A thousand years ago in Cairo, surrounded by ancient pyramids and the ghosts of lost civilizations, the great Arab scientist Alhazen conducted a peculiar optical experiment. Building on observations made by Aristotle thirteen centuries earlier, he first constructed a room, one completely shuttered from the light of the outside world, as dark as death. He then cleverly lit the space around the room with an array of bright lamps. Finally, he punched a single pinhole into one wall, just large enough to let a small beam of lamplight bleed in.

Alhazen confirmed that if you entered such a room, and sat in the darkness until your eyes had ample time to adjust, and then followed the beam of light emanating from the pinhole to where it splashed onto the wall opposite, you would be privy to an amazing, almost magical sight. As you watched, shapes and colors would begin to coalesce. Familiar forms would appear. And eventually, when your eyes had acclimated enough, you would be staring at nothing less than an exact upside-down projection of the outside world, perfect in every detail. Alhazen marveled at this, and gave the experiment an evocative name: Al-Bayt al-Muthlim, translated by later scribes into Latin as camera obscura — The Veiled Chamber.

In a sense, it was the very first movie theater.

A millennium after Alhazen, the world now brims with Veiled Chambers — tricked-out IMAX theaters with stadium seating, careworn revival houses, happily unkempt family rooms. Each plunges us into a darkling twilight that induces a spectacular hypnosis. Think about it: we’ve seen the likes of Kevin Costner, Meryl Streep, or Denzel Washington in countless films, we’ve watched them give interviews on television, we’ve read about them in tabloid exposés. We know, consciously, that they are actors. Fakes. Pretenders. And yet no sooner does the darkness engulf us than our logical, skeptical, twenty-first century minds shut down, allowing them to become a Civil War soldier, or a queen, or a mafia kingpin, or a globetrotting archaeologist. Over the course of two hours they pretend to fall in love, to risk their lives, to make and lose fortunes, to die. And somehow, through it all, we believe. We laugh, gasp, scream. We weep, with tears of genuine grief streaming down our faces. Only when cast back into the daylight does this madness pass, leaving only a bittersweet nostalgia as we realize that all the monsters and magic and galaxies far, far away were just so much hocus-pocus.

That, Dear Reader, is the essence of cinema (from the Greek kinēma — “motion”), and no other art form is as capable of such focused, vibrant, transformative power.

The power of cinema, I humbly propose, is at its peak when harnessed to the task of refreshing and strengthening our civilizational confidence — our deepest loves, our noblest aspirations, our cherished traditions, the beauty and poetry and truth of our language and songs, our regenerative myths, our moral certitudes, our martial might. Above all, the best films revel in shared humanity — that realm of pure feeling that soars far above politics, religion, race, age and gender, allowing us to commune with “the better angels of our nature.” By necessity, civilizations establish notions of perfection, of heroism, of worthy sacrifice, of right. To thrive, they must continually enforce and perpetuate these tenets through the medium of culture. The boundaries imposed by a strong culture act not as the walls of a prison but as the battlements of a fortress. Decorum, manners, styles of dress, the developed forms and structure of art — these serve the same purpose in a healthy civilization as the deadbolt on the front door of a house or the fence surrounding a backyard. They provide comfort, surety, self-possession. As such, they are an absolute good.

Alas, civilizations are also home to damaged and deranged people, twisted with bitterness and hate, who seek to become purveyors of what can only be described as cultural leprosy. Like any virus, they thrive wherever a civilization has succumbed to weakness, confusion, lawlessness, decadence, doubt. Incapable of real artistry, they resort to cruel acts of desecration and graffiti. A crucifix dipped in urine. A Madonna covered in feces. Songs that delight in scatology, rape, murder, fear, perversion. Movies that provide no sense of composition, sequence, or movement. Paintings that defy explanation or even description. Poetry bereft of form, meter, rhyme, or import. Criticism that warps meaning, denies standards, and condemns beauty. Left free to attack and spread, all of these things carve grievous wounds into a culture, breaking down the battlements of a civilization brick by brick. They are agents of anti-humanity, and their weapons are cancer, disease, and dissolution. While they can never be wholly eradicated, a healthy culture will fight these malevolent usurpations with the assured ruthlessness of a gardener ridding a prized flowerbed of poisonous weeds.

Ask yourself: what is the current state of our civilization? Of our culture? Are we awash in civilizational confidence? Or is our fortress crumbling and graffiti-littered and strangled by an ocean of weeds? If we set ourselves to pulling the weeds, what forgotten gardens might reveal themselves? What lost temples or treasures might be found? What senses of pride, glory, and strength might be enjoyed again? Most important of all, given the mission statement of this website: what part might cinema — that most powerful and hypnotic of art forms — play in rebuilding our cultural fortress and reestablishing a healthy and humane civilization?

In the words of Andrew Breitbart’s inaugural editorial here on this site: “Something has gone drastically wrong. . . Hollywood should return to its patriotic roots. . . [Until conservatives] recognize that (pop) culture is the big prize and that politics is secondary, there will be no victory in this important battle. . . We need to discover that spirit again.” The purpose of this blog series, For Conservative Movie Lovers, is to seek out those roots and that spirit, to make them relevant once again to modern conservative filmgoers, and to express a great many things regarding film and conservatism that I care about deeply — lonely, forgotten things that get precious little hearing in today’s high-octane, news-driven cultural arena, but which in the end constitute our only real protection against the darkness of cultural debasement and decay.

By way of achieving these goals, I have carefully selected a different film to represent each year from 1915-2009. Every Saturday here at Big Hollywood, my time and your interest permitting, I will introduce these pictures to you via rich, multimedia-enhanced essays. You will learn about the men and women who made each movie, and discover a cavalcade of actors destined to bring you countless hours of delight. You will learn something about cinematography, film music, costume design, dance choreography, and much else, becoming conversant with the names and careers of revered geniuses in each discipline. You will gain some knowledge of French cinema, German cinema, Hong Kong cinema. You will learn about what makes good criticism good, bad criticism bad, and why films do indeed need critics. Again and again you will be brought face-to-face with the old studio system, the facts and myths surrounding the “Golden Age” of American cinema, the infamous blacklists (both past and present), and many other things of high interest. All of this will be addressed from a conservative perspective and made relevant to the cultural battles of today.

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to follow along with each group of posts, then seek out the movie in question and watch it. And by that, I mean really watch it, with all of the things you have learned informing and enriching the viewing. If you have any pertinent observations or are otherwise so inclined, you can light up the COMMENTS section of each post with additional discussion and argument. I’ll also provide a vast assortment of links for further reading and viewing, so that if a particular director, genre, actor, or thematic idea seizes your imagination, you can travel down those side-paths as far as you like. Think of For Conservative Movie Lovers as a graduate course in film (taught by a conservative, wonder of wonders!) right here at Big Hollywood U.

My hope is that, by the end of this long march through cinematic history, I will have armed despairing conservative readers with the certitude that they are far from defeated in this sphere, that they are in fact the heirs to an immense store of cultural wealth. If a Hollywood conservative uses something they find here in their next film or performance, if someone at home passes a telling anecdote or story onto their kids, if people leave this series feeling inoculated against those who yearn to destroy them and everything they hold dear, and if they achieve a sublime elation regarding their history, heritage, and especially their cinema, I will consider the effort as time well spent.

For in the end cinema is, by its very nature, an intensely conservative medium. Look at the movies from any decade of the last century, and you’ll get an education in how people looked, spoke, dressed and thought. No amount of nanny-state whining can take the cigarettes out of their mouths, steal the oh-so-offensive words from their lips, or dissolve their humanity in the acid-bath of nihilism. They and the times in which they lived are conserved, free from fleeting and ever-changing notions of political correctness and censorship. This is good to see, because it preserves truth, in a form that glitters and glows like only the very best art can, as beacons of light and hope.

I’ll leave you for now with a quotation from the late critic and filmmaker Lindsay Anderson, whose magnificent treatise About John Ford bears heavily on the first film to go under our microscope, and indeed remains the most penetrating and moving defense of conservatism in cinema I’ve ever read. Attempting to explain the natural appeal of old movies, he wrote many decades ago that:

With all the brilliance, the intelligence and sophistication that goes into filmmaking today, with all the multiplicity of elaborate and costly techniques, there is still this lack of feeling, of emotional exposure and commitment. Which is one reason why, again and again, we return in our dissatisfaction (not just with nostalgia) to the great films of the past in which we can still feel “the freshness of the early world,” and from which we can still receive refreshment.

The freshness of the early world (a phrase originally penned by the poet Matthew Arnold, while describing the appeal of Wordsworth upon the latter’s death in 1850). I like it. Let us begin, then, to refresh ourselves at the well of great cinema by meditating on some great films, with an especial focus on their makers and their making.

Coming tomorrow, For Conservative Movie Lovers begins its journey into The Veiled Chamber with our first film.

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.)

Yes, in just one year, Hollywood released three films that in one way or another portrayed sex with children as potentially healthy or their molester as sympathetic. And these aren’t fringe, indie films either. All three involve name stars and Oscar winners.

Unfortunately, this is not a conspiracy. Hollywood deviants never gathered together to plan for a slate of films aimed at a drip-drip campaign designed to dull our moral outrage towards the most heinous crime imaginable. It’s worse than that. We’re up against a culture; the same culture that can’t quite grasp why a child rapist should have to serve prison time for a crime he’s confessed to.

And this is how cinematic propaganda works. Whether the filmmaker’s motivations are good or evil, the idea is to get decent and thoughtful people to start second guessing themselves as they’re enveloped in the dark and held captive by the powerful sound and fury of the moving picture. First we’re led to identify and sympathize with a particular character, then that character does something designed to challenge our belief structure. This can range from, “If John Wayne opposes racism, maybe I should,” to, “Well, if a loving mother is okay with it, maybe I need to get a little more nuanced and tolerant about this whole child-rape thing.”

On its face, that may sound laughable, and maybe it is, but that doesn’t mean our eyes are lying to us. Last year merely topped off a campaign targeted at our children that began some time ago.

In 2006’s “Notes on a Scandal,” Academy Award winner Cate Blanchett plays a school teacher engaged in a steamy sexual affair with one of her students. Like “The Reader,” the sex scenes between a mature woman and her student strive for the erotic and never once does the story stop to examine how such a destructive affair might psychologically affect a teen-aged boy. That same year, in “Little Children,” Jackie Earle Haley was Oscar-nominated for his support work as a molester just released from prison who’s the victim of that favorite Hollywood whipping boy, suburban hypocrisy. Just two years earlier, Kevin Bacon’s heroic molester in “The Woodsman” not only saves the day and wins the pretty girl, but in his valiant struggle to “reform” he’s presented as a kind of “civil rights” metaphor as policemen and “intolerant” co-workers torment him.

The award for Most Unsettling, however, must go to 2004’s “Birth,” where Academy Award winner Nicole Kidman stars as a widow convinced her dead husband has returned in the form of a 10 year-old boy. If watching a near-forty year-old woman exchange longing looks with a little kid isn’t creepy enough, wait till they end up naked in a bathtub together.

Whether it’s true or not that seventy-five years ago Clark Gable nearly bankrupted the t-shirt industry by not wearing one in “It Happened One Night,” what is true is that billions of dollars are spent annually by advertisers convinced sound and images can alter behavior. You’d have to be a fool to make an argument against the persuasive powers of moving images, but those fools do exist. Most of them are liars.

The Hollywood Left is many things but they’re not fools and they fully understand the power of the medium under their control. Certainly, damning everyone who works in the entertainment world would be unfair, but this is also a culture where only a handful of “names” were willing to speak out against the pro-Polanski movement – including many Leftists who have never been shy about speaking out in the past.

The film industry has a history to be proud of when it comes to opposing racism, homophobia and anti-Semitism. Unfortunately, the most vocal from this current crop seem all too ready to tarnish that legacy as they target our children for profit and worse.

Is it too much to ask of the Hollywood Left that they show as much intolerance towards the sexualization of young children as they do towards conservatives and Christians?

That question has already been answered.

Streep is one of those rare thespians who truly morphs into the character she is playing. You forget for a while that you are watching Meryl Streep (as opposed to never forgetting it’s Tom Cruise in “[insert film title here]“), and for that she deserves heaps of praise.  But her off-screen silliness is ripe for mocking.

Take, for example, her declaration during a promotional interview for “Julie & Julia” that she was “disappointed” in Child because 20 years ago, Child refused to take part in Streep’s efforts to get organic produce into supermarkets:

“She was very resistant and she brushed us off quite brusquely,” the Oscar-winning actress recalled. “She sent word back that she didn’t have anything to say on the subject, and she really resisted making a connection between the high fat diet of a heavily laden cordon bleu-influenced cuisine and cholesterol levels. I remember being so disappointed that she was in the thrall of something called the American Council for Science and Health, which was a front organisation for agro-businesses and petrochemical businesses.

“They seduced Julia into giving them money, so she was on the other side for a while. Eventually I think she came around, though.”

How dare she!

I guess Streep didn’t read this bit in the New York Times obituary for Child:

Mrs. Child was always a star, never a spokeswoman. She prided herself on not granting endorsements because she was devoted to public television, and she was not afraid to mock corporate contributors to her advertising-free programs. She once demonstrated how to break off a part on a Cuisinart food processor to make it less cumbersome to use even as the manufacturer’s representatives sat in the audience. And she was known to sue to prevent a restaurant from advertising that it was one of her favorites.

And according to this, Child only accepted $50 per show for her series “The French Chef,” donating the rest of her salary to WGBH, the PBS station from where the series originated.

Hmmm…

You know, Streep’s starring role in the alar scare of 1989 caused American apple growers to lose plenty of money, despite evidence that there was nothing to worry about. But never mind; it was all for a good cause – she, like many actors, wanted to ward off the perception that she was ”just an actor” and so decided to throw herself into the environmental movement. Rachel Carson would be proud.

Streep’s disappointment in Child’s unwillingness to go along with her schemes didn’t stop her from cashing in on the cooking doyenne’s name, however. While I don’t know how much she earned for her turn in “Julie & Julia,” I do know that over the past year, she earned $24 million, making her the third highest paid actress in American film.

Also, the studio behind “Julie & Julia” is Sony Pictures. Sony Pictures is a – gasp – corporation. Does that mean Meryl Strep is in the thrall of big business too? Is she some kind of corporate tool or shill? After all, she didn’t earn her cool $24 million starring in indie projects. Some food for thought, no? Bon appetit!

Like I said before, Streep is an amazing actress. Let’s just leave it at that, shall we?

The first thing that grabbed me was the character work. The hero, Julia Powell (her real life blog is here) is a foodie blogger played by Amy Adams. I’m used to watching Amy Adams over my kid’s shoulder in “Enchanted,” which plays in our house on continual loop. I didn’t know Amy knew how to turn down the volume and play a “plain-Jane, yet interesting”… but she’s awesome. This isn’t her usual glowing, perky role where she turns it on like a fire-hose. And she doesn’t turn invisible like when she played a piece of cardboard in “Doubt.”

Back to the characters because “J and J” is a feast of interesting, appealing people I haven’t seen chew up the screen like this in a long time. The real Julia Child is already a great character, but Streep not only personifies this larger than life personality, she pulls off hilarious physical acting. She’s a comedic presence that had our audience laughing with every scene. And she looks huge, just like the real Julia Child. As a 6′8″ fellow, I appreciated the height jokes like when Streep reclines in a bed only to have her feet extend well beyond the mattress.

But Streep shows us sides of Child we probably hadn’t seen before: her sexuality, her competitive spirit, and the mourning for children. How painfully ironic that her name was Child.

I don’t know how Streep does it, but she makes her jowls look bigger. Her hands look big and mannish. Her shoulders rounded so that she looks like she’s playing a man in drag, which is kind of how Child came off to me. A refrigerator in a dress.

Stanley Tucci was in another favorite food movie of mine, “Big Night.” My friends told me to see Big Night then go out for Italian food. My Beloved and I saw “J and J” on date night then went out for dinner. It was one of our better date nights… much better than the time I made her see “Mimic.” But guys, don’t be fooled into thinking this is a chick flick. It’s a people flick. I’d take anybody to see this and if they didn’t like it, they’d need therapy. Yeah, this is the first sure fire Oscar contender I saw this year. At least this is the one I’ll be rooting for when they award it to some movie about a transvestite who marries a 12-year-old boy then murders him because Republican Christians fired him from his job.

Where was I? Oh yeah, Stanley Tucci. He plays the nicest guy in the world. He’s a great, understated character to provide contrast to Streep’s living cartoon. Hats off to Chris Messina as Julie Powell’s long-suffering husband and Jane Lynch who plays Julia Child’s sister.

This is for Nora Ephron: stop wasting your time at Huffington Post and make more movies. As a married man, you’re one of the few who seem to get marriage… even men in marriage. You seem to like men, which is rare among women writers. As someone who writes graphic novels, you’re one of the few who gets what it’s like to long for a significant project to find its way to publisher. You get the narcissism of working on one’s craft while someone else is in the house being neglected for some great piece of art. As someone who knows his way around the kitchen, you get the love of cooking, experimenting with recipes, even shopping for ingredients. Finally, you get Julia Child… including details like her love of sending post cards.

My wife went through a phase when she became an airplane pilot in the ’90s where she studied great women of the last century. She stumbled on the biography of Child Appetite for Life by Noel Riley Fitch. So inspired was my Beloved that she mailed Julia a birthday greeting for her 88th birthday. A few weeks later, she received a hand written post card from Julia herself! We were both so excited and my Beloved went into a cooking phase where I was the benefactor.

Man, this makes me wanna cook something. Maybe I’ll try making beef bourguignon.

“Julie & Julia” follows the amusingly parallel lives of chef Julia Child (played by Meryl Streep), who achieved worldwide fame while revolutionizing the art of cooking starting in the ‘50s, and Julie Powell (Amy Adams), a young New York City woman searching for identity in 2002. Powell longs to be a successful writer like her friends and yet is trapped processing insurance claims from victims of the World Trade Center attacks.

Yet two things keep Powell happy: her loving and supportive husband, played by Chris Messina, and her passion for cooking. When she hears her friends talking about launching blogs, her husband convinces her to launch her own blog about cooking. Julie rises to the challenge by deciding to cook every recipe in Julia’s landmark tome “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” within a year – meaning she’ll have to cook 524 exquisite recipes in 365 days and live to blog about it daily.

As she embarks on this culinary quest, Julie learns more about Julia’s own personal life and her parallel loving marriage to her diplomat husband Paul (Stanley Tucci). Julie also gains confidence even as the strain of finishing her goal adds occasional strain to her marriage.

“Julie & Julia” deftly moves between the past and the present in a true screenwriting feat that draws one parallel after another between the two women separated by both an ocean and five decades of life experience. Ephron’s dialogue is crisp and fits both time periods to a T, while its depiction of two happy marriages in which no one’s secretly gay or committing adultery must set a Hollywood record for the modern era.

The film’s traditional moral values (not only is this a movie you could take Grandma to, she’ll likely wind up taking you) carry over into its traditional filmmaking qualities with sterling performances from the four lead actors (Streep could get a Supporting Actress nom, while this could lead to star-making roles for the previously little-known Messina). The exquisite cinematography by Stephen Goldblatt makes dozens of dishes spring to vivid life on the screen, and is sure to leave viewers craving a hearty meal after they leave the theater.

“Julie & Julia” isn’t hip or edgy, but viewers of all ages will appreciate a solid and sterling main course of a film over the quickly forgotten appetizers offered by the much weaker fare to be found in this summer’s multiplexes.

Their big message: military films aren’t working. The country is weary and doesn’t want war films as entertainment. Rather, they say, the good citizens of our nation want to escape with the fictional heroes in movies such as “Transformers,” “X-Men,” and “Spider-Man.” 

Military movies may not be working because Hollywood presently refuses to capitalize on the real life heroes in combat everyday. Everyone loves a good hero and for Hollywood to embrace the notion that there might be a valorous man or woman worthy of a feature film may lend creditability to the cause for which they are fighting. And we can’t have that. 

Instead, their latest war films are partisan propaganda as opposed to realistic and balanced. Somewhere between the screenplay and the final edit group therapy takes place and movie houses release message films as opposed to realistic action movies. 

Take for example Lions for Lambs and Redacted. 

In Lions for Lambs, two students, the ‘Lambs,’ follow the guidance of a professor to make a difference in the world so they enlist in the Army, only to be left stranded by their chain of command on an Afghan mountaintop as the Taliban execute them. The message? Don’t be a fool and enlist. You will be abandoned. The movie is noticeably absent any true hero as Tom Cruise, Robert Redford and Meryl Streep all pontificate through a collective diatribe. The failing here is that millions of servicemen and women have fought in these wars and their families know that they are true heroes. So a movie that paints their loved ones as misguided sheep rings hollow. 

Redacted is worse and more blunt. It sensationalizes a violent criminal act by a small group of Soldiers. Why did De Palma choose the rape and murder of an Iraqi girl as the focus of his movie, using the tagline, “Truth is the First Casualty of War?” It was a heinous, violent crime, but in no way does De Palma’s movie capture the essence of these wars or the spirit of the American fighting men and women. Again, no heroes, only villains, who happen to be American service personnel. 

It seems to me that the invasion of Iraq has been a watershed. Instead of gems such as Blackhawk Down, We Were Soldiers, Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers, post-Iraq we get political pitch pieces. Hollywood is venting its displeasure with the previous administration’s foreign policy through its films. Yet moviegoers are not so easily fooled and pan the movies that portray the military as bloodthirsty goons or ill-informed morons. 

If really is that simple, and Tyler’s lyrics have it right. We are holding out for a hero-the right kind of hero. We need Hollywood to capture the heroism of our troops. The American people know that their sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, and fathers and mothers are carrying this nation’s rucksack superbly in combat. And everyday there are heroes fighting to deny our enemies the ability to attack our homeland. 

One short example takes me back to January 2007 where a young sergeant displayed the everyday valor of American fighting personnel. 

Tyler’s lyrics were the furthest thing from my mind as my UH-60 Blackhawk’s composite rotor blades cut through the thin air of the Afghan Hindu Kush Mountains. 

“Blackhawk Down”

For two weeks I had been trying to fly from Bagram Air Base, where the joint task force is headquartered, to a remote operating base near the Pakistan border called the Korengal Outpost. My team had been collecting ‘To Any Soldier” letters and boxes for weeks and the holidays were upon us. However, a sudden snowstorm prevented our movement on Christmas Eve and then again on New Year’s Eve. 

But January 5th was a crystal clear day, the winter sun low and bright in the blue sky, perfect for flying…and fighting. So we loaded the Blackhawk and departed early in the morning with the intent of circulating to several small outposts, checking on morale, and ensuring the troops had the equipment they needed, a routine part of senior leader battlefield movement in the 10th Mountain Division. 

As we approached Asadabad Base where we would refuel, the radio crackled with the excited chatter of troops in contact just one valley over. They needed air support quickly. I directed my Apache helicopter escort to provide that support and for my Blackhawk to provide cover as his wingman. After emptying all of their ammunition twice in support of the troops in contact, the aircraft returned, picked up my team and we cruised the remaining 15 minutes to the Korengal Oupost where I would link up with Captain Jim McKnight’s rifle company. 

As we approached for landing, PKM machine gun fire echoed from two or three directions. Jim McKnight was there to greet me as we disembarked, but it was clear that he had other priorities. Soon machinegun fire and rocket propelled grenades were raining down upon our exposed position. The Blackhawk alone took 8 rounds in its cargo door, where we had just been sitting, and the left engine caught on fire. The pilots powered up with the right engine, leaving their crew chief on the ground and yanking his communications cord from his crew helmet. 

As rocket propelled grenades begin to crisscross through the outpost like Roman candles, I told Captain McKnight, “Forget about me, go command your company.” Happy to be unburdened from the task of managing a general in his outpost, he got to work. Meanwhile, we hunkered down and returned fire. As we moved toward the command bunker, I caught out of the corner of my eye a Soldier running down to the command post. This Soldier was shot through his left arm, tying off his tourniquet with his teeth. 

As he wheeled into the bunker, he hooked a radio handset into his helmet strap with his good hand while his wounded arm was bleeding badly. Soon, it was apparent he was going into shock and that his arm was seriously damaged. He began convulsing and a medic approached him, saying, “I need to take a look at that.” 

“Get away from me,” the Sergeant said, bluntly, as he punched numbers into his mortar ballistic computer. The biggest weapon at this firebase was a 120mm mortar that, with the right calculus, could destroy the attackers in quick fashion. This sergeant’s mission was to perform that calculus with the aid of a ballistic computer and then relay the information to the gun crew. Conversely, if he got the math wrong, a misguided round could kill friendly troops or civilians. 

He had an important mission. 

As the sergeant began to shake from the onset of shock, the medic approached again, and a second time the sergeant refused medical care, this time employing an expletive to keep the intruder at bay. 

As enemy machine gun rounds punched through the plywood roof of the bunker and fell to the floor like a Colorado summertime hail storm, the medic approached a third time. Looking up from his ballistic computer the sergeant said, “You can work on me when we get first round down range.” 

That was his compromise, which of course was no compromise at all. This Soldier was going to perform his most vital mission until the last drop of his blood fell into the gathering pool at his feet. 

Finally, a few minutes later the mortar launched the first round, which was impressively accurate. Soon, the mortar crew was melting the tubes, pumping out high explosive, fin stabilized and deadly accurate rounds onto the enemy. 

His mission done, the sergeant pushed the ballistic computer across the table to his assistant, handed him the radio, turned to the medic, and said, “Now you can work on me.” 

While it’s not Paul Blart, Mall Cop, there is a good message for Americans in the young Sergeant’s sacrifice. His actions were truly heroic. And the amazing part of this Sergeant’s valor is what came next. 

I was privileged to pin on his Purple Heart (2nd Award), the following day in Bagram after we medically evacuated him out of the Korengal Outpost. The sergeant then was evacuated to Landstuhl, Germany and then finally to Walter Reed Army Medical Center where he spent two months getting reconstructive surgery and healing from the gunshot wound. 

In the interim, the Secretary of Defense extended by 5 months his brigade combat team’s deployment in Afghanistan, making that brigade’s cumulative time deployed 17 months. As soon as this sergeant was released from Walter Reed Army Medical Center he had every right to go on convalescent leave and chill out. He’d earned that after 11 months of combat and a serious battle wound. 

Everyone but perhaps Hollywood knows how this story ends. Our hero scoffed at the notion of taking time off while his buddies were in the thick of it in Afghanistan. 

Of course, he was on the next airplane smoking to Bagram. 

So, we don’t need to hold out for our heroes. They’re there, right in front of us everyday. 

They are holding out for Hollywood’s enormous resources and talent to capture the right heroes doing the right things at the right time. And that’s a timeless story. It’s Hoosiers on the battlefield. Good men and women with solid values placed in difficult circumstances and producing unbelievable results. 

On our behalf. 

Message to Hollywood: Get to work. If you remove the political lens so that you can see the American heroes fighting the good fight, your only issue will be too many good screenplays and packed movie theaters. 

Believe it or not, the America I know is very proud of its men and women in uniform.

But it’s too bad my niece didn’t have actor Edward Norton to look to for advice. Not only is he the official U.S. ambassador for Earth Hour 2009, but he was on CNN’s Larry King Live this week, along with Alanis Morissette, to explain just how this symbolic act of the entire world turning out their lights for one hour will encourage world leaders to cap or tax carbon emissions through legislation. Global unity and all that.

Norton even compared turning out the lights for an hour to the famous civil rights march in Selma, Alabama in March of 1965:

If you think about things in our national history, the march on Selma in the Civil Rights Movement, the march itself, unlike some of the boycotts they did was not a, was not an act in itself meant to change the problem. It was a symbolic act and I think this is for my generation, for many people around the world who care about this issue, I think we’re looking for those kind of symbolic acts that show how many people are, are concerned about this.

The only thing the march in Selma has in common with Earth Hour is that they both share the same month.  Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon these days for someone with a cause to promote to try to link it to the Civil Rights movement in order to give it legitimacy. Even The One himself claimed that his parents met at the Selma march in order to give His birth more meaning (even though He was three and a half years old when the first Selma march occurred).

It’s fashionable for Hollywood celebrities to “give back” by donating time – and sometimes money -to a pet cause, be it cancer, AIDS, or whatever. Not only does it make them look like they care (and yes, sometimes they really do), but it gives them free publicity. Everybody wins, right? Unfortunately for them, that publicity sometimes makes them look like knuckleheads.

Global warming has become a popular cause because it’s easy to tell other people how to live their lives while not necessarily making changes in yours. Just by “getting the word out” you’re helping. If Arianna Huffington doesn’t have to live the life of a global warming paragon, why should anyone else? And since you don’t have to have a complicated scientific degree (one only needs to look to Al Gore’s successful global warming career), just about anyone who “cares” can be an expert.  Sheryl Crow, Laurie David, Leonardo DiCaprio and Carmen Diaz are just a few of the glitterati to lend their names to the global warming cause.

Looking back to the 1980s, noted scientist Meryl Streep helped hobble the apple growing industry in America when she became the face of the evils of Alar, despite the fact that claims of its dangers were unfounded. Perhaps Edward Norton is looking to cripple the economy in general by taking part in a hoax that won’t save the earth from anything (anyone heard of the sun?).

By the way, the economy includes movies and television. I wonder how big Hollywood’s carbon footprint is? How much does global warming owe to all of the electricity needed to run the hot lights, cameras, editing equipment, and air conditioning (or heating) for the stars’ individual on-set trailers? Not to mention all of the gasoline that is used traveling to and from site locations and to run the cars and other vehicles featured in the films and shows.

If Norton and others are looking for a way to lessen the threat we face from global warming, how about making the ultimate sacrifice by shutting down the entertainment industry as we know it? Actors and actresses could instead turn to live theater, giving daytime plays outdoors for maximum earth-saving benefit. They could travel around the country by wagon train to further shrink their carbon footprints. And just think of all the electricity we could save by there being no more movie theaters and no need for televisions, DVD players, cable boxes and so on in our homes.

Sure that’s ridiculous, and I would never actually expect it to happen. But if these cap and trade regulations that Norton is such a fan of take place, you can bet that the entertainment industry will eventually be affected. As it is, the recession is causing some celebrities to look for infomercial deals as acting and modeling gigs begin to dry up. Even liberal blowhard Alec Baldwin connected the dots between higher taxes and the entertainment industry. Shocking, I know, but if Alec can grasp it, there must be hope.

Meanwhile, I’ll be saving the earth by making sure I don’t watch any Edward Norton movies, either at home or in the theaters. He’ll be proud of my efforts, I’m sure.

Julia Roberts and Clive Owen star in the fun, smart DUPLICITY, from writer/director Tony Gilroy

Roberts’ last starring role was in 2003’s Mona Lisa Smile ($63.8M domestic), and since then she has become a full-time Mom. Overall, she has 8 movies on her resume that have reached $100M in the US with her as a lead (I’m not including the Ocean’s Eleven franchise). Her most successful string of movies started in 1997 with My Best Friend’s Wedding ($127.1M cume) and ended with her Oscar winning performance in Erin Brockovich ($125.6M cume). During that span, she starred in 6 movies, generating an average of $115M in domestic box office.

Katherine Heigl is one of the actresses getting all of Roberts' old ingenue roles

But, she has entered the “danger zone” for any actress. All the types of roles that Julia used to turn into $100M blockbusters are going to Katherine Heigl, Kate Hudson, Anne Hathaway, Reese Witherspoon and Elizabeth Banks. What’s a 40+ woman to do?

DUPLICITY writer/director Tony Gilroy

She should be looking for smartly-written, age appropriate movies with some pedigree (co-stars, director, etc.). That is exactly what Duplicity is. Writer/director Tony Gilroy wrote the Jason Bourne movies, and his last film, Michael Clayton, was nominated for 7 Academy Awards. The result is an excellent movie. Clever, smart and charming, and Julia Roberts isn’t trying to pass herself off as an ingénue. The movie was expected to open to about $15M, and that’s exactly what it did, and still, bloggers write things like Julia’s Comeback: Audiences Say Go Back and people question if she’s still a draw.

For comparison sake, here is, to the best of my knowledge, the all-time box office champs for movies starring 40+ actresses above the title.

Glenn Close as Alex Forrest in FATAL ATTRACTION grabbed over $156M

ALL-TIME TOP 15 GROSSING MOVIES WITH A 40+ FEMALE LEAD
1. Fatal Attraction – Glenn Close (40) – $156.6M cume
2. Sex & the City – Sarah Jessica Parker (43) – $152.6M cume
3. Mamma Mia! – Meryl Streep (59) – $144.1M cume
4. 101 Dalmations – Glenn Close (49) – $136.2M cume
5. The Devil Wears Prada – (57) – $124.7M cume
6. Something’s Gotta Give – Diane Keaton (57) – $124.7M cume
7. On Golden Pond – Katherine Hepburn (74) – $119.2M cume
8. Terms of Endearment – Shirley MacLaine (49) – $108.4M cume
9. First Wives Club – Diane Keaton (50), Goldie Hawn (41), Bette Midler (51) – $105.5M cume
10. The Client – Susan Sarandon (48) – $92.1M cume
11. Flightplan – Jody Foster (43) – $89.7M cume
12. Moonstruck – Cher (41) – $80.6M cume
13. The Bridges of Madison County – Meryl Streep (46) – $71.5M cume
14. Bird On Wire – Goldie Hawn (45) – $70.9M cume
15. 102 Dalmations – Glenn Close (53) – $66.9M cume

In other words, it is a longshot for a mature woman to open a film in a big way. Last year, Hollywood gave us Mamma Mia! and Sex & The City, but they were both based on popular source material. The only other movies that starred 40+ actress to generate significant receipts were Australia ($49.5M cume) starring Nicole Kidman (40), Nim’s Island ($48M cume) featuring Jody Foster (46) and Nights in Rodanthe ($41.8M) with a 43-year-old Diane Lane.

Meryl Streep had Universal Studios execs jumping for joy with MAMMA MIA!

Given the nature of the business, is it really fair to say, “Julia Roberts can’t open a movie anymore?” The reality is that it is very rare that any woman north of 40 “opens” a movie, and let’s face it, ABBA opened Mamma Mia! and HBO created the success of Sex & The City.

In fact, I would argue that Duplicity is an excellent choice for the former $20M-per-movie star. You could argue that it is quite similar to Adam’s Rib, the movie that Katherine Hepburn starred in at the age of 41, a romantic comedy featuring she and Spencer Tracy as husband and wife operating, as lawyers on opposite sides of a big case. Duplicity is a very good modern-day parallel, not a classic like Adam’s Rib, but very good.

Kyra Sedgwick has scored big with THE CLOSER on TNT

Increasingly, the best roles for women 40+ are on television. Kyra Sedgwick (The Closer), Glenn Close (Damages), Holly Hunter (Saving Grace), Edie Falco (The Sopranos), Vanessa Williams (Ugly Betty) and Sally Field (Brothers & Sisters) have all found meaningful work on the small screen, but with two young kids, the TV series grind isn’t likely in the cards right now for Roberts right now.

Based on the $14.5M weekend and the fact that Females 25 Plus don’t often rush out to see a movie on opening weekend, I think it’s reasonable to project a $40M-$45M domestic gross – maybe even $50M. Michael Clayton only reached $49M in the US, so is Julia’s drawing power that much inferior to George Clooney?

In my mind, Duplicity is a creative success and, although the jury is out on commercial viability, it is by no means a disaster. Good for Julia Roberts that she has devoted herself to full-time motherhood. I’m glad she chose a project with an IQ, and I hope she continues making smart career choices. Her success will be of service to other actresses in Hollywood – those who are 40+ now, or will be someday.

Steve Mason is on Facebook and now also on Twitter@LAMase.

Cut to me in one of the comfy chairs at the Screening Lounge of the Landmark Theaters at the Westside Pavilion in West L.A last night. (Which is awesome, by the way– it really is just like a screening room.)  Things got off to a slow start when some guy, seemingly not noticing the half-empty room, informed me that I was sitting in his seat.  Like most of the other patrons, this guy gave every appearance of being either a Yale or a Harvard man. Speaking of which, does Harvard only admit pompous jackasses, or is becoming a pompous jackass a requirement for graduating from Harvard?  Ah, the eternal questions.  (Actually, that’s probably not fair.  I’m sure that plenty of normal, decent, men and women of average-sized egos have graduated from Harvard University.  I’ve just never met one.)  In any case, the seating issue was resolved, the film was soon underway and I settled in for what promised to be the cinematic experience of a lifetime.

About half an hour in it occurred to me that Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 would probably be most interesting to people whose passion in life is Ivy League football.  Towards the forty-five minute mark, I had narrowed this down considerably to conclude that, with the exception of the starting line-ups for Harvard and Yale on this autumn day in 1968, IT IS HIGHLY UNLIKELY THAT ANYONE ELSE ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH WOULD FIND THIS FILM EVEN REMOTELY INTERESTING.  Not for the on-field action, the skill level of which was about that of the average suburban high school football contest.  Not for the endless, pointless inserts of former players waxing poetically about this singular non-event.  Not even for the pauses, silences, and visual takes that can be so satisfying in a good documentary.  As I desperately tried to maintain interest in this film, my mind began to wander and I found myself dreaming up alternate titles for Harvard Beats Yale 29-29.  The best ones I came up with were:

Crappy Team Almost Beaten By Even Crappier Team!

Ivy League Football Standings Remain Unchanged After Tie!

Other than “Coal Miner’s Daughter” and “The Fugitive,” What’s the Big Deal About Tommy Lee Jones, Anyway?

Finding the game footage virtually unwatchable, I looked to the non-football aspects of the film.  After all, some of the best parts of Hoop Dreams took place off the court.  But I found no salvation there.  Just rich-looking old men reminiscing about how great it was to be young during the Sexual Revolution and the anti-Vietnam War protests.  One former player spoke of taking a three-year break from his Harvard studies to serve as a Marine in Vietnam.  Arriving back in the States, he and his fellow Marines were spat upon as they stepped off the plane.  Weren’t all those “Vietnam vets being spat upon” stories supposed to be apocryphal?

The filmakers being Yale men, they managed to find a former player who claimed to have seen an inebriated George W. Bush after a football game–wow, how scandalous.  Another Yalie who had dated Meryl Streep was astonished by her success in Hollywood given that in the entire time he knew her, La Streep had virtually nothing to say to anybody about anything.  A pained-looking Tommy Lee Jones described his Harvard roommate Al Gore as being “funny.”  Asked for an example, Jones said Gore would play “Dixie” on his touch-tone phone when that technology was first introduced.  Hard to believe some people still think he’s a big, weird stiff.

I’ve been an avid filmgoer for over forty years, and in my entire life I’ve walked out of maybe five movies after paying for a ticket.  I really wanted to sit through Harvard Beats Yale 29-29, and you can’t say I didn’t give it the old college try, but a little over an hour of this film was all that I could take, so I made for the exit.  I guess I’m just not Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 material.

Like any film, a documentary is supposed to tell a story which has something to say about the human experience that ordinary people can relate to on some level.  That’s what made Hoop Dreams such an exquisite film.  We’ve all imagined the exhilaration of exceeding others’ expectations and dreaded the despair of unrealized potential.  A person with absolutely zero interest in high school basketball–me, for example–could watch Hoop Dreams and, by the end of the film, be up on his feet clapping, laughing, and cheering for Arthur and William because their hopes and dreams had something to say to all of us.  As opposed to the aging, elitist Ivy League jocks of Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 who, in attempting to ascribe such gravity to this utterly meaningless incident, came across as smug and self-indulgent at best.

Tonight (Thursday) is the last night this film will be playing at the Landmark Theater, after which you’ll undoubtedly be urged to rent it on DVD by the same shysters who tricked me into coughing up eleven dollars and an hour of my life to see it last night.  Here’s my advice: times are hard and life is short and unless you were in the starting line-up of either Harvard or Yale’s 1968 football teams, don’t see Harvard Beats Yale 29-29. Instead, spend that hour and fifty minutes hugging your kid.  Well, OK…no, that would be creepy.  But give that kid a good, solid hug, then spend the rest of that time doing something useful like changing the batteries in all of your portable clocks, or having a sandwich, or offering up a prayer of thanks that you’re not a Harvard or Yale man.  Better yet, dig out that old VHS copy of Hoop Dreams and watch it again.  You’ll be glad you did.

Slumdog Millionaire is about to win the Hollywood's Grand Prize

The “Battle Royale” of the night is Mickey Rouke from The Wrestler (Fox Searchlight) vs. Sean Penn in Milk (Focus) in the Best Actor category. There have been two ties in major categories in Academy Award history. The first was in 1932 when Frederic March in Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde shared Best Actor with Wallace Beery for The Champ. (March had one more vote, but in that era, any finish within 3 votes was rules a tie.) Then in 1968, Katherine Hepburn for The Lion In Winter and Barbara Streisand for Funny Girl tied for Best Actress. If there was any justice, Rourke and Penn would share the award. In any other year, either of them would be a lock. Forced to make a pick, I’m going with Rourke.

Does Streep's upset of Winslet at the SAG Awards set the stage for Meryl's third Oscar win?

Kate Winslet is on the cover of Time Magazine, and she has picked up a wheelbarrow full of hardware during this awards cycle, but a fair number of voters got their fill of Kate when she pulled off the double-win at the Golden Globes. My upset special is Meryl Streep for Doubt (Miramax). This is her 15th career nomination, and she has not won an Academy Award in 25 years (Sophie’s Choice in 1982). That is too long for the most-revered actress in history to go without getting one of those golden guys. Streep won the SAG Award for Lead Actress, and I think she has a real shot here. (It would be a huge upset.)

Finally if my predix hold up, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Paramount) would win only 2 Oscars – Best Visual Effects and Best Makeup – despite 13 nominations. That would be the fewest wins for any movie with 13 or more nominations. In fact, 2 wins would be among the poorest showings ever for a movie with 11 nominations or more.

Tied for the biggest shutout in Oscar history; Benjamin Button could win for Makeup and Visual Effects

FEWEST OSCAR WINS FOR MOVIES WITH 11 NOMINATIONS OR MORE
1. The Color Purple – 0 wins (11 nominations)
2. The Turning Point – 0 wins (11 nominations)
3. Chinatown – 1 win (11 nominations)
4. Johnny Belinda – 1 win (12 nominations)
5. Becket – 1 win (12 nominations)
6. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington – 1 win (11 nominations)
7. Pride of the Yankees – 1 win (11 nominations)
8. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – 2 wins (13 nominations) – predicted
9. Rebecca – 2 wins (11 nominations)
10. Sergeant York – 2 wins (11 nominations)
11. A Passage To India – 2 wins (11 nominations)
12. Judgement at Nuremberg – 2 wins (11 nominations)

After weeks of obsessive study, relentless debate and intense soul-searching, here are my final Oscar predictions for all 24 categories.

BEST PICTURE
My Pick – Slumdog Millionaire
Consensus Pick – Slumdog Millionaire
Dark Horse – Milk

BEST ACTOR
My Pick – Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler
Consensus Pick – Sean Penn, Milk or Rourke
Dark Horse – None

BEST ACTRESS
My Pick – Meryl Streep, Doubt
Consensus Pick – Kate Winslet, The Reader
Dark Horse – Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
My Pick – Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
Consensus Pick – Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
Dark Horse – None

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
My Pick – Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Consensus Pick – Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Dark Horse – Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler

BEST DIRECTOR
My Pick – Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
Consensus Pick – Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
Dark Horse – David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Milk screenwriter Justin Lance Black

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
My Pick – Dustin Lance Black, Milk
Consensus Pick – Andrew Stanton, WALL-E
Dark Horse – Martin McDonagh, In Bruges

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
My Pick – Simon Beaufoy, Slumdog Millionaire
Consensus Pick – Simon Beaufoy, Slumdog Millionaire
Dark Horse – David Hare, The Reader

BEST EDITING
My Pick – Slumdog Millionaire
Consensus Pick – Slumdog Millionaire
Dark Horse – Frost/Nixon

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
My Pick – Anthony Dod Mantle, Slumdog Millionaire
Consensus Pick – Anthony Dod Mantle, Slumdog Millionaire
Dark Horse – Wally Pfister, The Dark Knight

BEST ART DIRECTION
My Pick – The Dark Knight
Consensus Pick – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Dark Horse – The Duchess

BEST SOUND MIXING
My Pick – The Dark Knight
Consensus Pick – The Dark Knight
Dark Horse – Slumdog Millionaire

BEST SOUND EDITING
My Pick – Slumdog Millionaire
Consensus Pick – Slumdog Millionaire
Dark Horse – The Dark Knight

BEST COSTUME DESIGN
My Pick – The Duchess
Consensus Pick – The Duchess
Dark Horse – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
My Pick – A.R. Rahman, Slumdog Millionaire
Consensus Pick – A. R. Rahman, Slumdog Millionaire
Dark Horse – Alexandre Desplat, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
My Pick – Waltz with Bashir
Consensus Pick – Waltz with Bashir
Dark Horse – The Class

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
My Pick – Man on Wire
Consensus Pick – Man On Wire
Dark Horse – Trouble the Water

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
My Pick – WALL-E
Consensus Pick – WALL-E
Dark Horse – Kung Fu Panda

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
My Pick – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Consensus Pick – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Dark Horse – The Dark Knight

BEST MAKEUP
My Pick – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Consensus Pick – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Dark Horse – The Dark Knight

BEST ORIGINAL SONG
My Pick – Jaiho from Slumdog Millionaire
Consensus Pick – Jaiho from Slumdog Millionaire
Dark Horse – Peter Gabriel, Down to Earth from WALL-E

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT
My Pick – Toyland (Spielzeugland)
Consensus Pick – Auf der Strecke
Dark Horse – The Pig

BEST ANIMATED SHORT
My Pick – Presto
Consensus Pick – La Maison en Petits Cubes
Dark Horse – This Way Up

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT
My Pick – The Conscience of Nhem En
Consensus Pick – The Witness
Dark Horse – The Final Inch

Steve Mason is on Facebook and now also on Twitter.