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Here’s a link to Cherry Tree Media.

Politico:

You never know which Madonna is going to show up.

Sometimes, The Material Girl is the sexually charged songstress posing nude for a coffee table book or dry humping one of her tour dancers. Next, she’s the primly dressed children’s book author trying to be a good role model for her own kids.

This week, the latter piped up to chastise singer M.I.A. for flipping the audience the bird during Madonna’s Super Bowl halftime show.

Madonna has taken to the airwaves to express her disappointment with M.I.A.’s decision to flip the bird at cameras during the halftime show, calling the move a “teenager … irrelevant thing to do.” Madge was chatting with Ryan Seacrest about her performance when he brought up the incident.

To the pop star, the middle finger was simply “out of place” at a show characterized by “such a feeling of love and good energy and positivity.

M.I.A. would have better served the event by making out with another woman, apparently.

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NBC’s Friday night series “Grimm” is a fantasy show, but for reasons I cannot fathom the program’s writers chose to mine that most heinous relic of Mittel-Europa: the story of the seemingly good and kind Jew who is really a demonic creature underneath for last week’s episode “Organ Grinders.”

A brief history of blood libels, courtesy of Wikipedia:

• In England in 1144, the Jews of Norwich were accused of ritual murder after a boy was found dead with stab wounds in the woods. This was followed by similar accusations elsewhere, leading to massacres in London and York. In 1190, “the Norwich Jews were butchered in their homes.”

• In France in 1171, a similar accusation against the Jewish community of Bloise led to the massacre by fire of some 40 Jews.

• In Germany, a boy’s body was found in the Lauter river. Based on “miraculous” evidence that “proved” the Jews had hung the boy by the feet and had opened every artery in his body to obtain the blood, the Jews were executed.

• In Russia in 1820, a Jew in Zverki is accused of kidnapping a six year old boy, draining his blood for nine days and dumping his body. In 1997, “Belorussian state TV showed a film alleging the story is true.”

This is the gist of the blood libel: the belief that Jews kidnap children to drain them of their blood. It didn’t die with the Nazis. It is still in currency today. You have only to turn on Syrian or Egyptian television to see. But American TV? (Spoilers Ahead)

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Kirk Cameron could have ended up as yet another sitcom star gone bad.

Instead, the teen heartthrob from the ’80s sitcom “Growing Pains” became a parent, headlined one of the biggest movie sleepers in recent memory (“Fireproof”) and today addressed the conservative conference CPAC about his latest project.

Cameron’s “Monumental,” hitting theaters next month, mourns a nation in decline and looks to the past for a brighter future. The actor turned activist told CPAC attendees why he made the film:

As I look around I get this sinking feeling that we’re off track, that there’s something sick in the soul of our country,” Cameron told those gathered at the conservative conference in Washington on Thursday. “I examine the fruit that’s hanging on the tree of America and I can see that it’s rotting. And that concerns me deeply.”

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On February 7th, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that the marriage protection amendment, commonly known as Prop 8, violates the U.S. Constitution. Although it passed with the support of 52% of California voters in 2008, the court said it “serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples.”

From where I sit, this ruling was a travesty, not only because it discarded the wishes of 7 million Californians who voted for it, but because much of the money to overturn it came from Hollywood elites who are completely out of touch with the heart and soul of America.

Honestly, watching the decision come down from the 9th Circuit was like watching Brad Pitt and Elton John stomp all ever everything that flyover country holds near and dear to its heart. I cite Pitt and John because Pitt gave at least $100,000 to “fight the proposition,” and in Jan. 2011, John played a benefit concert in Beverly Hills that raised $3,000,000 for the same cause.

Of course, these two were not alone. Steven Bing, long time Democrat Party donor and Hillary Clinton supporter, donated $500,000 to the cause, and according to Advocate magazine, Mary J. Blige and Melissa Etheridge were right there in the mix as well. Oh, and we can’t overlook old “Meathead,” Rob Reiner, who opposed Prop 8 when it was on the ballot in 2008 and who’s been “one of the biggest fundraisers behind the legal effort” to overturn it since. (more…)

Yesterday, the creators of the hit show “House” announced that at the end of this, its eighth season, Dr. House and his cast of characters would fade into the distance.

“The decision to end the show now, or ever, is a painful one, as it risks putting asunder hundreds of close friendships that have developed over the last eight years,” said executive producers David Shore, Katie Jacobs and Hugh Laurie, “but also because the show itself has been a source of great pride to everyone involved.

The producers have always imagined House as an enigmatic creature;  he should never be the last one to leave the party.  How much better to disappear before the music stops, while there is still some promise and mystique in the air.”

Now’s as good a time as any for a post-mortem on one of the quirkiest, most interesting character shows of the last decade. “House’s” focus on a thoroughly unlikeable character was risky, and it paid off; the creators’ decision to make him a thoroughgoing atheist constantly at conflict with others subtly made the case for the bankruptcy of his ideology.  Or, at the very least, it offered philosophical contrast.

Most famously, “House” featured a very pro-life episode in 2007, “Fetal Position,” in which an unborn child reached out of the womb and touched House’s hand, mirroring the famous photograph. That was mirrored by a pro-choice episode that same season that made the case for abortion for a religious rape victim. That was House’s style.

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Madonna – love her or hate her. Some think she has no talent, while others have named their daughters after her.

Some think her career is pure marketing and her fans believe she’s a real trend setter. There has always been a wide range of opinions about this woman, an entertainer who has enough monikers to be in the witness protection program. As her personal life has evolved through marriages, children and boyfriends, her songs are what are more familiar to people.

For the first time since she became famous, she got to be the star attraction at the Super Bowl Halftime Show. What aspect of her performance did people focus on? Her voice? Nope. What she wore? Not really. Her new song? Sure, a little. Her age? Bingo, report her to AARP, stat!

How dare she try to pull off that type of show as a woman who has experienced more than three decades on the planet? Perish the thought! She has some nerve being on that stage and lifting her leg up at the age of 53. Where are her Mom jeans with the elastic waist? How could she be in high-heeled, thigh high boots when she knows she should be in Easy Spirits? This is even more of an abomination than her performance in “Swept Away.”

Doesn’t she know that woman over 35, let alone 40 in this country, are considered older than Methuselah? You mean she has no clue that she should be referring to herself as “long in the tooth” “an old bag” and a “has-been.” Doesn’t she realize that she has to grow into her date of birth by talking about things she can’t do anymore? Where is her rheumatoid arthritis? COPD? High cholesterol? She should be punished for doing a jumping jack.

Just check the reaction to her performance on social media outlets if you think I am exaggerating.

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Conservative movies can rock the box office, as anyone who so much as glanced at the balance sheets for “The Passion of the Christ” can attest. But a new study by Movieguide, a faith-friendly film outlet, claims the big picture is far more positive for movies promoting patriotism and faith.

The Hollywood Reporter:

The Movieguide report rates movies using more than two dozen criteria, such as whether a title promotes capitalism or socialism or if it promotes or denigrates biblical principles. Violence, sex, political correctness, revisionist history, environmentalism, feminism, homosexuality and more hot-button political issues all are taken into consideration.

This year’s report concludes that seven of the top 10 films of 2011 scored high on Movieguide’s index and therefore qualify as films with “strong or very strong Christian, biblical, moral and redemptive content.”

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Rush Limbaugh isn’t making Clint Eastwood’s day.

The conservative talker spent a second straight broadcast mocking Eastwood’s now infamous “Halftime in America” Chrysler ad that aired on Super Bowl Sunday. Today, Limbaugh played a parody on his popular radio show to keep the story alive despite Eastwood’s protest that the commercial wasn’t meant to support President Obama’s auto bailout policies.

When somebody tells me Clint Eastwood did a halftime commercial for Chrysler, I expect it to be something like this,” Limbaugh told his 20 million listeners before audio of an Eastwood impersonator began:

Limbaugh’s is audio only, but video parodies from other sources were created for the Internet, including one from the Second City Network that appears to be a subtle attack on GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

The reports and books that were timed with Reagan’s 100th birthday last February tended to mention the Hollywood years as a mere afterthought. Moreover, most Reagan biographers typically focus on the more well-known movies such as “Kings Row and “Knute Rockne.”

But there are several films worth revisiting that have gone largely unheralded. At a time when Reagan has earned high marks from historians and academics for his time in office, the caricature of him as just a B actor persists. But Reagan’s uncommon human touch and affable
personality are on full display in films that are worth revisiting.

Furthermore, his conversion from New Deal liberalism over to Goldwater conservatism is directly tied in with Reagan’s Hollywood years. And, as Gorbachev learned during their summit meetings, Reagan could be a tenacious, shrew negotiator; a skill that can be traced back to his time as head of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) union.

The steel behind the congenial smile was forged during some of the more intense altercations with Hollywood communists intent on taking over the union and organizing the film industry. “Thugs” attached to the “red-dominated” Conference of Studio Unions were significant players here, Kengor informs readers in his book. They went after Reagan personally and even threatened to throw acid on his face. Reagan began to carry a gun for his own personal safety and did not give any quarter.

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Small wonder the White House has tweeted approval of Clint Eastwood’s Super Bowl Chrysler commercial. From its calls for America to “be as one,” one wouldn’t know that Eastwood doesn’t approve of the Obama administration.

One also wouldn’t know that Eastwood calls himself a libertarian. For Eastwood’s speech, with its calls for unity and marching together from halftime to what I take to be a touchdown, is precisely the kind of collectivism libertarians shy away from.

This is at odds with Eastwood’s maverick persona. As a consistent Republican voter, he stands apart from the Hollywood liberal herd. When the country was cheerleading for an Iraq invasion, Eastwood opposed it on “practical considerations.” While Hollywood emptied their wallets for Obama, Eastwood criticized him.

Eastwood’s libertarianism has always slipped through via his film canon. With the sheriff bashing unarmed citizens in “Unforgiven,” Eastwood sounded a warning against gun control, then and now. In last year’s “J.Edgar,” Eastwood revealed that there was a decided terrorist threat from leftists in the post-World War I period, while at the same time showing the civil liberty abuses of Hoover.

But now, the actor’s message has moved from the honor of being one against the herd to urging us all to join one.

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Everyone knows that the typical advertisement on the Super Bowl goes for millions of dollars.  And we all wonder why the ads they produce for that money feature children peeing in pools, monkeys farting, and bungee jumping cars.  Those don’t seem like particularly good uses of company funding.

And they aren’t.  They’re commercials targeted to the younger demographic.  And as the Super Bowl itself shows, the younger demographic isn’t where the cash is.  The advertising agencies had better wake up and smell the coffee: older, more conservative audiences are the ones that should be targeted now.

The networks and the NFL get it: we’re getting old as a country.  Seven of the last eight Super Bowl halftime shows have featured Boomer and Gen X icons: Paul McCartney (2005), the Rolling Stones (2006), Prince (2007), Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (2008), Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band (2009), The Who (2010), and Madonna (2012)?  Perhaps the under-40 crowd remembers Madonna, but if they do, it’s in a very vague half-sleep state.

And yet America’s commercial advertisers seem to think that the most valuable audience is the 18-49 crowd.  For years, American advertising has been run on the notion that young audiences are more valuable than older audiences; that if you grab a youngster’s brand loyalty early, you’ll grab ‘em for life; and that older audiences are set in their ways.  That’s how so much liberal television has been sneaked past advertising honchos – young people tend to be liberal, and so the honchos figure that liberal television will appeal to the most lucrative demographic.  Even if more older people watch than younger people, the advertisers figure, they need to greenlight young-skewing programs to hit the target demo.

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“You can fool all the people half the time, and half the people all the time.” That quote has been attributed to everyone from Abe Lincoln to P.T. Barnum. Whoever said it doesn’t matter. It’s true. Polls show that about half the people still believe in man-made global warming, despite Climategate and despite an avalanche of evidence to the contrary.

What we found in our movie “An Inconsistent Truth” is that belief in man-made global warming is wide but very shallow. Ask people on the street, as we did, if they believe in global warming and you’re likely to get a confident affirmation. Ask them why they believe it and you’re likely to get the dull stare of a dairy cow or the puzzled and confused gaze of Edith Bunker.

The trouble is most people have been spoon-fed only half the story and as Thomas B. Macaulay once said, “Half knowledge is worse than ignorance.” Indeed. People have taken Al Gore’s claims of global calamity at face value despite his propensity to lie. Remember, he’s the man who once claimed to have created the Internet.

It’s a shame but most people are simply incurious creatures. Some may call it intellectual laziness but the fact is people are just too busy living their own lives to devote any serious study to global warming. Being a talk radio host I do nothing but study the issues, and we spent two-and-a-half years researching and filming “An Inconsistent Truth.” We learned there was actually more time spent by the global warming alarmists trying to scare away the curious than actually cementing their argument. Phrases like “settled science” and “consensus” are the parlance of
politicians and political hacks, not scientists.

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Acting legend Clint Eastwood has already tried clearing the air regarding any political fallout from his two-minute Chrysler Super Bowl ad.

Now, it’s Chrysler Group CEO Sergio Marchionne’s turn.

Marchionne told WJR radio in Detroit this morning “politics had nothing to do” with the instantly controversial clip.

Democrats and the White House embraced the ad narrated by actor Clint Eastwood that said the United States could learn from the Motor City’s economic woes, while a former adviser to President George W. Bush criticized it….

“It has zero political content,” Marchionne said. “It was not intended to be any type of political overture on our part. We are as apolitical as you can make us… I wasn’t expressing a view and certainly nobody inside Chrysler was attempting to influence decisions.

After a heated exchanged opened the 1985 Geneva Summit, Ronald Reagan suggested to Mikhail Gorbachev that the two leaders take a break and walk together along a nearby lake. Even in this informal setting, Reagan’s unyielding support for the SDI initiative remained a major sticking point. But the conversation assumed a more congenial tone when Gorbachev began to ask Reagan about the president’s movie career.

While it may be difficult to pinpoint a precise moment when Cold War tensions began to ease, it is evident that Gorbachev’s interest in Hollywood helped foster a human connection that advanced negotiations and solidified relations.

By all accounts, Reagan was proud of his Hollywood career, which began on April 20, 1937 the day he signed a contract with Warner Brothers. While political opponents and hostile media personalities have made a sport out of demeaning Reagan’s acting ability, he was actually quite accomplished in his own right and cultivated a strong following.

A good source here is Marc Eliot who authored “Reagan: The Hollywood Years,” a well-researched, highly readable yarn that highlights some of the former president’s best performances on screen and on television. Reagan co-starred alongside some of most talented stars of his era including Bette Davis, Ann Sheridan, Ginger Rogers, Humphrey Bogart and Errol Flynn.

While Reagan may not have achieved lasting fame as a leading man, he did carve out a strong niche as a supporting actor in films that attracted critical attention, as Eliot explained in an interview with Reason TV. He was widely viewed as the reliable “best friend” standing behind
the big names of that time, Eliot notes.

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The 2011 thriller “In Time” tells the dystopian science fiction story of a world where time means everything.

Social classes are not determined by income, but by the amount of time a person can live. The humans are genetically engineered to stop aging when they turn 25. At that point, their clocks begin ticking and they must earn or steal more time to stay alive. Lower classes work menial jobs for pay in days, while the upper class hoards centuries. Gangsters prey on the weak to steal their time. “Timekeepers’” or law enforcement’s primary concern is to make sure the “wrong people” – the lower class – never have too much time.

Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) is from “the ghetto,” where people live hour to hour. He meets Henry Hamilton (Matt Bomer) in a bar flashing around a wealth of time – 100 years. After Will rescues him from gangsters, Hamilton gives Will his entire store of time. Sadly, Will can’t get home in time to prevent his mother (Olivia Wilde) from “clocking out.” In retaliation, Will travels to the top “time zone” on a mission to take as much time from the wealthy as he can.

However, possessing time that you didn’t earn is illegal. Timekeeper Leon (Cillian Murphy) catches up with Will and takes back what time he’s managed to accumulate. To avoid capture, Will takes wealthy Sylvia Weis (Amanda Seyfried) hostage and goes back to the ghetto. He realizes it’s not enough to take time from the wealthy, he needs to redistribute the time to the poor. Sylvia falls in love with Will and joins him on a crime spree to spread the wealth of time around as much as they can before they are caught…or their own clocks run out.

We’re lead to believe that a small portion – the one percent? – of the population not only controls the vast majority of wealth, but is actively engaged in preventing the 99 percent from ever progressing outside of their “time zone” by strategically raising taxes and interest rates whenever people start accumulating too much time.

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I loved going to the movies.  I always have, but I’m not so sure I do anymore.

We all know Hollywood is spinning around the bowl, waiting for the final flush. Attendance at theaters is not just flat-lining, it’s in free fall. There are a lot of reasons, some of which Hollywood really cannot do much about. Video games occupy young eyeballs. Technology now delivers a tsunami of entertainment options to our TVs, computers and iThings. But there are ways that Hollywood can respond. It can make movies that don’t suck, but that’s another subject for another time. And it can make the theaters into something new and different – that is, it can make them into places we want to be.

I (and folks like me) should be a target demographic for the green eyeshade guys who supposedly run Hollywood.  While, even if all the conditions were perfect, I wouldn’t go as much as I used to, I used to go a couple times a week before I was married, and even after I’d go weekly. I’ll spend my few free bucks (including the fortune for babysitters) if there’s something I want to see (doubtful, and again another issue for another time) and if going to the theater itself is something other than a nightmarish death march.

Which brings me to my trip to the El Segundo, California, ArcLight Cinemas on a recent Friday night to see “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”…

The ArcLight, and other “premium” theaters, represents the industry’s attempt to address some of the more common complaints about theaters from people like me – decrepit facilities, careless projection, and snack options that range from bland to hideous.  As a drunken college student, I didn’t mind going to some hellhole theater on dollar night to see awesome fare like “The Exterminator II” and “Pieces”– hey, aesthetics aren’t Consideration No. 1 when your flick’s tagline is “You don’t have to go to Texas for a chainsaw massacre!” But today, I want a little more than sticky floors and discreet ticket takers who overlook the beer cans I had obviously secreted in my pockets. (more…)

I love Ellen DeGeneres. She’s America’s kid sister.

Daily Caller:

Ellen DeGeneres is the new face of JCPenney, and one conservative group is not happy about it.

One Million Moms, an organization whose goal is to stop the exploitation of children by the entertainment media, is hoping to convince JC Penney to fire her for being gay, the Inquisitr reports.

The group argues that the retailer’s decision to hire the openly gay talk show host and comedienne will backfire because most of their customers are from “traditional families.”

I find Ellen’s politics obnoxious but doubt she’ll be advocating for abortion, Obama, and same-sex marriage in these JCPenney ads.

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The venerable dance show “Soul Train” was never just about the music.

The series debuted at a contentious time in our nation’s history, and audiences of all colors could watch – and groove to – the sounds being spun by host Don Cornelius.

The “Soul Train” impresario may have passed this week at 75, but his musical and cultural legacy will endure, says Kansas City Star columnist Jenee Osterheldt:

The show first aired in 1971, on the heels of the civil rights movement, and it proved to be a great unifier. It served as a platform for black artists like Al Green and Johnnie Taylor, but it didn’t take long for the likes of Elton John and David Bowie to ride the train too. To me, that’s what makes it so important.

On “Soul Train,” you could tune in and see people of all colors and ethnicities singing and dancing together. What fan doesn’t remember Cheryl Song, the long-haired Asian dancer with moves to mimic? And Rosie Perez? She’s arguably one of the best dancers of the past few decades….

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Former child stars often take dramatic steps to prove their all grown up.

For Miley Cyrus, that means participating in racy photo shoots and announcing to the world her love of marijuana.

Actor Daniel Radcliffe is fessing up about his hard-drinking ways while promoting his first post-”Harry Potter” feature, “The Woman in Black.”

Turns out the fictional boy wizard was knocking back more than a few Coca-Colas before arriving on the set.

I have a very addictive personality. It was a problem. People with problems like that are very adept at hiding it. It was bad. I don’t want to go into details, but I drank a lot and it was daily – I mean nightly,” Radcliffe said to British celebrity news magazine Heat earlier this week.

“I can honestly say I never drank at work on ‘Harry Potter.’ I went into work still drunk, but I never drank at work. I can point to many scenes where I’m just gone. Dead behind the eyes,” the 22-year-old actor said.