Director Joe Wright in an interview with the left-wing site MovieLine:

“I think that the action genre is a very interesting one in terms of its place in a social context. I think that Paul Greengrass showed us with the Jason Bourne films that it was possible to make an action movie with a social conscience, a political-social context. You know, it’s not an accident that the journalist in the third film is writing for The Guardian newspaper. And so, I was interested in making such a film, because most action films that I see are misogynistic and misanthropic, and kind of gun-loving, Republican bullsh*t. And that concerns me because those are the films young people are going to see.”

Misogynistic? Misanthropic?

For the record, this is the same director who crafted an entire love story — the truly awful “Atonement” — around the word “cunt.” And because I’m a generous guy, I’d rather be called a liar than ask anyone to suffer through that turgid, overwrought pail of pretension. So no, don’t waste your time even with a Netflix.

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***UPDATE: closing paragraph added below.

Today, over at the hard-left film site Movieline (a site that eagerly participated in the grossly dishonest character assassination and attempted blacklisting of conservative musician Jonathan Kahn), famed screenwriting teacher Robert McKee responds to Big Hollywood’s Ann McElhinney. For those of you who might have missed her terrific piece, I personally read it as a warning to anyone not a wild-eyed, narcissistic, America-bashing, religious bigot, that for the price (you pay) of $745, Mr. McKee believes he’s earned the right to prove he is one throughout a very expensive screenwriting course.

Anyway, brought to you by one of left-wing Hollywood’s chief Palace Guards and water carriers, S.T. VanAirsdale, here’s the unsurprising response from McKee, someone with a seemingly bottomless well of ego (we’re groupies?) and insecurities (really, we’re groupies?) who insults his students with unadvertised (at least until now) political sucker punches and then literally tells them to “fuck off” if they don’t like it:

Movieline:

Earlier this week, a contributor to the right-wing film and culture Web site Big Hollywood offered up the delightfully titled tale, “For $745 You Too Can Be Insulted By Famed Hollywood Screenwriting Teacher Robert McKee.” Author Ann McElhinney proceeded to recount her time in McKee’s celebrated (and, indeed, expensive) story seminar last October, time reportedly spent chafing under the instructor’s prodigious use of profanity, social criticism, “Bush bashing” and other liberal bloviation. A torrent of conservative bile followed in the site’s comments. Of course, anyone who’s seen Adaptation, featuring Brian Cox as the legendary — and legendarily irascible — writing mentor, could have warned McElhinney of at least some pedagogical turbulence ahead. So Movieline asked McKee on Wednesday: What, if anything, went wrong here?

In a nutshell: Nothing.

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Comprehending the work of a propagandist is nearly impossible. Since their goal is the opposite of trying to enlighten, there’s never any logic behind the words. Instead, the goal is to obscure and deflect in the hopes that The Lie being told is highlighted and can come across as some sort of scholarly conclusion now that it’s been buried in a whole lot of meaningless words. Patrick Goldstein, Hollywood’s chief leftist enforcer at the L.A. Times, has just created yet another perfect example of this (and why the financially troubled newspaper has been reduced to the size of a dinner menu).

Goldstein’s editorial mission — his specialty at the high-profile perch — is poaching from another news outlet any story that disrupts the Leftist Hollywood narrative. If the story makes Hollywood look bad or risks damaging the industry in any way, Goldstein’s job is to twist it around in the hopes of changing the narrative into what Hollywood wants to hear.

If you recall, just this last month, Goldstein did exactly this with a Wall Street Journal profile of musician Jonathan Kahn. Nowhere in the article did Kahn claim his right-of-center politics had ever hurt his career, and yet in an attempt to paint him as a whiner, Goldstein told all of Hollywood he had. Worse, in a conscious effort to portray Kahn as a no-talent has-been, rather than mention Kahn’s long, successful relationship with a Grammy-winning producer (which made up a large part of the WSJ profile), Goldstein ignored it and instead Googled up some old credits of Kahn’s in order to present them as though they were Kahn’s entire resume. (the hard-left film site Movieline soon followed suit.) (more…)

After S.T. VanAirsdale of the hard-left film site Movieline wondered aloud who Big Hollywood would choose to “smear” with respect to the upcoming documentary “The Tillman Story,” I responded that when a leftist propagandist launches that kind of near-hysterical preemptive tactical strike, it can only make you wonder what all the defensiveness is about. 

Then, as if to thicken the plot, that same day, Jeff –The Latino Lover– Wells was so righteously piqued by my response to VanAirsdale that in a post titled “Lock and Load” he found it so necessary to rush to the film’s defense he reran his entire review. (Which gave Glenn – The Lawyer Callerer – Kenny an opportunity to slam us…again — which I’d be happy to respond to if not for fear of lawyer-callering.)

Obviously all this interest only increased my curiosity, so over the weekend I took a look around the Web and read everything I could find written by those who (unlike us) have seen the film. Interestingly enough, every review and/or write up I came across shared two common characteristics: The first is glowing, effusive praise; the second is that not a single write up questions the validity of even a single frame of the film.  (more…)

I wonder how a certain left-wing film site will cover “The Tillman Story,” a documentary about Pat Tillman’s death in Afghanistan directed by Amir Bar-Lev and narrated by Josh Brolin (this Josh Brolin?) that’s set for a theatrical release August 20th.

Actually, I wonder how all of the leftist entertainment media will cover it. Will they be skeptical? Will they fact check? Will they even bother to pretend there might be another side to the story? These are rhetorical questions.

—-

Rhetorical or not, S.T. Vanairsdale of the hard-left film site Movieline looks as though he’s already answered the question:

[T]he trailer peels back a few preliminary layers of the documentary the Weinstein Company hopes can help elevate it back to Oscar heights next year. Moreover, director Amir Bar-Lev has a story to tell about the mistreatment of a soldier, his family and an entire American public by a government preoccupied with preserving the heroic tradition of its military at any costs — even at the expense of a selfless troop’s legacy.

It’s all twoo! It’s all twoo! because Hollywood told me so! It’s so true in fact that for the first time in who knows how long Vanairsdale put on suspension the shallow, superior snark that made him who he is. (more…)

In Hollywood, being a conservative is the kiss of death. — Jonathan Kahn

Today’s entertainment-industry conservatives can only wish they lived under the same type of blacklist practiced in the 1950s. As terribly misguided as that was, there was at least an honesty to it. There was an actual list and when you were on it you were told you were on it and understood why your phone had stopped ringing. This gave its victims something to fight against and better yet, no one tried to stereotype them as untalented, paranoid whiners for daring to mention its existence.  

Today’s Progressive Hollywood Blacklist is a much more insidious thing. By design it functions in a way that still punishes those who stray from the ideological plantation but like the elephant behind Jimmy Durante, remains hidden well enough in plain sight so that when you try to point it out, the progressive blacklisters can say, “What elephant?” even as they laugh in your face.

As we witnessed with Jonathan Kahn’s coming out in the Wall Street Journal last week, the Progressive Hollywood Blacklist is a system upheld with no small amount of help from the entertainment media. They are Leftist Hollywood’s professional character assassins specialized in the dark art of keeping the industry ideologically pure through the stereotyping of conservatives. (more…)

September 29th, 2009:

Amid all the noise, no one has yet to really mention the most unthinkable consequence overshadowing all of this: that Polanski, 76, could die in jail, either fighting his extradition in Switzerland or withering in a cell in Los Angeles. Surely that couldn’t be justice, could it? For a Holocaust survivor and Manson Family widower (whose wife and unborn son’s killer, coincidentally, died in prison last week) to perish while battling a prosecutor’s politically motivated whim, however legally sound?

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Stu VanAirsdale of the left-wing filmsite Movieline interviewed “Fair Game” director Doug Liman. Check out this biting, insightful follow-up question to the director’s absurd claim that his film isn’t committed to politics:

MOVIELINE: It’s kind of a weird climate for this film. There was Nothing But the Truth, which was kind of mishandled. Then there was Green Zone, which audiences were very cool toward. Where will Fair Game fall in this political intrigue/spy thriller spectrum?

LIMAN: I think it’s in the spectrum of “It’s a really great movie.” And a lot of other movies that have been about the war or dealt with the war have not been great movies. In fact, they’ve been motivated more by politics than by story, and that’s been a turn-off to audiences. This is sort of the first political movie that’s been made where I feel like the commitment was there from the first moment to story and character, and not to politics.

MOVIELINE: I overheard you a moment ago mentioning Naomi Watts is outstanding in this. Can you elaborate?

Translation: After I carried a little water for the embarrassment that was “Nothing But the Truth,” you made the wildly outrageous statement that your movie about Valerie Plame and starring Sean Penn isn’t committed to politics. My follow up, however, will ignore all of that — will let that spin stand – and instead I’ll give you the opportunity to gush over your leading lady for two reasons: We’re on the same ideological team and I really, really want you to like me. (more…)

Whenever Oscar-winning filmmaker Michael Moore releases a new documentary the reaction in the press is typically jubilant. Rave reviews. Fawning interviews which rarely ask tough questions. Oscar buzz aplenty.

But this time could be different.

Moore’s last film, “Slacker Uprising,” didn’t go straight to DVD. It went straight to download. Now, Moore’s catching heat from Movieline.com, the online film magazine which routinely taunts conservative targets like Gov. Sarah Palin. The site’s new Moore-related post swats the filmmaker for a less than sharp attempt at marketing his upcoming film about the country’s economic collapse. The movie blogger sets up his critique here: (more…)