For Liberty Lovers ‘We The Living’ Arrives on DVD

An extraordinary film just came out on DVD which couldn’t be more timely.  It’s about a fiercely outspoken, beautiful woman trapped in a country rapidly descending into socialism, with the government steadily ratcheting up control over all aspects of life.

No, it’s not The Ann Coulter Story.

The movie is We The Living, based on the Ayn Rand novel of the same title.  Rand said that We The Living “is as near to an autobiography as I will ever write.”

Conservatives and libertarians have long lamented the scarcity of movies that depict the evils of communism.  Let’s see, there’s Doctor Zhivago, The Killing Fields, The Lives of Others, and… and, well, now there’s We The Living — a long-lost classic filmed in 1942, and now available on DVD for the first time ever.

WTL takes place soon after the Bolshevik takeover of Russia (which Rand experienced as a young woman).  The stunning Alida Valli plays Kira, a fiery college student who detests the communists ruining her country.  (Valli is perhaps best known to American audiences for her indelible performances in The Third Man and The Paradine Case.) (more…)

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Tags: Alida Valli, Ayn Rand, Bolsheviks, Censorship, classic movies
Posted Oct 30th 2009 at 4:03 pm in Film, Politics, Reviews | 25336234 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/aleigh/2009/10/30/we-the-living-for-liberty-lovers-and-for-our-time/For+Liberty+Lovers+%27We+The+Living%27+Arrives+on+DVD2009-10-30+23%3A03%3A20Andrew+Leigh

The Gulag Archipelago

Like everyone else driving along Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park last year, I couldn’t help but notice the now-iconic Shepard Fairey “Hope” poster of candidate Barack Obama emblazoned 20 feet high on the side of a building near Dodger Stadium.  As a piece of advocacy, it was tremendously effective – Obama the visionary, gazing bravely into the middle distance and the distant future – even if it did turn out to be a shameless rip-off of an Associated Press photograph.

That image is now once again front and center in the wake of the revelations that the National Endowment for the Arts has apparently been colluding with the White House’s Office of Public Engagement and the president’s United We Serve “call to action” to enlist sympathetic artists in the furtherance of the administration’s political goals, in defiance of tradition and perhaps, as George Will has suggested, the law.  Having served myself on both the NEA’s Opera-Music Theater and Oversight panels in 1985, I find this news to be profoundly depressing. (more…)

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Tags: john adams, Khrennikov, Leningrad, nea, Pravda
Posted Sep 21st 2009 at 4:49 pm in Art, Politics | 23085036 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/mwalsh/2009/09/21/the-gulag-archipelago/The+Gulag+Archipelago2009-09-21+23%3A49%3A11Michael+Walsh

Honoring September 11th: The Restart of History

“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!” – Michael Corleone, Godfather Part III

True story:  As a young man just out of law school, I was consumed with politics.  I even went to work on the Hill (Capitol, that is, Washington, DC) and in journalism.  But at some point in the ’90s, my interest faded away.

Francis Fukuyama wrote a then-notorious book called The End of History, published in 1992, shortly after the Soviet Union’s collapse.  He argued that the age-old ideological struggles over what constitutes the best form of government were over, and the undisputed universal champion was Western liberal (in the classic, free-market sense) democracy.

I grew up during the latter stages of the Cold War, when the existential threat of nuclear war hung over and colored almost everything.  It made politics seem vital to one’s very survival.  And I found the debate between capitalism and communism hugely compelling. (more…)

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Tags: 9/11, Clash of Civilizations, cold war, Politics, Soviet Union
Posted Sep 11th 2009 at 1:51 pm in Culture, Featured Story, Military, Politics | 22237815 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/aleigh/2009/09/11/honoring-september-11th-the-restart-of-history/Honoring+September+11th%3A+The+Restart+of+History2009-09-11+20%3A51%3A51Andrew+Leigh

The Cold War At Home

The news is really unbelievable these days. All that I once thought were core American values and traditions are now being washed away in a sea of propaganda and political attacks from the radical Left, which now rules supreme and knows it. The Left in power is now waging an ideological war not only against conservatives, but any dissenting Americans who get in their way. Worst of all, they are using the full machinery of the government and their Lefty media lapdogs to do it all, and in the same fashion as Ahmadinejad’s government is demonizing the Green protesters in Iran.

It is chilling to witness, in the United States of America of all places. Civil political discourse is a thing of the past. You cannot oppose ObamaCare without being a swastika-waving corporate Nazi stooge. Never mind the fact that no one will tell us exactly where all the hospitals, doctors, and nurses to treat 50 million new patients will magically materialize from, or how it will all be paid for.
(more…)

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Tags: Cap and Trade, Cap-and-Tax, cold war, DHS, FCC
Posted Aug 31st 2009 at 7:12 am in News, Politics | 212846125 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jtsimpson/2009/08/31/the-cold-war-at-home/The+Cold+War+At+Home2009-08-31+14%3A12%3A14John+T.+Simpson

Fishy

I’m doing standup in Denver. Shelley is driving me from radio to radio to TV as I do the monkey dance at each station promoting the show, selling tickets. I don’t like this part of the job. I must answer the same 10 questions about Saturday Night Live and try to explain where I’ve been for the last fifteen years. All the DJ’s want are some juicy stories about celebrities. I don’t really have that many. I’m booked at two political talk stations, a rock station, a country station, and two local TV shows.  I guess that’s my demographic! Everyone! I ask Shelley why I’m booked on the political stations. She shrugs, “Well, we didn’t really know…isn’t that what you are doing now?” The first stop I’m told is a “just right of center” show, so I feel free to share my newest shocking information that the White House is asking us to “snitch’” on our friends and family. To report anything “fishy.” This news is so abhorrent to me that I could barely sleep the night before. I immediately emailed Andrew Breitbart to see if it was true. He said yes. I searched the hotel computer web to see if the big shots, the smart people have gotten on this. They were just starting to fight back. The news was so new. Well, at least this administration is entertaining…in a bad way. I’m watching a horror movie every day.

As I share the shocking information that our Freedom of Speech is being attacked, the radio host across from me, his face, it looks like he just ate a lemon. It’s all scrunched up like…he hates me. He abruptly cuts me off and ends my interview. I’m stupefied at the reaction of people who “just can’t handle the truth.” My driver Shelley is a liberal. She doesn’t say anything. As we get in the car I try to apologize, “Well, he asked me why I was a new political activist.  I guess I should just tell jokes.” I mean I have been hired basically to sell tickets to a bar where people will spend lots of money on alcohol. And, I do need to make some money. My husband is a cop. (more…)

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Tags: "Unhappily Ever After", Andrew Breitbart, Beer Summit, Cornyn, Cornyn and Sekulow's letters
Posted Aug 10th 2009 at 12:25 pm in Featured Story, News, Politics | 203378144 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/vjackson/2009/08/10/fishy/Fishy2009-08-10+19%3A25%3A11Victoria+Jackson

‘Slumdog Millionaire’: A Leftist View of a Globalized World

Well after its phenomenal success of eight Oscars, four Golden Globes, seven BAFTA’s, and $350 million at the boxoffice, “Slumdog Millionaire” has managed to stay alive. As much an amazing longshot victor as its hero, an urchin from the Mumbai slums cum tea server at a phone call center who wins a fortune in an Indian version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?,” “Slumdog” has kept making news in ways deeply rooted in its own depiction of the world.

Recently the film’s British director Danny Boyle, serving as jury president of the 12th Shanghai Film Festival, confided during a panel discussion that on “Slumdog” he had shed the patronizing, “imperialist” mentality, relying heavily on a local Indian crew. Boyle also observed that while it was “regrettable” that Beijing imposed censorship restrictions on its filmmakers, he’d nonetheless love to work in China, as it would be a “challenge learning Mandarin.” Boyle neglected to mention that on “Slumdog” he’d skipped the challenge of learning Hindi, necessitating an Indian co-director, and also skipped the patronizing practice of paying Western wages, and the low pay for local child actors would fuel most of the subsequent controversies. (more…)

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Tags: "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?", Amitabh Bachchan, BAFTAs, Bandra, Bollywood
Posted Jul 27th 2009 at 6:52 am in Culture, Politics, Religion, Reviews | 19112630 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/eazlant/2009/07/27/slumdog-millionaire-and-topdog-fantasies/%E2%80%98Slumdog+Millionaire%E2%80%99%3A+A+Leftist+View+of+a+Globalized+World+2009-07-27+13%3A52%3A03Edward+Azlant

The Most Powerful Weapon

During the Cold War, a slew of movies came out that dealt with the possibility of a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union. This is not surprising since the atom and hydrogen bombs were the most powerful weapons ever devised by man. Well, almost.

I’ll get to that somewhat nervy assertion in a bit, but first a little background.

Among the cinematic slew released during those years of cold, are two of my favorite films, Dr. Strangelove and Fail-Safe. Both dealt with strikingly similar themes, unintentional nuclear holocaust, yet in entirely different tones.  But cold war themes weren’t that varied by their very nature, since inevitably the worst case scenario was the best case plot device and nothing brings down the house like bringing down the house.

With that said, still, there’s so much similarity between the two stories that law suits were indeed filed and production schedules slowed. This worked out to Stanley Kubrick’s advantage as his Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb was released almost a year ahead of Sidney Lumet’s Fail-Safe. In my opinion Kubrick’s is a better film than Lumet’s and not due to slowed schedules, either. But both are magnificent, and because of their approaches to the topic, very different  and essential part of the genre. (more…)

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Tags: 2001: a space odyssey, a6m zero-sen, an american in paris, army motion picture unit, Auschwitz
Posted May 6th 2009 at 9:56 am in Entertainment, Politics | 1284064 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/smann/2009/05/06/the-most-powerful-weapon/The+Most+Powerful+Weapon2009-05-06+16%3A56%3A35Schizoid+Mann

Remembering a ‘Sweet’ Little Birthday

“Wax on, wax off.” “He slimed me.” “Fortune and Glory, kid.” “I’ll be back.” “Don’t get him wet. Keep him out of bright light. And never feed him after midnight.”

It’s hard to believe that a quarter century has passed since that magical movie summer of 1984. The calender year of George Orwell’s dire dystopian nightmares had arrived, but instead of a nation writhing in servitude to Big Brother, America was delighting in the prosperity engineered by Big Gipper. Throughout the summer of ‘84, the greatest president of the twentieth century was cruising to the single largest electoral total ever amassed by a presidential candidate in our history, and “It’s Morning Again in America” commercials were playing on TV’s across the land to widespread approval. (more…)

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Tags: 1984 (book), American Graffiti (1973), American Pie (1999), Anthony Michael Hall, Apple Macintosh
Posted May 5th 2009 at 8:07 am in Entertainment | 125742One Commenthttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/lgrin/2009/05/05/remembering-a-sweet-little-birthday/Remembering+a+%27Sweet%27+Little+Birthday2009-05-05+15%3A07%3A03Leo+Grin

To Form a More Perfect Union, Hollywood’s Taking You Out of the Equation

Return with me now to the days of yore, when frothing left wing loonies exhibited some semblance of knowledge and didn’t just spew bizarro diatribes, as exhibited in the recent Garofolo rant. I hearken back to an era of bi-polarity (no, not the mood swing/disorder, lithium kind) but to the 1980’s, when the Good Guys (USA and western society) and the Black Hats (the Soviet Empire and their captured lackey governments) squared off to contest ways of life and global spheres of influence. 

It was a simpler time. Our external enemies were easily identifiable: they were blatant in railing against capitalism, freedom of speech, belief in God, individual accountability, and love of country, while pleading, teary eyed, for pro-government wet-nurse-ism (Soviet-style socialism). Their domestically deranged fellow travelers, the unhinged adversaries of the Founder’s Constitutional principles, were relegated (correctly) by voters to minority political power status, and were as effective as a brace of quacking ducks.  (more…)

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Tags: Big Brother, Culture, Dictator-chic, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac
Posted May 4th 2009 at 4:55 pm in Entertainment, Politics | 1259704 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/mzimmerman/2009/05/04/to-form-a-more-perfect-union-hollywoods-taking-you-out-of-the-equation/To+Form+a+More+Perfect+Union%2C+Hollywood%27s+Taking+You+Out+of+the+Equation+2009-05-04+23%3A55%3A11Marc+Zimmerman

The American Gorbachev?

Remember Gorbachev, that bold round-headed Russian tractor loving peasant-Secretary whom the West loved so much?  The West loved him perhaps because he was the first one in the short but depressing succession of the Soviet leaders who did not really aspire to wipe out Poland from the face of the earth. 

I remember him too, in a different way, though. Half of the country hated his guts back in the Soviet nightmare. Gorbachev was liked abroad but gradually became hated within his own country for the same reasons he was loved outside. He seemed not to be working in the best interests of his country, or let’s say, the interests that he was pursuing were far more interesting for the West than the people of the Soviet empire. As he was actively pursuing warm relations with the West, his own country was rapidly collapsing from within. Not that it was a country worth saving or that it was his fault or that he really didn’t care about his country. It just seemed that way.  (more…)

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Tags: bush, capitalism, communism, Gorbachev, Obama
Posted Apr 15th 2009 at 6:39 am in Politics | 105278No Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/ykochar/2009/04/15/the-american-gorbachev/The+American+Gorbachev%3F2009-04-15+13%3A39%3A33Yervand+Kochar

A 12-Step Liberal Recovery Program

Most 12-step programs start out by requiring that people understand that they’re powerless over their addiction and that only by turning their lives over to a Power greater than themselves can they be restored to sanity.  Far be it for me to suggest that I am that Power, but clearly someone has to step in and try to rescue these poor liberal souls.  Even the most harebrained among them deserves that much.

First, though, they have to acknowledge that Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, John Murtha, Dick Durbin, Charles Rangel, Harry Reid and Charles Schumer, are not moderates, but, rather, leftists with a Socialist agenda.  Furthermore, they must recognize that the New York Times, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, CNN, the three major networks, the news magazines and the New Yorker, are not objective in their reporting of political events, and neither are Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and Bill Maher, in their commentary.  If these entities and individuals are not on the payroll of the DNC, they certainly should be.  They certainly put in longer hours than Howard Dean. (more…)

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Tags: "under God", 10 Commandments, 12-step programs, abc, ACLU
Posted Mar 6th 2009 at 2:42 pm in Media Criticism, Political Humor, Politics | 7413869 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/bprelutsky/2009/03/06/a-12-step-liberal-recovery-program/A+12-Step+Liberal+Recovery+Program2009-03-06+22%3A42%3A04Burt+Prelutsky

The War for the Castle of our Imagination

One of the most unfortunate events that deterred a healthy development of a motion picture industry is that its childhood tragically coincided with the childhood of Communism. The Soviet era of Communism was the first totalitarian regime that recognized the power of a moving image and used it fully to align masses with its party line. Not unlike the liberal-Democrat film and media machine that so disgracefully uses it today and by far exceeds the standards of tasteless social realism initiated by their Soviet forefathers. 

Understandably, I float in a much generalized stream but nevertheless the essential point of this thought is well anchored in the truth. Let me try to substantiate myself with an example.

Did you notice how often when one prays in the movies or TV something of a terrible nature, usually involving lots of blood, happens to him or her? (more…)

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Tags: Commies in film, Danger of praying in film, Lenin, Soviet Union
Posted Feb 23rd 2009 at 6:23 am in Entertainment, Politics | 5625436 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/ykochar/2009/02/23/the-war-for-the-castle-of-our-imagination/The+War+for+the+Castle+of+our+Imagination2009-02-23+14%3A23%3A32Yervand+Kochar