I’ve been looking around for answers, but all I hear is noise. Everyone is pointing fingers at the Left or the Right, blaming Hollywood or Capitol Hill. Time is flying by too quickly for petty arguments. My children’s future won’t wait. I’ve got to do something now.

Here’s my hunch: Could it be that we have simply forgotten what made us such a great nation in the first place? So many people are waiting around for our leaders to come up with a grand plan to save our nation. But is that really how America got started? What if things actually work the other way around? What if real change doesn’t start at the top but at the bottom? What if the best place to begin transforming our country is not the Oval Office but the dinner table?

For the past year and a half, I’ve been making a film called “Monumental,” and I am thrilled to announce that it’s coming to theaters on March 27. We are creating a live, one-night national event in 500 theaters where audiences can experience a monumental moment together. Then we will release the film in theaters in select cities, while providing helpful new resources to families, churches, and schools who want to go further with what they’ve experienced in the film. 

In the film I retrace the footsteps of our Founders from England to America in the hope of discovering our true “national treasure.” I wanted to listen to them, to learn from them. Our forefathers knew we were a forgetful people, that someday we would lose our way as a nation. So they left us “maps” that would guide us back to the source of America’s success. What I discovered is amazing! This is one of the most important journeys of my life. America is worth fighting for, and so are our families. We can still be a “city upon a hill,” but we need to work together. With God’s help, we can turn this thing around. It’s been said, “Footprints in history are not made sitting down,” and I couldn’t agree more. I hope that our children will mark this moment as the turning point when we stood up, came together, and reclaimed the true national treasure of America.

And it’s only Romeo and Juliet in the loosest sense. This isn’t the story of warring families; this is the story of warring gangs divided along racial lines (the white Jets and Puerto Rican Sharks) who don’t really understand why they hate each other. But every time a mutual respect begins to develop between the two gangs, a racist cop named Schrank (Simon Oakland) stirs up animosities built on nothing more than hollow notions of pride and turf.

Caught in the middle is Tony (Richard Beymer), the Jets’ one-time leader who’s just started to mature enough to know a better life can be had through hard work, and Maria (a ravishing Natalie Wood), the sister of one of the Sharks’ leaders. Per chance they meet at a dance and as only teenagers can, they immediately fall madly, desperately, passionately in love just as the two gangs prepare to face off to see who will dominate the neighborhood.

Two things make “West Side Story” the timeless classic it is. The first is Leonard Bernstein’s unforgettable score, and the second is how well the story explores some heady themes without ever devolving into a preach-a-thon. A perfect example of this is the film’s highlight (at least for me), the rooftop show-stopper “America” where Anita (a smoldering Rita Moreno) and Bernardo (George Chakins) square off over the pros and cons of immigrant life in America. What you’re watching is both performers win their respective supporting Oscars and more wit, sex, attitude, exuberance, and magic in those six minutes then we’ve seen from Hollywood in the last five years put together. Watch here and tell me it doesn’t make you glad to be alive:

“I think I go back to San Juan.”
“I know a boat you can get on — bye, bye.”
“Everyone there will give big cheer.”
“Everyone there will have moved here.”

Something else you can appreciate is how little the camera gets in the way of the musical performances. Today’s musicals are all editing — chop, chop, chop. “West Side Story” might cut here and there and move the camera a bit, but you are at least allowed to enjoy these remarkable performances without feeling manipulated or cheated. The actors, music, and choreography dazzle, not the post-production.

In many ways (after those opening scenes), “West Side Story” does come off as stagy but that’s really one of its strengths. Had the story been shot completely on-location, I doubt it would’ve survived 50 years. The posturing of the gangs and all that finger-snapping, “daddio” stuff works perfectly in a stage setting, but out in the world it would’ve dated rather poorly. The same is true for the two leads, Wood and Beymer, who really don’t have much chemistry. Wood’s breathtaking beauty forgives a lot, but the decision to put her in an “ethnic” role would’ve truly failed without the production’s heightened reality. But because of it, we can focus on the splendid qualities Wood does bring to the role, her innocence and what it means to flush with first love.

For you fans, the 50th annniversary Blu-ray edition comes packed with enough extras (most of them new) to make the purchase worthwhile:

Disc 1: West Side Story Remastered in 1080p Hi-Def with 7.1 DTS-HD Sound
Pow! The Dances of West Side Story In-Movie Viewing Mode
Song-Specific Commentary by Stephen Sondheim
Music Machine

Disc 2: Blu-ray Additional Special Features
A Place for Us: West Side Story’s Legacy
Creation and Innovation
A Timeless Vision
West Side Memories
Storyboard-to-Film Comparison Montage

Disc 3: DVD
West Side Story Digitally Restored in
Standard Definition
Music Machine

The improvement in picture quality over my 1998 bare bones DVD is striking. And as much as I hate having to buy these movies again, they look so good that the experience is heightened in so many ways. Nothing can replace the first time you see a movie, but a top-shelf Blu-ray like this one comes about as close as anything can.

“West Side Story” is also something you can show your children. Naturally, they will love the drama, music and choreography, but along with all that vibrant entertainment there’s the kind of inoffensive and non-partisan life lessons Hollywood used to teach us. The story might be highly romantic, but the themes are tragic — which, when you’re dealing with characters driven by racism and gang life, is as it should be.

Early on, there was a debate within Paramount and Marvel as to whether having Captain America in the title would be off-putting to international distributors, and so the studio offered an alternative title, The First Avenger.

Cripps turned out to be correct in his hunch that the Captain America character has such strong brand recognition — the comic books have been published in at least 75 countries — that foreign distributors would happily choose Captain America: The First Avenger.

Only three countries opted for The First Avenger — Russia, Ukraine and South Korea. Everywhere else, it’s being released as Captain America: The First Avenger. …

Defying perception, Paramount and Marvel Studios’ Captain America: The First Avenger has now earned more overseas than in North America

To date, the superhero tentpole has grossed $178 million internationally, compared to $173.5 million at the domestic box office. The overseas tally includes a strong $5 million opening in China over the Sept. 9-11 weekend.

It’s hardly uncommon for a summer event pic — and especially a 3D title — to do bigger business internationally, but many assumed Captain America wouldn’t play as well among foreign audiences because of its title.

Full story here.

Via NBC:

The  festival, “9/11 Reclaiming the Truth, Reclaiming our Future,” is organized by the Northern California 9/11 Truth Alliance, a group that formed shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The lineup of films and speakers kicked off at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland this afternoon, and will continue on Sunday at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco after a march from Justin Herman Plaza to the theater.
   
Similar events are being held in Seattle and in Toronto, and a portion of those events will be broadcast live in the Bay Area as part of the film festival.

The slate of films includes “Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup,” “9/11: Explosive Evidence — Experts Speak Out,” and “We Were Also Killed on 9/11: First Responders.”

“We’ve had rallies every year,” said Northern California 9/11 Truth Alliance co-founder Carol Brouillet. She said the group organized its first film festival in 2004 and has had similar events every year since.

She said the main goal of the festival is to inform attendees about “the disparity between the official version and the actual events.” …

The rub below the fold:

However, she believes that the federal government was at the very least informed about the attacks and allowed them to happen as justification for a shift in foreign and domestic policy.

While that view has never gained traction in the mainstream, a recent BBC News poll found that 15 percent of those polled in the U.S. believe that there was a conspiracy behind 9/11 that involved the federal government.

Those last two paragraphs buried near the bottom the story spell it all out. This isn’t really about believing in some sick conspiracy, this is about spreading hatred for America through lies and propaganda.

I may go to Hell, but I’ll have better living quarters than any one of these bastards.

This is my third time through the Katt Williams, flame-throwing, soul-burning comic meltdown! 

This is so far beyond having an audience in the palm of your hand, it is an entire American Counter-Revolution!

This must be not only the worst night and foulest nightmare of this heckler’s life, I don’t see how this fool could walk after the justified incineration he waltzed into.

The almost 8 minutes of deliriously savage brilliance rises like a great symphony to culminate in the only possible ecstatic climax: The Star Spangled Banner!!!

This fifth time through for me brings tears to my eyes! Shouts of gratitude!! America is in a major foxhole right now and a pathetic heckler has, indeed, UNITED THE TROOPS!!!!

We’re One Nation Again! Indivisible!! With Liberty and Justice For All!!!!!

WE HAVE WAITED SO LONG FOR THIS UNITED SCREAM OF PRIDE OVER BEING AMERICAN!!!!!

If you haven’t seen this Katt Williams explosion in Phoenix yet, feast your eyes and ears on the clearest response to an old and ancient, American defeat at the Alamo: We are American and proud of it!!!!!!!

Video is NSFW:

—–

What Katt Williams said to the heckler wasn’t racist, it was long overdue. Sure I’ve been saying the same and I’m sure you have, as well. But it’s nice to hear it coming from someone who has a platform like Williams does. Usually people in his position would rather patronize people like that heckler and try to win them over by acknowledging they’re “disenfranchised.” This allows them to look compassionate and morally superior. But that’s the behavior of a true sellout — selling out the country that allows people to achieve their dreams in exchange for glorifying yourself by soliciting laughter and applause for cursing it.

Katt Williams breathed fire all over that narrative, and God bless him for it.

Ever since I was a kid I’ve heard the racist statement, “Why don’t you go back to Africa”, and I’d have to remind these jackasses, “I can’t go back to a place I’ve never been.”

Furthermore, I’ve never flexed African national pride on people. I’ve never given people a reason to believe I love Africa more than America, so I never deserved the remark.

I love being black, and I love being black in America. Enjoy whatever ethnicity you are! But if you enjoy it to a point where you think your ethnicity makes you superior, then you’re a jackass.

But like Katt Williams I feel that if a person has that much Mexican pride then they should take their behinds over to Mexico. Nobody dragged them over here. Nobody forces them to stay here. Black people were sold by other Africans and dragged over here to be enslaved illegally. But the generations that have been here have long enjoyed the freedom to leave. And I say to my black people, ‘If you think Africa is so much better, you’re free to move there.’

A lot of Mexicans act like white people were the only people to take their land, yet the ancestors of Mexicans are the ones with the long history of taking land from each other. They would pillage and enslave each other; rape the women, and sacrifice the tribes they conquered to their idols.

Today, Mexico isn’t doing that great and has a pretty corrupt government, which is why a lot of people want to leave. What cracks me up is that Mexican patriots want to live here — and not only that, they want to claim the Southwest region of America. Why? So Mexico can have an even bigger territory for the Mexican people to want to leave?

So thank you, Katt Williams. I may not dig all the cursing and what not, but I don’t think our troops bite their tongues when they’re defending God’s blessing of freedom, either. At some point all the profanity may not be as important to Katt Williams, but he is a patriot.

—–

In this insufferably PC era, defending America and this kind of openly proud patriotism is the very definition of edgy.  Via HuffPo, here’s a portion of the transcript. The audio is pretty garbled in spots:

“… it appears to me, y’all like it over here a lot… If y’all had California and you loved it, then you shouldn’t have given that mothaf*cka up. You should have fought for California, goddamnit, since you love it… Are you Mexican? Do you know where Mexico is? No this ain’t Mexico, it used to be Mexico, motherf*cker, and now it’s Phoenix, goddammit. USA! USA!… No n*gga, do you know where you at? USA! USA!… No n*gga, this is my hood… [security comes] F*ck him! Mothaf*ckas think they can live in this country and pledge allegiance to another country… Do you remember when white people used to say go back to Africa? And we’d have to tell them we don’t want to? So if you love Mexico, bitch, get the f*ck over there! [breaks into the National Anthem]… We were slaves bitch, you just all work like that at the landscapers…”

Naurally, the Huffington Post is all bothered, bewildered and offended by this:

Recently, African American comedian Katt Williams went on a xenophobic anti-Mexican rant during a comedy show on August 27th in Phoenix, Arizona, apparently in response to a heckler. In comedy it’s painfully hard dealing with audience barbs and catcalls (no pun intended), although everyone knows this is part of the life and any comedian worth their salt generally address such attacks with their most powerful weapon–humor.

Yet we get those instances when a comedian loses it.

For decades, we’ve all watched comedian after comedian after comedian trash this country, and no Leftist has ever stopped to wring their hands over that — which makes them the bigots.

Well, now we have another “again” to add to our growing list of “agains,” this time courtesy — of all film sites! — our regular left-wing antagonists over at Movie Line:

Before Captain America: First Avenger was released in July, much was made about how the title — and title character in his red, white and blue — would play in foreign markets. In fact, three countries (Russia, Ukraine and South Korea) even decided to release the film with the Marvel-approved shortened title The First Avenger. Following a successful showing stateside, good ol’ Cap made his worldwide debut in many big foreign markets over the weekend; as the numbers trickle in, it looks he’s got some pretty enthusiastic allies. …

Overall, Captain America: The First Avenger has earned a reported $65,863,605 internationally thru Aug. 2 (Paramount has CA at $53.9 million thru Aug. 1), with tallies from openings in France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Greece, Egypt and Austria yet to come. As for Russia, Ukraine and South Korea: Captain America The First Avenger has yet to debut in those countries, but Movieline will update its progress there when numbers become available. UPDATE: Per Paramount, Captain America actually did premiere in Russia and South Korea, where it grossed $4.2 million and $2.5 million, respectively. Score one for the non-American title!

Below, the top 10 foreign markets for Captain America:

Words I never thought I’d write: Please visit Movie Line for more.

Firey visionaries of The Progressive New World Order are scheduled for casting their Hollywood scripts post-election lest the unthinkable happen and Sarah Palin become the 45th President of the United States.

It is actually an infuriating time for Hollywood because of the “Wait” and “The Hold”.

Since massive amounts of money are involved, the second stage of the Obama Nation really can’t explode until The Man is back in office.

Educating Americans can be so laborious at times.

Why?

Because, as that Marxist Point Man, Bill Maher, says, “They’re stupid!”

These obstacles to Obamacare and our President’s even more revolutionary plans for American energy?

They’re stalled under Congressional challenges and the slim but terrifying possibility that The Man might not be reelected after all.

There is talk of a Hillary-Clinton-Challenge to Obama’s certain candidacy.

Another 1968?

Obama will run. That is for certain. He’s no Lyndon B. Johnson with an unwanted war on his hands. Even if Americans are a bit disgruntled with the endless battles in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, President Obama’s no quitter.

Besides, Hillary may take the job that Roger Ailes of Fox News is offering her.

Boy, wouldn’t that be a bold finger to her former pals in the DNC if she went to work for Fox?!

“Take that for abandoning me in 2008!”

Hillary’s Left but not a Radical Left like Obama. By contrast to Obama, she could be sold to America as almost palatable.

That would be something: Sarah v. Hillary!

“Sarah hasn’t even announced a run for the Presidency, Michael!”

She will.

“You’re sure of that?”

Yup.

“Why?”

If she doesn’t run, she will never know whether she was right or not to run alongside John McCain in 2008. She’s a born competitor and to not run would mean she’s not really Mamma Grizzly. That would be an impossible reality for her to live with.

“What if they change her image to Mamma Fox?!”

Sarah doesn’t hide like a fox in a hole. She’s right through the front door. Without running? She would no longer be Sarah Palin. Besides, she’s still too young to play the wizened duenna to the Republican Party, merely advising them on political strategy. She’s a player.

She can win for sure.

She can win!

“I beg your pardon!!”

America is, as they say, “on” to the slick exterior of Barack Obama. Sarah is even beyond a breath of fresh air to the rancid, smelly corruptions going on in both the Republican and Democratic Parties.

I don’t see how the Republican Party can live without her!

I don’t see how America can survive without her!!

“And if she doesn’t run?”

Obama will be reelected. He’s the new Jimmy Carter and without a Ronald Reagan Carter would have been back in office.

“So Palin is the new Reagan?”

Better than a new Reagan. She’s the complete symbol of pro-life. Nothing less will put the United States back on track. She doesn’t talk pro-life. She and Trig are the very meaning of pro-life.

In the same way, she doesn’t talk the renewal of basic American values. She is America.

Are Americans really as “stupid” as Bill Maher says they are?

If so, then they all must, at heart, be as “stupid” as the elitist press of both the Republican and Democratic Parties say Sarah Palin is.

If the “stupid” American people see enough of themselves in Sarah Palin, they will, indeed, put her into office.

Ms. Palin is here! She’s the profoundest of quintessentially American realities! To not elect her is for America to sell not only herself out but the rest of the world as well.

To not elect her is to not know America’s greatest enemy and that enemy can be summed up in two words: the Obama Nation.

Lincoln predicted that America would not be destroyed by a foreign power. If she dies, it will be by suicide.

Sarah is the only life raft America has right now. Any other candidate for the Republican Party, Romney in particular, will eventually be in the back room cutting deals with a virulently Progressive Democratic Party, a radically Leftist’s poison that has, with Obama, proven its own promise: “the fundamental transformation of the United States of America.”

After four years of Obama, the Dr. Jeckyll of America has already become Mr. Hyde. This radical experiment with a known Marxist in the Presidency?

Suicide.

Ms. Palin has said she will announce in the near future.

Should she even announce her withdrawal, I trust these words and those of others might help her to reconsider.

Sarah Palin is America.

America at her most beautiful, her most honest, her most simply eloquent and her most resilient.

Resilience is what America needs now.

Without Sarah Palin as President, America cannot bounce back.

Many might call a President Palin “bold medicine”.

With America on the edge of suicide, Sarah Palin is the “shock treatment” needed by the entirely moribund, self-defeated and suicidally depressed world.

The human race must either be pro-life or pro-death. Those “enlightened despots” who think otherwise and are certain we can “split hairs” into whole crops of Progressive New World Order Thinking?

Into the very, bipartisan Progressive Mess that America finds herself in now?

Again I say, it is the subtlest form of suicide.

Neo-Soviet Russia, Red China and Radical Islam are just waiting for the American people to make that same mistake again.

Don’t make them happy.

Elect Sarah Palin as President of the United States.

Part three of an essay inspired by George Washington’s Farewell Address:

Faction… they are likely in the course of time and things to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of the government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

We are at a crossroads in America. This is a choosing time. Are we going to choose Republicanism or Marxism? Free Enterprise or Socialism? Are we going to choose ignorance or reason, reality or denial? Are we going to be a nation divided or a nation united? Are we going to crumble or crawl through the fire? Do we have enough knowledge as a nation to know the demons that we face? Do we care?

I know one thing. We will care. We will care, when we see the ashes of America carried on the winds of CHANGE.

The political agenda of the cultural elite has slyly and insidiously captured the essence of America and shaped it into their vision and their desires. All of which are built on sand. They are not built on reason. It is built on an ideology that sells a mirage to the people and leaves the architect a hypocrite. Ignorance has let this happen.

One of the greatest mysteries of all times is how so many Americans could not see the change Barrack Hussein Obama sought to bring to America. Like all great leaders who manage to seduce a majority, he mastered the slick and slippery ways of doublespeak. Obama voters deliberately chose not to peer inside the looking glass that yielded focus on his true intentions. They chose denial instead. They chose to believe, mistakenly, that America could sustain herself on change. Others knowing exactly what Obama’s mission was, believed in the seduction of big government with feel good economics.

Yet, big Government cannot possibly be sustained and it cannot provide for every American. It was never the intention of our founding fathers and it is not the intention of our United States Constitution. The American debt will drown the economy and American ingenuity and free enterprise will be continually strangled by invasive federal mandates. Governmental intrusions will eventually suck the life out of the American Spirit.

This is not just random thought and fear mongering. This has been proven by the collapse of the Communist societies abroad and even in Europe today, who is moving away from socialism because it simply does not work. These are facts. These are lessons from history. These are warnings that are based on reason. Our founding fathers did not construct a Declaration of Independence and a United States Constitution on visions of utopia. They built the foundations for future generations on education, history and reason.

Where is reason? It’s as if the liberal elite and those gullible enough to follow suit, want to act like a child who plucks the dandelion and while blowing out all of the seeds with eyes closed, wishes,  “Oh, I wish for a perfect society where there is no pain or poverty and I will always be taken care of by my nanny.”

A government simply cannot be everything to everybody. The people have to sustain themselves. The government is to lay the platform to give them that opportunity and then let go. Let go and let God. Modern day liberals want the government to micromanage our lives. Do children ever really find their way if parents never let them go? The liberal elite wants us to believe that we can do nothing without “Big Daddy,” or “Big Brother” as George Orwell predicted.

Another haunting prediction of what America would be like in Socialist hands, is found in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. It is a powerful example of the crisis at hand and the insidiousness of propaganda. In Atlas Shrugged, the social realms of all levels are eventually led to believe that people who work hard, and reap from their labors, are bad people. They are led to believe that government is the answer to all the problems. The talented, the wise, the brilliant are despised by the populace and run off to exile. The ones who are left behind, the leaders of the socialist movement, watch the economy dissolve around them; the very economy they had possessed and controlled. Debt, depression, starvation and lack of spirit eventually crush America.

Sound familiar? All these events happened because people were led to believe that the government was the power, government was the answer, government would provide. Yet, incompetent and based on ideology instead of reason, the government stifled and manipulated individual, social, corporate and industrial liberties – liberties that included the ability to succeed or fail. Government promised what it couldn’t deliver.

The engine of America stopped because the soul of the American people was seduced by a bill of goods that had no bill of rights. Americans had sold their soul to the devil. They had turned away from God as their provider and instead turned to Government as their provider.

This is why our founding fathers based our fundamental principles on the solid, brilliant and inspired reason that our rights are given to us by God – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Our declaration does not guarantee happiness. It gives us the right to pursue it, and the desire to pursue it, with liberty. Our founding fathers were motivated by God and logic, history and education.

Today, we are a nation divided. We are divided in a fundamental perspective of who gives us our rights and liberties, God or Government. The dilemma is that we will not be able to sustain our republic or rise from the mire of debt, deficit and demise, unless we unite in the primary principles of our country’s origin. Government is not the answer. Government is the problem.

The divide is perpetuated by denying our children an education in the principles of our country and the wisdom behind them. The liberal elite has infiltrated every aspect of our culture and has laid the groundwork for a takeover – like dynamite in a glass castle. Our courts, our primary schools, our movies, our television, our music, our colleges have all been slowly usurped – usurped like a slow poisoning with a propaganda that had no antidote – reason. Where is reason?

An awakening must occur. There must be a unification that defies party and unifies Americans. America has done it before but it has been in times when America still believed in, and taught their children about, the goodness of America, the basic principles of the Constitution and the fact that God has given them their right to succeed and fail and that it was up to them to decide. America was built with immigrants who yearned for such freedoms – Let me be and let me see what I am capable of doing. I will not know until I try to fly – And fly we did.

Today our children are taught to deny God in school and that loving their country is passé, that it is stingy and selfish to succeed and that the government owes them happiness. Sound familiar? Where is reason? Can we pull ourselves out of another slump if our spirit is broken – if our mantra is give me instead of let me?

George Washington warned that division and blind, ignorant allegiance to party would ruin America and give rise to dictatorship.

The alternate faction of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism…Sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able and more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty.

It’s in the books for us to read. The writing is on the wall. But do Americans want to face the challenge? Do we as a nation have the stamina? Our muscles are weak and our minds mush. Just the way the left, socialist agenda wants it. Do not be fooled, their goal is not a perfect state of well being for all. It is power. Americans will be snapped into the snare of ruin by the dangling carrot  – free care for life. Like a donkey with blinders on, we will walk in vain, if we cannot see the truth.

Where is reason?

The effort ought to be by force of public opinion to mitigate and assuage it (Parties). A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.

Previous chapters can be found here.