Hulu isn’t just for watching your favorite TV shows of today – and yesterday – any more.

The streaming platform is planning original content just like its 21st century peer Netflix, and one of the first new Hulu shows out of the gate feels like “West Wing Lite.”

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“Battleground,” debuting Feb. 14 on Hulu, takes us behind-the-scenes, “Office” style, of a senatorial campaign. The candidate in question is a Democrat, so expect plenty of scenes about believing in the cause, fighting the power, changing the system, etc.

The first glimpse of the new show does feature those moments, but the focus appears to be on the lifestyles of the young, overworked campaign staffers as opposed to policy wonk soliloquies.

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You have seen John Nolte’s countdown of the Top 25 Christmas Movies, but this list is something else – a list of movies worth watching that take place in or around Christmas but aren’t about Christmas itself.  They don’t necessarily embrace the spirit of the season – as to some of them, that’s putting it mildly – but each one is guaranteed to provide you at least a couple of hours blissfully sheltered from the mindless socialist rants of the health care demolition crew, from the lame excuses and transparent equivocations of the climate change scammers, and from Howard Zinn-scripted commie nonsense spouted by ignorant Hollywood nitwits.

Here they go, in no particular order:

10. Die Hard (1988): You’ve seen Die Hard probably a hundred times.  See it again, preferably uncut and not sanitized for TV.  Bruce Willis is a cop trapped alone while the incredible Alan Rickman and his band of fashion plate terrorists grab Nakatomi Plaza during the annual Christmas party.  The plot is simple, but the execution is simply awesome.  This movie is the archetype, the template  for a hundred subsequent movies that were pitched as “Die Hard in a (fill in the blank).”  For more fun, try my Die Hard-themed drinking game – take a pull on a Dos Equis every time something happens that creates or reaffirms a classic action film cliché.  Wisenheimer renegade cop who play by his own rules – gulp!  Lots of MP-5s and other (then) hi-tech armaments that fire a ton of rounds but rarely hit anything – gulp!  Villain who rises from the dead to be killed one last time – gulp!  You may want a designate a driver – cue Argyle, the streetwise sidekick in the limo (gulp)!   (more…)

Lest we forget, we are at war. 

Men and women at this very moment are fighting for their lives and for the lives of those they took an oath to protect and defend. 

There have been some recent films about war and what it means for the “average Joe” to be at war. A few of these are receiving deserving accolades for their realism. No, not the realism of blood and guts spilled, which is what war is, of course, but the realism of human behavior in adverse conditions, or as Hemingway put it, grace under pressure. This is the human condition that we all face, in one form or another, each and every day of our lives. Of course, most of us can face our pressures, make our decisions, get through our daily angst without wondering if a shell is going to go off five feet away, having the vehicle we’re riding in targeted for destruction or being exposed to combinations of chemicals not even named yet. No, we don’t have that extra worry. But some out there do.  (more…)

In less than two months we’ve lost three of the stars of “Battleground“ (1949). In December, Van Johnson was taken from us, last month it was Ricardo Montalban, and now James Whitmore. In the William Wellman classic, Whitmore plays Sgt. Kinnie, the battle hardened leader of a small group of soldiers lost and confused in the midst of the Battle of the Bulge. Because of frostbite, Kinnie limps through most of the film as he leads the men through increasingly difficult times right up to that dreaded moment where bayonets are necessary because the ammunition’s run out.

Whitmore’s superb in the role, was nominated for an Oscar as a supporting actor (he won the Golden Globe), and launched a sixty year career that would include memorable turns in “The Asphalt Jungle” (1950), “Kiss Me Kate” (1953), “Them!” (1954), “Planet of the Apes” (1968), “Tora! Tora! Tora!” (1970), “Chato’s Land” (1972), “The Shawshank Redemption” (1994), numerous television appearances and two successful one man stage shows as Will Rogers and Harry Truman. (more…)

In Doug TenNapel’s look at how politics undermine the enjoyment of modern day films, he writes:

…when a new trailer is released that takes place during the Iraq War[,] I turn to my wife and whisper, “Don’t tell me; it’s about a gung-ho soldier who wants to fight for the good cause of America then sees enough friendly fire and slaughtered children to gain a conscience that the whole war is a lie for oil.”

Don’t we all. (more…)