Introducing ‘For Conservative Movie Lovers’

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A thousand years ago in Cairo, surrounded by ancient pyramids and the ghosts of lost civilizations, the great Arab scientist Alhazen conducted a peculiar optical experiment. Building on observations made by Aristotle thirteen centuries earlier, he first constructed a room, one completely shuttered from the light of the outside world, as dark as death. He then cleverly lit the space around the room with an array of bright lamps. Finally, he punched a single pinhole into one wall, just large enough to let a small beam of lamplight bleed in.

Alhazen confirmed that if you entered such a room, and sat in the darkness until your eyes had ample time to adjust, and then followed the beam of light emanating from the pinhole to where it splashed onto the wall opposite, you would be privy to an amazing, almost magical sight. As you watched, shapes and colors would begin to coalesce. Familiar forms would appear. And eventually, when your eyes had acclimated enough, you would be staring at nothing less than an exact upside-down projection of the outside world, perfect in every detail. Alhazen marveled at this, and gave the experiment an evocative name: Al-Bayt al-Muthlim, translated by later scribes into Latin as camera obscura — The Veiled Chamber. (more…)

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Tags: Al-Bayt al Muthlim, Alhazen, Andrew Breitbart, Aristotle, camera obscura
Posted Oct 16th 2009 at 6:43 am in Classic Hollywood | 24541078 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/lgrin/2009/10/16/introducing-for-conservative-movie-lovers/Introducing+%27For+Conservative+Movie+Lovers%272009-10-16+13%3A43%3A44Leo+Grin

John Podhoretz: Movie Stars Strut Towards Extinction

John Podhoretz in the Weekly Standard:

“[T]he system around which the motion-picture business has oriented itself almost since its creation in the early years of the last century–the star system, which it largely invented–has finally reached its end.”

“The eight most successful movies over the course of the year’s first eight months have collectively grossed $2.7 billion, up from $2.3 billion for the entirety of 2008. And what is most striking about these eight films is that not a single one of them, not a single one, features an unmistakable star. Three of them are cartoons (Up, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, and Monsters vs. Aliens). Three are sequels whose top-line talents are incidental to their success (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the sixth Harry Potter, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine). Two feature relative nobodies (Star Trek and The Hangover). The first traditional star appears in the ninth-place film, which is itself a high-concept sequel in which the star mostly stands around (Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian with Ben Stiller). It’s not until tenth place that a classic vehicle hits the list, Sandra Bullock’s The Proposal. And after that you have to jump down to 15th place to find Tom Hanks in Angels and Demons. Will Ferrell’s movie tanked. Julia Roberts laid an egg. Adam Sandler couldn’t sell a ticket. Johnny Depp disappointed. Denzel Washington and John Travolta bombed together. Instead, the movies whose successes depended on their strong leading performances were the ones featuring the 57-year-old Irishman Liam Neeson (Taken, $145 million) and the out-of-work TV comedian Kevin James (Paul Blart: Mall Cop, $146 million).
(more…)

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Tags: 2009, adam sandler, ben stiller, Denzel Washington, Harry Potter
Posted Sep 18th 2009 at 1:55 pm in Celebrity News, News | 229038108 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/bighollywood/2009/09/18/john-podhoretz-movie-stars-strut-towards-extinction/John+Podhoretz%3A+Movie+Stars+Strut+Towards+Extinction2009-09-18+20%3A55%3A45Big+Hollywood

Natalie Portman’s Castle and Why the Movie Star is Dead

One day … ONE day after gushing over how exciting the recession is now that those forced to work jobs they hate or who have lost them entirely can focus on their passions, Natalie Portman bought herself a $3 million castle-like estate.

Natalie, whoever’s advising you … fire them. If no one’s advising you, find someone who doesn’t carry a small dog in their purse or dates someone who does. Look to the real world for help. Look to someone who’s spent a few years in a land where the zip codes don’t start with “9-0.” Someone who cares enough about you and your career to say (without any “Honey, babys”):

“Nat, past the gates of your community and away from the hills of Hollywood losing your job doesn’t fuel passion, it fuels despair, and working a job you hate is almost as bad because of the big black  permanent ball of dread it plants in your gut. I know you dig Barack, I did too before he targeted my children and health care, but you can’t flak for his recession. That’s what the mainstream media is for. You have to empathize with your audience, build goodwill. Besides, you’re closing on that castle tomorrow, so today wouldn’t be a good time to get all gushy over how exciting Barack’s recession is. And if you do, I quit.” (more…)

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Tags: "District 9”, "Twitter Effect", academy awards, Castle, Christian Bale
Posted Sep 5th 2009 at 9:52 am in Celebrity News, Classic Hollywood, Featured Story, Politics | 218402194 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/09/05/update-natalie-exciting-recession-portman-buys-castle-like-estate/Natalie+Portman%27s+Castle+and+Why+the+Movie+Star+is+Dead2009-09-05+16%3A52%3A07John+Nolte

Weekend B.O.: ‘Pelham’ Soft, Eddie Flops

Exclusive Steve Mason Early 3-Day Estimates

1. The Hangover (Warner Bros) – $32M 3-day – $103.97M cume
2. Pixar’s UP (Disney) – $28.5M 3-day -$185.16M cume
3. The Taking of Pelham 123 (Sony) – $26M 3-day – $26M cume
4. Night at the Museum 2 (Fox) – $9.2M 3-day – $143M cume
5. Land of the Lost (Universal) – $8.8M 3-day – $34.62M cume
*Imagine That (Paramount) – $6M 3-day – $6M cume
*Star Trek (Paramount) – $5.1M 3-day – $231.52M cume

Knowing most people would not have seen the original before buying a ticket for the ”retelling,” I deliberately chose not to screen the 1974 “Pelham” before writing my review. This proved wise. Had I, as my screening of the original last night proved, the review would’ve been much harsher. My love for Denzel aside, they’re not even in the same ballpark. There’s more texture, personality and narrative scope in the first ten minutes of Joseph Sargent’s urban classic than in all 106 minutes of this weekend’s offering. (more…)

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Tags: Denzel Washington, Eddie Murphy, Imagine That, Steve Mason, The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
Posted Jun 13th 2009 at 6:13 pm in Entertainment, News | 160174One Commenthttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/06/13/weekend-bo-pelham-soft-eddie-flops/Weekend+B.O.%3A+%27Pelham%27+Soft%2C+Eddie+Flops2009-06-14+01%3A13%3A10John+Nolte

Review: ‘The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3′

The publicity emphasis around director Tony Scott’s ”The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3” is that this is not a remake, but a “retelling” based on the original source material, John Godey’s novel of the same name. Fair enough. After all, who wants to beg comparisons to one of the very best urban thrillers to come out of the 1970s? And to be fair, it is a retelling, though an inferior one, that still manages to stand on its own as a pleasant, though unmemorable, summer diversion.

Denzel Washington is Walter Garber, a longtime civil servant in the New York City MTA who started at the bottom and worked his way into an administrative position until a scandal hit. An investigation’s underway, and until Garber’s name is cleared (or not), he’s demoted back to dispatcher. His skill and knowledge of how New York’s intricate subway system operates is obvious and impressive, but nothing in his career or life prepares him for the call he receives from the manic, ruthless Ryder (John Travolta), the leader of a small team who have just hijacked a subway car loaded with innocent passengers.

Ryder wants money. $10 million (and one cent), to be exact, and wants it in cash in 60 minutes or he’ll kill a passenger for each minute it’s late. Unfortunately for Garber, Ryder takes a shine to him, forcing the civil servant into the unenviable position as the only person the hijacker will talk to or deal with. Aiding him is NYPD hostage negotiator Camonetti (John Turturro), who helps Garber through the tense moments but also has to worry if this man, who’s facing an investigation where a prison term could be the outcome, isn’t the inside man.

The “retelling” works as far as keeping those of us familiar with what came before from knowing what will happen next, but even so there’s not much suspense. What made the original so riveting was the believability of it all. Robert Shaw’s quiet, shark-like efficiency and Walter Matthau’s clever but cynical civil servant were characteristics we recognized from our everyday lives; these people seemed to inhabit a real world that, thanks to a remarkable cinematography, was perfectly captured in a familiar time and place. (more…)

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Tags: David Shire, Denzel Washington, john travolta, luis guzman, Robert Shaw
Posted Jun 9th 2009 at 12:08 pm in Reviews | 1553982 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/06/09/review-the-taking-of-pelham-1-2-3/Review%3A+%27The+Taking+of+Pelham+1+2+3%272009-06-09+19%3A08%3A32John+Nolte

Summer Movie Season: The Good, the Bad and the Maybe

No matter how frustrated, disappointed, or outright disgusted Hollywood makes me, all is forgiven during that brief moment just after the trailers finish and just before the film begins. When those lights dim the chip dissolves from my shoulder and all the filmmaker need do to win me forever is tell one helluva story.

Politics shmolitics… Just take me away.

For we hopeless movie lovers, each year hope (if you’ll pardon the expression) springs eternal with a fresh offering of pull-out-the-stops-studio-balance-sheet-in-the-crosshairs slate of tent poles. And for that reason, this is my favorite part of the movie year because all I want for my ten bucks is to get lost for a couple hours, and from May 1st through the end of August filmdom at least attempts to put the political nonsense on hold to do just that. (more…)

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Tags: 3, Bruno, Christian Bale, Denzel Washington, george clooney
Posted Apr 9th 2009 at 1:09 pm in Entertainment | 1017142 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/04/09/summer-movie-season-the-good-the-bad-and-the-maybe/Summer+Movie+Season%3A+The+Good%2C+the+Bad+and+the+Maybe2009-04-09+20%3A09%3A31John+Nolte