My followers on twitter know I’m an avid follower of mixed martial arts (MMA). As a pathetic attempt at a submission grappler myself, it would be reasonable to assume that I’d be first in line to see “Warrior.” Truth be told, I avoid MMA movies like the plague. Prior to this film, the MMA genre was relegated to nothing more than straight-to-DVD filler whose voluminous presence in the bargain bin was surpassed only by the increasingly fluorescent Steven Seagal. I’d hate to see the world’s purest sport sullied by the likes of Degrassi dropouts and pretty boy soap stars, and so I was dragged to “Warrior” kicking and screaming.

Not only did I leave the multiplex misty-eyed and exhausted from the film’s emotional gut punch… but more strikingly, for the first time in a very long while, Hollywood made me feel truly proud to be a man.

Much like the sport of MMA, men in modern America are often misunderstood. One needs look no further than the hilariously ignorant review of “Warrior” from Andrew O’Hehir of Salon.com in which he describes MMA as “a theatrical hybrid of boxing, wrestling and kung fu.”

Ummm, no.

Firstly, Kung Fu plays little role in MMA aside from that of a debunked joke that died in 1993 when the sport birthed stars like Royce Gracie and Ken Shamrock. Also, as anyone who’s watched the sport can attest, MMA is often not theatrical at all. To the untrained eye, its game of human chess often looks like nothing more than two sweaty, bloody masses dry-humping each other into oblivion.

More importantly, elitist leftists like Andrew (who went on to call the movie a “pseudo-individualist, sub-Freudian, Tea Party-friendly fantasy”) seem to have little grasp of what it is to be a man in this century. Don’t worry, little guy, I’ll help you out.

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Well, we know which one Salon Mary Elizabeth Williams would save first if her house was burning down. If you think that the article reads more like seething, unspoken envy of a beautiful starlet that seems to have it all, you’re not alone. The entire piece has a Sweet Valley High mean girl aesthetic, in which a beta-wanna-be-alpha female projects her insecurities onto the popular girl by way of criticism over the most inane things.

—–

The tagline: “In her acceptance speech, the “Black Swan” star suggests that pregnancy trumps a career. She’s wrong.”

Did you hear that, Natlie Portman? What’s-her-face at Salon thinks you’re wrong. No! Williams couldn’t let Portman have her moment in the sun without seizing upon her big, round, potential-laden belly.

thanking her fellow nominees, her parents, the directors who’ve guided her career, and then at last “my beautiful love,” dancer and choreographer Benjamin Millepied, for giving her “the most important role of my life.” That’d be when he impregnated her, I’d wager.

At the time, the comment jarred me, as it does every time anyone refers to motherhood as the most important thing a woman can possibly do. But the reason why didn’t hit until I saw the ever razor sharp Lizzie Skurnick comment on Twitter today that, “Like, my garbageman could give you your greatest role in life, too, lady.”

Yes, because turning bathroom stall wall-level writing into an article for Salon is exponentially more important than creating and fostering life and raising it for the next eighteen years. (Natalie Portman is a/n [insert pejorative here]!)

But is motherhood really a greater role than being secretary of state or a justice on the Supreme Court? Is reproduction automatically the greatest thing Natalie Portman will do with her life?

Williams’ presuppositions are based on humanism which downgrades the divine and places greater emphasis on man’s desires. Williams misses that her examples of secretary of state or the Supreme Court were created by man, and that man had to be born in order for those positions to be created. She argues that the things created by humans, who required birth for their establishment, are greater than the that which created their originator.

This is indicative of what’s wrong with progressivism. The logic is insipid.

If Williams can point to me an example of a job created by an individual who existed without birth, I’ll be glad to discuss her argument on those terms.

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So an entertaining film comes out about a woman who bucks up against societal norms in the early seventies, puts career over family, and still comes out a winner — sounds like someone’s flirting with Oscar! Strangely, it doesn’t earn a single nomination.

“Secretariat,” a movie about the horse who won more awards than Al Gore, will not be in the starting gate at the Oscars, February 27. What could be the problem? It opened the weekend after the “Social Network,” so it wasn’t like the Academy of ADHD Artists had time to forget about it. It wasn’t that it didn’t have a good enough campaign team working behind it either. Disney pitched it right alongside “Toy Story 3,” a long-shot which actually made it into the Best Picture category, a rare occurrence for a cartoon.

Diane Lane put in an undeniably Oscar-worthy performance that recalls some of the most glamorous actresses of a Hollywood’s golden age. She played Secretariat’s owner, Penny Tweedy, with the poise of Grace Kelly, the brash of Katherine Hepburn, and the warmth of Donna Reid. John Malkovich should have been a shoe-in, with one of his quirkiest characters to date, as the trainer Lucien Laurin; a role that recalled some of the greater comedic sidekicks from the heyday of Disney like Don Knotts, Tim Conway, and Buddy Hackett

Perhaps the PG rating made it into a film that no one in the Academy bothered to watch. After “The Blind Side” took two nominations last year, the members of the Academy became aware of the disturbing trend of solidly entertaining family pictures that are uplifting and not vulgar. Perhaps a few more jokes about cleaning out the stables could have won a PG-13 rating and a couple seats in the Kodak Theater. (more…)

Jodie Foster is a two-time Academy Award winner and one of the most respected and well-liked movie stars of our time. She minds her own business, does her job better than most and exhibits nothing but old school class in her personal life. If anyone’s ever had an unkind word to say about her, I haven’t read it and I most certainly haven’t written it. Like many, I was disappointed when she signed on for Roman Polanski’s new film but wasn’t about to judge someone I’ve respected for decades over a single misstep. There’s just too much goodwill there and you can add to that the points she earns for consistency in her willingness to publicly stand by her longtime friend and colleague Mel Gibson, when almost no one else will — including many vigorous and outspoken supporters of a fugitive child-raping director.

The raving left-wingers at Salon, however, have decided that Foster’s loyalty to the embattled Gibson not only warrants criticism (fair enough) but an entire Orwellian “rethink” (their chilling word, not mine) of her as a human being and as an actress. In a piece subtitled, The movie icon continues to go to bat for her embattled friend. Maybe it’s time to rethink the acclaimed actress, Salon writer, Mary Elizabeth Williams, unsheathes the long knives of the New Blacklist:

The time has come to admit it — Jodie Foster is not all that. …

Yet even when she’s not aligning herself with rageaholics and fugitives, Foster’s cinematic track record is something of a head scratcher. Her powerhouse glory days of movies like “The Accused” and “Silence of the Lambs” are now two decades in the past. She did a neat turn in “Inside Man,” but “Flight Plan,” “Panic Room” and “Nim’s Island” doesn’t exactly amount to a stunning body of recent work. (And if you want to blame it on her age, note that Laura Linney, Joan Allen, Hope Davis, Patricia Clarkson, Mary Louise Parker and a slew of other actresses of Foster’s generation seem able to find challenging, award baiting roles in quality films.) Foster can pick and choose. And often, she chooses dreck. …

She’s made a string of forgettable to downright offensive movies. And she thinks Mel Gibson is “incredibly loved.” So why are organizations like Elle handing her accolades? Why are fans, especially women, especially women who fell in love with her sometime around “Bugsy Malone” not coming out and saying, she is no longer our role model?

We shouldn’t be surprised by this. After all, this is the same publication that was so freaked out over “Secretariat” being openly marketed to we churchy types that one of the nicest things they screamed at it was “master race!” (more…)

If I were a hardcore Leftist like Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir, I’d be a little freaked out over what I’m seeing in Hollywood these days, as well. Every smurf-less left-wing film released over the last few years has not only failed miserably at the box office, they’ve also been artistic embarrassments of the highest order. And yet, a good number of openly conservative films and those openly embraced by conservatives have been monster hits: “The Blind Side,” “300,” “The Dark Knight,” “Fireproof,” “Taken,” and both “Iron Man” films have grossed more than the production costs of all those anti-war flops combined. ”The Expendables” is currently thisclose to crossing a quarter of a billion dollars worldwide. Then there’s “Salt,” the “Twilight” saga, “The Book of Eli,” “Grown Ups,” “Gran Torino,” the Narnia trilogy, and the Pixar collection — all of which appealed to the right side of the political spectrum and have, to say the least, done better than respectable business.

Lit by the warm glow of a burning cross

In the world of documentaries, there’s a similar disturbance for those currently residing within the darkside of the force. You have Steve Bannon launching a full-frontal assault on the medium, Citizens United winning the most important Supreme Court free speech case in generations, Davis Guggenheim seeing the light, and Michael Moore becoming less relevant than a Sunset Boulevard lunatic screaming about capitalism as he tries to pull his pants off over his head. And do I really need to cite specifics on the utter collapse of the “edgy” nihilism that now represents the indie marketplace? 

Whether the intent with some of these successful titles was to produce a conservative movie or not, there’s just no mistaking the fact that the films we “teabaggers” love and champion are not only good box office, but in many cases, on some level, they’re also artistic achievements the people behind them can be proud of.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not declaring victory. What I am declaring, however, is Reality — a reality similar to what the Left is rightfully panicking over as they lose control of the news media and hopefully both Houses of Congress come this November. And now, it must be more than a little unsettling for Salon-style Leftists to watch helplessly as popular entertainment culture — the most powerful propaganda device ever created — starts to slip just a little from their entitled, totalitarian grasp — and judging from his outrageously stupid and mean-spirited review, the writing O’Hehir sees on the wall with “Secretariat” has him completely unraveled. (more…)

JournoList scandal is back and prepare for it to be a driving force in the news for quite some time. The Daily Caller published an article tonight indicating they’ve obtained emails from the JournoList and the initial details are as damning as we expected when the list-serv, founded by the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein in 2007, surfaced with the Dave Weigel kerfuffle last month.

Snippets from the article below, but make sure to read the whole thing at the Daily Caller and return to Big Journalism early and often as we unpack the details that emerge and track the fallout from this seminal event in the history of left-wing media bias. It’s unclear exactly what the Daily Caller has, but there’s certainly no indication from this article they’ve already laid all their cards out on the table.

According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.” (more…)

After S.T. VanAirsdale of the hard-left film site Movieline wondered aloud who Big Hollywood would choose to “smear” with respect to the upcoming documentary “The Tillman Story,” I responded that when a leftist propagandist launches that kind of near-hysterical preemptive tactical strike, it can only make you wonder what all the defensiveness is about. 

Then, as if to thicken the plot, that same day, Jeff –The Latino Lover– Wells was so righteously piqued by my response to VanAirsdale that in a post titled “Lock and Load” he found it so necessary to rush to the film’s defense he reran his entire review. (Which gave Glenn – The Lawyer Callerer – Kenny an opportunity to slam us…again — which I’d be happy to respond to if not for fear of lawyer-callering.)

Obviously all this interest only increased my curiosity, so over the weekend I took a look around the Web and read everything I could find written by those who (unlike us) have seen the film. Interestingly enough, every review and/or write up I came across shared two common characteristics: The first is glowing, effusive praise; the second is that not a single write up questions the validity of even a single frame of the film.  (more…)

The same weekend “Sex and the City 2” hit theatres, the email copied below (which was leaked to Big Hollywood), titled: Is Sex & the City 2 Bad For America’s Brand?,‏ made the rounds in the obvious hopes of kicking up and furthering the narrative that SATC2 was not only racist but also stereotyped Americans in a way that reinforced why Islamists hate us (as though the motivations of pure evil matter). 

This email was disseminated to various media publications on behalf of  Adam Hanft, a “branding and marketing expert,” eager to offer his important self up for interviews in the hopes of tarnishing and “branding” as racist a film that strayed from the Liberal Plantation — a cinematic fairy tale that dared to indulge in materialistic luxury and display an open defiance of Islamic Nazism.

And would it surprise you to learn that this same Adam Hanft is a HuffPoster?

From: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Date: Fri, May 28, 2010 at 12:24 PM
Subject: Expert Avail: Is Sex & the City 2 Bad For America’s Brand?
To: XXXX@XXXXXXXX

Hi XXXXXXX,

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The first reaction to a story like this is get wrapped ’round the axle of HBO’s hypocrisy, so let’s get that out of the way: Of course no Republican who had behaved in the same manner as ”sex columnist” Dan Savage would get a shot at an HBO show. But there’s really no hypocrisy when you realize that Bill Maher’s network is waging ideological war. Through that prism of clarity, the network’s desire to do business with and thrust Mr. Savage further into the American cultural/political landscape is perfectly consistent.

For those of you unfamiliar with Savage, here’s an excerpt from a Salon piece he wrote in 2000 titled “Stalking Gary Bauer.” The set-up was simple, Savage volunteered at Republican Gary Bauer’s presidential campaign headquarters and decided, “…if it’s terrorism Bauer wants, then it’s terrorism Bauer is going get[.]“: (more…)

I occasionally like to poke around Salon.com for a healing dose of tolerance, inclusion and progressive enlightenment whenever my heathen conservative predilections get the better of me. Imagine my shock when browsing through some reader comments when I saw the sort of lowbrow discourse usually reserved for people who couldn’t get into Swarthmore or Brown and never drove a Saab: “go fuck yourself;” “you’re so full of shit;” “shut up idiot;” “get a fucking clue;” “screwball… crank;” “bitch;” “whore;” and the never encouraging, “cunt.”

What's it going to take to put you in some Hope & Change today?

What was happening here? A good-n-proper reaction to the obligatorily reviled Ann Coulter? Did Sarah Palin say something unacceptably state-schooly on TV again? Did an enemy trollette deposit some right-wing talking point in an otherwise high-minded and compassionate Salon discussion thread?  Alas, something much more catastrophic had occurred: one of the flock strayed and had to be punished.  (more…)