Obama’s Palace Guards are … everywhere.

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How old do you think Sean Penn is in drug years?

Via Fox News:

If Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum ends up in the White House, Sean Penn won’t be happy about it.

“I don’t want to see Rick Santorum be president because I would like to see people in trouble in this country getting out of it,” the actor and liberal activist said on CNN  Monday night. “I don’t want to see a narrow-minded leadership encourage a narrow-minded Congress.”

Penn went on to call Santorum “a fanatic,” but gave the former Pennsylvania senator credit for his consistency. “If Rick Santorum said to me, ‘here’s what I’m going to do,’ I’d be much more likely to believe him than many others,” Penn said, adding: “It’s the reason I wouldn’t support him.”

More here.

Seems a future politician named Ronald Reagan made quite an impression on Philbin. The former “Live! With Regis and Kelly” star devotes 12 pages in his new book to the conservative icon.

Philbin was hosting a live post-news talk show at the time – 1962 – and he was hungry for guests. So when he learned that the star of “Knute Rockne All American” was available, the affable Philbin jumped at the chance to book him.

The two talked a little about life in general and sports in particular given Reagan’s background as both an athlete and sports broadcaster. They avoided politics all together.

“It was unthinkable back then that he would go on to become the governor of California and, eventually, the president of the United States!” Philbin writes in his typically breathless style.

The talk show host recalls the reaction Reagan had on not just him but the studio audience.

“I could tell the audience was becoming mesmerized by his optimism. He just made you feel better, gave you hope, made you want to strive even harder to achieve your own goals,” he recalls.

That television appearance marked the first of several on-air chats the two would have in subsequent years. Philbin wraps his chapter on Reagan by including some of the president’s 1981 commencement speech at Notre Dame University. The event came shortly after the assassination attempt on Reagan’s life, but a recovered Commander in Chief delivered one heckuva speech all the same, according to Philbin.

“Yes, the ‘Gipper’ – now the leader of the free world – came back that day to give these graduates a rousing send-off that I’m sure each of them will remember forever,” he writes.

The American version, which airs Sundays at 10 p.m., centers on Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes), a strong but flawed CIA officer trying not to repeat mistakes that led to the 9/11 attacks. She learns from a condemned Iraqi informant that “an American prisoner of war has been turned.”

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As far as she knows, there are no American prisoners of war. Ten months later, U.S. Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody, presumed dead for the past eight years, is recovered from Baghdad during a raid on a militant compound. Despite all of the pride flowing through the CIA and military circles regarding his recovery, Carrie immediately suspects Sgt. Brody is the “turned” American she had been warned about and begins an illegal surveillance of his home. The viewer is left to wonder who the villain really is.

Growing up in the 1980s, Hollywood never left you wondering who the bad guys were going to be. It was the Russians. The Americans were always the good guys, fighting against Communists to preserve the American way of life. In the years after 9/11 this is not the case.

More often than not, today’s bad guys, radical Islamist terrorists, became terrorists only because we somehow made them do it. The U.S. government or the military are really the bad guys. Welcome to life in the age of political correctness and Saul Alinsky tactics.

That’s why ‘Homeland’ is such a breath of fresh air.

When Showtime first announced that they would be distributing a television series about a CIA officer investigating radical Islamist terrorists, conservative viewers were probably tentatively optimistic. Learning that the series would be produced by the same group who brought us the Fox hit ‘24′ may have eased some, but not all, concerns. Conservative viewers do not want to see Americans portrayed as bad guys when they fight evil. Nor do they want to have to listen to ignorant actors who label them as tea-bagging racists.

The Hollywood Reporter recently published an article about actors that Republicans and Democrats refuse to pay to see. Tops on the list were Sean Penn for Republicans and Charlton Heston for Democrats, despite the fact that Heston died in 2008 and his last real film was released in 2003. The list of actors that Republicans refuse to pay to see appears to be getting longer by the day. The producers of next year’s ‘The Avengers’ are probably hoping that the desire of those who want to support Robert Downey, Jr. will outweigh any misgivings over avowed Occupy Wall Street supporter Mark Ruffalo (cast as the Hulk’s alter ego Bruce Banner).

This feeling toward actors also extends to cable news anchors and the media in general. So, when the preview for the third episode of ‘Homeland’ showed Sgt. Brody being interviewed by admitted socialist Lawrence O’Donnell, conservative viewers may have been left thinking “Oh, great. Here we go again. Another show I’ll have to stop watching.”

Thankfully, those feelings were quickly laid to rest. For now, the show is an apolitical look at the War on Terror. O’Donnell’s questions were straight-forward and honest, the complete antithesis of his disgusting interview of Presidential candidate Herman Cain.

In fact, when Sgt. Brody’s wife asks him if he is nervous about the interview, his response is “No. I was told that Lawrence O’Donnell gives everyone a hard time except guys in uniform.” That may be putting it lightly.

Whether the lack of a political ideology continues throughout the series, which will return for a second season, remains to be seen. Thus far, viewers have been treated to a suspenseful thriller with the only question being, who really is Sgt. Nicholas Brody?

Sean Penn may have a bigger foe than Mr. Hand in the Tea Party, but, still, a rep for the conservative movement is still willing to sit down and share a pizza (or, let’s face it, more likely tea) with the man who was Jeff Spicoli. After the actor appeared on Piers Morgan Tonight Friday and called the Tea Party the “Get the N-Word Out of the White House Party,” the co-founder and national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots released a statement to EW, inviting Penn to meet with members of the movement.

Said Mark Meckler: “I’m fairly certain that Sean Penn has never been to a tea party or met anyone who belongs to a local tea party. I’d be happy to sit down and speak with him if he’s ever interested in really speaking with one of us and learning what we are about instead of just slandering millions of his fellow American citizens with racist hatred. This kind of rhetoric, while protected by the First Amendment, has no place in reasonable discourse in America. Then again, no one has ever accused Sean Penn of ‘reasonable discourse.’”

Read the full article here.

The diminutive actor from ‘The Italian Job’ and the ‘Austin Powers’ franchise has been giving as much social media love as possible to the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Via Seth Green’s Authorized Twitter Account:

#WeThePeople @Mike_Dougherty: #OccupyWallStreet Inspires Worldwide Protests in 951 cities and 82 countries npr.org/2011/10/15/141…

#WeThePeople RT @CherriVeeRC: In the rain, we stand united! yfrog.com/kgxckhvj yfrog.com/j2uz1epj #OccupySaltlakeCity

Witness- not OK RT @OccupyWallStNYC: cops beating peaceful protesters tonite. WARNING-graphic http://youtu.be/xpOMlDVaXzc #occupywallstreet

RT @OccupyWallStNYC: cop bragging about beating peaceful protesters tonight- didn’t know he’s on camera. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBxPzhXFT6c #WeThePeople

What a shame, since the OWS crowd would make a fine resource for his pop culture skewing series ‘Robot Chicken.’

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Politico:

The video stars Kevin Spacey, Matt Damon, Sean Penn, Kristen Wiig, Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen as part of the foundation’s celebrity division, pumping out ideas like not breathing to save the environment. There’s even a cameo from Bubba at the end.

More here.

The week we have one of the best movies of the year coming to Blu-ray, Terrence Malick’s ‘The Tree of Life.’ I was hoping for a Criterion release of this, but I’ll take what I can get (rumor has it a longer cut is on the way). The only special feature to speak of is a making-of that features appreciations of Malick’s work from great filmmakers like David Fincher and Christopher Nolan, which should be worth checking out for that alone. Seeing ‘Tree of Life’ on the big screen was damn near a religious experience, I have a hard time imagining that it has the same effect at home, depending on the set-up you’re watching it on.

‘Tree of Life’ divided audiences; I went to see it twice in the theater, and both times I saw a handful of people walk out, usually during the bit with the dinosaurs. Friends who went to the theater to watch it reported seeing the same thing. Malick has become far less conventional as a filmmaker as his career has progressed, getting more and more abstract with each film. In ‘Life,’ it appears the man has almost abandoned narrative altogether, making for a film that is far less accessible than, say, ‘Badlands.’ Also, having names like Brad Pitt and Sean Penn on the poster may given some people the wrong idea as to what sort of a movie ‘Tree of Life’ is instead of having a cast simply made up of unknowns.

Regardless, it’s audacious filmmaking that hits on massive themes and deals with small, everyday events on the most enormous scale imaginable. The story of the movie has a small coming-of-age tale at its heart, but it places the theme of personal loss in the context of the very miracle of life itself. It’s a film that tugs out deep emotions in the most gentle manner possible, never resorting to cheaply manipulating the audience. If you connect with it, it’s a film that will haunt you long after you see it.

Many critics praised ‘Tree of Life’ with a big asterisk, citing the film’s Christian worldview as a major sticking point, as though Malick is somehow obligated to set aside his Episcopalian beliefs in order to please the intelligentsia. Malick fills ‘Life’ with a tone of complete sincerity that seems like a bold artistic choice in today’s world of cynical, detached hipster irony. If you missed ‘Tree of Life,’ do yourself a favor and check it out now that it’s available, because to me, it is one of the truly great films of 2011.

Available on Blu-ray/DVD combo

On the opposite end of the spectrum, we go from one of the best movies of the year to one of the worst.  The idea of a studio doing a monster-budget Green Lantern movie seemed absurd to me from the beginning, given that the property is one that resides in DC Comic’s second tier. However, as Marvel was able to elevate Iron Man from a second- to first-tier character in their roster with their wildly successful Robert Downey, Jr. film series, it seemed Warner Bros. and DC were looking to follow suit. It didn’t work.

‘Green Lantern’ represents a master class in what not to do when attempting to bring a superhero to mainstream audience.  Great superhero films like ‘Superman: The Movie,’ ‘Spider-Man,’ and ‘Batman Begins’ do a great job of establishing a comic-book mythology by showing it to us. Bad superhero films, like ‘Green Lantern,’ info-dump you before the opening credits even have a chance to roll, with a British actor doing an austere voice over. Whenever this happens, it’s almost always means the movie you’re about sit through won’t be great because that technique epitomizes lazy storytelling. With Green Lantern, it’s all downhill from there.

It’s nice to see your superhero go through some kind of struggle to become the hero they are, be it via overcoming some sort of trauma or personal tragedy (‘Spider-Man’ and ‘Batman’) or through a serious trial by fire that changes the hero’s outlook on life (‘Iron Man’). Like any good character, they need an arc that comes about through a struggle. In ‘Green Lantern,’ our hero, Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds), has his powers handed to him by a dying alien, but we never get the idea that the powers bestowed upon him are the life-altering force they clearly should be apart from what we see on the surface.

The movie tries to sell us the idea that Hal’s big struggle is overcoming his “fear,” but this never comes through in Reynolds’ performance, who plays the same wisecracking douchebag he’s played in every other comic book movie he’s been in.  Other characters in the film constantly tell the audience that Hal is full of fear, and at some point, he just kind of overcomes it when he needs to beat the bad guy. Big deal. A good film wouldn’t feel the need to constantly remind us of this, because it would be evident in the character and the storytelling, but it’s not with this one, and therefore we are meant to accept this element because the film flat out tells us we should.

‘Green Lantern’ suffers from a laundry list of other problems that I covered in my review when it came out, problems that I doubt the extended cut on the Blu-ray can remedy. The film is also available in a 3D edition which, sadly, doesn’t compensate for the 2D writing and characterization (yeah, that was too easy, but if the movie’s gonna be cheap, then so will I).  Apparently, a sequel is happening; I hope for the sake of diehard fans that the new Lantern learns from the mistakes made here.

Also, fun fact: this movie was almost a wacky comedy starring Jack Black.  Yep, that almost happened.

Available on Blu-ray 3D, Blu-ray, and DVD

Other Noteworthy Releases

Horrible Bosses: Even when I think the film he’s in is completely horrible, I find Jason Bateman to be an extremely enjoyable presence.

Available on Blu-ray and DVD

Zookeeper: If Happy Madison productions have taught me anything, it’s that Adam Sandler is very, very good to his friends.  If only his friends were funny.

Available on Blu-ray and DVD

Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead: Joe Cross’s chronicle of his juicefast transformation has gotten a lot of positive buzz, be sure to check out Big Hollywood assistant editor Christian Toto’s review.

Available on DVD

The Four Feathers: Zoltan Korda’s 1939 Technicolor epic about British soldiers in Africa, based on the novel by A. E. W. Mason.  Available from Criterion.

Available on Blu-ray and DVD

The Bad Seed: The classic evil-kid movie comes to Blu-ray.

Available on Blu-ray

The Family Man: Just watch It’s a Wonderful Life again instead.

Available on Blu-ray/DVD combo

Maniac Cop: This entertaining eighties slasher flick was written by Larry Cohen and features performances from two B-movie heroes with awesome chins: Bruce Campbell and Robert Z’Dar.

Available on Blu-ray

Jet Li Blu-ray Collection: This three pack of excellent Jet Li films includes The Legend (also known as The Legend of Fong Sai-yuk), Fist of Legend, and Tai Chi Master.

Available on Blu-ray

This post originally appeared over at Parcbench

In an interview, Penn said of his supporting role in “Terence Malick’s “Tree of Life”:

I didn’t at all find on the screen the emotion of the script, which is the most magnificent one that I’ve ever read. A clearer and more conventional narrative would have helped the film without, in my opinion, lessening its beauty and its impact. Frankly, I’m still trying to figure out what I’m doing there and what I was supposed to add in that context! What’s more, Terry himself never managed to explain it to me clearly.

The quote can be found in the New Yorker, where writer Richard Brody attempts to defend Malick with what can only be described as nonsense: “Penn brings an acid yellow to the glass-and-metal grays of his scenes”.

Whatever.

As a fan of Malick’s “Badlands” and “The New World,” I was eager to see “Tree,” and did so in Hollywood at the ArcLight Theatre, which might be THE premiere place on the planet for upscale movie-lovers to ply their trade. After 139 confusing, frustrating minutes the credits finally rolled, the tension in the audience broke, and more than a few people broke out laughing — and not in a good way.

“Tree of Life” has its moments, but for the most part is a pretentious mess. For what seems like a half-hour, you witness Creation — from the Big Bang to dinosaurs to Brad Pitt — and then the narrative settles down into the story of a boy’s complicated relationships with his father (Pitt) in the idyllic rural ‘burbs of 1950’s America. The only problem is that this part of the movie is told in a way that’s obviously supposed to represent the jumbled way in which we all remember our childhoods. It’s all flashes and snips and bits and pieces, and after a while you just stop caring.

But the oddest parts of the film involve Penn, who plays one of the Pitt character’s grown sons (I was never sure which one). His scenes, which kind of bookend the film, simply don’t belong. In fact, the film would probably be better without his “acid yellow” because it would ease up on the confusion and pretension.  

One of the most difficult parts of being an actor has to be the trust they offer the director. Once the actual shoot is over, the actor has no control of what the director will do with all that footage. While the actor moves on to the next project the director spends months in a dark room editing together a performance — creating whatever they want. Unless the actor enjoys the unique and rare privilege of final cut approval, they’re forced to let go of the wheel for a year and then hold their breath during the cast and crew screening. That has to be terrifying.

Penn (who worked with Malick before on “The Thin Red Line”) obviously trusted the auteur and fell victim to whatever happened between script and final cut. And I don’t blame him for being frustrated with what finally ended up on screen. Penn’s an excellent director in his own right and therefore understands how the process works as well as anyone. I would’ve been horrified to see my performance relegated to that disjointed afterthought — and I don’t have two Oscars.

“Tree of Life” is a noble failure, however; an ambitious director pushing himself to create a feeling — and succeeding at times. The problem is that he’s unable to sustain that feeling over 139 minutes. Obviously Malick’s feeling his age (67) and The Big Questions feel more pressing then ever — questions about where we came from and, more importantly, where we go next. “Tree of Life” tries to give us the answers, or at the very least, hope, which is worth something. But that’s the stuff of a fascinating late night conversation, not a film — where themes require the vehicle of a story.

This shouldn’t surprise us, Hollywood is a fantasy factory – so it seems that the foreign policy experience of these folks reflects more their career than it does any true understanding of the reality of the governments they so enthusiastically defend. Recently, Hollywood liberals have found a new group of dictators to support. They now heedlessly defend the nouveau authoritarians of South America, like Hugo Chavez, Rafael Correa, and Evo Morales.

In the most recent episode, Sean Penn wrote an op-ed in Huffington Post condemning the State Department for economic sactions against Venezuela’s oil company, PDVSA. Decrying the sanctions’ unfairness, Pennsays that ‘Venezuelans live in abject poverty’. On that we agree: the plight of the poor in Venezuela is stunning. Yet Mr. Penn it seems has not stopped to think of why so many Venezuelans are so poor in such a rich country. Under Chavez’s twelve-year rule alone, Venezuela has earned close to 1 trillion dollars in oil wealth. Yet the people remain desperately poor. Lets put this in perspective, this one thousand billion dollars translates to over $130,000 per average Venezuelan family. What did Chavez do with it? It is hard to believe that after 12 years of this kind of hard income Chavez – who Penn defends so wholeheartedly – has been unable to reduce poverty. This seems to be more a reason to call for new leadership than to defend the current one. If this were the case in the United States, of a President who after holding the equivalent of three terms, as Chavez has – Mr. Penn himself would probably be calling for a change in the White House – and rightly so.

This further illustrates the double standard of armchair experts and coddlers of corrupt despots. They seem willing to accept dictatorships of the left if those regimes justify their authoritarianism in the name of “equality” or “social justice.” Every dictatorship in history has had to justify its abuses, even the most brutal – Mussolini made the trains run on time, Stalin brought modern factories and electricity to rural Russia and Hitler eliminated inflation and unemployment and built the Autobahns. Oh, yes, they also perhaps went a bit far in how they “persuaded” their populations that the regime meant well.

Hollywood liberals praise the perception of Third World “socialist” programs without ever having to experience the reality. It is easy to praise Chavez’s inadequate housing programs from the comfort of a Malibu mansion, or Castro’s medical system while being attended by the best doctors in California when the reality is that an ordinary Cuban being operated in a Cuban hospital for ordinary citizens has to take his or her own bedsheets, sutures, and even aspirin to the hospital. But those are not the Cuban hospitals that appear in Hollywood’s films, like Michael Moore’s “Sicko”. The hospitals in Hollywood’s make-believe world are reserved for tourists and others who pay in foreign currency (even the hated American Dollar). Those facilities are clean, well-stocked and modern. They also do not allow Cubans, except high-ranking members of the Cuban Communist Party, Government or Armed Forces.

That is bad enough, but when it comes to freedom, Hollywood types are noticeably quiet. They live in the world’s epicenter of free speech, enjoying immense power and privilege provided them by capitalism – and use that position to decry the very system which made them wealthy. Yet they say nothing when TV stations are shut down or taken over (for example, 3 in Venezuela, 3 in Ecuador, 2 in Nicaragua) or when excellent movies made by skilled filmmakers are denounced as “imperial plots” (as in the case of Secuestro Express in Venezuela – a movie that would have won at Cannes several years ago but was vetoed by the Chavez government for allegedly showing a “negative vision” of Venezuela). Instead of standing with their colleagues – those in the entertainment industry – they say nothing as dictators control free expression and as ordinary citizens (should we call them “audiences?”) are denied the right to watch, read or listen to what they want.

Naturally, Hollywood (and Mr. Penn) have the right to say what they will – something that is not the case in the countries they so freely defend. But it is way past due that those who defend the liberties that Mr. Pennenjoys point out the inconsistencies in their logic.

Finally, with regards to the sanctions on PDVSA, Chavez willingly brought these problems on himself. The sanctions were imposed by the US on a half-dozen countries and companies, including PDVSA, that have financial and energy ties with Iran, ties that in the opinion of the US Congress and Administration help finance Iran’s terrorist activities around the world.

If Mr. Penn has such an excellent relationship with Hugo Chavez, and if Chavez is equivalent to “the US President” as Penn states, he could perhaps use his access to convince the Venezuelan dictator to cease dealing with the anti-semitic and repressive government of Iran, for the good of the Venezuelan people who Mr. Penn seems to care about so much. Should he do so, however, I imagine Mr. Penn would find himself unwelcome in Hugo Chavez’s workers’ paradise.

The whistleblower vs. the evil corporation. the tough reporter vs the corrupt politician.

the half-naked talk show host vs. a team of rambunctious houseboys.

But for the narrative to be accepted, David must be a lib, and Goliath an evil Republican.

So when these roles are reversed, in real life, it confuses the crap out of the mainstream media.

Andrew Breitbart was accused of trying to destroy a Congressman, of fabricating a scandal, of hacking social networks.

These accusations were pushed by the left, and a carnal Congressman.

So when Breitbart took the stage at Anthony Weiner’s presser, it may have been one of the greatest, “speaking truth to power” moments ever: Breitbart vindicated himself, and Weiner imploded.

As I tweeted earlier, if Breitbart were a leftist, Sean Penn would die to play him. But since he’s not: I guess it’s Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

Because this battle doesn’t fit one’s assumptions, just ignore it, or mock it.

And, as Jon Stewart says about Weiner, ‘We sometimes forget these people are human’.

Remember him saying that about Palin, Cheney and Bush?

No?

But we’re missing the big picture: Weiner was a hairless, sculpted cat.

He spent a lot of time, not on his constituents, but on himself.

As Politico points out, Weiner has “no major legislation to his name, and no… fondness for filling… potholes.”

When not waxing his scrotum, he waxed on facebook.

in sum: Weiner was a phallus attached to a politician: driven to pump iron, pluck hair, and pester women.

But, in my mind, if his perversions keep him from his progressive politics, maybe that’s not so bad.

And if you disagree with me, I was hacked.

Tonight:

Paul Mecurio

Mahsa Saeidi-Azcuy

Writer Thaddeus Russell