Be sure to go listen to the latest episode of the HomeVideodrome podcast, where Jim Dirkes and I go off on tangents about Don Dokken, the horror that is the new sit-com Whitney, and how iTunes & NetFlix think we have crappy taste.  Of course, we also talk about movies, good, bad, and stupid.  So, go forth, listen, and enjoy!

Carlos was one of my favorite films of 2010, Olivier Assayas’s cracking chronicle of the career of notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal is as entertaining as thrillers get, all 339 minutes of it.  Split into three episodes that serve as a whole, Carlos moves along at a brilliant clip, especially given its length.  The only bit where it slows down is towards the very end, which feels like a function of the actual true-story, more so than stretchy writing.

Assayas takes the time needed to flesh out Carlos as a character, doing a brilliant job of depicting the on-the-run lifestyle held by wanted terrorist.  The way Assayas approaches Carlos as a character makes his film the antithesis of Steven Soderbergh’s intellectually dishonest Che, a similarly ambitious film that covers a similar figure (and is also available on Criterion).  Assayas depicts Carlos as a terrible man who does terrible things, but is fully realized on the screen as a human being, as opposed to the filmmaker’s idea of what Carlos should be.  This is a stark contrast to Soderbergh’s Che, in which he depicts the murderer-turned-left-wing folk hero as a wise holy man who can do no wrong, especially in the film’s second part The Guerrilla.

(more…)

Charlton Heston as Judah Ben Hur, the Jewish hero—notice the Star of David necklace—of Ben Hur, 1959.

The Los Angeles Times is, like the NY Times, a reliably anti-Israel newspaper whose liberal/progressive/leftist slant often veers into  support for the Jew-hatred that is the foundation of Palestinian terror.

Even their entertainment articles frequently marinate in a radical ideology that extends to an ignorant and vile denial of Jewish, not to mention literary history.

In this brief announcement of an anniversary release of a Ben Hur DVD, the Charlton Heston character, Judah Ben Hur, is referred to as a “Palestinian nobleman.”

In the book and in all the movies Judah Ben Hur is a Jewish merchant.

This charade of so-called Palestinian history is a replacement ideology, Jewish history erased by faux Palestinians, a post-modern construct with zero historical basis.

I might add that this is also a fabrication of movie history.

(more…)

The great pioneering director D.W. Griffith hired Rabbi Isadore Myers as the Jewish technical consultant on his great epic, Intolerance, 1916. Griffith was so happy with Rabbi Myer’s expert advice and attention to detail that he said to the good Rabbi:

“How can I ever repay you?”

Replied Rabbi Myers: “I have a daughter who would like to get into pictures.”

Rudolph Valentino at the height of his fame.

True to his word, Griffith extended a helping hand to Carmel, Rabbi Myer’s striking and talented daughter. Carmel Myers (1899 – 1980) appears fleetingly as a dancing girl in Intolerance and after production wrapped, she was signed as a contract Griffith player. A few months later, the future star Colleen Moore arrived in Hollywood, also under exclusive contract to Griffith.

Myers and Moore became close friends. In her excellent memoir Silent Star, Colleen Moore remembers that a club for young actresses—Our Club—was organized as a means of mutual support. The young actresses would lunch on Sunday, discuss movies, books, “boys” and generously feed one another tips on what roles were available at which studios. Myers was an active member. (more…)

Many of you know the story of Jerry Maguire, the agent with a conscience. Ya, I know. It’s only a movie. But sometimes movies can be great moral guideposts. Ironic that I should use one of Hollywood’s finest morality plays to illustrate how Tinseltown should operate at its most basic level.

In Jerry Maguire, the key conflict was Jerry’s realization that he was putting a pretty facade on the moral deterioration within his profession, and was in fact complicit in it. It took an injured hockey player’s young son telling him to fuck off and a bad dream for Maguire to realize the true ugliness of who and what he had become, especially when measured against the high standards of his idol and mentor, agent Dicky Fox. Those troubling events created in Maguire a perfect storm of revulsion, introspection and a commitment to reaffirm the basic principles of his profession, which he laid out in his memo “The Things We Think and Do Not Say.” In truth, he had me at hello. Tom’s a hottie! (more…)

Boy, did I ever kick a hornet’s nest with my tongue-in-cheek Archie Bunker-on-steroids BH post, “My Secret Life as a Conservative Republican.” Lefties called it Reaffirmation With Senator Smalley, which I expected. But Righties nearly wet their pants in fear, which I did not expect in the least. Where’s the pioneering spirit, self-confidence and gutter-level humor that founded this country?

People, this is OUR Fortress Hollywood! This is OUR sanctuary! Since when the hell do we care about what demagogues like Keith Olbermann think or say? Or any other mental tinfoil hat Lefties like Garofalo for that matter? It’s like Churchill worrying about Hitler calling him a fat cigar-chomping drunk! Who won that fight, and why? And who was in the right, despite all the insipid name-calling?

Time to grow a pair, people. It’s also time to raise the stakes. Now, I’ve heard from some contributors here at BH that it is really bad in Hollywood in places. That people might even lose their jobs if they spoke up like I do here. If true, that’s McCarthyism at its worst. Fortunately, that’s not my experience. I still have great relationships with people in the biz who could care less about politics. All they care about is finding great scripts or literary works to adapt, and telling great stories on film.

And that is where the battle really needs to be fought: on their playing ground. An insurgency of ideas, if you will. Example. Just under the Big Hollywood sign today, I saw the banner “TNT’s ‘The Closer’ Thrives on Strong Moral Foundation.” That PJM-linked article describes how The Closer, a show that portrays the border, the illegals situation, and even the cops themselves in very gritty and realistic fashion, is the top-rated scripted show on ad-supported cable since its inception. (more…)

During the Cold War, a slew of movies came out that dealt with the possibility of a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union. This is not surprising since the atom and hydrogen bombs were the most powerful weapons ever devised by man. Well, almost.

I’ll get to that somewhat nervy assertion in a bit, but first a little background.

Among the cinematic slew released during those years of cold, are two of my favorite films, Dr. Strangelove and Fail-Safe. Both dealt with strikingly similar themes, unintentional nuclear holocaust, yet in entirely different tones.  But cold war themes weren’t that varied by their very nature, since inevitably the worst case scenario was the best case plot device and nothing brings down the house like bringing down the house.

With that said, still, there’s so much similarity between the two stories that law suits were indeed filed and production schedules slowed. This worked out to Stanley Kubrick’s advantage as his Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb was released almost a year ahead of Sidney Lumet’s Fail-Safe. In my opinion Kubrick’s is a better film than Lumet’s and not due to slowed schedules, either. But both are magnificent, and because of their approaches to the topic, very different  and essential part of the genre. (more…)