Debbie Schlussel is an attorney, columnist, and critic of pop culture, politics, and world affairs. She is also a movie critic for Sirius Patriot Channel 144's "Mike Church Show" and WPHT Philadelphia's morning radio show, "The Michael Smerconish Show," on both of which her reviews are featured every Friday morning. She also reviews most new box office releases on her website, DebbieDoesPolitics.com, where she has over 10,000 readers a day. A member of the Detroit Film Critics Society, Schlussel's movie reviews have been featured on FOX News Channel, MSNBC, and Al-Jazeera. Her reviews have been quoted in The New York Times, USA Today, The UK Guardian, The Daily Mail, The Globe and Mail, The Telegraph, Toronto Star, Village Voice, and many other major newspapers around the world. She was profiled in the Wall Street Journal in a feature-length article. Her columns have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, the Jerusalem Post, The Detroit Free Press, and The Detroit News.
Schlussel has made hundreds of appearances on cable and broadcast network TV and major radio stations around the country. Rush Limbaugh cited Debbie Schlussel's website as one of the 13 sites he reads daily to prepare his nationally syndicated show, and in 2001, Ms. Magazine named Schlussel as one of its most hated women, in "Women to Watch Out For." For several years, Schlussel appeared regularly on the nationally syndicated Howard Stern radio show. In 2002-2003, Debbie Schlussel hosted her own successful radio talk show on Detroit's 97.1 FM. Schlussel maintains one of the top 75 conservative websites in the world, is the 14th most popular female blogger on the Net according to Alexa rankings, and has the 54th most popular politics blog according to Wikio rankings.
She speaks several languages and was a member of MENSA (until she forgot to pay her dues; she intends to renew soon).
Debbie Schlussel
No Tears for Roger Friedman
by Debbie Schlussel
Sorry that I can’t cry over Roger Friedman’s firing as a columnist from FOXNews.com.
It’s not just that he ignored the age-old advice–don’t blank where you live/eat/work. And it’s not just that as an entertainment industry writer, he was an uber-liberal who rarely wrote anything of interest and mostly gushed over the vapid celebs he covered.
It’s that left-wing politics dominated his absurd praise of left-wing propaganda on the silver screen and his apologism for extremist Muslims in showbiz. (more…)
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
| 
Hollywood-pocrisy: Waterboarding Okay for Movie Criminals, Not Real Life Terrorists
by Debbie SchlusselToday, “The Last House on the Left” debuts in theaters. It’s a remake of Wes Craven’s 1972 movie of the same name. The movie–while infinitely better than the original (which was supposedly making an anti-war statement, but was just torture porn)–is still torture/snuff-porn, and I don’t recommend it (see my reviews of this weekend’s new movies, including “Last House”).
But one point in the movie bears noting–the use and applause for waterboarding.
The story of “Last House” is that of a girl and her friend tortured by a gang of criminals. The girl (Sara Paxton, who “graduated” from kids’ show “Darcy’s Wild Life” to snuff-porn–talk about regressing) is raped and left for dead. When her parents discover that the people they welcomed into their house are the perpetrators, they take revenge. (more…)
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
|
Hollywood’s Second Class Jewish Chicks & “Two Lovers”
by Debbie SchlusselWhy is it that on the silver screen, the Jewish chick is always the undesirable one, the safe choice, the ugly/annoying one? Even women who are Jewish (or half) in real life play the “desirable gentile goddess” while the Jewish woman character is the second fiddle. It might have something to do with the self-hatred of many male Jews in Hollywood for whom the Jewish woman is exactly that stereotype; besides, many of them need to justify marrying outside of the faith. Or maybe it’s just the self-hatred.
I ask this because in “Two Lovers,” which hit nationwide release this week, Joaquin Phoenix plays a Jewish guy whose parents want him to date (and marry) the beautiful Jewish daughter (Vinessa Shaw), of the couple who are buying their business. But, instead, he prefers the hot blonde gentile woman (played by the half-Jewish Gwyneth Paltrow) who doesn’t want him. The Jewish woman as the safe, not-as-sexy-or-hot choice is nothing new in Hollywood. We’ve seen it in sooo many TV shows and flicks, like the 1972 incarnation of “The Heartbreak Kid” in which Elliott Gould Charles Grodin dumps the homely Jewish stereotype-ette for the hot (at that time) Cybill Shepherd. (more…)
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
|
Saluting the Dead
by Debbie SchlusselSo, they just had Queen Latifah sing, "I’ll Be Seeing You," while they showed the Hollywood people who died last year. It reminded me of how they saluted Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl in 2004 , after she died the year before. I marveled at how many of these Hollywood shameless vigorously clapped for her during the montage.
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
|
So Glad Anti-Israel Flick by Israelis Didn’t Win
by Debbie SchlusselThank you, Japanese people, for making "Departures" (I’ve never seen it, so forgive me if it’s a bad movie). It would have been a huge tragedy if Israel’s first Academy Award went to the lie-filled, anti-Israel, high-quality Bin Laden cinema, "Waltz with Bashir ."
Domo Aregato, and Todah Rabah. Thanks for no Oscar to that horrid anti-war movie.
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
|
Is This the First “Allahu Akbar” Oscars?
by Debbie SchlusselSo Muslim music dude A. R. Rahman said, "Allahu Akbar," upon winning the first of two Oscars he’s won so far. He says it means, "god is great." Uh, no. It means, "allah is the greater" or "allah is the greatest," meaning greater than your and my G-d or the greatest above your or my G-d. And that’s part of my tiny objection to "Slumdog Millionaire," which I loved. It shows us the scene of a brutal massacre of Muslims by Hindus. It’s the same problem we see on a much smaller scale with regard to Oscar nominee, "Waltz with Bashir ." They don’t show the plethora of Muslim massacres and violence against Hindus and Sikhs and Christians in India.
Ironically, "Rahman," mean mercy or the merciful. Too bad he didn’t have mercy on the Oscar audience to leave the Islamic chant we hear in Nick Berg videos out of it.
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
|
The Coke Scholarships Ad
by Debbie SchlusselSo, they just had an ad from Oscar sponsor Coke about how if you drink Coca-Cola, you’re helping fund scholarships. Well, yes. But what they didn’t tell you is that those scholarships–some of them, anyway–go to illegal aliens .
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
|
Funniest Oscar Moment So Far
by Debbie SchlusselBy far, the best part of this boring Oscars show is Jimmy Kimmel rescuing Tom Cruise’s non-existent cat from a burning house. Oh, wait, it’s not part of the Oscars. No wonder it’s funny. (It’s an ad for Kimmel’s show.)
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
|
If Bill Maher’s “Religulous” is a Documentary . . .
by Debbie Schlussel. . . Then, so is the work of Leni Riefenstahl.
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
|
Man on Wire & 9/11
by Debbie SchlusselWhile it’s great that an anti-war documentary didn’t win this year (unlike in year’s past) and while I thought “Man on Wire” was a great, fascinating, suspenseful documentary, it was missing one detail that I thought was jawdropping. It’s about a man who walks a tightrope between the World Trade Center towers. But it doesn’t mention, even for a second, that the towers aren’t here anymore or why. The absence of any mention of this, I felt, was glaring.
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
|
Hoffman Headgear?
by Debbie SchlusselI like Philip Seymour Hoffman. Great actor, especially in "Doubt." But, dude, what’s up with that hat? It’s like a cross between a Muslim kufi and a Russian Jewish yarmulke. I thought black tie means you take the hat off once you’re inside the venue. Even Mickey Rourke looks more dressy.
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
|
What Was That About The ‘Burbs?
by Debbie SchlusselAs you probably know, “Revolutionary Road,” was basically a Communist attack on middle-class life in the suburbs. Because, you know, we should all live in overcrowded, high-crime urban centers, where rent- and gun-control and high taxes rule all. We get it. But did we really need the Oscars people to repeat it? Was it just me, or were you annoyed when we were told (I think by Jackman, but coulda been one of the other proud high school grads onstage giving out awards) about how the homes of the suburbs in the ’50s “looked nothing like the prisons that they were”? Prisons? As opposed to the Manhattan slum tenements and overcrowding (the movie takes place in the ’50s suburban New York)? And I wonder how many of these celebs voluntary live in shoeboxes, instead of their giant mansions, er . . . “prisons”? Many of these are actually homes from the ’50s that have been remodeled or redecorated.
P.S.–Andy Levy, gay or no gay, “Milk” was booooring and way too long (kinda like the Oscar show). For all the stereotypical “flamboyance” gays are supposed to have, this movie was the exact opposite. A snoozer (but for the stomach turning makeout scene with Penn and James Franco–frankly, I’d rather see Penn make out with his true male love, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; woulda been a lot more interesting).
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
|
Under the (Hypocri)Sea 3D: More Silver Screen Child Abuse to Scare Your Kids
by Debbie SchlusselToday, among the major box office releases debuting at the theater, is “Under the Sea 3D,” a fascinating, visual wonder about sea life. It’s very cool–and occasionally creepy, like when giant, poisonous sea snakes jump out at you from the IMAX screen.
But while this great cinematography would make a great scientific outing for you and your kids, you’ll have to outfit them with heavy duty earplugs or enroll them in a deprogramming seminar, afterward. That’s because narrator Jim Carrey (yup, that guy) repeatedly hits you over the head about how we humans are destroying the underworld (no, not that underworld) and the fish and other wildlife that live there. (No mention, though, of how Carrey and girlfriend Jenny McCarthy repeatedly “global warm” with their private jets and heavy lighting and energy use on movies.) (more…)
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
|
Half of New Movies This Weekend Lecture us to Recycle
by Debbie SchlusselLook, if I wanna recycle (and sorry, right now, I just threw out a dirty plastic cup, without washing it out and reusing it–horrors!), I’ll recycle. I don’t need hypocritical, non-recycling gazillionaire starlets to tell me to do so. Including when I’m trying to watch a movie.
But Hollywood, while stupid, ain’t that stupid. So, instead of telling me to recycle, they’re doing it through t-shirts. . . . in two out of four national movie releases this weekend, the star wears her political views not on her sleeve, but on her chest. In “He’s Just Not That Into You“–a funny movie that turned into a sappy, non-credible chick flick–Ginnifer Goodwin (whose parents got the “Jennifer Memo,” but couldn’t spell) wears a recycle symbol t-shirt while she’s lying on her bed. In “Push,” the ever-dull Dakota Fanning wears the same t-shirt. Same recycle symbol. You can read my full reviews of both of these movies–I was Just Not That Into for than one of them–and the far superior “Coraline” here. (more…)
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
|
With “Taken,” Hollywood Inches Closer to Melting “Thou Must Whitewash Islam” Rule
by Debbie SchlusselWith “Taken” debuting at the box office today, we’re inching closer to the melting of the post-9/11 “Thou Must Whitewash Islam” commandment.
Since 9/11, Hollywood is taken with the politically correct idea that they’re not allowed to portray Muslims as terrorists, or when they do, it’s to glorify the terrorists and justify their behavior–that America deserves it and made them do it. Or–a la “24″–that Muslim terrorists are always working for the American White man. Instead, Hollywood, post-9/11, made terrorists and hijackers, everyone BUT Muslims. There were Black Men with AIDS from Africa (”The Interpreter“), Federal Air Marshals and airline stewardesses, er . . . “flight attendants” (”Flight Plan,” exec produced by my uber-leftist cousin, Charles J.D. Schlissel), White Christians (a number of movies and TV shows) and everyone else you can think of . . . except Muslims, who make up the majority of real-life terrorists plotting against America today. (more…)
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
|
Make it Stop: When Will Hollywood Stop Glorifying Hip-Hop Thugs?
by Debbie SchlusselNot sure why we’re supposed to worship the dead thug, hip-hopper Christopher “Biggie Smalls” Wallace a/k/a “The Notorious B.I.G.” Is it because he’s a fat guy who was successful?
Either way, the best part of “Notorious “–the movie, out today, that whitewashes and glorifies this sleazebag–was when Wallace was shot and killed. “Just die already,” I thought in the critics’ screening I attended last week. I couldn’t believe people were actually crying at the end of this movie over this waste of a human vessel. I walked out thinking that I guess this is the new civil rights: If you’re gonna make a hero out of White (Larry Flynt) and Latino (Ernesto “Che” Guevara) scumbags, then I guess the new “equality” is to do the same for a Black scumbag . . . on the eve of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Kids who get the day off can celebrate the new civil rights by seeing this two-hour celluloid ode to America’s worst. Lowlifes ‘R’ Us.
Here’s my full review and those of most of this weekend’s other new releases , including “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” (loved it), “Defiance” (loved it, despite writer/director Ed Zwick’s reluctance to have an ounce of courage and denounce Islamic terrorism ), and “Last Chance Harvey” (not bad).
Oh, and don’t forget, one of Barack Obama’s most visible supporters, Sean “Diddy” Combs, was responsible for making “Biggie” a star. Welcome to Obama’s world of low expectations.
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
|
“Defiance” Director Not So Defiant on Islamic Terrorism
by Debbie SchlusselOn Friday, I asked Big Hollywood readers to provide suggested questions for my interview with “Defiance” writer/director, Edward Zwick. The movie is about the Bielski brothers, Jewish partisans, who fought back against the Nazis. They saved hundreds of Jews and killed several Nazis in the process. It’s a great movie. But, after the interview, I can’t say the same for this director. He simply doesn’t get it on Islamic terrorism.
I’ve written a column on this that I hope you’ll read in its entirety, but here’s an excerpt:
He said he couldn’t see himself doing a movie about the Jews versus the Islamic terrorists in Israel because, “It’s very difficult to parse morality in what’s going on in the Middle East and especially in the last two weeks. It’s full of moral complexity that I’m not sure I could address in a two-hour movie. What I’m loathe to do is to analogize between this [the Nazis vs. the Bielskis] and the contemporary situation. I didn’t want to have a movie with an agenda.”
But when I pointed out that there is clearly an agenda and clearly good guys and bad guys in “Defiance” (not to mention, “The Siege”), he responded with more psychobabble gobbledygookish squirming, that his movie “showed the difference between passivity and powerlessness [and was] a necessary historical redress.”
Well, there’s a “necessary historical redress” about what Islamic terrorists are doing against Jews in Israel and throughout the world.
It’s sad that Edward Zwick can’t make the connection between the old Nazis the Jews fought to survive then, and the new ones the Jews fight to survive now. Dr. Jay Bielski, son of Zus Bielski (one of the Bielski brothers depicted in the film), fought in the 1973 Yom Kippur war as a member of the Israeli Defense Force after serving as a U.S. Marine during Vietnam. His sons now serve in the Israeli Army.
Read the whole column.
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
|
Isn’t the Gushing Over Pop Music’s Fave HAMASnik Getting Old?
by Debbie SchlusselIs it just me . . . or are you, too, getting tired of the mainstream entertainment media’s gushing over HAMAS mule Yusuf Islam a/k/a Cat Stevens a/k/a Stephen Georgiou? Whether it’s FOX News’ uber-liberal faux-movie-critic Roger Friedman or today’s USA Today, which features a gusher by longtime music writer Edna Gundersen, the attempts to whitewash this extremist with a guitar get stale and tiresome.
If ever there were a time to re-birth Moon Unit Zappa’s “gag me with a spoon” from the ’80s, this is it:
David Spero, Yusuf’s manager, sees maturity, not a radical personality change. “Cat Stevens was the voice of a generation, and Yusuf is a voice of that same generation grown up,” he says. . . .
After nearly drowning off the coast of Malibu in 1976, the singer turned to Islam and found “a message to the human heart” in a copy of the Quran his brother gave him. “It didn’t have any connection to politics or global issues or the continuing turbulence in the Middle East,” he says. “That wasn’t the issue.”
HAMAS Money-Mule Yusuf Islam a/k/a Cat Stevens & Family
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
|
The Feel Good Post-Holocaust Dr. Mengele-Twins-Experiment Jewish Exorcism Thriller Movie of the Year
by Debbie SchlusselWow, I never thought I’d be writing about the Feel-Good Nazi-Twins-Experiments Jewish Exorcism Movie of the Year. But that’s the basics on the absurd movie, “The Unborn,” out today. It’s possibly the most absurd and laughable horror movie of the decade. Not sure what’s up with Hollywood, but this must be the Demented Take on the Holocaust year for movies. It’s not just “The Reader,” in which we’re supposed to be sympathetic to a Nazi SS Guard because she had hot sex scenes with a 15-year-old and liked to be read high-brow books. It’s this one.
Oh, and then, there’s “Rabbi” Gary Oldman (dude! nice knitted yarmulke)–hilariously reading transliterated Hebrew–in this one. (And, of course, for the Jewish exorcism, you need an Episcopal Priest in tow.) As my friend, reasonable liberal movie critic Corey Hall of Detroit’s “Metro Times” joked, “With all the Jews in Hollywood, they need to cast Gary Oldman as the rabbi?” More like, with all the good scripts in Hollywood, they need to make this exercise in laughing gas?
Example of a great thriller invoking the image and deeds of Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele: “The Boys From Brazil.” Example of a bad one: This movie. Gives new meaning to the phrase, “Never Again.”
Read my full review of this and the other new releases at the box office this weekend, and guys, make sure to skip “Bride Wars” at all cost. You’ll thank me. . . or dread that you didn’t listen. Makes “Sex and the City” and “Mamma Mia” look like exciting male action hero films.
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
|
Questions for “Defiance” Movie Writer/Director
by Debbie SchlusselToday, I have a phone interview with Ed Zwick, writer/director of “Defiance” and a number of other movies and TV shows. The interview focuses on “Defiance,” starring Daniel Craig. As you may know, it’s the story of the Bielski brothers, Jewish partisans who fought back against the Nazis and saved hundreds of Jews. They are true heroes, and the movie captures that.
The movie is also important because it betrays the myth that Jews willingly went to the ovens and didn’t try to fight back–an allegation with which anti-Semites often confront me. The Bielskis and the Warsaw Ghetto uprising are the two most famous instances of many such efforts to stop Nazi evil. I’ve always said, Jews with guns are my favorite combo. And I especially love it on the big screen. Hate to paraphrase America’s most famous porn star (Paris Hilton), but “That’s hot.”
I’ve not yet posted my review of the movie, which I’m barred from doing by the studio, until the movie releases in Detroit. But I liked it, and I’ve written about it here. And, as a member of the Detroit Film Critics Society, I voted for it as one of the year’s best pictures, best ensembles, and Liev Schrieber as one of the year’s best supporting actors, as Zus Bielski. Zus’ son, Jay (who served in the IDF and is a New York doctor), wrote me that the movie captured his father perfectly.
So, what questions would you suggest I ask Zwick? Please post them in the comments section, and I’ll consider them for use in the interview. I’m posting the trailer [below the foild] as a refresher, but the movie is in nationwide release, next week.
One thing I plan to ask Zwick: Why do the Jews in Hollywood love portraying the bravery of Jews fighting tyranny 65 years ago, but can’t bring themselves to show the bravery of Jews fighting it in Israel today (and instead villainize them)? I know the answer, but I want to see what he says.
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
|
It’s Official: Spidey in the Tank for Obama (& Ashford & Simpson, Too)
by Debbie SchlusselOnce, comic books were against Nazis and Hitler and were very up front in supporting America’s fight against them. But those days are over. Both DC and Marvel Comics long ago embraced left-wing politics, and when it came to the war on terror, they were for the most part silent. Fighting “global warming” and on behalf of other mythical left-wing creations was far more important (as was transforming Wonder Woman into an ugly, steroidal man).
Now, though, comic books are back to supporting the President, since he embodies their far-left ideology. Yup, Spider-Man is in the tank for Obama and lets us know, telling us he’s left Washington “in capable hands.” In a special issue, “Amazing Spider-Man #583,” out on Jan. 14th, the President-Elect Obama and Spidey are shown doing the fist-bump (wanna know what I think about the fist-bump?). In the plot, the Chameleon tries to kill Barack Obama before he gets inaugurated–feeding into the BS narrative that Obama is a martyr-in-waiting more so than any other President. But Spidey saves the day. Look at the Spiderman-Obama photo gallery (and get out the barf bag).
I’m just wondering: When Obama goes to share some baklava with his new friend Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or his buds in HAMAS, will we see Spidey cheering that on, too, and, again, tell America’s comic book readers we’re in “capable hands”?
Boy, I long for the days of Superman, Sgt. Fury, and other comic book superheroes fighting the Nazis . . . not sitting down to talk and eat wienerschnitzel with them or praising Presidents who want to do just that.
Look at this Sgt. Fury comic book from the Debbie Schlussel comic book collection. Like Spiderman, Sgt. Fury was also from Marvel Comics. Note that Sgt. Fury’s mission wasn’t to have a “dialogue” with Hitler. So sad that these days, the superheroes’ objective is girlie-man foreign policy.
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
|
Follow Us on Twitter
Subscribe via RSS
Tips & Feedback