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.

As much of the rest of Hollywood dutifully sides with an abortion mill (responsible for killing more unborn women than Stalin), over a respected foundation that has done more to fight breast cancer and save women’s lives than any other, one high-profile star isn’t afraid to swim against these left-wing Tinseltown hordes:

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Ellen Barkin, Roseanne Barr, John Legend, Lance Armstrong, and many others have pledged to not only end their support of Komen, they are also urging others to do the same. But that’s how the left thinks. First off, how dare a private charity make a private decision (so much for “choice”). Secondly, you can’t support both for heaven’s sake, Harvey might not invite you to his next shindig.

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Egypt’s Arab Spring is making freedom of speech a punishable offense.

The Arab world’s most famous comic actor is heading to jail for supposedly insulting Islam through his films and plays.

Adel Imam has received a three-month jail sentence for insulting Islam in films and plays, a court document showed on Thursday.

Imam, who has frequently poked fun at authorities and politicians of all colors during a 40-year career, has one month to appeal the sentence and will remain out of jail until the appeal process is concluded.

The sentence Wednesday evening came weeks after Islamists swept most seats in a parliamentary election. The case was brought by Asran Mansour, a lawyer with ties to Islamist groups, and had languished in court for months, judicial sources said.

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Left-wing operatives, like those who run Politico, are intentionally attempting to create their own reality. In the same way the left turned “30 Rock,” a show that ranked 106 in the ratings last season, into some sort of cultural phenom, the idea here is to push the political and social values of something no one watches into our country’s cultural and media narrative as though it’s something it’s not — popular.

Politico loves Stephen Colbert because Stephen Colbert loves Barack Obama and is waging war against the Right and free speech. America, however, is, to be kind, indifferent to Colbert. 1.44 million viewers and only half that among the 18-49 group, does not make you King of anything.

But Colbert knows how to play the game and understands that if he wants these kinds of hollow accolades and the opportunity to push his left-wing agenda and to have history revised in his favor, he must appeal to the right people, and the right people are not THE people; the right people are the left-wing elites who infest our corrupt media.

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The following contains spoilers. You’ve been warned.

Michael Jackson!

OK, no matter how you feel about Jackson personally, the man made some awesome music in his lifetime, which is why I was uber excited for this week’s episode of “Glee”… the Michael Jackson episode!

Yup, lots of cool cover songs were there, accompanied by fantastic dance numbers, but this episode bit at me on a personal level. Do you remember the last time we watched “Glee” together (and by that I mean I watched it, and you read about it here), when Finn proposed to Rachel? Well, this week we saw her answer.

Throughout the episode, we saw Rachel hemming and hawing as she tried to make a decision as to whether or not to tie her life to one man for the remainder of her time on earth. For some reason, she decided to go to her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend Quinn for advice. Because, of course, the best place to go for relationship advice is your current boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend (insert eye roll here).

This is where my issue with tonight’s show began and ended. Quinn told Rachel that she shouldn’t marry Finn. Rachel interjected with, “I know he and I haven’t lived together or anything, but, you know, I love him, and he’s the one, I know it.” (more…)

The 2010 presidential election tome “Game Change” recalled the battle between Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama for the Oval Office.

The HBO movie version is all about McCain’s Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin. And, if this early peek is any indication, conservatives can expect a feature-length assault on the Tea Party darling.

The first full trailer for the movie, debuting March 10 on HBO, backloads the Palin bashing. We get a respectful treatment of Sen. McCain (ably reproduced by Ed Harris) and Woody Harrelson playing McCain’s campaign chair Steve Schmidt. Then we meet Sarah, and right away it’s clear that actress Julianne Moore hasn’t captured Palin’s charisma or personal pluck.

Heck, even Tina Fey’s excoriating impression of the self-described Hockey Mom had more clarity.

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The tiny film studio known as Sherwood Pictures continues to baffle Hollywood.

First, the studio’s micro-budget features like “Fireproof” and “Facing the Giants” earned millions without traditional marketing muscle or star power.

Now, its latest film, “Courageous,” debuted at the top of the DVD sales charts, surpassing such mainstream fare as “Moneyball,” “The Ides of March” and “Abduction.”

“Courageous” follows four police officers who must overcome tragedy while vowing to strengthen their bonds with their families. The film opened in the number four spot late last year and hung in the top 10 for four weeks despite opening on just over 1,100 screens, about a third of what major film releases receive.

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It’s unfair to hold Woody Allen to the standard he set 35 years ago with “Annie Hall.”

Allen’s romantic comedy, which beat out “Star Wars” for the Best Picture Oscar in 1977, remains an unabashed delight in its newly minted Blu-ray format. You’ll fall in love with Miss La-dee-dah herself, Diane Keaton, and marvel how Allen could smuggle in so many laughs without sacrificing the film’s bittersweet core.

It’s that rare comedy that hasn’t aged a minute, even if we still scratch our heads over why a stunner like Annie would fall so hard for a neurotic comedian.

What’s more remarkable about re-watching the film is seeing how Allen the artist handled the political divide then … and now.

In “Annie Hall,” Allen’s Alvy Singer is a liberal stand-up comic who is seen at one point performing for an Adlai Stevenson fundraiser. It’s clear from that sequence, and from other stream-of-conscious bits, that he’s a man of the Left. Yet Alvy never rubs us the wrong way no matter how he kevetches about his inability to be truthful to his girlfriends or his unabiding hate for the Left Coast.

Contrast that demeanor to two of Allen’s more recent films, “Whatever Works” and “Midnight in Paris.”

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Writer/director Bobcat Goldthwait walked a gossamer-thin line with the excellent 2009 comedy “World’s Greatest Dad.”

How many auteurs could spin gold out of a father profiting off the accidental suicide of his son?

The “Police Academy” alum will have to be even more delicate with his upcoming film, “God Bless America.” (Warning: Attached trailer is the red band version meant for mature audiences).

The coal black comedy stars Joel Murray (“One Crazy Summer”) as a fed-up consumer who takes action against our debasing pop culture. Think trashy celebrities, sexually voracious reality show stars and the like.

Easy pickings, no doubt. But sometimes it’s impossible to parody material as over the top as Maury Povich, “Jersey Shore” or any “Real Housewives” scratch-a-thon. And the clip, while humorous at times, hints of the same faux civility debate the Left manufactured to silence dissent in the wake of the 2011 Tucson shooting. We also get a Fox News-like bit where a host paints President Barack Obama as a Nazi.

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There’s nothing pretty about Liam Neeson.

The Irish actor sports a disheveled nose and an accent that sounds like it belongs in a pub where the bar stools date back to the Second World War. And when Neeson puts up his dukes on screen, there’s no “Matrix”-style effects to give him cover. It’s all loping jabs and hay makers.

It’s why audiences are responding to his latest action film, “The Grey.” The film came in first over the just-wrapped weekend, earning $20 million without any big stars beyond Neeson and no existing brand to bank on. Neeson stars as a depressed sharpshooter who must survive the elements, and a hungry pack of nearby wolves, when his plane goes down in freezing terrain.

Compare the box office results for “The Grey” to the opening weekend haul of Taylor Lautner’s “Abduction” from late last year:

“The Grey” – $20 million

“Abduction” – $10.9 million

Lautner’s got Neeson by 40-odd years, and you just know Neeson doesn’t have six-pack abs like Mr. “Twilight.” Audiences didn’t care. They responded to the way Neeson goes about his business on screen. It’s never smooth or calculated, but Neeson’s characters settle scores and survive in a way that hearkens back to how male movie stars used to behave on screen.

He’s a man’s man, and that makes him a rarity in today’s Hollywood.

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“It’s almost as laughable as accusing Fox News as being … news!”

The Fox News segment Kermit and Miss Piggy are responding to (in the video below) can be watched here, and you can see it’s a rather innocuous and perfectly valid discussion about the culture. As a response, and nearly a week after the segment aired, the Fox-hating entertainment media (which is all of them) viralized the clip, blew the controversy up into something it really wasn’t, and did so because they find it impossible to turn down an opportunity to prove they’re one of the minions in the club.

What effectively happened, though, is a week-old Fox Business segment was consequently amplified into the news narrative, which turned the new Muppet film into a political and partisan football. Only our wildly out-of-touch entertainment media minions would think this is a good thing, and as a consequence, a well-reviewed film that opened above expectations entered the divisive culture and political wars and didn’t do anywhere near as well at the box office as some had expected and hoped.

That, however, wasn’t the fault of the Muppets.That was the immature, clubby entertainment media. The video below, though, puts the Muppets themselves into this controversy, which will only further alienate a very large segment of their audience:

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The Los Angeles Times (we read it so you don’t have to) is reporting that “The Grey” director, Joe Carnahan, is attached to write and direct a remake of Charles Bronson’s vigilante classic.

As chance would have it, less than 12 hours ago,  I watched a documentary looking back on the “Dirty Harry” films where Carnahan said, and I am paraphrasing, “I’m liberal on a lot of things but very much a law and order right-winger.”

That’s all well and good, but I doubt present-day Hollywood has the maturity to tell this story with the same courage of conviction we saw in director Michael Winner’s 1974 genre-masterpiece. For starters, Paul Kersey’s (The Mighty Charles Bronson) vigilantism is shown to work and is portrayed as a solution to a serious crime problem the ineffectual police and liberal courts can’t solve. For emphasis, there’s a wonderful scene where we see how Kersey’s actions inspire everyday people to finally fight back.

Secondly, the Kersey character (a conscientious objector during the Korean War) is made to see up close and personal the cost of his limousine liberalism and haughty pacifism. Intolerant Hollywood giving a character that kind of arc today is inconceivable. In films like the superb 2007 remake of “The Hills Have Eyes,” we’ve seen it. But if you listen to the director’s DVD commentary, you learn it was by accident.

Finally, this first entry in what would become a fantastic five film franchise isn’t like its sequels. Here, Kersey isn’t exacting revenge on the same punks who blew a hole in his family. He’s simply working through his grief and refusing to be a victim through the awesome act of cleaning up the streets and, in the end, he is not at all repentant for his actions.

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Director Spike Lee is taking a page out of comedian Bill Cosby’s playbook.

The man who gave us “Do the Right Thing” and “He Got Game” is talking up the power of getting a good education and how the media makes gangster life far too appealing. Cosby said essentially the same thing a few years back, but members of the black community didn’t take kindly to the veteran comic’s message.

Despite 100 years of slavery, our ancestors were smart enough to know that education would be the thing to lead us out of bondage,” he said. “At a time when to learn to read and write was against the law for African-Americans, our ancestors risked life and limb to learn.”

He spoke of his parents’ and grandparents’ generations greatest mantra: “Education is the key.”

Then, he asked the crowd how, with such a rich history, fewer than half of Black males graduate from high school in America.

Lee blamed the influence that crack cocaine has had in poor neighborhoods and the influence that media have had in glorifying drugs and gangsters, whom he said are primarily portrayed by Black actors.

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In preface to this critique, it’s important to say that there is no such thing as a perfect Christian; Jesus Christ, the God Christians follow, was the only perfect human being, which is why true Christians believe faith should be placed in Him alone.

With that said, it was after the Jesus Movement of the ’60s and ’70s, during the 1980’s that many non-denominational churches sprouted up all over America, some of them overseen by self-appointed pastors and leaders who were unaccountable to anyone but themselves. As a result, in the Christian community, young adults, desirous to serve God, were drawn into congregations with showbiz-style charismatic leaders who exploited the enthusiasm and commitment of individuals who, at that time, were too immature to differentiate the counterfeit from the divine.

Kids “raised” in many of these churches responded harshly to hype and unbiblical legalism and emerged from the experience tattooed, smoking, drinking, and toting around babies born out of wedlock. Lost between redemption and confusion were grossly cynical parents who realized they wasted precious years serving man and not God and a generation of kids who sang with Psalty, then grew up eager to partake of forbidden fruit.

Similar scenarios were common in churches across America and could explain the disturbing phenomenon presently on display where the worldly success Christian pop stars achieve is often accompanied by a public fall from grace. Two of the most obvious examples of church kid tragedy include the sorry lives of Jessica and Ashlee Simpson and train-wreck-waiting-to-happen Katy Perry. (more…)

The Oscar nominations are out, almost by surprise.  There was a time when Oscar nominations were news, when people cared.  Did you care?

Maybe, but it’s hard to see why.

There was a time when the Academy Awards were an institution, where the nation devoured the nominations and joined together around their TV sets to watch the show itself.  It was fun – the whole family watched.  But that time is rapidly receding in the rear-view mirror of American culture.

It’s more than the fact that there are, literally, other things to watch while in the past the other two networks bowed to the inevitable and counter-programmed with “Mannix” reruns.  But the ratings are now in freefall.  We don’t care about Oscar because Oscar stopped caring about us.

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Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of NBC’s “Fear Factor” knows the show isn’t for the faint of heart. Or, for that matter, anyone with a semblance of pity for their fellow man.

“Fear Factor” combines outrageous physical stunts – don’t try this at home, or this … or this – with dares you wouldn’t pin on your enemy. Yes, eating some bugs can be nutritious, but there’s a good reason 99.9 percent of us choose Big Macs over Cockroach cupcakes.

The show’s latest gross-out stunt nearly got spiked by NBC suits. Even network executives had to think twice about approving an episode where contestants gulp down donkey semen. But the show will go on as scheduled.

Sources involved in the production tell us the stomach-churning stunt was shot last summer — but NBC honchos were having a tough time swallowing this one as the air date approached.

We’re told the challenge involved teams of twins drinking the full glass of donkey semen — with a glass of urine thrown in for good measure. Contestants had to drain both glasses in order to move on to the next round.

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You’ll never guess what the villain in the new movie “Man on a Ledge” does for a living.

No, Ed Harris’ character isn’t a crusading journalist, a nonprofit executive or a green energy czar. He’s a… wait for it… super rich real estate developer out to smite the common man. Harris plays him with all the requisite sleaze the Oscar winner can muster, which is plenty.

It’s Donald Trump without the unfortunate hair, but more importantly, the role represents Hollywood’s latest attack on the rich. It’s a trend already seen in recent fare like “In Time,” “Tower Heist,” and “A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas.”

“Ledge” producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura told The Huffington Post that the film’s choice of villain is no accident.

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The price those the left label as apostates pay is always a high one. Their very identity is questioned, and these attacks are always ignored by the same MSM that labels facts, such as the record number of food stamp recipients under President FailureTeleprompter, as racist. Moreover, heaven help a comedian who aims a little satire at the gay community, but once again, openly sexist, racially-charged attacks against leftist apostates are always met with the media’s approval in the form of complicit silence.

Crystal Wright is an accomplished commentator and writer who holds a  Masters from Georgetown. But she just happens to be black and female and Republican, so therefore …. this gets fired out to nearly a quarter of a million people:

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Ms. Wright wrote about what happened at Freedoms Journal:

What’s curious is no other race, White, Hispanic or Asian, gives over 90% of their vote to one party but blacks. In exchange for this block vote, Democrats, including President Obama, our first black president, take the black vote for granted each election cycle because they don’t have to work for it.

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Even people who recoil at “Saturday Night Live’s” inability to hit the Left as hard as the Right will admit the show’s sketches look great.

Terrific makeup. Top-flight impersonations. Impressive production values.

Actor Justin Long proves in his latest video that’s he’s not ready for prime time, “SNL” style.

Long is partnering with far-left MoveOn.org to play up the already discredited meme that former Gov. Mitt Romney likes to fire people. “SNL” beat Long to the punch, but the “Live Free or Die Hard” star doesn’t want to let it go.

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Rev. C.L. Bryant isn’t about to apologize for comparing the plight of black conservatives to the “Peculiar Institution” in his new documentary “Runaway Slave.”

“There had to be something shocking enough to bring them around to seeing it,” Bryant says of the film’s intended audience, black liberals unwilling to consider another ideological viewpoint.

“Runaway Slave,” which recently had its sold out world premiere Jan. 13 at the Landmark Regent Theater in Los Angeles, features Bryant’s attempts to free his fellow black Americans from the shackles of liberalism. The film finds Bryant trying to win over stubborn converts, deploring how black conservatives are treated and interviewing prominent black conservatives like Herman Cain and Thomas Sowell.

Bryant is a former man of the left who switched sides in the early 1990s thanks in large part to radio talk show titan Rush Limbaugh.

“I was driving down the street looking for a client and looking for Jim Hightower,” he recalls. Bryant’s car radio happened on Limbaugh’s afternoon broadcast, and he found himself unable to change the dial. “The things he was saying about the Clintons that was totally alien to my ears, but it was captivating. And the reasons he was saying them were more captivating.”

“I discovered there was an entirely different world out there, trying to tell others how precious freedom was,” he says.

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