JAMES GARNER’S DAUGHTER OPENS TRIBUTE SITE TO HER AWESOME FATHER

The Mighty James Garner’s daughter, Gigi Garner (a successful talent manager in her own right), has opened a tribute website to her father. She seems to be updating it fairly regularly with a number of terrific family photos and excerpts from Garners’ new memoir “The Garner Files,” which I loved and reviewed here.

Please check the site out.

Anyone who’s been reading me for any amount of time (or who has seen my Twitter wallpaper), knows of my all-consuming affection for all things James Garner, most especially “The Rockford Files.” You can imagine how much this tweet meant to me.

Tell me how it gets any better than that. You can’t, because it doesn’t.

The only bad news is that if this photo on Ms. Garner’s site displays the actor’s real signature, that means I got robbed on Ebay.

Cue my well-rehearsed of-course-I-got-swindled-again Rockford face.

FINALLY: AN HONEST ASSESSMENT OF HOLLYWOOD’S BOX OFFICE BLUES

With all of Hollywood and most of their sycophant entertainment media blaming box office and DVD woes on everything but bad product, this is the rare break from that absurd narrative:

(more…)

When it comes to Lourdes, Rocco, David, and Mercy, their mother Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone has quite a different view on what they should be exposed to, which is ironic considering what the decadent diva of debauchery eagerly imposed on a generation of naïve children.

Pop icon Madonna made a name for herself by exploiting her sexuality, celebrating the loss of cherished virginity, hitchhiking in the nude, and singing songs with explicit, blasphemous lyrics. She did so caring little about how impressionable children would be tainted by her morally corrupt influence.

Then, when Madonna became a mother herself, she banned television and magazines in her home. To shield her kids from the pornographic obscenity she promoted in the book Sex, and in an effort to preserve their purity, Madonna penned wholesome children’s books like Mr. Peabody’s Apples and The Adventures of Abdi.

Over the years, Madonna has transformed herself over and over again, first into a sadomasochistic sex slave, channeled Evita Perón to the point of naming her daughter Lourdes, married Guy Ritchie, adopted a British accent, and moved to the English countryside. She’s taken the Hebrew Kabala name Esther and joined the Angelina Jolie/Sandra Bullock/Mariska Hargitay adopt-a-black-baby club. Now, she’s settled into middle-aged doting mother mode.

(more…)

One of the most frustrating things about writing blogs or trying to win over hearts and minds is the slow realization that the opposition actually possesses a different thought process.  It’s not just about laying out the facts, pointing out data, and drawing reasonable conclusions, it really comes down to the way the left looks at the world and parses data.

The other day, I clicked the link at the top of Big Hollywood that led me to a commentary by Michael Lee at “The Wrap.” Mr. Lee takes aim at John Nolte’s commentary about the Ricky Gervais performance at the Golden Globes.  As I waded  through the piece I quickly realized that Mr. Lee didn’t understand the basic points that John made.

And this, unfortunately, is typical.

John Nolte made the astute observation that Gervais‘ performance was awesome because he took the witty, acidic, and mean spirited humor that is usually aimed by Hollywood at the American populace and turned it on the sanctimonious, self-righteous entertainment community.   Had Gervais been ten times more vulgar but aimed it all at Sarah Palin, George Bush, and people who believed in God, there would be no discussion.  There would be no outrage.  There would be absolutely zero press.  Gervais would probably be paid double to return next year. (more…)

Although the Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie-starrer “The Tourist” has been faltering at the box office, it recently received unexpected support from the Golden Globe nominations. Along with a nomination for best musical or comedy, the film also earned acting nominations for both Depp and Jolie. As in many other cases, audiences were right in their distaste with it and the Hollywood Foreign Press was mistaken in its misguided support for a film that doesn’t even qualify as either a musical or a comedy.

—–

“The Tourist” begins with Elise Clifton-Ward (Jolie) under heavy surveillance. She sits at a European restaurant while agents watch her every move waiting for her daily routine to change. She’s a woman who stays on schedule so any deviation from it could bring the agents information on their real target: Elise’s former boyfriend and well-known thief, Alexander Pearce.

As the agents watch her, Elise receives a note from Alexander to board a train and find a stranger that resembles the missing thief. This person will help her divert attention away from the real Alexander when he arrives back in town. Frank Tupelo (Depp), an American schoolteacher, is the man that Elise chooses. Frank is amazed that such a beautiful woman wants to talk to him and he follows her every move. Soon enough, the police and the mobster that Alexander betrayed are keeping tabs on the couple and trying to figure out who Frank is and how he fits into the equation. (more…)

It’s a holiday and some might say we should be charitable to the unfortunate. By unfortunate usually they mean those that don’t have as much as you and I. But one might construe “unfortunate” to mean being gut wrenchingly stupid, too. And when one thinks of the gut wrenchingly stupid one often thinks of the denizens of Hollywood above all others. Still it is awfully hard to be charitable toward such stupidity, I have to admit.

Today I have two members of the gut wrenchingly stupid Hollywood set to report upon. It might have been three but the terminal lunacy of Charlie Sheen just goes without saying.

—–

This week Americans stood ready to wish each other a Happy Thanksgiving, to be sure. Well, everyone was but the  Angelina Jolie, that is. If reports are true, to her this holiday isn’t a day to thank God for our fortunate bounty and to reflect upon the fortuitous founding of this nation, it’s little else but “happy murder the natives day” and she refuses to take part.

Angelina Jolie hates this holiday and wants no part in rewriting history like so many other Americans,” a friend of the actress tells me. “To celebrate what the white settlers did to the native Indians, the domination of one culture over another, just isn’t her style. She definitely doesn’t want to teach her multi-cultural family how to celebrate a story of murder.

I suppose we can be charitable and ignore these kitschy musings based on a woefully incoherent view of American history. Unfortunately, it is just the sort of vapidity that is de rigueur for the empty headed Hollyweird set. As they puff themselves up imagining they care more than you about “the little people,” they indulge a corresponding hatred of our country all too often.

But Jolie’s absurd notion pales in comparison to the outright lunacy of “comedienne” Whoopi Goldberg (real name: Caryn Elaine Johnson). Whoopi thinks that the world does not have a Muslim problem, thinks “white men” are terrorists, and thinks that Muslims in the USA are persecuted more than Jews. Oh, there’s more. Goldberg also thinks that the Japanese didn’t attack Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Those are truly gut wrenchingly stupid notions. (more…)

Paris Hilton is celebrated for a sex tape. Kim Kardashian is thrown in our face for the same, almost daily. And recently it was reported that “Laurence Fishburne’s 19-year-old daughter Montana is making a serious push to break into Hollywood — and she’s doing it with a hardcore sex tape.” Gawker reports: “I’ve watched how successful Kim Kardashian became and I think a lot of it was due to the release of her sex tape.” I think

I felt a collective shudder from parents everywhere when they heard about this.

When did woman start reaching so low to find their heroes, giving up what the feminists fought so hard for in the 60s and 70s? Wouldn’t it be nice to go back just 10 years or so, before reality TV and the Internet, before any Josephine was celebrated for displaying slut behavior? It seems like the norm for women in Hollywoodland and pop culture is to use their sexuality, savvy and gifts to seek celebrity with an abandon of self-respect, integrity and class. Whether Lindsey Lohan’s endless partying, drinking, drugs, and prison; to Ashley Judd’s belligerent, political tirades.

Whatever happened to women showing character and integrity when making choices and exhibiting decorum in debate? Wouldn’t it be nice to see them exercise the brain God gave them and work at the top of their intelligence? Granted Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian and Montana Fishbourne wouldn’t have careers if they had character, but TMZ would be much more palatable.

Rather than feeding these lower life forms with any more of the publicity that provides their sustenance, I thought I would celebrate a few exceptions to the rule. (more…)

When John Nolte asked me to write a piece for Big Hollywood on the affect of popular culture on feminism, I got nervous. Surely he remembers that I don’t agree with the majority of his readership’s politics? But then I remembered that this is precisely why we had become friends. In general it seems that the Republicans I’ve met in Hollywood are much more willing to reach across the aisle than some liberals, whom I sadly have to admit can be quite elitist. But that’s another piece for another time. 

Still, what I have to say about feminism and popular culture will probably shock conservative, right-wingish folks. (I can literally see the angry comments now — heck I could practically write them myself). But in the name of tolerance, keep in mind that I was born and raised in Europe, Germany for the most part. We don’t have the same relationship with sex and sexual content Americans have. I grew up seeing boobies and penises on television shows (even commercials) and in magazines; none of them X-rated and none of them were ever attacked by what we call “clean content organizations.” 

As a result, I don’t instantly associate nudity with sex the way many Americans do. When Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction became this country’s most talked about crisis, I thought we were being punked…until I realized that people were seriously offended. And that’s their right… but really?  (more…)

Yes, I know. This post is a few weeks late. Unfortunately I don’t have the time to see everything as soon as it comes out and only caught up with “Salt” and “Eat Pray Love” this last week. So please be kind and rewind your brains to early August. Or pretend that what you’re reading here is a way-early DVD review from a real go-getter. My original plan was to wait for the DVD releases, but that was before witnessing the surprise box-office stamina of “The Expendables.” My expectation was that Stallone’s ode to the 80s would top off somewhere below $80 million, and yet after three weeks of release it continues to chug right along earning another $10 million this weekend for a total of $83 million.

That’s pretty impressive for a non-sequel, non-franchise action film, especially one with the added weight of being R-rated. You’ll never catch me trying to publicly predict the how and why of the box office, but a look at “Salt” and “Eat Pray Love” did bring to mind certain elements of “The Expendables” that helped me to respect it as something more than just a thick-necked gun and run (not that that’s a bad thing) and maybe help somewhat to explain its unexpected shelf-life.

There’s a lot to like about Angelina Jolie’s PG-13 “Salt,” and even though the Oscar-winner looks a little frail to be dispatching nameless henchmen, there’s no doubt she’s one of the few movie stars, male or female, still able to artistically and commercially carry a picture all on her own. Better yet, after a ten-year absence from the action genre, director Philip Noyce returns in fine form with his old-school skill of putting together the kind of exciting action sequences that made Harrison Ford’s two Jack Ryan pictures so memorable. In this awful era of The Paul Greengrass, what a treat it is to comprehend what’s happening during a car chase, what a rarity to enjoy gunfights structured in a way that allow you to understand the geography of who’s killing whom. (more…)

“Salt,” the new Angelina Jolie movie, opens with a prisoner exchange. Jolie’s character, Evelyn Salt, is a CIA agent who is being exchanged by the United States government for a foreign agent. That exchange brings Salt back to the CIA, where she works as a well-regarded expert on Russia. However, back at work, it is revealed that Salt may be hiding some secrets about her true identity.

Those secrets and the movie’s twists make “Salt” a solid thriller that is peppered with exciting action sequences. 

When Salt returns to the United States, she is returning to her loving husband, who enjoys studying insects on the dining room table, much to Salt’s disapproval. Salt returns to the CIA where she works with Ted Winter (played by Liev Schreiber). The two of them are preparing to leave the office one day when a man walks into their CIA office and says that he has Russian intelligence that he wants to share with the United States.

Salt is called in and interrogates the mysterious man trying to determine whether or not he is telling the truth. After a few minutes in the interrogation room, Salt prepares to leave when the Russian man tells her about a plan to assassinate the Russian president during his visit to the United States. He names the Russian spy who is preparing to carry out this secret plan: Evelyn Salt. Salt then quickly falls under the suspicion of some of her coworkers. (more…)

MTV’s Kurt Loder:

There’s no law that an action movie has to make sense — it can just be all action. “Salt” is a demonstration of this. However, the best action movies consist of more than nonstop frenzy, and they can sell their wildest implausibilities — James Bond with his jet packs and underwater tuxedos, Jason Bourne still alive in the sea after taking two bullets in the back — with a spirited blend of style, pace and personality. In its indifference to such elements, “Salt” is a demonstration of how important they are.

The story does kick off with a clever hook. Top CIA agent Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) is in the middle of grilling a Russian intelligence operator named Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski) when he tells her that the Agency has been infiltrated by a Russian mole, whose ambitious mission it is to destroy the United States. Salt asks Orlov the mole’s name. “Salt,” he says.

Two of Salt’s fellow agents have been watching this interrogation, and they’re naturally startled. One of them, Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber), says he’s certain that Evelyn can’t be a mole. The other, however, a hardass named Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor), isn’t so sure. Salt herself doesn’t stick around to explain — she takes off. All kinds of pursuers leap into action, and as the chase proceeds, we marvel at her ability to dispatch hordes of heavily armed soldiers (all terrible shots) and her easy access to guns, chemicals and high-end designer clothing. (At one point in her flight, attired in a flowing fur-trimmed cape and matching hat, she looks like a fugitive from a fashion shoot.) She has also brought along a venomous pet spider. Well, her husband’s pet spider. (more…)

Even in the vast annals of Hollywood sycophantic suckuppery, the recent UK Guardian profile of Oliver Stone by Carol Cadwalladr is in a class by itself.  It is a fawning treatise hailing everything about Ollie, from his unique artistic vision to his unique attitude toward self-love – and, unfortunately, I’m not referring here to his narcissism.  Yet this hagiography still provides some intriguing clues about a question that arises every year or so when Stone puts out a movie:  Why does this pretentious clown still get taken seriously?

I think it’s because entertainment journalists seem to think he’s hot.

I mean, after all, Stone “is a man’s man… a sort of latter-day Ernest Hemingway, an action man with a reputation for women and drugs who won the Purple Heart for bravery in Vietnam “

Wow, a Purple Heart “for bravery” – glad we have the MSM’s famous layers of fact-checkers and editors hard at work making sure reporters don’t make basic, embarrassing errors.  But I digress.

The overriding theme of the profile – and Stone’s own personal narrative – is simply how hunky the auteur is.  Whether he’s palling around with Castro and Chavez or simply talking about his Daddy issues – which, trust me, are nowhere near as terrifying as his Mommy issues – we learn that Ollie is all-man, all the time. (more…)

So what gives? Are these areas just not glamorous enough? Do celebs not want to further highlight The One’s pathetic response?

Celebrities love causes. They love them for a couple of reasons: one, it makes them seem like “serious” people despite making a non-serious living as entertainers – or, as in the case of “professional reality show stars,” making a living by leeching off the system. Two, it’s free publicity. After all, you aren’t a celebrity if you aren’t being “celebrated” by an adoring public.

As such, celebrities often embrace “feel good causes” that enhance their PR value and their egos. Take “green living,” for instance. Why all the Hollywood hooh hah about carbon footprints and other such nonsense? Christopher Grey of WND has a theory:

Celebrities want attention, but they also want credibility because they typically don’t have any. Environmentalism is an easy cause for them to promote to get attention and at the same time appear somehow thoughtful and even educated because it is allegedly based on science. Of course none of this has anything do with reality, but this is the entertainment business. Reality is not important at all. Image is everything. Talking about recycling, stopping offshore drilling, solar power, and electric cars is a lot easier than really trying to do something for people in the world like feeding the hungry, helping abused children, or building houses for the homeless.

It also deflects attention from the obvious fact that celebrities are often some of the most wasteful, energy inefficient, materialistic, shallow, and superficial people in our society. A classic recent example was James Cameron, who talked about how his film, Avatar, was a shining example of environmentalism. Obama echoed this praise. This was the most expensive movie ever made about a war on an alien planet. What exactly about this movie helped to conserve resources or save our planet? The answer is absolutely nothing.

(more…)

In “Sput Car – Part 2″  (part 1 is here), Flora and Fawna hit Melrose to test drive the latest eco trend in the hopes of being noticed by A-list celebrities.  Will their attention-getting plans succeed…or will they backfire with ghastly results?

—–

Click above image to play video.

Two more webisodes to come!   Stay tuned for Gasbags Part 1 and Part 2. (more…)

In their debut webisode, BFFs Flora and Fawna meet at the crack of noon at their fave hangout, the Fatuity Cafe, to concoct their latest scheme to one-up the biggest publicity whores in town. After their weekly colon cleanse, they happen upon a dealership that sells Sput Cars, the hottest new eco craze. Rushing to be the first in town to own one, the girls neglect to read the fine print in the test-drive contract and may just end up being the kinda “green” that pushes up daisies.

**CAUTION FOR SOCIAL CONSERVATIVES:  ‘FLORA & FAWNA’ IS RAUNCHY

Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion, next week.  More webisodes to come! (more…)

My first two posts at this site addressed the topic of so-called “Christian” films in Hollywood. In my first post, I opined that the increased interest in Christian films by Hollywood execs hasn’t necessarily been a good thing because films with a faith theme are being sent to the small, low-budget faith divisions of the studios and marketed nearly exclusively to Christians. In my second post, I gave what I consider the reasons that most Christian films are so bad. Even though I’m an evangelical Christian, I had to admit that the films made by my brethren, intended for audiences like me, were typically very poorly done.

–

So…I was faced with a few realities. Hollywood wanted more Christian films. As a Christian, I wanted more Christian films that were actually watchable. I’d publicly and condescendingly bemoaned the fact that Christian films usually weren’t good. I’m a Christian. I’m a filmmaker. (more…)

Could this be true?

Barack Obama does not have Angelina Jolie’s seal of approval.

“She hates him,” a source close to the U.N. goodwill ambassador, 34, tells the new issue of Us Weekly (on newsstands now).

“She’s into education and rehabilitation and thinks Obama is all about welfare and handouts. She thinks Obama is really a socialist in disguise,” adds the source.

But don’t expect to see the Salt actress rally against Democrats on Fox News like her staunch Republican father, Jon Voight.

“Angie isn’t Republican, but she thinks Obama is all smoke and mirrors,” the source says.

(more…)

Brad Pitt was recently asked by German magazine Bild if he believed in God. Pitt smiled and answered: “No, no, no!”  Then, asked if his soul was spiritual, he once again said: “No, no, no!” Adding: “I’m probably “20 percent atheist and 80 percent agnostic.” With that, the shrieks of millions of women who dreamed of a storybook church wedding with Mr. Pitt could be heard crying out across the planet.

The comment is sure to cause a few ripples from the man who once played the son of a preacher man in the spiritual A River Runs Through It.  What’s more, Pitt advises there is no use thinking about God or a higher power — we’ll find out when we get there, he says.  Umm, get where Brad?  The Beverly Hills Hotel in the sky?  It never ceases to amaze to hear celebrities speak out about religion – or a lack thereof.  In a business where vainglory is king, perhaps it is not surprising many in Hollywood are said to lack religion.  Que Sera Sera — free country, right?   (more…)

Despite being told “no” regarding her bid to adopt a second child from Malawi, Madonna remains hopeful that her appeal will be successful. She wants what amounts to a companion piece to little David, the boy she adopted from that nation in 2006. That adoption had its problems, as critics said she used her wealth and fame to skirt laws that prevent non-Malawian citizens from adopting.

The idea that she wants to give little Mercy “a home, a loving family environment and the best education and health-care possible” is admirable. But if her final goal is, as she says, to give David and Mercy the tools they need to “one day return to Malawi and help the people of their country,” why doesn’t she just stick with the school she is planning on building? Or perhaps invest in the local economy, providing jobs for parents who are unable to adequately care for their own children? Wouldn’t that go further than holding what amounts to a kind of lottery and then whisking the lucky winners away to a fantasyland of luxury? (more…)