Occupy Wall Street types seemed like the perfect audience for “Margin Call,” a film which shows some of the fiscal sleight of hand that factored into the 2008 financial crisis.

Not so fast, says “Margin Call” writer/director J.C. Chandor.

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Not only does the film refuse to paint all Wall Street denizens as cold-hearted villains, it shows that money isn’t always the driving factor in foul financial decisions.

“The situation is far more complicated than quote, unquote greed. Careers are on the line, people’s self worth,” Chandor tells Big Hollywood. “It’s beyond monetary gain.”

The film, which nabbed two Independent Spirit Award nominations (Best First Feature and Best First Screenplay), is now available via Blu-ray, DVD and digital download from Lions Gate.

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Sit back and take in a full year’s supply of empty-headed, self-important Hollywood narcissism (is there any other kind?) courtesy of Sean Penn, Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore… aka  The Usual Empty-Headed, Self-Important Suspects. 

It is good to know, though, that someone in Hollywood opposes children being forced into sex slavery. Love to hear their thoughts on ACORN, wouldn’t you? And what about Roman Polanski? Do real men forcibly rape thirteen year-old girls in Jack Nicholson’s hot tub?

Anyone?

Anyone?

Thought so.

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***UPDATE: Perez Hilton disputes the photo was of a nude Miley Cyrus.

It is hard to find a media personality more widely despised than Perez Hilton.  From Will.i.am to Demi Moore, celebs across the spectrum think Hilton is a pimple on the butt of Hollywood.  And they’re basically correct. 

As of Sunday, he’s not just an annoyance – he’s a child pornographer.  On that fateful day, Hilton, whose standards of good taste include using Photoshop to paint semen on the faces of stars and starlets and helpfully labeling body parts like “ass” and “boobs”, hit a new low.  He linked via his Twitter account to a picture of rising Madonna wannabe Miley Cyrus climbing out of a car in a short skirt and no underwear.  In the picture, which has been removed, Cyrus’ genitals are allegedly clearly visible.  

According to Salon.com, Jeffrey Douglas, a criminal defense attorney in Los Angeles, said that Hilton had subjected himself to “extraordinary and intense” liability and that it was “suicidal for him to do this.”  Douglas continued, “We’re not talking about a misdemeanor.  You don’t have to know what the definition of the law is; all you have to do is knowingly distribute the photograph.”   (more…)

Pity the poor American consumer.  Evidently, a little charm and a winning smile are enough to sell them anything.  They voted for Obama after all, although this film probably does not have that example in mind.  It is those nefarious guerrilla marketers fleecing unsophisticated suburbanites that are supposed to stir our moral indignation in Derrick Borte’s The Joneses, which opens today in New York. 

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Steve Jones is not really Steve Jones.  He is a former car salesman hired by a shadowy marketing company to pose as the father in a Potemkin model family pushing high-end consumer goods on their unsuspecting neighbors.  His lovely wife Kate is really their boss or the slightly sinister sounding “cell” leader.  All ridiculously good-looking, the Joneses (Demi Moore, David Duchovny, Pineapple Express’s Amber Heard, and a dude from a cancelled CW show) effortlessly bedazzle those dumb, hardworking rubes.  Before they know it, they are buying ugly track suits and sports cars they cannot afford because of the “ripple effects” generated by the Joneses’ extremely unsubtle product placement. 

Therein lays the greatest problem with The Joneses.  While it unequivocally reproaches the supposedly predatory capitalism practiced by the phony family, it simply drips with contempt their hapless targets.  This is personified with excruciating clarity by the Joneses’ Mertzes: Larry and Summer, the couple next door.  Though he supposedly owns his own business, he is a classic hen-pecked husband, nauseatingly ineffectual in every way.  Summer is an equally unsympathetic figure, obsessed with her motivational tapes and her Mary Kaye-like cosmetics sales program.  Sure, the Joneses wreck havoc on their lives, but it seems like the film can hardly blame them for taking advantage of such easy marks.  (more…)

It’s been less than two weeks — ten days to be exact — but it seems that May-December Hollywood power couple Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore have already broken the spirit of their “Presidential Pledge” to Barack Obama.

Last week Big Hollywood drew attention to a 4:13 video directed by Demi Moore and starring Kutcher and fifty-six of their famous friends and intended to “illustrate how they will help make the nationwide change, inspired by President-elect Barack Obama, a reality.”

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Aaron Sorkin really pisses me off.

And not for the reasons you might think.

Yes, he’s a liberal’s liberal. And he epitomizes all that Big Hollywood rails against. He infuses his politics into everything he writes. He purposefully paints most conservative characters with broad, stereotype strokes which leave them characterized as either stupid or evil. He makes liberal characters out to be earnest, hard-working idealists with hearts of gold. They are all intelligent and sympathetic and their only fault seems to be that they just care too much. Even when he’s writing about sportscasters or a sketch comedy show, liberal political positions come out of most of his character’s mouths as if they are given facts, gospel truths. When he does offer up a sympathetic character with conservative views (Ainsley Hayes or Harriet Hayes) they are “lone voices” that always seem to be outnumbered, shouted down or merely there as a foil for the lead character (heroic liberal) to intellectually vivisect for the happy ending. (more…)

This clip is from the finale of “Babes In Arms,” the first of four extremely entertaining, black and white, “Let’s put on a show” musicals Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland made over just a few years.

The context of the clip is what’s fascinating. The year is 1939, two years before Pearl Harbor, so this is not a studio humorously and affectionately saluting a wartime president. In fact, FDR’s New Deal was well into its fifth year but still the Depression raged. Even more interesting is that MGM studio head, Louis B. Mayer, was a staunch and active Republican who opposed FDR and loathed his Big Government solutions. (more…)

Rush transcript of the celebrity Pledge of Obama Allegiance video (for educational purposes only)

[Fade in; cue pseudo-soulful electric piano dirge]

Courtney Cox and her husband, what’s-his-name: I pledge.

Demi Moore: I pledge.

Cameron Diaz: Me pledge too!!

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Many of the celebrities that were central to demonizing and making life impossible for President Bush for eight loathsome years NOW want to help with the heavy lifting of bringing America back together under President Barack Obama.

Witness Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher’s cavalcade of shiny, happy situational patriots appearing in a derivative public servitude announcement: A “Presidential Pledge” to President Barack Obama.

Forgive and forget? Right.

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