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…

Anyway, the next time some executive tries to tell you “America” doesn’t sell overseas, the response is an easier one than trying to remember all of this. Simply point them here and here. Then remind them that we saw what happened to Superman when Bryan Singer intentionally stripped him of his Americanism (and masculinity).

Now it’s time to wonder how the decision to tone down all that offensive America stuff in Captain America is settling in over at Marvel today.

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. 

The biggest question is how does Hollywood get away with it time and again? If money is the bottom line, and a movie is terrible, and you see it once in theaters and never rent it again, how can a studio make money off this product? Journalist Edward Jay Epstein tells exactly how in his eye-opening book, “The Hollywood Economist: The Hidden Financial Reality Behind the Movies.” This book breaks through the shroud over Hollywood finances to explain why your popcorn is loaded with butter, why theatres in general seat less than 300 people per screen, why you might see Canadians starring in American films, how a studio can make a $100 million film for $20 million or less out of pocket and how a film can basically make more money before it is released than after. 

It’s a brilliant book and a must-read for anyone who really wants to understand how the back rooms of Hollywood work, where the money comes from and why. I’ll be making the pitch for Epstein over the next few weeks in a weekly series, where I’ll address the key elements of the book, and relate those elements to conservatism – why we’ve been ignored by Hollywood, why money is the last reason we should accept for it. Most importantly, I’ll throw out my best ideas on what we can do about it. And then I’ll wait for your best responses telling me why that’s ridiculous. Hopefully there’s some fun dialogue. 

It’s time to take back the movies.

 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.

During the presidential campaign of 2008, President Obama received a lot of criticism for being open to talks with Iran and Mr. Ahmadinejad. According to a CNN.com article from late in that year, it was noted that “[t]he Obama-Biden Web site calls for ‘tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions.’” Since that time and Obama’s inauguration, Ahmadinejad has continued his angry rhetoric and made accusations against our nation including, according to CNN.com, his recent statement that the September 11th attacks were “a ‘big lie’ intended to pave the way for the invasion of a war-torn nation, according to Iranian state media.”

Gilbert’s film discusses the rhetoric of the two leaders and although Obama has seemingly become more forceful recently in talking about Iran’s leader, many would likely still argue that he has not been forceful enough especially after last year’s contentious election in Iran. In showing clips of the two leaders, Gilbert raises serious questions about our president’s diplomatic rhetoric. Although people on the left and right can disagree about the forcefulness of rhetoric that the president should use, both sides can likely agree that Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric throughout the past several years has been bitter and angry towards the United States and he continues to speak out against the U.S. and Israel, regardless of who the president of our nation is. Gilbert’s film is a small but important film about the region that raises serious questions about our president’s rhetoric concerning Iran. 

Gilbert’s film and the history depicted in it also raises a broader question about Iran at the movies. One wonders why more mainstream films have not been made about what is going on in that nation. Films about Iraq with major stars hadve received a lot of media attention.  However, many of the same mainstream celebrities depicted in movies about Iraq have not brought the same amount of attention to what is going on today in Iran.

Last year, I had the opportunity to interview Shohreh Aghdashloo for “Big Hollywood” about her movie “The Stoning of Soraya M.” Aghdashloo, who I noted in the article was the first Iranian to be nominated for an Academy Award for acting, has used her opportunities as an actress to tell important stories about Iran. Her most recent film doing that was “Soraya M.,” a movie that brought publicity to the cruel act of stoning people to death as punishment. Several years before that, she also appeared in the film “House of Sand and Fog,” a fictional story about an Iranian couple struggling to make a decent living in the United States.

It is disappointing that more mainstream actors, actresses and writers have not done more work to educate people about issues in Iran but it is great to see people like Mr. Gilbert and Ms. Aghdashloo try to bring attention to political issues surrounding that nation. There are many stories that should be told through films that have not been (including at least dozens of stories about the controversial elections last year and the protests afterwards). One hopes that with the box office failure of “The Green Zone” and other movies like it, celebrities will stop telling conspiracy stories about U.S. foreign policy and they start addressing real foreign policy issues (like the current situation in Iran) that are not getting the publicity they deserve.

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.

America — you know, all the rest of America out there in Oklahoma City, Denver, Houston and Nashville, Albuquerque and Sacramento — wants to see heroes, American heroes and not just comic book heroes. Successful political thriller author Vince Flynn, Extreme Measures and ten other extremely well written “war on terror” centered novels gets this. On the Glenn Beck show recently, Flynn described his Mitch Rapp, CIA counter terrorism hero as a CIA version of Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry. Rapp is a take no prisoners, break any law necessary and take any risk necessary to protect America kind of guy.

At least six of Flynn’s novels have made it to the New York Times Best Seller list, and he’s now made the number-one spot there as well. The amount of in depth research and his own innate understanding of the world his characters inhabit actually brought him under temporary scrutiny by the Secret Service and other top-level government security. Now the same government law enforcement and intelligence types are huge fans and often appropriate sources.

In a telling scene from Flynn’s Protect and Defend an enlightened but fictional centrist Democratic President tells Mitch Rapp:

“There are too many people in my party who think that violence is never the answer. It’s a very enlightening and alluring argument when made in a civil society that has a relatively efficient justice system. Even more so when unchallenged in the lecture halls of academia, but in the real world it’s a bunch of bullshit.”

Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura has the rights to Flynn’s Mitch Rapp character, but now according to Daily Variety no studio is going to want to make these films. Flynn himself has said that in most of his Hollywood meetings the first thing the studio execs want to do is change the bad guys from Muslim extremists to something far more politically correct. His books deal with the intelligence, front line and political war on terror today, who the hell do they think the antagonists are supposed to be, a twisted Santa Claus and a group of demented elves! It doesn’t mean Flynn or his hero hate Muslims, in fact there are often sympathetic and even heroic Muslim characters. It’s the extremists who are in Mitch Rapp’s gun sights. Lorenzo di Bonaventura gets Flynn and his hero, so there is hope. If the no-nonsense Mitch Rapp is cast right the film could make a fortune, but will the studios bite?

Vince Flynn

In the 1987 action thriller Wanted Dead or Alive Rutger Hauer’s former CIA operative, now a bounty hunter, catches a murderous Muslim terrorist played by Gene Simmons just before he sets off a bomb that would produce a poisonous gas cloud that could kill tens of thousand of Southern Californians. Simmons has also brutally killed Hauer’s police detective best friend. The bounty hunter leads out the terrorist with his hands bound and a live grenade shoved in Simmons’ mouth, the pin of which Hauer now has his finger through. Hauer tells the government types to send the reward to his late-friend’s family and he’ll keep the bonus for bringing in Malak Al Rahin alive. Then he has a change of heart and says, “Fuck the bonus,” pulling the pin on the grenade and exploding Simmons’ head in a ball of flame. It’s an incredibly satisfying film moment.

If studio execs today want to attract audiences they should think about more Rutger Hauer and Mitch Rapp-type heroes in their movies instead of corrupt Americans, bleeding hearts and left wing actors.

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.

Read the full story here.

Compare that to the opening weekend figures for the two previous collaborations between director Paul Greengrass and Damon:

Bourne Supremacy: $52.5 million

Bourne Ultimatum: $69.2 million

Gee, I wonder what the difference was?

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.

SPOILERS COMING

Miller’s skepticism draws the attention of CIA station head Martin Brown, a character who should’ve been called Liberal Argument because his job is to spout leftist talking points as Greengrass muscles the truth to insure Brown’s proved correct. Brown and Miller join forces to find the source of the intel, whose known only by the code name Magellan. Poundstone, a sleazy Pentagon senior Bush official played by Greg Kinnear, has sole access to Magellan, and using him as a source, made the case for the war with the help of Lawrie Dayne (Amy Ryan), a Wall Street Journal reporter who reported as gospel Magellan’s dire warnings about Saddam’s chemical, nuclear and biological weapons.

Greengrass’s absurd, twisted little fantasy is that this lie caused the insurgency that would eventually result in the deaths of thousands of Americans soldiers. It works something like this (I think). In Jordan, before the war, one of Saddam’s generals held a secret meeting with Poundstone and told him there were no WMD. So desperate was the Bush administration to go to war, they ignored this and went ahead with the invasion anyway. The problem is that the only man who can stop the insurgency is also this same general, who must now be killed in order to cover up that the administration knew there were no WMD.

This hysterical lie Greengrass, Damon, and Universal Studios have invested so much in is so laughably desperate I’m still having trouble believing they told it. Seemingly intelligent people have positioned $150 million dollars worth of propaganda on a stool with one wobbly leg. How did they delude themselves into believing that leg wouldn’t be immediately kicked out from under and the whole tower of bull shit collapsed as soon as everyone in the audience with an IQ above 75 remembered the well known fact that the United Nations, France, Germany, and Russia (among others) all had the same intel we did showing Saddam in possession of WMD?    

Even removing the context of history and truth, the premise is still a completely illogical storytelling device that asks us to buy into the idea that a general from the enemy’s army convinced a Pentagon official Saddam wasn’t in possession of WMD. Why would Poundstone believe him? What did this General show him that was so convincing and incontrovertible? Poundstone, however, is so terrified of this information getting out that he orders up a big conspiracy to have the General and Miller killed — instead of, you know, telling the press, “The General did tell me there were WMD and now he’s lying.”

As the story plods along — and plod it does with zero tension — the moral hole Greengrass obviously has in his heart, ultimately turns on our own troops. Miller’s job is to go rogue and save this Ba’athist General — the only man who can save us from the coming insurgency (as the thuddish exposition that mars the whole script continually reminds us). But there has to be bad guys, so Greengrass chooses the American Special Forces and turns them into a brutal team of ruthless killers working for Poundstone. By the time the third act arrives, all of unholy Hollywood is hoping we’ll cheer as Saddam’s former henchmen, the monsters behind those mass graves, shoot down a helicopter full of American servicemen.

I just felt sick.

The Iraqi people don’t come off much better. There’s one Iraqi man Miller uses as a translator. We’ll call him Ali-Token. But in the end he comes off a self-destructive fool. The rest are nameless and faceless, alternately selfish looters or helpless, pathetic victims of the invasion. This refusal to humanize the Iraqi people is part of the leftist gameplan. To make them real and sympathetic is to say they were worthy of liberation. Can’t have that.

In Matt Damon’s Iraq there are no mass graves and there are certainly no terrorists, only dark, brutal nightmarish prisons manned by American soldiers. Outside our men terrify helpless Iraqi prisoners with German Shephards. Inside they’re choked, bruised, bloodied and kept in black hoods. There’s also no New York Times. Even though the Lawrie Dayne character is obviously based on Judith Miller and her reporting in the liberal Times, the newspaper Dayne works for is the conservative Wall Street Journal. The L.A. Times’ Chief Water Carrier tried to explain this obvious bias away by informing us that the studio was worried about a lawsuit — as though no one thought to consider a fictional newspaper name.

Politics aside, Greengrass and his shaky-cam have finally reached the full self-parody stage. During the “Bourne” films I at least wished I could see what was going on. Here, especially during what’s supposed to be the big, important climatic set-piece, the camera is so epileptic and the lighting so dark you tune out and go to your happy place. That place where the multi-millionaires in charge of the most powerful propaganda device known to man aren’t soulless liars at war with us.

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.

Movies like “In the Valley of Elah,” “Rendition” and “Redacted” have shown US forces doing nasty things — but none went anywhere near as far as this picture in suggesting original sin corrupted the entire Iraq war and that American officials are more blameworthy than the insurgents for the most violent years.

“Green Zone” isn’t cinema. It’s slander. It will go down in history as one of the most egregiously anti-American movies ever released by a major studio.

Read the full article here. Warning, there are plot spoilers.

More here.

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.

In the movie, Amy Ryan plays a reporter obviously modeled after Bush water-carrier Judy Miller. Greg Kinnear plays the oily Bush operative who leads her to believe an Iraqi general has confirmed the existence of WMDs. A chase commences to find the general.

Since Paul Greengrass is directing, think of “Green Zone” as Bush-bashing filmed with a shaky-cam set alternately on WhatInTheAlmightyHellIsGoingOn or ICan’tSeeShit.

The advertising for this $150 million piece of propaganda is desperate to make it look like “Bourne 4:  Undermining An America Still At War,” which brings us to today’s survey question…

After more than a dozen-plus anti-Iraq/War on Terror films flopped something terrible, many of them starring the biggest names in the business, would a money-driven industry greenlight $150 million for yet another? Is that the behavior of a money-driven, profit seeking, bottom line industry?

Or is that the behavior of Leftist propagandists?

Okay, I lied, that’s a rhetorical question.

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.

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Alice in Wonderland (March 5): Alice in Wonderland is indeed a strange tale. Alice’s curiosity prompts her to follow a talking rabbit with a pocket watch down a hole and enters a land of odd creatures where nothing is as it seems, replete with talking animals and a power crazy queen whose army is a walking, talking deck of cards – and of course, she finds it was all a dream. The 1951 Disney animated film made this a favorite of children of all ages – which is why the idea of creepy Tim Burton taking over kind of bums me out. I was initially excited about seeing his version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but in the end was disappointed. Instead of Willie Wonka being a fun-loving man who just enjoys making candy and takes us along on his wacky adventures, we got Johnny Depp as a Willie Wonka whose father was dentist and ruined Willie’s childhood by forcing him to wear a horrible contraption on his head to straighten his teeth and wouldn’t allow him to have any candy. Because Willie’s childhood was “taken away” from him (think Michael Jackson, whom Depp reportedly used as inspiration for his character), he becomes a man desperate to relive his childhood. Sad. Depp is once again teaming up with Burton for Alice. Depp’s a fine actor, but I shudder to see what the two of them will do to this story.

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Green Zone (March 12): Matt “I Love Howard Zinn and I’m smarter than Sarah Palin” Damon in a movie about war. That pretty much sums it up.

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Wall Street 2 (April 23): Gordon Gekko is back. Sigh … again with the remakes. But Wall Street is once again in liberals’ sights as a symbol of all that is wrong with the world. The plot via IMDB: “As the global economy teeters on the brink of disaster, a young Wall Street trader partners with disgraced former Wall Street corporate raider Gordon Gekko on a two-tiered mission: To alert the financial community to the coming doom, and to find out who was responsible for the death of the young trader’s mentor.” Everyone’s favorite nerd Shia LaBeouf joins Wall Street veteran Michael Douglas in the sequel, directed once again by Oliver “I Love Castro” Stone. What’s not to, er, like?

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A Nightmare on Elm Street (April 30): The first Nightmare movie was shocking partly because it was different: a child murderer preys on the children of a lynch mob who killed him by entering their dreams. How can that be topped? Has Hollywood become so bankrupt in the idea department that it has to remake horror flicks from the 1980s?

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Sex in the City 2 (May 28): Haven’t we seen enough of these self-absorbed, sex-addicted, relationship-phobic women who have nothing better to do than to shop, do lunch and talk about … well, sex? Frankly, they’re getting a little long in the tooth for this sort of thing. Before you know it, they’ll be starring in Sex in the Nursing Home. And for the record, I am not one of those SJP haters…I happen to think she’s an attractive and talented woman. But let’s move on already.

—–

A-Team (June 11): When I was in high school, the A-Team was one of the top TV shows. Yes, I am showing my age. I watched it occasionally, but knew people who scheduled their evenings around it. A bunch of ex-U.S. Army Special Forces guys are on the run for a “crime they didn’t commit” become soldiers of fortune whose clients are always somehow oppressed. It was a product of its age: over-the-top action and over-the-top characters. I do enjoy watching reruns, but again wonder why Hollywood can’t seem to get out of the rut of revamping either old movies or old television shows for today’s audiences. The only bright side I can see are appearances by original A-Team stars Dirk Benedict and Dwight Schultz.

—–

Karate Kid (June 11): In the original film, Ralph Macchio plays Daniel, a teen whose divorced mother moves them from New Jersey to California. A fish out of water who is bullied by the local jerks – who happen to all belong to the same karate school run by a creep with a violent streak – Macchio is befriended by Mr. Miyagi, under whose handyman exterior is an accomplished martial artist and who teaches him that martial arts are more than just about beating up your opponent. “Wax on, wax off” became a catchphrase of the day (heh, I still say it). The new movie has the single mom and her son moving to China, but the rest of the plot is pretty much the same. As you might have already figured out, I’m not a big fan of remakes and am leery of films that don’t have an original storyline.

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Piranha 3-D (August 27): Since Avatar’s success, be prepared to be inundated with 3-D movies. In Piranha, a tremor under Lake Victoria unleashes the voracious ancient piranhas, leaving Sheriff Julie Forester (Elisabeth Shue) to save the hapless townsfolk. Poor Elisabeth. … true stardom has always eluded her and she is now relegated to doing films about man-eating fish that jump out of the screen at the audience. And it’s not even the very first horror movie about these killer fish (surprise!). Watch for appearances by Christopher Lloyd, Richard Dreyfuss and Jerry O’Connell (whom I really loved in his online spoof of Tom Cruise giving a creepy Scientology talk). Bottom line: If you loved Anaconda, you’ll probably love Piranha. If not, it’s probably best to save your money and your sanity.

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Jackass 3-D (October 15): What did I tell you? 3-D! And not just any 3-D movie, but a movie about a bunch of men who refuse to grow up and go around perpetrating stupid, dangerous pranks and stunts for their own amusement – and get paid for it. It’s based, of course, on the television show from MTV (remember when they actually used to feature music videos?) and the previous two Jackass movies. I’m sorry to say that Johnny Knoxville, whose career was launched by this series and whose biggest role to date was Luke Duke in the Dukes of Hazzard movie, and all of his friends are back. I’m not necessarily a comedy snob, but I don’t find humor in watching people hurt themselves.

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.

And now we have the upcoming “Green Zone” with Maaaatt Daaaamonnnn. The villains appear to be evil American contractors again. Sheesh, are they done with Nazis now as the cliched Hollywood villain? Oh, I forgot, they’re busy making Nazis more sympathetic now.

Hollywood seems to have it in their head that Americans are the bad guys.

Meanwhile, Muslim fanatics of the Al Qaeda variety don’t exist in Hollywood movies anymore. You have to go back to 1994’s “True Lies.” Yet James Cameron’s movie didn’t exactly take the threat of Muslim terrorists seriously. It treated them more like typical goofy movie villains for the hero to punch out. And now, when Islamo-fascists are referenced at all, they are usually shown to be tools of evil Americans (with the exception of a handful of art films, mostly foreign, like 2007’s the “Kite Runner” in which the Taliban were shown to be the murderous thugs they are.)

Hollywood once had no trouble showing us the villains of the world. The Nazis were an easy target. After all, they were vanquished. Yet they took on the Soviets on occasion. They also had no problem coming up with all kinds of diverse antagonists of every nationality. Not anymore. Now they can’t even deal with the most clear cut bad guys around, the Islamo-Fascists.

Not Muslims, Islamo-Fascists. There’s a difference.

The fact is, terrorist groups like Al Qaeda are not loved in the Muslim world despite what some would tell you. They’ve killed more innocent Muslims than any combatants in recent wars. The Taliban are oppressors in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The US, on the other hand, has done a lot to build schools, hospitals and infrastructure both in Afghanistan and Iraq. But Hollywood makes our contractors as sinister villains. Both TV and film are knocking out one hack script after another. And our troops are often shown badly as well, despite the fact that we have the most disciplined armed forces in the world.

Once upon a time Hollywood used to make films for the war effort showing the free people of the world what we’re fighting for and why. Now they make movies that do the opposite. They question our motives and make us out to be the villains.

So whose side are you on, Hollywood? If your goal is to make money, you keep failing. The movies I listed above, that made us the villains, were all failures. Movies that make us heroes tend to be successful. Are you using Obama math now?

To paraphrase your favorite president, George W. Bush, either you’re with us or you’re against us. We’re not feeling the love right now.

In case you don’t get it, Islamo-fascists shut down all media when they get into power. They kill gays, lefties, intellectuals first. Are you telling us you approve? Because there’s no point in attacking your own side otherwise. Not unless you want us to lose.

Oh, I know, you don’t think these terrorists are any real threat. That’s why all those lefty “comedians” aren’t afraid to mock Islam and terrorists, right? Oh, yeah… they don’t do that. They mock Christians instead. Because they know Christians won’t kill them.

If you’re afraid of fatwas, Salman Rushdie is still picking up hot women and hanging around parties. All those Danish cartoonists threatened with death are still around years later.

So in other words, are you a bunch of spineless cowards? A pack of gutless, cringing eunuchs? Are you are letting the world know this by attacking your own side, hoping the bad guys will treat you better if they win? Like those Jews who worked for the Nazis in Poland as ghetto cops, thinking they would be spared the cattle car treatment?

I think you better get your priorities straight. Pronto.