In order to not make the pro-American films that so offend them, Leftist Hollywood lies and tells us pro-America doesn’t sell at what we’re told is the increasingly important foreign box office. And the hopelessly butt-boy entertainment media is always ready to help spread that lie. We knew that was a lie last year and now this year the single BIGGEST weekend for foreign grosses was captured by the openly pro-American, pro-U.S. Military Battle: Los Angeles.

In just 12 days, Battle: LA’s foreign take is $52 million — and this is a big-budget action film with no stars. However, during its entire run, the stridently anti-American “Green Zone” cleared only $59 million overseas, another big-budget action film, but this time with a big star and director. Wonder how Matt Damon likes them apples?

Oh, and congratulations to the new Narnia film for exceeding $300 million overseas, for a total take thus far of over $400 million worldwide. I guess in a world with a billion Christians Christianity does sell. Who knew?  

THR:

Battle: L.A.’s overseas gross accumulated over a dozen days stands at $51.9 million. The latest weekend gross is the highest of any No. 1 weekend tally recorded this year on the foreign circuit.

Meanwhile, Fox’s The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader passed the $300 million mark overseas, and Black Swan breached the $175 million barrier.

Maybe Leftist Hollywood’s going to tell us that America sells overseas today because Obama’s president – he’s not Bush and our overseas neighbors like him more because he closed Gitmo, oh wait; because he ended indefinite detentions, oh wait; because without Congressional approval he would never attack a Middle Eastern, oil-producing nation that wasn’t a threat to us, oh wait; because he wouldn’t fight a war of choice, oh wait; because… because… because…

(more…)

Despite the numbers that show more Americans identify themselves ideologically as conservative than anything else, Hollywood continues to either ignore or blatantly criticize conservatives and their ideals. Considering this point, it’s a wonder how a liberal minority continue to dominate Hollywood messaging through films like “Avatar” and “Green Zone,” and moreover how they continue to get away with it. With the larger fan-base that a well-done conservative film would logically have, it’s a wonder why time and again conservative ideals have fallen before big-budget, bigger box office successes without putting up any real alternative. 

Funding would be the first logical explanation – making a movie costs upwards of $100 million. But somehow films with average scripts and worse acting make it to the screen almost daily. For example: the aforementioned liberal duo. 

Now, average to awful films can be classics despite themselves – “Big Trouble in Little China” anyone? – but with all the hype over how much a film costs versus how much it rakes in at the box office, it begs the question how do bad special effects, scripts and actors make it to the big screen, and how do writers, directors and producers continually insult the largest portion of American audiences and get away with it? How does a value-system upheld by liberal elites define American cinema? And this isn’t the case in every film – there are some quality conservative films out there like “Die Hard” and “The Patriot” – but such films are the exception, rather than the rule.  (more…)

Over the past several years, many major movie stars have appeared in films about the war in Iraq.  Even though many of those movies, including the recent “Green Zone,”  failed dismally at the box office, movies like that film arguably received more credibility and publicity because of the well-known stars and directors who worked on them. For the ”Green Zone”, that included stars  Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear and the movie’s director Paul Greengrass. One would only wish that these same celebrities would focus less on criticizing U.S. policy in Iraq and focus more of their attention on the stories that are not being told about what is going on today in Iran.

 I recently had the opportunity to watch a new movie that focused on Iran entitled “Atomic Jihad: Ahmadinejad’s Coming War for Islamic Revival and Obama’s Politics of Defeat.” “Atomic Jihad” is a new documentary written and directed by Joel Gilbert. Because the movie often focuses on religion and the Middle East, it is bound to be a controversial film. The movie focuses on some extremists in the region including the current leader of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I am not as familiar with the region as Mr. Gilbert is so I cannot testify to the accuracy of everything in the movie but I can state that this film is worth watching for people who want to learn more about the history of the region.  

To me, the strongest part of the film focused on the disparity between the diplomatic rhetoric of President Obama and the harsh and demeaning rhetoric of President Ahmadinejad of Iran. (more…)

The recent Daily Variety article “Hollywood calls ‘Truce’ on war films” described how the film industry is now sidelining any future war and espionage films because of recent box office disappointment like Green Zone. The $100 million to $130 million budgeted Matt Damon star vehicle brought in a paltry $14.5 million its first week, a major embarrassment to Universal. Virtually every recent Middle-Eastern war film with the exception of The Hurt Locker (which has a few problems of its own) and The Kingdom have trashed United States troops, security and intelligence personnel. The Hurt Locker cost less then $20 million to produce and swept the Academy Awards, so it should eventually make a tidy sum in DVD sales and some foreign sales, though it has yet to break the $15 million mark in domestic box office.

Hasn’t it occurred to the overpaid and over-educated studio execs that the rest of America, minus the liberal bastions of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco, would probably pay to see Americans be the good guys again? Jerry Bruckheimer has a great Afghanistan War project called Horse Soldiers based on Doug Stanton’s incredible non-fiction book about the first teams of US Special Forces who led the Northern Alliance to victory over the Taliban – on horseback. With Bruckheimer behind the project it will have high potential for box office success, if Disney lets it see the light of day.

Producer Chris Godsick has been trying to get the World War II version of Horse Soldiers about the last combat charge of horseback US Cavalry made for a number of years. Colonel Ed Ramsey who led that heroic charge of the 26th Cavalry against the Japanese is a good friend of Godsick’s and an acquaintance of mine. I’ve actually filmed several hours of in-depth interviews with Colonel Ramsey for a possible documentary, yet we can’t get The History Channel to bite, “We aren’t doing those kind of shows any more.” No kidding, Ice truckers, pawnbrokers and UFOs are The History Channel’s stock-in-trade now. Ramsey is 94, a still sharp and vital 94, but Chris and I both would like for him to see he and his men’s real life courage celebrated on film before he goes off to Fiddlers Green, the cavalrymen’s Valhalla in the sky. (more…)

UPDATE: AP confirms: “Green Zone”  opens to a dismal $14.5 million.

The moral of the story? If you’re going to trash America and the troops, use Smurfs.

The Wrap:

Universal’s “Green Zone” became the latest Iraq War-themed movie to fall down the box office rabbit hole, debuting to just $5 million in the U.S. and Canada Friday, according to studio estimates. …

 “Green Zone” could find little traction, getting out to a pace that will give it less than $15 million for its premiere weekend.

That would be even less than the modest pre-release expectations for the $100 million film, which reteams star Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass, who worked on the Universal’s last two “Jason Bourne” franchise installments. The film was put into production during the co-chair term of Marc Shmuger and David Linde. (more…)

The poetic irony of the delayed release of the shaky-cammed Hollywood temper tantrum known as “Green Zone” couldn’t be sweeter. Yes, the very same week our Iraqi allies held a historic election that ended up much more successful than we could have ever hoped, our own Hollywood swoops in with a piece of cinematic sour grapes in the frantic, desperate hope of rewriting the history of a war they were so eager for us to lose.    

After making the last two “Bourne” films together, director Paul Greengrass and star Matt Damon have teamed up again in an un-thrilling attempt to transfer that same success to the streets of Baghdad. But this time within a very real and recent historical event, the immediate aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In a vacuum where history doesn’t exist, the film’s absurd premise would still undermine itself. But Greengrass isn’t working in a vacuum. Unfortunately for him, we all know the truth and this truth reduces his story to a strained, poorly contrived, episodic, Hollywood Hills fever dream that no amount of suspended disbelief can overcome.

Damon plays Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller, a good soldier in charge of an army team on the search for WMD four weeks after shock and awe. Baghdad is in chaos as the newly liberated Iraqis loot the city and scattered snipers take potshots at anyone wearing the American flag. Miller risks his own life and those of his men based on intelligence that’s supposed to reveal the location of Saddam’s WMD facilities. And this is the third time they’ve come up empty.  Frustrated and angry, Miller starts to ask questions and demand answers about the source of the intel. Naturally, his commanding officers aren’t interested in answering those questions or even facing the possibility the weapons might not be found. That would upset the Bush administration’s narrative of the New Iraq. (more…)

Today’s New York Post:

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. (more…)

The lead for this story might be Matt Damon’s heartbroken disappointment over Obama’s inability to strip away our health care as the millionaire actor holds on to his, but the news about “Green Zone” — which hits theatres March 12th — is the more interesting part:

It’s hard to think of a movie that’d play better in the Obama White House screening room than Matt Damon’s new Iraq War thriller, “Green Zone,” in which the Oscar-winner adroitly portrays a soldier fighting to expose the Bush administration’s weapons of mass destruction deception. …

Damon … vouches that “the people who worked on ‘Green Zone’ come from all across the political spectrum.”

His character, Roy Miller, is based on real-life Army chief warrant officer, Richard (Monty) Gonzales, whose Mobile Exploitation Team was charged with finding the WMDs during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

“Monty was a Republican – he’d voted for Bush,” Damon told us at Nobu 57 after the movie’s Cinema Society premiere. “He went to Iraq with the absolute conviction he was going to find the WMDs.”

Makes sense. After child-raping directors, Hollywood’s favorite hero is The Disillusioned Republican. (more…)

The year has barely begun and there are plenty of movies in the can awaiting their big screen release. Looking at the list, I can only admit to being stoked about two: Iron Man 2 and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1. Yee haw!

Most of the films on the list fall into my ambiguity zone – I couldn’t care less one way or another. Yet some fall into the “there’s absolutely no way I’d waste $10.50 plus the cost of snacks on this one” category.

Here they are, in order of their release. You may or may not agree with my assessments,  so have at it in the comments section:

Valentine’s Day (in theaters now): Another vanity project that crams in as many big names that would say “Yes.” Directed by Garry Marshall, the “all star cast” includes (in alphabetical order) Jessica Alba, Kathy Bates, Jessica Biehl, Bradley Cooper, Eric Dane, Patrick Dempsey, Hector Elizondo, Jamie Foxx, Jessica Garner, Topher Grace, Anne Hathaway, Ashton Kutcher, Queen Latifah, Taylor Lautner, George Lopez , Shirley MacLaine, Emma Roberts, Julia Roberts, Taylor Swift and Carter Jenkins. The movie follows the “intertwining storylines of a group of Los Angelinos as they find their way through romance over the course of one Valentine’s Day.” In other words, yet another cross-generational movie about how the beautiful people deal with love. Yawn. (more…)

Once upon a time Hollywood movies were often about American heroes vanquishing our enemies. Now they make movies attacking Americans while ignoring the real people who attack America.

Once upon a time Hollywood had no problem distinguishing our enemies from our allies. Now our allies are often shown to be feckless and evil while our enemies are either ignored or made out to be mere puppets of our evil leaders.

For example, last season of “24″ had an African dictator’s troops invading the country and trying to unleash a deadly virus, but of course, they were working for an evil Blackwater type military contractor run by a right-wing “patriot.” Patriot is Hollywoodese for crazy nut job. The same kind of villains were used in this year’s “State of Play” which had evil government contractors murdering people to cover up their evil conspiracy. Or last year’s “Body of Lies,” also starring Russell Crowe, which showed the CIA as a bunch of lying killers who have Arabs picked off with abandon for the aims of US policy. And let’s not forget 2007’s “Valley of Elah” in which American soldiers are portrayed as soulless killers made that way because they were exposed to combat. Or how about “Syriana”, in which a fat George Clooney wanders around the Arabian desert learning how evil the US is while boring the audience with an obscure plot. (more…)

On Pharmacy Road

Captain Henry Coltart on Pharmacy Road

24 August 2009
Helmand Province, Afghanistan

The British soldiers of 2 Rifles had a mission: clear and hold Pharmacy Road.

FOB Jackson is currently home to Battlegroup headquarters for 2 Rifles. The area around the river is called the “Green Zone,” but just as appropriately could be called the Opium Zone. During season, the area is covered with colorful poppies, whose 2009 products are probably showing up by now on the streets in Europe. European money flows back here and buys fertilizer in the Sangin Market, which can be used to make bombs, produce more opium, get more money and make more bombs and grow more opium and make more money and bombs and grow more opium. Sangin is at once an ATM and weapons bazaar for the enemy. Nearly all fatalities in this unit have been caused by fertilizer bombs. The decision to mostly ignore the drug dealers has been a strategic blunder. (more…)

Why would a company interested in making money (so they say) make yet another film trashing the Iraq War? By my count (narratives and documentaries), 13 have already flopped miserably and yet Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass team up for number 14, this one a big-budget studio critique of a war that successfully liberated 25 million innocent people.

Companies truly interested in making a profit don’t behave this way, which is why there’s never been a New Coke 2, much less a New Coke 14. And yet, Universal doubles down on more anti-Americanism using the fig-leaf of “based on a true story” to hide their malicious intentions which — to anyone paying attention — are always exposed by which “true stories” they choose to drop in theaters all over the world.

Here’s the New Yorker description of the book “Green Zone” is based on: (more…)