A fight to the death in an urban hell between US Marines and an implacable, evil foe who murders civilians without a second thought – if only Hollywood had the moral courage to tell that story straight, the story of America’s finest who battled to victory over jihadi degenerates in Fallujah and throughout Iraq and Afghanistan.  But Hollywood can’t tell that story, not without exchanging the real menace our men and women are fighting everyday for a horde of CGI space aliens.  Sadly, the industry lacks the moral courage of the men and women it portrays.

Let’s be clear – Battle: Los Angeles is a terrific action film that makes no bones about its pro-American, pro-military agenda.  And that fact has invited carping from the usual suspects, lefty movie critics who work themselves up into a lather over the portrayal of better men than they will ever be.   

And note that when I use the term “men” here, I include the fighting women of the US armed forces – don’t worry, critics:  Heroines like Sergeant Leigh Ann Hester will protect you . . . just move to the rear with the children and try not to get in the way. 

The fact is that science fiction has long been a tool to comment on the present, including the relationship between our warriors and our society.  Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers was a fascinating depiction of military life as well as what the author saw as a degrading, decaying culture.  The Paul Verhoeven film of the same name, though different in tone, had its own insights into military vulture, including coed showers and a machine gun-packing Doogie Howser.

(more…)

Let’s be clear – the upper echelons of Hollywood are dominated by weirdos, losers and mutations.  I’m not judging – I live in LA, so naturally some of my best friends are weirdos, losers and mutations.  I’m simply pointing out a fact.  Most of the normal, hardworking, all-American folks in Hollywood are crew – and they showed it with their heartfelt booing of Michael Moore when he removed the muffin from his pie-hole just long enough to run down our country during the 2003 Oscar ceremony. 

But these great Americans are generally not members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and they don’t get to vote for who takes home the Oscar.  People like Sean Penn do.  And Tim Robbins.   And tranny vomit recipient Susan Sarandon.  

—–

These are the kind of folks who make up the majority of Oscar voters, so it’s no wonder that the Academy Awards show is so often a festival of nitwittery that leaves normal Americans scratching their heads wondering, “Um, what the hell was that?” 

Oscar has more than its share of astonishing failures, of crazy-uncle-locked-in-the-attic nods that the Academy sorely regretted about the time the after-party coke bowls ran dry.  The terrible Oscar choices listed here are only from the last few decades since the sting of choosing How Green Is My Valley over Citizen Kane and The Maltese Falcon has presumably faded since 1941– well, for some of us.  Oh, and you won’t find Marisa Tomei on this list – she rocks.  Deal with that, haters. 

So, in no particular order of insanity, here are Oscar’s 10 biggest recent screw-ups: ]

(more…)

If nothing else, you have to give the entertainment media credit for its inability to hit bottom. There is no low low enough for these people and just when you think they can’t possibly sink any lower, somehow they always manage to summon up that little something necessary to go the extra mile in the department of outright cruelty.

Last week the Screen Actors Guild announced that Ernest Borgnine will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at next years awards ceremony. Obviously this decision is a no-brainer. The 93 year-old Oscar-winner’s been making films since 1951 and is still active today, including a role in the upcoming Bruce Willis blockbuster “Red.” But now, no less than the L.A. Times is suggesting that SAG reconsider their decision to honor the man because of — their words, not mine — “his personal politics.” 

In an online article titled “Should SAG Be Honoring Ernest Borgnine?”, here’s the rationale: [emphasis mine] (more…)

Hollywood, particularly at awards ceremonies, prides itself as being courageous, ahead of the pack and willing to discuss and say the unpopular long before the rest of the world has caught up.

This is of course nonsense but it has proven a persistent and popular narrative. Hollywood does not like to admit it but the film industry is often woefully late coming to social and political change.

—–

It was only after gays became one of the world’s most protected and revered minorities that Hollywood felt it was ok to give them a movie all to themselves. And so Brokeback Mountain came to pass. And everyone in the industry congratulated themselves on how courageous they were tackling a subject that almost every family in America has had to deal with for decades when their sibling, child, uncle, aunt, mother or father came out of the closet.

The truth is that Hollywood generally makes movies that repeat received wisdom that has since been disproven by the facts.

Take communism. Please. (more…)

A great performance sticks with you long after you’ve scraped the theater floor-gum off your Keds.  But too often, professional drama geeks and mainstream media critics will bestow their blessing on freaky, idiosyncratic performances that hew to the party line *(cough) Heath Ledger (cough) Brokeback Mountain (cough)*, leaving the rest of us to scratch our collective heads.  If that was good, we wonder, how bad do you have to be to be bad?

What follows is a list of the Top 10 performances of the last quarter century.  It focuses on lead roles, or at least substantial ones – no cameos, thank you.  Interestingly, there are no straight comic performances here, and many of the roles are villains.  And it is also focused on movies people have actually heard of. 

So, this is not an exhaustive list – it overlooks plenty of great performances.  But it is my list and based on my criteria alone – and I’m sure I’ll hear about my myriad defects of insight, taste, breeding and general mental competence in the comments.  For example, Daniel Day Lewis is missing because I decided not to invest three hours into There Will Be Blood (2007) since after seeing the “I drink your milkshake!” clip I just can’t take it seriously.  (more…)

Director Ang Lee’s films tackle a wide variety of ostensible subjects and genres, but they’re consistent in conveying antinomian-individualist platitudes.

After his big international success with the superb martial arts saga “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” Chinese-born film director Ang Lee continued in the eclectic manner indicated by his earlier films, jumping from genre to genre and style to style. Over the years he has directed the genial “Sense and Sensibility,” the thoughtful historical film “Ride with the Devil,” the gloomy family drama “The Ice Storm,” the homosexual love story “Brokeback Mountain,” and the inept superhero action film Hulk, among others.

This eclecticism and the tendency toward a rather downbeat style have kept Lee from developing a large following among U.S. moviegoers, as has the fact that he tends not to work with the top stars or in popular genres. Thus it was perhaps to be expected that his latest, the historical comedy “Taking Woodstock,” didn’t do much business at U.S. movie theaters in its opening weekend, taking in only $3.7 million and finishing ninth in the box office standings. (more…)

This week’s Washington Times column:

Here we go again. The latest poster conservative for political-correctness-run-amok in a country careening downhill on left-wing, Democratic cruise control is Republican congresswoman Virginia Foxx.

Mrs. Foxx’s impropriety: The thought crime of arguing against “hate crime” laws by pointing out that Matthew Shepard – the tragic icon attached to the legislation – represents a salient argument against enacting them.

Mr. Shepard, the gay Wyoming teenager robbed and savagely beaten to death by drug-addled thugs in 1998, is the emotionally charged posthumous force behind the movement to pass hate crime laws. He got that way after a relentless, decade long mainstream media, Madison Avenue and Hollywood propaganda campaign to make his death a symbol of just-beneath-the-surface sadistic intolerance toward homosexuals. (more…)

The other night I did a show at the New York Friars Club. The Friars do a lot of shows for a lot of good causes: to raise school tuition for underprivileged kids in the arts, for charities that help disabled kids, for our returning heroes from Iraq and Afghanistan in the Wounded Warriors Project. I recently had the tremendous honor of performing my stand up act for United States Marines in the Wounded Warrior Battalion at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Apparently my act is very motivational – one lance corporal told me afterwards that during my act several marines actually left the theater and volunteered to go back to combat.

The show we did at the club the other night was for an equally momentous, but slightly less altruistic, purpose: it was Mickey Freeman’s birthday. Mickey is an octogenarian, possibly nonagenarian, borscht belt comedian, forever beloved as Private Zimmerman on Phil Silver’s old “Sgt Bilko” show. Mickey is a delightful little guy, if he’s even five foot tall he’s a very short five foot tall, and he can still reel off the rapid-fire classic one liners like a comedy machine (“I worked one hotel that was such a dump, the beds were unmade on the postcard!”). Everybody loves Mickey, and the show was a classic Friars affair: great older comics (like Eddie Lawrence, The Ol’ Philosopher: “What’s the matter, Bunky? Life getting you down?”) mixed in with comics like Ross Bennett, Jackie the Jokeman Martling, and those like me who are, if not quite young, are at least younger. With the younger Friars, our prostates are only slightly enlarged. (more…)

There is a phenomenon known as “the Oscar bounce.” When a movie receives Academy Award nominations, especially one of the five coveted Best Picture slots, ticket-buyers generally follow. The Oscar seal of approval used to mean something to the rank-and-file moviegoer, but that seems to have changed.

Only one of this year’s Best Picture nominees has inspired any real passion from the broad public. The almost-certain Best Picture winner is Slumdog Millionaire (Fox Searchlight), and its devotees, including critics and members of the Academy (not to mention yours truly), have made it a word-of-mouth smash hit. The Danny Boyle-directed feel-good Bollywood fusion movie made for a meager $14M added another $2.05M or so on Friday and is charting a 3-day course for about $7.4M. That will give the Slumdog a $77.4M take, and it could reach $90M-$95M before it’s through in American theatres.

(more…)