I just cannot get behind this Star Trek rebirth.  The whole thing is just so unrealistic.  Not the warp speed or phasers or beaming about the universe - those are at least remotely plausible.  I am talking about the fact that the starship Enterprise is composed entirely of officers and yet it still seems to function.  Where are the non-commissioned officers (NCO), the petty officers and sergeants who actually make any military organization run?  No, I can suspend disbelief over Klingons and tribbles, and I actively support the notion of green alien hotties.  But the idea of a functioning military unit without sergeants is just a wormhole too far.

Hollywood movies often focus on the commanders, the captains and colonels, but they have also managed to highlight some great sergeants as well.  When you are picking out DVDs for next weekend, remember that May 16th is Armed Forces Day and consider a few selections that show the sergeant in all his gruff and grumbling glory. 

If you have never experienced the joy of going through basic training and do not plan to, your first stop should be Full Metal Jacket, with R. Lee Ermey’s legendary portrayal of a Marine drill instructor who must have missed out on the block of instruction on sensitivity.  I saw this in the theater about a week before I reported to Basic.  That was a poor idea.

If you're a country music fan you might be advised to avoid reading the Washington Post Style section when its writers tackle country music. It might make you want to put your boot up the critic's posterior.

The latest nuisance is J. Freedom du Lac's analysis of why country music radio is so chock full of songs about small town America. To you and me, the answer might be obvious, but du Lac set out to paint the trend as "divisive" and reactionary. In this excerpt, du Lac sets out to discredit the professional opinion of a D.C.-area country music station programmer:

Says Meg Stevens, the WMZQ program director: "It's a global theme: Wherever you're from, that's your place. You see what's happening with the economy and what's going on in the world, and people are getting in closer to their roots and their community, whether you're from rural Virginia or downtown D.C."

But the Atkins song and others of its ilk -- from Jason Aldean's "Hicktown" and Miranda Lambert's "Famous in a Small Town" to Zac Brown Band's "Chicken Fried" and Josh Turner's "Way Down South" -- are narrowcasting to a specific community: the core country audience, whose roots aren't exactly in America's urban centers.

The symbolism and prideful sentiments of the songs are intended to create a sense of belonging among people with similar backgrounds and lifestyles, or at least people who romanticize life in the rural South. (It's not a place; it's a state of mind.) To some listeners, though, it might sound as if the artists are closing ranks.

Nobody wants to be mocked.  And if you’re a rock star, surrounded by sycophants for the better part of 35 years, it must be especially hard to deal with being mocked.  It makes sense, then, that Don Henley does not like the parody of his song “Boys of Summer,” penned by Chuck DeVore, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, and Justin Hart, his advisor.  But Henley’s copyright-infringement lawsuit is far bigger than one rock star or his feelings.  Henley’s lawsuit undermines the First Amendment right to speak freely. 

Don Henley makes no effort to hide his political leanings.  In addition to performing at scores of fundraisers, Henley has given about $750,000 to partisan, liberal causes, including $10,000 to Barack Obama and $9,000 to DeVore’s soon-to-be opponent, Barbara Boxer.  Henley also exploits his music to advance a liberal, political agenda. 

In 2004, coalition forces in Iraq launched Operation Phantom Fury, the battle for control of Fallujah. American troops battled through a city of enemy insurgents, fighting house to house and street to street to seize control of the most dangerous city in the world.

Narrated by Senator Fred D. Thompson, “Perfect Valor” [view trailer at right] is the story of the high price paid by US forces and the legacy of that campaign as seen through the eyes of the men and women who were there, risking their lives in service to their country.
 
We meet a Navy Cross recipient, recognized for extraordinary gallantry under fire during the assault on Fallujah. A true American hero still haunted by his experience in Iraq. We listen to the family of a fallen Marine as they tell the story of their sacrifice. We hear the harrowing tale of a battalion surgeon who risked his own life to move an aid station forward, into the middle of the fight - a decision that saved thirty lives.

Today's Los Angeles Times has a story about freelance comedy writers who get paid for their jokes submitted to late night comics that actually make the cut and air in a monologue. Times staffers Matea Gold and Richard Verrier report that "For some late-night hosts, the laughs come cheap."

But alas, it's actually a violation of labor contracts for late night shows to pay freelancers. What's more, with Conan O'Brien acceeding to Leno's throne in June, the practice is expected to stop altogether for NBC's "Tonight Show."

O'Brien is one of the few late-night hosts to refuse freelance jokes, and East Coast guild officials used his move to privately remind their California counterparts of the prohibition.

"Conan is one of the key players in this industry, and we knew he was pure on this issue," said Lowell Peterson, executive director of the WGA, East. "This was just an opportunity to let the West know that this was a culture that was moving west. We just want to encourage that culture."

Watching “24” this week, I realized that our number one threat is multi-national corporations with battalions of hired killers on the payroll.  Similarly, “Michael Clayton,” “The International,” the new “State of Play” and many others have taught me that big companies assassinate their rivals, whistleblowers, policemen and random passersby with astonishing regularity.

I wish.  But then, I’m a trial lawyer and I could use a new house.

Sadly, the real world is much more esoteric than the portrait Hollywood paints, and the real threat is not quite so picturesque.  Instead of corporate death squads composed of hardboiled mercenaries with high tech assault rifles, the real killers are boring jihadi doofuses with dusty AKs, booby-trapped Fiats and the occasional boxcutter.   

Let’s stop and check the numbers.  Real terrorists, counting the victims of 9/11 and American losses in Iraq and Afghanistan: Over 7900 murdered. Victims of corporate murder: Zero. Nada. Zip. I would add in the number of Iraqis and Afghanis murdered by these folks, except that toll is beyond counting.  And to many liberals, their lives don’t seem to count anyway.

Someone needs to sue Santa Monica High School for education malpractice on behalf of the ill-educated Sean Penn. I mean, the man is nearly illiterate and he certainly has no grasp on history, philosophy, or statecraft. But his wacko left-wing inanities aside, it is his illiteracy that seems the most lamentable. Oh, it isn't Rosie O'Donnell illiterate. Hers is a special class of insensibility all by itself, but Penn's brand is proof of the lowest quality of education. I mean the man can barely put two words together sensibly much less exhibit a grasp of grammar and syntax. It really is a crime how badly he's been educated.

Take for instance his latest Huffington Post blathering where he seems to be saying that all we need to win the day in international relations is to give a "smile." Aside from being childishly simplistic in concept, it has some of the worst word usage and syntax I've seen for a long time in what is supposed to be a leader of opinion (again, Rosie aside).

The attacks on Miss California Carrie Prejean have gotten so bad that even same-sex marriage champion and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is taking notice.

Prejean, the runner-up of last Sunday's Miss USA pageant, has been the target of reports from the Hollywood media intelligentsia after her feud with gossip blogger Perez Hilton for the stance she took on same-sex marriage. And Newsom, who had just announced his intentions to run for governor of California, has noticed.

"I want to challenge her on her point-of-view," Newsom said in an appearance at Sapphire Energy, a bio-tech company, which aired on NBC's San Francisco affiliate on April 23. "She challenged me on my point-of-view and she spoke her conscience. What more can you ask? I speak my conscience, she should speak hers. So, I think she's being a little unfairly maligned."

Proving the old adage that instead of sitting quietly letting everyone think you are an idiot one should speak up and prove it, funnyman John Cleese and Kung Fu action star Jackie Chan recently did some talking that they should probably have avoided. Apparently unaware that they've left office, Cleese unloaded on George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and seemed to say U.S. Marines weren't very sophisticated at a recent visit to Cornell University. For his part, Jackie Chan announced to the world that Chinese people "needed controlling" because all that darn democracy is just too "chaotic" for them. One wonders where Jackie thinks all his many millions of dollars have come from: communism or democracy?

Chan's comments were so ridiculous that even the communist Chinese government thought they were foolish enough to denounce in the Chinese press.

The 9/11 terrorist attacks were part of “a massive neo-conservative government effort” to enable “American global domination,” a character on FX's "Rescue Me" argued on Tuesday night's episode. In the drama about firefighters in New York City, firefighter “Franco Rivera,” played by actor Daniel Sunjata, a real-life 9/11 “truther,” laid out his theory for a French journalist interviewing firefighters for a book on 9/11 first-responders. As noted in a February NewsBusters post, in a New York Times story about the then-upcoming storyline, Brian Stelter reported the ludicrous theory “may represent the first fictional presentation of 9/11 conspiracy theories by a mainstream media company (FX is operated by the News Corporation).”

During the episode, “Franco” outlined the four-point plan by the Project for a New American Century, starting with how Bush-Cheney “came to power with plans already made to attack Afghanistan and Iraq.” Second, “we have to make huge technological advances with our armed forces, that for some reason include the capability to fight wars from outer space.” Third, “huge increases in military spending” to the neglect of “sick and dying first-responders, 9/11's heroes, who can't even pay their light bill let alone their medical bills.” Fourth, “we changed the definition of pre-emptive attack so we can unilaterally bomb the shit out of, invade and occupy countries even if they pose no credible threat or had nothing to do with 9/11.” Finally:

How you going to put it into action? I mean, the American people are never going to go for shit like that, right? You're damn straight. No, what you need is an event, an event that gets everyone's heads turned around the right way. What you need is a new Pearl Harbor.

Audio: MP3 clip which matches the video.

In a case of entertainment imitating entertainment, Arron Sorkin -- maker of the faux president series West Wing -- has hinted that he is soon to start development of another one of those behind-the-scenes TV shows, this one to be the goings on with a TV pundit show ala Keith Olbermann's Count Down spectacle on MSNBC. So says Entertainment Weekly this week at least.

So, what are we going to be subjected to? Another ponderous show where a lefty bleeding-heart host that is soooo "concerned" with the whole wide world? A salute to the "seriousness" of an Olbermann type? Or are we going to see the tale of a nearly insane, egomaniacal freak that terrorizes everyone with whom he works? If they are going for fantasy probably the former. Reality... who knows?

OK, now by that headline you are most likely assuming that I am calling del Toro, Carrey and Penn Hollywood stooges and making fun of them. Of course, we already know that Penn and del Toro are stooges on the "useful idiot" level, but you may wonder why I am slapping Carrey? Well, I mean it in the strictest sense -- that Hollywood is casting for a new 3 Stooges team and these are the three Nyucks under consideration. It is del Toro as the new Moe, Carrey as the next Curly and Penn as our favorite nebbish, Larry.

But leave it to Hollywood to take the funniest threesome in Hollywood history and make a muck of it. This isn't really the 3 Stooges at all. See, it is a "new" one, set in modern day, where three guys sortta, kinda like the 3 Stooges find each other in an orphanage and start a comedy team bringing them fame and fortune.

The self-aggrandizing denizens of Hollywood constantly scold Americans over a lack of national healthcare. It is the biggest failure of American society ever that there is no cradle to the grave program for free health care, they constantly tell us. And now, in keeping with these nearly universal Hollywood "principles," to prove how Hollywood is far more moral than we lowly citizens of flyover country, and to show that they are better than the great unwashed in the backwaters of America... Hollywood is closing its nearly 90-year-old Motion Picture Fund hospital and accompanying long-term living facilities for aging actors.

Yep, dumping it. Walking away from the facilities for free healthcare for actors. Fuggedaboutit.

If you thought you couldn't care less about tonight's Academy Awards you're not alone for many of Hollywood's top stars are refusing to participate in Sunday's festivities other than just being in the audience.

Yikes!

So wrote Deadline Hollywood Daily's Nikki Finke Saturday:

With so much populist outrage at bankers and other corporate types these days, Hollywood is predictably trying to capitalize on it (TNT's "Leverage" is just one example.) "The International," from Relativity Media was just the latest to hit theaters with its Feb. 13 opening.

In the slow-moving thriller "The International," the executives of the fictional International Bank of Business and Credit (IBBC) aren't just crooked, they willingly hire assassins - the executives call them "consultants" - to get rid of anyone about to expose their crimes. The protagonists are Louis Salinger, an Interpol agent played by Clive Owen, and Eleanor Whitman, a Manhattan District Attorney played by Naomi Watts.

Owen made the morning talk show rounds hitting CBS "Early Show" Feb. 11 and ABC's "The View" on Feb. 13. In both cases, the hosts sought to find out if this story was grounded in reality.

"This is based roughly on a true story," CBS's Harry Smith queried. Owen replied that the script was "well-researched" and "well-informed." Owen's comments on "The View" were similar, but at least on ABC the actor admitted that the script was in fact "fictional."

"Now this movie, it really shows you that banks are terrorists in many ways, you know. I mean they do the same things to people in this movie that real terrorists groups like al-Qaida would do. Is this based on fact?" Joy Behar asked Owen.

“A coming episode of the acclaimed FX drama Rescue Me will tackle what may sound like a far-fetched plot line: that the attacks of Sept. 11 were an 'inside job,'” Brian Stelter reported in the New York Times, noting the ludicrous plot “may represent the first fictional presentation of 9/11 conspiracy theories by a mainstream media company (FX is operated by the News Corporation).” Actor Daniel Sunjata (IMDB page), who plays New York City firefighter “Franco Rivera” -- and who in a photo with the Times story sported a shirt emblazoned “INVESTIGATE 9/11” -- “predicted that the episode would be 'socio-politically provocative.'”

In the episode, the second in the new season starting in April, “Mr. Sunjata’s character delivers a two-minute monologue for a French journalist describing a 'neoconservative government effort' to control the world’s oil, drastically increase military spending and 'change the definition of pre-emptive attack.' To put it into action, he continues, 'what you need is a new Pearl Harbor. That’s what they said they needed.'” Now that's some crazy paranoia.

The message has made it everywhere else - Hannah Montana songs, every night on the news, in books and cartoons, so why not video games? If you want a preview of tactics that could be on the way in the name of curbing global warming, take a look across the pond at what they're doing in Europe.

In Britain, Lord Puttnam, the founding chairman of the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts and a former chairman of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Draft Climate Change Bill issued a statement ahead of his speech slated for the end of this month at the Terra future conference, urging video games to be used to spread the message about global warming.

"Serious games based upon real-life geography should be vital tools in our fight against climate change," said Lord Puttnam in a statement. "Educating people about the impact of prolonged changes to our climate in an accessible way is the best catalyst for action I know."

British politicians have been actively promoting various ways to curb the effects of so-called anthropogenic global warming. On Feb. 4, Lord Turner, the British climate czar, told the U.K. Environmental Audit committee that climate laws may be needed to restrict airplane flights and reduce carbon emissions.

Hollywood filmmakers are ruminating about taking on the 2008 political season. Towering personalities, scintillating stories, and epic clashes abound. The stories of the 2008 political campaign are pretty stimulating. We had the aging Democratic establishment in the form of the Clintons taking on the fresh young face in Obama, not to mention the first black candidate of note. We also had a close fought Democratic primary that went to a nail biting finish. On the GOP side we had the amazing emergence of the hockey mom from Alaska. Heartwarming family woman, popular governor, tender mother of a special needs child. A self-made woman from humble beginnings. Seems like some stories that could make for some compelling movies, eh?

So, how is Hollywood looking to treat these incredible stories? Would you be surprised that the Clintons and Obama stories are set for high drama, earnestly told... and Palin's is for comedy and satire? Would it shock you that only Sarah Palin is to be ripped, attacked, made fun of and satirized? I didn't think you would.

Brian Williams revealed Wednesday afternoon that in a question he didn't get to with President Obama the day before, he wanted to ask Obama if he is “ever tempted” to start over again with the stimulus bill “and give a stemwinder combination fireside chat/speech to the nation,” just as did Michael Douglas on "the crime bill” in The American President movie, “and just say, 'look, here's what we got to do. I went wrong. It got loaded up. Now we're going to do the real thing?'”

In that 1995 film (IMDb page), in which Douglas played Democratic President “Andrew Shepherd,” after compromising with Congress, he returns to his left-wing sensibilities and, in the climatic point of the movie cheered by liberal film-goers, walks to the press room where he delivers an impassioned lecture -- which earns affirmative nods from the journalists -- praising the ACLU, pushing for extreme action on global warming and promises, in the portion Williams admired, “to get the guns.” President Shepherd:

The other piece of legislation is the crime bill. As of today it no longer exists. I’m throwing it. I’m throwing it out and writing a law that makes sense. You cannot address crime prevention without getting rid of assault weapons and handguns. I consider them a threat to national security and I will go door-to-door if I have to but I’m going convince Americans that I’m right and I’m going to get the guns.

The Washington Times reported Friday that NBC rejected for the Super Bowl an ad from the Fidelis Center for Law & Policy's CatholicVote.com (video of the ad) showing a baby in the womb identified as Barack Obama -- which reminded me of how in January two years ago another network, CBS's Showtime cable channel, featured in one of its prime time series a mannequin “art” piece of Barbara Bush aborting George W. Bush. NewsBusters reported on January 29, 2007:

Sunday's episode of the L word, Showtime's drama series about lesbians in Los Angeles, featured the “Unauthorized Abortion of W,” a sculpture of a woman's body with an exposed womb displaying George W. Bush's adult face with each of his hands holding onto a rocket labeled “U.S. Air Force.” The rockets were angled to suggest they represent forceps. The figure was made to look just like Barbara Bush, with an American flag blindfold, and with the suction end of a vacuum cleaner just below her crotch.

(Video below.)