NEW ‘TERMINATOR’ FILM TO BE R-RATED

That’s the ONLY news on ‘Terminator 5.’ Nothing else is really happening, just a tweet from the woman funding the film.

This might be heresy, but I thought “Terminator 3″ was damn good and could care less about the rating. The story was tight, held my attention, surprised at the end, and contained all kinds of superb action scenes. “Terminator: Salvation,” on the other hand, was utter crap; a third act right out of a Sy-Fy Channel movie.

Worry about the storytelling. Let that process take you to the rating, not the other way around.

MONTY PYTHON MEMBERS SET TO REUNITE FOR SCI-FI COMEDY ‘ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING‘

“Life of Brian,” “Meaning of Life,” and “Holy Grail” are all brilliant, but something happens to these guys as they get older. They lose their comedic edge and just get meaner towards “safe” targets, and an obvious political correctness seeps into their work:

“a group of aliens who endow an earthling with the power to do ‘absolutely anything’ to see what a mess he’ll make of things — which is precisely what happens. There’s also a talking dog named Dennis who seems to understand more about the mayhem that ensues than anyone else does.”

Who knows where this could lead, but let’s hope that self-importance is off limits. As a Christian and Catholic, it’s an honor to get my butt kicked by the boys in the trio of films listed above because the films are clever, not mean-spirited, avoid preaching, and come from a  less fascist time when it was still okay to make fun of everyone.

Because liberals ruin everything, that’s just not the case today.

SCREEN ACTORS GUILD AUCTIONS OFF MOVIE MEMORABILIA

I’ve walked through many a studio prop and wardrobe warehouse, which is just as delightful as you would imagine. What’s amazing is how cheap, fake, and worn out everything looks in reality and how perfect it looks on a television or movie screen. Some of this stuff goes back to the Golden Age — suits worn by Cary Grant, gowns worn by Irene Dunne — and yet it might show up on “Law and Order” the following week.

I’ve never understood why the studios don’t track down the history of every dish, chair, hat, and rubber gun, and auction this history off. You would think there would be a market for it, a market for a piece of Hollywood history.

Back in 1989, I came across a shirt John Wayne wore in one of his films. It was for sale at a store in Disney World for only a couple of hundred bucks. That’s still a lot of money, but at the time it was a fortune. I still should’ve bought it, though, and wish I had.

‘LOCKOUT’ TRAILER: GUY PEARCE BREAKS INTO SPACE JAIL

Well, this sounds promising:

Guy Pearce stars in the film as a man wrongly convicted of conspiracy and espionage, who is offered his freedom in exchange for a big task: break into an orbital prison that has been overrun by inmates, in order to rescue the president’s daughter (Maggie Grace). That premise alone has a throwback action movie feel to it (in the best possible way).

This can only go two ways: Awesome or suck.

The good news is that Guy Pearce has finally put a decent amount of weight on. For a while there he looked like someone Sally Struthers might lose sleep over.

NETFLIX: DVD IS  DYING

In a nutshell, Netflix is reporting that streaming subscriptions are up and DVD subscriptions are declining and won’t stop declining. This, after the studios enacted a 28-day wait period and are about to increase that wait to 56 days. But here’s /Film’s bizarre conclusion:

All of this suggests a power shift away from Netflix back towards studios, as Netflix accepts less than favorable DVD deals. And that power shift cements the idea that Netflix doesn’t believe in DVD as a media any longer, with all its priority going towards streaming media and original content.

What!?

Where’s the context? Today the number-one DVD rental retailer is Redbox, an outlet the studios hate as much as Netflix and one that is under the exact same 28 to 56-day wait period as Netflix. Sure, you could say that the power shifts back to the studios if the studios were seeing a bump in DVD sales, but they aren’t. DVD sales have continued to decline since these wait periods were enacted.

The only way you can say the studios have the power again is in the same way a worker has the power to go on strike. But that worker isn’t making a salary and the company is suddenly discovering that worker is more obsolete than they originally thought.

More and more of the customers are deciding that the days of purchasing crappy moves are over and so are the days of paying more than a buck or two to rent a crappy movie.

And how much of this is a political statement; is Middle America hating Hollywood back? I don’t know about you, but every time I Redbox or Stream, it feels like I’m sticking a finger in the eye of Hollywood — and it feels pretty good.

We like Redbox and we love Streaming. In the meantime, the studios are stomping their feet and cutting their own throats under the mistaken belief they hold some kind of leverage with these waiting periods, when they don’t.

As the 2011 data proves, wait periods did not increase DVD sales, did not stop Redbox from becoming the top rental outlet in the country, and did not stop Netflix from rebounding through… STREAMING.

Bottom line: We don’t need your stinkin’ movies, Hollywood. We can wait. In fact, we’re happy to wait. Those aren’t chips in your hands, that’s shit. Your product is shit and you can’t carrot-and-stick us with shit into purchasing shit or renting shit.

Want to see even more throat-cutting? Read on…

WARNERS WON’T ALLOW NETFLIX CUSTOMER TO WAIT-QUEUE UPCOMING RELEASES

Talk about petty:

There’s also a weird wrinkle in the Warner Bros. delay window plan. The LA Times points out today that Netflix uses won’t even be able to add WB movies to their disc queues until a 28-day window is over. That’s a pretty strange thing; as most Netflix users are aware, discs that are not currently available can still be queued via the ‘save’ option, which helps keep user queues current.

Obviously, Warners is under the strange belief that if one of their new titles is in our queue, sitting there until the waiting period is over, we’re more likely to wait during the waiting period — as opposed to running out and buying the title.

This is what you call “flailing.” You can smell the desperation.

Out of sight, out of mind. We’re not going to run out and buy a lousy title because we’re not allowed to queue it up in advance. WE’RE GOING TO FORGET ABOUT IT.

The customers are at Redbox and Netflix and the studios are pitching and promoting their wares elsewhere as though they’re in possession of a high-end specialty product like Bose radio. But it’s not Bose. It’s shit.

Hollywood has spent the last ten years self-destructing with lousy product, a fetish with metrosexuals that killed the movie star, insulting over 60% of their customers, and betraying their country during a time of war. And today the chickens have come home to roost because the industry doesn’t have the product quality or the goodwill necessary to survive this market shift.

You’ve already lost, Hollywood. It’s just a matter of how many more casualties you want to take.

In the meantime, we’ll be at Netflix and Redbox. If you want to stop by, great. If you don’t, nobody cares. Go watch “30 Rock,” you’ll feel better.

Idiots.

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LAST NIGHT’S SCREENING

Thank heaven the GOP debates are over for at least a month.

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SCOTTDS’ EPIC LINKTACULAR

R.I.P. JOHN LOWRY, RENOWNED RESTORER OF CLASSIC FILMS INCLUDING ‘SNOW WHITE’ AND ‘CITIZEN KANE‘

INTERVIEW WITH OUR OWN ADAM BALDWIN WITH OUR OWN CARL KOZLOWSKI

STEVEN SODERBERGH’S ‘SIDE EFFECTS’ GETS CATHERINE ZETA-JONES BUT LOSES ITS FUNDING

TOP TEN STEVE MARTIN FILMS

‘HANGOVER 3′ STARS NEARING DEALS FOR BIG PAY INCREASES

LISTEN TO SOME OF MICHAEL GIACCHINO’S SCORE FOR ‘JOHN CARTER‘

10 BADASS ADVERSARIES WORTHY OF FIGHTING LIAM NEESON

JOSS WHEDON’S SCREENWRITING HURDLE: DOES ‘THE AVENGERS’ HAVE TOO MANY CHARACTERS?

‘THE ARTIST’ PROVES WE HAVEN’T ALL FALLEN UNDER THE 3D SPELL…

…BLOOPER REEL FOR ‘THE ARTIST’ ONLINE

MEET THE EXPERTS WHO PUT THE SCIENCE IN HOLLYWOOD SCIENCE FICTION

10 SHOWS THAT WOULD BE MUCH BETTER IF THEY KILLED OFF A MAJOR CHARACTER

HOW INDIE MUSIC HYPE CANNIBALIZES ITS YOUNG

WYLD STALLYNS! THE BEST FICTITIOUS MOVIE BANDS

6 MYTHS EVERYONE BELIEVES ABOUT SPACE (THANKS TO THE MOVIES)

6 GREAT TV SERIES TO MARATHON

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COMING SOON TO HOME VIDEO

Meet the Browns: Season 5: The Brown family will have you rolling on the floor with laughter as Lionsgate releases Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns: Season 5 on DVD this spring.  Starring the 2011 NAACP Image Award Winner for Outstanding Actor in a Comedy Series, David Mann (Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family) as Mr. Brown – a kind father and friend who tries to keep his family together despite the ongoing craziness – the laugh-out-loud comedy also stars Tamela Mann (Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family), Lamman Rucker (Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married?), Denise Boutte (Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married?) and Juanita Jennings (Tyler Perry’s Daddy’s Little Girls).  Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns: Season 5 DVD is complete with 20 episodes across three discs.

Mr. Brown’s “retirement home” started as a complete fluke – a result of a misunderstanding followed by a happy accident in a neighborhood full of lively and unique individuals. While Brown might not be the brightest bulb in the house, he’s managed to create a combination safe haven and circus act under his “Brown Meadows” big top. The new “family” members – young and old – who now call Brown Meadows home hail from all walks of life, but more importantly, they share trials, tribulations and lots of laughter. Meeting the Browns will surely make you a part of this fun family too. –Pricing: DVD – $29.98

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Crew 2 Crew: Break out the dance moves as Lionsgate debuts Crew 2 Crew on DVD, Digital Download and On Demand this April. Inspired by true events, the drama tells the story of one person’s love of hip-hop dance. With the old school vibe of Dirty Dancing, the film stars Jordan Bridges (TV’s “Rizzoli & Isles”) and Brooklyn Sudano (Alone in the Dark II) with Kate Nauta (Transporter 2). The Crew 2 Crew DVD includes an alternate ending and a behind-the-scenes featurette.

Luca (Andres Londono, Kingdoms of Grace), longs for more than his small town can offer him. Inspired by his love of hip-hop dance, he joins a break dancing troupe that allows him to travel the world in pursuit of his passion. But soon Luca struggles to choose between his love of dance, and the love of his family and girlfriend. –Pricing: DVD – $26.98

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CLASSIC PICK FOR SATURDAY,  JANUARY 28

TCM:

12:00 AM:  Soylent Green (1973) —   A future cop uncovers the deadly secret behind a mysterious synthetic food. Dir: Richard O. Fleischer Cast:  Charlton Heston, Edward G. Robinson, Leigh Taylor-Young. C-97 mins, TV-MA, CC, Letterbox Format

I’ve read that the last scene The Mighty Edward G. Robinson would ever film was his poignant death scene in “Soylent Green.” The legendary actor was dying in real life, everyone knew he was dying, and it was quite an emotional day’s work. And it’s really Robinson who makes the film work, especially his scenes with Heston that glow with human warmth.

Imagine how much better off today’s film industry would be if they had even a quarter of the star-power that was around in 1973.

The great thing about DVD is that today’s lack of star-power is Hollywood’s problem, not ours. Whenever we want them, they’re just a click away.

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Please send comments, suggestions and tips to jnolte@breitbart.com or Twitter @NolteNC.

So what went so wrong?

“Mildred Pierce” is based on Cain’s classic potboiler of the same name, about a woman living through the dark days of the Depression in the generic suburb of Glendale, California. Mildred’s attractive, smart, and knows her way around a kitchen. Her ongoing downfall, however, is perpetually brought on by an attraction to bad men and an unnatural dedication to her oldest daughter Veda, a monster of need and manipulation — who’s really just a carbon copy of Mildred minus humanity.

After Mildred (Winslet) kicks her cheating husband out of the house (a very good scene), she has no car, no way to make a living, and in these economic times, no real prospects. She eventually “lowers” herself to accept a waitress job in a cafe where her smarts and notable cooking abilities gives her the know-how and confidence to open a place of her own — with a little help from her husband’s former business partner, the shady Wally, who Mildred is also enjoying loveless sex with.

As fate would have it, on her last day of work, Mildred meets Monte (Pearce), a handsome playboy with a Clark Gable mustache who haunts the attic of the mansion (that’s now up for sale) his family once occupied until the Depression wiped him out. On their first date, Monte and Mildred enjoy passionate HBO-ey sex and spend the night together. Fair or not, the consequence of this behavior sets the stage for the next decade of Mildred’s life, which will include professional successes, failures, and more personal turmoil than a full season of “One Life to Live.”

At nearly six hours over five chapters, “Mildred Pierce” is just too long. Cain’s novel is less than 300 pages, which means the screenplay for this 336 minute mini-series was probably longer. In the first and last two chapters, the pacing is downright stifling. Reportedly, Haynes wanted to do a slavish adaptation of Cain’s novel, but there’s a reason why even the most popular novels are almost always altered and cut dramatically for the silver screen — and that includes director Michael Curtiz’s far superior 1945 “Mildred Pierce” adaptation, which won its star, Joan Crawford, a well-deserved Best Actress Oscar.

When it comes to an art form, novels and films are as different as juggling and playing the tuba. To attempt to mash them together is only inviting trouble. Haynes (who also co-wrote the script) actually gets away with more than he should. There are number of compelling scenes and sequences, especially in chapters two and three. But for the most part, there are so many unnecessary scenes and so much extraneous dialogue that time and again you’re taken out of the story wondering what the point of it all is.

Another problem is the title character. Whereas Crawford played Mildred as a strong, clever, and unassuming woman who’s regularly conned and caught off guard by her awful daughter and the equally awful men in her life, Winslet portrays her as a sap, a perpetual victim and self-appointed martyr (You’ve come a long way, baby!). Over the course of a two hour film, it’s much easier to digest and sympathize with a mother who keeps falling all over herself to please a spoiled, ungrateful daughter who’s impossible to please. After three hours, though, you start to lose sympathy with someone who seems to enjoy being used like a doormat by everyone around her. It becomes frustrating to witness a woman who’s obviously intelligent continue to beat her head against a wall which we all know will never budge.

And then there’s all that HBO-ey soft-core porn. Winslet is gorgeous, but after a while even I got tired of seeing her naked. In almost every chapter, the story simply stops for various sex scenes performed in various positions that serve no story purpose whatsoever. Do I really need to see Pearce with his head in Winslet’s naked crotch?

The performances are mostly good, especially Pearce, but the harder-edged characters portrayed by Leo and Winningham seemed a bit over-the top at times, and Winslet — who’s in every scene — can’t do much after the second hour except repeat all the same emotions we’ve seen so many times before. And it’s the repetitiveness of these emotional beats that do the most damage in bogging down the story and sapping your sympathy for a protagonist who, shame on her, is fooled way more than once.

A fascinating exercise for Haynes and HBO would be to re-edit the entire production and cut the run-time to something closer to 150 minutes. There’s a choice steak in all that fat. I’m sure of it.

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That double murder was a real event known as The Walsh Street Police Shootings and it was done by the Petingill family, a vicious gang of armed bank robbers run by a woman named Kath Pettingill, in reprisal for the killing of one of their own by police. The men charged were acquitted in court, but after one of them was gunned down by rival criminals, his widow later told Melbourne reporters her late husband and the others charged did do the crime they escaped conviction for.

In his film treatment of this real story, writer – director David Michôd shows us this sordid crime family as one of brothers overseen by a sociopathic matriarch, Janine “Smurf” Cody (Jacki Weaver), America’s Ma Barker and her depression era bank robbing, murderous sons would have loved.

Like Ma, Smurf loves her sons.  In fact she loves them so much that the scent of incest wafts through the theater as she kisses each full on the mouth.

Eldest son and armed robber Andrew “Pope” Cody (Ben Mendelsohn) is hiding from a bunch of killer cops and not taking the pills that temper his considerable temper. Middle brother Craig (Sullivan Stapelton) has an unstable personality from taking the street drugs he sells. Youngest brother Darren (Luke Ford) is ambivalent but goes along with whatever his older brothers do.

Michôd reveals the pathology of these pathetic Melbourne animals in their blue collar kingdom through the eyes of their emotionally numbed 17 year old nephew, Joshua “J” Cody (James Frecheville). He’s living with his uncles and grandmother because his mother, who kept him shielded from her criminal brothers and mother, has overdosed on heroin and he has no place else to go. Soon after arriving, his uncle Craig welcomes him into the family way of doing things by having him point a gun at two street hoodlums.

That inclusiveness reverses shortly after a family friend and fellow crime partner is murdered by the same killer cops gunning for Pope. The Cody boys retaliate by killing two policemen. At that point,  detective Leckie (Guy Pearce) does what all good police investigators do, he goes predator and isolates the weakest member from his criminal herd.  That’s “J” in this case, and Leckie starts applying the pressure for him to testify against his own blood.  Smurf being the cunning animal she is knows “J” knows too much, so she conspires with the corrupt cops hunting her sons to murder her own grandson.

All of this is pulled off by Michôd in a way that reflects reality,  and I believe that’s a good thing considering the crime, violence and resolution fantasies movies so often depict. The real criminal world is populated by malevolent, banal scum, not principled Godfather glorification princes in some alternate but equivalent moral realm.  Real violence is quick, nasty and often unexpected. Having been shot at several times and stabbed once myself, I can assure all reading this that real violence is nothing like the extended choreographed fight scenes of  a   James Bond,  Jason Bourne or Evelyn Salt.  Most of all, justice and goodness do not necessarily prevail in the real world and Animal Kingdom constantly smacks us in the face with that fact without anyone’s acting technique getting in the way.  Our mates down under seem to have a talent for that.

The only downside about Animal Kingdom for me is the Aussie accent. It’s allegedly English, but I find myself not immediately catching onto the slang, the pronunciation and the quick turn of indigenous phrase so that I’m often a few beats  behind what’s being said. In sum, I rather feel like the grievously wounded American GI in a WWII joke who was brought to an Australian hospital.

“Did they bring me here to die?”, the GI asks.

The Aussie nurses replies: “Wie now suh, thie brot ya ear yustuhdie.”

That aside, I highly recommend Animal Kingdom.

Firstly, real people act in it, which is, as I explained in my post on “Kung Fu Panda,” a definite pro for me. Secondly, “Traitor” deals with an incredibly hotly debated subject; the war on terrorism. Thirdly, the main character is a Muslim American who helps fight extremist Muslims; it is a subject seldom explored in books or movies. It is a grand, novel and innovative idea, especially from my perspective.

And it was. The actors perform sublime. They draw you into the movie immediately and convince you that they are the characters rather than pretending to be them. The special effects are great and the movie was exciting; it keeps you off-balance. It is not until the very last moment that you understand the plan and the way in which it was executed.

But there is more to the movie than the superficial aspects described above. What made this movie so interesting – and from my perspective resulting in a mixed review nonetheless – are its major themes.

*Some Spoilers Coming*

Let’s start with the good stuff: The main character, Samir Horn (Don Cheadle), is depicted as a Muslim who worked for the FBI but fired after his colleagues complained about his devotion to his religion. He is “the reluctant fundamentalist” but more violent. Although that theme can hardly be called innovative, everything changes after those first 30 minutes. At that moment it becomes clear that the firing was a cover-up. Instead of being fired he became an undercover agent who had to infiltrate terrorist networks and prevent them from executing their plans.

The above was quite surprising because his project is depicted as just and as the act of a religious Muslim who, we find out later, considers extremists his secular and religious enemy, an opinion many Muslims, including myself, share. It has, however, seldom been made clear in movies or books.

That his fight is portrayed as ‘just’ is also surprising because Hollywood often produces rubbish about the war on terrorism portraying the good guys as the bad guys and vice versa. “Traitor” shows reality as it is and how it should be: a devout Muslim opposing extremism and even fighting it, and Americans as those who are protecting freedom against the enemy who wants to destroy all we hold dear.

There are certainly some minor points of criticism with regards to the first part of the film: for instance, at the very start of the movie, one sees the father of Samir teaching his son how to perform the ritual prayer. Ironically enough, the ‘devout Muslim’ performs the ritual prayer incorrectly. Instead of saying “as salaamu aleikum wa rahmatulaa” twice at the end he says “Allahu Akbar.” This is a frustrating mistake to make for a Muslim because both sentences have entirely different meanings. “Allah Akbar” means “God is Great” while “as salaamu aleikum wa rahmatulaa” means “may the peace and blessings of God be with you.” If the main character of a film is a devout Muslim, at least teach the actor how to perform our ritual prayer correctly.

The American government too is generally shown in a favorable light. An example: Samir’s superior cares deeply about him and does everything in his power to protect the undercover agent. Additionally, one of the two FBI agents, impressively enough the one who also happens to be a devout Christian , tries to understand terrorists and is open to a different interpretation than the most obvious one with regards to Samir’s actions. Agent Roy Clayton (Guy Pearce) is passionate about fighting terrorism, but he does not use  “all means necessary.”

Clayton’s partner is an entirely different agent, the embodiment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney’s approach to the war on terror Hollywood-style. This man is not open to reasonable arguments, all he wants to do is to capture or kill terrorists. If torture has to be applied, so be it. If innocent civilians have to die, who cares as long as they are Muslim?

Luckily, the partner plays only a minor role in the film, so the viewer is not really bothered by him.

As said, there is certainly room for criticism of “Traitor” but its main themes are refreshing, inspiring and of fundamental importance: the war on terrorism is a war between good and bad, between freedom and oppression.

Especially the message that you can be a devout Muslim yet a good American nonetheless, is inspiring. It has not been said often enough in the last couple of years that one can be both at the same time. Many pretend that in order to be a good American a Muslim has to ignore a large part of his religion. “Traitor” shows that this is not the case; you can be a devout Muslim, yet a supporter of America, of freedom, and of democracy nonetheless.

Unfortunately, the above changes radically in the last few minutes when Liberal Hollywood could not resist to once again portray the good side in the war on terrorism as the bad side.

Where Samir Horn is portrayed as a religious and devout Muslim fighting the good fight in the first 90 minutes of the movie, he ends up with absolutely nothing in the end. He tortures himself by reciting a famous verse in the Qur’an in which God says about those kill one innocent: “It would be as if he killed the whole of mankind” (5:32). Samir makes clear to agent Clayton that it may finally have been clear to all involved that he was acting in America’s interest, but he has lost his confidence in himself and in his moral authority. In short, the devout Muslim fighting extremists ends up a broken man.

If there’s one thing we (liberal Muslims) do not need right now, it is for others to tell us that our fight is not worth fighting. We need encouragement , not discouragement. We are fighting the good fight and standing up for what we believe in. We are doing everything in our power to prevent the hatred disguising itself as religion from taking over our communities, our mosques, our families, our cities and our countries. We know, and we need to know, that it is the extremists who are the villains and that is us who are the good guys.

Samir is a hero in every sense of the word; he is a secular American hero and a true Muslim hero; we need more of those. The film should have had a happy end for that would have sent a positive and inspiring message, instead of giving everyone the impression that the war on terrorism is not truly worth fighting.

Worse, according to “Traitor” we are no better than Osama Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and other extremists if we decide to take them on. If someone would say this to your face, you would laugh at him. But for some reason, Hollywood considers it perfectly OK to put this idiotic message in one of its top productions. It defies reason.

Samir made mistakes in the movie, but this does not make him a bad guy. Even good guys make mistakes in the real world. We should learn from those mistakes but they should not cause us to lose our confidence in ourselves and our goals. The mistakes made by proponents in the war on terrorism – say Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib – were grave, but what differs us from the real bad guys is that these acts are mistakes for us while they are normal for the enemy. The enemy does not beat itself up after seeing evidence of a prisoner being tortured; it happily publishes videos of the (innocent) person being tortured and eventually murdered on the Net. The enemy is proud of it. We are not – and that’s what makes us different.

Perhaps some big shot in Hollywood will read this pos, and do something with it. I know it’s easy for these people to dismiss everything conservatives say, but I’m also a Muslim which should make it harder to ignore me considering liberals’ adoration for minorities. If Hollywood wants to make a positive difference in this world, it should use “Traitor’s” themes for a good cause: to encourage rather than discourage, and to build rather than destroy.