Entertainment Media

On CBS's Sunday Morning, correspondent Mark Phillips described the latest adaptation of the Robin Hood legend by director Ridley Scott and starring Russell Crowe: "And so here is an evil King John, squeezing his subjects for more taxes....And here is Robin. Not as a thief, but as a revolutionary figure trying to limit the King's power. Robin Hood meets Che Guevara." [Audio available here]   

Protesting high taxes and wanting to limit government power is the equivalent of a Communist revolution? Sounds more like the Tea Party movement.

After making that bizarre comparison, Phillips further explained the plot of the new film: "This Robin joins the fight to get the English king to sign the Magna Carta in the year 1215, the document establishing the first rights on which modern democracies are based." Guevara, of course, was the ruthless henchman of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, hardly an advocate for democracy.

For many far-left MSNBC fans, one conservative on the cable network is one too many. Combine a tired tirade against Joe Scarborough of "Morning Joe" with the inanity of a Hollywood leftist's lame attempt at media commentary, and you have one entertaining Huffington Post column.

"Are the programmers at MSNBC nuts?" asked legendary actor Donald Sutherland (pictured right) on Sunday. "They give us refreshing afternoons with Chris and Ed, put us to bed with the clarifying sensibilities of Rachel and Keith and then, idiotically, wake us up with Mr. Small Mouth."

Yes, Sutherland did just use the terms "refreshing" and "clarifying sensibilities" in reference to Ed Schultz and Keith Olbermann, respectively. And no, apparently he was not being sarcastic. Then comes the Scarborough-bashing:

Actor Alec Baldwin and New York Times assistant managing editor Richard Berke went back and forth mocking Sarah Palin during a discussion at Harvard University on Wednesday.

Baldwin dubbed Palin "caribou barbie," while Berke rehashed the former Alaska Governor's interview with Katie Couric during the 2008 campaign -- perhaps the left's favorite Palin-basing talking point. Baldwin went on to attribute Palin's success to a television news culture that sports women who look like they "just popped off the runway."

These demeaning comments marked the latest in the liberal elite's condescension of Sarah Palin -- condescension that would likely be condemned as outright sexism if directed at another prominent public figure. Videos of the exchange are embedded below the fold.

CNSNews.com recently caught up with actress Janine Turner and asked her what it is like to be a conservative in Hollywood. Her frank response paints a dark picture.

No one has ever accused Alec Baldwin of being a rocket scientist, but apparently the actor fancies himself a nuclear physicist. At least that’s the logical conclusion to draw based on his post over at HuffPo entitled “The Human Cost of Nuclear Power.” The actor assumes his new role with gusto, metaphorically donning a lab coat to explain what he believes are the inherent dangers of nuclear power, but his bizarre conclusions and the outdated, discredited research he cites suggests that a straightjacket would be his better fashion choice. 

Let’s start with a question that illustrates just how far the limb that Baldwin is precariously balancing upon extends: what kind of power plant emits the most radiation? The correct answer isn’t the obvious answer. According to the Department of Energy, coal fired power plants emit about one hundred times more radiation, per unit of energy produced, than nuclear plants, chiefly because coal naturally contains trace amounts of radioactive compounds and, unlike nukes, they’re not designed with radioactive shields. Before anyone living near a coal fired power plant runs screaming for the door, I should hasten to add this is still an incredibly tiny amount of radiation, about 1/10,000th of all the radiation that an average person is exposed to each year. Natural sources, by far, make the biggest radioactive contributions to our lives. Nothing else is even close. 

On Tuesday's CBS Early Show, co-host Maggie Rodriguez described how comedian Conan O'Brien could attract viewers to his new late night show on the TBS cable channel: "if he can get this young revolution, you know, a la President Obama, to follow him, that could be huge."

Rodriguez made the comment after guest Dalton Ross, the assistant managing editor for Entertainment Weekly, observed that O'Brien was: "now competing with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, he's not expected to have these mass numbers. As long as he brings his younger audience, his albeit smaller, but passionate audience to TBS, it's going to be successful."

Ross thought Rodriguez's comparison of Obama and O'Brien supporters was "exactly right."

I must have missed the groundswell of support and the public clamor for the return of Rosie O'Donnell to the daytime airwaves. It seemed that her time in the cultural spotlight had passed following her notorious 2008 variety show failure (It was hailed by one merciful critic as "dead on arrival") and her exile to a daily Sirius XM radio show that caters to creepy shut-ins and those unlucky listeners who can't figure out how to tune-in to Howard Stern. But like some sort of loudmouthed, frumpy, left-wing vampire who just won't stay in the ground, she is threatening to rise again with a terrifying plan to replace Oprah once the Queen of Daytime TV retires in 2011. Someone in Hollywood, please - break out the garlic.

Of course, I'm hardly Rosie's daily television show target demographic. I work for a living instead of sitting at home staring slack-jawed at the succession of Sham-Wow commercials and ads for shyster lawyers promising big payouts for the imaginary injuries of their deadbeat clients that fill the time between inane segments of mindless yak. And while the social parasite demographic seems to grow larger after every freebie, hand-out and pay-off the Administration and its Congressional flunkies issue in favor of their employment-averse constituents, Rosie O'Donnell still seems like a bad economic bet.

With the recently announced end of Fox's hit series "24," many liberal pundits are parading the show as a false depiction of the notion that "torture works." Contrary to their accusations, the Jack Bauer interrogation methods bear exactly zero resemblance to any actual interrogation techniques used by American military, law enforcement, or intelligence agents.

"On '24,' torture saves lives," the New York Times's Brian Stelter writes, disapprovingly. James Poniewozik, writing on a Time Magazine blog, attributes the show's supposed approval of harsh interrogations to the "conservative politics of co-creator Joel Surnow."

Any American who has serious doubts that our military and intelligence officials would allow interrogators to, say, directly threaten the lives of a terrorist's family (let alone inflict tremendous physical pain) to elicit information has a better grasp of interrogation techniques -- and the integrity of our men and women in uniform -- than most of the liberal media.

"Avatar" director James Cameron had some nasty words for Glenn Beck and global warming "deniers" yesterday.

Cameron said at a news conference that he would like to shoot "those boneheads," referring to skeptics of anthropogenic global warming. "Anybody that is a global warming denier at this point in time has got their head so deeply up their a** I'm not sure they could hear me," Cameron added.

As for Beck, "he's a f****** a**hole," the 2010 Oscar nominee so eloquently put it. He backtracked a bit, but still maintained that the FNC host is "dangerous because his ideas are poisonous," echoing a statement by NPR's Cokie Roberts yesterday. "Of course he wound up on Fox News, which is where he belongs, I guess."

Perfectly timed for the week President Barack Obama is pushing the House to vote on ObamaCare, on tonight’s (Tuesday) episode of CBS’s The Good Wife, set at a Chicago law firm, the lawyers “battle a health insurance company that refuses to pay for urgent in-utero surgery.” The CBS.com plug for the March 16 episode: “In an emergency courtroom set up in a hospital, Alicia and Will battle Patti Nyholm and an insurance company that refuses to pay for life-saving in-utero surgery.”

The last time I critiqued The Good Wife (“CBS Drama Showcases Blank Book that Mocks Palin as Empty-Headed Dunce”), NewsReal blog’s David Forsmark contended the program “is both politically and (more importantly) dramatically complex” and deserves credit for showcasing liberal hypocrisy.

So, I’ll hold out hope this episode will deliver more than just simplistic vilification of an insurance company and might, given the plot involves “in-utero surgery,” also forward pro-life perspectives. Watch and see.

Three weeks after the mother on ABC’s Brothers and Sisters (“Nora Walker” played by Sally Field) fretted over the GOP “denying global warming,” the ABC drama on Sunday night featured an episode centered around her daughter, “Kitty Walker-McCallister,” a Republican candidate for Senate in California played by Calista Flockhart, coming under attack from conservative rubes who think she used her influence to get the visa renewed for her older sister’s French boyfriend, “Luc.”

At a campaign event with mini-video camera-toting bloggers visible, protesters boo and repeatedly chant: “America for Americans!” as they hold up signs, such as “FRENCHIE GO HOME!!!” and, with a mustache added to Kitty’s face, “Hi Kitler!” Just like the real media’s slander of Tea Party protesters.

Kitty’s husband whom she is running to succeed, incumbent “Senator Robert McCallister,” played by Rob Lowe, charges: “It’s just the conservative purity police trying to purge the party of lily-livered Republican moderates.” Kitty complains to her sister, “Sarah Walker,” played by Rachel Griffiths: “I am fighting for my political life with a bunch of ultra-conservative yahoos who want my head because you decided to fall in love with a guy who has immigration issues.”

Audio: 90-second MP3 clip that matches the video highlights from the March 14 episode.

In an interview with Matt Damon near the end of Thursday's CBS Early Show, co-host Harry Smith helped promote the actor's latest film, 'Green Zone,' which attacks the Bush administration over the Iraq war: "What was it like to make a movie like this? Because it's a little – it's – I'm not sure if this is an apt analogy, but it's a little 'Bourne' meets 'Hurt Locker.'"

Smith alluded to Damon's role as Jason Bourne in the action movie series and the Oscar-winning film 'Hurt Locker,' which chronicles bomb defusing teams in Iraq. Smith introduced the pre-recorded interview by touting Damon's latest film as a "new Iraq war thriller."

Lending credibility to the 'Green Zone' screenplay, Smith noted the movie was: "loosely based on a book that was written by a correspondent for the Washington Post, but the characters in it are fictional." Damon explained the premise of the film: "The guy I play is based on a real guy, he's leading a mobile exploitation team. We had these teams follow the Army....exploiting these sites where we thought the WMD were....they start realizing that there aren't any weapons there." Smith added: "Yeah, and he's a true believer." Damon replied: "Oh, absolutely."

Over the weekend, Time Magazine published a long, glowing profile of Tom Hanks to help promote his upcoming HBO miniseries “The Pacific.” And as with all things entertainment media, the subject is never challenged or even made to shift uncomfortably in his seat. The push to ascend Hanks to “national treasure” status is clearly on.

Hanks does seem to be a genuinely nice man and the work he’s done to bring American history to life on film is impressive, especially during a time when the singling out of America’s exceptionalism is more and more frowned upon in artistic and academic circles. ”From the Earth to the Moon,” “Band of Brothers,” and “John Adams” are not only artistic achievements, but in this MTV-addled culture, might be the best hope of teaching America’s youth about the unique history and greatness of this nation. And I suspect ”The Pacific,” the 10-part miniseries premiering this Sunday on HBO (which Big Hollywood’s Michael Broderick will cover extensively) will be a worthy addition to what came before.

But when it comes to leftist Hollywood, whenever Tinseltown and America meet, you have to brace yourself for it — and by “it” I mean the leftist sucker punch. Throughout, Hanks sounds perfectly reasonable, intelligent and even patriotic for a couple of thousand words. But of course that’s just the lure to get us on his side before we’re walloped with this left cross: [emphasis mine]

On this past Tuesday’s episode of The Good Wife on CBS, viewers were treated to a scene in which a ballistics expert opens a gift, from a partner of a law firm, to find a book about Sarah Palin made up of, he discovers by thumbing through it, blank pages “satirically representing,” Amazon.com explains, “the mind and thinking of Sarah Palin.” The book, ‘Going Rouge: A Candid Look Inside the Mind of Political Conservative Sarah Palin.’

In the March 2 episode, Chicago law firm partner “Diane Lockhart,” played by Christine Baranski, engages the ballistics expert to help her with a murder trial. In her office, he notices a picture, on her credenza, of her with Hillary Clinton. Visiting him at his home office on a farm, she notices on his credenza a photo of him next to Palin: “Is that photo-shopped? You and the Barracuda?” He doesn’t deny he “photo-shopped” it: “No, she’s at a pro-life rally.”  
 
After his testimony exonerates her client, he sends her a gift in a box: Sarah Palin’s biography: Going Rogue, promptly her to chuckle. In return – the scene in the accompanying video clip – he sends her the book ridiculing Palin. He opens the box, picks up the book and discovers all its pages are blank.

Perhaps this was a cry out for relevancy - something she hasn't been since the Clinton administration, but comedienne Roseanne Barr is showing her social commentary knows no bounds.

In a March 4 post on her blog, Barr used the suicide of Marie Osmond's son, Michael Blosil, to go on a sick and twisted anti-religion screed. According to the former sitcom star, any underlying issues that led to Blosil taking his own life were a result of "his church and the people in it":

"marie osmonds poor gay son killed himself because he had been told how wrong and how sick he was every day of his life by his church and the people in it. Calling that ‘depression' is a lie!"

You got to wonder, what is it with this relative congressional backbencher that drives lefties so crazy?  

Throughout Rep. Michele Bachmann's, R-Minn., two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, she has been target of liberal scorn - from the great mind of MSNBC's Ed Schultz to the bomb-throwing commentator parading as a pseudo-investigative journalist known as Matt Taibbi. But this latest round of Michele Bachmann derangement syndrome actually required time and effort - a comic book dedicated to denigrating the representative from Minnesota's 6th Congressional district.

The comic book series is called "False Witness! The Michele Bachmann Story" and is up to its third issue. The first issue laid a foundation for future misogynistic exploits by the creators and the second issue took direct quotes from Bachmann to prove anecdotally she's a "right-wing lunatic." And in the latest installment, the creators wear their feelings on their sleeves about Bachmann's stand for traditional marriage instead of supporting a pro-homosexual agenda.

Demonstrating how Hollywood writers aren't reticent about inserting gratuitous political points into prime time dramas, on last Sunday night's (February 21) episode of ABC's Brothers and Sisters, “Nora Walker,” played by liberal actress Sally Field, walked into her kitchen during a kick-off party for her daughter's Republican senatorial campaign, and complained to another daughter, a son and his husband:

I can't believe the three of you are in here drinking while the GOP is out there denying global warming.

The far-fetched current storyline has “Kitty Walker,” played by Calista Flockhart, weeks after a battle with cancer and adopting a baby, running for the U.S. Senate as a Republican from California to replace her husband, “Senator Robert McCallister,” played by Rob Lowe, who is stepping down after a heart attack.

Another episode will air tonight on ABC at 10 PM EST/PST, 9 PM CST.

(This post has been UPDATED; see end of entry.)

It seems that even the most [what appears to be] level-headed of comics writers these days just can't resist the pressure to delve into the "progressive" political cesspool. This time it's Captain America scribe Ed Brubaker. Hunting Muses lays it out:

Enter Captain America.

You know, the WW2 hero who died recently and just came back to life to fight a 20 ft tall Red Skull in front of the Lincoln memorial. I had heard a lot of good things from Ed Brubaker. I picked up some trades shortly before Cap’s death, read them, and then finished out Bru’s run because they were great. Right up there with Geoff John’s Green Lantern series as what I want from a comic.

Then Brubaker had to go and not only insult me, but violate the core of what Captain America is all about in issue 602 “Two Americas part 1″. Here are 3 consecutive pages from the comic to help you get a full context:

Two years ago, Time critic Richard Corliss wrote an article that clearly must have resonated at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Oscar telecast was sinking in the ratings, he wrote, because the nominees were largely unwatched by the masses. It used to be that the Best Picture prize went to mainstream box-office hits. "Now when the nominations come out, people try to catch up with the finalists, but it's almost like homework."

The 2010 Oscar nominations clearly signal that Hollywood is trying to return to a broader vision of the Oscars, as something more than an insular critics’ circle that likes only the self-consciously arty and obscure. That signal came most obviously with the announcement that there would be ten nominees for Best Picture. That list hadn’t seen 10 nominations since 1943, when the winner was "Casablanca."

Arty films that almost nobody has seen are still there – like "An Education." But arty blockbusters are there as well, like "Avatar" – current box office gross: $601 million -- and the animated film "Up," with $293 million. (By contrast, two years ago, the Best Picture box office leader was "Juno" – at $85 million when the nominations came out.)

Why let facts get in the way of a good liberal meme?

Paul Farhi sure didn't when he panned Oscar-nominated movie "The Blind Side" during a special "Hardball on Hollywood" segment with Vanity Fair's Michael Wolff and host Chris Matthews on the February 2 program.

The Washington Post media critic slammed the Best Picture-nominated drama -- based on a true story -- as just another movie in which the white characters' guilt is assauged by helping a black guy (video embedded at right; an MP3 audio clip is available here):

PAUL FARHI, Washington Post: The problem is that the black character is basically a prop to make the white people feel better about themselves, and that's been the major criticism. It's also the "magic negro," in other words, the idea that a black character will emerge to provide wisdom for the white people involved in the movie.

Alec Baldwin, award winning actor and wannabe leftist political commentator, called on Congress to sink congressional health care legislation today, saying he would rather the federal government "Put a Major Oil Company Out of Business," according to the headline of his column at the Huffington Post.

Baldwin isn't the only liberal entertainer calling for the death of ObamaCare. Plans to tax so-called "Cadillac" health care plans--or the most expensive insurance plans--have riled up some key Democratic supporters. The Teamsters Union and the AFL-CIO have protested, but now objections are also being raised by Hollywood's biggest unions.

The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that the "generally cozy relationship between Hollywood's unions and the Obama administration is coming under strain." The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists recently sent a letter to President Obama and congressional leaders pleading with them to drop the Cadillac tax. According to the Times, the Screen Actors Guild, the largest union of actors, is expected to take a similar stance on the legislation.

While speculating that Tonight Show host Conan O’Brien may move to Fox in the wake of NBC shaking up its late night schedule, on Wednesday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Maggie Rodriguez referred to Sarah Palin becoming a contributor for Fox News: “Sarah Palin his sidekick? Because she’s on Fox now, too.”

Co-host Harry Smith couldn’t resist getting in a shot of his own as he replied that Palin could “lead the band” for O’Brien’s Fox late night show. Of course if O’Brien made the move, he would be on the Fox broadcast channel, not Fox News.

Earlier, co-host Russ Mitchell reported Palin’s Fox News debut on Tuesday’s O’Reilly Factor: “Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin made her debut on Fox News last night. She appeared as a news analyst with Bill O’Reilly, who asked her about the controversy she attracts.”

There has been a substantial push lately by some of Hollywood's big names to reeducate Americans on world history. The leftist-dominated television and film industries have taken it upon themselves to promote histories of the United States and its role in the world that portrays it as an evil, occasionally colonial, always destructive force in global relations.

The latest such effort is being undertaken by director Oliver Stone, well known for his loving portrayal of Venezuela's Marxist dictator Hugo Chavez and derisive portrayal of our previous president in "W". Now Stone has set his sights on Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. He plans to "liberalize" America's thinking regarding two of the 20th century's most murderous dictators by putting them "in context", whatever that means (h/t Hot Air headlines).

"We can't judge people as only bad or good," Stone said at the Television Critics Association's press tour, referring to two dictators who--unless this writer's understanding of history is not sufficiently "liberalized"--are responsible, in Hitler's case, for the extermination of 6 million Jews and 3 million others in killing camps during World War II, and in Stalin's, for the murders of 20 million individuals in Russia and Soviet-occupied Europe.
 
It seems, Stone's claims notwithstanding, that one is historically justified in classifying these two particular dictators as "bad".

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd really wants a national security system that looks really nice and has lots of fancy bells and whistles, but is, beneath the shiny exterior, quite mediocre and extremely expensive.

Dowd implied as much when she asked Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano in a New Years Eve interview, "Why is it so hard for those charged with keeping us safe to be as imaginative and innovative as filmmakers like James Cameron?"

Yes, Cameron is so imaginative that he managed to spend $400 million on what amounts to a visually dazzling remake of Disney's Pocahontas (see plot summary below the fold - h/t Big Hollywood).

Finally, a movie where the Americans are the bad guys, and it's making a KILLING at the box office.

Yes, Time columnist Joe Klein is pumped about "Avatar."

It's not because he's a fan of special effects or blockbuster action flicks, but because the "timely" liberal message of the movie could "ripple" through the culture in a manner favorable to, wait for it, "enviro-theism" (emphasis mine):

MSNBC host David Shuster on Wednesday attacked conservatives who have a problem with the liberal agenda of the film Avatar, dismissing their arguments as "shameless and crazy." Shuster and New Live co-host Tamron Hall seemed bewildered by right-wing complaints about the environmentally-themed movie.

Talking with film critic Mike Taibbi, Shuster derided, "Could this be just about the political strategy of punching up? That the Weekly Standard, or whoever wants to criticize, they can get a little bit of attention for their point of view, as shameless and crazy as it may sound, by attaching themselves to a movie that's doing so well?"

Update (Ken Shepherd, Managing Editor, 11:30 p.m. EST): A few minutes ago, Ebert tweeted the following apology on his Twitter feed: "I feel bad about my cheap Limbaugh jokes. Sincere apologies to Rush and you folks. He said he was fine but that's no excuse." # # #

In a demonstration of Hollywood's quintessentially intolerant hatred of conservatives, film critic Roger Ebert took to the Twitterverse on Saturday to mock Rush Limbaugh and his sudden trip to a Hawaii hospital (h/t Big Hollywood headlines).

Ebert was hardly alone in rejoicing Limbaugh's hospital visit--and distressed when he was given a clean bill of health. Liberals nationwide let loose the vitriol, some--including members of the hate-stricken mobs at Daily Kos and DU, as reported by P.J. Gladnick--simply wished he would expire.

For his part, Ebert fell short of calling for Limbaugh's death, and offered only lame fat jokes and implications of racism. Some of the juicier tweets:

If you bother to read Joanna Weiss' column in today's Boston Globe, expect to get a sense of déjà . . . lu.  Like untold polemics that have preceded it, "Hollywood’s burden on aging women" stamps its feet over the unequal treatment of aging in men and women.

You know: male stars are allowed to age gracefully, but women must struggle ever-harder to conform to a youthful stereotype of sex-appeal. Unfair!

The feminist response is to blame the culture, in this case embodied by Hollywood, for promoting shallow, sexist values.  But the fault, dear Joanna, is not in our stars but in ourselves, or more precisely, our DNA.

Inside the studios of talk radio and cable news, the hot talk about a "war on Christmas" has cooled somewhat in 2009. But the controversies over Christmas, which seem as eternal as religion itself, continue on a number of different levels.

There’s the schoolhouse war over politeness to religious minorities – and even more unnecessarily, the altogether non-religious. This is the kind where many parents sit through inane "winter" chorus concerts at both public and private schools where there are more songs about sleds and skis than about herald angels and newborn kings. In some cases, students even salute the holidays of religious minorities (including the recently invented Kwanzaa) while excluding any mention of Christmas.

At my son’s "holiday" middle-school party, students performed skits from "Star Wars" and "West Side Story" and there was even a tribute to Michael Jackson. Not one popular Christmas carol was sung all night. (Their version of a "Silent Night," come to think of it.)

Managing Editor's Note: The following is a reprint of Michael Moriarty's original December 14 post to Big Hollywood. Moriarty, you may recall, played a prosecutor in the first few seasons of the long-running NBC drama "Law and Order."

Well, I think I’ve been fairly calm and forgiving of "Law and Order" for about fifteen years. Living outside of the U.S. has certainly helped in more ways than one. Out of sight, out of mind. "Law and Order" has, for years, been just a press of the remote away from non-existence.

However, recent events have "Law and Order" just begging for my reassessment. I hardly expected my old television series to be the clown act that leads the American viewing audience into an increasingly predictable pile of hard left propaganda.

Why?