Before Season 6, my wife was a die-hard “Lost” fan.  For five years, during the appointed hour, I wasn’t allowed to so much as breathe.  And heaven help me if I had to walk past the TV screen.  Suddenly, my normally mild-mannered wife could hurl the remote with notable precision and ferocity.

Five years of secret hatches.  Ancient four-toed statues.  Teleporting cabins.  A string of lottery numbers popping up everywhere.  Weird pseudo-science. Steampunk technology.  The Dharma Initiative.  (Remember that?)  And what the heck was a polar bear doing on a tropical island?

“Lost” was a major brain tease, too.  Naming so many of the characters after philosophers (Locke, Rousseau, Hume, etc.) was a stroke of genius – paper-thin genius, I later learned, as few of the characters had much to do with their namesakes.  (My favorite character name was Charlotte Staples Lewis, i.e., C. S. Lewis – incidentally, his middle name really was Staples.)

As the show’s intellectual promise faded, my interest flagged, but it really took a tumble during Season 5, when time travel, the last refuge of a desperate sci-fi writer, reared its inevitable head. (more…)

The climate change conference is long gone, but with Christmas just around the corner, I figured there had to be a connection. Also, I’m writing this after a holiday party, so I’m drunk.

As President Obama says, let’s be clear: that comical Copenhagen conference wasn’t about science, it was about wealth transfer. The gist: because of America’s “hyper-industrialization,” we need to pay off poor countries for all the harm we’ve caused in the world. That’s the real green in the green movement: It’s cash, not grass.

What’s this have to do with Christmas? Well, I think the world has forgotten that the biggest gift to this planet is America’s industry – and it’s time to remind them where they would be without it.

1. Whenever a horrible disaster hits, they would be dead. Be it an earthquake, a tsunami or a Madonna tour – we’re usually the first and biggest responders – saving the injured, and helping to rebuild. It is because of our tremendous capability to mobilize quickly that makes us a nation of superheroes. It also takes planes, trucks and tractors to do that stuff. Imagine that carbon footprint. (more…)

Attention Santas:

This missive is directed at the guardians of, and donors to, tiny humans. If you fall into that category you likely are already familiar with Build-A-Bear, a world-wide corporation that provides the most innocent of services. They sell customizable stuffed animals. Make your own bear, dog…penguin. Cute concept.

So cute, in fact, that the Build-A-Bear empire sweeps across nearly every state and into 17 other countries. You’ll find their outlets in shopping malls everywhere and even some ballparks. The company also has a website called Build-A-Bearville.com where children can play an interactive video game that, on it’s surface, is unlikely to raise suspicion or sound alarms.

But when your unsuspecting tot logs on and hops a virtual train to the North Pole…you should know that he or she will be informed — by Santa Claus — that Christmas may be canceled this year due to Global Warming. Below is part two of the 3-part video.

(more…)

Last Friday, America was introduced to documentary filmmaker Phelim McAleer when he asked an inconvenient question of former vice-president and multi-millionaire climate-change spokesperson Al Gore.  The terse exchange has become a hit on YouTube, and has afforded Phelim several appearances this week on cable news shows.  In it, Phelim asks Mr. Gore to weigh in on a British judge’s ruling that nine facts cited in the vice-president’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth”, were in fact not true.  After struggling to remember the exact details of the case (it was so long ago…), Mr. Gore and Mr. McAleer wrangle briefly over whether or not polar bears are actually endangered.  Mr. Gore remarks that if they are not, “the polar bears didn’t get the message.”  Cute.

Of course, this answer is really at the very heart of the current debate over global climate change (formerly global warming, formerly global cooling), because whatever the polar bears might think about their own species’ global population, it is obviously far more than most every human environmentalists seem to care about theirs.

“Their is an anti-human element to many environmentalists.”  That was what Phelim told me the day I first met him and his lovely wife Ann McElhinney early last year.  The two had just spoken, quite passionately I might add (everything the two of them do is quite passionate), at a private gathering of conservatives in Sherman Oaks, California.  (more…)

The Society of Environmental Journalists spent much of their conference in Madison, Wisconsin questioning why mainstream journalism was dying.

Then they answered their own question when they decided it was their role to protect Al Gore from An Inconvenient Question.

Phelim McAleer, the director of Not Evil Just Wrong, asked Al Gore about the British Court Case which found his documentary An Inconvenient Truth had nine significant errors.

McAleer said that given his documentary is being shown in schools – does he accept the errors and has he done anything to correct them?

However, Mr. Gore declined to address the issue and when asked for a straight answer from McAleer – the response of the Society of Enironmental Journalists was not to applaud one of their own for bringing truth to power but instead they cut the mic of a journalist.

(more…)

Everybody knows that Global Warming is real.  The debate is over.  No one with any real common sense would dare challenge the fact that human CO2 production is directly related to rises in temperature.  To save the earth from massive disaster we must all take action NOW.

Luckily our Great Leader and the people in Washington who look out for us poor, ill-educated masses have set “Cap and Trade” into motion.  The heathens and “anti-intellectuals” will cynically point out that “Cap and Trade” is a massive tax, a way to further grow government, a way to control behavior and a way to benefit Democratic supporters and lobbyists.  But those of us who righteously follow “smart power” know better.

Saving the planet.

Cap and Trade isn’t enough.  I’ve taken a few minutes to scour the halls of knowledge (i.e. the Internet; Wikipedia and the Huffington Post to be specific) to relay a couple more things that you can do to stop the biggest threat to our planet right now!

1) Drink more carbonated beverages.   That’s right, enjoy that delicious Coke, Diet Coke or A&W Root Beer.  See, the bubbles in soda products are made from…you guessed it, deadly CO2.  When you drink it, your body absorbs the CO2, emitting far less CO2 than the contents of the original soda. Your body is like a little CO2 destroying factory.  So, drink up.  But please note, I didn’t say drink more Pepsi products.  That’s because I own stock in Coke and not Pepsi.   I don’t think Pepsi puts as much CO2 into their drinks as Coke. Yeah, that’s it.  Pepsi has 5/10th less carbon byproducts per linear ounce than Coke, so drink Coke. (more…)

“The picture got great reviews but let’s take a chance anyway.” That’s what I usually say to my wife when we’re planning a night out at the movies. Critics and I are not usually on the same page. But the Disney release called “Earth,” a compendium of brilliant nature footage cribbed from a BBC series, seemed irresistible, even though it got raves. True, there’d been quibbling about the corn-ball narration and the selection of stentorian-voiced James Earl Jones to deliver it, but the summation of the reviews was: don’t miss it.

Disney had taken miles of extraordinary footage from the long-running English nature series and condensed and shaped it into a story of sorts: mama polar bear and her cubs emerge out of hibernation in the arctic snow, with the adorable babies blinking at their first sight of the summer sun. She begins the task of teaching them to survive. Papa bear, meanwhile, or “dad” as he’s known in the narration, is off on the ice floe, trying to catch a seal for his dinner. But “global warming” is making this difficult to do as the ice is breaking up earlier than usual. Dad falls into the frigid water and begins swimming for his life. He swims and swims till he gets to Antarctica where there is an abundance of seals. But dad is too weak from all that swimming, can’t nab a seal, and lies down and dies. End of family. (more…)

In my Final Weekend Tracking column posted on Wednesday, I predicted that X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Fox) would reach $92M on opening weekend, despite soft reviews (now only 38% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes). My first fearless forecast of the 2009 summer blockbuster season appears to be close to dead-on (missed by only 5%).

Star-turned-producer Hugh Jackman has scored his second-biggest opening ever and, easily, his biggest as a solo star. Wolverine has mauled the competition with a massive $34.75M opening day (including $5M or so in Thursday midnight sales). That could translate to a 3-day of $86.8M, getting Hollywood’s most lucrative season off to a spectacular start.

(more…)

The great thing about a sequel is that it has a built-in audience. The problem with sequels is that, as the numbers after the title go up, so does the production budget. Very hard to know for sure, but sources have told me that the production budget for X-Men was in the $75M range. X-2: X-Men United may have had a budget of about $110M, while the cost of X-Men: The Last Stand was, in all likelihood, as much as $210M. Why doesn’t it make sense to just churn out X-Men 4?

Look at these numbers.

(more…)

Recording superstar Beyonce Knowles is building a bankable resume for herself as an actress with Sony Screen Gems’ Obsessed as the latest title burnishing her resume. Co-starring the excellent Idris Elba (The Wire), this low budget, PG-13 genre pic has scored a far-above-expectations $11M on Friday, and it will likely reach $27.5M for the weekend. That is the best opening yet for the former Destiny’s Child lead vocalist as an above-the-title star, topping 2003’s The Fighting Temptations and Cadillac Records from late 2008.

Beyonce does battle with the sexy Ali Larter (HEROES) in OBSESSED

OPENINGS FOR BEYONCE MOVIES
1. Austin Powers: Goldmember – $70.3M opening
2. Obsessed – $27.5M opening (projected)
3. Pink Panther (2006) – $20.2M opening
4. Dreamgirls – $14.1M wide break (after a platform start)
5. The Fighting Temptations – $11.7M opening
6. Cadillac Records – $3.4M opening

(more…)

Anyone who’s figured out that Global Warming is socialism disguised as nonsense will immediately understand why DisneyNature’s “Earth” was dropped into theatres and aimed at your children on Earth Day. The subtext, as defined by a running subplot involving the struggle of “Papa the Polar Bear,” is how the warming of the earth is endangering the cutest animal families you ever will see. This warming is never openly blamed on man, but it no longer needs to be. Years of dishonest propaganda have laid that groundwork so well that “Earth” can toss off the warming fallacy in the most effective of ways: matter-of-factly.

Propa-nonsense or no, the saving grace of any theatrical nature documentary should be the photography, but I’ve read that “Earth” uses footage from, and is nothing more than a boiled down version of, the “Planet Earth” television series (recycling?), and it shows. There aren’t more than a few shots that rose above my childhood memories of what good ole Marlin Perkins introduced in Mutual of Omaha’s “Wild Kingdom” every Saturday afternoon in the seventies.

“Just as the mother lion protects her cubs, you can protect your family with Mutual of Omaha …” (more…)

The final weekend of April has never been Hollywood’s favorite release date. In fact, it is generally considered to be among the worst release dates on the calendar. Whatever opens on the final weekend of April gets absolutely crushed by the official start of the summer blockbuster season on the first weekend of May.

The 4 new wide releases and 1 major specialty release set to debut this weekend will face an onslaught of mega-hits over the next month. How can Obsessed (Sony), Earth (Disney), The Soloist, (Dreamworks/Paramount), Fighting (Rogue) and The Informers (Senator) possibly find an audience with X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Fox) and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (Warner Bros) arriving next weekend followed by, in successive weeks, Star Trek (Paramount), Angels & Demons (Sony), the combo of Night at the Museum 2 (Fox) and Terminator: Salvation (Fox) and Disney/Pixar’s Up?

(more…)

Ah yes, the “Go Green” movement.  One would expect it to be an aptly named title for a Kermit the Frog album. Unfortunately, the amphibian has pulled a Pontius Pilate and washed his hands clean of this entire situation. This latest video installment addresses the militant environmental activists and their effective manipulation tactics aimed squarely at today’s ignorant, fickle youth

All the regular environmental fixtures are here.  Barack Obama, SUV’s, polar bears and cow farts.  Who could ask for anything more? I would also like to take this moment to formally express my hatred for both Ted Turner and his crappy, poorly drawn, douchebag of a hero known as “Captain Planet.”  How many more lives must be ruined?  How many more boys must be stuffed into lockers, Ted… How many more?