So I headed on down to Shock City Studios in Saint Louis, owned by Chris Loesch, with nothing more than a concept. The idea; what if the founding fathers rose from the dead only to see how badly we’ve screwed things up? What you now see is the fruit of hard working professionals as well as the inability to pay our rap-video sirens in anything more than sandwiches.

Note: No women were actually objectified during the making of this video. Not while they were looking.

This week, even the great George Lucas has his hands full with a Valentine’s Day timed release. This weekend’s predictions and revenue results go as follows:

1. The Vow ($37 Million) – There are forces at work that can even beat “Star Wars” sometimes. A romantic drama on the weekend before Valentine’s Day will be one of those. The timing on this film really couldn’t be better.

2. Safe House ($32 Million) – Denzel Washington is also such a force at the box office. Big Hollywood’s own John Nolte had some great comments on this in one of his Daily Call Sheets this week. This will be yet another action film of Mr. Washington’s to beat projections. Liam Neeson showed how reliable this audience is right now with “The Grey”’s success. Look for even better results here.

3. Star Wars: Episode One – The Phantom Menace 3D ($22 Million) – “Star Wars” audiences are loyal, but this particular franchise entry was a great disappointment to general audiences in 1999 (three words: Jar Jar Binks). On the bright side, it will open higher than 2008’s animated “The Clone Wars,” the franchise’s current lowest opener.

4. Journey 2: The Mysterious Island ($19 Million) – The Rock takes over for Brendan Fraser, which in itself isn’t bad. The problem is the first one opened when 3-D had a lot more appeal with audiences. That’s not the case today, and this one will finish far behind its predecessor’s overall gross ($101 million domestic).

5. Chronicle ($10 Million) – The “found footage” films usually post significant drops on their second weekend. This one won’t be immune.

Does Sensei have it right, or will others prevail?

The new film’s trailer will debut tonight at the annual CPAC convention in Washington. The clip will show Judicial Watch’s battle versus bipartisan corruption as well as corrupt elements within the Obama administration.

Written and directed by award-winning filmmaker Stephen K. Bannon and produced in association with Constant Motion Entertainment, the Judicial Watch film will be released in the summer of 2012. The film will chronicle Judicial Watch’s heroic battles to clean up government corruption in Washington, DC, focusing most comprehensively on its efforts to counter the unprecedented corruption and secrecy of the permanent political class and, currently, the Obama Administration. The film will comprehensively expose the Beltway’s current scandals, including: “Fast and Furious”; Solyndra and “Green Energy”; federal bailouts and earmarks; the New Black Panthers; ACORN and voter fraud; stealth amnesty; threats to the integrity of the 2012 elections; and new attacks on government transparency and accountability.

The film is a companion piece to the upcoming book, “The Corruption Chronicles, Obama’s Big Secrecy, Big Corruption, and Big Government,” by Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.  The Judicial Watch book is scheduled for release in July 2012, from Simon & Schuster’s Threshold Editions.

“For too long our nation has suffered through a massive expansion of government power and corruption, the likes of which we haven’t seen in generations,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The American people are tired of Washington corruption—that’s why Judicial Watch is the largest grassroots watchdog group in the nation.  Our new partnership with Stephen Bannon, the nation’s preeminent conservative filmmaker, will educate the American people by giving them the unvarnished truth about Obama’s corrupt machine and the longstanding problem of bipartisan corruption in Washington, DC.

Turns out the performer actually meant to sing “You Better You Bet.”

Will.i.am spoke about his support for Obama during a fundraising event this week as well as why he created his own foundation to support education.

The Black Eyed Peas leader said he was inspired by the 2010 documentary “Waiting for ‘Superman,’” about U.S. public education. He said that “Superman is not coming to save no neighborhood or no education system.”

Please take a moment to digest, or better yet, diagram that sentence. Let’s move on.

Will.i.am also talked politics: He said President Barack Obama is not a “magic man,” and that people shouldn’t expect him to solve the country’s problems with “some freakin’ plan.”

“We can sit and point fingers and say Obama’s not doing his job, but you’re supposed to do your job,” said will.i.am , who has supported Obama in the past.

Now he tells us. We elected Obama so we can do our own jobs. Got it.

The modern hero is less than perfect, to put it mildly. Think Showtime’s “Dexter,” or films like the “Bourne” franchise where shades of gray are the order of the day.

The era of John Wayne-style heroes is no more.

Enter “Safe House,” the new Denzel Washington thriller about a rogue CIA agent who possesses a file so important people are lining up to kill him. Washington’s character, Tobin Frost, is a prime example of the modern anti-hero. He’s a mastermind who went off the grid a decade ago against the will of his government.

At least that’s what we’re told.

The film keeps us guessing about Tobin’s true nature, and that’s part of the story’s appeal. But “Safe House’s” impressive nuance ends abruptly when it’s time to give us a typical Hollywood finale. (Major Spoilers Ahead)

The story’s big reveal involves a number of government spy agencies trying to hide damaging information on some of their members. So one of the film’s key characters chooses to leak the information in toto so the bad guys can be outed – and punished.

But what other information got leaked? Were there field agents compromised by the intelligence dump? Could the move impact ongoing missions or terrorism tracking efforts?

The film just doesn’t care. The screenwriters insist full and complete transparency, in the grand WikiLeaks style, is the order of the day. The leaker is deemed a hero for dumping the data. Real life doesn’t work that way, and the film is poorly served by pretending it does.

So which is it, Hollywood? Are anti-heroes and shades of gray the building blocks for great stories? Or are they gimmicks to be set aside when there’s an agenda in play?

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.

One wonders if Madonna has truly learned the error of her shocking ways, or if she’s grumpy people are still talking about M.I.A. and not her.

I like The Rock because he always manages to steal every scene he’s in with that huge on-screen presence; you can’t deny him that. However, some of his films are goofy and tired; d0es anyone remember “The Tooth Fairy?” I hope not. With that said, I walked into this film not expecting much at all and thought the 3D effects were going to be non-existent. I walked out pleasantly surprised and with a smile on my face.

We were first introduced to Sean Anderson (Josh Hutcherson) four years ago in “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” based on the classic Jules Verne tale. Now, Sean has matured into a handsome, determined teenager whose hormones are raging as he eagerly awaits another exciting adventure.

Sean’s mother (Kristin Davis) is newly remarried to Hank (Johnson), who Sean can’t stand and refuses to get along with. One night, Sean starts to decode a distress signal he relayed from a local satellite and convinces himself the message must be coming from his long lost grandfather Alexander (Michael Caine). Hank barges into his room and offers to help Sean with the message, thinking this would be the perfect bonding activity for them.

By determining the longitude and latitude coordinates, they find that the S.O.S. is being broadcast from the foreign waters of the South Pacific. Sean immediately wants to embark on a rescue mission and mother says he can go to the island, just as long as Hank accompanies him.

When they get to their destination across the globe, Sean and Hank run into tour guide Gabato (the hysterical Luis Guzman) and his daughter Kailani (Vanessa Hudgens), who agree to fly them to the island on their rinky-dink helicopter. Of course, Sean and Kailani have a corny, predictable tween romance, but that’s expected in a movie like this and it doesn’t hurt the film. One thing that hinders the proceedings, though, is the midriff-bearing, sweaty tank top Hudgens wears throughout the film. This is supposed to be a kids’ movie, and her choice of outfit is a bit too much for young audiences.

Johnson and Guzman hit their relationship right on, and it truly makes the film. The two actors have great chemistry, and their hilarity just bounces off of each other and offer plenty of amusing exchanges onscreen.

With all the incredibly beautiful CGI created landscapes we’ve seen in movies like “Avatar,” “Thor” and “Planet of the Apes,” it becomes a challenge to top cinema’s best. “Journey 2“ may not exceed the backdrop of “Avatar,” but it sure is fun to watch the actors gallop around in it. In one especially well done CGI scene, the group rides gigantic bumblebees to get up a mountain. Yes, Caine and Johnson ride bumblebees, and even if you’re not impressed with the CGI, this scene will certainly give you a few chuckles.

Where “Journey 2″ gets lost is the horrible stepson and stepfather subplot. Why can’t the scriptwriter just let the movie be funny, goofy and even corny? But the several sappy, sentimental moments between Hank and Sean were completely unnecessary. At least Johnson does the famous “pec pop” in one.

“Journey 2″ is certainly a fun hour and a half in the theaters, and if you can get through the useless family drama subplot, you might come out surprised and with a few laughs, too.

The story, based on true events as recalled by survivors in a 1991 book, begins in a Jewish ghetto in the Polish city of Lvov in 1943, where occupying German soldiers and their Ukrainian allies are slaughtering men, women, and children in the streets with the casual barbarity that was a hallmark of Nazi derangement.

Polish director Agnieszka Holland presents some of this depravity (in one scene, a Ukrainian officer takes a break from shooting Jews to exchange greetings with a friend, then happily returns to his hideous work) in an almost offhand way, as part of the day-to-day scenery in that awful time and place. This slight distancing serves to deepen our horror.

The central character is a sewer worker named Socha (Robert Wieckjewicz), a Polish Catholic who moonlights as a burglar in order to sustain his small family. Like many of his neighbors, Socha has idly concluded that the Lvov Jews must somehow deserve their fate; he has other worries of his own. Then, one night, he and a fellow burglar glimpse a group of naked and terrified Jewish women being herded through the forest by soldiers. After they disappear from view, the two men move on—and before long come upon those women again, now shot dead and clumped in piles among the trees. Later, at home with his family, Socha listens as his wife (Kinga Preis) expresses a Christian empathy for the Jews of Lvov, and is surprised to learn from her that Jesus, too, was a Jew. We feel a small light begin to kindle in Socha’s mind.

Read the full review at Reason.com

That’s the dilemma facing Leo (Channing Tatum) after his wife Paige (Rachel McAdams) recovers from a serious brain trauma wiping out all memories of their marriage in “The Vow.”

The film, loosely based on a true story, tells the standard tale of a young couple who meet, fall in love, get married to live their happily ever after until one of them falls out of love. It’s just not in the way you expect.

When Paige wakes up from a medically induced coma following a car accident, she thinks she is currently engaged to ex-boyfriend Jeremy (Scott Speedman), still in law school, and is in close contact with her estranged parents (Sam Neill and Jessica Lange). Paige resumes her old life, the one she lived before meeting Leo and becoming a completely different person.

So artsy Leo hardly seems her type, and her parents seize the opportunity to re-enter her life again. Can Leo win back the heart of the love of his life?

What happens when your loved one loses the last five years of her memory and can’t remember you at all? Well, it probably wouldn’t go down exactly the way it did in this film, but director Michael Sucsy does a sweet job trying.

I know this is only “based on” true events, and whenever that pops up in the trailer, it means the scriptwriter has taken an idea from a true story and used plenty of creative license. I was very much in love with “The Vow” until it took an unexpected turn midway through. Paige becomes extremely whiny and annoying after starting out as likable, fun, and relatable! I just couldn’t sympathize with her anymore.

One minute she wants to be with Leo, then the next she’s fighting her feelings for ex-fiance. This story’s been said and done and frankly, we didn’t need all this mixed feeling nonsense in the middle. We should’ve seen more of Leo and Paige’s back story and struggles the couple face while trying to reconstruct her memories. It would’ve been much more of a realistic touch than how the film eventually plays out.

McAdams is a talented young actress, but don’t expect to see her charismatic character from “The Notebook” here. She does what she can with the part; I just didn’t agree with the scriptwriter’s wishy-washy tone.

As for Tatum, the handsome star certainly has impressed me this year kicking butt (literally) in Soderbergh’s “Haywire” and coming off strong with his film performance. If nothing else, it’s he who really carries the heartfelt tale all the way to the end.

“The Vow” isn’t this year’s best romantic drama or the Valentine’s Day film girls were hoping for, but Sucsy tells us an unusual story in a very pleasant and watchable way. If only certain subplots were left out altogether, the film could’ve been remarkable to watch versus just mediocre.

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)

The Feb. 3 episode of “Grimm” began with the body of a teen being found in a river, the corpse drained of three-fourths of its blood. The culprit? A “Geier” named Dr. Levine, who has been kidnapping street kids to kill them for their organs and blood.

Does the name “Geier” sound familiar? Sometime toward the end of the 18th century, Central European governments required Jews to adopt surnames. So at a time when Jews were restricted to marginal occupations, some Jewish money-lenders and merchants were made to take the pejorative name Geier, or vulture: a term used then, as now, to reference avarice or greed.

And what does “Geier” mean in the “Grimm” world?

Here, via Wikipedia’s “Creatures of Grimm”: “Geier are vulture-like creatures. Highly sadistic almost on a satanic level, infamous  for harvesting human organs and blood, [they are] the most vile creatures of all.”

And, in case we don’t get the connection between blood and money, here’s this bit of dialogue from the episode to hammer it home:

Capt. Renard: “Well, whichever way you look at it, it’s cannibalism.”

Sgt. Wu: “Uh, I think it’s pronounced ‘capitalism’.”

Good one, Sgt. Wu. You go get those vulture capitalists. I’m sure you and the National Socialists will be great friends. But why rely on words when pictures will do?

Behold: a screenshot from “Grimm” of a cannibalistic “Geier,” left, beside an anti-Semitic cartoon of a cannibalistic Jew, right:

A “Grimm” drawing of birdlike Geiers tormenting a man, left, next to a detail of birdlike demons tormenting the damned, right. Note the clawed hands and feet in both images, and the claw-like hands in the cartoon above.

Medieval illuminations portraying both Jews and demons as rapacious and bird-like, left. Often Jews were depicted as demons, and demons as Jews, right.

And once again Grimm’s “vulture,” left, beside the Nazi’s Jew, right.

So: am I saying that the “Grimm” writers, rather than coming up with a fresh and unique twist on one of the Grimm Fairy Tales, instead recycled the most vile antisemitic tropes to come out of Europe?

Yes.

1) Based on the choice of the name “Geier,” a pejorative label of a name bestowed upon Jews in Europe, and the pointed reference to vile profit from others’ pain.

2) Based on how closely the appearance of Grimm’s mythical Geier hews to portrayals of demonic Jews in Medieval paintings, as well as to modern anti-Semitic caricatures of Jews.

3) Based on how closely the plot of the story parallels that of the blood libels, including the medieval blood libel of blood-draining, and the modern blood libel of Jewish surgeons as organ thieves (as seen in the anti-Semitic, anti-American Turkish film, “Valley of the Wolves: Iraq”)

4) And based on how, for no other reason, the doctor-who-is-a-Geier still bears the thrice-mentioned, explicitly Jewish name of Levine, in spite of a Latina (Valerie Cruz) being cast in the role.

Yes. Yes. Yes. And yes.

No matter how the writers will insist — up, down and sideways — that some of their best friends are Jewish. No matter how they or their employers insist that their skin color or heritage or gender or sexual preference or height or weight or allergies makes it impossible for them to have created an anti-Semitic display.

And no matter how they are shocked, shocked to learn that mean racist people, for at least nine hundred years, have used “vulture” as an epithet for “Jew.”

- Anonymous