Because of Hollywood’s default liberal culture, it’s almost impossible to watch comedy that has any social or political relevance that doesn’t go squarely after conservative targets with gleeful and mean-spirited offensiveness. For the most part, conservative comedy lovers would just do well to fasten their seat belts and get ready for the bumpy ride, because attack comedy on right-wing targets is just part of the territory.

But does it have to be that way? Imagine a sketch comedy show that pokes fun at clueless liberal mayors, politically correct feminists, and entitled hipster butt-inskys. Sound impossible in today’s climate? Surprisingly, the most politically incorrect comedy show out there right now might just be IFC’s “Portlandia.” All six episodes of the first season of the show are currently available for streaming on Netflix, and the second season starts January 21^st on IFC.

“Portlandia” is the brainchild of “Saturday Night Live”’s Fred Armisen and musician Carrie Brownstein. It’s a half-hour show set entirely in the left-wing magnet city of Portland, Oregon. In the very first episode, they say that Portland is a city where the 1990s never ended (it’s “a place where young people go to retire”) and sure enough, Armisen and Brownstein have created a cast of Portland-based characters with the requisite tribal piercings, chin beards, and indigenous pantsuits. (more…)

Modern Hollywood villains stink. You know I’m right. They’re dull and played out. They’re always the same guy. They’ve all become cartoon villains… psychopathic Snidely Whiplashes. I’m sick of it. And you know what’s to blame? Liberalism.

Here’s the problem: the most important aspect of any film is the motivation of the characters. Motivation is what we use to decide whether a character is right or wrong, good or bad, justified or not. It is what makes us sympathize with some and repulses us from others. It is what defines the conflicts of the film. Change the motivation and you change the whole meaning of the story. No other story element is as important as motivation.

“What’s my motivation?”

Consider a story about a businessman who kills someone. Suppose he kills for money. Clearly, he’s a villain. But what if he kills because he likes it? What if he kills in self-defense or by accident? Changing his motivation fundamentally changes the nature of the character and thereby the central conflict of the story. All his other traits can be changed with little effect on the story. For example, it doesn’t matter that he’s a businessman or rich or even male. These may seem important at first glance, but they are just details and like Hitchcock’s MacGuffin can be changed without affecting the story. But motivation is different. Motivation is the key factor. It defines the characters and generates the story. Change it and you change everything.

That’s why it’s vital to give a villain a proper motivation. The villain sets everything into motion. If the villain’s motives are pedestrian or nonexistent, then the story is handicapped from the get-go. (more…)

Click here for Part 1 and here for Part 2.

In many popular narratives of the period, it was the Baby Boomers (born 1943-1960) who “ruined” the movies. Here’s the pretentious film snob summary of the death of Hollywood’s alleged second Golden Age, as popularized by Peter Biskind. The seventies were filled with bold, dark art and transgressive intellectualism. Then the greedy Baby Boomers – like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas – made “Jaws,” “Star Wars,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and “E.T.” All of a sudden Hollywood did not want to make serious, grown-up pictures. Now it was the age of blockbusters so simple that 3-year-olds can summarize them.

It was the 1980s when Boomer Blockbuster filmmaking would arrive in the event pictures of Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson. We see this tendency further in the films of arch-Boomers Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. For a definition of Boomer cinema just look at the output of their company Imagine Entertainment. These aren’t the New Wave-influenced pictures of Roger L. Simon’s generation.

It was the Boomers who also gave us our most strident and simpleminded cinematic leftists: Spike Lee, Oliver Stone, and Michael Moore. Think about these three careers. Over the past 30 years have any of them shifted an inch in their political thinking? Of course not and neither have most Boomers who are still arguing over sex, race, and the Vietnam War as though it were still 1975. (more…)

Recently I was lucky enough to attend a political fundraiser featuring a new breed of documentary that looks, sounds, and smells like a real Hollywood movie.  I Want Your Money fairly summarizes the ideological battle currently playing out all over this country between big government liberalism and small government conservatism.  The movie is ultimately a teaching tool to encourage a return to the conservative constitutional principles that the Tea Party and true conservatives espouse.  It’s political evangelization, if you will.

—–

Bias alert: I am a member of the Eeeeevil Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, and have been since I was old enough to understand politics.  I realize I like the movie because it gives voice to facts and principles that animate conservatives — facts and principles that are ignored or omitted by the Make-Believe Media and Hollywood.  Many hardcore leftists will hate the film because they will hate the advocacy for limited government.  Predictably, they will call the director every name in the left-wing play book and pooh-pooh the film’s style; however, I challenge them to actually address the film’s facts without using name calling. 

I Want Your Money does the near-impossible: it makes politics entertaining.  The documentary combines historical clips and quotes with interviews of today’s conservatives, and lampoons prominent politicians from Nixon to Sarah Palin, Bill Clinton and, of course, President Obama using CGI cartooning.  My favorite bit was counting how many times Hillary got to slap a womanizing Bill Clinton.  There were many moments where the crowd of about 50 die-hard conservative Tea Party-types laughed out loud.  The director Ray Griggs has proved the adage, “you gotta know your audience.” (more…)

The last thing I was worrying about was that The Other Guys would be too preachy.  Sure, Will Ferrell has a long history of deep, thought-provoking critiques of society and culture, so that should have been my big concern.  Also subtitles.  And having the last shot of the film be the word “Fin” superimposed over the freeze-framed image of a crying child alone on a beach symbolizing death or something. 

——

You know, sometimes you just want to go, have a drink or two, or three, or ten, and then sit in a movie theater and tune out the seemingly endless parades of nimrods, pinkos and sanctimonious deadbeats who make up so much of our society today.  You just want some guys to come on the screen and to do and say some funny stuff.  Maybe you want an explosion or two, perhaps a gratuitous shower scene – strike that, as shower scenes are never gratuitous.  Unless it’s a dude.  Or Kathy Bates.

The point is the last thing you want after a Dos XX prep and handing over $11.75 each for yourself and your life partner/designated driver is for a bunch of Hollywood half-wits to stop the fun to give you a PowerPoint briefing on their insights into modern politics – without even the PowerPoint.  And it appears that this is exactly what The Other Guys intends to do. (more…)

“Relax, it’s just a movie.”

You often hear that when you step up to point out the lefty assumptions, biases and what John Nolte calls the “liberal tells” within popular entertainment.  You are allowed to praise the technical achievements of an Avatar – such as they are, since many of us think it looks freakin’ stupid – but heaven forbid that you dare question the hackneyed liberal noble savage clichés that James Cameron offers up instead of a story.  The message is clear – our proper role as pop culture consumers is to sit back, open our eyes, slacken our jaws and swallow Hollywood’s agenda.

But what is remarkable – and crucial – is that we are no longer passively accepting whatever Hollywood dumps on us.  The backlash to Avatar’s flabby thinking and tired ideology is the new paradigm, with even reviewers outside the conservative movement slagging it for its staggering intellectual hypocrisy, cardboard military/corporate villains and sophomoric Mother Earth enviro-babblings.

(more…)

The term “Jump the Shark” has been with us for a while. The clever metaphor is used for the moment when something of cultural significance begins to lose its luster, and descends into lameness.  It is a reference to the T.V. show “Happy Days,” specifically the episode when Fonzie water skied over shark infested waters.   This is the precise moment where the show began to decline.

Republicans and conservatives are dancing with glee every time a new poll comes out showing Obama’s poll numbers going down faster than a Hilton (Perez or Paris) after a nice dinner and a couple of cocktails. The support for things like Universal Health Care, closing Gitmo, and Cap and Trade are sinking even faster. Yet, that’s not the whole story.  Something else is going on here.  Something that begs the question: Has Liberalism “Jumped the Shark”?

Ehhhh…

Over the last sixty days or so, we’ve seen some amazing things. We saw a “wise Latina,” a self-described “affirmative action baby” claim that her statements were taken out of context or merely “meant to inspire,” and that race has nothing to do with her job performance. The White House has re-branded the $787 billion “stimulus package” a “stabilization package.” Our Vice-President, devious genius that he is, stated that we need to, “crazy as it sounds,” spend like lunatics to avoid bankruptcy. A gay blogger and gay civil rights champion called a black guy “the worst thing [he] could think of…a faggot.” We saw our government allow Iranian protesters, who peacefully challenged a rigged election, get shot in the street. Concurrently, we demanded that a tin-pot dictator be reinstated after his government got wise to his schemes and legally booted him. (more…)

–

This owned me at the six-second mark with the bumper sticker that reads, “Support Our Troops … And Their Opponents.”

What’s going on at ABC? First the miniseries “O” “V,” and now this…? Is it… (more…)

Whenever I have suggested that left-wingers aren’t normal human beings, and have wondered if perhaps they’re some weird interplanetary life form like the pods in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” the liberals accuse me of indulging in ad hominem attacks, and I suppose I am.  But I am honestly bewildered.  It just doesn’t seem plausible that Americans could find good things to say about tyrants like Castro, Chavez and Ahmadinejad, while at the same time reviling the likes of Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh and General Petraeus.

Left-wingers side with the so-called Palestinians and insist that their country was stolen from them by the Jews, but when you ask them just exactly where the country was located, what their flag looked like and who their president was, they huff and they puff and they denounce you as a tool of the Jewish lobby. (more…)