BUMMER: STARZ ENDING STREAMING DEAL WITH NETFLIX

As of Feb. 2012, Netflix will no longer stream Starz, which means a lot of newer movies won’t be available.

Bad timing with the new Netflix price increase starting today. Starz content was a big attraction.

Related: Netflix stock took a hit.

More: If you want to understand the power of streaming, Starz turned down a $300 million  a year deal up from $30 million last year, and…

Starz was looking for tiered pricing, which would have seen subscribers of Netflix, led by CEO Reed Hastings, pay more than the standard $8 per month for content from the premium TV provider.

That is in line with comments from Starz executives who said repeatedly this year that they were looking to charge Netflix more in line with cable and satellite TV distributors, which have seen the streaming video service as a reason for consumers to cut the pay TV cord.

Count me among those eager to cut the pay TV cord.

FANS CALL FOR BOYCOTT OF GEORGE LUCAS’ ALTERED ‘STAR WARS SAGA’ ON BLU-RAY

Couldn’t agree with this more:

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 UPDATE ON YESTERDAY’S NETFLIX POST…

An email from a friend informs me that Netflix is currently being sued for their lack of close captioning. Also, a third of their streaming titles already include captions — with 80% expected by the end of the year.

DISH NETWORK LOOKING TO ACQUIRE HULU

Though I’m not exactly happy with it, I have Dish Network and could become a lot happier if they acquired some kind of streaming service as part of their service. They’ve already acquired Blockbuster, which gives them an incredible inventory even after the physical stores go under (and they will). So adding Hulu would be a major triumph — though an expensive $2 billion one.

What I really want to do is dump cable/ satellite altogether. Thanks to you, Dear Readers, I have found Fox News, CNN, and  MSNBC online, which is presently saving me $17 a month with the disconnect of a second receiver that was devoted to delivering news to my home office.

One down, two to go. Because…

Once football and “Burn Notice” can be screened via the Web on the TV (legally), the wife has okayed a big, fat buh-bye to the days of paying for television.

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Bill Maher recently complained that “We can’t throw around the word (sexist) just to stop people like me from point out that Michelle Bachmann, now running second for the Republican presidential nomination, is a dangerous nincompoop.” Hm, sort of sounds like the argument of “racism” used toward Obama detractors doesn’t it? 

This video explains the subject in a little more depth: 

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–SEASON FOUR OF ‘BREAKING BAD’ FINALLY PREMIERES

Unfortunately, I don’t have AMC and refuse to pay another $30 just to get it along with 50 lame-ass channels I’ll never watch, so I’ll have to wait for DVD. But wait for DVD I will and with the idea in mind of voraciously eating up each and every episode in a weekend binge.

From the performances to the directing to the writing, the story of a mild-mannered high school chemistry teacher who goes into the meth business with fairly good intentions, is some of the best television I’ve seen since “The Sopranos” and “The Wire.”The arc of the characters, especially the main character, Walt (played brilliantly by Bryan Cranston), his wife, and his partner Jesse, is what keeps you glued year after year. Even as they surprise you, the show is so well written and layered that in the end whatever they do makes perfect sense.  

Essentially, “Breaking Bad” is a study of evil; an examination of how there are no half-measures when it comes to dealing with the devil. You can’t dip your toe in a dirty business and expect to hold on to your soul.

With no threat of being accused of hyperbole, I can assure you no dramatic film aimed at adults released in the last five years has been half as good as any episode of “Breaking Bad.” Television is where Hollywood shines right now.

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Nothing makes me happier than watching others treat Jon Stewart as the political, left-wing partisan that he is. This is EXACTLY how our side should be responding to Stewart: fighting back and giving as good as we get. Nothing less than our country is at stake, 2012 matters more than I can even begin to express, and Stewart has pretty much had free reign for years to define who in our political world is dumb, evil, racist, or all three — and it’s no coincidence that the dumb, evil racists are almost always Republican stars.

Yes, Stewart goes after Democrats. But only when they’re caught in a scandal that can’t be ignored or not being liberal enough. And Stewart almost never goes after Democrat stars in a way that undermines or negatively defines them. 

Jon Stewart is a left-wing hatchet man disguised as a satirist and that disguise is one of his most potent weapons. Below you’ll see Steven Crowder and Herman Cain do the honorable work of starting to pull that disguise off of him.

I’m especially happy to see Fox News no longer taking Stewart’s dishonest attacks lying down.  As Glenn Reynolds might say: More, please. Marginalizing and exposing Stewart for what he is, is (hyperbole warning!) good for America. 

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Last night, Jon Stewart addressed the fact check of his claim that Fox News viewers are consistently the most misinformed about politics compared to the audiences of other news networks and shows– in “every poll,” he said. Though much of the conservative blogosphere went to town on that bunk claim right away, the backlash against Stewart found a rallying point in an article by the normally left-leaning Politifact:

So we have three Pew studies that superficially rank Fox viewers low on the well-informed list, but in several of the surveys, Fox isn’t the lowest, and other general-interest media outlets — such as network news shows, network morning shows and even the other cable news networks — often score similarly low. Meanwhile, particular Fox shows — such as The O’Reilly Factor and Sean Hannity’s show — actually score consistently well, occasionally even outpacing Stewart’s own audience.

Meanwhile, the other set of knowledge surveys, from worldpublicopinion.org, offer mixed support for Stewart. The 2003 survey strikes us as pretty solid, but the 2010 survey has been critiqued for its methodology.

The way Stewart phrased the comment, it’s not enough to show a sliver of evidence that Fox News’ audience is ill-informed. The evidence needs to support the view that the data shows they are “consistently” misinformed — a term he used not once but three times. It’s simply not true that “every poll” shows that result. So we rate his claim False.

Stewart’s response…

In short: “Yes, I lied, but look at how much Fox lies!”

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There’s a dirty little secret in the entertainment industry (ok, there are a LOT of dirty little secrets, but I’ll just reveal one in this post):  A lot of people have jobs for the sole purpose of protecting others from looking like assholes.

In the inherently egocentric world of entertainment, no one wants to reveal themselves to be the bitchy, obnoxious, catty, vindictive, mean-spirited and selfish person that they really are.  So they hire others to do it for them.  This is especially true with the part of the business revealed by Steven Crowder’s stunning new video that shows how Jon Stewart’s PRODUCER told Crowder’s MANAGER that the Daily Show doesn’t book conservative pundits.  In the extra sensitive realm of hiring or not hiring (especially in such a subjective and sensitive industry as ours) these extra layers are essential to keeping everyone looking like the great guy and gal we are all sure they are.

Think about it: Jay Leno was the nice guy back in the late show booking wars, Helen Kushnick was the monster, right?  And actor’s are never to blame for the outrageous demands their cut-throat agents squeeze from the studios, right?  As a theatrical general manager I handled duties like this all the time.  I was the asshole who had to tell Val Kilmer he couldn’t do all the crap he tried to do, and the producer who hired me came in right behind me and gave Val’s ass a nice air kiss, but make no mistake, if I air-kissed any part of Kilmer that producer would have canned me.  My job was to be the asshole so my boss could schmooze with Val Kilmer.

And so it goes.

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When Ben Shapiro approached me, asking me to put a face to the anti-conservative, discriminatory practices in Hollywood (along with providing tangible examples), I had no idea what I was in for. “Sure, I can just send you the most recent one that comes to mind,” I said flippantly. Well here we are, two weeks later, manager-less and having ticked off one of the most powerful men in comedy.

Eh, it’s Hollywood folks. What can ya do?

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I would like to introduce my new film, “The Last Eagle Scout,” a social satire independent film produced in Utah, focusing on how political correctness can interrupt the very fiber of Americana.

Cliff Elliot is close to getting his Eagle Scout award, a promise he made to his late father. His eagle project includes having a flagpole erected at the local Petty County High School. He paid for the project by having flags posted in neighbors’ yards for a year on patriotic holidays.

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By the end of that year, the Boy Scouts of America had closed its doors due to bad press from an accidental death at a scout camp. The American Flag has also been banned from public viewing.

The Citizens Taskforce, represented by local congressman Jude Marx (who was paramount in getting the scouts closed and the flag banned), search for Cliff in an effort to stop the flag postings. Instead, Cliff skirts around the “pretend police” in an effort to finish his eagle project and become the last boy in America to become an Eagle Scout… all while striving to live the scout law.

The objective of this fictional film is to experience a time when basic freedoms we take for granted are taken away for the greater good of everyone else, protecting us from ourselves. (more…)

“I didn’t expect them to so blatantly attack the message,” Steven Crowder recently told me over the phone. He was discussing how critics had reviewed his recent Christian-themed movie “To Save A Life.” Some negative feedback from critics was anticipated, but he expected that they would be a little more clever when it came to disguising their prejudice towards Christians and their message. In an interview I conducted with the young actor/writer/comedian, we discussed this criticism, as well as “edgy” comedians and the reason why so many young people are liberal.

Although only in his early twenties, Crowder’s already established himself. Aside from acting, he serves as a contributor for Fox News and performs regularly as a comedian. His online videos have been both extremely funny (see the debate between Crowder and Crowder’s impersonation of Keith Olbermann) and deadly serious (see his video about Canadian health care), and those videos have earned Crowder well-deserved media attention as a rising conservative star.  

Aside from his distinct roles as comedian and conservative pundit, Crowder is also an actor and his latest film “To Save a Life” was recently released on DVD. The movie tells the story of Jake (Randy Wayne), a high school student struggling with grief and regret. Early on in the story, one of Jake’s childhood friends commits suicide. That friend had become a loner after Jake abandoned him years earlier to join the popular crowd. After the suicide, Jake decides to change his own life and quickly befriends some of the school’s outcasts, much to the displeasure of his more popular friends. Crowder plays one of the popular friends horrified when Jake starts hanging out with ”losers.”  (more…)

In the kick-off to BH’s “Death of the Movie Star” series, Steven Crowder posited that new media has rendered the Hollywood machine irrelevant. If you have the talent and the drive, you don’t need them. And writing for the UK Telegraph earlier this year, David Gritten has a similar theory in that Hollywood can no longer afford A-list stars (who are also aging and may not appeal to younger audiences) and is relying more heavily on lesser-known names and reality-based entertainment. They both make valid points. However, I think there’s something more to this rapidly spreading phenomenon.

Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire – class and glamour during Hollywood’s heyday

The term “movie star” used to mean a lot to the American public – glitz, glamour, excitement. It embodied an “other worldliness,” if you will, that took hard-working people away from the daily grind and gave them something thrilling and new to take their minds off of their troubles. An afternoon or evening at the movies really meant something then, and the stars who populated the silver screen lived up to the hype – publicly, anyway. This was due to the studio system. During the 1930s and ‘40s:

…the major studios groomed their stable for stardom by picking suitable vehicles that developed their personae—sophisticated comedy for Grant, intense melodrama for Davis, and so on. They also controlled the stars’ publicity, doling out digestible, often-erroneous tidbits on their personal lives for the fan magazines and gossip columns.

Once the studio system was broken, however, we began to see Tinseltown’s residents through a very different lens. Stars began to develop their own careers, making their own decisions and living with the consequences, both good and bad. And the press, which was once held at bay by the studio bigs, had much more access to celebrities. Television talk shows like The Tonight Show and Merv Griffin brought us even closer to our idols. They became…well, more like us, except with oodles more money, fancy cars, designer duds and entrée into exclusive clubs and resorts. (more…)

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Sorry, I’ve been away. Was in Los Angeles doing some media hits for the book, but now I am saddled with jury duty, which is what I’m doing today, and tomorrow. I hope I am able to do the show tomorrow.

 Tonight Billy is hosting. Hang in there!

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By now many of you have heard that Debbie Schlussel unjustifiably smeared Sean Hannity.  Sadly, without Tim Mak’s great work at Frum Forum, her act of character assassination would have spread much worse than it already has.  Below is a quick summary video of her unjustifiable smear of Sean Hannity.  It is too bad that Hannity has to put up with people like Schlussel who simply have no conscience.

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This isn’t the first time that Debbie has engaged in such malicious acts.In fact, a few months ago she attacked Steven Crowder after his investigative video on Detroit. 

She dragged Crowder through the mud, claiming he made up all his facts, and she said terrible things about him too.  After I did my own research, it turns out that it was Debbie who got her facts wrong and her hatred directed against Crowder was reckless.  (more…)

It is more than just interesting how advertisers are rebelling against free television’s current crop of lurid, creepy content.  For the Hollywood elite, this is a canary in the coal mine, and they should heed that figurative dead bird’s warning.  Their time as the sole arbiters of what will and will not be seen is ending.  And the conservative movement stands to gain.

As the Wall Street Journal recently reported (subscription required):

The world’s biggest retailer, Wal-Mart Stores, and Procter & Gamble, the world’s biggest consumer-products maker, are jointly creating a made-for-TV movie, in an effort to promote “family-friendly” alternatives to what they say is increasingly risqué TV fare.

The two advertising heavyweights have teamed up on the two-hour “Secrets of the Mountain,” to be broadcast in April on NBC. The movie, which focuses on a single mother who brings her family to a mountainside cabin, highlights values—such as generosity, honesty and togetherness—that Wal-Mart and P&G executives say are in short supply on television.

Now, the root cause of the problem is clear.  Television and other Hollywood executives are interested in two kinds of currency.  One currency is dollars.  The other is coolness.  And you don’t get a coolness payoff by producing entertainment involving decent people and solid values.  Sure, a show about a normal family, free of the perversions and bizarre Blue Velvet-esque weirdness Hollywoodoids always seem to attribute to normal Americans, might make money.  But what are your peers going to think?  Are you going to win an Emmy?  Are you going to be labeled a visionary?  Are girls with piercings and daddy issues going to even want to talk to you anymore? (more…)

As anyone in the entertainment industry will tell you, it is a miracle that any film actually gets made.  From the moment a writer sits down with an idea to the first time the movie actually graces the screen, a film has passed through the care of so many people, so many unique personalities and competing visions and interests, that even the simplest film is a defiance of the odds.

To Save a Life is not a simple film.

From the moment we meet Jake Taylor, high school (and soon-to-be college) basketball star, it is clear we are meeting a young man in crisis.  Jake’s world has been upended by the recent and very public suicide of his childhood friend Roger – a relationship Jake had forsaken in recent years as his own star was on the rise.  For Jake, the burden of guilt for the choices he did and did not make along the way have become a crushing rebuke.  The young man is lost.

Unfortunately for Jake, introspection is not a welcome trait among his top-of-the-food chain peers. Instead, Jake finds common ground with Chris, a local Christian youth-pastor carrying his own guilt over Roger’s death. Chris, who struggles to navigate a true course through the often false world of Christian culture, detects an authenticity in Jake’s growing and self-imposed alienation from his equally false high school aristocracy.  Jake detects in Chris an authentic faith.  As the story unfolds, the two men help one another to stand against the tides of inconsistency in both worlds. (more…)

I opened TimeOut NY magazine this morning and saw that I was featured in their “Essential New York” issue. Excellent. I’m overjoyed, as most performers are when they get some press. Now among the other nice things in their profile, they said this:

“He’s the only conservative Republican comedian who’s actually funny.”

Now, what do you think was the first thing I did when I saw that in print? Defend the honor of Evan Sayet and Steven Crowder? No.

My act is personal, not political, and those are two different things, unless you believe what it says in that dog-eared copy of “Our Bodies, Ourselves” on your ex-girlfriend’s bookshelf. But since Andrew invited me to “come out” on this site last year and air my (comparatively moderate) center-right views, the word has gotten around to some of my fans and associates that I might be playing for the other team. I’ll be at a showbiz cocktail party and someone will playfully say, “I heard a rumor about you…” They’re not trying to be mean or McCarthyite-they genuinely like the idea that they may have a right-wing acquaintance. It’s fun for them! But then they want to pick my brain. “How did it happen? Was your dad a minister?” They begin to introduce me to their friends as “their favorite Republican.” (more…)

It takes a big man to admit when he’s been bested. I have to say however, that after this one I had to walk away with my head hanging in shame.  You win this round, Mr Olbermann… You win this round.

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In my defense however, I will say that Maddow came way out of left field with the double-teaming.  I personally found it to be distasteful… But well played on Maddow’s part.

I still can’t decide which is silliest; a person believing in a God who “isn’t there,” or a person offended by a God whom he doesn’t believe exists. It’s a tough question, but I’m sure Janeane Garofalo has the answer… Haven’t you heard? That dame knows everything. There’s just “no two ways about it.”

For all of you atheist Libertarians who will undoubtedly be offended by this… Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time to complain about it while you’re in hell.

I agree with Crowder: When the headlines are more over-the-top than any joke one can form from them, it certainly makes comedy challenging. “Try making the idea of released detainees going back to terrorism funny”?

Hey, according to the Pentagon, only 11 percent of them do that! (Though I hear that estimate has a margin of error of about 89%.)

One released detainee detonated himself in Iraq a couple months ago. And our liberals are worried about us dripping water on their faces. The guy just blew himself up! Clearly, our interrogation techniques are not extreme enough. They prefer to lose a limb or two before giving us information. No wonder Gitmo and Abu Ghraib were torture for these sado-masochists. (more…)