Why does the Hollywood Reporter say this as though it’s a bad thing…?

Sticking to its simplistic, patriotic origins, where a muscular red, white and blue GI slugging Adolf Hitler in the jaw is all that’s required, Captain America trafficks in red-blooded heroes, dastardly villains, classy dames and war-weary military officers.

With the MSM , patriotism is always “simplistic” and/or “jingoistic.” You never read reviews that say, “simplistically angsty” or “simplistically brooding” or “simplistically dark.”

Yesterday in the comments, someone quoted someone who said something the effect of “angst is much easier to write than nobility.” And this is very, very true. The same is true with sincerity over irony and inspirational over nihilism.

This approach to patriotism is all a lie, a ploy from the Left to turn what really is simplistic and lazy (nihilism, angst, irreverence, irony) into “art,” when just the opposite is true. What the Left despises about themes that lift the human spirit is that they’re more often than not, conservative themes — themes of self-sacrifice, selflessness, fidelity, manhood, bravery, and nobility. Whereas darker, simpler themes or a complete lack of theme, appeals to the all-about-me, chaotic narcissism that so defines the Left.  

Mock everything + respect nothing = A Leftist

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A local Tea Party group hailing from Pasadena, California is making an end run around Hollywood’s production blockade.  The production company is called Colony Bay.  Kudos and credit to none other than The Hollywood Reporter for delivering a fair presentation of the fledging production company’s offering.

Watch the trailer:

YouTube

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The one-hour drama is called Courage, New Hampshire, and it premiers Sunday at a movie theater in Monrovia, Calif. Co-hosting the red carpet activities are Saturday Night Live alumna Victoria Jackson and radio personality Tony Katz, both of whom regularly speak at Tea Party rallies.

Courage has the pacing and feel of a soap opera, though its set in Colonial America. While its creators are making it as a TV show, there’s no distribution partner, so it’s going straight to DVD after the premiere. The company, Colony Bay, is also trying to strike deals with conservative online TV outlets, like Glenn Beck’s GBTV and Kelsey Grammer’s Right Network, and are seeking a television VOD partner.

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Paul Bond in THR:

In clips that will hit the Internet to promote a new book, producers including “Friends” co-creator Marta Kauffman and “House” creator David Shore say Hollywood discriminates against and belittles conservatives.

Some of TV’s top executives from the past four decades may have gotten more than they bargained for when they agreed to be interviewed for a politically charged book that was released Tuesday, because video of their controversial remarks will soon be hitting the Internet.

The book makes the case that TV industry executives, writers and producers use their clout to advance a liberal political agenda. The author bases his thesis on, among other things, 39 taped interviews that he’ll roll out piecemeal during the next three weeks.

The Hollywood Reporter obtained several of the not-yet-released clips, embedded below. Each contains a snippet of an interview, usually some historical footage of the TV shows the interviewee was responsible for and, naturally, a plea to purchase the book, “Primetime Propaganda” by Ben Shapiro and published by Broad Side, an imprint of HarperCollins.

In one video, Friends co-creator Marta Kauffman says that when she cast Candace Gingrich-Jones, half-sister of Republican former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, as the minister of a lesbian wedding, “There was a bit of ‘fuck you’ in it to the right wing.”

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Paul Bond at the Hollywood Reporter:

Despite its “awful” marketing plan, as one distribution exec calls it, the movie earned a $5,640 per-theater average opening: “Things have turned for us,” producer Harmon Kaslow tells THR.

The power of Ayn Rand devotees have impressed some Hollywood distribution executives, who took note of the hefty $5,640 per-theater average scored by Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 during its opening weekend.

‘Atlas Shrugged’: First Movie to Target the Tea Party Atlas Shrugged Review”Shocking,” one executive said about the healthy business the low-budget film has been doing considering its “awful” marketing plan.

Awful or not, business has been brisk enough for producers Harmon Kaslow and John Aglialoro to expand from 299 theaters to 425 this weekend and to 1,000 by the end of the month, they told The Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday.

The two said they fielded 500 inquiries from theater bookers Monday but didn’t have enough film prints to fill orders.

“Things have turned for us,” Kaslow said. “When we started, exhibitors were not embracing the film like we thought they would. Now, we can pretty much go into as many theaters as we want. It’s just a matter of logistics.”

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This seems desperate, a throw it up against the wall strategy to boost stagnant ticket sales and plummeting DVD purchases. If you want to see a movie thirty bucks-bad, wouldn’t you go to the theatre? And if you can wait, why not wait another 30 to 60 days and pay nothing on Netflix or $4.99 on PPV? There will likely be a small market among the very wealthy who don’t see a statistical difference between $30  and $5, people who would buy this, but will it be enough to offset the start up, maintenance, and advertising costs? Smarter people than me are obviously involved in the planning and launch, but smarter people than me came up with this.

Hollywood Reporter:

Narrowing the theatrical window, four Hollywood studios and DirecTV will launch a pricey premium VOD service at the end of April, followed swiftly by Comcast and VUDU. Consumers will be able to see a movie 60 days after its release in theaters.

The move is sure to irk exhibitors, and comes just as studios and theater owners are in Las Vegas for CinemaCon.

Warner Bros., Fox, Sony and Universal are all on board, according to insiders. The movies will be available for 48 hours for $29.99. The first titles to be offered are likely Sony’s Just Go With It, Fox’s Cedar Rapids and Warner Bros.’ Unknown.

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Last week’s Hollywood Reporter has yet another excellent story (Variety who?) looking into the many fascinating details of where digital technology is currently taking home video — a subject I’m even more obsessed with than Jon Stewart. Powered mostly by the raging success of Netflix’s streaming video service — a concept too undeniably popular for Hollywood to ignore for even a second longer, the latest idea is to create a hybrid that offers the beauty of digital streaming with the all-important revenue created by DVD purchases that are so vital to the entertainment industry’s bottom line. The current digital purchase model is ludicrous. 

As it stands now, the price of purchasing a digital copy of a film from, say, Amazon (that you have to store on your own hard-drive), is practically the same price as a new hard copy, double the price if you’re willing to wait a month to purchase the previously-viewed hard copy and triple the price of waiting  six months to purchase it out of a bin at Walmart. With Obama determined to tank the economy, people are thinking these kinds of purchase-points through today. There’s also the sad fact that movies themselves just aren’t as good as they once were. Regardless, Hollywood finally appears to have figured out that this digital business model isn’t attracting enough customers and is now developing an idea that sounds somewhat promising. See if you agree.

They call it UltraViolet, and a number of heavy-hitters, including Netflix and Microsoft, are teaming up to bring it to fruition this year (what a time we live in):

[S]tudios are also terrified of the trend toward renting streaming media rather than purchasing it. Consumers wonder why they should buy digital movies for what they’d pay for a physical DVD that is loaded with extras. To sweeten the digital deal, Sony has introduced some enhancements: a search function that uses facial recognition and speech-to-text software; Clip & Share, allowing viewers to share clips on Facebook and Twitter; and an interactive music playlist that links to movie scenes and the iTunes Store.

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No more than three weeks ago, 17 days to be exact, Hollywood’s favorite overrated, race-obsessed, ex-scientologist Oscar-winner, Paul Haggis, raised the bloody shirt of the dreaded Hollywood blacklist of the 1940s and ’50s … again. For those of you might have missed one of the annual offerings from Hollywood’s self-referential masturbatory genre of films covering the blacklist, essentially what happened is that for a time entertainment professionals were denied employment based on real and perceived communist sympathies. A terrible thing to be sure, but not so terrible for today’s communist sympathizers who, for seven decades now, have lovingly fed, pruned and cared for this unfortunate era of Hollywood history in order to grow it into a Mighty Oak of Indignation. After all, how else would today’s Hollywood — the wealthiest, freest community of artists in the history of the world – feel the moral superiority that comes with being oppressed were it not for a scandal old enough to collect Social Security?

The irony of this, of course, is that the situation is now reversed. The only thing today’s Hollywood Left learned from the original blacklist was how to blacklist better. They leave no fingerprints today. There’s nothing official, there’s no list, so there’s no way for anyone to get caught. At the very least, The Hollywood Ten understood what had happened to them. There was a list, they were on it, and so they could work around it with the use of pseudonyms until the storm passed. Today’s Hollywood Blacklisters are shrewder and much more insidious. Their blacklist is an unspoken social one. There’s nothing official to tell you why the phone stops ringing.

The worst part is that those on this awful list aren’t even looked at as victims (not that they want to be). As we’ve documented ad nauseum, the entertainment media is a willing participant in the blacklisting of those who don’t conform to their political beliefs. Anyone who dares mention that it might not be the best career move to take the other side of a Global Warming debate in a production meeting or by the craft services table, is immediately pounced upon as a talentless, hasbeen, paranoid whiner by no less than Patrick Goldstein at the L.A. Times, among others. (more…)

Wow. Paul Bond in today’s Hollywood Reporter:

Liam Neeson, who voices Aslan, the resurrected lion in the upcoming film. The actor told the Telegraph in London that his character doesn’t necessarily represent Christ. That might be news to Lewis, though, who wrote the opposite before he died in 1963.

Gaia, is that you…?

“Aslan symbolizes a Christlike figure, but he also symbolizes for me Mohammed, Buddha and all the great spiritual leaders and prophets over the centuries,” Neeson said.

The comment got some passionate bloggers working overtime to rebut Neeson’s analysis by using Lewis’ own words.

“The whole Narnian story is about Christ,” Lewis once wrote. He said he “pictured him becoming a lion” because it’s the king of beasts and because Christ is called “The Lion of Judah” in the Bible.

Aslan, wrote Lewis, “is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question: ‘What might Christ become like if there really were a world like Narnia?’”

Money quote a-coming:

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James Hibberd over at THR has written a terrific article that should cause all kinds of heartburn throughout the left-wing fever swamp we call Hollywood. No one should be surprised that we Republicans like television, but what is surprising is that while Democrats flock in larger numbers to niche programming such as “30 Rock,” ”Mad Men,” and “Dexter,” pleasing we righties appears to be one of the key factors in creating a  mainstream ratings success:

[I]f you look at the list of broadcast shows that are Republican favorites, it closely mirrors the Nielsen top 10 list, whereas Democrats tend to gravitate toward titles likely to have narrower audiences.

To Hollywood, the data suggest a potentially disquieting idea: The TV industry is populated by liberals, but big-league success may require pleasing conservatives. …

“Historically, the shows that have done better are populist, mainstream and give us confidence in our public institutions,” TV historian Tim Brooks says. “For a while in the 1960s and early 1970s, shows started representing social rebellion, but broadcast quickly reverted to Happy Days.”

What has changed is the explosion on cable that has allowed networks to appeal to more specific viewpoints, from Comedy Central’s The Daily Show With Jon Stewart to Fox News’ Glenn Beck. Moreover, if you’re a liberal viewer in a major city (which typically correlates with higher education) and you have such titles as Mad Men and Dexter to watch each week, are you going to also be interested in seeing a paint-by-numbers crime procedural on broadcast or a laugh-track-boosted sitcom? On the scripted side, at least, the explosion of complex dramas on cable may have ceded some of the broadcast ground to what one might label Republican tastes.

Funny how it’s the left who screams the loudest about the loss of the old network monopolies that gave concentrated power to a very few, and yet they seem to be the ones benefiting most from the choices created by an ever-growing cable landscape.  Another takeaway: (more…)

Why do we fear this will be a hit job? Because it’s a movie about a conservative icon and when it comes to conservative icons they’re either ignored by filmmakers or trashed by filmmakers. 

Do I sound cynical? Yes. But so does the film’s synopsis (click on the names of those involved for more information).

Hollywood Reporter:

Meryl Streep is in talks to reteam with her “Mamma Mia!” director for “Thatcher,” a biopic of the former British prime minister.’

Jim Broadbent would play Margaret Thatcher’s husband, Denis, for the British production.

The film, to be directed by Phyllida Lloyd, is set in 1982 and tracks Thatcher as she tries to save her career in the 17 days preceding the 1982 Falklands War. The 2 1/2-month war was a turning point for the prime minister, who, after the victory, saw her approval ratings double and went on to win a second term.

Producer Damien Jones (“Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll”) came up with the story with screenwriter Brian Fillis.

Hrm. Thatcher tries to save her re-election chances in the days just prior to a … war. (more…)

After S.T. VanAirsdale of the hard-left film site Movieline wondered aloud who Big Hollywood would choose to “smear” with respect to the upcoming documentary “The Tillman Story,” I responded that when a leftist propagandist launches that kind of near-hysterical preemptive tactical strike, it can only make you wonder what all the defensiveness is about. 

Then, as if to thicken the plot, that same day, Jeff –The Latino Lover– Wells was so righteously piqued by my response to VanAirsdale that in a post titled “Lock and Load” he found it so necessary to rush to the film’s defense he reran his entire review. (Which gave Glenn – The Lawyer Callerer – Kenny an opportunity to slam us…again — which I’d be happy to respond to if not for fear of lawyer-callering.)

Obviously all this interest only increased my curiosity, so over the weekend I took a look around the Web and read everything I could find written by those who (unlike us) have seen the film. Interestingly enough, every review and/or write up I came across shared two common characteristics: The first is glowing, effusive praise; the second is that not a single write up questions the validity of even a single frame of the film.  (more…)

In the NSFW below video, “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane, whose new Indian name is He Who Lies About Arizona’s Immigration Law, goes out of his way to savage Sarah Palin in the crudest possible way as a Hollywood Reporter “journalist” butt-boys right along with him. Over a mere 72 seconds you get the perfect encapsulation of everything wrong with our incurious, unskeptical, PleaseGawdLikeMe! entertainment media.

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Things are so clubby and inbred between those who dominate our popular culture and those charged with covering them, that a cold, cruel fish like MacFarlane (who obviously shares David Letterman’s twisted sexual hate for Palin) can talk about “f*cking” a major national political figure and the only follow up from the interviewer is to play sycophant groupie.

But how nice of MacFarlane to set a new comedic standard for us all. It appears as though ridiculing the developmentally disabled on network television is okay if someone who’s developmentally disabled says so. Now that we know how it works, I’m sure we can expect the “courageous” MacFarlane to push the envelope beyond just ridiculing young Trig. (more…)

Paul Bond at the Hollywood Reporter:

“Looks like “Land of the Lost” has earned star Will Ferrell the dubious distinction of being the most overpaid actor in show business, according to the list makers at Forbes magazine.

“Forbes looked at 100 top actors based on their widely released films over the past five years. It factored in the production costs of those movies against how much boxoffice, DVD and other revenue they generated in order to come up with an operating income for each film, which it then compared with the salaries the stars earned. (more…)

“Family Guy’s” Stewie

Source:

“Family Guy” on Thursday became the first animated show in nearly 50 years to score an Emmy nomination for best comedy series.

The show’s creator, Seth MacFarlane, says his nomination marks the end of Emmy discrimination against animated TV[.] …

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: WHICH EPISODES DID YOU SUBMIT?

MacFarlane: We submitted three episodes. We submitted “Road to Germany,” we submitted “Family Gay,” we submitted “I Dream of Jesus.” We picked three of our edgier shows as a choice. Ya know, we figured if we are going to be damned, let’s be damned for what we really are.

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Bruno and “Gayby”

Oh, big city critics loved them some “Borat,” which spent 95% if its screen time manipulating, editing and boiling down average, working class, not-bothering-anyone Americans (and Romanian peasants) into the worst possible caricature imaginable. How they laughed and found genius and insight into the machinated savaging of everyday folks just minding their own business. But listen to some of them squeal and squawk now that the satire is turned on someone other than us. Here’s a sampling:

San Francisco Chronicle: 

Imagine if a white comedian went into the Deep South, disguised in a very convincing blackface and started acting like Stepin Fetchit.

Hollywood Reporter:   (more…)

Dear Big Hollywood readers, it gives me great satisfaction to report to you that BH has been out on point not only on compelling film industry issues, which will never be covered in promo rags like Variety and the Hollywood Reporter (but then again, AMPAS and the studios aren’t buying us off), but on many controversial issues being played out in America and the greater world at large as well.

I know this to be true. Being a news junkie myself, I have found time after time as I was reading about a supposedly breaking subject, like ABC’s recent coverage of the targeted LGBT murders in Iraq, that it had already been on display for all to see in Big Hollywood posts for months.

Not to toot my own horn, but…well, okay, I’m tooting my own horn. And those of Andy Breitbart and John Nolte, who have given I, and so many other wonderful and insightful Hollywood right-wing fringe types, a magnificent bullhorn we otherwise would not have. We appear to be doing the dirty jobs our media just refuses to do. It’s a labor Hercules would completely sympathize with. (more…)

Hollywood Reporter:

If the world could be rendered as simple as “Angels & Demons,” we’d all be living in a less confusing place. Taking to heart the critics’ lament that the first Dan Brown novel-to-film “The Da Vinci Code” was talky, static and arcane, director Ron Howard and his crew have worked hard to make Professor Robert Langdon’s return a thrilling, faster-paced walk in the park. (more…)

With 400,000 Americans showing up every year at the Indy 500 and 200,000 more buying tickets to see NASCAR’s premiere event The Daytona 500, you would think that the most creative minds in Hollywood would be looking for a way to cash in with more movies about car racing and car culture. NASCAR has an estimated 75 million fans, and it is second only to the National Football League in terms of television ratings, so where are all the good racing movies?

Jordana Brewster is reunited with Vin, Paul and Michelle in FAST & FURIOUS

Universal seems to have answered that question by getting its successful street racing franchise back into the fast lane this weekend with Fast & Furious. The movie, which reunites Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster and Michelle Rodriguez for the first time since 2001’s original surprise blockbuster, has exploded to a high octane $30.11M or so on Friday and that could mean a $70M opening weekend. That would make it the all-time #1 opening for a car racing movie.

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Universal’s Fast & Furious will be “burning rubber” this weekend at America’s multiplexes as the original street-racing cast reunites after some sub-par chapters of the franchise.

The original The Fast & The Furious hit theatres in 2001 under the direction of Rob Cohen who had shown a knack for action with Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story ($35M US cume) and Sly Stallone’s Daylight ($33M US cume) and a savvy feel for bigger-than-life characters in his Golden Globe winning biopic The Rat Pack (which, if you’ve never seen you should put in your Netflix cue and prepare to be amazed by Don Cheadle’s turn as Sammy Davis, Jr.). In tow, he had a 34-year-old Vin Diesel in only his second starring role following the surprise low budget hit Pitch Black ($39M cume) and 28-year-old Paul Walker, who had just starred in Cohen’s forgettable The Skulls. Also in the cast was Jordana Brewster (As the World Turns) and a pre-Lost Michelle Rodriguez, whose most notable credit was a gritty little indie called Girlfight.

Vin Diesel returns for FAST & FURIOUS

The result was box office jet fuel. Seemingly out of nowhere, The Fast & The Furious scored a scalding $40M opening weekend and reached $144.5M domestic and over $200M worldwide. But Diesel, whose signature line in the original movie is “I live my life one quarter of a mile at a time,” didn’t like the script for the sequel (or they wouldn’t pay his asking price depending on who you ask). That led to the 2003 sequel 2 Fast 2 Furious directed by Academy Award nominee John Singleton (Boyz n the Hood) starring Walker along with rapper Tyrese Gibson and Eva Mendes. Despite Diesel’s conspicuous absence, 2 Fast still delivered $127M in the US. (more…)