Sarah Palin will be joined by an unlikely group of co-stars in her upcoming film: Matt Damon, Rosie O’Donnell, David Letterman and Bill Maher, among other Hollywood celebrities who loathe her.

The stars appear in the feature-length biography of Palin from documentary filmmaker Stephen Bannon that is designed to reintroduce Palin as a woman who rose from nowhere to become the nation’s most popular governor. …

While the celebrities are only a small part of the film, Bannon’s goal is to remind moviegoers of the vile comments made about Palin, and he hopes the rest of the film makes the case that they were calculated and undeserved. …

Bannon made The Undefeated for $1 million and he predicts that, whether or not Palin runs for president in 2012, the film will help shape the narrative of the election and the various campaigns.
 
“This will go off like an atomic bomb in the upcoming Republican primary,” he says.

Full piece here.

What if God Himself was standing in the way of your deepest hopes and dreams, or your true love? Can you possibly change His mind and His plan for your destiny? And is it wrong to try in the first place?

——

These fundamental questions are addressed in fascinating fashion by the remarkable new film “The Adjustment Bureau.” The fact that it manages to do so in the context of a strong romance with plenty of thrills, stunning special effects, constant yet effective plot twists and outstanding performances by Matt Damon and Emily Blunt only adds to the appeal of this must-see movie.

Built upon the mind-bending work of legendary sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick, whose literary output also inspired “Blade Runner,” “The Adjustment Bureau” stands close behind “Inception” as one of the most original films to come out in years. A refreshing change of pace from typical Hollywood cookie-cutter fare, it stars Damon as David Norris, an idealistic young Democratic congressman who in the film’s opening minutes is scrambling to win a seat in the U.S. Senate, only to surprisingly lose on election night.

While prepping his concession speech, he meets Elise (Emily Blunt), a supremely talented ballet dancer whom he feels an instant love connection with, but who is chased away from him by mysterious men in hats. When David finds Elise again a few days later and develops an even stronger connection, he loses her in even more mysterious fashion – but this time, David stumbles across the mystery men in an entirely different setting.

They are erasing the memories of his colleagues at the law firm he now works at, forcing the hat men to explain that they work for “The Chairman” – an obvious reference to God – to keep certain important people’s lives running according to a strictly written plan. That plan is supposed to prevent David and Elise from falling in love, because each is meant to have a profound impact on the world in distinctly separate ways.

But this time, David doesn’t want to take “no” for an answer, and convinces Elise to make a literal run for their lives and destinies – setting off a complex chain of events and spectacular chases that force themselves and viewers to consider just how much of our lives are truly shaped by our free wills, and how much are predetermined by God or other mysterious forces.

Written and directed by George Nolfi, who previously worked with Damon as a writer on “Oceans Twelve” and “The Bourne Ultimatum,” “The Adjustment Bureau” weaves together action, humor, drama and romance all under universal questions that should leave viewers fully engaged in discussions about their own lives long after they leave the theater.

While the whiz-bang effects and top-notch performances are expected for such top-notch artists and actors, what’s truly surprising is how well the film handles the questions of free will versus predestination. Yes, God is an unseen “Chairman” here rather than straight-up Jesus, but “Bureau” is so adept with and respectful of the profound issues underlying its extremely entertaining core that the studio has engaged in a massive national outreach to Christian groups in an attempt to let them know that this film could be the kind of thing that kicks open the doors to inventive, intelligent work with a Godly bent. This is one film that merits such an outreach and isn’t just faking it, nor is it a religious film where the entertainment value is lacking beyond its message.

Damon and Blunt have instant, sparkling chemistry and handle the vast range of their roles with ease, while the film’s stunning visuals create an entire parallel vision of New York City that will likely make anyone who sees this film never look at the Big Apple the same way again. The only weak spot in the film is the character of one of the lead men in hats, played by John Slattery, who comes marching into some early scenes with blatantly expository dialogue that made me feel like a college freshman fiction-class writer had been handed the scenes while the rest of the film was being written by Shakespeare.

But after a couple such maddening moments, even Slattery and his character find their groove, slipping into the puzzle with ease and ultimately adding to the wonders at hand. I realize that this may sound like a studio press release, but trust me on this one folks: this could be a landmark film in the quest to have deeper films that respect the quest we’re all on for a Godly life and a meaningful eternity, and if it’s not supported, it will be a long time before Hollywood steps up to the plate on this level again.

Like most everyone who loves movies, I have a great admiration and respect for the Brothers Coen. Joel and Ethan are a rarity in the filmmaking world these days. Rather than make mega-commercial extravaganzas they create mostly off-beat character-driven stories in most every genre there is — and if there isn’t a genre that fits whatever the latest is they’re cooking up, they go right on ahead and create one of their own. Better still, these two multi-talented Oscar winners seem much more interested in creating a lasting cinematic legacy as opposed to changing the world or telling us how to vote. Not everything they create is universally accessible, but that has to do with the rhythm of a sometimes peculiar muse always in search of greatness, as opposed to a politically divisive approach to their signature way of telling a story. Which isn’t to say you won’t find large political and social themes at play in some of their best work. Those things are there and are usually what elevates the eccentric into something that sticks to the ribs.

But it’s also  fair to say that both auteurs frequently seek to explore nihilism as a theme, the futility of life and living in a world without purpose. Though tonally different, most recently, “Burn Without After Reading,” the Academy Award-winning “No Country for Old Men,” and especially “A Serious Man,” delivered grim stories without any real hint of redemption or sympathy. Sometimes, as was the case with the magnificent “No Country,” this approach resonates; the whole point is in witnessing the power of the human spirit to fight its way through a cold, indifferent and harsh world like a flower through the crack of a sidewalk. But sometimes it doesn’t work and the end result is something cold, distant, and a little off-putting. “True Grit” is one of those times.

The pieces are all there. Who better to fill John Wayne’s shoes than a beloved Jeff Bridges whose already formidable charisma has only increased with middle age?  The music score, photography, production design and direction are as impeccable as expected, and the supporting cast, most especially Hailee Stainfeld as Mattie Ross, the young girl who hires Bridges crusty, aging Marshal to avenge the murder of her father, are all top notch. But what’s missing is what resonates, an emotional heft promised to us when the story opens with a quote that raises our expectations…

You must pay for everything in this world, one way and another. There is nothing free except the grace of God.

 …but never really pays off like it should.

In this surprisingly faithful remake of the 1969 Henry Hathaway classic which won Wayne a long overdue Oscar for Best Actor, the setting is 1880s Arkansas and the shockingly poised, mature, and willful 14-year-old Mattie Ross has hired Marshal Rooster Cogburn (Bridges) to hunt down and bring to justice Tom Chaney for the murder of her father. More mercenary than marshal and more eager for violence than conversation, Cogburn reluctantly agrees but things suddenly become complicated when a Texas Ranger, LeBoeuf (Matt Damon), arrives on the scene. He has his own reasons for wanting Chaney which put him directly at odds with the vexing Mattie. Unfortunately for Rooster, a man who has obviously spent most of his life hiding from personal entanglements either in a bottle or on the back of a horse, he’s caught dead in the middle of all this.

With this conflict unresolved, the three set off into the stark plains to hunt their man and what follows are three very good performances, clever, though at times cleverly self-conscious dialogue, some exciting gunfights, an uneven but mostly well-paced story, but also an emotional disconnect both between the characters and the audience.

“True Grit” is arguably the Coen Brothers most accessible film to date and when you’re dealing with seasoned pros like those two, this is not something that happened by accident. But at the same time you can sense their not wanting to go too far emotionally, you can sense a fear of the kind of sentiment that made the original the kind of film that forty years on still reruns on television and is remembered with such affection.

Mattie and Rooster and LeBeouf are interesting characters played well by the actors who inhabit them, but there’s no real depth there. You never get a sense that they live any kind of emotional life even as the exposition fills in their respective back stories along the trail. Their connection between each other is equally surface. In the end, we’re told this shared adventure brought the three of them closer together, but it’s not a bond we in the audience feel in any way. Thematically, the story rings equally hollow.

This isn’t a fatal flaw. “True Grit” is entertaining and, at times, involving, suspenseful and humorous. Unfortunately, by accident or design, there’s much to admire but nothing that sticks to the ribs.

Even for Hollywood, “Green Zone” is dumbfoundingly brazen in its effort to rewrite the facts. As any reasonably informed person knows, many intelligence services (including the French, German, Chinese, Russian and British) believed Iraq had WMDs. And the CIA (which along with Chief Miller is a hero of “Green Zone”) was among them. Plus, such intel reports predated the Bush administration — and Saddam’s refusal to allow the UN weapons inspectors to finish their work gave us every reason to think he was hiding something and sealed his fate.

It’s one thing to make a fantasy film laced with snarky jibes at the United States and its military. It’s of another order entirely for an American studio (Universal, a unit of GE) to perpetrate, during an ongoing war, such vicious anti-American lies disguised as cheap entertainment.

“Green Zone” tells US troops that all of their efforts have been based on a deliberate deception. Worse, it blames the insurgency that has killed so many of our fighting men and women on US treachery.

Movies like “In the Valley of Elah,” “Rendition” and “Redacted” have shown US forces doing nasty things — but none went anywhere near as far as this picture in suggesting original sin corrupted the entire Iraq war and that American officials are more blameworthy than the insurgents for the most violent years.

“Green Zone” isn’t cinema. It’s slander. It will go down in history as one of the most egregiously anti-American movies ever released by a major studio.

Read the full article here. Warning, there are plot spoilers.

More here.

I considered that a potentially baleful eventuality, considering that the new comedy seemed likely to be very anti-business, given the scenes shown in the trailers and the presence of politically active Damon and Soderbergh (director of Che, which lionized the Cuban Marxist revolutionary). I haven’t seen it yet, and so will reserve judgment on that score, but perhaps it makes sense that although The Contender did better than expected, it was clobbered by the animated comedy Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

Meatballs brought in a very healthy $30.1 million in North American ticket sales in its first weekend during the past three days (50 percent more than industry analysts had expected), far outpacing The Contender’s take of $10.5 million. The Damon-Soderbergh comedy finished just ahead of Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All by Myself, which brought in $10.1 million in its second weekend. Another comedy, Love Happens, finished fourth.

With three comedies leading the pack and two highly promoted horror-suspense films with attractive female stars in the lead roles tanking with unexpectedly low ticket sales (Jennifer’s Body, Whiteout), it’s apparent that U.S. audiences are tired of downbeat material and want a more positive, optimistic type of entertainment,

That’s especially important with the economy remaining in bad condition long after recovery typically begins (average of ten months after onset) and Congress and the President considering a multitude of expensive new initiatives guaranteed to make the situation even worse.

With so many comedies to choose from, the weekend’s total U.S. box office was up 14 percent over the same weekend of last year and 17 percent over the previous weekend. Clearly, the Hollywood studios would be smart to press their filmmakers to move toward a more optimistic, positive, pro-American, classical liberal approach to the stories they tell.

If not, they may find themselves in a recession of their own.

With this year’s Academy Award season over and the next one already into act II, both winners and losers, or rather, award recipients and award non-recipients, have already begun taking stands on undiscovered political issues and digging their heels in deeper on those already known and talked about. 

Does anyone benefit from this? Is there a payoff? Does the world become a better place? Or is it all about career, being in the limelight, and publicity? 

Some say that actors, directors, musicians, really any entertainer at all who makes a political speech insults and loses half their audience the moment they speak about politics. I disagree with that statement. I think it’s worse than that. Here’s why. 

Whatever your politics, it’s hard, really hard to detach the image of the political speech from the entertainer. 

Let me repeat the important part: Whatever your politics.

I’ll bet you thought I was going to repeat detach, didn’t you? I was going to, but then common sense stepped in and I realized this problem involves more than even a fairly robust action verb can adequately handle. It involves everyone. That point often gets overlooked, hidden in the piano for safe-keeping and forgotten until someone wants to play some music. 

Entertainers, once they voice personal opinions, and not just the opinion itself, but the way they voice it, often with anger and negativity, lose.  No, I don’t mean they lose half their audience. They lose something bigger, much bigger than that. They lose the illusion.

Entertainers, particularly actors, thrive on the ability to deceive us, to transcend identity and become something else, a hero, a villain, a pirate, a tycoon, a stow-away, etc… When they voluntarily put themselves in the spotlight of contemporary politics they shatter that illusion, one they’ve worked so very hard to cultivate. Once it’s shattered, like Humpty Dumpty, 80s MTV and network news, you can’t put it back together again to the way it was, no matter how much you desire to. 

Like I said, this is true of all entertainers, but of actors it’s especially profound. The big problem is not what politics they espouse, but that they do so publicly.

There used to be a time long ago and far away when who you voted for was secret. People were discreet about it. Others respected it. No one pushed the issue. I’m not sure where that philosophy and practice went. Probably to the same place good taste ended up and common sense is headed for. Whatever happened to it, it’s no longer the norm, that’s for sure.

These days everyone seems determined to not only state their politics on their sleeves, but to rub those sleeves in others’ noses. Its makes for some very emotional and fruitless exchanges, not to mention a lot of dirty sleeves. Why is there wisdom in the old adage, “Never talk politics or religion at a cocktail party?” Because It’s not that folks don’t have opinions, but rather that they do!  — and discussions about those two topics can only lead to frustration over the fact that the other person just doesn’t get it, to borrow an awful cliche.  It’s a no-win situation with a built-in guarantee.

And for big names, so-called A-list actors to do it on the world stage, is an even bigger ‘no-win.’ They lose half their audience, we lose the entire illusion. It’s like watching a ‘making-of’ documentary about your favorite movie. To this day, I regret viewing the ‘behind the scenes’ bonus feature on a Casablanca DVD. Though thoroughly engaging and fascinating, it shattered for me, an illusion of that last scene at the airport, forever after.

I can no longer watch that movie or that ending the same way, the way that I used to. I loved Casablanca. I still do, but that doesn’t change the fact – and it is a fact – that the illusion is gone.

So it is true with many of these actors whom we’ve come to know and love, not from their own, real lives, but from the work they’ve done in great performances. Regardless of your political stance, and theirs, once their ‘behind the scenes’ is shown to the public, once we see that, it’s a painful reality that we can no longer look at them the same way.

The ‘beautiful friendship’ we had with them is gone. And as we walk along the wet tarmac and into the fog, this time alone, we can’t help but feel regret and sorrow at what once was.

Dateline: Next Thursday.

Announcer Voice Over:  Live from New York City, it’s The Bill Kristol – Matt Damon Debate, and here’s your moderator for the evening: Greg Gutfeld.

Greg Gutfeld:  Hello, I’m Greg Gutfled, host of the Fox News late night show Red Eye. Tonight I am coming to you live from the stage of Town Hall here in New York City for a debate between Mr. Bill Kristol and Mr. Matt Damon. The audience has been told to hold their applause (and their privates) except for when introducing our two debaters - which happens right now!

On my right is Mr. Bill Kristol.

Audience applause.

Gutfeld: This is a man who really needs no introduction, but here’s one for posterity kids: Editor in Chief of the Weekly Standard and a regular panelist on Fox News Sunday, Bill Kristol is to politics what Madonna is to the New York Knickerbockers.

On my left, quite appropriately; Mr. Matt Damon.

Audience applause.

Gutfeld: Mr Damon is a BIG BIG movie star. He is to politics,… what Alec Baldwin is to politics.

This is an open debate forum and there are no rules except one: I will not let the tenor of this debate degrade to behavior as barbaric and frightening as the daily fight over the hormone replacement pills backstage at “The View.”

Okay! Bill Kristol, since you have the tie on you can go first.

Bill Kristol: Good evening everyone. Good evening Greg, Mr. Damon. Mr. Damon, you recently were quoted calling me an “idiot” for saying we have won the war in Iraq. Well, the simple indubitable fact is; we have won. We will have to be there for some time to come, as in other wars we have prevailed in, like Germany, Japan, etc… So, my question to you is: Are you on the Left incapable of admitting we have won, or at the very least winning significantly, or do you wish for failure in Iraq?

Matt Damon: Did you see “Good Will Hunting?”

Kristol:  Yes I did, great movie.

Damon: Then here’s one for ya: You like apples? (Shakes head ‘yes’ in a caffeinated sort of way.)

Kristol:  (After slight pause) There really isn’t any denying the success we have had in Iraq.  So, I repeat the question: Do you wish we would have lost the war?

Damon stands, does some Karate/Judo type moves, spins around, grabs the small table in front of him, tries to smash it and fails. Adjusts his jacket, sits down.

Damon: How do like them apples?

Kristol:  (Smiling politely with a pause) The fact of the matter is, Iraqi neighborhoods are back. Terrorists no longer control cities. Public works projects are flourishing, and the way of life for the average Iraqi has improved ten-fold. Benchmarks are being met and the Iraqi government is taking more and more responsibility for their own country.  Also, I would have to say that your whoop-ass moves don’t have the same impact without all the cinematic sound effects; the grunting, swishing, crashing sounds, etc.

Greg Gutfeld: Oh boy, I think I feel a famous Bill Kristol prediction coming!

Kristol: In fact Greg, I will make a prediction: President Obama and the left will never apologize to the American people for being horribly wrong about the surge, and Mr. Damon you will continue to avoid Ben Affleck like the plague.

Damon stands, hands on hips with a big “I so crazy” grin, shaking his head in a “I just got ya” fashion.

Greg Gutfeld: And that concludes our broadcast. I’m Greg Gutfeld and if you didn’t get the significance of this debate – then you sir, are worse than Hitler.