It’s hard enough for a young actor to win over a casting agent, producer or even director to score a role.

Child star Nathan Gamble landed his biggest part to date by charming a bottlenose dolphin.

Gamble’s audition for the lead in “Dolphin Tale” meant spending some quality time with Winter, the dolphin famous for her prosthetic tail.

“There so much like humans. They have to like you and be comfortable with you,” Gamble tells Big Hollywood. “You have to be very respectful, and calm, and do the hand signals [the trainers] tell you.”

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The producers of “The Blind Side” are back with another true story family feature. “Dolphin Tale” is inspired by Winter, a dolphin that swims with a prosthetic tail and serves as encouragement for handicapped people of all ages.

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The story follows Sawyer (Nathan Gamble), a quiet kid whose cousin and only real friend (Austin Stowell) has just shipped off to the military. During a visit to the beach, Sawyer finds a dolphin, Winter, tangled in a crab trap and helps the team from Tampa Bay’s Clearwater Marine Aquarium to rescue her. When the injury requires Clearwater director Dr. Clay Haskett (Harry Connick Jr.) to amputate Winter’s tail, Sawyer and Haskett’s chatterbox daughter Hazel (Cozi Zuehlsdorff) are there to help Winter learn to swim again. But Winter’s new swimming style puts pressure on her spinal cord and threatens to paralyze her.

Meanwhile Sawyer’s cousin returns home after being wounded in an explosion during his tour of duty. While visiting him at a veteran’s hospital, Sawyer runs into prosthetics specialist Dr. Cameron McCarthy (Morgan Freeman). In a race against time, Sawyer convinces the doctor to create a prosthetic tail for Winter while financial concerns threaten to close Clearwater permanently.

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Ashley Judd’s no conservative, that’s for sure, but the predicted backlash has already begun. Here’s where it started – excerpts from her memoir:

Along with other performers, YouthAIDS was supported by rap and hip-hop artists like Snoop Dogg and P. Diddy to spread the message…um, who? Those names were a red flag.

“As far as I’m concerned, most rap and hip-hop music — with it’s rape culture and insanely abusive lyrics and depictions of girls and women as ‘ho’s’ — is the contemporary soundtrack of misogyny.

“I believe that the social construction of gender — the cultural beliefs and practices that divide the sexes and institutionalize and normalize the unequal treatment of girls and women, privilege the interests of boys and men, and, most nefariously, incessantly sexualize girls and women — is the root cause of poverty and suffering around the world.”

After the backlash hit, Judd got in touch with rap mogul Russell Simmons. He interviewed her for his website. To her credit she didn’t appear to back down:

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There are certain things that make you a man.  It’s not a matter of mere plumbing or chromosomes.  A man is more than that.  A true man defeats his enemies.  A true man can make it happen with the ladies.  A true man can repeat, verbatim, all of the classic dialogue from Heat.

Heat (1995) is more than just a heist film – it’s an epic, a shambling three-hour monster of a movie that soars and frustrates, leaves your jaw hanging in awe and you scratching your head wondering what the hell is going on.  The star power it unleashes is literally unparalleled, the direction by Michal Mann is superb, the music is incredible (go buy the soundtrack now), and the cinematography creates a vision of Los Angeles that is more real than the reality.

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I will not insult your manhood by recapping the plot.  Actually, it’s so dense and convoluted it would take forever anyway.  Plus, there are the tangents that I still don’t fully get – what the hell is that whole Natalie Portman subplot doing in there anyway?  And some parts you just have to see for yourself – think Waingro’s plot line.  Bottom line: if you have never seen Heat, go buy it immediately.  Until you do, if you are biologically male, you are not entitled to stand while urinating.

For many of us, Heat has a personal connection that comes from both its time and place.  I saw Heat in Houston the day it came out (December 15, 1995), having been waiting for it for months thanks to the remarkable trailer.  I was there for a buddy’s wedding the next day; at that wedding, I would meet my hot wife for the first time.  About a month after, the giant law firm I was then slaving away for moved into the 444 South Flower building.  You probably know it best as the bank De Niro’s crew robs.  Before I quit (I had more business than many of the partners but they offered me the same crappy $500 bonus they gave to the guy caught sleeping under his desk, so I counter-offered that I’d keep everything), I must have walked past the spot where Val Kilmer first opens up with his CAR-15 a hundred times thinking, “Dude, I know where you’re coming from.” (more…)

Armed with her Master’s Degree from Harvard, which she earned in less than a year, Ashley Judd is back in public and showing off her smarts. She was recently in Kentucky to protest against a type of coal mining. Everybody, please boo loudly at the evil coal company if you love Mother Gaia.

Seems environmentalist Ms. Judd has a problem with coal mined by the mountain top removal method. Fair enough! I am sure she came to Kentucky, which she claims as her “home” even though she was born in California and has never maintained a residence there in her adult life, by public transport or maybe by carpool.

While giving a speech to the National Press Club last month she tried to poke a little fun at the coal mining folks and a  golf event they were hosting by saying, “”I’m not too keen on reinforcing stereotypes about my people, but I don’t know a lot of hillbillies who golf.”  Being one of “her people” I would like to tell Ms. Judd that even though she has a phantom degree from U.K. and a quickly earned degree from Harvard, she as we say in the South, “really showed her ass.”  For those of you who might not understand that idiom means Ms. Judd has yet again showed her ignorance. (more…)

Ashley Judd’s been running around on a crusade to strengthen the power our oil rich-enemies hold over us and to put coal miners out of work. She calls it “opposing mountaintop removal mining,” but those of us who live in the real world understand the human consequences of her thoughtless narcissism. Speaking for all “hillbillies,” the actress went so far as to single out for criticism golf courses that have been built atop former mining sites, stating “I don’t know a lot of hillbillies who golf.”

Well, the “hillbillies” have struck back. The poster below was on display at a recent coal industry-sponsored golf tournament in Kentucky:

If you want to understand why Hollywoodists are so enamored with dictators, look no further than this. Ashley Judd and Oliver Stone and Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn despise being questioned, mocked and challenged by the hoi polloi, which is why you’ll never hear them criticize a Hugo Chavez for putting the “opposition media” out of business.

Judd’s crusade against the “rape of Appalachia” epitomizes thoughtless and cruel activism. If you remember, when she was asked how she planned to replace the working class jobs her activism against “environmental genocide” would eliminate, she freaked out and accused the interviewer of playing a trick on her. (more…)

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CNSNews asks actor/activist Ashley Judd a perfectly straight-forward question about what to do with the Appalachian coalminers she’s absolutely determined to see banished to the unemployment line, and in response she  freaks out that she’s being tricked.

CNS: “So the government should shut down the mine and then pay for these people to be trained in a new job?”

JUDD: “You know, I’m not going to get into that kind of detail because there are people who are policy expert at those particular kinds of questions. John could answer it.  And I frankly don’t know who you are and I kind of have a feeling you’re trying to trick me.”

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By now most of you have seen this dishonest attack on Governor Sarah Palin narrated by Ashley Judd:

Hi, I’m Ashley Judd, and years ago I was best known for starring in the same movie again and again before all but disappearing after accepting a supporting role in something with both “ya ya” and “sisterhood” in the title. I’m here today, hoping to endear myself again with Hollywood by savaging Sarah Palin because my manager told me that was my last, best shot at a late career gasp.

Obviously, I’m paraphrasing. (more…)

Shooting animals is so “brutal,” especially if they are shot from the air, right? Slamming Sarah Palin for “casting aside science” and “championing the slaughter of wildlife,” one would think that Ashley Judd’s stance in a new ad on hunting is beyond reproach. After all, Judd certainly cares more about animals, right?

Yet, sometimes the emotional response isn’t the most responsible one. In this case, hunting is done to keep animals from dying from starvation and to maintain higher quality populations. The problem is that in the wild, animal populations go through what are called “boom and crash” cycles – animal populations expand to consume the available food supplies and when those are exhausted, the animals starve and the populations crash. Starvation also makes the animals more susceptible to disease. Hunters stabilize populations, and keep those problems from recurring.

Ironically, the hunters and Sarah Palin seem to know a lot more of what is in the wolves’ and their preys’ interests than the wolves’ supposed defenders. Shooting might not be perfect (despite the ad’s exaggerations, the wolf might not die instantly), but stabilizing the wolves’ population through shooting some animals is probably a less painful way for an animal to die than through starvation. In addition, starvation would have impacted virtually all the wolves, but only a fraction of the animals risk suffering any trauma from being shot. (more…)

I grew up in a small town in Eastern Kentucky. There were two major industries there - an oil company and a steel mill, and yet I’m only the seventh most famous person from that town.

There was Henry Clay back in the pre-Civil War day who was a senator and known as “The Great Compromiser, ¨ which means he was the John McCain of his day with no core beliefs he wouldn’t drop for the sake of getting along.

Ashland Kentucky also produced that achy breaky Billy Ray Cyrus, game show host Chuck Woolery and three Judds. Ashley Judd wasn’t born there but lived back in the land where coal meets iron off and on as she was growing up. Ashley went on to study at The University of Kentucky where she majored in anthropology, theater and woman’s studies, which meant she was destined for Hollywood, a counseling job at the U of K student center or management at the local McDonalds. (more…)