HBO has made a name for itself for not only delivering strong original content like “The Sopranos” but deeply biased documentaries like “Reagan.”

Now, HBO’s main competitor Showtime is backing a new documentary on Vice President Dick Cheney. The channel hired R.J. Cutler, the producer behind the pro-Clinton documentary “The War Room,” to give us a new look at President George W. Bush’s vice president and confidante.

Tentatively titled, “The World According to Dick Cheney,” the film will take a look at one of the most powerful vice presidents in history. Here’s director R.J. Cutler’s take on the upcoming film from a Showtime press release:

Like it or not, we live in a world defined by the domestic and international vision of Dick Cheney — perhaps the single-most influential non-Presidential figure in American political history,” said Cutler. “But for all the debate that his re-emergence in the public eye has caused, the fact is that Cheney the man remains an enigma, and the  manner in which he utilized his power and experience to become such a dominating political figure, have been left largely unexplored. This documentary will shine a balanced and multi-dimensional light on this truly polarizing figure.

Will “The World According to Dick Cheney” be a fair representation of the veteran political figure?  We’ll have to wait and see, but consider this snippet from a piece Cutler wrote about how “The War Room” got such unfettered access to Clinton’s campaign.

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I’ve written several articles skewering HBO for producing political projects destined to air immediately prior to the 2012 election, where the vast majority of the cast and crew are passionate Barack Obama supporters, and where the content is aimed at the Democrat’s two favorite Republican villains: Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney. So, when I sat down to watch HBO’s Too Big to Fail, I prepared myself for the worst. What I didn’t expect was the big surprise awaiting me.

Too Big to Fail, which premieres on HBO on May 23, 2011, features a star studded cast recounting the events that led to the financial crisis and bailouts by the U.S. government in 2008. It is a mini-series packed into a 98-minute made-for-television movie where several essential characters are quickly introduced and where finance and economics are casually discussed. It may help if one has a baseline of knowledge about the crisis before watching the movie. If one doesn’t know who Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke, and Timothy Geithner are or what Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, and AIG are, it may prove slightly difficult to follow.

Although the Director, Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential, 8 Mile), was limited to telling a very long and complicated story in a very short amount of time, he was able to skillfully pull it off. Perhaps this is because the screenwriter, Peter Gould (Breaking Bad), deftly adapted Andrew Ross Sorkin’s 2009 prize winning New York Times Bestseller, Too Big to Fail. (more…)

HBO just can’t help themselves.  Less than two weeks after the pay television giant announced Julianne Moore, 50, will play a 43 year old Sarah Palin during the 2008 Presidential election, the network announced its intentions to make another anti-GOP movie based on the 2008 Barton Gellman book, Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency as well as The Dark Side, a 2006 documentary which aired on Frontline, a PBS public affairs series.

There is no argument that Gellman’s book casts a very dark and negative shadow over Republican Vice President, Dick Cheney.  His own website describes the book as taking on “the full scope of Cheney’s work and its consequences, including his hidden role in the Bush administration’s most fateful choices in war: shifting focus from al Qaeda to Iraq, unleashing the National Security Agency to spy at home, and promoting ‘cruel and inhuman’ methods of interrogation.”  If you didn’t know any better, you might think that description fits a member of the KGB, or even the Gestapo.

The Dark Side, not to be confused with the UK horror film publication or as the general concept of evil in the Star Wars universe or the anthology horror TV series produced by George A. Romero or the DC comics super-villain, no The Dark Side is a documentary produced by David Fanning and Michael Kirk of Frontline.  The title of the documentary perverts a quote from Cheney a few days after the 9/11 attacks in which he stated that in order to defend America against future Osama bin Laden and al Queda attacks, we would have to work “sort of the dark side, if you will,” because, “That’s the world these folks operate in…” and depicts the struggle between the CIA and the vice president and how Cheney was the chief architect of the war on terror and invasion of Iraq.

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With a movie based on the gossipy, mostly unsourced, pro-Obama, Palin- savaging “Game Change” already casting and likely timed to boost President Barack –War of Choice! — Obama’s re-election bid in 2012, it looks as though HBO’s decided to double down with a miniseries written by a “West Wing” alum that’s based in part on the PBS (your tax dollars used against you again) Frontline documentary, “The Dark Side.”:

HBO has optioned the book Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency by Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Barton Gellman for a miniseries to be executive produced by Paula Weinstein.

The mini, which will be based on the bestselling book and the Frontline documentary The Dark Side, tells the story of Richard Bruce Cheney from his early days as Donald Rumsfeld’s protégé in the Nixon administration, to the nation’s youngest Chief of Staff under President Ford, to serving as Secretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush, through two controversial terms as Vice President under President George W. Bush. According to the producers, the project will center on Cheney’s “single-minded pursuit of enhanced  power for the Presidency (that) was unprecedented in the nation’s history.”

Read the full post here.

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Over the past two years, Academy Award-winner Richard Dreyfuss has undertaken a campaign for civility in political discourse. To aide in achieving this civility, he launched the Dreyfuss Initiative in 2010, the proximate of goal of which was to promote “a…diverse variety of websites representing disparate political opinions… to foster a discussion related to the future of America.” (His stated goals for a revival of civility even reach into K-12 classrooms, for which he is personally designing a curriculum to ignite students’ interest in Civics once more.)

Oh yes, and I almost forgot to mention that he sees nothing uncivil about the fact that MSNBC’s Ed Schultz wishes that former Vice President Dick Cheney would die.

That’s right: When recently asked about comments Schultz made in March 2009, wherein Schultz called Cheney an “enemy of the country” and prayed that God would soon whisk him away to “the Promised Land,” Dreyfus said the words were “beautifully phrased.” (Moreover, Hollywood’s self-proclaimed crusader for civility is on record saying that when he prepared to play Cheney in the movie “W.,” he did so by searching his own heart to find “villainy in the world.”)

It’s kind of discombobulating isn’t it? First, Dreyfuss bemoans lacks of civility in political discourse so he founds the Dreyfuss Initiative to help foster civility in our discourse again. Secondly, he bemoans the diminished study of Civics, which he views as a basis for civility, thus he forges a curriculum to restore the study of Civics (and therefore promote civility). Finally, he then calls Cheney a villain and says that Schultz’s prayers for Cheney’s death were “beautifully phrased.” (more…)

In a recent appearance on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, Roseanne Barr unintentionally proved the validity of Forrest Gump’s maxim, “stupid is as stupid does.”

She did so initially by accusing Sarah Palin of being “a traitor to this country.” This ridiculous statement caught my attention not because it had any foundation in facts, but because it was being made by Barr: a woman who made headlines in 1990 for mocking America by grabbing her crotch and spitting while singing the National Anthem for a baseball game between the San Diego Padres and the Cincinnati Reds.

Barr next accused Palin of being “a dupe” and an opportunist who’s capitalizing on the “anti-intellectualism” of Americans. And while there’s something inherently laughable about Barr speaking derisively of “anti-intellectualism,” it’s somewhat offensive that she doesn’t guard against throwing the word “dupe” around so recklessly. After all, she is the dupe who once donned a Nazi uniform and wore it in pictures that showed her taking “burnt Jew cookies” out of an oven.

Yet as stupid as all these things were, perhaps Barr’s most stupid statement was her assertion that Dick Cheney has never “[earned] one damn thing. [The] guy’s never worked an honest day in his life.” Where has she been for the last 10 years? A period of time in which Cheney was relentlessly criticized for his ties to Big Oil, via his past working relationship with Halliburton. To this day, Cheney continues to be vilified for his work with that company. (more…)

It seems a bit odd that my three main objections to a graphic TV series about flesh-eating zombies is that it lacks realism, that its characters are hackneyed, and that it has too few flesh-eating zombies.  After all, it’s hardly a genre most folks associate with realism or complex characters and not having zombies seems to miss the point.  Our hopes were so high, but AMC’s The Walking Dead sadly does lack realism, falling into the usual horror film trap of forcing its characters to do stupid things for no better reason that it is necessary to propel the plot.  If stupid were money, these characters would be George Soros. 

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And the characters themselves are – in the classic critique offered by a thousand screenwriting teachers – less characters than caricatures.  The first real redneck we meet is a racist loudmouth.  As is the second.  And the third is, so far at least, just a wife beater, though I expect he’ll end up hating black people too.  This is no surprise.  To people who write for the entertainment industry, if you live east of I-5 and south of the Mason-Dixon, you’ve got a sheet and a flammable cross in the back of your pick-up and you could someday grow up to be a revered Democratic senator.

Oh, and there’s not enough zombie action.  Instead of flesh-eating terror, we get scenes of budding survival suffragettes complaining about having to do the laundry.  Seriously.  The little band of refugees can’t be bothered to set up the most basic security for the undefendable position they’ve chosen to occupy, but these walking, talking clichés have plenty of time to bicker about gender roles while scrubbing Dockers. (more…)

(As with all Sucker Punch Squad reviews, what follows is a review of the script, not the final film – which I’ve not yet seen.)

Despite their insistence that Americans “get over” 9/11 even though we’re still at war with Islamic fundamentalists, the Left refuses to get over the Bush administration and the war in Iraq that we’ve already won. The Hollywood Left, with their “Bush lied, people died,” bumper-sticker brain capacity, are especially determined to keep flogging that dead horse long after American audiences have proven that they reject such defeatist, morally inverted propaganda.

And so if you think a new movie about the conspiracy to assassinate President Lincoln might make a gripping historical thriller and be refreshingly free of Hollywood lectures about the ill-named War on Terror, you’d be wrong on both counts.

Robert Redford recently unveiled his period piece The Conspirator at the Toronto International Film Festival. It begins with the assassination of Lincoln and centers on one apparent conspirator, Mary Surratt, on trial for providing gunman John Wilkes Booth and his accomplices (including her son) with a location to plot their conspiracy (her boardinghouse) and with other assistance. Mary, who “kept the nest that hatched the egg,” as Andrew Johnson put it, ended up being the first woman ever executed by the U.S. government.

But strangely – or maybe predictably, if you’re as cynical about Hollywood as I am – one figure looms as a more insistent presence in Redford’s courtroom drama than Surratt, Booth or Lincoln: President George W. Bush. (more…)

One of the big stories in filmdom today is about all the concerns surrounding the marketing of Christopher Nolan’s new film “Inception,” which cost a reported $160 million to produce and hits theatres next Friday, July 16th. According to Reuters, awareness isn’t as high as the studio would like, especially in Middle America.

Well, here’s one way to entice Middle America into your film, insult them by having your three main stars hit the promotional circuit and savage Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin as stupid and evil: 

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QUIZ: What makes you most want to see “Inception” now?

1. Ellen Page’s insufferably cruel sanctimony?

2. Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s pathetic, butt-boy me-toosim?

3. Leonardo DiCaprio’s wild hypocrisy?

Actually, “wild hypocrisy” is an understatement….

The same Leo you see in that video belly-aching with so much touching concern over Mother Earth, just happens to be the very same elitist whose PRIVATE jet-setting helped cause the chaos that cost hundreds of World Cup fans — who had spent upwards of $1300 for tickets — the ability to attend the game. Found buried yesterday in the sometimes useful L.A. Times: (more…)

Tomorrow, July 1st, I have the honor of co-hosting Move America Forward’s 3rd Annual Troopathon to raise money for care packages for our troops. The eight-hour broadcast, which will air live across the World Wide Web, will stream here at Big Hollywood, Big Government, Big Journalism, and Breitbart.TV from 4 p.m. to midnight, EDT. Please join us to show your support for our brave men and women fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere for our safety and for the freedom of people around the world. Here are the details from MAF:

The concept behind Troopathon is not a new idea, put on a Jerry Lewis style telethon to benefit a worthy cause, but a Troopathon is groundbreaking and innovative in that we bring together famous celebrities from radio, television, movie stars, musicians, journalists, and more to create a one-of-a-kind event with one purpose – to support our troops on the front lines in the war on terror and honor their service and sacrifice for our nation. (more…)

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is drawing a lot of attention from Americans right now, particularly the residents of the Gulf Coast who will have to absorb the brunt of the spill’s economic and ecological impact. Consequently, every cable news outlet in the country is hosting guest after guest to talk about the spill and how its ramifications might be curtailed.

Earlier this week, CNN’s Anderson Cooper, host of Anderson Cooper 360, had actor Robert Redford on his show to talk about the spill. Not surprisingly, what viewers heard from Redford was how the spill demonstrated that big oil companies are bad, that it was George W. Bush’s fault (more accurately, Dick Cheney’s), and that Obama has done his level best to handle this mess in a Presidential manner.

Cooper began the interview by asking Redford what he thought of BP’s response to the spill thus far, and Redford answered by saying we were seeing the fruits of “a failed energy policy” that was “the consequence of the collusion between government, Congress and big oil companies.” Redford went on to say that it was our “terrible energy policy” had “allowed this [spill] to happen” in the first place. (more…)

The political thriller Fair Game premiered at Cannes today. (Pause for giant, collective yawn from Big Hollywood readers…)

The Sean Penn-Naomi Watts “starrer” (hey, it’s fun using unnecessarily awkward Variety-speak!) revisits the Valerie Plame Wilson scandal, an episode I’m not even going to bother recapping, because to do so would simply be coma-inducing for all of us. Besides, I already summed up the affair and dissected the screenplay’s political slant for Big Hollywood here. Suffice it to say, it’s a tale the Hollywood Left is hell-bent on getting Americans to care about.

As are its water-carriers in the media. In a deceptive puff piece an article last week for the Los Angeles Times, Rachel Abramowitz discusses the film and interviews its director Doug Liman. The first clue that we’re about to be sold a crockpot of hooey comes when she describes Valerie Plame as “the undercover CIA operative whose name was leaked to the media by the Bush White House in an effort to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson.”

Notice how matter-of-factly those lies are delivered. Matter-of-fact because the left-dominated entertainment industry clings to its anti-Bush narrative about the affair as received wisdom: courageous patriot Joe Wilson dared speak truth to power by exposing the lies neocons used to promote a “war of choice,” and then the wicked Bush and his flying monkeys Rove and Cheney plotted vengeance against him from their White House lair. (more…)

****UPDATE from Adam McKay: “The Cheney joke is gone cause it didn’t work. But the villain is a Maydoff character. How is that partisan?”

The co-writer/director of “The Other Guys,” Adam McKay, Tweeted Big Hollywood yesterday after Pam Meister’s Sucker Punch review ran. He and I went back and forth a bit (if you’re interested, I’m @jjmnolte, he’s @ghostpanther). Long story short, he’s pretty sure Cheney’s a criminal…or something.

After the below reader-comment popped up I asked McKay directly if there was indeed a Thousands Oaks test screening for “The Other Guys” Tuesday night, and he confirmed that there was. So with that confirmation, I’m comfortable highlighting the following from reader lars bentley: [emphasis mine]

Just saw a test screening of this movie on Tuesday in Thousand Oaks, CA and one scene featured a bio of the “bad guy” that had photos of him hanging out with George W. Bush and referred to him as a Best Friend of Antonin Scalia. Rush Limbaugh was also featured in a scene where the main characters are changing channels on the car radio and an out of context clip of Rush talking about how he wants Obama to fail.

Methinks bentley’s closing sentence speaks for us all:

The movie had some pretty funny scenes, but they kept throwing in these political references for no apparent reason other than to express the filmmakers personal opinions, and it detracted from the movie.

Please keep in mind that lars is a commenter and that there’s no way to confirm anything other than the fact that the test screening he says took place did. (more…)

Slated for release on August 6, 2010, “The Other Guys,” written by Adam McKay and Chris Henchy and starring Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg (whose “funky” credentials expired a long time ago), offer viewers a film that is:

“Set in New York City, … [and] follows Detective Allen Gamble (Will Ferrell), a forensic accountant who’s more interested in paperwork than hitting the streets, and Detective Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg), who has been stuck with Allen as his partner ever since an embarrassing public incident with his quick trigger finger. Allen and Terry idolize the city’s top cops, Danson and Manzetti (Dwayne Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson), but when an opportunity arises for the Other Guys to step up, things don’t quite go as planned.”

No big deal. We see these sorts of cop comedies all the time: Opposite personalities are forced to work together. They constantly clash. They bungle assignments. Then they come to an understanding and manage to save the day.

A sneak peek at the script tells us that there are a few moments that will irk conservatives, including a “hilarious” reminder that we have a “black president” and that it’s time to stop stereotyping, even though there’s no stereotyping involved in the scene. Get it? Ha ha. But that’s all typical for this kind of in-your-face, over-the-top comedy film. (more…)

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So last week I told you about the scandal at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit. There a hacker revealed confidential emails exposing attempts by global warming apostles to manipulate embarrassing info that countered their warming claims.

These emails have been called “the nail in the coffin” of global warming hysteria.

I wish that were true.

Check out the sites where the Chicken Little`s still thrive. About the hacked emails, The Huffington Post says “this criminal activity has created fodder for right-wing groups to promote their own agenda that global warming is not real.” And, after admitting he was “deeply shaken” by the emails, a Guardian columnist adds that “To bury man-made climate change, a far wider conspiracy would have to be revealed.”

Really? (more…)

Earlier this week, Andrew Breitbart paid tribute to the late Ron Silver at the Center for Security Policy’s Keeper of the Flame dinner.  Attendees included Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

When “Law & Order” first hit the airwaves in September of 1990, I was an immediate fan. The concept, the ignoring of the personal lives of the lead characters, the wonderful acting and especially the endless plot twists hooked me a few seasons before the public would catch on and make the show a regular ratings hit. The first four seasons are among four of the best ever produced for dramatic television, thanks mainly to Michael Moriarty’s exceptional work as Assistant District Attorney Ben Stone, a resourceful, Robert F. Kennedy-style hard-nosed prosecutor determined to see justice done (though the whole cast was top-notch).

After 88 episodes Moriarty left, Sam Waterston (one of my favorite actors) took his place, and while the show was never quite the same, it remained regular viewing until around 2002.

The program’s eventual deterioration was a case study in the boiling frog theory. The quality of the production and acting remained, but the politics slowly shifted to the far left almost without my noticing. And it wasn’t the actual politics that first became apparent; it was the negative effect of those politics on the quality of the storytelling. (more…)

[ed - Rush transcript! Leaked NEA conference call from my mom, proving the Bush Administration did it too]

TRANSCRIPT OF
CONFERENCE CALL OF THE
NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS
21-Jan-2007

MR. SMIRNOV:  Hello everybodies! Who we gots on the phones here?

MR. KIETH:  Toby Keith. Built Ford Tough.

MR. SMIRNOV:  Hokay, buddy!

MRS. BURGE:  Beverly Burge, Ocelot, Iowa. I do scrapbooking.

OAK RIDGE BOYS:  Howdy! We’re the Oak Ridge Boys!

MR. SMIRNOV:  Alrights, Branson in da house!

MR. HANEY:  Lester Haney, Sepulpa, Oklahoma.

MR. SMIRNOV:  Hey everybodies, I don’ts know if you see Lester Haney’s work, but he does some of the most beautiful chainsaw stump sculptures Yakov ever sees. (more…)