This is a new, recurring segment on Big Hollywood where we focus on some of the best talent you (generally speaking) have never heard of. You’ll remember these people as “the bad guy fighting George Clooney” or “the main girl’s funny best friend.” These wonderful actors often make up most of what’s great about films but rarely get A-list consideration. No, you won’t see their name on the marquee; in fact, you’ll have to wait for the credits to roll.

Actor: Stephen Dillane

You know him as: Thomas Jefferson (“John Adams,” 2008), Harry Vardon (“The Greatest Game Ever Played,” 2005), and as a ’semi’-antagonist Harker (“Spy Game,” 2001)

This guy is a personal favorite. I hate, hate, hate to put the “unknown” tag on him, because there is apparently no justice in this world; I do this with great reluctance. While Dillane doesn’t have the movie star glow to him, his characters usually have twice the amount of depth as their leading counterparts. He is a very natural actor to watch, and he complements the other aspects of his films by playing his part well. There is a bit of commonality to his roles. For the most part, he seems to know situations in and out. While some actors are typecast to a certain role (mafia, military, etc.), Dillane is always the smart one in the room.

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Barack Obama’s approval rating is presently a rousing 42%. That means the largest portion of the sane American public would love to see the first family pack up their Samsonites® and head back to the Winfrey City, famous for deep-dish pizza, Mayor Rahm, and the type of thuggish politics the head of the house is obviously comfortable with.

However, President Barack Obama’s latest fundraising report cites an “A-list of Hollywood stars, with donations from some of the top celebrities in the entertainment industry.” Apparently, left-coast liberals want to see to it that the best script reader since Martin Sheen has another shot at practicing lines on set while acting the part of President.

It’s not surprising that Hollywood is smitten with the “Yes We Can” man’s refusal to admit he can’t.  Those in the acting profession are impressed by amateurs like Barry Soetoro (stage name Barack Obama), who has proven to have a professional-level ability to make believe he’s something he is not. Heck, for a season, even Paul Giamatti was convinced he was John Adams.

What could be better for Hollywood than a President who swims around in a policy cesspool similar to the one they refuse to empty in Tinsel Town, overflowing with the squalid water of loose morals, abortion rights, angry feminists, racial indignation, class warfare, and overall elitist hypocrisy? (more…)

Do you know how they catch monkeys in Taiwan (and parts of India)?  A trap is set with a banana. The monkey saunters on by, reaches into said trap, and grabs the banana. The monkey – now with his fist clenched around the banana – can no longer remove his hand. At any point, he could opt to let go of the banana and run free, but instead he is trapped.  Hilarious isn’t it?

Bill Maher is that monkey.

See, Bill Maher’s a smart guy. None of us can deny that. A nuisance at worst, a more than worthy adversary at best, Bill Maher is the kind of intellectual whose worst enemy is his own pride. Smart people generally don’t make intellectual miscalculations; they make careless errors.  Sometimes, a mistruth is so often repeated in society that even smart folk like Maher accept it as fact. A good example would be Bill Maher’s constant claim that the Bible encourages slavery and the founding fathers were anti-Christian.

Firstly, Bill would be right to say that the founding fathers were anti-religion.  One could say the same thing about most pastors heading churches throughout the United States today. A disdain for man-made religion does not equal a hate for personal faith in God.  (more…)

HBO isn’t often accused of being a great source of patriotic material, but their 2008 mini-series John Adams should required viewing. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a great one to rent.

It deals with the first fifty years of the United States and the life of our second President. John Adams, played with his usual panache by Paul Giamatti, wasn’t the most loved, best looking or even heroic of our founders. But he was a brilliant man and an important part of the forging of this nation and the drafting of the Declaration of Independence.

Based on David McCullough’s Pulitzer Prize winning book and starring a host of great actors like Giamatti, Laura Linney, David Morse, Tom Wilkinson, Danny Huston, it shows is how fragile the nation was in its infancy, the forces that drove the founders to revolt against the English crown, the politics that threatened to tear the country apart afterward, how the country was treated by the Europeans then. It’s very eye opening.

John Adams was lawyer who believed in the rule of law. He served two terms as George Washington’s vice president and one as president. He had to make some tough decisions in his one term, which meant he was vilified in his time, much like the last president. John lived to a ripe old age and saw a lot of changes come to this land. He even lived to see his son John Quincy become president. (more…)

Over the weekend, Time Magazine published a long, glowing profile of Tom Hanks to help promote his upcoming HBO miniseries “The Pacific.” And as with all things entertainment media, the subject is never challenged or even made to shift uncomfortably in his seat. The push to ascend Hanks to “national treasure” status is clearly on.

Hanks does seem to be a genuinely nice man and the work he’s done to bring American history to life on film is impressive, especially during a time when the singling out of America’s exceptionalism is more and more frowned upon in artistic and academic circles. ”From the Earth to the Moon,” “Band of Brothers,” and “John Adams” are not only artistic achievements, but in this MTV-addled culture, might be the best hope of teaching America’s youth about the unique history and greatness of this nation. And I suspect ”The Pacific,” the 10-part miniseries premiering this Sunday on HBO (which Big Hollywood’s Michael Broderick will cover extensively) will be a worthy addition to what came before.

But when it comes to leftist Hollywood, whenever Tinseltown and America meet, you have to brace yourself for it — and by “it” I mean the leftist sucker punch. Throughout, Hanks sounds perfectly reasonable, intelligent and even patriotic for a couple of thousand words. But of course that’s just the lure to get us on his side before we’re walloped with this left cross: [emphasis mine] (more…)

Like everyone else driving along Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park last year, I couldn’t help but notice the now-iconic Shepard Fairey “Hope” poster of candidate Barack Obama emblazoned 20 feet high on the side of a building near Dodger Stadium.  As a piece of advocacy, it was tremendously effective – Obama the visionary, gazing bravely into the middle distance and the distant future – even if it did turn out to be a shameless rip-off of an Associated Press photograph.

That image is now once again front and center in the wake of the revelations that the National Endowment for the Arts has apparently been colluding with the White House’s Office of Public Engagement and the president’s United We Serve “call to action” to enlist sympathetic artists in the furtherance of the administration’s political goals, in defiance of tradition and perhaps, as George Will has suggested, the law.  Having served myself on both the NEA’s Opera-Music Theater and Oversight panels in 1985, I find this news to be profoundly depressing. (more…)

In the comment section of a recent post, I drew some fire for making the following, apparently shocking claim:

We [Americans] see America, from the Pilgrims who signed the Mayflower Compact to the Biblical scholars… who birthed the nation, to the spirit of sacrifice and charity that thrives to this very day, not as a nation of Christians (for that freedom is at the deepest core of our common philosophy) but as a Christian nation.

It seems that there is a growing belief that because our Founders were stalwart advocates for religious liberty, and because some of them had very nuanced and sometimes cynical views about organized religion, the United States was somehow conceived to be a secular nation. This belief is not only untrue, but detrimental to an adequate understanding of the underlying political philosophy of the founding, not least of all because it envisions the government as the nation instead of merely the organization through which the nation conducts its civil affairs, and more importantly because it betrays the singular belief that undergirds the entire American experiment: That the rights of man come not from government but from God. (more…)

March 16 will mark the 40th anniversary of the Broadway opening of “1776.”  Written by Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone, it went on to run for 1,217 performances.  It’s hard to believe that forty years ago it was still popular to write an unabashedly patriotic musical that openly celebrated American Exceptionalism and painted the founding fathers not just as humans but as the intellectual and moral giants that they were.  Because the 1972 film version is tantamount to a filmed version of the play rather than a Hollywood re-interpretation, its original intent and form is easily accessible to today’s audience.  It deserves a good look and therefore, is this week’s Sunday Matineé.  (more…)