The feature-length documentary “Ayn Rand & the Prophecy of ‘Atlas Shrugged‘” is currently in its final week of a month-long limited national theater run, having to date played to enthusiastic audiences in upwards of 75 cities, including New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Toronto, Stamford, Boston and Annapolis, Md.

The documentary will be available on DVD and download beginning in April through Virgil Films (“Restrepo,”"Forks Over Knives”) complete with extra features.

Author/philosopher Rand began writing her last and most ambitious novel – “Atlas Shrugged” – in the years immediately following World War II. Her working title for the book was “The Strike.” It was about what would happen if all the productive people in America went on strike, leaving the entitlement recipients and governmental regulators she called “moochers” and “looters” without anyone to create value for them.

The result is chaos and ultimate disaster.

The post-war years and early ’50s are generally thought to be a relatively prosperous and benign period in twentieth century American history. Yet that’s the period through which Rand painstakingly crafted her novel. When it was published in 1957, “Atlas” was widely dismissed for its “preposterous” scenario. “Atlas” was science fiction. In no way, said the critics, did it depict the real America. Not yet, Rand said. In fact, she wrote the novel in the hope she might prevent it from coming true.

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If you love B-movies with plenty of camp, comedy and gore, then you’ve probably seen a few films created by the writer/producer/director Roger Corman, the man behind SyFy channel pictures like “Dinocroc vs. Supergator” and older classics like the original “Little Shop of Horrors.”

Up-and-coming director Alex Stapleton turned the camera onto the camp master in her film “Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel.”

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It follows Corman’s career – over half a century of cheap-as-dirt indie filmmaking – and the resulting 400-plus films that he created in that time. The film launched earlier this month, and Stapleton called BH recently for an interview about her film, Corman’s influence, and getting Jack Nicholson to cry on camera.

BH: Where does Roger Corman fit into the history of cinema?

Stapleton: I definitely think he’s part of the backbone of cinema. I think, creatively speaking as a filmmaker and director, he kind of helped – along with his compatriots – to birth the kind of blockbuster genre film experiences that we experience today that the studios are making.

I think Roger was definitely one of the pioneers in that movement. When you look at the movie “Avatar,” you look at the director and it’s James Cameron, and James Cameron [worked] under Roger Corman for years and… I think that James Cameron would probably tell you the same thing: that he learned a lot about how to put together a genre story by working for Roger.

I also think that as far as moments in cinema history, Roger has had a huge influence, specifically with the American new Hollywood movement, by finding and mentoring people like Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson, [and] Peter Bogdanovich, starting their careers but also giving them the idea – Peter Fonda, Denis Hopper and Jack Nicholson – giving them the idea to make the movie “Easy Rider,” which is a hybrid movie of Roger’s movies “The Trip” and “Wild Angels.” (more…)

Hard for me to imagine, but I am now 41. Amazing. It seems like yesterday my poofy mullet and parachute pants were all the rage, and Prince had a #1 hit on the radio. Now I’m married to the most beautiful woman, raising six children, and living the American dream. Our country has changed so much since my days of fighting with Carol and Ben on TV. America has always been known as “the land of the free” and “the home of the brave.” It’s the richest, freest nation the world has ever seen. Everyone wants to live here. But as I look around, I’m left with a sinking feeling that America is losing her way. Big time. The soul of our country is sick, and history shows me we are headed for disaster if we don’t change course now.

I’ve been looking around for answers, but all I hear is noise. Everyone is pointing fingers at the Left or the Right, blaming Hollywood or Capitol Hill. Time is flying by too quickly for petty arguments. My children’s future won’t wait. I’ve got to do something now.

Here’s my hunch: Could it be that we have simply forgotten what made us such a great nation in the first place? So many people are waiting around for our leaders to come up with a grand plan to save our nation. But is that really how America got started? What if things actually work the other way around? What if real change doesn’t start at the top but at the bottom? What if the best place to begin transforming our country is not the Oval Office but the dinner table?

For the past year and a half, I’ve been making a film called “Monumental,” and I am thrilled to announce that it’s coming to theaters on March 27. We are creating a live, one-night national event in 500 theaters where audiences can experience a monumental moment together. Then we will release the film in theaters in select cities, while providing helpful new resources to families, churches, and schools who want to go further with what they’ve experienced in the film.  (more…)

I highly recommend the documentary “His Way” as a testament to one man’s persistence, the value of being optimistic and looking for opportunities when others see problems. In covering a man, Jerry Weintraub, for whom the Bush family helped end anti-Semitic policies at many Kennebunkport, Maine establishments in the 1960s and who counted both Ronald Reagan and Armand Hammer as friends, Douglas McGrath directed one of this past year’s best biographical documentaries.

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In these trying times, this story of one man’s unrelenting efforts to succeed can serve as an inspiration to many. I know “His Way” inspired me. After learning how Jerry cold-called Elvis Presley’s Manager, Colonel Tom Parker, every day for an entire year for the right to take Elvis on tour (for the first time in nearly a decade), I decided to roll the dice and take my own film out on the road to build an audience. Concluding our interview with Douglas McGrath, director of the documentary “His Way,” we talked about more of the film, including the amazing segments on Weintraub’s experiences with Elvis Presley and Colonel Tom Parker and Frank Sinatra.

KW: How did you go about choosing which stories or chapters to cover or not cover from the book?

DM: Well, I didn’t do it that way. I didn’t think of them in terms of chapters. I just thought of them in terms of stories. But, I knew we’d have ninety minutes, an hour and forty-five maybe at most and I just thought, there’s no way to go through everything. I just thought “I’m going to ask about all the stuff I liked the best and the things that were really the big tent poles of his life.” So, I thought I’d better go with the things that really tell us, without repeating it, what his magic was. And the Elvis story is emblematic of his whole career, you know, that tells you how he started with nothing, he persisted. He won the contract, so to speak, the right to take him. He almost blew it. When you think of 20th Century entertainment, particularly musical entertainment and particularly male musical entertainment — you know, you have Elvis and you have Sinatra. Those guys are the big tent poles in that story. (more…)

The documentary feature “His Way” premiered on HBO this past Spring. “His Way” is based on  the autobiography “When I Stop Talking, You’ll Know I’m Dead,” which highlights the life and career of the great film producer/concert promoter/manager/philanthropist/entrepreneur Jerry Weintraub over seven decades.

Weintraub first managed musical acts ranging from The Four Seasons to The Moody Blues, then promoted artists such as Led Zeppelin, John Denver, Bob Marley, Bob Dylan, Kiss, Aerosmith and Queen. He also promoted the “comeback” tours for Elvis Presley, then Frank Sinatra. Weintraub’s movie producing credits include “Nashville,” “Oh God!,” “Diner,” “Cruising,” “The Karate Kid,” “National Lampoon’s Vegas Vacation,” “The Karate Kid” (2010), and the 2001 remake of “Ocean’s Eleven,” as well as “Ocean’s 12″ and “Ocean’s 13.” He appeared in all the “Ocean” films as well as “The Firm.”

“His Way” is the first documentary feature film directed by Douglas McGrath. McGrath is an actor/writer/director whose past directing credits include “Emma,” “Nicholas Nickleby,” “Infamous,” and “I Don’t Know How She Does It.” In my opinion, “His Way” is pound for pound and frame for frame the most entertaining and inspirational documentary of this past year. “His Way” was shot and edited for nearly ten months and culled from approximately seventy hours of interview footage.

KW: You took an autobiography and turned it into a documentary film. That doesn’t seem like it is usually done very often.

DM: It wasn’t quite as direct as that. Graydon Carter [Managing Editor, Vanity Fair] had called me and asked if I was interested in making a film about Jerry and Jerry’s book was not out at that point. So I read Rich Cohen’s piece that he had done for Vanity Fair and said, “Boy, this guy sounds like quite a character.” (more…)

Is George Lucas having the last laugh?

Lucas, the visionary behind the ‘Star Wars’ franchise, insists on tweaking the original trilogy every time it hits a new media platform. And with each change, longtime ‘Star Wars’ fans rise up in near unanimous fury.

Alexandre O. Philippe, the director of the new DVD ‘The People vs. George Lucas,’ is starting to believe Lucas relishes the negative attention.

“Some of the things Lucas does to this day make me wonder … I feel like he’s enjoying triggering reactions from his fans. I see no other good reason for him to do what he does,” Philippe says. “The changes [to the franchise] are ridiculous. I don’t know of a single fan who says, ‘Yeah, that makes sense.’”

‘The People vs. George Lucas’ investigates the love/hate relationship between Lucas and a galaxy of ‘Star Wars’ faithful. They adore Lucas’ space opera and the colorful characters inhabiting it, but they despise how he won’t let the films exist in their original form. And don’t get fans started on Jar Jar Binks, the comic relief introduced in 1999’s ‘Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.’

‘George Lucas’ showcases the nuttier side of the modern fanboy, but it also tackles meatier themes like a director’s responsibility to the public and if a beloved movie belongs to the filmmaker or the culture at large.

Philippe says the ‘Star Wars’ films had a “profound” impact on him as a child, and while he floated away from the franchise as a young adult it always remained in the back of his mind. So when Lucas re-released the original ‘Star Wars’ movies in Special Editions – complete with enhanced special effects and small but significant story edits – fans like Philippe blew a galactic gasket.

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You can say one thing about MTV; it knows its demographic better than most TV channels.

The “music” network is prepping a new documentary focusing on the youthful Occupy Wall Street movement.

Now the network said it will use its Emmy-winning True Life documentary platform to air True Life: I’m Occupying Wall Street on Saturday, November 5 at 6 PM ET/PT. MTV said it embedded cameras with three people at the protests for a two-week period to “capture the day-to-day realities” of the protesters as the movement gains visibility — even among MTV’s target youth demos.

Deadline serves up a five-minute preview of the upcoming special. Does the clip focus on the group’s political demands? Their crush of slogans and prime directives? The fact that they’re interfering with the lives of many New Yorkers?

Nope, nope and nope.

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As I watch documentary recollections of 9/11, I remain of the opinion that it will be a nearly impossible task to contextualize the atrocity in any form of popular culture.  That’s not to say it can’t happen, but to do so will require a master artist creating a work that transcends any living work.

Some may ask why it should even be necessary to do so.  The reasons are plentiful.  Those who do not study the past are doomed to repeat it.  The human experience is intrinsically connected to the search for meaning, from which our collective purpose can be divined. In short, by seeking to understand, we become that much closer to each other and to God.

But there is a greater reason still.  You’ll find much of it contained in David Milch’s discussion of his intriguing (though flawed) HBO series John From Cincinnati.  Mr. Milch postulates that the media has abdicated its moral responsibility (fans of Big Journalism have known that for some time), and that television has created a surrogate existence for us, detaching us from emotional reality.  Specifically:

I think that the media have infantilized the expectations of the audience because of the lack of some sort of transcendent informing vision. I believe that the surrogate existence that is provided by television has come to supplant the genuine emotional life of the populace…the assault on the collective sensibility of 9/11 was such as to give the audience so much fear that the only way that they could be placated was with a television series [The Iraq War…which had] everything to do with the habituation of the viewing public to the shaping of human experience in distorted forms for which the media is responsible…we wanted to be narcotized in our reaction to the assault on the World Trade Center…There is a different drama which is enacting itself in our country right now and it has to do with a failure to acknowledge the necessary moral and imaginative predicate that has become an entirely virtual existence, which is, you know, people spend more than half their waking hours watching television. Just think about that for a second. That has to shape the neural pathways…”

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First off, thank you to all the Big Hollywood readers who had so many nice things to say the past few months about our new documentary film, “Fear of a Black Republican.”  Your comments were so inspiring and so many folks wanted to know where they could see our film – that we took a step back to think about how (with limited means) we could get our little movie “out there.”

Our first Theater-Size (27x41) poster - "hot off the presses." (Actually - hot off Kinko's large-format printer.)

Well, in the spirit of “Colonel” Tom Parker and THE POLICE – ’78 Tour of America (in a cargo van), we have gone ahead and put together our own “Southern Tour – 2011″ for FEAR OF A BLACK REPUBLICAN.  After driving twelve hours or so, we will be having our World Premiere in Atlanta GA tomorrow at 7 PM at the Landmark Theatre – Midtown Arts Cinema.  Two days later and four hours up I-85, we’ll be screening in Charlotte NC on June 25th (Blumenthal Performing Arts Center) and then in Greensboro NC on June 26th(Carousel Cinemas at Battleground) .   These will be the first public screenings ever for our little film.  We did hope to add another city or two, but as this is our first foray into “Movie Touring”… we figured short and sweet would be smarter and safer.  

In order to make this tour happen, we are “four-walling” (renting out) two movie theaters and are renting and sharing space in a “black box” theater running a stage play.  Luckily, the space can project films and do stage plays in the same venue.  Pretty convenient, but if you ever want to do something like this, here are a few things to think about ahead of time:  Insurance and advertising.  In booking our theaters, we learned that you now have to have some type of “Event Insurance” to screen your film as an Independent filmmaker.  Ouch.  Enough said.

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Sarah Palin IS The Undefeated.

 By the time you finish watching this superbly scripted and produced two-hour documentary about the former Alaskan Governor, if you don’t come to that conclusion, you were either asleep during the film or you still  believe that “Community Organizer” trumps true executive experience and success as qualification to serve as America’s Commander-In-Chief.

Dim the house lights…

It is 2008 and Republican Presidential candidate John McCain introduces Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate to a crowd of thousands of enthusiastic supporters.  The beautiful, poised, confident Governor takes the stage at the Republican National Convention to thunderous applause and delivers an electrifying speech with a level of charisma, wit, and passion not seen since Ronald Reagan, that catapulted this relatively unknown Alaskan Governor onto the National political stage making her almost instantly and simultaneously one of the most revered and one of the most reviled politicians in recent memory.

In stark contrast, the film then cuts over to a dramatic 3-minute montage of pure, unadulterated hatred from the left for this VP candidate which history will record as one of the most vicious campaigns to annihilate a public figure.  It was vulgar.  It was brutal.  It was violent.  It was main stream.  It was textbook Alinsky.  And yet, she is still standing…undefeated.

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For those of you who don’t know Joe McGinniss, he’s the “journalist” who– unaware of the difference between Dian Fossey and Bob Woodward —  made the ridiculously creepy decision to move in  next door to the Palin family in order to intimidate and gain attention for himself research his upcoming hit-job “The Rogue.” According to Politico, he’ll be one of many during this campaign season using the obscene tactic of weaponizing Palin’s very own children as political bludgeons against her.

Kenneth Vogel at Politico, who helpfully amplified and mainstreamed McGinniss’ work:

McGinniss, who said his publisher wouldn’t let him do interviews, has compared the Palin family’s life to a soap opera and signaled that his book will focus on the mother of all Palin conspiracy theories: the long-simmering, though widely rejected, allegation that Palin’s daughter Bristol or someone else entirely is actually the mother of Palin’s youngest son, Trig.

As I wrote here, in this respect, McGinniss will be very useful to Obama’s Palace Guards in the MSM (like Politico) when it comes to these non-stop attempts to destroy the Governor through every method imaginable — even using her own children. And this will happen whether she runs for the presidency or not because the Left and their MSM allies are desperate to keep the Palin-Fury brewing — the nonsense that freak-shows her family, obscures her record, distracts from the issues, and constantly portrays her as unserious. In other words, they want to talk about everything except Palin’s time as Governor and her positions on the issues. McGinniss is a bad man, though, not a dumb one, and he apparently understands the power of popular culture and what a million dollar documentary-feature focused on the issues can do to help swamp and overcome the dishonest narrative he and his ilk are trying to make permanent:

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From the Associated Press:

Talking at Cannes film festival, director Keith Allen defended his documentary ‘Unlawful Killing’, about the death of Princess Diana which was funded by Mohamed Al Fayed.

From KGTV ABC San Diego:

Two student filmmakers are bringing the stories of U.S. Marines wounded in combat in Iraq to light. Ryan Smith and fellow student Sebastian Maselli entered their documentary, “The Blood We Shed,” for consideration in the national G.I. Film Festival and it was accepted.

The festival, now in its fifth year, draws entries from professionals, as well as top film schools, but this was a project both were connected to. Maselli spent seven years as a Marine and was among the first wave of troops sent to Iraq in 2003. He finished his active duty tour at the Wounded Warrior Battalion at Camp Pendleton.

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Being a filmmaker who happens to be Republican, I had long considered making a documentary about why there are so few Republicans where I live and what that means in a city with an African American-majority population and Democratic Party-controlled government.  But not being a documentarian, I never knew how or where to start. 

Then, in late October 2004, I read in a local newspaper that Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters of Los Angeles was coming to my hometown of Trenton, NJ.  She was coming to stump for Democratic Presidential Candidate John Kerry and our local Democratic Congressman, Rush Holt.  In this election, New Jersey was considered “up for grabs” and both parties were duking it out. 

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Being a constituent of Congressman Holt and having made friends with some local Democrats, I got permission to film the event as a filmmaker.  However, while I set up my camera, a pair of African American women approached me and flatly asked if I was “a spy.”  (Supposedly, the Republicans were going around filming and disrupting Democrat events.)  I told them that I had permission to be there and to shoot.  One of the women stayed with me, while the other one checked out my story.  After a few tense minutes, they got the word that I was “okay.”  But, I did get a few suspicious looks as I waited for the fiery Congresswoman to speak to the mostly African American crowd.  And when she finally arrived, she spoke words that would change my life.  Because being on the inside of a mostly African American Democratic Party election rally and seeing and hearing what was inferred about the Republican Party and several prominent Black Republicans… reinforced my suspicion that that there was more to this “Black Republican” thing than just a punch line. 

My wife and I would then spend the next six years researching, filming and editing FEAR OF A BLACK REPUBLICAN. (Being a Public Enemy fan from my college days, there was no other title for me).  While making my documentary, I would travel to a Presidential Inauguration to kick off the project; follow a Congressional Campaign in Georgia; criss-cross a Hurricane-devastated New Orleans; visit the birthplace of the Republican Party; make multiple trips to the National Archives and the Conservative Political Action Conference; and close out principal photography by filming my Party’s future Presidential nominee campaigning in the first suburb across the border.  And along the way, we’d also have to figure out what kind of film we’d make and what kind of filmmakers we are.  Because being a filmmaker who happens to be Republican is one thing.  Being a filmmaker who happens to be Republican and is making a film about Black Republicans is something else.

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Alfred Hitchcock was reputed to have said, “In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director.” While this enigmatic statement can be read and interpreted several different ways, one thing’s for certain: implicit is the idea that documentary filmmaking is powerful, heady stuff. It can, and has, been used to instruct and inform and – regrettably – propagandize and confuse. Generally, it’s left up to the viewer to decide if what they’re seeing is of the first or second variety.

And so it is for a viewer who happens upon an alarming film called Iranium, a 60-minute window into the very real threat of a nuclear-armed Iran. Released by the Clarion fund and directed by Alex Traiman, the film is at once gritty, brutal, terrifying and hopeful. And most importantly, if the professional and political pedigrees of those interviewed in the film are any indication, frighteningly true.

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Traiman, a journalist living in Israel and covering the Middle East, says he became fully aware of the threat of a nuclear armed Iran after attending a 4 day conference that focused on the subject in Israel in 2009. “So I started reading,” he says.  “After reading ‘The Rise of Nuclear Iran’ by Dore Gold and ‘Persian Night’ by Amir Taheri, I realized that there were several components that most Westerners did not know about the threat: There is a deep ideology guiding Iran’s leaders since 1979; there is a 30 year history of killing Americans that continues today; and that Western leaders have repeatedly misread the intentions of Iran’s leaders.”

In fact, Traiman adds, Westerners have a tendency to misunderstand the true nature of the threat because we insist on filtering the events in the Middle East, from the Iranian Revolution in 1979 to the events occurring today in Egypt and Libya, through a decidedly Western value system.

“There is most certainly a huge disconnect between the nature of these oppressive regimes and how they are viewed in the West,” Traiman says. “We view events in the Muslim world, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, through a prism of values that is uniquely American.  But those nations across the world have a completely different system of values that were established long before America ever became a nation.”

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Ed. Note: Zack Arnold is my brother and because he’s a struggling filmmaker involved in something I think the BH community will appreciate, as others have here and will continue to, I asked him to write something about his project and the efforts involved in getting it made. I am not in any way involved in the film creativity and I do not and will not ever have any kind of financial stake in it.  – J.N.

After ten years working in Hollywood, it still amazes me that ANYTHING ever gets made. You don’t appreciate what it takes to make a film until you try it yourself. By day, I edit the TV show Burn Notice. But like everyone else, I have a “passion project,” GO FAR: The Christopher Rush Story. It is a (unfinished) biographical documentary about a friend of mine who made such an impact in my life that I named my son after him. Through the film, I want his legacy to inspire others the way he inspired me and everyone that knew him.  

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I met Chris my senior year at the University of Michigan. His aid wheeled him into class to a room full of stares and whispers. This was an intensive, hands-on film production course, so to everyone else, the thought of having someone handicapped in their group, much less a quadriplegic, was apparently unfathomable. I took it upon myself to approach Chris and ask if he’d like to join my group; I had no idea how much that simple gesture would change my life.

Chris was born with a severe form of muscular dystrophy and was given a life expectancy of two years. When he lived past two, they said five. Then twelve. When he graduated from high school, he was told he “shouldn’t worry about college.” After he graduated from law school, I think his doctors got the point. Chris was going to defy the odds. His short list of accomplishments includes: He was the national ambassador for the Muscular Dystrophy Association (Jerry’s Kid); he had a meeting with Ronald Reagan; he met countless celebrities; he threw out the first pitch at major league baseball games; he was an honorary NASA astronaut; he was the first  to quadriplegic become a licensed scuba diver. But most importantly, he was a motivational speaker and advocate for the disabled, which led him to develop GO FAR, a program that used his experiences as a road map so others with seemingly insurmountable obstacles could achieve their goals. The first time I learned about GO FAR was at a Methodist Church during Chris’ funeral. He died of respiratory failure while studying for his bar exam just short of his 31st birthday. As a family member eulogized him and mentioned this program, I was struck with the inspiration to make a film about him.

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Ed. Note: Monday, HBO will air Eugene Jarecki’s documentary “Reagan.” The video embedded below is a 40 minute interview with the director that we’ve added to the Fox News piece. More on the great man here at Big Hollywood tomorrow, the Centennial of his birth.

Hollie McKay over at Fox News:

President Ronald Reagan is getting a lot of attention across the United States this week, including a special video tribute during the Super Bowl, as the country honors the centennial of his birth.

In conjunction with the commemorations, Eugene Jarecki’s new documentary “Reagan,” which explores the “glamorous leading man with the common touch,” debuts on HBO Monday night. Jarecki told FOX411 that most Americans will probably be surprised to learn about the “real” Ronald Reagan, a man he feels is quite different from the one portrayed by the media and history books. …

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“One of the great myths about Reagan was that he was an amicable dunce – a guy that floated his years throughout the White House and was just the puppet of smarter men. That could not be farther from the truth from what I saw in getting to know Reagan very intimately through the footage and interviews that I did with people who knew and loved him and worked with him, and also people who were very critical of him,” Jarecki said. “He was a shrewd thinker in many ways, and far smarter than people gave him credit for. He was also a man with blind spots and shortcomings. But the idea that he was just a figurehead and not the driving force of his presidency is to not understand that he was really the driving force of a massive life that began with small town roots and ended up in the most powerful office in the world and arguably one of the greatest presidential legacies in the world. That did not happen by accident.”

Interestingly, Jarecki also told FOX411 he didn’t think doesn’t Reagan, an advocate of limited government, would necessarily approve of the Tea Party, a vocal proponent of limited government. Why? Namely, the issue of immigration. (more…)

It’s never a good day when one of the most wicked organizations on the planet is pleased by anything. But how could America’s teachers unions not have been thrilled with the news that Davis Guggenheim’s damning indictment of the devastation they have brought down upon America’s public school system and millions upon millions of children was snubbed by the Academy this morning?

Objectively, from a pure documentary filmmaking point of view, “Waiting for Superman” is a superbly crafted piece of cinematic advocacy that not only displays great humanity for its subjects but also effortlessly takes the audience through a complex argument. That is what great documentaries do and as someone who has openly praised Michael Moore’s films, unlike some, I can park my politics at the door when it comes to judging the quality of the work based on objective merits. Furthermore, “Superman” is incredibly persuasive in making its case for charter schools and against the abomination of public school teacher tenure. With compassion and an intellectual scalpel, Guggenheim finally puts to rest the liberal lie that “certain” kids can’t learn and that public schools lack funding. 

“Superman” is both a Road to Damscus moment for its creator, a liberal who won the Academy-Award for directing Al Gore’s Global Warming nonsense “An Inconvenient Truth,” and a stake in the heart of the borderline racist myths perpetuated by teachers unions, the Democratic politicians beholden to them, and a media unwilling to upset that cozy narrative even as millions of impoverished inner-city kids are doomed to failure year in and year out. Going in with one set of beliefs and coming out with another, Guggenheim discovered and had the moral courage to tell the world that in schools free from the appalling manipulations of astonishingly selfish teachers unions, poor, black children can learn. Someone just has to give enough of a damn to worry about the fate of innocent children more than how much they’re being overpaid to fail.

The film’s single most persuasive element, however, is Guggenheim himself, a card carrying, bona fide lefty. As I mentioned in my review, the film is a Nixon goes to China moment. A conservative making the exact same documentary would’ve been completely ignored. These truths needed to be told by a man like Guggenheim and now I fear he’s learning another truth — the price a political apostate pays in Hollywood for straying off  the liberal plantation.

To their great credit, even film critics nominated and awarded ”Waiting for Superman” with the prize for this year’s best documentary. (more…)

Over the past few weeks I’ve been catching up with the Turner Classic Movies’ original documentary “Moguls & Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood,” which aired in seven one-hour installments and reportedly took two-and-a-half-years to produce. Which is a shame, because it was uniformly awful. Trying to cover the history of Hollywood from Thomas Edison to “Bonnie and Clyde” in just seven hours is a recipe for disaster to begin with, more or less guaranteeing that your Hollywood history lesson will be as surface and shallow as a middle school film strip about the American Revolution. In those seven hours, there was nothing new to be learned for anyone who’s ever taken Film 101 at a community college, much less someone who’s enough of a TCM fan to dedicate that kind of time to one of their original productions.

There were also a number of eye-rolling moments. The series found it impossible to mention John Wayne without also mentioning he didn’t serve in WWII and went so far as to remind us that while Ronald Reagan served in the Reserves during the war he never left American soil. Naturally, they failed to mention that much to the future President’s frustration, he was disqualified for combat due to extreme near-sightedness.

Furthermore, as though there isn’t one today, the documentary covered the political blacklist of the 1950s and spent an inordinate amount of time arguing against the dreaded Hollywood Production Code, a set of self-imposed guidelines created by industry moguls that spelled out what was and wasn’t acceptable content in motion pictures. According to TCM, any film ”brave” enough to buck up against the dreaded Code was to be celebrated as some sort of moral victory. If you didn’t know any better, you would think the arrival “Bonnie and Clyde” — the film that pretty much marked the end of the Production Code — was as important and liberating as the fall of the Berlin Wall. Hollywood has finally arrived, the documentary seems to say.

Really? (more…)