The Boggy Nature of Fear

Halloween is a time of fright and fear. It’s a favorite time of year for many kids. Of course the candy helps, but that’s not all of it. It’s really about the feeling. The leaves are falling, the skies are darker, the weather is getting colder and there’s still more cold to come. It’s a time for spookiness, mystery and the unknown. So, as I write this, on a dark and stormy night, well, actually,  it’s the afternoon, but it is very dark and very stormy outside. My mind turns to this season, to Halloween, to fear.

There are a lot of films that scared us as kids, and still scare us. Many of the films today are far too graphic for my tastes. Heck, most of television is, too, for that matter. So, I should say right at the outset that I’m not a fan of gore, not in any way shape or form. I know some folks out there are big on the stuff, but not me. Sure, I’ve seen some, the classic Herschell Gordon Lewis, Romero and Savini works, but none of the modern multi-sequel films that grace our theaters with single word titles. I don’t mind being scared. As most would agree, we all need a good scare every now and then. It’s good for you. It’s thrilling. But gore isn’t thrilling for me. It’s sickening. I like to be thrilled, I don’t wish to be sick. Besides, I’ve seen enough of the footage and descriptions of films like “Saw” and “Hostel,” which I rebel against, regardless of how “intelligent” or “clever” they are reported to be. (more…)

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Tags: blair witch project, CSI, earl hamner, Fear, fouke monster
Posted Oct 31st 2009 at 5:42 pm in Film | 25265848 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/smann/2009/10/31/the-boggy-nature-of-fear/The+Boggy+Nature+of+Fear2009-11-01+00%3A42%3A14Schizoid+Mann

Kidman Worries About Treatment of Women While Representing the…UN?

Nicole Kidman is a fine actress. I’ve enjoyed her work over the years, and heartily congratulate her for her long and storied career. I also congratulate her for getting out of her marriage to Tom Cruise, but that’s another story.

Now Kidman, like many Hollywood stars who want to prove that they’re more than just pretty faces, is involved in A Cause. Like Meryl Streep’s concern about healthy produce and Heather Graham for ObamaCare, Kidman wants to Save Something. To that end, she is the goodwill ambassador for the UN Development Fund for Women, known as UNIFEM and in that capacity, recently testified before Congress to plead for more support for the program (read: cold, hard cash).

The big story that came out of that appearance was Kidman’s concession that the film industry might play a role in violence toward women by portraying them as weak. That may be true, but it’s a topic for another day.

 Kidman’s desire to help women in need is admirable. But she might want to consider an outlet other than the UN to do this good work. (more…)

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Tags: Congress, nicole kidman, UNIFEM, United Nations
Posted Oct 28th 2009 at 5:07 am in Celebrity News, Featured Story, Politics | 25141469 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/pmeister/2009/10/28/kidman-worries-about-treatment-of-women-while-representing-the-un/Kidman+Worries+About+Treatment+of+Women+While+Representing+the...UN%3F2009-10-28+12%3A07%3A34Pam+Meister

The Polanski Culture: Hollywood’s Push to Normalize Sex With Children

The vocal, sanctimonious Free-Polanski uproar is merely a symptom of an entertainment culture infected with a moral cancer – a culture that regularly practices up on the screen what we’ve heard them preach this last week on behalf of a confessed child rapist.

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.) (more…)

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Tags: alan ball, Best Actress Oscar, birth, cate blanchett, Child Molester
Posted Oct 8th 2009 at 4:49 am in Celebrity News, Culture, Featured Story | 242242288 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/10/08/the-polanski-culture-hollywoods-push-to-normalize-sex-with-children/The+Polanski+Culture%3A+Hollywood%27s+Push+to+Normalize+Sex+With+Children2009-10-08+11%3A49%3A19John+Nolte

Tom Cruise’s Latest Role – Marriage Counselor?

Being a celebrity means that you can do anything you want to do because you know more than the average person. Not just when it comes to hawking hair care products and credit cards, but important things like how to save the Earth and telling governors how to run their states.

And if you’re Tom Cruise, that means you are not only qualified to advise women on how to deal with postpartum depression, but you are also qualified to act as marriage counselor.

That’s right – Tom “Couch Commando” Cruise is, out of the goodness of his heart, David and Victoria Beckham’s new “relationship guru” – because you know with all of their money, they can’t afford a certified therapist:

After an evening with David, Tom decided to have a friendly chat with Victoria about the family’s future, saying it was because he cared so much about all of them,” revealed a source.

“They love each other dearly but Tom is a big believer in talking about issues . He could see they were both worried about the future and what it might hold.”

(more…)

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Tags: David Beckham, Jada Pinkett, Katie Holmes, Mimi Rogers, nicole kidman
Posted Aug 11th 2009 at 5:06 am in Celebrity News, Featured Story, News | 203246102 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/pmeister/2009/08/11/tom-cruises-latest-role-203246/Tom+Cruise%27s+Latest+Role+-+Marriage+Counselor%3F+2009-08-11+12%3A06%3A19Pam+Meister

‘Nine’ Opens November 25th

Here at Big Hollywood, the film folks get all the fun by previewing film trailers in their posts.  But, since the upcoming “Nine” is a film adaptation of a Broadway musical, I’m claiming this one! 

Directed by Rob Marshall, who did a pretty good job adapting a little show called “Chicago” to film, “Nine” is set for a Fall opening which usually means the studio has Oscar hopes.  “Nine” was a musical adaptation of Federico Fellini’s masterpiece “8 1/2″ and was staged by Tommy Tune in 1982 starring Raul Julia as Italian film director Guido Contini.  For that incredibly demanding role in the film, we get Oscar winner Daniel Day Lewis.  The cast includes Penelope Cruz, Kate Hudson, Nicole Kidman, Fergie, Judy Dench and none other than Sophia Loren! (more…)

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Tags: 8 1/2, broadway, daniel day lewis, federico fellini, fergie
Posted Jun 9th 2009 at 8:23 am in Entertainment | 153510No Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/sright/2009/06/09/nine-trailer/%27Nine%27+Opens+November+25th2009-06-09+15%3A23%3A18Stage+Right

‘Antichrist’: Lars von Trier Bores Me

Antichrist hasn’t even come out in the United States and I’m already bored.  

If you haven’t heard about Antichrist yet, you will.  It’s the latest movie from Danish art film director Lars von Trier, who has made a name for himself with critically-hailed movies that push the limits his audiences’ tolerance for bizarre sex, bloody violence and artistic pretension.  One of his recent movies focused on an American town where slavery never ended, while another had pretty much an entire American village raping Nicole Kidman.  A third film ends with the American authorities hanging Icelandic rock waif Bjork.   Sensing some themes?   By all accounts, Antichrist is a similarly delightful romp.

Naturally, the critics adore him, and combined with the fact that von Trier despises Americans, you would expect that he would get cut some slack by the French audience at Cannes last weekend when the festival screened Antichrist.  Not so – the few cheers were apparently drowned out by a tsunami of boos when the lights went up.  What happened?  

Maybe, just maybe, people are starting to catch on to the fact that shocking art has become anything but.  The problem for Mr. von Trier and those like him who specialize in transgressive art is that there’s really very little in the way of conventional morality left to transgress.  (more…)

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Tags: Antichrist, Bjork, Cannes, Lars von Trier, nicole kidman
Posted May 22nd 2009 at 5:01 am in Entertainment, Featured Story | 137998No Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/kschlichter/2009/05/22/nothing%e2%80%99s-shocking/%27Antichrist%27%3A+Lars+von+Trier+Bores+Me2009-05-22+12%3A01%3A01Kurt+Schlichter

Why is Hollywood Silent on Roxana Saberi?

I see a great story in Roxana Saberi. Don’t you? A can’t fail, high-concept, four-quadrant script with a unique storyline. In fact, I’d expect a bidding war no less severe and cutthroat for the rights to Roxana’s story as that for Lone Survivor. You know. A MARIE in Iran meets MISSING kinda thing.

A young and beautiful former Miss North Dakota and reporter for the BBC and NPR, among others, falsely arrested by misogynist Iran and tagged with a series of escalating charges, from buying wine to reporting with expired credentials to espionage, charges even Roxana’s lawyer has not officially seen to date, but upon which Ms. Saberi was just sentenced to eight years in the Iranian Hell of Evin prison in a one-day kangaroo court trial. Coercion was also involved, including a threat to kill her.

Any questions as to who and what we’re really dealing with here now? (more…)

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Tags: Academy, Afghanistan, Barack Obama, bening, Congress
Posted Apr 25th 2009 at 1:23 pm in Media Criticism, Politics | 1096867 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jtsimpson/2009/04/25/why-is-hollywood-silent-on-roxana-saberi/Why+is+Hollywood+Silent+on+Roxana+Saberi%3F2009-04-25+20%3A23%3A20John+T.+Simpson

The Streisand Effect – or People Who Don’t Need People

I have a confession to make: when I’m alone in my car – or in iPod isolation – I sometimes listen to Barbra Streisand.  And I’m neither a big fan of pop music nor of the current state of liberalism – the cushy, comfy, groupthink kind with which Streisand has become closely linked in recent years.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Whenever I’m feeling a little down, Streisand’s rousing, patriotic rendition of “Before the Parade Passes By” (from the Hello, Dolly! soundtrack) is the next best thing to shooting up a Diet Rockstar.  The movie may be deadly, but that track is classic Barbra: starts out quiet, plaintive, then slowly builds to an almost militaristic crescendo of chorus, trumpets, beating drums – and Babs, screaming her head off above it all with a heroic, never-ending high note that sounds like a war cry.

I know - that’s so gay.  But for me, the song is musical comfort food – and proof of the power of the human spirit: a rusty Main Street USA antique, shined up and brought back to life by a disadvantaged ugly duckling from Brooklyn, with a voice straight from God, who beat the odds.  That’s when Streisand was still one of a kind.

But that was 1969.  This is now.  Today, “Before the Parade Passes By” would probably be called something like “Whenever the Trans-Cultural Community Gathering Happens to Reconvene.”  And it would probably be sung by Sheryl Crow. (more…)

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Tags: a star is born, Arnold Scaasi, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Barack Obama, Barbra Streisand
Posted Apr 17th 2009 at 5:03 am in Celebrity News, Featured Story, Politics | 999786 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/cwinecoff/2009/04/17/the-streisand-effect-or-people-who-dont-need-people/The+Streisand+Effect+-+or+People+Who+Don%27t+Need+People2009-04-17+12%3A03%3A37Charles+Winecoff

Summer Movie Season: The Good, the Bad and the Maybe

No matter how frustrated, disappointed, or outright disgusted Hollywood makes me, all is forgiven during that brief moment just after the trailers finish and just before the film begins. When those lights dim the chip dissolves from my shoulder and all the filmmaker need do to win me forever is tell one helluva story.

Politics shmolitics… Just take me away.

For we hopeless movie lovers, each year hope (if you’ll pardon the expression) springs eternal with a fresh offering of pull-out-the-stops-studio-balance-sheet-in-the-crosshairs slate of tent poles. And for that reason, this is my favorite part of the movie year because all I want for my ten bucks is to get lost for a couple hours, and from May 1st through the end of August filmdom at least attempts to put the political nonsense on hold to do just that. (more…)

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Tags: 3, Bruno, Christian Bale, Denzel Washington, george clooney
Posted Apr 9th 2009 at 1:09 pm in Entertainment | 1017142 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/04/09/summer-movie-season-the-good-the-bad-and-the-maybe/Summer+Movie+Season%3A+The+Good%2C+the+Bad+and+the+Maybe2009-04-09+20%3A09%3A31John+Nolte

The plight of 40+ Hollywood actresses; Don’t write off Julia Roberts because of DUPLICITY!

The movie business is not generally kind to women when they pass the age of 40, and Julia Roberts (now 41) is learning that lesson the hard way. The former Pretty Woman has returned to the big screen this weekend in Tony Gilroy’s Duplicity (Universal), and one prominent blogger wrote this headline:

Duplicity soft: Julia’s Comeback? Audiences Say Go Back

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.

(more…)

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Tags: 101 dalmations, 102 dalmations, 40+ actresses, ABBA, academy award winner
Posted Mar 22nd 2009 at 6:48 pm in Celebrity News, Entertainment, Media Criticism, Reviews, Steve Mason's Box Office | 8689872 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/smason/2009/03/22/juliaroberts/The+plight+of+40%2B+Hollywood+actresses%3B+Don%27t+write+off+Julia+Roberts+because+of+DUPLICITY%212009-03-23+01%3A48%3A38Steve+Mason

Hollywood embraces the “chick flick” – NOT THAT INTO YOU and CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC are only the two latest successes!

Hollywood execs seem to be waking up to the power of women at America’s multiplexes. The success of He’s Just Not That Into You (Warner Bros) and this weekend’s Confessions of a Shopaholic (Disney) can be traced to Meryl Streep’s witty riff on the tyrannical Anna Wintour in The Devil Wears Prada in the summer of 2006. Prada opened to a $27.5M weekend on its way to a $124.75M domestic cume (Streep also earned an Oscar nomination).

Then in July of 2007, New Line grabbed an almost identical $27.47M with the opening weekend of the female-skewing Hairspray, translating to $118.87M domestic. Also Enchanted, starring Amy Adams, was a hit for Disney over the holidays reaching $127.8M domestic.

(more…)

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Tags: 3-d, accidental husband, alec baldwin, Amy Adams, amy poehler
Posted Feb 15th 2009 at 12:21 am in Steve Mason's Box Office | 5133828 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/smason/2009/02/15/chick-flick/Hollywood+embraces+the+%22chick+flick%22+-+NOT+THAT+INTO+YOU+and+CONFESSIONS+OF+A+SHOPAHOLIC+are+only+the+two+latest+successes%212009-02-15+08%3A21%3A44Steve+Mason