The arrival of a serious film about a serious conservative presents liberal reviewers with a quandary. When the film trashes the conservative, that’s great – the slander in and of itself is good for at least a star on its own, and if the boom mikes aren’t looming in the frame and the actors don’t forget their lines you’re guaranteed at least a three star review if only in the name of socialist solidarity.

But if the movie, as some say happened here, refuses to take a position on its subject, then there’s a problem for the liberal reviewer. As we shall see, they tend to handle it by simply inserting their own limousine liberal insights into the review. Somewhere, sometime, someone must have lied to them and told them that the world gives a damn about the political views of guys whose job it is to discourse upon movies that feature singing chipmunks, space robots and/or Ashton Kutcher.

No one is really sure about what might happen in the third theoretically possible situation. It will be interesting to see how liberal reviewers respond if Hollywood ever makes a major movie biography about a prominent conservative that views him or her in a positive light.

The reviews for “The Iron Lady” are mixed, with Rotten Tomatoes giving it a 55 percent score by the critics.  Not surprisingly, the critics are having a tough time sticking to the substance. Many of them just can’t resist taking a whack at her – as if she had not spent her career being hit harder by better.

Roger Ebert, a reflexive leftist whose pinko opinions usually saturate his movie reviews, wrote a thoughtful review here. He objected not to the opinion the film held of its subject, but that the producers seemed too timid to offer any opinion at all:

Was she a monster? A heroine? The movie has no opinion. She was a fact. You leave the movie having witnessed it. Whatever your feelings were about Thatcher were before you saw it, you now have some images to accompany it.

Love him or hate him, that’s some sharp writing. If true, it represents a valid criticism and is the kind of keen insight one looks to a reviewer to express. But, of course, Ebert could not resist a long digression into lefty/peacenik silliness over Thatcher’s steadiness in the face of Argentine aggression in the Falklands which then morphs into a lament for her heartlessness:

Thatcher held office for an unprecedented three terms, bitterly divided Great Britain, and led her nation during the Falklands War, which seemed to be largely an exercise in hubris on both sides. Before the war (and now), no one frankly gave a damn about the Falkland Islands, and Thatcher’s foreign policy amounted to: “They’re ours and you bloody well can’t have them.” For this brave troops on both sides were killed, and those who cared to could deceive themselves that there was one small spot of foreign soil that, as far as Thatcher was concerned, would be forever British. (Footnote: The British didn’t consider it foreign.)

Of course, Argentina started the war by invading the Falklands, over which it had disputed Britain’s claim since 1833. You can’t say they didn’t wait long enough before taking action. And if Argentina mounted a military invasion, what could Thatcher do? She was compelled to defend the islands. The loved ones on either side who lost someone in that war must have been hard-pressed to understand why death was useful or necessary.

That wasn’t Thatcher’s concern. In a striking scene that takes place in her increasingly senile old age, she declares that ideas are more important to her than feelings. That seems to have been a governing principle in her life, allowing her to look with apparently limited concern at unemployment, hunger and homelessness on the domestic front.

Ebert’s feelings about British policy of the 1980s really aren’t the issue – we just want to know if “The Iron Lady” is any good. But like all liberals, Ebert seems to think we’re dying for his insights on politics when the important question is whether we should drop $40 for seats and popcorn to watch this flick.

Lesser reviewers likewise join in the Thatcher-bashing. You’ll be shocked to learn that Karina Longworth of the Village Voice resented Thatcher not being presented with horns and a pointy tail. Variety accepts the unexamined premises of the community it serves, showing why it is Hollywood’s own Pravda when reviewer Leslie Felperin fumes that “[m]uch is made of how Thatcher broke through the glass ceilings of gender and class on a personal level; rather less is said about how her policies disadvantaged the poor.”

While it’s no shock that Slate’s Dana Stevens thinks that it was Thatcher’s “policies of economic deregulation and union-busting that dismantled Britain’s social safety net,” I expect that British subjects taxed into poverty to support the bloated behemoth of cradle-to-grave socialism on that sinking island would be shocked to hear about this alleged “dismantling.”

Cole Smithey (“The Smartest Film Critic in the World”) sugarcoats it by labeling Thatcher one “of the Right’s most reprehensible examples of absolute power corrupting absolutely,” raising the important questions, “Who is Cole Smithey, and why should I give a rat’s ass what some hipster doofus with a website and a subscription to The Nation thinks?”

He also asserts that “Thatcher contributed to the world’s current economic collapse with a cunning brand of daring cruelty that defies logic and reason,” forgetting that the lefty Labor Party had some small part in running Britain after Thatcher stepped down in 1990. I particularly enjoyed his characterization of how “Thatcher’s heavy-handed military response in the Falklands rightly paints her as a warmonger.”

He seems to have forgotten that Argentina invaded the Falklands, not vice versa, but then he seems to have grown up in an age where wussy school administrators suspend both the kid who starts the fight and the one who fights back. Smithey opines that “[h]istory will not be kind to Margaret Thatcher,” a threat I would find more chilling if Smithey’s comments betrayed any familiarity with history.

With all the hyperventilating about the subject of the film, it’s hard to get a straight answer to the only question we really want to hear these critics answer – should we pay to see the movie?  We still don’t really know.

Roger Ebert has spend the last few years insulting, degrading, offending and demeaning anyone in his once loyal audience who dares to disagree with his obnoxious, leftist politics.

No one has worked harder to destroy the enormous amount of goodwill they built up over the decades, and the “hiatus” of “At the Movies” might just be those chickens coming home to roost.

IndieWire:

Last week, Indiewire reported that the”Ebert Presents At the Movies,” the PBS film review show launched by Roger Ebert earlier this year, faced a few promising options to help salvage it from financial trouble. While those possibilities haven’t necessarily gone away, Ebert and his wife and co-producer, Chaz Ebert, need more time. As a result, as the seminal critic posted on his blog on Wednesday night, the program will go on hiatus at the end of December. “We held off as long as possible, but had to give notice today,” Ebert wrote. “It was a sad but necessary moment of realism.”

Since launching in January with co-hosts Christy Lemire and Ignatiy Vishevetsky in January, “At the Movies” has recorded 50 episodes. Lemire and Vishevetsky also contribute written criticism to other outlets on a regular basis, Lemire to the AP and Vishevetsky to MUBI and the Chicago Reader. “We have co-hosts whose chemistry has ignited, and who provide two definitely different viewpoints, which is the idea,” Ebert wrote. He concluded:

“We hope our status will be brief. You have told us you like the show. And we now have options. A touching number of viewers offered to send us money directly. One of the avenues we may take is a Kickstarter campaign, as you suggested. We will let you know as soon as that is worked out.”

Man, if a leftist can’t make it on public television…

Aren’t these the kinds of things that happen when 70% of the country thinks you’re a jerk?

Movies, says Loder, film critic for Reason.com, are “fresh material to me, in a way that music somehow isn’t. It’s tangible. It’s up on the screen.”

Loder’s movie commentaries – witty, wise and full of admiration on the rare occasions when the stars align to yield a great film – can now be held in your hand thanks to a new collection.

“The Good, the Bad and the God-Awful: 21^st Century Movie Reviews” lets Loder opine on Hollywood’s recent movie releases. Loder slams “Australia,” praises “In Bruges” and puts more journalistic muscle into his take down of Michael Moore’s “Sicko” than most of his peers.

“Some movies are so appalling you wonder what went wrong … who said, ‘this is really good, let’s put it out,’” he says.

“The Good, the Bad and the God-Awful” compiles reviews into themes – like Schlockbusters (expensive flops), The Land That Laughs Forgot (comic duds) and Funtime (hilarious romps). He even dedicates an entire chapter to Nicolas Cage (“one of the great without-a-net highfliers of our time”). Loder may be most fond of Looking for Love, the section dedicated to great films still searching for an appreciative audience – like indie darling “The Brothers Bloom.”

Loder’s prose is prickly when the situation demands it, but he’s not a curmudgeon taking undue pleasure excoriating mediocre films. He also insists he’s a movie reviewer, not a film critic.

The latter group studies film as an art form, something he simply doesn’t have the time to do at this point in his impressive journalism career. Each movie scribe serves a purpose, although he suggests die-hard film fans should read material from each camp.

“If you’re really into movies you want both … you’ll want all the resonance you get from a film critic,” citing Dave Kehr and David Thomson as two personal favorites.

Loder contributes to Reason.com, a Libertarian site which reflects his own political attitudes. Just don’t expect him to interject politics into a cinematic treatise on “Transformers” or “Sherlock Holmes.”

“I try not to look at movies through the lens of politics,” he says, bemoaning how famed film critic Roger Ebert’s recent work too often does just that with predictably left-leaning results. But when the films demand a more thorough examination, like Moore’s aforementioned health care documentary, he won’t hesitate to put the film to a lie detector test.

Pop culture junkies may know Loder best for his lengthy tenure with MTV, but he also served as an editor with Rolling Stone magazine and wrote for Time, Details and Esquire magazines. He’s saddened to see so many movie and music writers heading to the unemployment lines these days, and he realizes they may not be able to make a new name for themselves on the cluttered Internet. Still, the best of the best eventually rise to the top.

“It’s a very difficult time, a transitional time in media,” he says, and he isn’t sure how it will all shake out eventually.

He’s far more certain that nothing he can say or type will dissuade a Twi-Hard from camping out to see the latest “Twilight” feature. But he hopes his prose can have a modest boost for films which could use a little appreciation.

“I try to review movies that aren’t gonna get an national release … maybe [movie reviewers] can help them get one,” he says, citing unsung gems like “The Brothers Bloom,” “Zodiac” and “Sunshine.”

Of the current crop of new films, Loder singles out “Like Crazy,” the buzzed about romance co-starring Felicity Jones.

“It’s so well done and edited, but how many people will see it?” he asks.

He admits it’s more fun to slam an awful movie than praise a neo-classic, but ultimately a movie reviewer’s job is to make suggestions that help the reader juggle schedules accordingly.

“You have to winnow it down somehow … and try not to waste your time on movies that are dreadful,” he says. And he hopes “The Good, the Bad and the God-Awful” can help.

The Web may rule in 2011, but there’s still something potent in having a book in hand to guide your movie selections.

Even the best web-published reviews are “ephemeral … they drift off into the digital ether,” he says.

Film bloggers rule, while veteran movie scribes are losing their gigs left and right from mainstream publications.

Perhaps that’s why Ebert’s rebooted review show, “At the Movies,” is struggling to find critical funding to keep it on the air. The show, which launched in January, might not survive if its financial situation doesn’t improve. Ebert shared the sobering news via his web site:

“Unless we find an angel, our television program will go off the air at the end of its current season,” the veteran critic says.

Ebert claims it isn’t a ratings issue. But if the show garnered a healthy audience, why wouldn’t someone rush in with their checkbook open?

Conservatives might blame Ebert’s alienating political views and angry tweets against a hospitalized Rush Limbaugh last year as reasons why the new show is struggling. More likely, there simply isn’t a market for review content when people can already go to YouTube and see spunky online critics weigh in on the films of the day.

The new “At the Movies” is co-hosted by Associated Press film critic Christy Lemire and Chicago Reader’s Ignatiy Vishnevestsky. Ebert serves as a producer on the program.

John Hanlon:

“Compared to the great movie stars of the past, modern actors are handicapped by the fact that their films are shot in color.” [Roger Ebert] adds, “In the long run, that will rob most of them of the immortality that was obtained even by second-tier stars of the black-and-white era.”

Ebert’s not the first one to make the argument that stars from the classic era have an advantage when it comes to becoming immortal due to being shot and remembered in black and white, as opposed to color. But in a word…

….this is preposterous.

Do we think of Marlon Brando, Paul Newman or Steve McQueen in black and white? What about Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Judy Garland, Kirk Douglas, Charles Bronson, or Gene Kelly? How about Clint Eastwood? Good heavens, James Dean became immortal after starring in only three films — all of them filmed in color.

Obviously the full context of Ebert’s thoughts can’t be included in a single book review, but like I said, I’ve heard this argument elsewhere and think it’s an excuse made by those trying to get ahead of the fact that the films that represent their values won’t live as long as those that represent age-old truths.

What becomes immortal is that which is eternal: beauty, truth, and the ennobling of the human spirit. Thirty years after his death, John Wayne consistently remains the most popular movie star in the hundred year-old history of cinema and we do not dream of him in black and white. We dream of John Wayne in blazing Technicolor, framed by the red sand and buttes that make up Monument Valley. But it’s what John Wayne stands for that makes him immortal, not the film stock that recorded it.

And now I’m going to be accused of being simple-minded as though my example of John Wayne is somehow simple-minded.

Yes, well, let’s talk about the themes of “The Searchers,” ”Hondo,”  and “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.” How about the themes Steve McQueen explored or Brando or Newman. The truth is quite simple: It is the rich thematic complexity of “black and white” films that helps to explain their immortality. “Casablanca,’ “Citizen Kane,” “Stagecoach,” “The Sands of Iwo Jima,” “The Ox-Bow Incident,” “The Best Years of Our Lives” and their hundreds of  counterparts live on forever because unlike too many of today’s “color” films, they explore how complicated doing the right thing can be as compared to their contemporary simpletons who explore the dull, one-dimensional thinking that goes with narcissism, nihilism, and hollow “edginess” – standing for nothing instead of standing for something.

In 200 years, people will be trying to decode color films such as “Bullitt,” “The Outlaw Josey Wales,” “The Magnificent Seven,” “Death Wish,” and “The Long Hot Summer.”  In 20 years George Clooney’s career (thus far) will already have bored itself into oblivion. 

What makes a movie star an immortal has nothing to do with cinematography and everything to do with how they make us feel and what they tell us. If it’s timeless, so are they. If it’s not … see ya.

Thousands of years before anyone ever dreamed of the motion picture, people kept stories alive by telling and retelling them around the campfire. The stories that mattered survived. The ones that didn’t were forgotten.  

Other than how that story is delivered, nothing’s changed.

The arguments typically end up more theoretical than reality based. In one famous instance, the 1994 Oliver Stone film “Natural Born Killers” supposedly inspired a young couple to kill a person and leave another paralyzed.

More recently, celebrities like Elizabeth Banks, Roger Ebert, Patton Oswalt and Michael Moore twisted the blame game for partisan reasons, using their Twitter accounts to accuse Sarah Palin of inspiring the Tucson shooter without a shred of evidence.

Now, we have a direct tie between an anti-war film and the murder of two U.S. soldiers. So … will the media cover the story? Will it change how the film industry treats the subject matter? And will Miss Banks and co. rush to Tweet their condemnation of the movie in question?”

Yes, I’m being rhetorical on all three fronts, but let’s plow on all the same.

“Redacted” by Brian de Palma (“The Untouchables,” “Scarface”) cast U.S. soldiers as racist, violent thugs. The film flopped in spectacular fashion, earning $65,388 for its entire theatrical run. Apparently, audiences weren’t too keen on seeing the men and women of the Armed Forces smeared.

But “Redacted” impacted Arid Uka, a Balkan Muslim who saw the film and went on to kill two U.S. Air Force servicemen in March. Uka told a judge this week he was inspired by “the movie’s graphic depiction of U.S. soldiers raping a girl in Iraq,” says The Daily Caller citing a BBC report.

The men killed were Senior Airman Nicholas Alden, age 25, and Airman 1st Class Zachary Cuddeback, aged 21.

The Daily Caller (full disclosure – I freelance for the publication) not only reported on the situation today but reached out to “Redacted” producer Jason Kliot for comment. What Kliot says is both stunning in its shallowness and so nakedly partisan even Ed Schultz might balk at saying it.

“I’m terribly sorry to hear that, but I don’t understand how my movie would impel anyone to commit murder,” he said. “I don’t see how people would be made to commit acts of violence [after watching “Redacted”], any more than they would for watching Fox News.”

Will de Palma be asked to comment by the press? How about Mark Cuban, who also helped produce the film?

Ultimately, the price of having artistic freedom means writers and directors can say what they want to say via film, television and music. But it sure would help if those same artists gave serious thought to the ramifications of their content, especially material specifically designed to impugn a population.

Before knowing for sure if alcohol contributed to the awful car crash that killed “Jackass” star Ryan Dunn and two others, Roger Ebert tweeted the following yesterday afternoon:

“Friends don’t let jackasses drink and drive.”

The blowback was immediate.

Today, Ebert backed off and somewhat apologized:

I don’t know what happened in this case, and I was probably too quick to tweet. That was unseemly. I do know that nobody has any business driving on a public highway at 110 mph, as some estimated — or fast enough, anyway, to leave a highway and fly through 40 yards of trees before crashing. That is especially true if the driver has had three shots and three beers. Two people were killed. What if the car had crashed into another car?

There’s a time and place for this discussion. No doubt about that. But before stepping onto your sanctimonius soapbox, it’s a good idea to know the facts.

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.

The film’s interesting camerawork and editing keep it from being an entire waste of time, but ultimately “How I Won the War” is only half as entertaining as its critiques, as average films sometimes are.

Ebert attacked the film’s advertising campaign, which asserted the movie as a work of art simply because it “starred” an artist. He wrote of the film: “Simply by appearing in this film, Lennon has cloaked it in his personal immunity. We know Lennon isn’t phony. Therefore, the movie can’t be phony, right? Wrong.”

Ebert’s critiques of the film rightly include the film’s highly accented (and thus, barely intelligible) dialogue, British in-jokes, and, more importantly, general carelessness of subject. He concludes his review saying, “I got no impression from this film that Lester really, personally, cares very strongly one way or the other about war. It was only a currently fashionable subject, a good excuse to make a movie. Especially if John Lennon would be in it.”

Crowther doesn’t hold back either, criticizing the film’s handling of the cruelty of war, and the offensive way that a Nazi officer passes over the “inconsequentials” of the holocaust. He concludes, “I am afraid Mr. Lester has not added a single discouragement of war, but simply a little discouragement toward patronizing too-pretentious films.”

The lesson from this: Story is everything. Being politically correct counts for next to nothing at the box office.

The Cannes Film Festival Board of Directors is unwilling to lay out a set of excuses for director Lars von Trier’s pro-Nazi comments yesterday. If memory serves this is the first time Cannes has ever declared “persona non grata” a director of astonishingly dull and pretentious films only liars and masochists claim to have watched all the way through*:

CANNES, France – Danish director Lars Von Trier was expelled from the Cannes film festival on Thursday after remarks he made at a news conference, apparently in jest, in which he declared himself a Nazi and Hitler sympathizer.

“The festival’s board of directors … profoundly regrets that this forum has been used by Lars Von Trier to express comments that are unacceptable, intolerable, and contrary to the ideals of humanity and generosity that preside over the very existence of the festival,” the festival said in a statement.

“The board of directors firmly condemns these comments and declares Lars Von Trier a persona non grata at the Festival de Cannes, with effect immediately.”

*”Breaking the Waves” is actually kinda brilliant.

If you remember, on Sunday night, film critic Roger Ebert was all excited after Salon’s Joan Walsh and NBC’s David Gregory (two people with racial issues of their own) called Newt Gingrich out for the hideous crime of labeling our failed food stamp president the “Food Stamp President.”

Here’s his tweet:

So “food stamp President” is “coded racism,” but when you fast-forward a mere couple of days to today you’ll find Roger Ebert publishing at his Chicago Sun-Times Journal a report written by Chaz Ebert that contains a lot of excuse-making for a famous director of pretentious films trashing Israel and proudly declaring he’s a Nazi:

[Von Trier] said he grew up thinking he was a Jew, and he was very happy to be a Jew. Then he discovered he was a Nazi, and that also gave him some pleasure. “Yes, I am a Nazi!”, he declared.

While his cast (Charlotte Gainsbourg, Udo Kier and John Hurt) looked on in horror, Kirsten Dunst tapped him on the shoulder and whispered to him to moderate his comments. He looked at her in confusion and said, “But this has a point, it will be okay.”

Then he proceeded to dig himself in deeper, saying that he understood Hitler, and that he could sympathize with his being down in that bunker toward the end. He continued, “Well that doesn’t mean I have anything against Jews, except Susanne Bier (Danish filmmaker, “In a Better World”).

“Well, Israel is a pain in the ass …

“Okay, I am a Nazi…

“Nazis tend to do things on a grander scale…

“Perhaps we can have a Final Solution for journalists….”

With that moderator Henri Behar called a halt to the conference because it was clear at that point that Von Trier just could not stop himself.

That’s some fine reporting on Chaz Ebert’s part, more information than we received from the video clip we posted earlier. But in the following paragraph, Chaz Ebert doesn’t condemn these objectively outrageous and offensive remarks. Instead, excuses are made on Von Trier’s behalf:

It is widely known that Von Trier suffers from bouts of depression, and “Melancholia” obviously reflected his state of mind. Ironically, before the declaration about Hitler and Nazism, Von Trier looked happier and more relaxed than he had at any of his previous press conferences at Cannes. He announced that he has broken through his depression and he has stopped drinking.

Leftists don’t have values, only tactics.

What kind of man hears coded racism in the words “food” and “stamps” on Sunday but publishes excuses for pro-Nazi/anti-Israel remarks on Wednesday?

Comments are open…