Audiences Reject Ang Lee’s ‘Woodstock’

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…)

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Tags: 'Taking Woodstock', Ang Lee, box office, brokeback mountain, Christianity
Posted Sep 1st 2009 at 3:05 pm in Entertainment, News | 21579447 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/stkarnick/2009/09/01/audiences-shun-ang-lees-woodstock-comedy/Audiences+Reject+Ang+Lee%27s+%27Woodstock%27+2009-09-01+22%3A05%3A37S.T.+Karnick

Political Correctness is Torture

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…)

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Tags: "Boys Don't Cry", brokeback mountain, Cindy Sheehan, Elton JOhn, gay rights
Posted May 3rd 2009 at 9:30 pm in Featured Story, News, Politics | 125486No Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/abreitbart/2009/05/03/political-correctness-is-torture/Political+Correctness+is+Torture2009-05-04+04%3A30%3A08Andrew+Breitbart

Sarah Silverman Crowd: Too Cool For The Catskills

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…)

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Tags: borscht belt, brokeback mountain, Camp LeJeune, catskills, comedy
Posted Feb 27th 2009 at 10:17 am in Celebrity News, Media Criticism, Politics | 6847878 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/dkonig/2009/02/27/searching-for-comedy-in-the-land-of-the-true-beleiver/Sarah+Silverman+Crowd%3A+Too+Cool+For+The+Catskills2009-02-27+18%3A17%3A38Dave+Konig

2009 Oscars doomed? – FROST/NIXON, THE READER and MILK are among the 6 weakest grossing Best Picture nominees of the last decade!

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…)

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Tags: a.r. rahman, academy awards, alexandre desplat, babel, ben button
Posted Feb 7th 2009 at 10:47 pm in Entertainment, Featured Story, Reviews, Steve Mason's Box Office, Video | 4505871 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/smason/2009/02/07/oscarboxoffice/2009+Oscars+doomed%3F+-+FROST%2FNIXON%2C+THE+READER+and+MILK+are+among+the+6+weakest+grossing+Best+Picture+nominees+of+the+last+decade%212009-02-08+06%3A47%3A17Steve+Mason