Definitely not safe for work but very refreshing….

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In this insufferably PC era, defending America and this kind of openly proud patriotism is the very definition of edgy.  Via HuffPo, here’s a portion of the transcript. The audio is pretty garbled in spots:

“… it appears to me, y’all like it over here a lot… If y’all had California and you loved it, then you shouldn’t have given that mothaf*cka up. You should have fought for California, goddamnit, since you love it… Are you Mexican? Do you know where Mexico is? No this ain’t Mexico, it used to be Mexico, motherf*cker, and now it’s Phoenix, goddammit. USA! USA!… No n*gga, do you know where you at? USA! USA!… No n*gga, this is my hood… [security comes] F*ck him! Mothaf*ckas think they can live in this country and pledge allegiance to another country… Do you remember when white people used to say go back to Africa? And we’d have to tell them we don’t want to? So if you love Mexico, bitch, get the f*ck over there! [breaks into the National Anthem]… We were slaves bitch, you just all work like that at the landscapers…”

Naurally, the Huffington Post is all bothered, bewildered and offended by this:

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“How I Won the War,” released on DVD over four decades after its theatrical debut in 1967, is notable for two reasons. First, it’s the only film that Beatle John Lennon appeared in without his fellow band mates in tow, and second, it’s a liberal, anti-war film that was reamed by Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times and Bosley Crowther in the New York Times.

Lennon plays a bit part as a soldier under the command of British lieutenant Earnest Goodbody (Michael Crawford), whose incompetence continually dwindles his troops as they fight the Axis in North Africa and Europe.

Director Richard Lester, the man behind Beatles films “Help!” and “A Hard Day’s Night,” splices grainy, tinted documentary footage into his film, but detracts from the weight of this footage through gag comedy and an apparent lack of direction throughout.

Charles Wood wrote the screenplay, though it’s hard to understand what he wrote exactly. The dialogue is spoken so fast that with the British accents it’s nearly impossible to understand. And the storyline is mashed and incoherent, seemingly without a purpose or end-point in sight.

I think the acting is good, I think, but I couldn’t really tell since I didn’t know what the actors were saying. Lennon’s pretty funny, but his character is a prankster, whose gags are immature and childish. (more…)

Taut thriller nearly trips over its own political correctness…

Source Code is a well-made movie with an engaging high-concept premise and — in a world where many movies don’t know how to land — a satisfying conclusion. Writer Ben Ripley tackles the (what I like to call) “screenwriter science” with the necessary balance of efficiency and logic, explaining away the sci-fi plot elements as much and as best as possible. Jake Gyllenhaal delivers an intense performance and is supported by sharp direction, cinematography, editing and F/X, and a dynamic original score by Chris Bacon.

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If you’ve seen the trailers, you know the set-up: It’s basically Groundhog Day with a terrorist attack. Gyllenhaal is an Air Force chopper pilot who last recalls flying sorties in Afghanistan but awakens to find himself trapped in what appears to be some kind of time travel pod: a device in a top secret military program that allows him to relive (repeatedly) the last 8 minutes of a doomed Chicago-bound passenger train.

You see, earlier that morning, a bomb exploded on the train, killing everyone on board, and it is believed to be the first of a series of attacks, the second of which is imminent and might involve a dirty bomb detonated somewhere in Chicago. Gyllenhaal’s mission is to identify the terrorist aboard the train so they can avert the upcoming catastrophe.

But then, just when you’re getting into it, the movie stumbles over the Hollywood Hills-sized speed bump of political correctness…

**MAJOR Spoiler Alert**

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Editor’s note: Script reviews of upcoming projects have been around for as long as there’s been an Internet. Therefore it’s no secret that a film can evolve into something quite different from its screenplay. Please keep in mind that this article represents a look at a particular script and not the final product. *some spoilers*

Thanks to political correctness, ours is a rough day for masculinity. Strong men are painted as tyrants, heroic men as ego-centrists, and moral standard bearers as bigots, or worse. This is particularly true in Hollywood, where a purposeful revisionism toward manhood has been under way for decades.

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Not surprisingly, big screen super heroes and mythic figures of valor – male figures – have been among the hardest hit by this revisionism. As a result, the mighty have learned to cry, the powerful to admit vulnerability, and the brave to second-guess themselves, all in an effort to win over the effeminized masses. And this is what makes the screenplay for the upcoming feature film, “THOR,” so wonderful: not because it carries on the ridiculous revisionism, but because it shatters it with a hammer blow from Thor himself.

Through its clear portrayal of an unapologetically strong male who comes to the rescue of female characters, risks his life in the defense of right and wrong, and loves his world (his realm) in an undying fashion, “THOR” promises to revitalize masculinity in 2011 the way “The Expendables” did in 2010.

Early in the screenplay we see Thor as a young man, and a citizen of the realm of Asgard, about to be crowned king of that realm by his father, Odin, who had been King of Asgard for some time. In that moment of passage, Odin’s words to Thor set the tone for the rest of the film — a speech about how responsibility, duty, and honor” are central to the charge Odin gives Thor, and as the screenplay unfolds, they are central to all that Thor does.

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You don’t have to be an art critic to see something tasteless going on at Pratt Institute. Since 1887, this venerable New York institution has been dedicated to educating “artists and creative professionals to be responsible contributors to society.” Yet teachers and administrators at Pratt have been nothing but irresponsible in their recent dealings with a fifth-year drawing student named Steve DeQuattro.

Mr. DeQuattro is a political artist. He uses his background in graphic design to illustrate the dominant political culture of his world. At Pratt, this means creating work that addresses, as he wrote to me, the “growing bureaucracy, higher tuition, new buildings for administration, new offices, and departments, and left-wing bias, all at the expense of the students.”

Steve DeQuattro, "Sustainable Liberalism In a Box" (2011)

As part of his recent work, Mr. DeQuattro has designed a cereal-box-like sculpture that he calls, ironically, “Sustainable Liberalism in a Box” (the graphics are pictured above). He has developed a piece that takes the ubiquitous Apple iPod ad campaign to address abortion. He has designed a sobering five-foot-wide mural that tracks the Democratic Party’s record on race, from Jefferson’s slave-holding days up through the racially charged speeches of Senator Robert Byrd and Vice President Joe Biden.

As a senior in the school, Mr. DeQuattro has been working on this art in preparation for a group show for Pratt’s graduating students, which is scheduled to open on April 23. While his faculty advisor has been supporting him, his peers have not. Mr. DeQuattro says they recently wrote a letter to his professors, calling his work “offensive” and complaining about exhibiting alongside him. Last week, the chair of the fine arts department stepped in to prevent Mr. DeQuattro’s participation alongside the other students in the group show–an unprecedented move in the history of the department, says Mr. DeQuattro, despite the fact that none of his work is pornographic, libelous, or in violation of the laws of free speech. Mr. DeQuattro’s advisor did not return a request for comment.

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If you haven’t seen ABC’s breakout hit Wipeout, then, well, I just feel sorry for you.

You may instead have been watching critically acclaimed, scripted dramas like Big Love, or award winning educational programming on Discovery or National Geographic. Hell, you may have been reading a book or spending quality time with loved ones. If so, you have been wasting your time.

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The premise of Wipeout is fiendishly simple: Everyday schlubs and schlubettes brave the “largest obstacle course in the world” – the last one standing wins $50,000. The course itself changes from week to week, but consistently features various moving apparatuses that don’t merely stand in the way of contestants, but actively seek out and pummel them before tossing them mercilessly into the icy water below. All this while sports broadcaster John Anderson and comedian John Henson deliver running, wise-ass commentary reminiscent of the two geezers from the old Muppet Show.

But a written description could never do justice to the genius of this show, which must be seen to be apprehended. Wipeout is gut-bustingly, laugh-out-loud funny. You will not believe some of the shots these poor bastards take to the head, stomach, and groin, risking humiliation and injury for our amusement. If you’re the squeamish sort, never fear: The course is said to be so padded that, no matter how brutal the wipeouts look on TV, there is virtually no chance for actual bodily harm. If true, that makes me feel a little better about the peals of Mr. Burns-like guffaws it draws out of me and a little less guilty about the warm fuzziness it brings to my otherwise exhausted and icy heart. (more…)

Reality isn’t always very fun. Because of that many people turn to comic books for a little escapism. But there’s escapism and PC indoctrination. Sadly, it appears that DC Comics’ Batman is angling for the latter and not the former. You see, Batman has decided to hire a Muslim to “save France.”

First the reality. The country of France is having serious domestic problems between its immigrant Muslim community and those natural-born, European Frenchmen. Immigrants have been rampaging across the country for several years now. Clashes between police and large groups of rioting Muslim youth have wreaked havoc on the Gallic nation. Violence is all too common — it is woefully common for hundreds of cars to be lit afire in these riots and dozens of arrests to be made. It has the country split and frightened.

It has gotten so bad in France that in some parts of its cities, those parts controlled by marauding gangs of Muslim youths, whites never enter for fear of their lives. Not only that but not even police dare enter these areas. This dangerous situation does not seem anywhere near being solved. In fact, it’s just getting worse.

Now for the fantasy: enter The Batman.

DC Comics recently launched a series called “Batman Incorporated.” Essentially, Bruce Wayne (well-known as Batman’s alter ego to comics fans) is cruising the world setting up a “Batman” for major cities across the globe. These Batman figures, though, will not be vigilantes. They will be sanctioned by whatever local police force is in charge of the area in which the new Batman is operating. In the case of Detective Comics number 12 (Part one) and Batman Annual number 28 (Part two), Bruce Wayne has come to Paris, France to find a “French savior.” (more…)

[Ed. Note: Video is NSFW]

Following my recent article on the dust up over the use of the word “gay” in a joke in the movie “The Dilemma” I engaged in an email discussion with our fearless leader, Big Hollywood editor John Nolte. The question John posed to me was in the new era “everything is deeply offensive to someone” could guys like Sam Kinison, George Carlin and even Saint Lenny make it today?  Could three of the greatest comic voices ever survive in today’s comic environment?

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My first impulse was to say a quick yes, give John a virtual eye roll, and get back to making funny Facebook status updates about the TSA. Then I considered his question a little more deeply. I was too young to have known or seen Lenny Bruce and only got to meet Carlin three times, so I didn’t know him well. Sam, that was different. I got to know him pretty well back in the late seventies in Texas. We stayed friends and even worked together a few times through the years. I’ll get back to Sam in a minute.

Lenny Bruce got arrested a number of time for his language. Back in the sixties few people objected to making ethnic jokes. The word “gay” still meant filled with joy and to most Americans a “fag” was a Lucky Strike. Lenny got in trouble for his scatological references. “Cocksucker” was a big one. Most of the stuff Lenny suffered for seems mild in comparison to today’s cable fodder. However, one of Lenny’s greatest bits, which heavily features the notorious “N” word, couldn’t be broadcast today even on cable. Today it couldn’t even be written in a transcript without serious repercussions. It is however one of the most brilliant bits of comic social commentary ever performed. Dustin Hoffman does it justice in the movie, “Lenny.” Lenny also foreshadowed today’s political correctness in another bit featured in the movie when he substituted the word “blahblah” for “cocksucker.” Quoting Hoffman as Lenny in the movie, “It’s the dirtiest bit I have ever done and they can’t touch me!” (more…)

Give Comedy Central an anal probe. Not because of Jon Stewart’s ongoing tiff with Bernard Goldberg and Fox News, which is just polite, interesting fun. Rather, it has to do with the disturbing news that the creators of the animated sitcom “South Park” were threatened by an apparent jihadist organization called Revolution Muslim over an episode that contains some (mildly) irreverent material about Mohammed – and the cable network caved.

They bent over and censored the show. According to the New York Times arts blog posted this morning, the episode in question, a follow-up to the one that showed the Prophet Mohammed wearing a bear costume, was edited by Comedy Central to avoid further offense. The version that aired Wednesday contained audio bleeps and image blocks (“CENSORED”), apparently inserted by the network, after the Muslim group warned on its website that show creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker “will probably end up like Theo Van Gogh.” This is a reference to the Dutch film maker who was murdered – shot eight times then stabbed, with a note pinned to the knife, like in an Eric Ambler story — on an Amsterdam street after he made a documentary critical of Islam’s treatment of women. Fearing for her safety, Van Gogh’s collaborator, Somalia-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali, was forced to flee the country, and the Dutch Parliament engaged in vigorous debate on the subject of banning certain kinds of speech as “blasphemy.” In other words, they unheroically blamed the victim. (more…)

As we move towards tonight’s granddaddy of all awards shows, I am starting to wonder several things: First, after seeing an editorial in the New York Times and a very drab and unhappy looking professor of women’s studies on Fox News call for just one best actor and best supporting actor award to end sex discrimination in Hollywood, I am starting to think lots of people are reading my blogs. Over a year ago I poked a little fun at the politically correct Screen Actors Guild for not using the word “actress” but still give and award for a “female actor.” The left has now jumped on my bandwagon so maybe there is hope for America and Hollywood!

The second thing that has been on my mind is which brand of political correctness will prevail this year’s Oscars. Will the “I’m voting for ‘Avatar’ because it ridicules America and its military” faction be stronger than the “It’s time a woman won best director” faction?

There are other political considerations in this year’s voting but this got me to thinking about past years and whether or not the nominations and awards really are all about the art. It seems that all sorts of considerations, political, social, personalities and career get mixed in and often the storytelling gets left on the cutting room floor. In the interest of brevity I will limit my comments to the years I can actually remember, which, if I am honest, would rule out several years in the early seventies and mid-eighties. (more…)

The first thing you need to know about “Race,” the new play by David Mamet currently running at the Barrymore Theatre on Broadway, is that it isn’t really about race.  Well, not entirely about race.

The setting is a conference room of a law firm.  Henry Brown (David Alan Grier) and his white partner Jack Lawson (James Spader) are interviewing a prospective client (Richard Thomas).  The client, a wealthy white man, is standing trial for the rape of a black woman.

Two expert attorneys interviewing a prospective client is the perfect device for Mamet to not only inform the audience of the facts at hand and the idiosyncratic personalities of the characters we will spend the next hour and a half of our lives with, but it also serves as a perfect showcase for the playwright’s legendary use of dialogue, timing, over-lapping speech patterns and no-holds-barred language.  For a Mamet addict, this is heroin.

It is a chance to watch a conversation that anyone outside that room was never meant to hear.  And the language the characters use reflect the comfortable and brazen style reminiscent of Glengarry Glen Ross and Speed-the-Plow, the unique vernacular often referred to as “Mamet-Speak.” (more…)

Whenever I watch a retrospective of the Golden Age of Television, I find the shows considerable less entertaining than television I’ve watched as an adult. The Golden Age actually refers to the dramatic programs, sometimes broadcast “live” starring many great Hollywood stars and written by terrific writers.  But I was watching television then from the mean streets of the barrio and usually from a neighbor’s house because we couldn’t yet afford a TV set.  My perspective of the era is skewed in favor of the sitcoms and variety shows that presented an escape from my reality.

What is noteworthy, however, is that much of television during that time period was considered politically incorrect but in a strange way was actually more honest. How can that be, you may ask? The fake domestic bliss of “Father Knows Best,” the racism of “Amos and Andy,” the sexism of “I Love Lucy” and so on. Yet there was a lot more credibility in those shows as entertainment than in the supposedly PC programming that probably started with Norman Lear’s “All in the Family.” (more…)

Actress and author Patsy Ruth Miller.

In 1924 while shooting a film in New York, actress Patsy Ruth Miller (1904-1995) developed a close friendship with author F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda. Frequently, Fitzgerald and Patsy Ruth would go out for dinner while Zelda remained home pleading fatigue. Patsy Ruth eventually realized that Zelda’s fatigue was acute alcoholism.

Observes Patsy Ruth:

It didn’t seem to me that Scott drank more than most of the men I knew. He seemed intoxicated on words, and sometimes we would sit, our after-dinner coffee growing cold, while Scott tried to make me see some fine point of writing, or understand why an emotion had been ill or well portrayed. But often I had the feeling that he was unsure of himself as a writer, that he was afraid of that one day he’d have nothing left to say, and I also had the impression that Zelda did little to build his confidence, even sometimes, in a perverse way, seemed to enjoy his battle with self-doubt.

Fitzgerald’s agonies of self-doubt are common among writers. The fear of having nothing left to say will, inevitably, be paralyzing. And a non-supportive spouse can act as a fatal poison to a vulnerable writer. Most witnesses observe that Fitzgerald was an alcoholic by the time he attended Princeton. There is no doubt that by the time he landed in Hollywood he was a hopeless drunk. It’s a measure of how common was alcoholism in early Hollywood that Patsy Ruth didn’t think Fitzgerald’s intake was all that unusual. (more…)

Almost before the echo of gunfire from the massacre at Ft. Hood had faded, the news media launched a pre-emptive rationalization for the slaughter committed by Muslim traitor Nidal Malik Hasan. To divert attention from the shooter’s inconvenient name (“I cringe that he’s Muslim,” said Newsweek’s Evan Thomas), the talking heads began speculating sympathetically about the fragile mental state of poor frazzled Hasan, who had never seen combat but nonetheless must have “snapped.” After all, surely there could be no rational, ideological motive for the mass murder, which President Obama labeled “incomprehensible.”  And “it’s certainly not about his religion, Islam,” denied Senator Lindsey Graham. Indeed, from listening to such “experts” as irrelevant diet book author Dr. Phil (“this is not a well act”), you’d think that Hasan was the victim, not the fourteen dead* and the nearly thirty seriously wounded that he left in his heartless wake. Even as a mountain of accumulating evidence irrefutably exposed Hasan’s act as premeditated violent jihad against the U.S. military, stubborn left-leaning commentators clung to their theory of mental derangement.

George Clooney in 2005’s  Syriana

Meanwhile the national discussion has segued to our own collective insanity, political correctness, which we are now discovering paved the very way for the massacre. It is this cultural and mental straightjacket that forced a U.S. Army general to say diversity is more important than losing American lives; that compelled our Homeland Security Secretary to reassure the Arab world that we’re doing everything we can to protect against a mythical Muslim backlash; that prevented people from speaking out about red flags that could have saved the lives of everyone murdered at Ft. Hood; and that prevents our officials from even naming the enemy. No such ailment afflicts the jihadists, however, who are celebrating Hasan as a hero, who have no problem acknowledging his ideological intent, and who recognize our political correctness as a self-inflicted fatal wound. Unlike our leaders and media elites, they don’t sap their wartime focus with hand-wringing and navel-gazing. (more…)

In reply to a recent political and cultural controversy involving “Sesame Street,” Sesame Workshop Executive Vice President Miranda Barry wrote:   

Jim Henson, Jon Stone, Frank Oz and others set a witty and silly tone for Sesame Street that our current writers work to maintain despite the demands of political correctness. 

What then, specifically, are the demands of political correctness that Ms. Barry’s taxpayer-funded organization operates under? 

What is Political Correctness? 

For an exacting scholarly analyses of Political Correctness we can turn to Free Congress Foundation & William Lind’s The History of Political Correctness. 

As Mr. Lind distills:

If we look at [Political Correctness] analytically, if we look at it historically, we quickly find out exactly what it is. Political Correctness is cultural Marxism. It is Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms.  (more…)

This past January, London’s Daily Star tabloid announced urgently that an upcoming episode – “the most controversial episode ever”! – of The Simpsons on the Sky1 network “pokes fun at Islam” and “is certain to enrage Muslim fanatics.” As anyone who morbidly follows this sort of thing (as I do) knows, enraging Muslim fanatics is hardly an accomplishment of Halley’s Comet-like rarity. It doesn’t take much: books, cartoons, teddy bears named Mohammad, posters of puppies, piggy banks, a Burger King ice cream swirl and the Nike logo (both of which apparently too closely resembled the Arabic script for “Allah”), are just a few of the recent Western offenses that have sparked their frothing outrage worldwide.

Yet despite the Daily Star’s perversely hopeful tone, there was no violent reaction in the UK from said fanatics, nor was there one in the United States after the episode originally aired here last Thanksgiving weekend (in a grimly ironic twist, the same weekend as the devastating mass murder and mayhem committed in Mumbai by a band of – wait for it – Muslim fanatics, or as the culturally sensitive media preferred to call them at the time, “gunmen”). So why no Muslim fury over The Simpsons? (more…)

As overly serious police procedurals have begun to saturate the primetime network TV schedules, the FOX network has quietly but wisely been exploring alternatives. Introduced a few years ago, the highly popular House varied the formula by moving it to a medical setting, and last year Fringe interestingly revived the delight in adventure characteristic of mid-1960s network TV dramas. 

The new drama Glee (Wednesdays, 9 p.m EDT) represents another approach and a bolder break with current trends–and it may point the way toward a welcome increase in variety among network TV dramas. 

Produced by Ryan Murphy (Nip/Tuck), Glee tells the story of high school teacher Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison) a married high school teacher in his thirties, who wants to restore McKinley High School’s glee club to its former glory, achieved when he was a member during his high school years and the club won the nationals.  (more…)

I became a “Sopranos” fan about three or four years after the show first aired. I thought it was great. I went back to rent the first four seasons to catch up and thought they were great too. I would write reviews of each show for fun and follow certain blogs. One theme of the blogs was how the show “changed” and it was no longer as good. I did not understand what they were talking about. I figured they were over thinking the show.

Welcome to my first reaction to Season 3 of “Mad Men.” I was surprised they skipped seven or eight months in time. The opening flashback scene of Don Draper’s childhood was linked to Betty’s pregnancy, but seemed perfunctory. They have a big firing scene about the head of accounts who had never been on the show before. He must have been hired after “Duck Phillips” was fired. But this made no sense, because it means the Brits would have already approved it and been involved. Pete Campbell’s wife undergoes a personality transplant and is suddenly a power person. The usually sharp eyed Betty misses the meaning of the Stewardess’s pin her daughter finds, as Draper pretends it is a gift. (more…)

Is it possible for a film to be both a brilliant, exciting piece of entertainment, and also a completely illogical piece of heavy-handed political propaganda? It is, if the new science-fiction oddity “District 9” is any indication.

Led by a stunning performance by Sharlto Copley, who is not only unknown to audiences outside South Africa, but who had never acted in anything but short films before, “District 9” blasts through its running time with a furious mix of action and satire. Yet its central plotline, focusing on what might happen if space aliens approached Johannesburg and were then held in a segregated district for nearly three decades, is riddled with holes and bangs viewers over the head with its allegories of racial discrimination harkening back to the evil days of that nation’s apartheid policies.

The film kicks off with a fast-paced blend of fake newscasts and faux-documentary footage shot by a camera crew that’s been assigned to cover a mass evacuation of aliens from their home in the city’s District 9. The aliens had come in a giant mother ship back in 1982, but no one has ever figured out why they arrived and left the ship to hover eternally over Johannesburg. (more…)