come.  This is of course, the big murder/insurance scam from Billy Wilder’s classic 1944 film Double Indemnity.

There was a time when dark crime films were popular both with mainstream Hollywood films and B-grade productions. McCarthyism, Hollywood censorship, and World War II among other things all played a role in the shaping and growing popularity of what became known as the classic period of America’s film noir (1940’s-1950’s). (more…)

By now, everyone should know that the new film, GI Joe: Rise of Cobra, is a despicable excuse for a movie. It was harshly panned by Big Hollywood as well as by me. For an action film, it is horrible, but for an American film, it is a disgrace.

Director Stephen Sommers said, “this is not a George Bush movie — it’s an Obama world.” Sounds to me that since Bush is no longer president it is supposed to legitimize the disintegration of patriotism for our armed forces. That would explain why the Joe’s are no longer the all American heroes they once were. Instead, they are a multinational task force that picks up the pieces after the USA fails.

This film represents everything President Obama worshipers stand for, which explains the lack of Americanism.GI Joe has always been a vehicle of unapologetic patriotism. What happened? Obama happened. For some reason, it now feels like multiculturalism was not acceptable until Obama was elected into office?

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There has been a lot written about vigilantism and conservatism in film lately. My friend David Swindle wrote a piece for American Thinker “What’s So Conservative About Vigilantism?” Big Hollywood contributor John T. Simpson wrote “Story and the Power of Conservative Themes in Film” and I wrote about vigilantism for Parcbench.com.

Conservative’s favorite vigilantes know that no justice system is perfect just like “Dirty Harry” Callahan knows there is no time for due process when people’s lives are at stake. These heroes always draw a distinct line between good and evil, and we trust them to do the right thing.

Watchmen, which was recently released on DVD, gives us a darker view of our heroes. It suggests that maybe we shouldn’t trust them, and takes a very cynical view of the fight of good versus evil. The characters are pitched as superheroes but most of them are as human as any of us.

The film takes place in a fictional 1985 where Richard Nixon is still the president. Over the years, “watchmen” had been working with the government to keep the world a safe place but eventually became outlawed. While President Nixon is trying to avoid nuclear warfare with the soviets, some “watchmen” see a world that is not worth saving anymore while others continue to operate as vigilantes. (more…)

Michael Mann’s Public Enemies was one of the most anticipated films of the year (Read my Parcbench review here, John Nolte’s slightly opposing view here). However, it seems that many critics are drastically underrating this film. This is unfortunate because even though the film may not be the gangster movie we are used to; it sure has hints of perfection throughout. After reading many reviews panning this film, I decided to give it a second look.

There were still some obvious flaws. There are a couple of choppy edits as well as questionable music in the scene where Dillinger walks into the cop shop. But the flaws most people discuss don’t seem to be a true flaw at all. I’ve heard and read many people say the film has no depth and the characters are shallow. This is simply not a fair assertion.

The film may appear shallow to some, but it doesn’t give us anything we don’t need to know. That is exactly what makes this film enjoyable; there is no abundance of useless information. It is about Dillinger’s short time as public enemy number one, nothing more. (more…)