We’ve gone from Dirty Harry to Jason Bourne (or whatever his name ended up being; the camera was too shaky for me to ever tell what was going on). We’ve gone from Humphrey Bogart to George Clooney.  We’ve gone from John Wayne fighting Indians to Na’vi fighting Americans.

But, don’t fret. For there is an answer to our problems, fellow film buffs. I know you’re six feet from that ledge, but let me give you hope…they are called books. They are these contraptions with bindings and pages with words on the inside. Together this all creates a story one hundred times more fulfilling than today’s dim-witted liberal flavor-of-the-month films.

Hollywood has always been a liberal town. They give us anti-Iraq war movie after anti-Iraq war movie despite the fact that they all flop at the box office. But what of the literary world?  They must surely share Hollywood’s contempt for conservatives and enriching stories, right? Wrong. The publishing world seems to get it, for the most part. They like to publish what sells and what seems to sell today are right-leaning stories.

Stephen Hunter, Vince Flynn, Brad Thor, Tom Clancy, Frank Miller, James Ellroy, and Andrew Klavan. These are just a handful of names of today’s top fiction writers. All of them have something in common: they have, admittedly, right leaning politics and philosophies. This does not mean that their books are some kind of weird right-wing propaganda. What it means is that their stories usually make the bad guys who the bad guys really are and their heroes don’t shy away from masculinity or righteous indignation. These writers also have something else in common: they are all New York Times bestselling authors. Try out Stephen Hunter’s new novel Soft Target. It’s a hundred times better and more visually striking than any new action film to hit theaters in the last year. Or try Andrew Klavan’s last adult thriller, The Identity Man. It’s more thought-provoking and more well thought out than any half-baked political thriller cooked up by George Clooney. These writers lead the fiction front in literature today. They put out bestsellers that frequently win acclaim from critics.

As for non fiction…now we are really getting to the heart of the beast. Look at the New York Times bestseller list for non-fiction and you are bound to see a plethora of conservative thought. While Bill O’Reilly and Laura Ingraham are regularly blasted in the mainstream media, they regularly put out bestsellers. Others do too. In fact, most non-fiction political books that hit shelves are written by conservatives. Why this phenomenon and why now? Is it that conservatives have been turned away by Hollywood so they have retreated to the inner workings of books? Or is it because right-leaning artists and right-leaning thinkers need more than a 90-minute film to bring across a message and/or story?

Perhaps films are more representative of a liberal approach to storytelling, while writing is a more conservative approach. Films are a collected effort. They takes hundreds, if not, thousands of people to create, and usually have a vision that is compromised by too many cooks in the kitchen. Books, on the other hand, are a celebration of individualism. It takes one person to sit and put his vision down. Maybe this is the explanation, but maybe not.

But whatever it may be, this much is true: if you hit up your local bookstore or head over to Amazon, you’ll find a world of old school storytelling and right-leaning stories. John Wayne and his films ain’t dead, they just grew up. They exist in an entirely new world: the world of books.

Check out footage from the latest Tea Party rally and you’ll see people holding signs referencing classics like 1984 by George Orwell and Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Check out footage of the latest Occupy Wall Street rally and you’ll see people wearing “V for Vendetta” masks. That says it all.

When you discover you just spent more than $10 to see pretty much the worst movie EVER made, can anything give you comfort?
I didn’t think so … especially when my mind started wandering about 15 minutes into ‘Cowboys and Aliens’ and the thrill of seeing Daniel Craig in chaps had worn off …

Then, I had one of those moments. It was the moment I realized that greatness could arise from the ashes of a ridiculously dumb movie plot … the hope came in the person of Harrison Ford.

Because seriously, no matter how old he gets, Harrison Ford can still work it …(kinda like Sean Connery … always sexy) … But a bad movie is still a bad movie … so, I slipped into stupid-movie, nap mode … then … it happened AGAIN. …

This ridiculously asinine excuse for a movie (thank you, Stephan Spielberg) about aliens stealing town folk from an old west mining town to ‘see how they tick’ so they could annihilate the human race, started to become a perfectly normal paradigm of how the left is infiltrating every aspect of our lives. And in case you hadn’t figured it out yet … the left are the aliens and us red-blooded conservatives are the cowboys.

Basically, in the sandstone hills and mountains of what looks like Texas or New Mexico, the aliens have imbedded this colossally large space ship underground and it sticks up out of the ground like a tower (and totally doesn’t blend in, btw).

The aliens, on occasion, swoop into town in their metal spaceships and throw out these rope lassos from the sky and round up people, pulling them bungee cord style behind their spaceships.

Once aboard the mothership, the townspeople are forced to stare into the light for some sort of brainwashing before being dissected by the brutally disgusting aliens whose hands come out of their chests in this terriblby grotesque manner.

Amidst the squishy alien sound effects and sound of ripping flesh, I saw our youth – being plucked from our ranks and mesmerized/glamorized by the left and removed from rational thought and clarity. Our future hope is snatched up and indoctrinated into a culture hating what’s good and right.

And we are just sitting by, watching because we, like the cowboys in this movie, don’t know what the hell hit us and we’re not equipped with our 6-shooters and spurs to fight the flying saucers swooping down. Our arsenal is outdated and ill-prepared.

Wives, children, friends and family – people we love and trust — are being taken from our ranks because we aren’t ready to fight the battle and can’t refute the argument of the left effectively! We can possibly spout off a few Constitutional issues or even make them agree with us on a few of Obama’s faults, but we can not hold a conversation compelling enough to actually sway opinion. Therefore, the glitz and glamour of the left, coupled with the joyless, greedy cartoonish picture the left paints of us wins out almost every single time.

But thanks to Hollywood, even really crappy movies have good guys (and what I thought were really classy actors) … Step in, Daniel Craig. Craig’s character somehow escapes the alien dissection fate at the beginning of the movie, and he awakens in a dessert with a weird bracelet on his arm. He also has amnesia … and he teams up with Harrison Ford, whose son was also snatched, to try to figure out how to kick some major alien ass.

Through a fun ‘sipping of the Kool-Aid’ party with the Native Americans in the area (who also have had snatchings), Craig’s eyes are open to his past trauma and his love interest in the movie (Olivia Wilde) who dies earlier, is reborn, stepping NAKED out of a fire to once again join the good fight (yes … a sort of ‘savior’ thing going on here …sans clothes, to keep the men movie goers interested .. because seriously … this movie is bad …)

So what is our Kool-Aid, fellow conservatives? Come on, I know you’re wondering … I say it is truth, education and engagement. We don’t need peyote or ‘shrooms to make people see the light – we just need voices. We need courage and most of all we need to find our audience, engage it and keep it.

I’ve said before it’s really easy for us to continually preach to each other. But to actually get out there and make a stand for what we know to be right, in the middle of those who are already engaged and enraged, is a totally different story.

This is not a friendly business we’re talking about. We are going up against a contingent that’s mad as hell – AT US – for all the wrong reasons and they’ve been lied to. And while we are the victims of this, we have to take the offensive stance and step out of the victim zone to win this battle and win back support.

We have our email groups and we have our publications – our communities — we turn to in order to make sure we can all stay informed and to gain strength. But these safe zones are not the trenches – they’re our home base — a place for us to recharge and gain support and encouragement.

How are we literally stepping out of our comfort zones and interacting with the natives? (For the record, Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford were at first taken prisoner by the Native Americans … then, after the peyote Kool-Aid party, they decided to team up).

How are we supporting each other when the media picks one of us off, or when one of our very own sells us out? Do we run around in a state of confusion, unable to respond accordingly, or do we have our stuff together enough to stay armed and dangerous?

This is an area where the left has us beat. We are a seemingly unorganized lot. Sometimes our messages are scattered and disjointed. It’s not because we don’t have passion and desire – our ranks are overflowing with it. We just don’t know how to mobilize as a cohesive group. But we can figure this out – it’s just a matter of being educated in strategy and in psychological warfare.

We can’t continually fluster or retreat when we are challenged on a belief. We must keep our wits about us and stay a step ahead. We are less equipped when it comes to money, training and backing. BUT if living in America teaches us anything, it’s that the underdog can indeed win the battle.

So you get the gist of the flick, right? These high-tech aliens (the left) and the good-intentioned, raw-hide underdog cowboys (the right) engage in a battle for the ages and everyone expects the aliens will come out on top.

But through team work, training and a deep belief in what’s good and right, Daniel Craig with his shiny bracelet (which turns out to be a high-tech laser weapon he stole from the aliens pre-amnesia), along with Harrison Ford, totally kick it on horseback. Along with the Native Americans and a band of unwieldy outlaws, they force themto fly off into the sky. … And while it could end here, it doesn’t …

Olivia Wilde, the time-travelling, reborn, now clothed gun-blazing beauty, found a secret weapon. She hides inside the bowels of this disgusting space tower as it rips itself from the earth.

In anotherChrist-like reference, she looks upward while engaging this computer chip board and hugs it to her chest… and causes the ship to implode … annihilating the entire alien colony and saving the old west from lasso-swinging, body snatching aliens.

The significance? Really, I have to tell you?

A woman saved the world … and seriously … I think that’s pretty cool …(and I’m ready to do it, btw … are you with me?)

—–

Yeah, it kind of did that, I suppose.  Except I was too busy wondering why the central premise somehow had to be that American military personnel are sadistic, bloodthirsty, cold-blooded murderers.  Then I remembered that this is Hollywood.

Now, to talk about Super 8, I will have to reveal what some might call “spoilers.”  Except, they aren’t really “spoilers” because to be that the plot points I reveal would have to be unexpected and surprising.  Sadly, Super 8 adopts the same tiresome clichés that have been wrecking Hollywood films for the last 40 years.  The only surprise was the total lack of any surprise.

What do we have? Crazy, evil military officer as the baddie?  Check!  Kid with daddy issues?  Check!  Climax where the hero rescues the girl from monster’s lair?  Check!  Monster that is the real victim even though he’s freaking killing US military people and eating civilians left and right?  Check?

Let me throw something out there.  The premise here is the space monster crash lands on Earth, then the Air Force gets him and won’t let him leave, and the monster gets mad, then escapes, and it’s all the fault of the mean colonel who was keeping him that the monster is devouring people.  Maybe I’m biased after two deployments, but a character kills an American soldier onscreen and my sympathy meter drops into the red – Avatar, I am looking at you too.  Maybe the cinematic deaths of some American military folk might be no biggie in Tinseltown, but some of us take it personally.  Perhaps I’ll drop J.J. Abrams a line and invite him to the next memorial I have to attend.

Am I overreacting?  Maybe.  I can see the misdirection of the counterargument – “Crazy Conservative Says ‘Super 8’ Promotes Killing Soldiers!”  What you won’t see is a good explanation of why our own troops almost always end up as the bad guys.  Perhaps the Hollywoodoids don’t see anything wrong with making US military people the villain so often.  After all, most of them have nothing but contempt for soldiers despite their poses to the contrary, and US military people won’t send a suicide bomber into your Beverly Hills offices – unlike certain real villains who liberals won’t dare name.

Hollywood can make the movies it wants – the First Amendment is one of the things I made a miniscule contribution to protecting.  But I can refuse to waste my money on a movie that depicts American servicemembers as psychos who literally murder American citizens in cold blood.  And so can you.

Look at the far superior Close Encounters.  The American military is an obstacle to the hero, not a malignant enemy.  There, the military (and other agencies) are trying to make contact with the aliens; the military is benignly keeping folks away from Devil’s Tower.  But in Super 8, they murder them – and that’s not an off-hand, one-time event but a key plot point.  The American military have somehow become Hollywood’s go-to bad guys (though there are welcome exceptions like Battle: Los Angeles and even Speilberg’s own Saving Private Ryan), but we don’t have to sit back in our seats like zombies and take it.

Disgusting slander of our folks in uniform aside, Super 8 has some other significant problems.  First, it’s slow.  Way too slow.  There’s a lot of talking and most of it is about feelings.  I don’t go to summer movies to be babbled at about people’s ungovernable emotions.  I go to escape people babbling at me about their stupid feelings.

Second, the movie makes no sense.  Zero.  Things happen not because they would happen but because they have to happen to facilitate the plot.  Here’s an example:  A key point is the heroine’s father missed a shift at work at the steel mill, which the hero’s mother took and where she was killed in an accident.  The heroine’s father comes to the wake and the hero’s father – a deputy – arrests him.  Huh?  Punch him maybe, but arrest him?  Well, it makes a good visual I guess, but it makes no sense.  The rest of the movie is similar – totally bizarre things just kind of occur and everyone just nods and moves on.  “All the dogs have left town, stuff’s exploding and a bunch of people are missing – yep, sounds like a good time to share our feelings!”

And the alien has all these powers – he scares all the dogs out of town, makes lights go on and off, and can dig enormous caverns without generating any huge piles of dirt.  I’m guessing he can also probably make the Earth cool, the oceans recede and keep unemployment under 8% by spending a trillion bucks.  Regardless, none of these magical abilities make sense.  Oh, he is the size of a Mac truck but he’s harder to spot than “Where’s Waldo” when he cruises around town – no one ever sees him as he steals entire auto engines, microwave ovens and whole junkyards.  I like how the hero constantly hears it loudly banging around town, the noise echoing across the burg, but no one else seems to notice.  And then, for some reason, the city water tower turns into a space ship.  Whatever.  I should have pounded a couple of my usual pre-movie Dos Equis – it may have made more sense.

Oh, and the alien eats the regular, hard-working citizens of Lillian, Ohio, which no one seems to think is a big problem.  See, the alien says he was oppressed, so whatever he does is excusable.  In this way, Super 8 is the ultimate liberal morality tale.  The alien says he was oppressed, the message goes, so you decent folk can just pick up the tab.  How dare you object to being used as cattle – didn’t you hear?  The alien said he was oppressed.  Shut up and take whatever happens to you.  Substitute getting munched by a space spider with being forced to pay ever higher taxes to support subsidies to the Democrats’ favored deadbeat constituencies and Super 8 becomes – quite unwittingly – a Tea Party manifesto.  To liberals, the devastation inflicted on normal people for the benefit of their chosen special interests is just well-deserved collateral damage.

Let me sound off on one other thing – I’m throwing my beer at the screen if I see one more scene where a character sneaks into the villian’s lair to rescue his girlfriend and, instead of getting the hell out, they stand there and hug and start babbling about  – yeah, you guessed it – their damn feelings.  Maybe your emotional breaktrhough can wait until you’re away from the intergalactic tarantula.  Oh, and the intergalactic tarantula looks kind of doofy; we could be reaching the limits of what CGI can do.  It also looks way too much like the Cloverfield creature, though, considering it is J.J. Abrams, that may not be unintentional.

All I wanted was to recapture some of the magic of those exciting, technically breathtaking movies I grew up with.  It sure looked like them – the cinematography was right out of the Spielbergian playbook.  The plucky youngsters were engaging too, though none are memorable except for Elle Fanning as the teen heroine.  She’s going to be a HUGE star, mark my words.

In the end, I could have gotten past the flaws and enjoyed Super 8 except for the relentless trashing of the men and women who, frankly, made it possible with their blood and sacrifice.  After 40 years of this nonsense, I’m bored and I’m disgusted with it.  I still haven’t seen Avatar because of how it slimes my fellow vets, and had we known what Super 8 would do (which the trailer carefully obscures) the Hot Wife and I wouldn’t have dropped $38.50 on it. 

You can make all the military-trashing films you want to, Hollywood – you’re welcome for the freedom to do so, by the way – but in the future you can count me and my money out.  And I bet I’m not the only one.

Blue Valentine is one of those movies that chronicles the kindling and death knell of a relationship.  Think Annie Hall, but minus the wit and the New Yorker neuroticism.  It instead opts for a mumblecore feel, except with dialogue that doesn’t feel completely pointless and impenetrable.  Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling co-star as a failing couple struggling to keep it together, despite the numerous problems facing them.  The film juxtaposes the complex beginnings of their romance with its subsequent floundering years later, the piece at the center being their awkward trip to a cheesy sci-fi themed sex motel in a limp effort to spice things up before the inevitable break-up.

The best thing I can say about Blue Valentine is that its tone does a good job of capturing that horrible feeling you get when you realize that you’ve fallen out of love with your significant other.  While critics have been using the dreaded word “brave” when describing her performance, Michelle Williams brings an intense emotional weight to it that makes the story more engaging than it otherwise would be.  While she shares some great moments with Gosling, such a lovely scene where she tap dances whilst he charmingly sings and strums a ukulele, her co-star doesn’t really come through at all times.  Gosling’s performance stinks of blue-collar working-class posing, like when a New Yorker thinks they can pass off a southern accent in a movie.  He can do the stubborn, occasionally drunken male well, but the other elements come off as forced.  Williams is the only thing preventing the lead performances from being anything other than self-congratulatory, though the film’s sexual content brings it damn close.

Movies that examine the complexities of romantic relationships always interest me, but Blue Valentine offers little to invest in.  As we watch the relationship unravel, there isn’t enough there for the death of their marriage to have any real meaning, we are asked to feel that it does simply because the movie asks us to.  Blue Valentine does have its moving moments, but it’s ultimately a cold experience.

Available on Blu-ray and DVD

For those of you who don’t want to buy every single one of the Alien films on Blu-ray in that big box set that came out a few weeks back, you’re in luck this week.  Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, and Alien: Resurrection are all getting individual Blu-ray releases.  It’s a foregone conclusion that the first two are universally loved.  Sure, people get fussy over which cut of Aliens they like, but for the most part, we can all agree that Alien and Aliens are solid slabs of tasty fried gold.  The last two is where we get into controversial territory.

A lot of people hate Alien 3, mainly because it’s such a Debbie Downer coming off the euphoric conclusion Jimmy Cameron gave us in Aliens.  But Alien 3 gives Ripley the best character arc possible, as the most interesting and challenging way to come off its predecessor would be to take away everything she has earned.  It also took an admirable risk in that it didn’t rehash the gung-ho space marine action that Aliens offered up.  Instead, Ripley finds herself stranded on a prison colony devoid of weapons, and filled with odd bald criminals.  Not exactly the action-fest fans were probably expecting, instead they got the slow-burn horror of the original with director David Fincher’s own twist.  That’s not to say it stands with the original, as the results are flawed, yet they are also fascinating.

Alien: Resurrection is another story.  Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, a French guy more famous for movies like Amelie, the film is like violent, crazy funhouse that is only occasionally, um, fun.  Written by Joss Whedon, the ragtag group of mercenaries at the story’s center seems like a prototype for his cult TV series, Firefly, but I must stress the word “prototype.”  Michael “Top Dollar” Wincott plays the cool, roguish captain of the crew a la Nathan Fillion’s Malcolm Reynolds.  Unfortunately, they saw fit to kill him at the start of the film’s second act, it would be like Captain Mal getting unceremoniously offed in the middle of the Firefly pilot.

The rest of the film is like one of David Cronenberg’s nightmares, it has a minimal amount of the atmosphere found in its predecessors, and instead opts for whackadoo characters screaming and yelling their way through a freakazoid monster movie.  It’s all worth it to see an enraged alien-impregnated Leland Orser beat the crap out of a bad guy, grab his head, and make it explode like a watermelon when the screaming alien baby pops out of his chest.  That’s comedy gold right there.  Alien: Resurrection is a stupid movie, but dumb moments like this make me throw it on for cheap laughs every now and then.  Guilty pleasure?  Sure.  Pass me a beer, fast-forward it to that chestburster bit, and I’m amused.

But hey, now you can pick and choose which Alien flicks get to sit on your Blu-ray shelf, in case you didn’t stuff like Alien: Resurrection stinking up the place.  But methinks if you want Alien: Resurrection on your shelf, you’ve already been watching those awesomely gross monsters in HD.

(Note: the Alien Vs. Predator movies don’t count, because they just plain suck)

Alien is available on Blu-ray. Previously available on DVD

Aliens is available on Blu-ray. Previously available on DVD

Alien 3 is available on Blu-ray. Previously available on DVD

Alien: Resurrection is available on Blu-ray.  Previously available on DVD

Other Noteworthy Releases

No Strings Attached: Ivan Reitman directs this rom-com starring Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher.  Also known by its French title, “Sex Friends”.

Available on Blu-ray and DVD

The Illusionist: Not the one with Edward Norton, but the 2010 French animated film directed by Sylvian Chomet, the animator behind The Triplets of Belleville.  Based on a script by the late Jacques Tati, it seems Chomet brings his distinctive animation style to Tati’s form of physical comedy.

Avaible on Blu-ray/DVD combo

I Saw The Devil: The latest movie by Korean filmmaker Kim Jee-woon, who also directed the twisty psycho-thriller Tale of Two Sisters and the oddball western pastiche The Good, The Bad, The Weird.  Word on the street is that this one ain’t for the faint of heart.

Available on Blu-ray and DVD

Something Wild: Jonathan Demme’s odd-coupling road movie starring Jeff Daniels, Melanie Griffith, and Ray Liotta gets the Criterion treatment.

Available on Blu-ray and DVD

Some Like It Hot: Billy Wilder’s acclaimed comedy featuring cross-dressing Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon starring alongside a dazzling Marilyn Monroe comes to Blu-ray.

Available on Blu-ray, previously available on DVD

The Misfits: Another Marilyn Monroe movie on Blu-ray, this one being her last before her untimely death.  Here she co-stars with the always-badass Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift, in a script written by Arthur Miller, directed by John Huston.  This movie was also the film Glenn Danzig’s legendary horror-punk outfit took its name from.

Available on Blu-ray, previously available on DVD

Justin Bieber – Never Say Never: I’ve never heard of this Justin Bieber kid.  Is he, you know, kind of a big deal?  Is a boy wearing a hoodie what the kids are into these days?  This one comes out May 13^th instead of May 10^th, so this Bieber kid must think he’s pretty special.

Available on Blu-ray and DVD

This article originally appeared over at Parcbench.com

As a retired Air Force veteran, I viewed this movie from a slightly different vantage point than one who has never served in our armed forces. And I loved every minute of this fast-paced, heart-stopping, riveting movie…silently cheering on the small platoon of courageous Marines, led by 2nd Lieutenant William Martinez (Ramon Rodriguez), sent out on what seemed like a suicide mission to rescue a few stranded civilians in Santa Monica before the Air Force was to completely level the entire city that had fallen to a devastating alien invasion.

What was originally reported to be meteors falling into the ocean along the Los Angeles coastline (as well as the coastlines of 20 other major cities around the world) was quickly determined to be a well-orchestrated invasion of a massive force of seemingly impossible-to-kill aliens… and they were everywhere… annhilating everything and everyone in their path.  As I watched the fast-paced, chaotic, and gripping action unfold, I often found myself holding my breath and sitting on the edge of my seat — myheart racing wildly, pulling for our heroes.  It has been a long time since I’ve been to a movie that left me exhausted like that, in a good way.

I appreciated how they introduced each member of the platoon and gave us a little insight into their frame of mind just prior to their embarking on this terrifying mission, setting the stage for some of the heart-wrenching actions and decisions that occurred throughout the movie.  It made them more real to me, as real as the stories and situations faced every day by our men and women deploying overseas into hostile combat zones.

The main hero of the movie, Staff Sergeant Nantz (Aaron Eckhart), was very convincing as a tough, no-nonsense, war-weary Marine.  In spite of having just gotten his retirement papers signed — a man who was struggling with some demons from his past (something not uncommon to our brothers and sisters who have served in a war zone) — SSgt Nantz displayed the kind of leadership, ingenuity, courage, selflessness, and compassion commonly found in the members of our military, most especially in our Marines, who are always on the front lines … and go where few dare to go.

I love that the movie producers hired members of our Marine Corps to serve as Technical Advisers during the filming of this movie to ensure every shot rang true to how Marines operate in battle and that the cast members had endured three weeks of intensive Boot Camp where they had no mobile phones, no television, no internet and no contact with the outside world.  They all slept in the same big tent, ate rations together, and acted like a cohesive Marine unit, wearing 40 pounds of gear at all times and staying in character between takes.

That rocks.

Coincidentally, I found myself relating to and rooting for the tough-as-nails Tech Sergeant Adriana Santos (Michelle Rodriguez) who was in Air Force Intel (I spent my 20 year AF career in this field), and kicked ass with the military hardware (pictured below with an M4A1 carbine).  Never fired one of those but have no problems handling an M-16 or a 9mm.

I thoroughly enjoyed the intensity and suspense of this movie, never knowing what to expect next.  Yet, according to Ebert:

“In a good movie, we understand where the heroes are, and where their opponents are, and why, and when they fire on each other, we understand the geometry.  In a mess like this, the frame is filled with flashes and explosions and shots so brief that nothing makes sense.”

 Clearly he has never been on a real battlefield.  War is hell.  And in today’s largely asymmetrical conflicts in the Middle East, it is every bit as chaotic and unpredictable as depicted in this movie.

It is no wonder the critics on the left panned this movie the way they did.  It is a pride-filled drama that highlights true heroism, military might, camaraderie, friendship, and forgiveness.  There were some very poignant moments in the movie that made my eyeballs sweat a bit and the popcorn hard to swallow having to negotiate its way past the large lump in my throat.  My heart swelled with pride at how these fine warriors took on every unpredictable, dangerous situation they encountered with uncommon valor — fighting for their families, their homes, their country.  They showed what true heroes are made of … and it made me think of all our brave men and women currently deployed who face unknown dangers, not knowing if they will ever see their loved ones back home again. 

God bless them.

I couldn’t help but notice some parallels in this movie to what we are experiencing right here in our own country.  These Marines faced an unknown, ruthless enemy who wanted our resources and were bent on destroying anything and everything standing in the way of achieving their objective.  There was a scene where one of the civilians being rescued, a young boy named Hector, told his father “Maybe we should try to talk to them.  Maybe they just want to be our friends”.  Sound familiar?  Sorry.  That doesn’t work when the enemy wants you dead…at all cost.

Honor, courage, service-before-self, love of country, and faith (love the close up shot of one of the Marines’ Bibles and the highlighted words “Through Christ comes freedom.”) …all things foreign and distasteful to the left and all the more reason for you to head to the theaters and enjoy.  As a strong proponent of promoting conservative art (music, films, etc.), I enthusiastically recommend this movie.  Go see it.  Let’s make it #1 for the third week in a row!

P.S.  And to our brothers and sisters in the Corps (the “ps” is silent for those who don’t know) …Godspeed and Semper Fi.

So clearly, you have got to go see this movie!

On the most recent addition of Take A Movie to Work over at Declaration Entertainment, Bill Whittle discusses the importance of this terrific action movie, which – MOST SHOCKING, EXHILARATING SPOILER ALERT OF ALL TIME – makes American soldiers, the best people our society has to offer, look like THE BEST PEOPLE OUR SOCIETY HAS TO OFFER!

Missing are all of the clichés we have come to expect from movies that depict our fighting men and women. There are no brooding loaners bemoaning the futility of war, no racist loud-mouth adrenaline junkies itching to kill anything they don’t understand, the troops aren’t victims of nefarious political posturing or trying to steal from the third-world…

Even the relationship between Aaron Eckhart’s battle-hardened Staff Sergeant Nash and the fresh-faced, just-out-of-school, naive Lieutenant is respectful and authentic. When the Lieutenant breaks down from his first exposure to the chaos of battle, there is no condescending moment of the wise-old enlisted man rising up to take command. Instead, Eckhart reminds the younger man of his responsibility, pulls him out of his own head, prompts him to make a decision, and then says “Yes sir.”

Every moment of this film inspires envy of the discipline, decisiveness, charity, and just general good character our military demands of its fighters.

Plus, they kick butt. Lots of it.

You know, according to German authorities, Arid Uka, the terrorist who shot and killed two US Servicemen last month, had recently viewed an Islamist propaganda video titled “American Soldiers Rape our Sisters!”

The four-minute YouTube video featured footage to backup its claim – footage of American soldiers sexually assaulting a Muslim girl – courtesy of Hollywood, USA. Specifically, the fictional footage is from Brian De Palma’s anti-American, anti-Military film, Redacted.

Redacted, of course, is just one of the litany of films to come out since Vietnam that portray our soldiers as rubes, murderers, rapists, dope-fiends, adrenaline junkies, or all of the above.

Movies have power. People spend almost as much time watching film and television as they do working – almost 1,500 hours a year. How much of our view of our military is informed or at least influenced by the way Hollywood typically portrays them?

It’s about time we started portraying them as the heroes they actually are.

“Battle: Los Angeles” deserves our support. Boycotting anti-military movies isn’t enough. You need to use the carrot as well as the stick.

While this movie, with its strong violence and salty language, is not for the kiddos, it is for everyone else – everyone who complains about the way Hollywood usually degrades our best and brightest, and who longs for a better day.

For a full video look at this film from Bill Whittle, and some great commentary, visit Declaration Entertainment and enjoy this week’s Take A Movie to Work.

Let’s be clear – Battle: Los Angeles is a terrific action film that makes no bones about its pro-American, pro-military agenda.  And that fact has invited carping from the usual suspects, lefty movie critics who work themselves up into a lather over the portrayal of better men than they will ever be.   

And note that when I use the term “men” here, I include the fighting women of the US armed forces – don’t worry, critics:  Heroines like Sergeant Leigh Ann Hester will protect you . . . just move to the rear with the children and try not to get in the way. 

The fact is that science fiction has long been a tool to comment on the present, including the relationship between our warriors and our society.  Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers was a fascinating depiction of military life as well as what the author saw as a degrading, decaying culture.  The Paul Verhoeven film of the same name, though different in tone, had its own insights into military vulture, including coed showers and a machine gun-packing Doogie Howser.

The Forever War mirrored Joe Haldeman’s Vietnam War experiences.  Aliens, back before James Cameron decided that American troops were an enemy to be exterminated, has a solid take on military life.  Even the popcorn flick Independence Day, superficially similar in theme if not tone, demonstrated the military values of courage and honor – plus it featured a 9mm M9 Beretta-firing Adam Baldwin.

As awesome as Battle: LA is – and it is awesome – it is also sad that the only way Hollywood will depict the brave men and women of our modern armed forces is in the context of a fantasy.  There’s no need to create hideous villains – they exist.  Too bad the people who greenlight movies can get behind zapping space bugs from Venus but dare not depict the struggle of our troops against the buddies of the scumbags who flew planes into our buildings a decade ago.

There is nothing wrong with Battle: LA itself.  It is highly entertaining and visually spectacular, especially to those of us who live in Los Angeles and know the area – I drove through one of the battle locations this very afternoon.  And, most importantly, it gets the troops right. 

The tough sergeant is dead on in many ways, while each of the characters is a distinct individual that anyone who has served in uniform will recognize.  The critics’ whining about “cardboard characters” is simply nonsense – the fact is most of these limo liberals probably don’t know any warriors.  If there was any doubt their “criticism” is simply agenda-fueled cheerleading, their “Eek, a mouse!” reaction to Battle: LA proves it.  Frankly, its characters (thanks in no small part to a team of talented young actors I look forward to seeing again in the future) were more authentic than the hipster smartasses of the insufferable Juno or the fake cowpokes of Brokeback Mountain.  But then, it might take a little courage to stand up at a Manhattan cocktail party and say “You know, I really felt the camaraderie of the Marines in Battle: LA…wait, are you ok?  Someone call a doctor!”

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It hit me personally as well, especially in the form of the young lieutenant taking his unit into theater for the first time – because twenty years ago that was me during Desert Storm.   Here’s a special shout-out to actor Ramon Rodriguez as Second Lieutenant Martinez – he got it.  The desire to accomplish the mission, the responsibility for his platoon, the knowledge that as a lieutenant he really didn’t know anything – and further props to Aaron Eckhart as Staff Sergeant Nantz, who helps train his lieutenant  as generations of noncommissioned officers have trained their officers (including this one). 

What’s interesting too is how the Marines learn and adapt to fight the invaders.  In an early scene, they are nearly routed in an ambush sequence so well-directed that I almost shouted “Get that %$#&%$ machine gun firing!” at the screen when everyone went to ground.  But the unit pulls together and they do what US troops always do – they adapt, improvise and overcome. 

The end scene is particularly welcome – let’s just say that Kumbayah ain’t on these guys’ iPods.  Battle: LA, in a way, commits two acts of Hollywood sacrilege.  It shows American troops as heroes, and it proudly says that our country is worth fighting for.  No wonder Roger Ebert is spazzing out on Twitter; this kind of thoughtcrime is a million times more transgressive than all the pretentious “Let’s freak out the bourgeois squares” art film nonsense he’s defended over the years.

Also appreciated – the scene where the Marines link up with a Soldier who announces he’s part of the 40^th Infantry Division – the California Army National Guard unit whose patch I wore for nearly two decades.

As exciting and fun and welcome as Battle: LA is, it’s just too bad that the only time American fighting men and women seem to get treated with any respect in Hollywood is if the war that’s being depicted happened a half-century ago, or if the enemy has tentacles.  Well, there is a real enemy out there, one who wants us enslaved or dead.  When is Hollywood going to display even one one-hundredth of the courage of America’s warriors and dare to tell that story?

My growing dislike for the act came from one place: I don’t trust anything with a fluffy, positive acronym. The Dream Act? It sounds like something I saw in Tijuana involving Louie Anderson and a tub of pudding. So, of course, the actual bill would be a let down.

Anyway, the name stands for “The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act,” and that was the problem. It was a lousy bill based on a bunch of unfortunate words, that together, don’t mean squat.

They were picked to spell “dream.” That’s it.

Now, I was for the Act, until I read up on it. Here’s what I noticed:

-the idiotic qualification “if they go to college or join the military” equates sacrifice with reward. I’m all for giving citizenship for immigrants who defend our country -because that’s awesome. But getting citizenship because you go to school? Seriously. Snoring in class is easy. War is hell.

-the age range for eligibility, even after it was dialed back – is still too broad (up to age 30), with the potential for lying so wide – that the act seems as porous as our border. It’s like we’re replacing a sieve, with a sieve.

But look – I’m for some kind of Dream Act, but not this one. Let’s revamp legal immigration: first let’s act like every other country (including Mexico) and secure our borders, then fix this Act. But to do that, we need to be honest. Stop tying lousy bills to emotional heartstrings. Call it what it is. This is about jobs, not diplomas. My suggestion, ditch the school crap, make the military the primary avenue for citizenship.

Make it a sequel. The Dream Act 2: Killing For A Green Card.

And if you disagree with me, you’re a racist homophobe.

TONIGHT:

Matt McCall

Imogen Lloyd Webber

Congressman McCotter

Now, it’s possible that his comment to Entertainment Weekly was just some off-the-cuff nonsense that just sort of slipped out.  That’s understandable.  Everyone says something mind-numbingly stupid once in a while.  Just ask Senator Coakley (D-MA).

You want to give the benefit of the doubt to the guy who, despite the freakin’ stupid  Avatar, made great movies like The Terminator, Aliens, True Lies, Titanic and, of course, the moving Piranha 2: The Spawning.  The guy has what the hep kids today call “mad skillz.”  We really want his unbelievably dumb statement to be just an unbelievably dumb statement.

But more likely its part and parcel of the Hollywood culture of disconnected privilege and provincialism that allows its members to stay utterly detached from the human consequences of their ideology.  Just ask those union grips and teamsters hanging around the set who’ll be paying the Democrats’ 40% tax on their health-care insurance just for the privilege of having negotiated good benefits.  The big guys like Cameron rake in so much dough that they won’t notice it; only their business managers care because the tax will leave that much less in the pot to embezzle.

It’s the same culture that allows A-list stars to jump onto the crummy commie dictator circuit, swooping into Havana, Bogota, Tehran or wherever for a quick bite with the resident thug-in-chief.  Somehow they forget not only that they are eating a lot better than the locals, but that in many cases they have another advantage too – they get to leave.   Of course, before they hop back into an enviro-friendly Gulfstream for their lift back to the Santa Monica airport, they have to pose with Fidel, or Hugo or whatever other dictator du-jour for some photos and some declarations about how their host’s deep thoughts rocked them to the depths of their eighth-grade educated minds.  Lenin apocryphally called them useful idiots; well, he was half right.

Of course, radical chic morphs into self-preservation when things get dicey.  If you were around for the L.A. riots back in 1992, you might recall how everything seemed to be on fire except for the areas like Beverly Hills and Bel-Air.  That was not because the rioters particularly appreciated the noblesse oblige of the liberal Hollywoodiods living there.  It’s because the liberal Hollywoodiods living there called out their cops and brought out their guns, both in large numbers.  But, of course when the fires died down after the Army took control again, they went right back to trashing the police, privately owned firearms, and for that matter, soldiers.

The fact is that Cameron doesn’t believe in eco-terrorism – can you imagine his tantrum should some ELF twerp dynamite his high-tech Avatar soundstage for being located on the paved-over Playa Vista wetland or torch his Central California ranch?  He believes in posing.  And saying stupid things like “I believe in eco-terrorism” is just a pose. 

Come to think of it, with his track record, what Cameron should be hoping is that eco-terrorism doesn’t believe in him.   But if it does, he’s fortunate that someone he probably has nothing but contempt for will protect him.

I much prefer the balance of say the great 1951 black and white classic The Thing, where James Arness’s murderous, but very smart alien runs amok in an isolated Arctic research station.  That is until captain Ken Toby and his wisecracking Army Air Corps crew and few common sense scientists manage to fry said killer alien’s ass with a makeshift electric chair.

The Thing’s military guys get all the really good lines, too.  In level headed response to the naive head scientist’s crazy insistence that “…our lives do not matter.  Knowledge, that’s the only reason to live, it knows far more then we do.  We can learn from it.  Just think we’ve split the atom.”  Toby’s co-pilot responds wryly, “Yeah, and that sure made the world happy didn’t it.”   But what do I know?   I love westerns and military films; only the rare common sense science fiction film like The Thing or a grand adventure like Star Wars captures my fancy.

Fortunately I also know a good amount of military and western history, too.  Since Avatar really is a politically correct sci-fi fantasy version of our own Indian Wars.  More then one critic has accurately compared the plot to Kevin Costner’s Dances With Wolves, while even a National Public Radio reviewer dared suggest that the script was actually a bunch of scripts thrown into a blender.   Though no one mentioned whether the blender was put on chop or grate, since the story line is so crude it certainly wasn’t blended in any sort of smooth fashion.   Like Plains Indians Cameron’s Na’vi break and ride horses, six-legged ones on their home planet of Pandora and domesticate dragon-like flying creatures bringing to mind Plains Indians who used to lay in wait for eagles to turn their feathers into war trophy head gear.

Both Avatar and Dances With Wolves share the most evil, villainous and genocidal military killers since Little Big Man in 1970.  It wasn’t true then and of course it isn’t true in Afghanistan or Iraq today.  All modern civilized countries armies have had rare murderous aberrations in their history like My Lai or Sand Creek, but these have always been the exception not the rule.  The Sand Creek massacre in 1864 featuring scum of the earth militia recruited out of the dregs of Denver’s saloons wiping out a good part of a Cheyenne village promised official government protection.  Still, Sand Creek was also a ill-fated response to the continuing line up of mutilated settler’s bodies, women and children as well that the Cheyenne were leaving on the Colorado and Kansas plains.

To the uninformed, and let’s face it we haven’t taught fact-based history in this country for several generations, Avatar’s chief of security is just a evil George Armstrong Custer clone from Little Big Man and his “soldiers” copies of that same film’s cowardly and murderous cavalry troopers.  Top professional western historians like Robert Utley, Paul Hutton and most recently James Donavan in his suburb 2007 book A Terrible Glory have repatriated Custer’s reputation based on facts.

From time in memorial in the heat and confusion of battle non-combatants have often been killed.  Yet at the battle of the Washita in 1868 against the same Cheyenne from Sand Creek (numerous young hot headed warriors had continued unabated murderous raids on the Kansas frontier, partially because of the atrocities at Sand Creek) but Custer went out of his way to stop any killing of women and children and took over fifty prisoners, including old warriors.   It was Custer’s Osage scouts who killed most of the non-combatants, just another day at the “office” against their tribal enemies.  Yes, he did wipe out the Cheyenne’s 1,000 horse herd because they were war materials, the same as destroying buffalo meat in the village or a gasoline dump or truck park in Iraq today.   An unhorsed Cheyenne warrior wasn’t much of a warrior at all.  As a cavalryman who loved and depended on horses, Custer didn’t like it much either, but that’s war.

Actually I really like Costner’s Dances With Wolves even if I disagree with the politically correct stances that it takes.  It’s a beautifully made film, captures the warrior spirit quite well and shows that each tribe like the Lakota Sioux and the Pawnee were distinct tribal groups unto their own.  Though through strength of numbers, white man’s guns and the decimation of tribes like the Crow, Pawnee and Arikaree by small pox it was actually the Sioux who were the “imperialistic conquerors” chasing the weaker Crows, Kiowa and Cheyenne out of the Black Hills in the Dakotas around 1800.   So much for Sioux claims that, “this land has been ours for as long as the sky has been blue and the grass has been green.”

By the way, the Sioux escaped the ravages of small pox because United States contract medical teams vaccinated them back in the 1820s!  You can look it up, the “evil” old US of A was worried that the disease might wipe out the western tribes and sent out those medical expeditions, except the Pawnees, Crows and a few others were at odds with white folks back then and kept their distance. It wound up being good for the Sioux and bad for other tribes, since the Lakota eventually grew into the most powerful tribe on the northern Plains. That’s why the Pawnee, Crows and Arikaree eventually became scouts for the U.S. Army.  One year after Custer’s death at the Little Bighorn, once the army had run the Sioux to the ground many Lakota warriors signed on with the U.S. Cavalry to fight their age old enemies Chief Joseph’s Nez Perce.  Once a warrior it was best to do your damnedest to stay a warrior, if only in spirit and demeanor.

Avatar’s twelve foot tall, blue-skinned Na’vi and the film’s themes of socialistic and egalitarian hunters at one with nature are right out of all of those numerous “Noble Redskin” movies, but not factual history.  Yet even some American Indians – that’s right Indian, since that is what almost all American Indian people refer to themselves as and Native American is a 1970s title that some comfortable, white, liberal college professor with a guilty conscience made up somewhere along the line – generally Indians recognize that their ancestors were warriors, generally pretty damn fierce ones at that and not a bunch of “happy hippies” peacefully fornicating in the hills.   Even today most American Indians remain some of the most patriotic people in the United States and send an incredibly large percentage of their young people to serve in the U. S. Military, the same military that James Cameron insults so egregiously in Avatar.

Today, one successful film on a particular historically themed subject becomes the benchmark for knowledge on that subject.   High school history teachers and even college professors often pick one film to show a class or give extra credit for watching out of class.  Want to know about the Civil War, show them Glory, D-Day and World War II then show them Saving Private Ryan, the Kennedy Assassination show them Oliver Stone’s JFK.  History is so out of fashion today that most students won’t watch a film on history out of the classroom.   Films may indeed mainly be entertainment, but they can have tremendous influence for the better or the worse.

I grew up during a time when there were a number of films and even dramatic television shows on a particular historical subject over a matter of a few years.  For some of us the fact that the movies and TV episodes didn’t even agree on say Custer and the Little Bighorn or what happened at the Alamo sent us to the library.   On those library shelves we quickly learned that the books didn’t even agree and some of them appeared to be written and researched far better then others.  It did something for our critical thinking eventually we even got curious about those pesky little numbers called footnotes and primary sources.

The danger of a vapid politically correct fantasy like Avatar is that for most of the audience there is no alternative opinion to the “America as Evil Fascist Empire” train of thought that it passes off as entertainment.  That is particularly disturbing when director James Cameron freely admits that the evil corporate lackeys and military contractors who serve as his films antagonists are his comment on American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan today.

[Ed. Note: This is part one of a two-part series which concludes tomorrow.]