The following contains spoilers. You’ve been warned.

“Glee” was back last night after a month-long hiatus, which means that I’m back now – the morning after. Didja miss me? I missed you. And I missed “Glee” too. On what other show can I get my musical numbers and teenaged drama all wrapped in a giant bow of glorious propaganda?

There is no other.

This week, “Glee” was high on love, down on the military, and big on acceptance. Unless, of course, you actually want to join the military, in which case it’s all doom on you, and the military turns you into a drug addict and therefore your widowed mother into a liar.

Hmm… let me back up a moment.

Toward the beginning of the episode, Finn confesses to Mr. Schuester that he met with a recruiter… an army recruiter. The Glee Club coach appears troubled by the news, because you know, who joins the military unless they have to? (more…)

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Yep, things are changing in Hollywood. Though Hollywood’s far from perfect or fair, this kind of open patriotism and honoring of our military seemed all but extinct 5 years ago.

In fact, 5 years ago Hollywood was shamelessly lying to us about how patriotism didn’t sell.

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Alec, you need to stop treating American soldiers like they were members of your own family.  They deserve better than that.

Not content with achieving Father of the Year Emeritus status for his unique, outside-the-box parenting skills, Alec Baldwin spent yesterday evening on Twitter to once again offer his nuanced, carefully researched insights into a variety of important topics.  In doing so, he offered a powerful challenge to such innovators as Oliver Stone, Sean Penn and even Hanoi Jane for the coveted title of “Hollywood’s Biggest Idiot.”

In the past, I’ve even taken to these pages to defend Alec as a performer.  But as amusing as he is on screen, the fact is that he is a moral illiterate who refuses to let his manifest ignorance hinder his desire to have himself taken seriously as something more than an actor. 

Alec wants to be just like Ronald Reagan, except he’s handicapped by some challenges the Gipper didn’t face – like being a leftist, a jerk and a fool.

The bloviating buffoon apparently got agitated because Georgia decided to execute a cop killer who had spent 22 years failing to convince any jury or judge that the overwhelming evidence against him was inadequate.  Ironically, the police officer Troy Davis finished off with a bullet to the head was an Army veteran – and judging from Alec’s attitude toward our warriors as manifested in his subsequent tweets, he probably thought that fact supported sparing the killer of Officer Mark MacPhail, Sr.

Here’s a selection of some of his inane tweets from his Twitter timeline.  Let’s see who fails to live up to Alec’s exacting standards!

Well, Michelle Malkin certainly does:

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FADE IN:

INT.   HOLLYWOOD STUDIO CONFERENCE ROOM – DAY

“Hurt Locker” scribe MARK BOAL slams his mighty fist down hard on the conference room table, making the HOLLYWOOD EXECUTIVES surrounding him jump in their leather seats.

MARK BOAL

Now listen up.  I don’t care about your liberal preconceptions and your smug certainty that you’re somehow better than those men and women out there in Afghanistan and Iraq just because you work in the movie industry and they actually work!

EXECUTIVE NO. 1

But, but…

MARK BOAL (pointing an accusing finger)

Put a sock in it, meat puppet!  You want to use those American heroes as a backdrop for some politician’s reelection campaign?  Well, you can take my Oscar and stick it in your Fonda-hole!  I’m not having any part of it!

Ed. Note:  We now pause for a photo of sensitive, introspective hipster Boal:

Big Hollywood has been all over the story of screenwriter Mark Boal’s collaboration with the Obama campaign’s usurpation of the work of our SEALs and other covert warriors in hunting down Osama bin Laden.  It’s outrageous – you know you’ve crossed a line in the sand of decency when even Jurassic liberal-saur Maureen Dowd seems creeped out by your shameless SEALS-ploitation.

As Big Hollywood has pointed out before, Boal is Hollywood’s go-to guy for sending the leftist message du jour about our troops.  When President Bush was in office and the party line was that fighting terrorists was a bad thing, Boal was there with In the Valley of Elah (2007).  That one painted our soldiers as hideous psychopaths driven crazy by the war, so nuts and evil they murdered one of their own because of, well, Bush or something.

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Retired Navy Warrant Officer, Dan Martin, has adopted three different, female German shepherds; Lucy, a black and tan; Zoe, an all black one; and Ella, an all white one. He reflects upon their nature and observes Ella’s surprising transition from docile to wild.

I don’t know about all dogs, but German Shepherds are bred to be highly focused, which helps explain some of their neurotic, obsessive/compulsive behavior such as digging, chewing, tail chasing, scratching, fixating on red laser points.

If they’re not working, they need to be doing “something”. It’s their ability to focus that keeps them on guard over a flock of sheep, maintaining the perimeter, preventing sheep from straying.

But they also like to focus on their master. They scrutinize every move and gesture I make. What am I doing? What next? Is he getting food? Can I have some? Does he look like he’s about to take us for a walk? He’s getting his car keys. Does that mean we go to the dog park or is he going away to the place where he brings back bags of food? Is he wanting to rub my belly? Huh? Please, can’t you see I’m asking you to with my eyes? Why’s he petting the other dog? What about me? My turn? Can I have some of your food?

The genius of dogs is their ability to read people.

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Ed. Note:  Please welcome Mark to the Big Hollywood family. We want him to return.

It took forty years, but I’m finally on a roll. In writing fiction, that is.

Back in 1970, I was an eighteen year old, budding virtuoso on acoustic fingerstyle guitar, the kind of stuff Leo Kottke and John Fahey were doing. I was poor, and figured that in order to develop my music as I desired, I’d need a separate income. I was going to junior college, and fell in love with creative writing. Foolishly (hey, I was young!), I became convinced I could make a good living as a writer, and decided to pursue that parallel to my practice of music.

You can hear some of my music here and watch a few videos here:

Fast forward to 9/11/2001. I’d already caught on to reading early bloggers like Instapundit when the monsters struck the Twin Towers. I was shaken and infuriated to the core, and then discovered I had coronary disease after a heart attack three days later. I recovered with two implanted stents. I was not yet fifty, had yet to make a dime on either my music or prose, and now I was feeling mortal, yet patriotic like never before. So I got on the bandwagon and began blogging as Sunny Days in Heaven, a conservative Catholic blog that attracted 50 or 60 readers on a good day. Never had an Instalanche.

I blogged a few years with diminishing returns, and was going to quit when a start-up, Spero News, asked me to contribute. Just then, a Hollywood promo agency decided that bloggers could help sell a movie, and began inviting them to screenings. Free movies? Sign me up.

The first movie I reviewed was the delightful and fun, Serenity. I predicted it would be a smash hit. That was not to be, alas. 

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You’ve certainly heard of the new film Super 8.  Not the self-serving Anthony Weiner autobiography– the new summer flick about a small town in 1979 invaded by a strange alien creature that was written and directed by J.J. Abrams and produced by Steven Spielberg.  With that pedigree in mind, I took off work early to take the little monsters to see it in the hopes that it would do what the trailers seemed to promise – capture the feeling of those uniquely American summer movies of the 70’s and 80’s like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. and The Goonies that mixed action, laughs, and special effects together in a way we see all too rarely in the Michael Bay world of today.

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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?

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Oscar-winning screenwriter Mark Boal must be thrilled about this whole Libya thing, since he seems to be making a cottage industry out of articles, books and movies about American soldiers and how they are a bunch of incorrigible psychos whose desire to murder everyone they see is constrained only by their limited intellect.  Who knows what doors the latest “kinetic military action” might open for him in Tinseltown.

His current anti-soldier hit piece, The Kill Team, is about a group of disgraceful scumbags in Afghanistan who decided to murder several civilians.  With it, Boal seems to be following his tried and true formula – write something for publication in a past-its-prime magazine that makes American troops look like cro-magnons then work to turn it into a movie.  He took a Playboy article on Americans murdering each other and soon we had In the Valley of Elah.  You may have seen it – though the odds are stacked against it.  It was ignored by popular demand.

Another article, this one on bomb disposal experts, became The Hurt Locker, which took some of the bravest and most dedicated people in our armed forces and made them out as undisciplined, drunken, unprofessional clowns.  In fact, Boal got sued by one of the guys he allegedly wrote about.  To be fair, it did win an Academy Award . . . from the same band of geniuses who passed over Saving Private Ryan in favor of Shakespeare In Love and once picked as “Best Song” the unforgettable hit “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp.”  So, there’s that.

Boal’s technique is to chronicle the most degenerate fringes of the warfighters’ experience and repackage the most sordid episodes as its totality.  One can easily imagine the Rolling Stone editors eager for the chance to please their dwindling audience of aging Garfunkel-digging hippies and Chomsky-devouring clove-smokers with another prejudice-reinforcing piece about how those Middle-American Army guys are barely one step above gorillas.  Rolling Stone even promises a glimpse at the grim photos the mean old Pentagon doesn’t want you to see – as if there was some moral imperative for the military to provide gist for the jihadi propaganda mill.  Hey, that’s Boal and Rolling Stones’ job!

What is particularly cunning in his approach is that there is no excuse for the crimes these savages committed, and Boal uses this fact to deflect any kind of perspective.  Hundreds of thousands of young, heavily-armed and stressed American men and women have served overseas since 9/11.  Several dozen have murdered people.  You won’t find any city in America with a murder rate like that for that demographic. 

(more…)

[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.]

The good news first – there’s no pinko sucker punch in The American despite the presence of chatty progressive George Clooney in the title role.  Sure, there’s a tiny bit of the hackneyed “American learns about life from the earthy foreigners who truly know how to live” cliché, but not much.  Now the bad news:  Not only is there no sucker punch but there’s no punch at all.

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This is a technically well-written script by Rowan Joffe that tells a story that made me want to lick my finger and stick it in a socket to jump start my soul.  Stop me if you’ve heard this before, which pretty much means stop me now.  Clooney plays a hit man who “wants out” and hides in an Italian village while he puts together his One Last Job.  He interacts with a few locals, sips coffee, acts paranoid, and awaits the series of twists and betrayals everyone sees coming a mile away.  Arrivederchi, two hours of your life.

I almost wish that the script had empowered Clooney’s Hollywood lib instincts so I could have felt something while reading the script other than the same exhausted ennui that the main character is supposed to feel.  Yeah, he’s burned out and morally and emotionally bereft.  We get it.  I mean, we’ve only seen this movie and this character, what . . . 500 times?  Except this one is hiding out in the same soul-regenerating village Italian countryside we’ve seen in, what . . . 500 other movies? 

Call it Clash of the Cliches.  Too bad they never actually unleash the kraken.

Let’s catalog some of the other clichés: (more…)

I have to admit I never cared for the action films back in the eighties. They seemed silly and mindless. The two biggest stars of the genre, Schwarzenegger and Stallone were barely capable of English; and the plots were as predictable as the wigs on a metal band.

It was the Reagan era, and I wanted no part of it, or it’s popular films. Looking back I realize that I was probably too hard on both the President and the genre. Most of my opposition to Reagan was his crackdown on drugs, and that probably came from his youth. In old Hollywood, it was the communists who tended to be dope fiends, so in his mind there was a correlation. (Come to think of it, most of the dope fiends in MY youth were communists as well.)

Looking back I realize that I agree with much of what Reagan stood for. His opposition to an ever growing government, matches mine; and his love for America’s promises of freedom prosperity and liberty, are things I cherish as well. Today, I can also enjoy a good action film. (more…)

Call me fussy, but I prefer that my conspiracies and cover-ups actually involve conspiracies and cover-ups.  The Tillman Story, a new leftist documentary on football player turned Army Airborne Ranger turned friendly fire casualty turned symbol of…something…posits a massive conspiracy to do…something…and an enormous cover-up of…something…but never quite explains what.  However, there are lots of ominous shots of George Bush and Karl Rove, so we can somehow gather that whatever it is is, in some way, all Bushitler’s fault.

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This is a bad film, both in its execution and its intent.  As a lawyer, it insults my intelligence.  As a veteran, it insults my professionalism.  As an audience member, it failed me as a film.  Pat Tillman, first seen in footage sitting nearly silently in a studio, begins the film as a cipher and ends as a cipher.  I know little more about the man or his motivations than I did coming in.  All I know is that I could not wait for it to be over.

This over-praised documentary is based on the premise that there was an enormous, mysterious conspiracy surrounding the death of Pat Tillman, which is a problem for the filmmaker since it is clear there is no giant, mysterious conspiracy surrounding the death of Pat Tillman.  The filmmakers cannot explain who conspired, or what they conspired to do.  Was there a cover-up?  Of what?  The film desperately wants there to be one, as does the family – perhaps that would give them the story the producers need and generate the meaning the family wants.  But, as the film demonstrates beyond all reasonable doubt, there isn’t one.  This is a story of mistakes, not malice. (more…)

It’s pretty clear from the loud and explodey and awesome trailer of the upcoming A-Team remake that the script version the Sucker Punch Squad’s source obtained was a draft or two back from the final shooting script.  That’s a good thing, because the old script was a little slower, left out some treasured icons (Where’s the van!) and its B.A. Baracus had nowhere near the original show’s essential Mr. T-errificness.

So, all hail the new A-Team.  I just hope they’ve fixed the one hackey sucker punch aspect – the lame use of U.S. contractors as, once again, the villain du jour.

Now, anyone who at any point in the 1980s was unable to legally drive knows The A-Team and its mythology.  Basically, a bunch of Vietnam War commandos are falsely accused of a crime, escape from a stockade and dodge the military police while acting as soldiers of fortune.  George Peppard was their leader Hannibal Smith, Dirk Benedict was Face, the good-looking con man, Dwight Schultz was “Howlin’ Mad” Murdock, the resident wacko, and Mr. T portrayed, well, pretty much himself.

Every week they crashed a lot of cars, shot millions of bullets without ever hitting anything, made smartass remarks and issued memorable catchphrases.  This was all highly entertaining – particularly if you were a college student like me who enjoyed accepting creative drinking game challenges.  Here’s a hint – designate not just a driver but a stretcher-bearer if you dare join in a round of “Let’s Watch The A-Team and Down a Brew Whenever Something Explodes.”  (more…)

Fresh and innovative, Patrol Base Jaker  is a captivating retelling of the remarkable history of Afghanistan from the Russian invasion to the current U.S. counterinsurgency operation. Walk in the boots of the Marine combat and civil affairs teams in Helmand Province, Afghanistan as they fight to turn the tide against a resurgent Taliban and Al Qaeda. Travel to the front lines where U.S. Marines stand at a wicked intersection of war, radical Islam, international drug trade, reconstruction, and a counterinsurgency strategy designed to reestablish the rule of law in Afghanistan.

vimeo Patrol Base Jaker

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Did you ever hear Jimmy Carter sound like a war hawk? Neither had we. Until we saw Patrol Base Jaker. Seriously, check out the trailer and you won’t believe your ears. And this is no Michael Moore hatchet job either…piecing together sound bytes to create some sort of Franken-statement. It’s all authentic Jimmy.

But aside from the shockingly pro-military statements from Carter (and Obama, by the way) what we really loved about PBJ is the fact that it documents a tremendous US military success story in Afghanistan…the kind you’ll never find in the pages of the New York Times or on any of the so-called “mainstream” news networks. (more…)

Last week, Uncle Pete sent me a box full of history.  Books, photos, news clippings and the granddaddy of them all… a scrapbook meticulously prepared and maintained by an Australian girl during the war and sent to Uncle Pete’s mother.  That, however, is a story for next week.

As I carefully made my way through the contents of this box, I realized that I was holding history in my hands.  It was quite a feeling let me tell you.  I hope to share some of the items as the weeks commence.

PFC Pete Cavo with 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division

Episode two returns us to Guadalcanal.  The Marines have been here a while and they are tired, hungry and low on supplies.  I’m beginning to recognize some of these guys.  Marines at rest are an amusing bunch.  It’s an attitude that’s difficult to capture and almost impossible to reproduce.  Too often, Hollywood goes for the stereotypes.  Director David Nutter handles the men in these situations deftly.

The age-old rivalry between the US Army and Marines made me chuckle.  Marines have always been asked to do more with less and that is a tradition that continues today.  The pride that is instilled in every Marine is demonstrated by Chesty Puller’s order that all personnel be freshly shaved upon the arrival of the Army.  Then, rather than call attention to their tattered uniforms, Puller praises his “raggedy-ass Marines,” declaring that they “look this way for a reason.” (more…)

This weekend, on the recommendation of a friend, my wife and I went to see “Dear John”.  I know, I know… I’m a little late to the game.  It seems this is the movie that briefly unseated the mighty “Avatar” (then in its 8th week) from the #1 slot a few weeks back.

Yeah, it’s a “chick flick” and I’m sure the film did most of its initial box office due to the popularity of its male lead, Channing Tatum.  The ladies love them some Channing Tatum.  He seems like a nice enough fellow; he’s a believable actor.  Aside from the fact that, watching him, I’m constantly reminded that I really need to work my core (we actors are a generally insecure and superficial lot), what’s not to like?  I first saw him in the excellent “A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints” and the guy impressed me.

In “Dear John,” Tatum plays Staff Sergeant John Tyree, a Green Beret who meets and falls in love with Savannah Curtis (played by Amanda Seyfried), while home on leave.  

Savannah is a pretty and intelligent young woman with a solid set of values.  She doesn’t drink, smoke or sleep around and seems at ease in her own skin.  She is confident, compassionate and gives freely of her time and energy to her friends and the larger community. (more…)

It’s hard to know what to make of a rich Hollywood mogul who announces that he “believe[s] in eco-terrorism” yet has a carbon footprint of his own that does to the environment what Godzilla did to Bambi.  As Pam Meister has pointed out here at Big Hollywood, it looks as though Cameron lives like a modern day rajah at his multi-mansion compound in Malibu and presides over an array of sprawling production facilities.  The greenest thing about this guy is the cash in his vault.

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. (more…)

So apparently a Michigan defense contractor has pissed off Muslim groups, by inscribing coded Biblical references on rifles it sells to the American military. The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations claims these religious references send a “negative message” to the Muslim world.

To quote Dolly Parton, here we go again. Groups like CAIR rarely have their priorities in place -they’re always “reacting angrily” to perceived slights or hypothetical backlashes – when they really should be reacting angrily to those who commit atrocities in the name of Islam.

But you know who really gets my gopher? Mikey Weinstein, president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. He says the gun sights not only give our enemies a propaganda tool, but adds, “I don’t have to wonder … how the American public would react if citations from the Koran were being inscribed onto these U.S. armed forces gun sights instead.” (more…)

Stop the servers!  Jackson Williams at the Huffington Post has a newsflash:  Actor Matthew Marsden Hides His Right-Wing Political Views.

This raises a couple of questions.  The first is, “Who is Mathew Marsden?”  Well, he was an up-and-coming young English singer and actor with athletic roles in Rambo and Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen.  Which leads to the second question – why would writer Jackson Williams be so giddy about the revelation that Marsden apparently does not hew obediently to the Hollywood left’s party line?

Well, it sure isn’t because he’s interested in giving Marsden’s career a boost.  Like the grinning little snot in every elementary school class who gets off on the high of narc-ing out the other kids to the schoolmarm, Jackson’s purpose was to tattle to every producer, agent, actor and other Hollywoodoid that Marsden had been a bad, bad boy.  He exercised his right to think for himself. Maybe Jackson should wear a sash:  “Political Hall Monitor.”  But it’s clear that his article is simply a nomination of Marsden for a spot on the New Hollywood Blacklist. (more…)

Mark Twain’s famous quote, “Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel,” resonates loudly in my mind as I finish Sarah Palin’s captivating story, Going Rogue.

But Palin ain’t buying it by the barrel, she’s got a whole pipeline of pure grade indigo flowing from the North Slope as she pumps up the volume on her NY Times #1 bestselling memoir.

When I got about halfway through the book I set it down, stepped outside of my Washington, DC townhouse and went for a run around the U.S. Capitol. Listening to the Outlaws, Marshall Tucker Band, and Lil Bow Wow (my daughter slipped that one in there) on my iPod, the recurrent thought in my mind was that this woman is far more qualified to be president of the United States than the current occupant of the White House. (more…)

The men and women who earn the right to wear eagle, globe and anchor of the United States Marine Corps are a special breed.   To those outside the Corps, they talk funny.  They look funny.  They are extremely impressed with themselves – and they have every right to be. 

My beloved United States Army is a blunt instrument, a magnificent club that has pummels our nation’s enemies into submission.  But the Marines are America’s rapier, a razor sharp weapon of war that has never been bested and never will be.  For over two centuries, the United States Marine Corps has been fighting our country’s battles in the air, on land and sea.  They don’t give up.  They don’t quit.  There’s no word for retreat in a Marine’s vocabulary.  And they are making history even today in the mountains of Afghanistan and elsewhere.

November 10th is the Corps’ 234th birthday.  With the indulgence of my Devil Dog brethren, here is this Army veteran’s countdown of the Top Ten Marine Corp movies: (more…)