Michael Moore’s Anti-Americanism Doesn’t Always Sell Overseas

This week, as the buildup to the upcoming movie “G.I. Joe” continues, the L.A. Times claimed that…

Yet overseas, where big action films often earn 60% or more of their ticket sales, rah-rah American sentiment doesn’t play well. So those references have vanished from the advertising.

Big Hollywood’s John Nolte gave that theory a thorough fisking, providing numbers showing that while “rah-rah America” movies aren’t guaranteed big foreign box-office returns, they aren’t automatically guaranteed to fail. He also points out that many “anti-rah rah” movies have even less appeal.

Oh, is it still okay to say “foreign?” Just checking, seeing as many schools are replacing “foreign language” departments with World Language departments. We’re all just one, big, happy World Family, right?

Okay, back to the topic at hand. John’s post got me to thinking. If anti-war movies such as “Rendition” and “A Mighty Heart,” despite the hype and the A-list star roster didn’t bring in the beaucoup bucks, how about anti-American movies made by one of the biggest anti-Americans on the planet, Michael Moore? (more…)

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Tags: A Mighty Heart, academy award, Bowling for Columbine, Cannes, Capitalism: A Love Story.
Posted Aug 5th 2009 at 7:07 am in Featured Story, Film, Politics | 198370117 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/pmeister/2009/08/05/michael-moores-anti-americanism-doesnt-always-sell-overseas-either/Michael+Moore%27s+Anti-Americanism+Doesn%27t+Always+Sell+Overseas2009-08-05+14%3A07%3A22Pam+Meister

‘Antichrist’: Lars von Trier Bores Me

Antichrist hasn’t even come out in the United States and I’m already bored.  

If you haven’t heard about Antichrist yet, you will.  It’s the latest movie from Danish art film director Lars von Trier, who has made a name for himself with critically-hailed movies that push the limits his audiences’ tolerance for bizarre sex, bloody violence and artistic pretension.  One of his recent movies focused on an American town where slavery never ended, while another had pretty much an entire American village raping Nicole Kidman.  A third film ends with the American authorities hanging Icelandic rock waif Bjork.   Sensing some themes?   By all accounts, Antichrist is a similarly delightful romp.

Naturally, the critics adore him, and combined with the fact that von Trier despises Americans, you would expect that he would get cut some slack by the French audience at Cannes last weekend when the festival screened Antichrist.  Not so – the few cheers were apparently drowned out by a tsunami of boos when the lights went up.  What happened?  

Maybe, just maybe, people are starting to catch on to the fact that shocking art has become anything but.  The problem for Mr. von Trier and those like him who specialize in transgressive art is that there’s really very little in the way of conventional morality left to transgress.  (more…)

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Tags: Antichrist, Bjork, Cannes, Lars von Trier, nicole kidman
Posted May 22nd 2009 at 5:01 am in Entertainment, Featured Story | 137998No Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/kschlichter/2009/05/22/nothing%e2%80%99s-shocking/%27Antichrist%27%3A+Lars+von+Trier+Bores+Me2009-05-22+12%3A01%3A01Kurt+Schlichter

Cannes’ Voyage to the Neverland of Irrelevancy

During the 1963 Moscow International Film Festival, few doubted Federico Fellini’s “8 ½” was a masterpiece. The film was not merely contending for the Grand Prize; it was clear that no conventional prize could put a tag on the sheer artistic genius and refreshing power of the movie. Threatened by Fellini’s highly formalistic language, the Communist Party’s movie department (who were making decisions behind the scenes), as usual, suspected something potentially harmful for the cause of the international proletariat. They put pressure on the head of the jury, a Soviet filmmaker Grigori Chukhrai, not to award the Grand Prize to “8 ½.”

Chukhrai was in a tight spot. He had his share of problems with the system with his 1959 war movie “The Ballad of a Soldier,” when he did not depict Nazis as stupid animals but rather as a highly organized and evil intelligence. Because of that, some in the government tried to ban Chukhrai and label him a Nazi sympathizer. They failed. First, Chukhrai’s movies about the war were Soviet classics and second, Chukrai himself was a war hero who fought through almost every battle of the war all the way to Berlin. (more…)

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Tags: Cannes, communism, film festivals, sean penn, Tarantino
Posted Feb 3rd 2009 at 5:15 am in Celebrity News, Entertainment, Featured Story, Politics | 3833017 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/ykochar/2009/02/03/cannes-voyage-to-neverland/Cannes%27+Voyage+to+the+Neverland+of+Irrelevancy2009-02-03+13%3A15%3A48Yervand+Kochar