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:

After two years in a row in which the Best Picture race was populated with a handful of blockbusters, The Help is the only one of 2011’s nine nominees that has so far earned more than $100 million. On average the movies have made just $57.6 million prior to the nominations, which is up on the five-nominee years from 2004-2008 but way off from ten-nominee years 2010 ($119.5 million) and 2009 ($151.5 million).

Kyle Smith:

‘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:

In fact movie attendance this year is expected to drop to its lowest in 16 years. …

Domestic movie attendance has plummeted since peaking at 1.6 billion in 2002 to what experts predict will be around 1.3 billion for 2011.

Hollywood might find a little relief this weekend. Thus far, the box office looks like it should at this time of year, though I suspect there will be a couple of high-profile films left without a chair when the music stops.

At least on paper, with “Dragon Tattoo,” “Sherlock Holmes 2,” “Chipmunks 3,” and two(!) Spielberg films, this should be one of the greatest Christmas weeks ever.

BIRD SNUBBED 3D FOR NEW ‘MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE’

Bless him:

“I think that any time you have a new toy, people feel excited about it and then they overuse it. I remain interested in 3D but I’m not exactly convinced yet. What I’m more interested in is really high resolution, and really big screens.

“For me I don’t like the glasses so much, and it’s a little dark. I think people are forgetting about the power of a really sharp bright image on a really big screen.”

Gawd, I hate 3D. Hate the glasses and hate the fact that Hollywood uses the technology as a crutch. Hoping to create an immersive experience, they spend millions on this obnoxious technology instead of telling better stories.

I wouldn’t even consider seeing ‘MI:4′ in theatres if it was in 3D.

Oof.

MORE: ‘Mission: Impossible 5′ Being Fast-Tracked by Paramount?

KYLE SMITH: ‘EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE’ A ‘VILE AND PUTRID FILM’

Here’s a taste. Read it all:

The film amounts to a celebration thrown by author Jonathan Safran Foer for an unbelievably obnoxious little genius meant to be a sweetly heartbreaking charmer. Instead of being the cause of daily horsewhippings with barbed wire as you would expect (and hope), the kid’s precocity is a source of wonderment to everyone around him (including an assortment of colorful minority peoples who are enchanted by his company as he goes around the city introducing himself, though occasionally white people are rude to him). The Islamofascist attacks of 9/11, which killed the kid’s father (Tom Hanks), are a sort of pickaxe Foer uses for attacking the tear ducts. I hated the kid and his nonstop efforts to convince us of his brilliance from the very beginning of the movie (even though we’re supposed to feel sorry for him) and my opinion of him sharply declined thereafter.

Smith’s colleague Lou Lumenick gives it one-star:

In the end, “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close’’ pulls out all the stops trying to put the audience through the emotional wringer. It’s Oscar-mongering of the most blunt and reprehensible sort.

Man, I don’t know what I’m going to do if I end up liking it.

NYT DECLARES ‘EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE’ KITSCH

But it’s an impossible role in an impossible movie that has no reason for being other than as another pop-culture palliative for a trauma it can’t bear to face. In truth, “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” isn’t about Sept. 11. It’s about the impulse to drain that day of its specificity and turn it into yet another wellspring of generic emotions: sadness, loneliness, happiness. This is how kitsch works. It exploits familiar images, be they puppies or babies — or, as in the case of this movie, the twin towers — and tries to make us feel good, even virtuous, simply about feeling. And, yes, you may cry, but when tears are milked as they are here, the truer response should be rage.

‘AMERICAN HORROR STORY’ ENDS ITS FIRST SEASON ON A HIGH NOTE; 3.22 MILLION TOTAL VIEWERS

It’s amazing how television has become so fractured that 3.22 million viewers, or 1% of the overall population, is now considered a roaring success. Twenty years ago, “Cheers” was pulling in 21 million viewers.

When you consider how good so many cable shows are today, even though they pull in only a few million viewers, we should be relieved ratings are now graded on a curve or the cancellations would be legion.

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LAST NIGHT’S SCREENING

The Gathering (1977) — A couple of years ago I counted down my top 25 favorite Christmas films and ranked this hard-to-find television movie at number seven. For some reason, the best Christmas film too few people have seen is only available on DVD via the Warner-Archives, which I watched for the first time last night. The print is gorgeous and includes a few moments that were not on my two decade-old VHS tape recorded so many Christmases ago. (You can also watch the complete film on YouTube — one of the best scenes is here.)

I don’t have much to add to my review linked above, but I will say that after many screenings, the film’s emotional punch never diminishes. Because of the circumstances and the skill of all those involved in the production, you dread the end of this moving reconciliation/reunion as much as any one of the characters participating in it.

I was also struck by how religious the story is. Even ten years ago, this isn’t something you would notice, because a film surrounding an openly Christian family was the norm, not a glaring exception. Watching it today within the context of a time when our faith is under assault and even the word “Christmas” itself has become controversial brings home not only how intolerant Hollywood has become, but how the loss of these themes has diminished the quality of modern-day storytelling.

In 1977, the National Education Association gave “The Gathering” a stamp of approval, something they would never do today — not that the film would have a chance of being produced by broadcast networks.

Trust me, this is one you want to own. Included in the package is the sequel, which, trust me again, you don’t want to waste your time on.

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SCOTTDS’ EPIC LINKTACULAR

BATMAN INFOGRAPHIC: EVERY (SIGNIFICANT) BAT-SUIT EVER

‘THE AVENGERS’ HAS A NEW SUPERPOWER: 3D

BRUCE CAMPBELL TO APPEAR IN SAM RAIMI’S ‘OZ: THE GREAT AND POWERFUL‘

‘PROMETHEUS’ SCREENGRABS IN HD

‘PROMETHEUS’ TRAILER ANALYSIS

SONY CLASSICS TO RELEASE WOODY ALLEN’S ‘NERO FIDDLED’ IN SUMMER 2012

‘BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER’ REMAKE SCRIPT REJECTED COMPLETELY

A CLOSER LOOK AT ‘THE HOBBIT’ TRAILER

SELENE DODGES FLAMETHROWERS IN ‘UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING’ TRAILER

THE 16 WORST CHRISTMAS SPECIALS OF ALL TIME

DISNEY CONFIRMS ‘THE SNOW QUEEN,’ COMING IN 2013

THE 10 BEST AND WORST MOVIE POSTERS OF THE YEAR

A ‘FRESH PRINCE’ REUNION

THE TOP 10 AFRICAN FILMS OF 2011

10 BADASS CHARACTERS NEUTERED BY THEIR SEQUELS

17 FILMS TO LOOK FORWARD TO IN 2012

‘MI:4′ AND ‘DARK KNIGHT RISES’ EASTER EGGS

A LOOK BACK AT THE OPENING NIGHT OF DISNEY’S ‘SNOW WHITE‘

NETFLIX CHIEF REED HASTINGS’ STOCK OPTIONS CUT BY $1.5M AFTER QWIKSTER DEBACLE

DIRECTOR STEVEN SPIELBERG AND EDITOR MICHAEL KAHN: A LIFE-LONG RELATIONSHIP

PODCAST: WHAT DO PRODUCERS DO?

TOP 10 FEMME FATALES

5 SHERLOCK HOLMES ANTAGONISTS WHO AREN’T MORIARTY

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CLASSIC PICK FOR SATURDAY,  DECEMBER 24

TCM:

2:30 PM  EST: Holiday Affair (1950) –  A young widow is torn between a boring businessman and a romantic ne’er-do-well. Dir: Don Hartman Cast:  Robert Mitchum, Janet Leigh, Wendell Corey. BW-87 mins, TV-G. CC.

So many excellent holiday titles to choose from, but this underrated 1949 charmer (TCM’s date is wrong) is about as good as a Christmas film can get. At first glance, the love triangle looks fairly boilerplate, but if you look closer you’ll find some very big themes at work. Also, the fact that Wendell Corey (a die-hard conservative Republican, donchaknow) is cast as an uncommonly decent guy who suddenly finds himself in competition with Robert Mitchum for the luscious Janet Leigh, is a very nice touch.

Also, we lost Harry Morgan this year, and his one scene (which he steals completely) as a skeptical police sergeant is a howler.

RIP, Harry.

More on my love affair with “A Holiday Affair” here.

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Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah, everyone! And I hope you intolerant crybabies offended by any of that have a good weekend.

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

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).

Could the film’s even-handed treatment of Lady Thatcher work against its Oscar chances? We’ll see.

Moviegoers can decide for themselves when the film opens on Dec. 30.

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.”

That isn’t even the leading “Huh?” moment. Repeatedly and tiresomely, we cut away from these tangents within tangents to go completely off-topic for updates on a quarrelsome pair of krill (Matt Damon, Brad Pitt) who speak in witless wordplay and rhymes. They’re named Will and Bill the Krill. Their lines go like this: “There’s no such thing as free, Will,” “Goodbye, krill world” and “One in a krillion.” Their drill is nil and made me ill.

Smith has much more here in a separate essay

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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SCOTTD’S EPIC LINK-TACULAR

TOTO RAVE: WITH ‘DRIVE’ GOSLING CHANNELS STEVE MCQUEEN

SMITH: ‘STRAW DOGS’ IS KENNY ROGERS’ ‘COWARD OF THE COUNTRY” WITH BAD SUBPLOTS

THE STRANGE CASE OF THE COMPETING SNOW WHITE MOVIES

“I FORGOT MY MANTRA”: 10 GREATEST ACTOR CAMEOS IN WOODY ALLEN MOVIES

35 THINGS WE LEARNED FROM THE ‘MEMENTO’ COMMENTARY

THE 20 MOST TYPECAST ACTORS

WHERE DISNEY DRAWS THE LINE WITH CLASSIC FILM RESTORATIONS

‘IT’S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA’ TEAM HAS NEW SERIES IN THE WORKS

NO ASH IN ‘EVIL DEAD’ REMAKE?

SCREENWRITING 101 AND THE LATEST CHARACTER CLICHE TO AVOID: THE “MANIC PIXIE DREAM GIRL”

‘ZERO HOUR!’ AND ‘AIRPLANE!’: A VISUAL COMPARISON

INSIDE STANLEY KUBRICK’S ARCHIVES

CBS DEVELOPING A ‘SOURCE CODE’ TV SERIES?

50 BIGGEST ALL-TIME EMMY SNUBS

NICE: STARZ PLANS ‘SPARTACUS’ MARATHON TO HONOR ANDY WHITFIELD

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LAST NIGHT’S SCREENING

Edit Big Hollywood by day, paint my big-ass house by night, fall asleep about twenty-minutes into a “Rockford Files.”

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

But up here on my mountain the air is cooling, the leaves are just starting to change, and therefore all is right with the world. 

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CLASSIC PICK FOR SATURDAY, SEPT 17

TCM:

8:00 PM  Mildred Pierce (1945) — A woman turns herself into a business tycoon to win her selfish daughter a place in society. Dir: Michael Curtiz Cast:  Joan Crawford , Jack Carson , Zachary Scott. BW-111 mins, TV-PG, CC.

When done right there is nothing like a melodrama and the film that finally won The Mighty Joan Crawford a well-deserved Academy Award is about as good as it gets.

I haven’t seen the HBO remake with Kate Winslet. I’m assuming there’s an “artistic” nude scene.

–Please send tips/suggestions/requests to jnolte@breitbart.com

–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.

Tarantino has an excellent eye for under-appreciated actors and a real gift for resurrecting those put out to pasture before their time. Now that he has some real age on his face, Costner would be perfect as a sadistic Western villain.  An actor known for being a good guy personifying evil worked out pretty well ofr Henry Fonda in “oOce Upon a Time In the West.” I suspect the same will be true here.

–UNIVERSAL WISELY PULLS PLUG ON STEPHEN KING’S “DARK TOWER” –

King wrote some of his “Dark Tower” series when he could still tell a damn good story and some long after his storytelling tank had ran out of gas. Regardless, even in the good ole’ days when I gobbled up all things King, the story of Roland the Gunfighter was sheer torture to get through and completely forgettable afterwards.

To adapt a film from a book is one thing. At times, it even makes sense to adapt a film from a lousy book if the concept is good and the story itself is somewhat simple (“Bridges of Madison County,” “DaVinci Code,” “Along Came a Spider”). But these Dark Tower books are a real slough; confusing and self-indulgent.

King’s strength has never been in creating layers of mythology. He’s no Lewis or Tolkien and becomes un-readable when he thinks he is. This was a good move on Universal’s part, but you can bet they spent millions just to get to a point where the obvious became apparent.

Only in Hollywood.

–AMEN, BROTHER, AMEN: KYLE SMITH HAMMERS HARRY POTTER–

Sitting unmoved and uninterested through all eight Harry Potter movies over the last decade or so, I often had the thought: Please don’t let this all be leading up to Harry P. and Lord V. standing a few yards apart zapping each other with their wands until one of them buckles.

Kyle and I are pals and share a similar political philosophy, but when it comes to films, oddly enough, we disagree much more than we agree. There are leftist critics I have more in common with in this regard. But when it comes to the uncommonly dull, episodic, and downright unbearable Harry Potter film franchise, we’re darn near soul mates. Here’s Smith’s excellent takedown, which I couldn’t agree with more or written half as well.

Smith blogs here.

–TOTO’S FEELING GUILTY–

When it comes to “Stealth” he should feel guilty. When it comes to the brilliant “Malibu’s Most Wanted,” however, he should feel guilty for feeling guilty.

–CHARLIE SHEEN PLOTS TELEVISION COMEBACK?–

Though it was an awful movie, the concept for “Anger Management” is a pretty good one and you can definitely see it as a workable sitcom.

As far as Charlie Sheen goes, unless he does a John Belushi, he’s here to stay no matter how outrageous his behavior. I’ve always felt he was an underrated actor, most especially a comedic actor, and someone is always going to take another chance on him. Furthermore, his return to television is likely to the biggest thing since Little Ricky was born.

If nothing else, we’ll always have Sheen’s canon of epic B-films, from 1989’s “Major League” to 1997’s “Money Talks,” to remember him by.

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TODAY’S QUICK HITS

–WHO DIDN’T SEE THIS COMING?

–RATINGS FOR “BREAKING BAD” SEASON FOUR PREMIERE ARE SERIES BEST

–AWESOME NEW “CAPTAIN AMERICA” POSTERS

–TRYING TO CARE. FAILING.

–BROODING SUPERMAN EQUALS SUCKY SUPERMAN. SCREW YOU, DC.

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CLASSIC PICK FOR WEDNEDAY JULY 20, 2011

TCM:

6:45 AM EST: Tomorrow Is Forever (1946) — A scarred veteran presumed dead returns home to find his wife remarried. Dir: Irving Pichel Cast: Claudette Colbert, Orson Welles, George Brent. BW-104 mins, TV-PG,

A beautiful and beautifully filmed and acted film that’s essentially the story of a mother (Claudette Colbert) who learns that winning the war means that mothers everywhere must risk making the ultimate sacrifice.

They simply don’t make films like this anymore and for whatever reason this particular one doesn’t get the attention it deserves. On its face the concept may seem a little absurd, but the emotional arc of the story and characters is handled so delicately and with such respect, that you soon forget.

Honestly, this one is not to be missed. A truly under-rated classic I promote at every opportunity.

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Please send tips/suggestions/requests to jnolte@breitbart.com

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.

[...]

So remember folks, the First Amendment provides for freedom of speech, just so long as you don’t offend any gay people.  Just ask Tracy Morgan…

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:

Yet whether the movie, which is set in 2016-17, has any resonance in 2011 depends on your answers to questions like these: Can you picture the government hiring a “Coordinator of Economic Planning”? Can you picture such a coordinator giving directives meant to correct the fact that “rich people are getting richer, poor people are getting poorer”? Do you see any instances of crony capitalism involving close ties between certain CEOs and certain political figures? Do you see any powerful unions out there? Do you worry that fuel prices could rise to unaffordable levels, and if so, do you think the government might have anything to do with that?

Liberals will scoff, “Oh, that could never happen” of things that already are happening. Then they’ll scoff at the box-office receipts — as if the puny circulation of The New Republic or National Review meant either of these magazines should be dismissed.

Most movies, even movies that earn many times what “Atlas Shrugged” will make at the box office, don’t matter. “Hop” and “Sucker Punch” are not going to create any activists, stir any conversation, make people want to read more about the subject. Despite playing on only a couple of hundred screens (and only covering the first third of the novel), “Atlas Shrugged” is going to have an impact. It’ll make kids want to read the book, it’ll get argued about on widely read blogs, it’ll make some viewers question their assumptions: Why is it, exactly, that we are supposed to hate successful businessmen?

And who is this mysterious John Galt, the shadowy figure not fully explained in the movie, who seems to be leading a pinstriped rebellion of the country’s business leaders?

Republican Congressman Paul Ryan, whose plan to restore sanity to federal budgeting made headlines this week, has reportedly ordered his staffers to read “Atlas Shrugged.” That leaves him open to being associated with the more distasteful elements of Randism.

Bring it on.

Read the full piece here.

You can find “Atlas Shrugged” theatres here and request your local theatre make it available here.

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.”

Katharine Hepburn, the Camilla Parker-Bowles of La La Land, carried on with a married (and Catholic) Spencer Tracy for decades. Errol Flynn probably had sex with two underage girls, yet avoided conviction when his lawyers smeared the victims by bringing up their past sexual histories in a statutory rape trial that gave us the phrase “in like Flynn.” Flynn was also an anti-Semite who wrote to a friend, “A slimy Jew is trying to cheat me . . . I do wish we could bring Hitler over here to teach these Isaacs a thing or two. The bastards have absolutely no business probity or honor whatsoever.”

You can go back even further to the 1920s and just start with Fatty Arbuckle. There’s also the sleazy murder of film director William Desmond Taylor and all the sexual scandal surrounding the death of Olive Thomas — who some believe might have been poisoned by her philandering, syphilis-suffering husband Jack Pickford — brother of screen legend Mary. Hollywood has always been a small community packed with too many young, good-looking narcissists loaded with ambition and willing to do most anything to get ahead. That doesn’t mean there are and haven’t been a number of truly decent and moral people working at high levels of the entertainment industry, but Smith is dead on with his overall point.

The American people are pretty forgiving of this kind of stuff, though. We know none of us is perfect and normally don’t concern ourselves too much with what happens between consenting adults. 

So what changed? Because something sure did.

How did an industry that was once almost universally beloved despite being as badly behaved then as it is today, suddenly become a polarizing punchline with an approval rating lower lower than that of President Bush when he left office?

I have my own ideas but would like to hear yours first.

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.

Read Taranto’s full piece here.

Kyle Smith weighs in:

Moreover, the sort of ingratiating, I’m-just-getting-a-show-of-hands-here do-gooder niceness that blends smugly into savage violence strikes a very creepy note. How many of us have dealt with smiling clean-cut activists and sensed a streak of contempt or even cold hatred underneath?

Curtis is a funny guy and it would be easy to forgive him if this film were funny. Is it? It’s the same joke repeated about four times. Its message is coarse and obvious, not wickedly satirical. The movie is really beneath him. And it does set back Curtis’s cause substantially. It’s just one more clue that fabulously wealthy Hollywood types are living in a completely different world from the rest of us, for whom the hazy specter of supposedly catastrophic climate change is much less worrisome than immediate economic hardship, either real or potential.

Read the full article here.