Okay, here’s my favorite headline of the day – no, make that year.

Take a look-see, for yourself, see.

Yes, the AP headline reads: “NY car bomb suspect cooperates, but motive mystery.”

Yeah it’s only a mystery if you’re in the media, and really stupid. Everyone else pretty much understands why the terrorist left a fuel bomb in an area filled with families.

He hates us. He hate our country, our culture. He wants you dead.

But the media – an entity full of fragile egos and bubble-encased boobs – just can’t see that. In fact, it’s kinda awesome how huge and gaping their blind spot toward radical Islamic fundamentalism is. If only there could be other motives for the mayhem, so they’d never having to place blame on anything (except America, of course).

So I thought I’d help them out, and find motives the media could be comfortable with.

So why did Faisal Shahzad try to blow up Time Square? (more…)

The real fun of the Oscars isn’t the cut-throat competition for the little gold naked man but guessing who will make the biggest idiot of himself. 

The Academy Awards show has a fine tradition of pampered celebrities popping off with something stupid when they hit the stage.  It must be something about TV cameras and the opportunity to make damn fools of themselves before tens of millions of people around the world that the Hollywoodoids find irresistible.  Notice how you never hear any fallout from the “technical awards” ceremony?  You know, the non televised ceremony recognizing the boring technological stuff that actually makes movies possible that is usually held at the Beverly Hills Elks Lodge with hosts Steve Guttenberg, Charo and/or one of the lesser Sweathogs.

Some of the past magic moments are legendary.  Remember back in 1993, when Tim Robbins and his then-gal pal, tranny vomit insanity enthusiast Susan Sarandon, harangued the crowd about the detention of Haitian refugees?  Of course, right after that these stars led the way by opening up the grounds of their mansion to these huddled Haitian masses.

Roberto Benigni engaged in memorably tiresome antics after winning “Best Foreign Language Film of 1997” for the Worst Film of All Time, the insanely appalling Life Is Beautiful.  Life has certainly aged well, and Benigni’s shtick has only gotten fresher, contributing to the runaway freight train of success that his career has become since then. (more…)

I’ve been a member of The Screen Actors Guild for almost thirty years. They spend my dues on politically correct crap I don’t agree with and to my knowledge have never supported a political candidate for whom I would vote. A lot of the better known members scream for a government takeover of health care but do not pressure the union to adopt a policy which would allow actors who work less to still have access to the union plan. At the same time, thousands of paid-up members continue to chip in with their dues to support richer members’ benefits. Exactly the opposite of what they would like the government to do.

A lot of my slack jawed knuckle-dragging conservative friends ask me why I remain a member. If I ever want to work in film or television again I have to be a member. The “art” of  television and film-making is a closed shop. I do get a really cool card to carry around in my wallet and I get to vote on the SAG Awards every year. Getting to vote on the SAG Awards has a great perk; I get screener copies of a number of the nominated movies. I got “Up in the Air” and “Precious” today. Most of them are films I would never pay $12 to see in a theater. I usually see a lot of  the nominated films during downtime on ships or airplanes.  For example, I recently saw “Inglourious Basterds” on a plane. I thought the first scene was compelling and then the movie disintegrated into mess which couldn’t decide if it was a farce or a Sam Peckinpah homage. (more…)

Spoilerific means there are spoilers. I hope that’s clear, because now that these films have been out for a while it seems safer to give away more information regarding plot and go into greater detail as to what’s so terribly wrong with them. In the case of “Precious” and “Up in the Air” there was more I wanted to say in the initial review and didn’t. With “Avatar” I just want to address the “Dances With Wolves” comparisons.

Avatar vs. Dances With Wolves

Comparing Kevin Costner’s elegant and moving Oscar-winning Western to the junk that is “Avatar” is unfair. There are similarities in the messaging, but when it comes to the execution and storytelling – the only thing that counts — the juvenile “Avatar” is a Scooby-Doo episode compared to “Wolves.”

In the first twenty-minutes (heck, in the trailer), the ham-fisted James Cameron telegraphs every plot point, character arc and moment, right down to the natives’ trendy spiritualism and insufferable sanctimony, all the way through to the protagonist’s eventual decision to turn on his own people and fight for his nobly dull new friends. The climax of “Titanic” is more surprising than ”Avatar,” and there are drivers-ed films with more humor.  (more…)

Biases up front:

For many of the same reasons most of us don’t care for leftist movie stars, I don’t like George Clooney, but after he publicly made fun of Charlton Heston’s Alzheimer’s, that was something altogether different. Unforgivable. An uncommonly cruel thing to do – even for a Hollywoodist — and it offered a disturbing glimpse into the mercenary assholery of a man willing to say anything for a place at the Hollywood Cool Kids’ Table. Clooney’s other problem is that unlike Jane Fonda and Sean Penn, he simply doesn’t possess the acting chops to transcend what a classless act he really is behind that Cary Grant-lite façade. Sure, Hollywood and the entertainment media adore him, but that’s because he’s the kind of guy who would make fun of Charlton Heston’s Alzheimer’s.

I do, however, like director Jason Reitman — quite a bit, in fact. “Thank You For Smoking” and “Juno” proved him to be a genuine talent, superb with actors and able to bring genuine warmth to the kind of stories lesser directors would distance us from with “quirk.” And as we saw with the subtle anti- abortion message in “Juno,” Reitman’s the rare filmmaker today who puts the quality of his story above the clichéd politically correct demands that bring down so many others … like, say, the wretched “Avatar.” (more…)

BEST PICTURE – DRAMA

Avatar
The Hurt Locker
Inglorious Basterds
Precious
Up In the Air

BEST PICTURE – COMEDY OR MUSICAL

(500) Days of Summer
The Hangover
It’s Complicated
Julie & Julia
Nine

BEST DIRECTOR – MOTION PICTURE

Kathryn Bigelow – The Hurt Locker
James Cameron – Avatar
Clint Eastwood – Invictus
Jason Reitman – Up In The Air
Quentin Tarantino – Inglourious Basterds (more…)

All your life, you’ve heard about the American Dream: find a wife or husband, pop out some kids, buy a house with a white picket fence and live happily ever after in the cozy embrace of suburbia.

But what if that cozy embrace wasn’t there anymore? Take a look around you at the news and official statistics, and it’s clear that America and its attendant “Dream” is in a heap of trouble. What if you did all that hard work, only to see it swept away by a devastating layoff? How would you handle it?

In his new film “Up in the Air,” George Clooney delivers perhaps the most well-rounded performance of his career while finding rays of hope and humor in the economic darkness of our present times. As Ryan Bingham, a corporate downsizing specialist, he flies around the country helping administer mass layoffs for companies too scared to handle such situations themselves.

Ryan has the patter of a concerned friend down to a T, calmly guiding people through the devastating moments of hearing they’ve lost their job by discussing their severance packages, giving them a pep talk and then providing them their final proverbial shove out the door with a kind smile and perhaps a pat on the back thrown in for effect. But his own personal life is nearly bereft of such touches, or connections of any kind – he’s on the fly over 300 days a year and wishes he could make it 365. If a woman’s around to seduce from time to time, Ryan will engage in some fun but meaningless sport sex and move on. (more…)