**The following contains a ton of spoilers**

The first season of the Showtime series “Homeland” mercifully came to an end last night. I say “mercifully” because, while I will never get the hours I invested in the series back, I will not be subjecting myself to season two.

To recap so far, the series follows CIA agent Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) tracking recovered U.S. Marine Sgt. Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis), who she suspects of being a sleeper terrorist who was turned by his captor, al Qaeda commander Abu Nazir (Navid Negahban).

The CIA is also tracking Brody’s former sniper team partner Tom Walker (Chris Chalk), who is also suspected of working for Nazir. Agent Mathison has been placed on administrative leave for removing classified documents from Langley and because her superiors learned she suffers from bipolar disorder, which precludes her from having security clearance.

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[Editor's Note: Script reviews of upcoming projects have been around for as long as there's been an Internet. Therefore it's no secret that a film can evolve into something quite different from its screenplay. Please keep in mind that this article represents a look at a particular script and not the final product.]

There are different ways to write and make movies. Very few are made from the heart; many more are formula based. There are movies inspired by dishwasher manuals and a great number derived from Marxist textbooks. And there is a special category of movies: those written and made by self-righteous hypocrites.

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“The Whistleblower” is a drama based on the experiences of Kathryn Bolkovac (played by Rachel Weisz), a Nebraska cop who served as a peacekeeper in post-war Bosnia and exposed the U.N. for covering up a sex scandal involving peacekeepers and an international ring of sex traffickers. The cast also includes Monica Belluci, Vanessa ‘best friend of Israel after Obama’ Redgrave and David Strathairn among others.

As Kathryn investigates the exploitation of young and underage girls, she discovers that “sex lords” are bribing the UN officials to run the illegal prostitution clubs that spring up like mushrooms across the war-ridden and apocalyptic Balkan terrain. Moreover, not only are the UN officials are being bribed to close their eyes on sex slavery but, in fact, the clubs are really operating to serve the UN peacekeeping force. The story also flashes back to how an underage Ukrainian girl is tricked into sex slavery by her own relatives.

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Tuesday morning Nikki Finke posted Andrew Klavan’s online interview (above) with CNSNews where the successful novelist and screenwriter (and my pal) – who just had his Homelander series optioned by Summit – discussed, among other things, the difficulties conservatives face working or looking to work in a very liberal Tinseltown. Finke’s opening comment pretty much confirm Klavan’s:

Sure, this has long been the complaint from Hollywood Republicans. But I’ve witnessed the atmosphere out here becoming far less toxic for politically conservative or religious right or other non-liberal Industry types.

“Less toxic.” What a relief.  Tolerant, open-minded Hollywood sure has come a long way.

Of course, Finke then goes out of her way to contribute to this admitted toxicity, closing her piece with the spreading of  the provably false claim that Klavan “characterizes his liberal biz counterparts as ‘Anti-American’.”

That’s a helluva charge to make against Klavan. But… (more…)

To fully appreciate the absurdity of the statements uttered by “Avatar’s” writer/director James Cameron in defense of his film the other night, you have to get a feel for the setting. The Q&A took place during an industry screening of “Avatar.” That means an exclusive audience packed with fellow frat boys, sorority girls and a gaggle of suck up pledges. Trust me, there have been Ku Klux Klan meetings with more ideological diversity. Better still, this was an industry screening at the ArcLight Theatre, and for those of you fortunate enough not to be familiar with Los Angeles — that means this was a frat party at THE frat house.

Welcome to Inside-Inside-Inside Hollywood, where James Cameron is Doug Niedermeyer, the Big Man on Campus:

“Avatar” director James Cameron responded to right-wing critics of his blockbuster hit movie on Tuesday night, saying that “as an artist, I felt a need to say something about what I saw around me.” …

But he rejected comments by critics that the film is un-American even if it is an allegory for American military forays. 

“I’ve heard people say this film is un-American, while part of being an American is having the freedom to have dissenting ideas,” Cameron said, prompting loud applause from a capacity crowd at the ArcLight Hollywood.

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Three out of five leftists agree: Avatar is anti-American….

Time’s Joe Klein:

But that wasn’t the most amazing thing about the movie: the Americans were the bad guys. They were a mercenary army working for corporate villains who wanted to strip-mine a tribe of alien, cerulean nice-guy, enviro-theists. The dialogue was awful; the characterizations were crude…and I’m sure that conservatives will dismiss this as another excretion of the Hollywood left. But still, it was something for a mainstream–indeed, a blockbuster–motion picture to have you rooting for the blue dudes flying about on birds painted like Chinese fans…and rooting against the humans, none of whom had the requisite Eastern European or Arab villain accents. (more…)

The crowing we’re seeing from leftists over the belief that the roaring success of the anti-American, military-bashing, feast of political correctness that is Avatar represents some sort of validation of their worldview or a comeback for liberal film-making only begs one question: What took them so long?

You can’t blame them, though. After years of watching helplessly as liberal films flopped at a heartwarming 100% rate while conservative-themed films such as “Rambo,” “Gran Torino,” “Taken,” ”Knowing,” “and “Dark Knight” made money, it only makes sense that to lost-in-the-desert Lefties, Cameron’s garishly colored 3D cartoon makes hamburger look like a steak dinner.

There’s little doubt Avatar will end up as the number one or two top moneymaker worldwide of all time, out-performing the conservative Dark Knight (#5) and another epic that frequently finds its way on to a number of conservative movie lists as a favorite: Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (#2).

So the question is: Do politics have something to do with the an event film’s box-office success? To a point, I think so. But does the fact that the exponentially more awful but pro-military, pro-American, anti-Obama Transformers 2, which was also a monster hit this year, cancel Avatar out? For argument’s sake, let’s say not. (more…)

Over the last weekend, I had the privilege of seeing “Avatar.”  This is a film of epic proportions and although I had some problems with it cinematically, from a technological standpoint, I recommend that everyone should see it.  However, do not go and see it if you are expecting a live action film or good acting.  It is a combination of live action and animation and it should be viewed as such.  Just expect the equivalent of a technologically advanced, “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”  I was disappointed because I was expecting a fully integrated live action film.

However, there is one thing about the movie that really upsets me.  It is blatant anti-military and less blatant anti-American.  Without giving away too much of the plot, the bad guys in the movie are the United States Marines.  Apparently, in the future, the world has become one big country that seems to be controlled by the United States.  The United States Marines are sent to the planet of Pandora to destroy the opposition to the New World Order’s acquisition of its substitute for oil which just happens to be located on Pandora. (more…)

Nobody liked this movie when it was called “Body of Lies.” 

This is the most revealing trailer yet and thankfully we’re given a heads up as to what the story might really be about. Hollywood will look for cover with the excuse that “Green Zone” is based on a true story, but we all know which “true stories” Leftist Hollywood cherry picks in order to fulfill the demands of an anti-American narrative. For example, the true story of 100,000-plus Americans risking their lives to liberate and protect from terrorists people they’ve  never met is one “true story” we’ll see in hell first.

Everything you’d expect from director Paul Greengrass and Damon is here, including that goddamn shaky-cam (it’s not saying the Lord’s name in vain if you mean it). Damon’s character is the protagonist and he’s there to do good but it’s not the terrorists who are the antagonists getting in his way … no, it’s The United States of America personified by the Greg Kinnear character. (more…)

Last Friday, America was introduced to documentary filmmaker Phelim McAleer when he asked an inconvenient question of former vice-president and multi-millionaire climate-change spokesperson Al Gore.  The terse exchange has become a hit on YouTube, and has afforded Phelim several appearances this week on cable news shows.  In it, Phelim asks Mr. Gore to weigh in on a British judge’s ruling that nine facts cited in the vice-president’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth”, were in fact not true.  After struggling to remember the exact details of the case (it was so long ago…), Mr. Gore and Mr. McAleer wrangle briefly over whether or not polar bears are actually endangered.  Mr. Gore remarks that if they are not, “the polar bears didn’t get the message.”  Cute.

Of course, this answer is really at the very heart of the current debate over global climate change (formerly global warming, formerly global cooling), because whatever the polar bears might think about their own species’ global population, it is obviously far more than most every human environmentalists seem to care about theirs.

“Their is an anti-human element to many environmentalists.”  That was what Phelim told me the day I first met him and his lovely wife Ann McElhinney early last year.  The two had just spoken, quite passionately I might add (everything the two of them do is quite passionate), at a private gathering of conservatives in Sherman Oaks, California.  (more…)

Richard Dreyfuss and Elizabeth McGovern have travelled across the pond to star in a play about America’s torture of terrorist suspects.  That’s right, not “alleged” torture. It’s a fact as far as this play is concerned.  And, the funny thing about the Variety review is that the fact that the whole world knows that America is guilty of torture undermines the effect of the play: 

The terrible timing is not Kevin Spacey’s fault: He couldn’t have known “Complicit” — U.S. dramatist Joe Sutton’s fictional indictment of his country’s possible condoning of torture and rendition — would premiere after President Obama had taken steps to dismantle that practice.

Clips of a TV interview with real-life BBC senior political commentator Andrew Marr provide details of Ben’s inflammatory publication, none of which can be news to British audiences with even a cursory knowledge of Guantanamo and other widely exposed scandals. (more…)