Hollywood’s contempt for “middle America” is no secret. Audiences are repeatedly subjected to its indoctrination, hiding in plain sight, via entire plot themes, one-liners in network comedies, and yes, even seemingly benign horror films. The lesson? Folks, Hollywood’s leftist propaganda is indeed peddled everywhere. Case in point:  the recent box-office bomb “Straw Dogs,” now available on DVD and Blu-ray.

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While billed merely as a home-invasion thriller, upon reading the plot description, my liberal propaganda radar was already on high alert. The story? Professional screenwriter David (“X-Men”’s James Marsden) and his wife Amy (“Blue Crush”’s Kate Bosworth) leave the confines of Los Angeles and head down south to Amy’s boondocks hometown so they can restore her deceased father’s house and David can focus on his writing.

Hmm, we already know where this is headed. Two enlightened, urban yuppies moving to a tiny Southern town? Forget the usual ‘fish out of water’ comedy hijinks; this is, of course, a liberal’s wet dream:  an opportunity to elevate blue-state dwellers while ridiculing the red. Moreover, you know you’re in for a dose of authenticity when Rod Lurie — its writer/producer/director — hails from the middle-America enclave known as… Greenwich, CT.

David and Amy slowly but surely clash with her high school ex-boyfriend, Charlie (“True Blood”’s Alexander Skarsgard) and his crew of “hillbilly miscreants,” culminating in a (yawn-inducing) home-invasion showdown. (more…)

“The truth does not require your belief in it to be so.” -Spike Spencer

So I received quite a bit of comment action from my last post, “The Wussification of America.” Most of it was positive and expressed similar views. Several on the conservative side actually missed a few of the points, but overall they got it. Of course, as expected, I received a few smuggalicious lefty responses decrying my opinion as barbaric and also as expected, questioning my manhood. As though bending over to the whims of actual barbarians is a manly way to live your life. Count me out, Sally.

Ya see, I live in a world where men take a stand. I come from a state that believes in the values of this great nation. I come from a state that believes that freedom is worth fighting for. I come from Texas, the sidearm of the nation. Undoubtedly the all knowing eyes of the left are rolling back in their head in their, “oh so better than thou” way at the knowledge that I, a redneck hick from a backwater Klan-infested swamphole could dare utter pride at such a thing. Well, to borrow a phrase from our brilliant enlightened leader, “Yes, yes I can.” (more…)

He is a man with a gun. He is a killer, a slayer. Patient and gentle as he is, he is a slayer. Self-effacing, self-forgetting, still he is a killer. . . All the other stuff, the love, the democracy, the floundering into lust, is a sort of by-play. The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted. — D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature (1923)

Every once in awhile an action film comes along that revives. That proves that — no matter how strong the political correctness of an age, no matter how pale and pathetic its notions of masculinity, no matter how much Ritalin is force-fed to little boys, no matter how many toy guns, xylophone mallets, and Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots get banned from stores and playgrounds — there are certain aspects of the male soul that are inviolate, and certain primal yearnings that are evergreen. Taken (2008) is one of those films, and its release last week on DVD and Blu-ray should be heralded by lovers of all things red-blooded, hairy-chested, and morally sound.

When this movie appeared in the doldrums of Hollywood’s off-season, it was expected to die a quick death in a marketplace filled with audiences either too sophisticated or too sophomoric to respond. Modern theatergoers, the theory goes, increasingly want their “heroes” to be either brooding Abercrombie & Fitch nymphets like Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon, feckless stumblebums like Ben Stiller and Paul Blart: Mall Cop’s Kevin James, quirky class cut-ups like Robert Downey Jr. and Johnny Depp, or silly video-game tough guys like Jason Statham, Vin Diesel, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. When an actor does put some honest testosterone in his performance — Daniel Craig in Munich (2005), Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino (2008) — it’s inevitably to make a much larger point about violence breeding only more violence, all of it equally reprehensible, a product of way too many pesky males wreaking havoc in primitive bursts of knuckle-dragging temper. (more…)