Director Roland Emmerich at his London home

The Times blames much of the problem on the economy, but as anemic as it’s been, the economy has improved some since 2008 and 2009, while attendance and revenues have not. In other words, that’s a stupid excuse. But at least it’s a new excuse. After years of blaming Redbox and piracy, you have to give Hollywood’s media friends credit for coming up with a new way to avoid admitting the obvious: People don’t like Hollywood or their product very much.

Movies are a cyclical business and analysts say that 2010 benefited mightily from holdover sales for “Avatar,” which was released late in 2009 and became one of the most popular movies of all time. A decline of hundreds of millions of dollars is not catastrophic when weighed against the size of the industry. Over all, North American ticket revenue for 2011 is projected to be about $10.1 billion, according to Hollywood.com, which compiles box-office data.

That is only a 4.5 percent falloff from 2010. But studio executives are alarmed by the downturn nonetheless, in part because the real picture is worse than the raw revenue numbers suggest.

Revenue, for instance, has been propped up by a glut of 3-D films, which cost $3 to $5 more per ticket. Studios made 40 pictures in 3-D in the last 12 months, up from 24 last year, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com, a movie database. Theaters have also continued to increase prices for standard tickets; moviegoers now pay an average of $7.89 each, up 1 percent over last year.

Attendance for 2011 is expected to drop 5.3 percent, to 1.27 billion, continuing a slide. Attendance declined 6 percent in 2010.

And now you know why Hollywood kisses China’s backside.

The Hollywood left may make a lot of noise about human rights and the like, but the reason they offer to participate in Chinese propaganda, make movies about how awesome the Chinese are, refuse to insult the Chinese, and suck up to communist/socialist strong men all over the world is to open the floodgates of their markets.

Forced abortions, slavery, human rights shmooman rights — with a billion-plus paying customers just waiting to be picked up, China means not having to do the hard work of making better movies and it surely means not having to make movies that represent American values.

A win-win for the bad guys.

The political intent of an opera that romanticizes Chou en Lai of Red China confirms the surrender of all American Arts to Marxism.

From Hollywood to “The Met,” from sheer entertainment to the pastimes of the privileged, the Elite of the Ivy League find themselves in the driver’s seat.

Whoever has gotten to the White House

In the last twenty years

Has  either an Ivy League diploma

Or a Rhodes Scholarship.

These enlightened despots,

As Voltaire might call them,

Have dragged America into slavish indebtedness to Red China.

According to “The Progressives” in both political parties, Sarah Palin needn’t apply for The Presidency.

Why Not?

She is blatantly and unforgivably not among “The Chosen”!

Now, as a Dartmouth graduate, I could apply for the job of President if I were still drunk enough… but I quit adorning barstools seven years ago.

My ambitions, however, aren’t entirely modest. My grand desire now is to continue composing for symphony orchestras and chamber groups.

I have a new Concerto for Orchestra looking for a world premiere, if any top-notch conductors or orchestras are interested. I could toss any interested maestros a PDF of the first movement’s score. The remaining four movements depend upon the listeners seriousness.

“Seriousness.”

Now I have never doubted either Sarah Palin’s seriousness nor her command of not only America’s traditional values but also her ownership of the political cunning to see those values re-instituted!

The know-it-alls underestimated a country boy named Abraham Lincoln. Doris Kearns Goodwin set the record straight with revelations about “The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.”

Sarah Palin had the mainstream press chasing after her for days and were she President of the United States they’d approach her with that memory firmly in their minds.

“Wouldn’t that be a double-edged sword, Michael?”

Yes, but Sarah’s side of the sword bestows upon her an equal advantage which she never  had until the MSM learned how quick she actually is.

No, the majority of Americans are not particularly interested in opera nor the disturbing depths of Marxism erupting in all of the American performing arts.

Only Big Hollywood readers are being informed on a regular basis just how owned by Marx and Lenin the American arts, all of them, actually are.

Why would an opera about a couple of conservative embarrassments called Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, not to mention some really villainous Communists in the Mao Zedong entourage, be of any interest to film buffs?

I have no doubt that a great movie or film documentary will be made about the Communist and mainly Soviet invasion of American culture and how all-pervasive it has become throughout the nation.

Progressives own “The Cultural Edge” and consequently hold the powerfully influential seats of American Royalty.

How can any President talk to the likes of Putin and the Beijing Politburo if he or she doesn’t know the European and worldly influence of artists upon Communist Russia and The New World Order.

My advice to a prayed-for President Palin: The less you know about Progressively Elite Presumptions the better. Utter disinterest is all they deserve. They’ve used such privileges for no other purpose than to look down on all of us.

I should know. I was surrounded by their contempt during my so-called “higher education” and forty years in the American performing arts.

My own personal and enjoyable interests in the Arts were whetted by the dissident histories of some of Russia’s greatest talents: composer Igor Stravinsky and ballet greats, Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov. The Nobel prizewinning poet Ivan Bunin who emigrated in 1918 and eventually settled in Paris. Then, of course, the scientists such as Andrei Sakharov and the legendary symbol of Russian dissidence, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

In light of so many well-known Russian dissidents, this documentary film I pray for, exposing the Soviet invasion of the American arts and sciences, dwelling places into which numerous gifted Russians sought freedom? That film will be made; and by then it will receive an Academy Award nomination.

Why?

Sarah Palin will have already been a great American President for eight years!

Hmmm … the course of Marxist genius never runs smoothly.

If you don’t believe me, read the life of Bertolt Brecht.

However, Peter Sellars’ Marxism, as Wikipedia prefers to translate it, is to be a “progressively radical” artist of some sort.

With President Obama in the White House, it can now be known as “radically Progressive”: the Progressive Clinton as versus the radically Progressive Obama.

Radicalism, a la Van Jones, even as seen through the eyes of the Huffington Post, is the inevitability of the “Progressive” New World Order, whether you like it or not.

There is, however, one impressively dialectical twist in this drama: women such as Alice Goodman, the librettist.

Her Marxist heresy, because of the ministerial collar, is what is sometimes referred to by the KGB  hardliners as the Western Sentimentality of “useful idiots” and the decadent schmaltz seems to have escaped even the intriguingly odd but hawk-eyed Peter Sellars.

Reverend Goodman is still a “Progressive” of the Progressively Baptist Bill Clinton sort. She is actually an ordained Anglican priest; and is now a chaplain at Trinity College, Cambridge.

The initial Wizard of Nixon In China happened to be the director, Peter Sellars.

The real Wizard, however, is Alice Goodman.

Peter Sellars’ instincts about Alice Goodman were Brechtian genius itself.

However, Alice Goodman’s love of God’s mysteries seemed to have escaped even the hawk-eyed and progressively radical Peter Sellars.

Either that or he simply endured the “mysteries” within Ms. Goodman’s poetry as allowably Buddhist.

Communism is ultimately no sin to Buddhism. The Dalai Lama actually admits to being a Marxist.

Besides, the John Adams’ musical portrait of Chou En-Lai contains the requisite, albeit poetic, sentimentality required to sell Chou En-Lai to America as the real hero of Nixon In China.

Score ten for the Progressive New World Order!

The music, in fact “minimalism” in general, just seems a lazy way to whip out hours of agitation for a profoundly complex encounter between two massively powerful cultures.

Laying that aside, what kept me glued to the You Tube video of the Houston Opera Company’s Production was Alice Goodman’s libretto.

Quite annoyingly, that libretto is not available on the internet. Scores of the entire opera cost $120 Canadian dollars … including delivery of course.

All I wished to see was the libretto but then how will John Adams get his share of the profits from a poetess he and Peter Sellars singlehandedly made?! Who taught them Marxist economics?

Michael Moore?

Sean Penn?

Is this Marxism? Or just good ole American, villainous Capitalism?

Rev. Goodman, however, and her firmly feminist point of view dominates Nixon In China. How else could she earn post-modern credentials with these Marxist men in her life?

She does indeed spare no amount of operatic melodrama in examining both the heroine and villainess of Nixon In China.

Ms. Goodman’s own romantic yearnings, God bless her, rise up not only in the huge question Chou En-Lai leaves us hanging on at the end, but also in the Cultural Revolution Ballet. This play-within-an-opera ballet and its hero and heroine, its Romeo and Juliet, caught amidst the Machiavellian nightmares within the Nixon In China opera itself?

Would she had Rachmaninoff’s lyricism and Stravinsky’s muscle to canonize the brilliant contrasts that sit and eagerly wait for a great composer. Then again, those two composers were decidedly not Marxists. Stravinsky was Russian Orthodox and exiled himself to, of all places, hamburger-eating, pre-Nixon America.

The ideological contrasts of Nixon In China alone make the encounter with Ms. Goodman herself fascinating.

Here she is!

Reverend Goodman, mind you!

A Marxist Christian?

She’s certainly a big fan of Chou En-Lai.

He’s the hero of Nixon In China.

You were right, Mr. Adams!

The idea of Nixon In China was a “risky” one … but possibly helpful enough to pave Elitism’s Way for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama to both become Presidents of the United States.

Hmmm … now there’s the major question of not only this editorial, and this hour but this coming decade … and possibly this century … or human infinity.

Can there be such a thing as a Marxist Christian?

The Dalai Lama himself is a Marxist and Chosen One of Buddha!

Why not?

There was Liberation Catholicism running all around South America, wasn’t there?

God and Karl Marx.

The Almighty and The Grandest of Atheists!

Who can’t see them married?!

The alternate lifestyle of a Marxist … no, the Community Organizing Fundamental of a Progressive New World Order!

“Let’s wear down those ugly Americans such as Sarah Palin!!”

“If she becomes President America will have the West’s version of Mao’s Chiang Ching!!!”

“Maggie Thatcher in jack boots!!!!”

“Ronald Reagan in drag!!!!!”

“A virtual animal! Mamma Grizzly as POTUS!!!!!!”

“The solution is to surround these ‘stupid people’ with not only their cultural superiors like Bill Maher The Atheist but their religious superiors such as Alice Goodman as well.”

“They’ll never be able to understand the divine subtleties within the Marriage of God and Karl Marx!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

“Such an achievement is far beyond the vulgarities of Catholic idiocies such as Figaro or Mozart’s Don Giovanni!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

“Match-making God and Karl is the only possible hope for peace, you know.”

“If not, Judeo-Christians, you are toast!! Toast!!! Toast!!!!!”

This last bit of libretto within my comic opera is sung in falsetto, a la Alban Berg.

Having spent two whole days with Nixon In China, I sympathize sincerely with Chou En-Lai’s exhaustion in the final scene.

As for Henry Kissinger, the double for a villainous landowner in the Cultural Revolution Ballet?

Here he isas The 20^th Century’s Greatest Courtier.

Why am I so sure that both Goodman and Adams are Marxists?

Anticipating the increasingly obvious and desperately inevitable marriage of Marx and Islam, they both, along with Sellars as well, prophetically mind you, gave voice to the Palestinian version of Israel’s “unacceptability” in their next opera, “The Death of Klinghoffer”.

From Wikipedia:

Following “Nixon,” the three collaborated on a second opera, “The Death of Klinghoffer,” about the 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking by Palestinians in which an elderly American Jew was killed. It premiered in 1991 but was promptly assailed by charges that it was anti-Semitic and glorified Palestinian terrorists. Several planned productions were canceled and the work has rarely been performed since, although the Opera Theater of St. Louis is presenting it next June.

Adams, Goodman and Sellars repeatedly claimed that they were trying to give equal voice to both Israelis and Palestinians with respect to the political background.

But the period of composition was a momentous one for Goodman personally. Raised a Reform Jew in St. Paul, Minn., she had married English poet Geoffrey Hill, and while writing “Klinghoffer” she converted to Christianity. She was later ordained as an Anglican priest and is currently winding up a stint as chaplain at Trinity College, Cambridge.

This Christian Marxist felt obliged to give two sides of the story in this second opera and here’s a larger version of “The Death of Klinghoffer”.

Communist Islam rising!!!

Can you hear the orchestra in full fortissimo??????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Last night I glimpsed the British version of Alice Goodman. It was Vanessa Redgrave sitting in the audience of the Tony Awards.

Both Goodman and Redgrave?

Oh, not both at The Tony Awards but brilliantly “useful talents” for the Communist Revolution.

The fact that God gave the two of them their talents seems a lie to Vanessa and a reason for Alice to make God a Marxist.

Now that’s not a bad idea for an opera: Marx’s conversion of God to Communism!

Obviously Alice Goodman is the only poet qualified to write the libretto since she obviously feels that is exactly what must have happened.

Alice Goodman, the Brechtian poet of Heaven.

Where’s Kurt Weill when you need him?

And who could possibly sing the role of God?

If it’s a movie?

The ghost of Frank Sinatra.

Italian Communism is, of course, as complex a thing as Alice Goodman might possibly want to confuse us with.

Unfortunately I doubt if Mr. Sinatra will want to even show up for rehearsal.

Why?

Karl Marx would be a tenor!

The tenor always steals the show from the baritone in an opera.

God is not Wozzeck.

The Almighty is never quite that stupid.

Why Richard Gere would be considered an authority on any subject besides the tango is a mystery to those who’ve had the opportunity to hear the man speak without a script. Then again, “Desperate Housewives” star Eva Longoria does intermittently “brainstorm” with the President on border security issues. 

—–

Following his gripping testimony, Gere was approached by a reporter and asked: “Has President Obama, in your mind,” – which is where it gets tricky – “been tough enough on China regarding human rights?” 

On occasion Richard has been known to criticize Obama for treating his holiness the Dalai Lama dismissively. Like for example the time the esteemed Tibetan monk was secretly escorted in the dead of winter out the back door of the White House and forced to maneuver in flip-flops around White House garbage bags. 

This time, appearing flattered to be asked another question from someone seeking further insight from his vast pool of expertise, Gere, without mentioning China’s “Paramount Leader” Hu Jintao being feted like royalty at a state dinner, said “No, no, he [Obama] has a ways to go.  I think he’s finding his way of how forceful to be.”  

Responding to reporter Nicholas Ballasy’s question about Obama’s handling of China, the self-appointed Tibetan expert expounded on Barry’s growth when dealing with the Chinese saying “I think he’s also finding out … you have to be very frontal.” With Weinergate and all, maybe ‘frontal’ was a poor choice of words. 

Nevertheless, in addition to human rights and religion, Richard proceeded to deliver an impromptu didactic exposition on Chinese foreign policy telling Ballasy: “You have to be very clear. You have to be unconfused and you must be very strong. I think he’s getting there, but he could be stronger, yes.” 

Zen master Gere, a 30-year insight meditation expert, then defended Barry’s private stance on China and said with full confidence, “I know what his own private feelings are – those are clear.” It’s no secret that Obama has been hard-hitting with the Chinese, like the time he asked Herbie Hancock to entertain at the state dinner instead of Beyoncé. 

Either way, the reporter pressed on and asked Richard Gere if, despite criticisms, “Are you supportive of [Obama’s] job performance overall?” Without wavering Gere responded, “Yeah, overall, really I think he’s done an extraordinary job.  I think he’s going to go down probably as one of our great presidents.” 

Ballasy requested the actor clarify his statement: “What specifically are you supportive of that he’s done?” 

Richard, shadowed by a “Pretty Woman” in a hijab, answered Nicholas’ question while leaning over and appearing to tie his shoe. As he bent down, the actor’s snow-white head testified to the source of Richard Gere’s prajna. 

Soft-spoken while haltingly thoughtful, Richard lauded Obama’s ability “to juggle.” The tranquil star said, “Let’s think of all of the problems that he’s had in his presidency. You know natural disasters, or international issues, domestic. He has found a way to change and flow to learn from every situation.” 

Having had a rare opportunity to tap into a wellspring of liberal wisdom, Ballasy missed a perfect opportunity to find out when Barack learned to juggle and how exactly a person ‘changes and flows to learn.’ 

According to Richard Gere, Obama is a man who “puts himself out there personally constantly. He’s a good listener” and “He engages on a personal level almost every day” – a portrayal that sounds like Barack would make a perfect contestant on the “The Bachelor.” 

From the sound of things, the Dalai Lama mentee must have been living the monastic life in Tibet, because the star of “Chicago” seems to believe that since Obama took office, “We’re coming out of this terrible economic crisis, [and] turning the corner on” what Gere oddly described as “terrorist situations.”

Richard Tiffany Gere’s short soliloquy on Barack’s life journey ended with a comment that even the Dalai Lama, who called for “democracy to flower” in China, would have trouble deciphering.  With the Buddhist lotus blossom inspiring another poetic analogy, in all seriousness, Gere said, “I think [Barack’s] engagement with the Chinese is starting to flower now. The strength within him is starting to emerge. I think he’s doing a terrific job.” 

The actor was so caught up in showering Obama with undeserved flattery, he forgot a fundamental Buddhist principle: Don’t believe anything without thinking first. Based on the Tibetan activist’s rambling comments about the President’s blossoming job performance, the “Final Analysis” is that thinking may be the one remaining tenet of the Noble Eightfold Path that Richard Gere has yet to master.

It was out of this cultural context that Tsui Hark’s classic martial arts epic Once Upon a Time China was released, an action-packed tale of the culture clash between east and west in 19^th century Hong Kong.   While the film’s protagonist, Dr. Wong Fei-hung, is a folk hero that has been portrayed in countless films, Jet Li’s version of the character helped reinvigorate Hong Kong kung-fu movies and would come to be his definitive role as an actor. Li’s take on Wong redefined the role of the intellectual warrior who must defend his countrymen against foreign tyranny.  Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen, which is a continuation of a TV series called Fist of Fury, is the latest in this tradition.

The TV show Fist of Fury was a re-working of the famous Fist of Fury film starring the legendary Bruce Lee.  Let me tell you, knowing the story so far going into Legend of the Fist helps, otherwise it’s a confusing narrative to say the least.  After avenging his slain teacher’s death at the hands of the Japanese, Chen Zhen (Donnie Yen) is presumed dead.  Chen travels to Europe to join his countrymen to fight in the European theatre of World War I (the film informs us of China’s ignored-yet-important role in said conflict).  After the war is over, he returns to Shanghai under the alias of a fallen comrade, finding the city torn between the occupying British and Japanese forces.  Joining an underground rebel movement, an incognito Chen becomes the manager of a posh nightclub for foreigners dubbed, homage ahoy, Casablanca.  Like in the Bogart/Bergman classic, the club is a place where powerful political enemies often find themselves tables away from each other, giving Chen a valuable position that is not only close to his enemies, but will also help him avoid suspicion.  Chen takes on the invaders in public by disguising himself as a masked hero, who looks an awful lot like Kato from The Green Hornet (no doubt another tribute to Bruce Lee).  Using his new superhero identity, Chen uses it to save the political enemies of the murderous Japanese forces, in an effort to rid Shanghai of their foreign influence.

If that paragraph above makes the plot to this movie sound simple in any way, I assure you it is not.  Legend of the Fist honestly feels like a season of a television show cut down into a feature film.  Characters are casually introduced and killed, slapdash subplots come and go, and none of it feels like it has any consequence.  On top of that, much of Chen Zhen’s kung-fu superheroics are given the montage treatment, as though a ton of action scenes were consolidated into a shotgun blast of various explosions and beatdowns.  These bite-sized bits that are neither exciting, nor satisfying.  The movie’s opening sequence, which takes place on a World War I battlefield, involves Chen fighting through enemy territory with dual bayonets in an effort to kill as many German troops as possible in the most insanely over-the-top manner imaginable, and it’s damn good fun.  The scene where he first attacks the Japanese assassins in his Kato costume is also excellent, and promises a fun, pulpy adventure for our hero.  But the movie loses steam shortly afterward, the story gets convoluted, it lacks focus, and eventually it becomes hard to care about anything that is happening.

The film’s director, Andrew Lau, is best known for co-directing the excellent Infernal Affairs films with Alan Mak, which went on to inspire the Oscar-winning Martin Scorsese remake, The Departed.  The Infernal Affairs movies were gritty (save for the occasional cantopop-laden sequence), but Legend of the Fist has a classical visual extravagance to it.  The pre-World War II Shanghai setting recalls the opening action scene in Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.  Combine that with the pulp superhero vibe, and you have what should be a unique martial arts concoction.  But Lau isn’t content to let his jazzy setting and extravagant production design do the work for him, and this is his undoing.  Flashy editing and modern music ruin the sense of time and place, it’s an approach that’s akin to serving a fine cut of steak with a side of ketchup.

Legend of the Fist is one I hoped to love, Donnie Yen is one of the greatest leading men in Hong Kong martial arts movies right now, his work in movies like Kill Zone and Ip Man are high above the rest of the city’s recent crop of films, and I can find no fault with his brutal action choreography in this film.  The cinematic tradition Legend of the Fist draws from, from Bruce Lee to Tsui Hark, is a rich one.  But it can’t be discussed in the same breath as films like Hark’s Once Upon a Time in China, or Ronny Yu’s magnificent Fearless (which deals with Chen Zhen’s late master, another legendary Chinese hero).  In fact, I would recommend watching those instead, if you haven’t seen them already.  For great movies featuring the Chen Zhen character, go snag Bruce Lee’s Fist of Fury, or the remake starring Jet Li, Fist of Legend.  They bring the goods in a manner that this film fails to.

I agree, but for different reasons.

As I mentioned on Tuesday’s podcast, I spend most of my life, thinking about useless things.

Which means that I would be no help, if I were to travel back in time. For there is no way I might explain how anything from the present day actually works.

I am but a barnacle on the ships of industry.

I complain, instead of innovate. I ponder petty grievances, fantasize about heroic endeavors, imagine what I’d say if I met a cartoon.

And so, I am useless to society. but somehow we – or you – continue to solve the world’s problems.

And that’s my point: If it weren’t for the ingenuity of giants who like solving problems, I would be nowhere. Dopes like me can exploit our resources, because you, the smart guy, always finds new things to exploit.

Human creativity is so relentless, that no matter the challenges, we are always better off than before. Where ever creativity is stifled, by bureaucracy, or something called “fairness” – people suffer.

And teachers’ unions break out.

But humans who want to make money, always solve the big problems. Not by anyone like me, but I know to stay out of the way.

We should know that now.

So the crisis will be solved. But not by Obama. Not by any womyn’s studies grad. Not by me.

The reason why: keyboard jockeys like me cannot look at a problem and – with patience – find an answer.

It’s like Snooki looking at a restaurant menu, in English.

And if you disagree with me, you’re worse than Hitler.

A lady named Lori, writing over at Feministing blog, says she just attended a panel on “transfeminism,” where one speaker says we should stop thinking of abortion as a women’s issue.

Okay!

—–

Let’s hear more!

Lori writes:

The thing is, it’s not just women that have abortions. Trans men have abortions. Gender queer people have abortions. Two spirit people have abortions. People who do not fit into the box of ‘woman’ have abortions. This is the reality we live in, and the more we pretend otherwise, the more dangerous it is for other people, and the more they are excluded by the movement.

This concept, she explains, will strengthen ” our reproductive justice work.”

Yep, “reproductive justice work.”

Sometimes I think they just pull random words out of the dictionary.

Sorry, vagionary.

It goes on:

It’s in that assumption that gender lives in our crotches, that we end up erasing the reality that men can have abortions, men can get pregnant and give birth. So I’m pledging, right here and now, to stop framing the issue of abortion access as one that’s unique to women. I hope you will too!

Oh, I will!

See, gender politics is all about your own subjective identity transcending the dictates of biology. seriously, why does one have to be pregnant at all, to have an abortion?

That’s just wombist.

Anyway, the bottom line is, it’s way more fun to talk gender, than really talk about abortion.

In China, years of population engineering, including abortion of ’surplus’ girls, has led to a creepy absence of females.

Which is really exclusionary if you ask me.

And if you disagree, you’re a racist, homophobic wombophobe.

Tonight’s guests:

Jedidiah Bila

Krystal Ball

Ryan Reese

Bill Rasmussen

Looks as though the times really are a-changing:

Counter-culture hero and 1960s protest singer-songwriter Bob Dylan got a rapturous welcome from fans on Wednesday at his first ever concert in China, despite having agreed to sing only an approved set designed not to offend political sensitivities.

Famous for his songs against injustice and for civil liberties and pacifism, Dylan struck a cautious line in Beijing and did not sing anything that might have overtly offended China’s Communist rulers, like “The Times They Are A-Changin”.  …Promoters tried to bring Dylan to China last year, but the Culture Ministry did not give its approval, as is required for any concert in the country.

China’s agreement this year came with the proviso that Dylan “performed with the approved content”, according to a brief statement issued last month by the ministry, which gave no other details.

Dylan’s concert comes at a sensitive time in China, where musicians and artists have always had to contend with at least a measure of government control and censorship.

More here.

I’ve seen it thirteen times, mainly because I’m a huge fan of C. Thomas Howell. And I’m lonely.

But that’s another story for another time. The film has since been remade, with the producers replacing the Russian bad guys with Chinese.

But now – According to the L.A. Times, China has become such a big market for Hollywood, MGM studios have decided to replace the Chinese with North Koreans.

Yep, in a first for Hollywood: filmmakers actually digitally erased Chinese flags and symbols and replaced dialogue… so now North Korea are the invaders.

Because, with that country, there’s nothing to be gained, financially. It’s as lucrative as a Kathy Griffin porn site.

Color me unsurprised.

Hollywood may be where dreams are made, but it’s also where wimps are cultivated.

I mean, look who they chose, just seven years after 9/11. The Chinese!

How’s that for cowardice? Here real life hands you an honest-to-God adversary – radical Islam – and you choose a country that makes your tennis shoes.

Wusses.

The paper says the “changes illustrate just how much sway China’s government has in the global entertainment industry.”

But an MGM spokesman says no one spoke to anyone linked to the Chinese government.

So i guess they gave in without a fight.

Which makes you wonder how quickly they’d fold when faced with a real threat.

Those kids from the original Red Dawn would be disgusted.

Anyway, I look forward to their remake of the China Syndrome. I hear the new title is “Tibet Sucks.”

And if you disagree with me, you’re worse than Hitler.

TONIGHT:

Andreas Tantaros

Chris Rovzar

Jamey Jasta (Hatebreed!)

So much for artistic freedom. And this is likely the wrong kind of artistic freedom to receive any kind of defense in the usual-usual entertainment press.

The L.A. Times:

China has become such an important market for U.S. entertainment companies that one studio has taken the extraordinary step of digitally altering a film to excise bad guys from the Communist nation lest the leadership in Beijing be offended. …

[P]otential distributors are nervous about becoming associated with the finished film, concerned that doing so would harm their ability to do business with the rising Asian superpower, one of the fastest-growing and potentially most lucrative markets for American movies, not to mention other U.S. products.

As a result, the filmmakers now are digitally erasing Chinese flags and military symbols from “Red Dawn,” substituting dialogue and altering the film to depict much of the invading force as being from North Korea, an isolated country where American media companies have no dollars at stake.

Wait. I’m confused. Hollywood bashes America constantly. Aren’t we “an important market for U.S. entertainment companies”? I guess some markets are more equal than others. (You’ll be glad to know that I’m now out of Orwell references.)

Back to the Corner, this time Daniel Foster, who points out the utter absurdity of portraying North Korea as any kind of threat to any country other than their own:

[T]he long-stalled remake has become a sick joke. To wit: MGM has taken the extraordinary step of digitally scrubbing the film of all references to Red China as the invading villains — substituting dialogue, removing images of Chinese flags and insignia etc. — because “potential distributors are nervous about becoming associated with the finished film, concerned that doing so would harm their ability to do business with the rising Asian superpower.” All without the PRC even uttering a single word of protest.

And who are the new invaders? North Korea. That’s right, the starving-to-death, massively brainwashed “Hermit Kingdom.” I imagine at this very moment, Hollywood script doctors are working on a revised first act in which Kim Jong Il decides it’s a good idea to let hundreds of thousands of his captive countrymen travel to America.

So much for realism. Read the whole thing.

Whenever you watch contemporary documentaries about the Golden Age of Hollywood, the Production Code is almost always portrayed as the Great Big Right-Wing Boogie Man. The infamous code was a set of self-imposed guidelines the industry lived under that regulated language, sex, and how much cleavage  Jane Russell could show. Of course, these same documentaries inevitably portray the lifting of this censorship in the ’60s as something akin to the falling of the Berlin Wall. Hallelujah! Free at last! Blah, blah, blah…

Well, to anyone paying attention nothing’s changed except the hypocrisy. We’ve gone from the PC of the Production Code to the PC of Political Correctness. Filmmakers can offend America all day long, but not the Communist Chinese. Storytellers can savage Christians till the cows come home, but Muslims get PSAs, and in-between all those redneck jokes let’s not riff about electric cars being gay.

The old self-imposed Production Code was designed to keep the film industry out of trouble with the U.S. Government and citizen groups concerned with morality. The new self-imposed Production Code is concerned only with offending oppressive governments and the left-wing, PC Sensitivity Police.

In other words, the only real difference between then and now is that today movies suck a whole lot more.