For Conservative Movie Lovers: John Ford, John Wayne, and ‘They Were Expendable’ Part 6

The casting of Robert Montgomery (1904–1981) in They Were Expendable was uncommonly appropriate. The suave, handsome actor made his name in debonair romantic comedies throughout the 1930s, but like John Ford he didn’t wait until America was dragged into war before enlisting. In 1940, fired up by the life-and-death struggles raging in Europe, he abandoned his M-G-M contract, went to France, and volunteered as an ambulance driver. Only a few weeks went by before he had it shot out from under him — one film magazine of the era reported (or perhaps exaggerated) that he narrowly avoided capture with the help of a French priest, and escaped the country mere hours before it fell to the Germans.

Back in the states he enlisted in the U.S. Navy Reserve, and over the next three years served in many capacities before finding his way to the Pacific theater, where he met John Bulkeley and became his executive officer. Montgomery commanded a PT boat in many battles, and eventually headed up to Normandy as an operations officer for a destroyer squadron. While preparing for D-Day, he remembered later, “I saw Bulkeley on his PT Boat and waved to him. There was another man on the bridge with him. I had no idea then it was Jack Ford.” (more…)

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Tags: Banana Wars, Bewitched (TV Show), blake edwards, Bosley Crowther, Bronze Star
Posted Nov 21st 2009 at 10:54 am in Classic Hollywood, Featured Story | 26542223 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/lgrin/2009/11/21/for-conservative-movie-lovers-john-ford-john-wayne-and-they-were-expendable-part-6/For+Conservative+Movie+Lovers%3A+John+Ford%2C+John+Wayne%2C+and+%27They+Were+Expendable%27+Part+62009-11-21+18%3A54%3A15Leo+Grin

For Conservative Movie Lovers: John Ford, John Wayne, and ‘They Were Expendable’ Part 5

“I was just the paint for the palettes of Ford and Hawks.”

– John Wayne –

John Wayne was still young in 1944, only thirty-eight years old. And yet the major elements of his inimitable style were hardening into place. Perhaps no other actor in history has been so cognizant of using his body to express grand themes and timeless mythological underpinnings. Under Ford’s direction Wayne never just stands there, he poses, in ways and with effects that conjure up famous paintings and sculpture. When he fills the frame as Lieutenant Junior Grade Rusty Ryan in They Were Expendable, he becomes every man who ever fought a losing action in a war, who faced defeat with stoicism, who sacrificed for a greater good. In the history of film, John Wayne remains nonpareil in his use of presence to project subtext.

Little of that came naturally to the Duke — in his early films he’s tall and rangy and handsome, but with little of the gravity, focus, and dramatic weight that would come to typify his prime acting years. Those skills, and they were skills, were consciously learned over fifteen years of working with Ford and his old troupe of veteran actors. He watched the way they walked and carried themselves, studied the way they were directed, and began to divine the level of nuance Ford demanded. There’s a funny story from the making of Stagecoach (1939, John Wayne’s big coming-out party as an actor), where Wayne’s character was supposed to be washing his face after a hard day, and Ford started smacking him around screaming, “Christ Duke, wash you face like a man! You’re daubing it! You’re daubing it!” He was trying to teach Wayne that, when you are an actor in front of a camera, your every movement can and should mean something deeper than what is on the surface. The act of washing one’s face can be pedestrian, or it can be a sweeping gesture that evokes strength of character, or a relaxed demeanor, or a gentleness of heart. And those deft movements will unconsciously fire off all sorts of neurons in the brain of an audience. (more…)

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Tags: Al Jolson, Bataan, Corregidor, Dan Ford, Danny Borzage
Posted Nov 14th 2009 at 10:56 am in Classic Hollywood | 26249855 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/lgrin/2009/11/14/for-conservative-movie-lovers-john-ford-john-wayne-and-they-were-expendable-part-5/For+Conservative+Movie+Lovers%3A+John+Ford%2C+John+Wayne%2C+and+%27They+Were+Expendable%27+Part+52009-11-14+18%3A56%3A38Leo+Grin

Semper Films: The Top Ten Marine Corps Movies

The men and women who earn the right to wear eagle, globe and anchor of the United States Marine Corps are a special breed.   To those outside the Corps, they talk funny.  They look funny.  They are extremely impressed with themselves – and they have every right to be. 

My beloved United States Army is a blunt instrument, a magnificent club that has pummels our nation’s enemies into submission.  But the Marines are America’s rapier, a razor sharp weapon of war that has never been bested and never will be.  For over two centuries, the United States Marine Corps has been fighting our country’s battles in the air, on land and sea.  They don’t give up.  They don’t quit.  There’s no word for retreat in a Marine’s vocabulary.  And they are making history even today in the mountains of Afghanistan and elsewhere.

November 10th is the Corps’ 234th birthday.  With the indulgence of my Devil Dog brethren, here is this Army veteran’s countdown of the Top Ten Marine Corp movies: (more…)

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Tags: 55 Days at Peking, a few good men, aaron sorkin, Adam Baldwin, Al Mathews
Posted Nov 10th 2009 at 9:41 am in Classic Hollywood, Film, Military | 260006166 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/kschlichter/2009/11/10/semper-films-the-top-ten-marine-corps-movies/Semper+Films%3A+The+Top+Ten+Marine+Corps+Movies2009-11-10+17%3A41%3A33Kurt+Schlichter

For Conservative Movie Lovers: John Ford, John Wayne, and ‘They Were Expendable’ Part 4

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“Close-ups, affectionate or noble, are held at leisure; long shots are sustained long after their narrative role has been performed. A marginal figure is suddenly dwelt on, lovingly enlarged to fill the center of the screen. Informed with heightened emotion, a single shot, unexpectedly interposed — a ragged line of men marching into nowhere, one of them playing a bugle-call on his harmonica — assumes a deeper significance than is given by its function in the story. This is one of the properties of poetry. They Were Expendable is a heroic poem.” – Lindsay Anderson

The wondrous shots about which Mr. Anderson writes were masterminded by John Ford, but they were brought to life on film by Joseph H. August (1890-1947), one of the great cinematographers of the age. It was August who memorably crafted the hauntingly beautiful images of night-fog and shadows for Ford’s The Informer (1935), which won Oscars for both Best Picture and Best Director. He also lensed now-classic movies like Gunga Din and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (both 1939), and during the war served as a Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Naval Reserves. (more…)

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Tags: American Society of Cinematographers (ASC), Breen Office, cinematography, Donna Reed, General Douglas MacArthur
Posted Nov 7th 2009 at 10:43 am in Classic Hollywood | 25840633 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/lgrin/2009/11/07/for-conservative-movie-lovers-john-ford-john-wayne-and-they-were-expendable-part-4/For+Conservative+Movie+Lovers%3A+John+Ford%2C+John+Wayne%2C+and+%27They+Were+Expendable%27+Part+42009-11-07+18%3A43%3A17Leo+Grin

For Conservative Movie Lovers: John Ford, John Wayne, and ‘They Were Expendable’ Part 2

“I am really a coward. I know I am, so that’s why I did foolish things. I was decorated eight or nine times, trying to prove that I was not a coward, but after it was all over I still knew, know, that I was a coward.”

– John Ford –

June 4, 1942. The Battle of Midway. John Ford was on his back, covered in debris, unconscious. All around him bombs were dropping, buildings were erupting into monstrous fireballs, and young marines were dodging deadly lines of machine-gun strafing sent down by Japanese fighter planes. Ford and his assistant, young Jack MacKenzie Jr. (whose father was an RKO cinematographer) had been perched on the roof of a power station on Eastern Island, brazenly filming the morning attack by the Japanese and reporting enemy plane positions to headquarters, when a bomb landed a scant twenty feet from their position. The shockwave was so great that MacKenzie later recalled he was “bounced flat on my face by the terrific explosion,” adding, “we almost lost Commander Ford.” (more…)

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Tags: alfred newman, Anchors Aweigh, Donald Crisp, Dudley Nichols, Field Photo
Posted Oct 24th 2009 at 11:03 am in Classic Hollywood | 24718630 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/lgrin/2009/10/24/for-conservative-movie-lovers-john-ford-john-wayne-and-they-were-expendable-part-2/For+Conservative+Movie+Lovers%3A+John+Ford%2C+John+Wayne%2C+and+%27They+Were+Expendable%27+Part+22009-10-24+18%3A03%3A32Leo+Grin

For Conservative Movie Lovers: John Ford, John Wayne, and ‘They Were Expendable’ Part 1

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“[John Ford] was the only one of the Hollywood directors who fought who did not forget his men.”

– Captain Mark Armistead, USN –

Thus quotes Joseph McBride in his masterful biography Searching for John Ford, at the head of the chapter dealing with the director’s wartime activities. It is usually seen as lamentable when a genius is pulled from the practice of his art for any extended period, but here we must make a special allowance. As filmmaker Lindsay Anderson (1923-1994) explains in his essential critical volume About John Ford (which, like the McBride book, should be sitting proudly and dog-eared on the bookshelf of every conservative film fan): “War service took Ford away from the making of films for some three years when his powers were at their height. One would regret this interruption more had it not led directly to the making of a masterpiece.” (more…)

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Tags: "John Ford's Navy", About John Ford (book), Bette Davis, bob hope, Charles Trowbridge
Posted Oct 17th 2009 at 11:09 am in Classic Hollywood | 24699460 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/lgrin/2009/10/17/for-conservative-movie-lovers-john-ford-john-wayne-and-they-were-expendable-part-1/For+Conservative+Movie+Lovers%3A+John+Ford%2C+John+Wayne%2C+and+%27They+Were+Expendable%27+Part+12009-10-17+18%3A09%3A04Leo+Grin

The Polanski Culture: Hollywood’s Push to Normalize Sex With Children

The vocal, sanctimonious Free-Polanski uproar is merely a symptom of an entertainment culture infected with a moral cancer – a culture that regularly practices up on the screen what we’ve heard them preach this last week on behalf of a confessed child rapist.

Last year Miramax released “Doubt,” a high-profile piece of Oscar-bait starring Academy Award winners’ Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Streep plays a puritanical nun on a moral crusade to expose a Priest (Hoffman) who she believes is sexually abusing a 12 year-old boy. Both characters are portrayed as unsympathetic (especially Streep’s) but in just a couple scenes the boy’s working-class mother (Mrs. Miller, played by Viola Davis) is established as the moral center of the film – the only one truly interested in the welfare of her child. When Mrs. Miller’s informed that her son’s being molested, the Moral Center Of The Film responds that her 12 year-old boy is gay, a social outcast, and beaten regularly by his homophobic father … so maybe the best option for him is a sexual relationship with a forty-something child predator.

Starring Aaron Eckhart, Maria Bello, and written and directed by Oscar-winner Alan Ball, last year’s “Towelhead” is a film Roman Polanski might have seen many, many times while wearing a rain coat. The protagonist is 13 year-old Jasira (played by the then barely eighteen Summer Bishil) and the story surrounds her sexual abuse at the hands of a number of men, including Eckhart’s Gulf War Vet. Rather than the repeated abuse damaging the young girl, the filmmaker portrays the rapes and molestations as a healthy and sexually liberating experience. More than once the audience is “treated” to lingering shots of Jasira’s bare legs as she discovers the joys of the orgasm while masturbating to photographs of naked women.

Kate Winslet won last year’s Best Actress Oscar for her role in “The Reader,” in which she plays a “sympathetic” Nazi guilty of mass murder who seduces and then engages in a steamy sexual affair with a 15 year-old boy. The sex scenes between this mature woman and a child lean heavily on the erotic, as opposed to the creepy. (The “sympathetic Nazi” issue we’ll save for another post.) (more…)

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Tags: alan ball, Best Actress Oscar, birth, cate blanchett, Child Molester
Posted Oct 8th 2009 at 4:49 am in Celebrity News, Culture, Featured Story | 242242288 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/10/08/the-polanski-culture-hollywoods-push-to-normalize-sex-with-children/The+Polanski+Culture%3A+Hollywood%27s+Push+to+Normalize+Sex+With+Children2009-10-08+11%3A49%3A19John+Nolte

John Wayne: America’s Greatest Movie Star

The centenary of John Wayne’s birth passed in 2007 with hardly any attention from the U.S. media, which shows both how out of touch the critical community is and how much more astute audiences are than the great majority of those who would presume to guide them. This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the death of the greatest movie star of all time, John Wayne, and his films still remain immensely popular on television and video, while critics grossly underestimate both his talent and his cultural significance.

Wayne surely wasn’t the most skilled actor ever, but he played a much wider variety of roles than is commonly acknowledged, and he brought his characters vividly to life with a force of personality very few, if any, other performers have even approached. A tall, powerfully built, former college football player, Wayne was a huge presence in the motion picture industry, and a superb actor whose skills were consistently underrated by the critics and still are.

Audiences, however, knew just how great he was, and they made his movies nearly automatic successes at the box office. (more…)

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Tags: Big Trail, Flying Leathernecks, Green Berets, Hatari!, john ford
Posted Jun 13th 2009 at 7:03 am in Entertainment, Featured Story | 1583103 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/stkarnick/2009/06/13/americas-greatest-movie-star/John+Wayne%3A+America%27s+Greatest+Movie+Star2009-06-13+14%3A03%3A29S.T.+Karnick

Seeing the Duke in a Whole New Light

For navel-gazing Republicans, in the throes of a full-blown identity crisis, the 30th anniversary of John “Duke” Wayne’s passing this June 11th, couldn’t come sooner, reminding us of what it was like when giants were in our midst.

The Duke, still ranked Americans’ all-time favorite film star, whose popularity only increases with time, was an “extremely close friend” of Ronald Reagan, said their close mutual friend, longtime Paramount Executive, A.C. Lyles.

Both “Duke” and “Ronnie” shared a clear moral vision concerning America’s greatness-only using force to liberate not conquer, as President Reagan characterized it five years, almost to the day, after Duke’s death, in his poignant tribute to the “Boys of Pointe du Hoc” on June 6, 1984, commemorating D-Day, in which, Lyles said, “he just spoke from the heart.”

“Here, in Normandy,” said Reagan, “… the Allies stood and fought against tyranny, in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.”  (more…)

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Tags: 30th Anniversary, D-Day, john wayne, Longest Day, ronald reagan
Posted Jun 11th 2009 at 11:53 am in Entertainment, Politics | 1577102 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/mckendall/2009/06/11/seeing-the-duke-in-a-whole-new-light/Seeing+the+Duke+in+a+Whole+New+Light2009-06-11+18%3A53%3A55Mary+Claire+Kendall

Hollywood Unveiled: John Wayne Walks Like a Girl

John Wayne walks the walk in Hondo, 1953.

It’s in the walk.

Think of Mae West, hands caressing her Rubenesque hips, head tilted, not just sauntering, but oozing forward, the exaggerated female.

Elbows cocked and angled at his hips, moving with concentrated energy, Jimmy Cagney looks like a coiled spring about to explode.

Joan Crawford, leading with her linebacker shoulders, like a tank on the battlefield, determined, dangerous, unstoppable. (more…)

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Tags: Andy Hardy, Bette Davis, Clark Gable, Harry Carey, henry fonda
Posted Jun 9th 2009 at 6:42 am in Celebrity News | 153810One Commenthttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/ravrech/2009/06/09/hollywood-unveiled-john-wayne-walks-like-a-girl/Hollywood+Unveiled%3A+John+Wayne+Walks+Like+a+Girl2009-06-09+13%3A42%3A35Robert+J.+Avrech

Memorial Day Top 5: Great WWII Films You Might Have Missed

These may not be the best known or most famous of WWII films, but they deserve to be. Keep an eye out. You’ll be glad you did.

1. Command Decision (1948) – Made just after WWII, this Air Force drama set in 1943 when the outcome of the war was still in doubt, is one of the most intelligent examinations of the burden of command ever put on film. Clark Gable is absolutely outstanding as Casey, a Brigadier General forced to give orders that on their face appear cold and even monstrous, but in truth are just the opposite. Caught between the Washington brass who have a war to sell and the men under him who see only a General ordering their comrades to certain death, Casey is a leader willing to be hated and even lose his command in order to do the greater good. What Casey cares about before anything is saving American lives. That means winning the war as quickly as possible, something which can only be accomplished if unspeakable sacrifices are made in the here and now.   (more…)

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Tags: Alan Hale, Arthur Kennedy, Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Command Decision
Posted May 25th 2009 at 2:28 pm in Top 5 | 1430503 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/05/25/memorial-day-top-5-great-wwii-films-you-might-have-missed/Memorial+Day+Top+5%3A+Great+WWII+Films+You+Might+Have+Missed2009-05-25+21%3A28%3A05John+Nolte

Sergeants Rock

I just cannot get behind this Star Trek rebirth.  The whole thing is just so unrealistic.  Not the warp speed or phasers or beaming about the universe – those are at least remotely plausible.  I am talking about the fact that the starship Enterprise is composed entirely of officers and yet it still seems to function.  Where are the non-commissioned officers (NCO), the petty officers and sergeants who actually make any military organization run?  No, I can suspend disbelief over Klingons and tribbles, and I actively support the notion of green alien hotties.  But the idea of a functioning military unit without sergeants is just a wormhole too far.

–

Hollywood movies often focus on the commanders, the captains and colonels, but they have also managed to highlight some great sergeants as well.  When you are picking out DVDs for next weekend, remember that May 16th is Armed Forces Day and consider a few selections that show the sergeant in all his gruff and grumbling glory. 

If you have never experienced the joy of going through basic training and do not plan to, your first stop should be Full Metal Jacket, with R. Lee Ermey’s legendary portrayal of a Marine drill instructor who must have missed out on the block of instruction on sensitivity.  I saw this in the theater about a week before I reported to Basic.  That was a poor idea. (more…)

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Tags: A Bridge Too Far, Afghanistan, Al Matthews, Aliens, An Officer and a Gentleman
Posted May 11th 2009 at 4:47 pm in Entertainment, Military | 1310103 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/kschlichter/2009/05/11/sergeants-rock/Sergeants+Rock2009-05-11+23%3A47%3A39Kurt+Schlichter

Haunted by the Memory of Her Song: Fifty Years of ‘Rio Bravo’

The sun is sinking in the west
The cattle go down to the stream
The redwing settles in her nest
It’s time for a cowboy to dream….

Exquisitely crafted, but never ostentatious. Pleasantly mellow, but never lazy. Thematically rich, but never preachy. Respectful of tradition, but never stolid. Deeply compassionate, but never descending into schmaltz. Five decades ago, a group of men now long-dead (and, it must be said, one smokin’-hot woman, still-living) followed an aged veteran director into the Arizona desert to make a humble, heartfelt western based firmly on quintessentially American notions of courage, decency, and good humor. The result of their collaboration, Rio Bravo (1959), remains one of the great visceral pleasures of cinema.

Howard Hawks’ masterpiece stemmed from his disgust with the joyless anti-heroics of uptight, melodramatic westerns like Fred Zinnemann’s High Noon (1952) and Delmer Daves’ 3:10 to Yuma (1957) — dark “message movies” that seemed to revel in smugly depicting small-town Americans as cynics and cowards. The man behind such classics as Scarface (1932), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), To Have and Have Not (1944), Red River (1948), and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) was in his early sixties in 1958, his career winding down after decades of constant production. He had interned for Famous Players-Lasky way back in 1916, and directed his first features in the mid-1920s. Thirty years later he was old and tired, and his last film, Land of the Pharaohs (1955), had been a disheartening flop. Since then, the previously prolific director hadn’t helmed a picture in three years, an unheard-of period of self-exile for a man who had cranked out movies regularly for decades. But the brazen slap across the face that High Noon had given America’s western mythology had bothered him. “I made Rio Bravo,” he later told an interviewer, “because I didn’t like High Noon. Neither did Duke. I didn’t think a good town marshal was going to run around town like a chicken with his head cut off asking everyone to help. And who saves him? His Quaker wife. That isn’t my idea of a good western.” (more…)

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Tags: 3:10 to Yuma (1957), academy awards, alfred hitchcock, Allen Barra, Angie Dickinson
Posted May 3rd 2009 at 5:30 am in Entertainment, Featured Story | 1221545 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/lgrin/2009/05/03/haunted-by-the-memory-of-her-song-fifty-years-of-rio-bravo/Haunted+by+the+Memory+of+Her+Song%3A+Fifty+Years+of+%27Rio+Bravo%272009-05-03+12%3A30%3A38Leo+Grin

Top 5: Western Themes

Can you remember the last piece of film score that made you want to jump into the screen and join in on the action — that made you want to destroy an arch-villain’s volcano lair or swing into ship full of enemy pirates…? But of all the genres, there’s nothing quite like a  Big Western Score. The best are rousing, moody, flavorful… They drive a sense of danger and adventure into your innards and make you long to be a cowboy, which is no small achievement for someone like me who would rather spend a night in jail than outdoors.

Here are my 5 favorites in all their YouTube glory.

1. Dimitri Tomkin – Red River (1949): Sweeping, epic, majestic and impossible to believe never nominated for an Oscar. An important part of scoring is deciding where to put the music and ”Red River” has some of the best spotting choices I’ve ever seen. It kicks in precisely when it should, not just to enhance a moment, but also to change moods and start fresh. Watch the scene again where John Wayne (who’s absolutely brilliant in his most unsympathetic role) tells Montgomery Clift (every bit as good as Wayne) he’s gonna kill him. This is “the” moment in the film and you expect dark, melodramatic music, but when Clift walks away and gets on his horse the score soars with adventure completely changing the mood and stripping the melodrama from the moment. (more…)

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Tags: Dimitri Tomkin, Elmer Bernstein, Ennio Morricone, For a Few Dollars More, Howard Hawks
Posted Apr 29th 2009 at 6:12 pm in Top 5 | 1198702 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/04/29/top-5-western-themes/Top+5%3A+Western+Themes2009-04-30+01%3A12%3A05John+Nolte

Heroic Hollywood: American Exceptionalism and the Hollywood Hero

Bitter Gun-Clinger  – and Hollywood Hero

For nearly a century now, Hollywood has inspired generations of Americans with the central truth behind the American Dream: in this country, people are free to choose their own destiny. It’s the moral message found in every film that features the classic Hollywood Hero. Here’s a look at how our movie heroes were shaped by American values, a personal look at how the Hollywood Hero can inspire our lives, and the belief that, despite the rise of explicitly anti-American movies, the Hollywood Hero will continue to ride to the rescue.

The late Stanley Kubrick awakened my interest in films. But it was a one-eyed fat man that launched my career in the movies.

The first time I started thinking about films as something more than Saturday afternoon’s amusement was in 1968 with the release of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I was a Midwestern boy in the 8th grade at the time, and it was the first film I kept thinking about after I left the theater: Who made it? How was it done? What does it mean? (more…)

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Tags: 2001, herosim, john wayne, Kubrick
Posted Apr 28th 2009 at 1:47 pm in Entertainment | 1176706 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/rdvonch/2009/04/28/heroic-hollywood-american-exceptionalism-and-the-hollywood-hero/Heroic+Hollywood%3A+American+Exceptionalism+and+the+Hollywood+Hero2009-04-28+20%3A47%3A29Russ+Dvonch

Memo to Hollywood: There’s Money Sitting On the Table

That the SEALs solved the pirate problem with three shots/three kills last weekend was no surprise; what was should have been really interesting to those of you in the Industry was the American public’s reaction.  The public was thrilled.  The good guys won, the bad guys lost – decisively.  There is a lesson there for you.

Here’s another lesson.  During an unpopular war, a popular star risked everything to bring a bestselling book to the screen about American fighting men battling a cruel and vicious enemy.  In 1968, you might think an unabashedly pro-war movie where the Americans were the heroes and the enemy the villains would have been soundly rejected, and it was – by the liberal elite. 

Roger Ebert, who never saw a film trashing the American fighting man he didn’t praise, still lists John Wayne’s “The Green Berets” as one of his most hated films forty years later.  But the public welcomed it, a film that could tell good from evil, and turned it into a hit.  It even spawned a hit song.  Where is the next war movie that outrages Roger Ebert while lining audiences up around the block? (more…)

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Tags: box office, john wayne, Military, Roger Ebert, The Green Berets
Posted Apr 17th 2009 at 12:02 pm in Entertainment, Media Criticism, Military | 1075622 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/kschlichter/2009/04/17/memo-to-hollywood-americans-like-it-when-their-side-wins/Memo+to+Hollywood%3A+There%27s+Money+Sitting+On+the+Table2009-04-17+19%3A02%3A58Kurt+Schlichter

‘In Harm’s Way’: Imperfect Greatness on the High Seas

The United States Navy is in the news and on my mind lately. The events off the coast of Somalia are surely one very good reason for this. Heroism and service. Ordinary people under extraordinary circumstances. Another not nearly so dramatic, but nonetheless exciting reason, for me at least, involves the very recent honor I’ve had of contributing my prose to a citation to confer on Mr. George Herbert Walker Bush the degree of Doctor of Social Science, honoris causa.  His own history, his willingness to serve, to sacrifice and risk everything for a cause, for others, is something we should never underestimate. It’s something we, as Americans have always been good at.

It’s also something our movies used to portray well. We don’t get to see too many of these kinds of movies anymore. Nope, they don’t make them like they used to. That can be said of both the men and women of Bush 41’s generation, as well as the films of that era. But sometimes, in more recent times, we’re graced with shining examples of tarnished excellence, of battered beauty in our citizens and in our favorite art, the movies.    (more…)

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Tags: Blade Runner, Burgess Meredith, CG, Dana Andrews, fx
Posted Apr 16th 2009 at 5:33 pm in Military, Politics, Reviews | 105722No Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/smann/2009/04/16/imperfect-greatness-on-the-high-seas-of-history/%27In+Harm%27s+Way%27%3A+Imperfect+Greatness+on+the+High+Seas2009-04-17+00%3A33%3A32Schizoid+Mann

Big Hollywood’s Top 100 Screen Legends

The American Film Institute went a little list-crazy a few years back. Most of their surveys were fun and about the pure pleasure of movie watching (top 100 chills, quotes, songs, laughs… ), but 1999’s “100 Years…100 Stars” definitely caught my eye because it was less about fun, more about creating something defining and just that bad.

For starters, the list was a bit of a cheat. There weren’t 100 stars, there were 50; 25 men and 25 women. But in order to get to the number 100, the AFI counted the 50 stars and celebrities who acted as on-camera hosts and presenters. In other words, the television show produced around the list was more important than creating a serious, comprehensive list. (more…)

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Tags: 100 Years...100 Movies, AFI, American Film Institute, bob hope, charlton heston
Posted Mar 26th 2009 at 1:33 pm in Entertainment, Top 5 | 89550No Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/03/26/big-hollywoods-top-100-screen-legends/Big+Hollywood%27s+Top+100+Screen+Legends2009-03-26+20%3A33%3A22John+Nolte

Guess Who’s the Third Most Popular Movie Star in America Today?

No, it’s not any of those celebrities we’re told are stars. DiCaprio and George Clooney didn’t even make the top 10. Neither did Ashton Kutcher, Sean Penn, Brad Pitt, Seth Rogen, Matt Damon, Will Farrell, or Tom Cruise.

Every year for about 15 years now, Harris Interactive has conducted a nationwide poll and asked a very simple question: “Who is your favorite movie star?” And every year since the taking of the poll one particular individual has placed in the top ten — 13 of those years in the top 3.

This year, 2,388 U.S. adults were surveyed and this star rose three places to tie Will Smith for third. Only Denzel Washington and Clint Eastwood rank as more popular.

One last hint before the reveal: This star is the only actor in the history of the poll to rank posthumously: (more…)

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Tags: Harris Interactive, Harris Movie Star Poll, Harris Poll, Harris Poll John Wayne, john wayne
Posted Mar 18th 2009 at 2:16 pm in Entertainment, Politics | 83554180 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/03/18/guess-whos-the-third-most-popular-movie-star-in-america-today/Guess+Who%27s+the+Third+Most+Popular+Movie+Star+in+America+Today%3F2009-03-18+21%3A16%3A50John+Nolte

TCM Pick O’ The Day: Tuesday, March 17th

11:15am PST -  Alamo, The (1960) – Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie join the fight for Texas’ independence from Mexico. Cast: John Wayne, Richard Widmark, Laurence Harvey, Frankie Avalon Dir: John Wayne C-203 mins, TV-14

John Wayne felt it was important enough to tell the story of the brave men of the Alamo that he nearly went bankrupt to fund this dream project he produced, directed, and starred it. This was something he willed into existence, forced into being using every ounce of juice he had as the biggest movie star in the world. Still, for the most part, he was out there on a limb, all on his own and it would take more than a decade of re-releases before the film would earn enough to call itself profitable. The film was popular enough, just too expensive. It was also nominated for 6 Oscars, including Best Picture. (more…)

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Tags: Alamo, john ford, john wayne, Santa Ana
Posted Mar 16th 2009 at 6:21 pm in Today's Pick | 8197880 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/03/16/tcm-pick-o-the-day-tuesday-march-17th/TCM+Pick+O%27+The+Day%3A+Tuesday%2C+March+17th2009-03-17+01%3A21%3A58John+Nolte

Top 5: Is The Color Film Big Hollywood’s Problem?

My original plan was to do a top five list of today’s actors under thirty-five with more personality than the ShamWow! guy, but you can only tap your chin so long.

To try and explain away the fact that the true movie star is fast becoming extinct, a few apologists over the years have tossed out the excuse that there’s no way today’s celebrities, er, uhm, actors can compete with their historical counterparts because color, unlike black and white, makes them too human and thus brings them down to earth. It would be foolish to completely dismiss that idea, but not as foolish as raising it before, oh, say, a lack of presence, talent, and most of all, class. Of course, if you’re determined to hold that position you must also believe that putting Ashton and the Jessica-of-the-day in a good noir film would change everything. (more…)

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Tags: errol flynn, gary cooper, ingrid bergman, john wayne, Linda Darnell
Posted Feb 4th 2009 at 12:17 pm in Top 5 | 4113861 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/02/04/top-5-is-the-color-film-big-hollywoods-problem/Top+5%3A+Is+The+Color+Film+Big+Hollywood%27s+Problem%3F2009-02-04+20%3A17%3A10John+Nolte