Both articles linked below make excellent points about how indifferent the public was to this year’s nine Best Picture picks. Other than “The Help,” which was a smash, none came close to reaching $100 million at the domestic box office. So unlike the last two years, where the nominations contained more than a single film people had actually seen, we have eight films practically no one did.

Yes, that’s a problem.

But here’s the bigger problem: 29 films topped the $100 million mark last year, but how many of those are worthy of an Oscar? “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” and ”X-Men: First Class”  were certainly good movies, but they’re not Best Picture material.

The problem isn’t so much that the Academy is out of touch (which it is), it’s that the product the industry created was so lousy last year, there really are no crowd-pleasers good enough to add to the list of nominations. And as someone who has seen the middling “Midnight in Paris,” the pretentious and impossibly dull “Tree of Life,” and the just pretty good “War Horse” — none of which is better than “Rise of the Apes,” “X-Men,” or “Resident Evil 4,” for that matter – the Academy is still guilty of stacking the deck with brand-tarnishing mediocrities.

Box Office Mojo:

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‘WAR HORSE’ WARNING FOR PARENTS FROM ORSON BEAN

Yesterday Orson emailed me a heads up for parents with respect to Steven Spielberg’s “War Horse,” which hits theatres Sunday. Some vague plot points are given away, so consider this a spoiler warning:

I would urge your readers not to take children to the Spielberg picture “War Horse.” The “horse in peril” stuff is deeply disturbing. At the advance preview my wife and I attended, we couldn’t watch bits of it, and upset people were walking out. I had seen the Broadway production in which the horses are portrayed by life-sized puppets, with four men working each horse puppet. It is one of the best productions I’ve ever seen. Within a few minutes, you don’t notice the people working the puppets. When the horses are caught on barbed wire, it is frightening. But since they are puppets, it is by no means too terrifying to watch, and it is also deeply moving as far as dramatizing the horrors of war.

But in the film, with apparently real horses in agony, it will give kids nightmares for weeks. The movie is being marketed as a family friendly affair, and indeed, the first half of it is reminiscent of “Lassie Come Home.” Then there is a sudden switch, with sections as intense as the opening of “Saving Private Ryan.”

I can’t imagine what Spielberg was thinking of. Anyone who could possibly enjoy the second half, would be turned off like crazy by the first half.

Good to know. Nothing I’ve seen in the promotion, other than the PG-13 rating, even hints at any of this.

THIS JUST IN FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF NO SHIT: ‘HIGH PRICES FOR LOW QUALITY FILMS KEEPING FAMILIES AWAY FROM THEATERS’

Some interesting numbers hidden in the obvious:

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There must have been some ferocious re-writing going on behind the scenes of “The Iron Lady.”

The upcoming biopic of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher seemed like yet another liberal Hollywood hatchet job, according to an early script review done here earlier this year.

Now, the film is being shown to select film critics, and right-of-center scribe Kyle Smith is weighing in with a glowing assessment of the movie.

Meryl Streep is terrific and should win an Oscar for a deeply engaged, highly sympathetic portrayal of Margaret Thatcher as a strong-willed leader and an icon of womanhood who cracked the ultimate Old Boy Network, got the British economy booming again, made a series of tough decisions in the Falkland Islands war that resulted in total victory together with a restoration of British patriotic pride and enjoyed a long and loving marriage with Denis (an impish Jim Broadbent) that unfortunately ended with his death by cancer. There is not much politics in the film (and still less economics) and issues such as the miners’ strike and the IRA hunger strike are barely alluded to. But this is an admiring look at an indomitable figure and forceful politico (who is shown not only acting with great courage and decisiveness in the Falklands War but also personally hand-writing agonized letters to the families of fallen British troops).

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Kyle Smith:

Perplexingly, things take a turn for the gay: Damon’s krill says he wants to raise kids together, at which point Pitt’s notes that they’re both males, yet Damon thinks this is no big deal and (I’m not making this up) starts suggestively singing a Wham! song, which causes Pitt (not unreasonably) to dump Damon. I’ve got nothing against alternative-lifestyle krill, but what are they doing in my dancing-penguin movie?

But that’s not all:

The “aliens” (humans) are enemy polluters, then friends, then enemies (the penguins panic when they spot the humans roasting their fellow birds the chickens), then friends again — an alliance sealed when the rockhopper penguin Lovelace (Robin Williams) plays them an air-guitar solo from “We Are the Champions.” The humans respond in kind, and the fraught interplay of man and nature turns into “Bill & Ted’s Wild Kingdom.”

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Maybe I need to start calling this “The Early-Afternoon-On-The-West-Coast Call Sheet”. Anyone who runs any kind of blog will tell you that it takes more work to write something when there isn’t much to write about. The search for inspiration is an endless one.

Charlie Sheen’s Apology Tour

Thus far, Sheen’s done both the “Tonight Show” and the “Today Show” and actually does come across as a guy who had some time to stare into the abyss. You never know, though. Sheen is an underrated actor, so it could all be a game to worm his way back into Hollywood’s good graces. No matter how talented you are, you can only be so much of a nightmare to deal with before you become unemployable.

On a human level, I hope everyone finds more peace in their life, but as a Charlie Sheen fan going back some twenty years, I’m eager to see what another phase in his career might bring. Hopefully more awesome B-movies like his epic ’90’s run and not “Major League IV.”

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–FINAL CHAPTER OF ANDREW KLAVAN’S HOMELANDERS’ QUADROLOGY RELEASED TODAY–

A very well-written, page-turning adventure series for the kids. God, country and values are treated as good things. On the other hand, terrorism and narcissism are treated as bad things. I think the word we’re searching for in this upside day and age is: Iconoclastic.

You can order the book here. I recommend all four. Klavan’s an amazing talent who also happens to be on our side. What more could you possibly ask for. Did you just say a film based on the series?  Done.

Klavan blogs here and here.

–KEVIN COSTNER UP FOR VILLAIN ROLE IN NEW TARANTINO FLICK–

I’ve always liked Kevin Costner and was sorry to see his career all but derail 15 years ago with the triple-punch of the underrated “Waterworld,” the truly dreadful “Postman” (which even Tom Petty couldn’t save) and the stillborn “Wyatt Earp.”

Costner’s masculine, has a genuinely likable screen persona, and seems like a decent guy in real life — and in the right role he’s a very, very good actor. Try to picture someone else in “Field of Dreams,” “The Untouchables” or “Dances with Wolves.” You can argue he’s no Olivier ( I would counter with his unforgettable work in “A Perfect World), but at the same time he’s always managed to hold his own on screen with some powerful actors: James Earl Jones, Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall, Morgan Freeman, Sean Connery, etc — which is a talent all on its own.

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Our buddy Kyle Smith points out that the Daily Beast has made a laughably pathetic attempt to gin up some controversy over a line from the movie “Horrible Bosses,” which is in theaters today.  From NewsBeast’s Ramin Setoodeh:

In the new comedy Horrible Bosses, Jennifer Aniston plays an overbearing dentist named Julia who tortures her assistant Dale (Charlie Day) by sexually harassing him. She’s one of three managers (along with Colin Farrell and Kevin Spacey) meant to be so detestable that their underlings plot to murder them. She constantly corners Dale, asking him to perform lewd sexual acts. In one scene, Aniston’s character calls him into her office, wearing nothing but a white lab coat. When he expresses discomfort, she taunts him like a high-school bully. “You’re starting to sound like a little faggot there, Dale,” she says.

[...]

The New York Post’s Kyle Smith gave “Atlas Shrugged: Part 1″ a mixed review, but closes his must-read piece with a spot-on analysis of why the film still matters. Regardless of the reviews and even the box office, something remarkable happens tomorrow: The imperfect but important ideas of Ayn Rand, which heretofore have only been available in black and white on Turner Classic Movies and in written form, will now burst into a few hundred movie theatres and eventually make a mark on a lot more people through home video.

Because of the power of the motion picture and popular culture in general, there’s no downside at this point. And we have a few brave individuals with the kind of moxie it takes to risk their own money and buck Hollywood’s PC-infested political climate to thank for this. They did this all on their own. From the beginning, Hollywood talent agencies refused to let their clients consider a role, and tomorrow they’re self-distributing in as many theatres as they can.

However, just because it’s already a win for our side doesn’t mean we should sit back and bask in it. if you want another win in Part 2 and 3, this one has to succeed. And how great would it be to see Part 2 dropped right in the middle of a Obama’s re-election bid?

Kyle Smith:

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I’ve been wanting to comment on Kyle Smith’s excellent New York Post column since Sunday, a column that reminds us of a truism too easy to forget. It’s just a fact that since the creation of celebrity there’s always been a dark, trashy, immoral side to it all – always been Hollywood debauchery, scandal and bad behavior. What we’re seeing today from Lindsay Lohan, Charlie Sheen, and Britney Spears, unfortunately, isn’t anything new. Which begs a question I’ll ask below.

The New York Post:

A common gripe about Lindsay Lohan, Chris Brown, Kanye West, Charlie Sheen and the rest of our celebrity monster posse is that they’re immature brats whom genetic fortuity gave riches but not brains, morals or character. They are.

But so were the stars of the ’50s. If their serene glamour persists, it’s in part because the movies are still on TV but the scandal sheets that chronicled their misadventures have crumbled to atoms. …

Taylor’s adulterous, drink-fueled hookup with Richard Burton on the set of “Cleopatra” inspired a letter published in a Vatican newspaper that condemned her for “erotic vagrancy.” When the lovers were out of the country, Rep. Iris Faircloth Blitch of Georgia called for them to be denied re-entry into the US “on the grounds of undesirability.”

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The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto:

What kind of people blow up children?

White supremacists, for one example. On the morning of Sept. 15, 1963, members of a Ku Klux Klan “splinter group” set off dynamite under the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., killing four girls: Denise McNair, Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley. Denise was 11; the other three were 14.

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Islamic supremacists, for another example. Groups like Hamas and al Qaeda not only attack civilians indiscriminately but frequently employ Muslim children as suicide bombers. Our friend Brooke Goldstein made a whole movie about it.

There’s a new kind of supremacist on the scene: green supremacists. They haven’t blown up any children–not in real life. But they’ve been thinking about it.

A British outfit called the 10:10 Campaign hired Richard Curtis, a writer and producer of cinematic comedies, to produce a four-minute video promoting its effort to encourage people to cut “carbon emissions.” The result, titled “No Pressure,” struck James Delingpole, a global-warming skeptic who writes for London’s Daily Telegraph, as “deliciously, unspeakably, magnificently bleeding awful.” He’s being too kind. (more…)

Back in April, our own Pam Meister gave everyone a heads up with a scathing Sucker Punch Review of director Adam McKay’s “The Other Guys,” which stars Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg and opens nationwide this coming Friday. From the looks of Kyle Smith’s write up today, the actual film is even worse than expected — completely undone by left-wing speechifying. Yep, Hollywood is money driven. Not political at all. You gonna believe Patrick Goldstein or your lying eyes?

Kyle Smith Online:

Ferrell and his writing partner/director Adam McKay think they have a really important message about capitalism. It’s so important that it interrupts, then takes over, then finally kills their (otherwise often very funny) new movie, “The Other Guys.” The movie is being sold as (like “Hot Fuzz”) a mock-cop epic, and it is. Or it was, at some stage of the process. But Ferrell and McKay introduce an investment banker (Steve Coogan) who represents Evil Capitalism and is even shown shaking hands with George W. Bush (whom Ferrell has said he would refuse to meet with, on principle).

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After a couple of weeks of unsubstantiated rumors, it has been confirmed that the forthcoming film The Invention of Lying is indeed intended to satirize religion and religious believers.

New York Post critic Kyle Smith has seen the film and describes it as “a full-on attack on religion in general and Christianity in particular. It might be the most blatantly, one-sidedly atheist movie ever released by a major studio, in this case Warner Bros.”

Although the commercials and theatrical trailers have presented the film as a cute comedy and made no allusion at all to any religious angle, much less a concerted case for atheism, Smith reports that the basis of the film is its attack on religion:

Gervais delights in what a faith-based society would call blasphemy, setting up an imaginary world in which no one ever lies. Except his character, who spreads what Gervais obviously sees as the biggest lie of all: Belief in God.

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Kyle Smith:

Compare [Harry Potter to] Luke Skywalker, who has to conquer his own vanity, laziness and anger in order to earn his powers. Harry, like many of his generation, is the Cosseted One from an early age. He’s told that he’s special, that he’s got awesome gifts, that those who don’t understand this are blind to the plain facts. Deploying his powers involves no more character or soul-searching than following a recipe.

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