Well, I certainly learned that there aren’t many opera fans among the Big Hollywood readership.

The political intent of an opera that romanticizes Chou en Lai of Red China confirms the surrender of all American Arts to Marxism.

From Hollywood to “The Met,” from sheer entertainment to the pastimes of the privileged, the Elite of the Ivy League find themselves in the driver’s seat.

Whoever has gotten to the White House

In the last twenty years

Has  either an Ivy League diploma

Or a Rhodes Scholarship.

These enlightened despots,

As Voltaire might call them,

Have dragged America into slavish indebtedness to Red China.

According to “The Progressives” in both political parties, Sarah Palin needn’t apply for The Presidency.

Why Not?

She is blatantly and unforgivably not among “The Chosen”! (more…)

Many on the left would have you believe that the world hates America, but I humbly disagree.  An alternative school of thought–one to which I subscribe–is that the world’s left hates America.  That’s a lot of people, to be sure, but they don’t speak for everyone.  Also, saying the world “hates” us is probably a bit too strong; more accurate would likely be that the world is “super jealous” of America.  They’re not jealous of everything, of course, but it gets under the “world community’s” collective skin that we have have enough wealth and freedom to build and play with all the toys we want and enough power to clean up human garbage around the globe whenever we damn well please.  Needless to say, a country spending billions upon billions on technology to create the most bad-ass military on the planet will not sit well with your typical pacifist lefty “citizen of the world.”  But your typical pacifist lefty “citizen of the world” does not your average superhero movie fan make.

The Hollywood Reporter informs that Marvel Studios and Paramount have elected to keep “Captain America” in the title of their upcoming blockbuster in all but three countries (see below).  The Reporter notes that the decisions to keep the U.S. title were likely made based on the fact that Captain America is a universally recognized brand.  That’s true, but so is the United States of America.  America is the world’s sole military super power and Captain America is known for being a patriotic symbol.  No matter what you think of this nation of ours, if there are some bad guys who need their teeth kicked in, the world knows where to turn.  In other words, if it’s called “Captain America,” you know we mean business.

Here’s to hoping Hollywood did the American hero–and now the world–justice.

Captain America hits theaters July 22nd.

From the Hollywood Reporter:

Marvel Studios and Paramount’s Captain America: The First Avenger will keep its US title in all but three countries: Russia, Ukraine and South Korea.

Though it is common for American blockbusters to feature less US-focused titles in foreign markets, Paramount largely decided against the alterations for Captain America, and instead gave foreign countries the choice of two titles, Captain America: The First Avenger or The First Avenger.

Interestingly, most international distributors believed the franchise name was so identifiable that not using “Captain America” in the title could risk losing ticket sales. (more…)

Phil Rosenthal is the co-creator of one of the most successful family sitcoms of all time – the nine-season ratings juggernaut “Everybody Loves Raymond.” The show won the Emmy for Best Comedy Series twice along the way, and is still playing in reruns in nearly 150 countries around the globe.

But just when Rosenthal could have kicked back and counted his money the rest of his life, a Russian television network came calling and invited him to re-create “Raymond,” adapting it for Russian TV audiences. Russian TV had never featured a sitcom before (go figure), so Rosenthal saw it as an intriguing challenge and jumped in.

—–

He was smart enough to bring a camera crew with him, filming a humorous documentary about the process and surprising ups and downs involved for the new documentary “Exporting Raymond,” which opens in limited release today and expands over the next few weeks. It’s a funny film, of course, but also fascinating for its insights into Russian culture and how an American phenomenon has to change to be understood by a foreign, and formerly enemy, nation.

Rosenthal sat down for a one-on-one interview with me recently to discuss his film and the history of “Everybody Loves Raymond,” offering up both amusing anecdotes and surprising revelations along the way.

Q: How did you first meet Ray Romano?

(more…)

Containing one of the most instantly recognizable soundtracks of any offering to come out of that big budget-era of widescreen musicals we saw through the 60’s and into the 70’s, director Norman Jewison’s classic “Fiddler on the Roof” (1971) has arrived on Blu-ray for the very first time in a 40th anniversary, two-disc edition that includes a splendid transfer and a host of terrific extras. Filmed mostly on-location and anchored by Topol’s unforgettable and iconic performance as Tevye, a village milkman in pre-revolutionary Russia, “Fiddler” tells a thematically sprawling tale that carries with it an emotional wallop which lingers (along with the tunes) long after the credits roll.

“Tradition” is not only the title of one of the film’s best known songs, but also the story’s over-arching theme that plays out as we watch the beautiful and time-honored Jewish faith and culture put to the ultimate balancing test (like a fiddler on the roof) due to unrelenting social change and terrible political circumstances. In the form of three different suitors for his three cherished daughters, Tevye will — with varying levels of success — be forced to accept circumstances outside of what he’s always known in matters of love and marriage. These personal conflicts, however, pale when compared to the  antisemitic attacks launched by the Russian government that always threaten to undermine the tranquility of Tevye’s modest village — a dot on a map filled with colorful characters just looking to eke out a quiet life, worship in their own way, and be left alone.

With such timeless songs as “Matchmaker, Matchmaker,” “Sunrise, Sunset,” and ”If I Were a Rich Man,” along with composer John Williams’ toe-tapping score, a screenplay that keeps the story turning, and sure-handed direction by Jewison, the 181 minutes simply fly by. Topol is such a bear of paternal warmth and the people around him so accessible (though nicely flawed), that you never want to to leave them. The film’s greatest success, though, is that right along with Tevye and his family and neighbors, you feel their crushing sense of loss as political and social winds — even in those rare instance when it’s for the better — undermine the village’s serenity.

(more…)

The venerable Marvel comic book character Captain America has been, well, “Captain America” since 1941. But as of the 2011 release of the new movie “Captain America: The First Avenger,” he won’t be Captain American anymore. At least as far as the film’s  title goes for its overseas release, anyway.

Apparently, Hollywood thinks a character called “Captain America” is too gauche for foreigners to handle. And so he’s to go nameless in such places as Russia, Ukraine, and South Korea. Once again, Hollywood shows that it’s ashamed of America, its traditions, and culture.

This film already raised eyebrows for patriots when the director said that his Captain America wouldn’t be that into America.  Last July, director Joe Johnston claimed that the Captain America in his film would not be a “jingoistic American flag-waver.” Johnston’s anti-American sentiment foreshadows the dropping of the character’s name from the title for overseas distribution. (more…)

MTV’s Kurt Loder:

There’s no law that an action movie has to make sense — it can just be all action. “Salt” is a demonstration of this. However, the best action movies consist of more than nonstop frenzy, and they can sell their wildest implausibilities — James Bond with his jet packs and underwater tuxedos, Jason Bourne still alive in the sea after taking two bullets in the back — with a spirited blend of style, pace and personality. In its indifference to such elements, “Salt” is a demonstration of how important they are.

The story does kick off with a clever hook. Top CIA agent Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) is in the middle of grilling a Russian intelligence operator named Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski) when he tells her that the Agency has been infiltrated by a Russian mole, whose ambitious mission it is to destroy the United States. Salt asks Orlov the mole’s name. “Salt,” he says.

Two of Salt’s fellow agents have been watching this interrogation, and they’re naturally startled. One of them, Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber), says he’s certain that Evelyn can’t be a mole. The other, however, a hardass named Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor), isn’t so sure. Salt herself doesn’t stick around to explain — she takes off. All kinds of pursuers leap into action, and as the chase proceeds, we marvel at her ability to dispatch hordes of heavily armed soldiers (all terrible shots) and her easy access to guns, chemicals and high-end designer clothing. (At one point in her flight, attired in a flowing fur-trimmed cape and matching hat, she looks like a fugitive from a fashion shoot.) She has also brought along a venomous pet spider. Well, her husband’s pet spider. (more…)

The script of the upcoming remake of the infamous America-conquered-by-Commies movie Red Dawn (1984) raises an intriguing question – can Hollywood actually still produce a movie where it takes America’s side?  The answer is “Sort of.” 

“Wolverines!”

There are some welcome ideological surprises lurking within the script’s 104 pages.  Shockingly, Hollywood actually seems to accept the premise that if the Chinese and Russkies invade the United States we are justified in fighting back with hot lead instead of teach-ins and choruses of Kumbayah.  But the script also displays a bit of the moral illiteracy we’ve come to expect from the Hollywoodoids – naturally, the script has to imply that we kinda brought the invasion on ourselves and that resisting tyranny somehow means becoming just as bad as the tyrants.

The re-imagining of Red Dawn will be released later this year and does very little actual re-imagining of the original’s simple plot.  We first meet some all-American teenagers.  They play high school football, party, and talk and look like CW series cast members – not real bright, but pretty (the pretty part in the script).  For some reason, the Soviets (replaced here by the Chinese with a Russian assist) invade America and seize their hometown.  Their town’s tactical significance appears to be that invading it advances the plot.  Anyway, the teenagers go up into the mountains, score some of the firearms our prescient Founders ensured we’d always have the right to keep and bear despite the best efforts of those gun control-loving wusses, and launch a bloody guerrilla war against the invaders.  (more…)

(more…)

(more…)

So while chuckleheads like Jesse Jackson and Senator Roland Burris hilariously blame George Bush for Chicago losing the 2016 Olympics, whiny columnists like Mike Lupica are up in arms that conservatives might be gloating over President Obama’s big screw-up. Apparently laughing at all this is somehow anti-American, because Obama is our President, and he was doing this for all of us.

You know… kind of like when Bush was trying win a war in Iraq – and all those left wingers stood behind him.

And that’s my first point: The right has every right to gloat over Obama’s humiliation, because, thankfully, NO ONE DIED. Unlike, say during the Iraq war, where, whenever there was a roadside bombing, the progressives did their own special victory dance – using the consequences of war to gloat over an embattled president and an unpopular country. I didn’t hear much of the smarmy press calling them out. (more…)

My old Communist girlfriend was an exotically beautiful actress whose parents had emigrated from Russia and settled in New York City. Nola went to Party meetings and kept up with the correct way to think and behave by reading The Daily Worker. This was back in the fifties. In those days, the bulldog edition of the next morning’s Times, Tribune, News, Mirror and even the Worker would appear at the news stand on the corner of Seventh Avenue and Forty Second Street shortly before midnight. Actors, anxious to read tomorrows review of the latest Broadway play would be waiting there, along with entertainers curious to see if they’d made it into Walter Winchell in the Mirror or Ed Sullivan in the News.

Beautiful Nola was anxious to read the review of the new Off-Broadway show she’d just opened in. The Times and Trib would be covering it but Nola wanted to see what The Daily Worker had to say. Her face fell when she read it. The play was a socially relevant drama, of course, about the struggles of the Negro. She had chosen a dazzling white suit for her wardrobe. The critic said that this was unconscious racism on her part. She had, in fact, picked the suit because it made her boobs look good.  (more…)

From the riots and chaos of the 1960s to the anti-war rallies of the Bush years, the American Left’s revolution has been widely televised. In fact, the Big Three and Dead Tree Press played a major part in that revolution. From negative field reporting during the Vietnam War to negative reporting on McCain/Palin and the beatification and election of Barack Obama, the MSM has been marching in lockstep and waving the banner for the American Left all the way. RatherGate, anyone? Doesn’t get much more lockstep than a reporter trying to subvert a presidential election to the Left’s advantage.

But there’s another revolution underway in America today, and you sure as hell won’t see it televised or reported on by our new fourth branch of government. It’s not in their interest to do so. Nothing new there. For a long time now, political corruption has been rampant in the Leftist ‘mainstream’ media. In 1998, Matt Drudge made his big mark breaking the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which Newsweek had buried to protect President Clinton. Think Obama’s Tiger Beat would have done that for Bush? (more…)

So if there`s one thing we learned recently, it`s that it`s not nuclear war that can wipe everything off the map. It`s the death of a pop star. Think about the things that mattered back in June: Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, cap and trade, that insipid health care infomercial – and ask yourself what happened in regard to any of those issues in the last few weeks.

A. Nothing?
B. Anything?
C. A lot?

The answer is C, but we just didn`t see it.

We know that some of our brave troops died fighting for freedom. Protestors in Iran were violently silenced too, fighting for a glimmer of what we have. You can also be certain that the opportunity to actively undermine fascism in Iran has passed – our President choosing “wait and see” over “hope and change.” He also snuck a few hundred pages of climate-bill baloney past us in the dead of night. (more…)

On June 3rd Sara Carter and the Washington Times reported, “Al-Qaeda Eyes Anthrax Attack On U.S from Mexico.” The story is based on an Al-Qaeda recruitment video first broadcast back in February on Al Jazeera.  In it, Kuwaiti dissident Abdullah al-Nafisi tells a roomful of people that Al-Qaeda is currently casing the U.S. border with Mexico to see how they could smuggle weapons through border tunnels and into the U.S. (Relax fellas, you don’t need to crawl through tunnels. I can show you whole unguarded roads that go across the river and into the U.S. … unless you really like crawling.)

[Click to enlarge]

Border Ranchers and Texas Law Enforcement have been warning of such a threat for years. For a long while now, ranchers and sheriffs have been reporting incidents of Middle Eastern human smuggling. For some Texas ranchers, stumbling upon Somalis, Eritreans, Bangladeshis or Iraqis is no longer surprising. Zapata County Sheriff Sigfried Gonzales had to reach out to the Israeli Mossad in order to identify Jihadist mercenary patches that were sewn into the inside of clothing recovered in the Texas brush.  (more…)

Disclaimer: What you are about to read is fiction. It is a story about peace. Peace at any cost.

THE WORLD TODAY: A News Summary

May 2009

BONN (EU News) – The current CSPEU administration has decided to increase productivity by lowering the age that children are required to enter the workforce from nine to eight years of age. The EU Vice Minister for the Interior states the lowering of the work age is due to an increased shortage of youthful workers. “It’s a reflection of the ongoing fighting between our peaceful union and the obstinate Russians.”

Citizens and subjects in the 18-25 age bracket have seldom been seen in recent years. The Vice Minister commented on this by stating, “This temporary downturn in our youthful population is insignificant compared to the tremendous loss of life on the Russian side. Though our rockets delivering Vemork V weapons obliterated St. Petersburg and most of Moscow years ago, the Russians, though scattered and ill equipped, still choose to resist to this very day. It staggers the mind why they wish to continue their own misery. ” (more…)

FROM : ALL US CONGRESS AND PRESIDENTS OF THE US

TO: ALL THE PEOPLES OF THE EARTH AND THE AMERICA.

CC: Madame Pelosis, Hary Reide, Sen. Frank, Not Bush. Mr. Gietner Taxes.

Dear American Friend!,

Oh the happytimes for us are coming without Bush. Assureing the future pleasent times for the Americans. Her’is what we are doing for this things: (more…)

The perpetually bumbling Obama administration wrote the wrong word on a gift for Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. It was a plastic red button on a black base with the Russian word “peregruzka” printed above it, as Politico.com reported: (more…)