Movies

The New York Times' reliably liberal television-beat reporter Alessandra Stanley offered up a surprising assessment in her mostly favorable review of “The Path to 9-11," a review which ran on Friday when there was still some doubt as to whether or not ABC would cave in to the Clintonistas and various left-wing bloggers furious at the network. The first part of the miniseries ran last night with some selective edits but with the essence of the story intact, further infuriating the left with its picture of a Clinton administration unwilling to take terrorism seriously.

Perhaps he hopes to give legitimacy to the "9-11 conspiracy" movement. Filmmaker Oliver Stone says he is thinking of doing a movie about a "group of people in the American administration" who planned the terrorist attack. In his classic approach, he will claim that "bin Laden and George Bush met on the Grassy Knoll."

Reports Agence France-Presse:

US filmmaker Oliver Stone, who surprised many with the patriotic flavor of his new film "World Trade Center," hinted here Monday that he is considering a more controversial follow-up investigating the "conspiracy" around 9-11.

"There is a great story in a movie, a conspiracy by a group of people in the American administration who have an agenda and who used 9-11 to further that agenda," he told journalists while in Moscow as part of a world tour to promote his latest movie.

Michael Moore hasn't taken time off from making films to please liberals. FoxNews.com reports he'll soon be releasing two movies (neither of which will ever be vetted for accuracy by the MSM).

In the story, Moore is also quoted defending actor Tom Cruise, saying "his religion is his own damn business." Two paragraphs later, though, the corpulent moviemaker makes fun of actor Mel Gibson's religion:

Controversial filmmaker Michael Moore unveiled two new projects last night in Toronto: a documentary about the health insurance business called “Sicko” and film that chronicles the aftermath of the 2004 election, entitled “Slacker.”

Moore showed clips from both films as part of a special two-hour presentation at the famed Elgin Theater. Larry Charles, director of the new comedy “Borat” and well-known from his work on the TV show “Seinfeld,” conducted the program that also consisted of a long, funny and intimate live interview with Moore.

The evening was almost marred by a faulty projector that caused Moore’s clips to be interrupted several times. The same thing apparently happened one night earlier during a screening of “Borat.” Moore jumped on stage and did shtick with Charles for the packed house. Last night, Charles returned the favor.

And while clips from both new Moore movies looked tantalizing, it was the director himself who made the biggest headlines with revelations about his life since becoming a lightning rod for controversy with “Roger and Me” some 17 years ago.

Don't be too surprised if you start seeing Guy Fawkes masks popping up at leftist demonstrations and political events in the near future. The reason is that the leftists are now deriving their political inspiration from an incredibly simplistic fantasy movie called V For Vendetta which they take completely seriously as is indicated from this title of a recent thread at the Democratic Underground, "The answers to many of our questions can be found in the movie 'V'."

If you are not up to speed on V For Vendetta aka V For Vicodin, it is set in the near future where Britain is ruled by the fascistic regime of High Chancellor Adam Sutler (read "Adolf Hitler") whom the movie makes sure we know is a member of the Conservative Party. The characters of V have the one-dimensional subtlety of a sledge hammer with Sutler never speaking normally but with a vicious snarl. Muslims are portrayed in this movie as among the innocent victims of a hate campaign (also directed against lesbians) where even the ownership of a Koran results in quick execution by the EVIL regime.

As you may or may not know, this coming weekend, ABC is presenting a movie about the events that led up to the attacks on the WTC in 2001, called "The Path to 9/11".

It has leaked out by various critics and folks who have been offered an advanced screening of this flick that the Clinton administration does not come out looking too strong on National defense in the years prior to the attacks on that fateful day. In fact, it shows them as responsible for one misstep and failure after another in the face of plenty of forewarning that the situation was quickly escalating.

In light of that depiction, for the last week or so, there have been some pretty persistent rumors that, after these screenings, various members of the Clinton administration, including the ex-president himself, began a campaign of calls, meetings and efforts to cajole ABC into altering and editing the film to make the Clintons look better.

As the summer ends, so ends the season of the superhero blockbuster, and some parents of young boys that I know are still getting over their annoyance at the superhero movie-marketing gap. The toy stores and burger joints carry all the merchandise for the grade-school set – and the movie is rated PG-13. What happens when your first-grader wants to see the movie that’s tied in with his new toy?

Suffice it to say that our news media would be more upset about the fat content in the Happy Meal food than the dangers of taking young children to movies they may not be ready to handle.

"Superman Returns" was a big, noisy, critically acclaimed blockbuster – and it was PG-13 for intense violence. But just look at how the movie was promoted by Burger King: eight different toys, including sweat bands, sunglasses, action figures, Frisbees, and fans. There was even a drawing for a Superman laptop computer.

Imagine the following film being made during Bill Clinton's presidency:

This is the dramatic moment when President George Bush is gunned down by a sniper after a public address at a hotel, in a gripping new docudrama soon to be aired on TV.

Set around October 2007, President Bush is assassinated as he leaves the Sheraton Hotel in Chicago.

Death of a President, shot in the style of a retrospective documentary, looks at the effect the assassination of Bush has on America in light of its 'War on Terror'.

The 90 minutes feature explores who could have planned the murder, with a Syrian-born man wrongly put in the frame.

Film director Spike Lee could have created a stirring tribute to the victims of Hurricane Katrina who lost everything. Instead, his documentary "When the Levees Broke" featured Republican/Bush-bashing, conspiracy-mongering, and a disregard for victims of other races

Jeff Crouere at Ringside Politics reviewed the movie.

Spike Lee focused primarily on the Lower Ninth Ward and the African-American victims of Katrina. So, viewers were left with the clear indication that the New Orleans area is almost solely comprised of African-Americans and the victims of Katrina were almost all African-American. However, the metropolitan area of New Orleans was 63% white prior to Katrina and 47% of the storm fatalities were not African-Americans, and of that group the vast majority was white.

Katrina was an equal opportunity destroyer and the flood waters did not discriminate. Incredibly, Lee found no time to investigate the damage in Old Metairie or Lakeview, two primarily white areas that were decimated. Was that just an oversight or an example of racial discrimination? Lee also completely bypassed the devastated Mississippi Gulf Coast, another primarily white region, which bore the brunt of the high winds and the storm surge of Katrina...

Reports European Jewish Press:

A group of Israeli filmmakers were dropped from the schedule of the Documentary Film Festival in the French town of Lussas last week with their films replaced by movies by Palestinian and Lebanese filmmakers.

The directors received a letter from the directors of the festival explaining that they were dropped because of the latest Middle East crisis.

In what appears to be the latest in a long list of cultural boycotts against Israeli artists, the letter informed the Israelis that their films would be replaced.

Lack of detachment

According to Ynet News, the letter, signed by the festival’s director, artistic director, and program director, claimed that “it is difficult to look at films from the countries involved in the current war with the same degree of detachment.”

Summer lovin', had me a blast

Summer lovin', happened so fast.

The opening lyrics to the signature song in the musical Grease are apt to describe the media's summer fling with global warming alarmist Al Gore.

A new study by Rachel Waters and Dan Gainor of the MRC's Business & Media Institute (BMI) documents the love affair.

Even with the extensive media coverage – more than one network story per day on average – Gore’s film spent only one week in the top ten. The film only made it to the number nine position.

By comparison “X-Men III – The Last Stand” had only had 25 appearances on the networks in the same three-month period. The third installment in the X-Men series raked in more than $233 million in the U.S. Gore’s documentary has brought in less than $22 million. That means X-Men pulled in 10 times the money with one-third the TV appearances.

When talking with someone who isn't especially political or is left-of-center about the topic of media bias, I will occasionally hear the argument that the media's political orientation doesn't really matter because most people are skeptical of what they hear on TV and elsewhere. In the modern age of low voter turnout, anti-advertising advertising, and the permanent campaign, people are smart enough not to take in any media message without several large grains of salt.

Non-intelligent people don't make this argument in my experience. Only smart people do.

Unfortunately, not everyone is smart. Many people continue to be very impressionable as adults, especially to mass media like television and movies, as demonstrated in this post from the Dummie Funnies, a blog run by NewsBusters user pjcomix which monitors the loonybin known as Democratic Underground.

Stand by for some really great laughs on Sunday, November 5. Some Dummies, taking their cue from the movie, "V For Vendetta," are actually planning to gather in front of public buildings around the country wearing dopey Guy Fawkes masks as you can see in this THREAD titled, "Remember, remember the 5th of November....". Yeah, that's just the ticket, DUmmies. Leading into the midterm elections, make complete FOOLS of yourselves. This doesn't totally surprise me since the DUmmies instantly took to this fantasy flick in which Britain is ruled by an EVIL rightwing regime. The DUmmies have fantasized themselves in the masked hero's role in opposing that regime (which they have transferred to the EVIL Bush regime). So let us now watch the DUmmies once again make laughingstocks of themselves in Bolshevik Red while the commentary of your humble correspondent, looking for a V For Vendetta Halloween costume at the Dollar Store, is in the [brackets]:

The fifth anniversary of the September 11 hijacking attacks on America by al-Qaeda may present a challenge to our memory as a country. How much do we remember, and how much have we forgotten? No one truly expected that the national unity in grief and anger on that day would last forever. But that unity is bound together again in the new Oliver Stone-directed movie "World Trade Center."

This comes as something of a surprise with the name of Stone attached. But believe it. This movie brings 9/11 back to life all its horrific immediacy in the lives of New York Port Authority cops and their families. This film is not political. This film transports us back into that day when Democrats and Republicans sang "God Bless America" on the Capitol steps, when the whole nation felt the pain of that gaping, burning hole in the center of Manhattan, the disastrous gash in the Pentagon, and the heroic downing of jihadist hopes in a Pennsylvania field.

It's not just Samuel L. Jackson. Hollywood really does love snakes on the silver screen.

The MRC's Business & Media Institute today released the second installment of our Bad Company trilogy today.

The three-part special report series examines the television entertainment, cinematic, and network news media's biases against the American businessman.

In our first study we found, among other things that boob tube businessmen "committed crimes five times more often than terrorists and four times more often than gangs."

With a bigger budget comes bigger bias. Here's what we found when we went to the movies:

In a Monday USA Today profile of Oliver Stone, published two days before the opening of World Trade Center, the movie he directed about the rescue of two Port Authority police officers, Stone didn't follow the apolitical script of the film. Reporter Anthony Breznican quoted Stone: “'Bush makes Nixon look like St. Augustine,' he says of the saint known for his zeal in confessing wrongs. 'At least Nixon had some intelligence and a conscience....Bush is The Manchurian Candidate,' a reference to the 1962 movie about a presidential contender manipulated by immoral handlers.” Stone also complained in the article in which he denounced President Bush: "I hate that kind of censorship which says celebrities can't speak." (Excerpt follows)

Neal Gabler might not look like an athlete, but don't be surprised to see him lining up for the long jump at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. For on this evening's Fox News Watch, Neal made a logical leap of Beamonesque proportions.

According to Gabler, the fact that a drunken Gibson made anti-Semitic remarks retroactively proves that his 'Passion of the Christ' was anti-Semitic too.

Here's how the liberal media critic put it:

"The interest here is 'The Passion.' It made something like $400 million. It was accused of being anti-Semitic. The mainstream press didn't really want to touch it. Because they were afraid of being clobbered from the right.

Washington Post reporter Paul Farhi noticed with the new Woody Allen flick "Scoop" the obvious trend in movies featuring journalists: the print specialists get all the plum roles, and the TV journalists get the pits:

As a general rule, when a story calls for a journalist to do something serious or important -- solve a murder, expose wrongdoing, spring an innocent man, etc. -- you can count on seeing a print reporter at the center of the story, not a TV journalist, says Joe Saltzman, a professor at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication.

Saltzman, himself a former TV journalist, has done enough reporting to say this with authority. He's director of the Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture project at USC, which maintains a database of some 46,000 items (films, TV shows, books, etc.) about fictional journalists.

I couldn't help but think of the "squeaky voiced teen" recurring character on The Simpsons when I read this story on global warming in today's Los Angeles Times:

Whatever the ultimate scientific truth, this month's weather has been for many Southern Californians a perceptual tipping point that brought home the possibility of global warming, just as the fury of Hurricane Katrina did for the people of New Orleans.

Inside the air-conditioned darkness of the Majestic Crest Theatre in Westwood, Max Furstenau, 18, was cleaning up after Tuesday's 3 p.m. showing of "An Inconvenient Truth," in which former Vice President Al Gore made the case for global warming.

If an MSM movie critic reviews a movie in an empty forest, will anyone care? That is the question posed by newspaper film reviewer, Steven Whitty who seems agonized that the general public and the movie industry increasingly regard him and his colleagues as irrelevant:

[Helping end the days when MSM critics matter more] has been Hollywood's increasing reliance on pre-sold titles, saturation advertising and action franchises aimed at teenage boys.

"When I started at Paramount in the '60s, you opened a picture in four theaters and hoped for good reviews," says the former studio exec. "Nowadays, when you open a movie on 4,000 screens, spend $80 million on ads -- well, you're not exactly dependent on word of mouth."

No argument there, and no news to veteran critics.

"I think the studios have finally realized they have all this power, so why don't they use it," says Dave Kehr, who reviewed films for the Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News and the New York Times before switching to a DVD column for the Times. "They don't need us. People like Adam Sandler have demonstrated that you can treat critics with open contempt and it doesn't make the slightest difference."

There's a lot of truth in Whitty's analysis so far. Since most people no longer read newspapers, it stands to reason that they'd stop consulting critics working in their employ. And he is certainly right about Sandler, whose cinematic corpus delicti demonstrates contempt not just for critics but for anyone with an IQ higher than 70. Unfortunately, this is about all our erstwhile critic gets right.

There’s another sequel coming out today, and this one is the highly-anticipated follow-up to the 1994 cult classic “Clerks.” Apparently, the Motion Picture Association of America gave this unbelievably vulgar film an “R” rating instead of a stricter “NC-17,” and the movie’s writer/director/star is absolutely shocked (hat tip to Town Hall’s blog). As reported by MSNBC.com:

“Clerks II” director Kevin Smith was “shocked, literally, in shock” when his slacker sequel got an R rating. Smith had fought the tougher NC-17 rating on the first film, and was prepared for a battle on this one. “The ‘questionable’ content in ‘Clerks II’ goes beyond anything we've ever presented in a film before,” he noted. “Don't know what happened in the MPAA screening that morning, and don't need to know. All I do know is that they handed us an R, without asking for a single cut. And rather than obsess over it, I just quickly [and happily] accepted the rating and moved on.” 

To give one an idea of just how vulgar this movie is supposed to be, film critic Joel Siegel actually walked out of a screening. According to the Hartford Courant, this is the first time in 30 years Siegel has done that:

It's getting harder to make a blockbuster these days, and as productions costs continue to rise, making movies is no longer financially rewarding. Superstar actors are now more talked about for their private lives than for their movies, and they face cuts in salaries as studios have to worry more about digital technology and foreign marketing.

One benefit of this, hopefully, will be that Hollywood will no longer be the purveyor of the conventional wisdom and the stars, who will not burn as brightly, will no longer have their every political opinion treated as gospel by Hollywood and national reporters.

Reports the LA Times:

As studios slash jobs and restructure to boost profits, Hollywood's creative and executive ranks are having a collective anxiety attack.

Walt Disney Co.'s move this week to lay off about 650 employees and revamp its Burbank studio to make fewer films only confirms what many in the entertainment industry have been stressing over for months: The movie business is shrinking.

Let's imagine an American World Cup team member 'of pallor' had head-butted, oh, an Arab or African player. Would the MSM be quick to excuse, even to make the incident the object of humor? Or would we have been treated to mind-numbing disquisitions on racism in sport as a microcosm of society at large?

But when a French player of Arab ancestry head-butts an Italian? Well, CBS tells us, boys will be boys. CBS's Elizabeth Palmer, who narrated a segment on the incident on this morning's Early Show, informed us that "it's a male thing understood around the world." To prove her point, CBS ran a clip from an Adam Sandler flick showing the comedian, as a football player, taking a flying foot leap into another player who had insulted his mother. We were also treated to images of video spoofs and video games that the incident has generated.

This weekend's print ads for the Al Gore global-warming-slide-show documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" explicitly appeals to liberals to vote for environmental extremism at the box office. Is this a movie ad, or a Greenpeace direct-mail letter? Judge for yourself. This prose appears on the image of a piece of paper tacked to a bulletin board (emphasis theirs):

An Inconvenient Truth' is already one of the top ten documentaries of all time.

It has a chance to become a phenomenon.

There are people in Washington hoping that never happens, so they can dismiss it as a fringe issue.

If you care... you can't let them.

You need to take your friends and family, and make them see it.

The media usually leaves Hollywood out of the class warfare it engenders, but NBC's Michael Okwu found a sore spot among union members angry at Hollywood hot shots like George Clooney: Top dollar celebrities pulling down millions to voice over commercial spots.

“Let’s put it this way, there are some people that are making a million dollars an hour,” announcer Tom Kane griped. Okwu told viewers Kane is paid “a lot less.”

“Just go make your movies. Let us do our commercials and no one gets hurt,” Kane told Okwu.

But Kane is far more successful than the average union dues-paying announcer and he himself has starred in a few animated movies.

A look at Kane’s professional Web site and his profile at the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com), tell of a career voicing over television shows, video games, and trailers to movies such as “Booty Call,” “Ice Age 2,” and “Jimmy Neutron.”

The 70-year-old comic book superhero Superman has always had the longtime slogan, "Truth, justice, and the American way." But in the latest movie reincarnation of the Man of Steel, the slogan is a little different: "Truth, justice and all that stuff."

The makers of the movie claim that "the world is different" than it was in the 40's and 50's, and that the film has to be applicable for movie watchers around the world.

Says Hollywood Reporter:

While audiences in Dubuque might bristle at Superman's newfound global agenda, patrons in Dubai likely will find the DC Comics protagonist more palatable. And with the increasing importance of the overseas boxoffice -- as evidenced by summer tentpoles like "The Da Vinci Code" -- foreign sensibilities can no longer be ignored.

One of the writers of the screenplay, Dan Harris, says "the American way" doesn't mean the same thing anymore.

Barbara Walters, fresh from firing Star Jones off The View, took the ABC talk show back to what it does best, promoting liberal issues. Former Vice President Al Gore and his wife Tipper appeared on the June 29 edition of the show. At the start of the program, The View's announcer previewed the paranoid, frightened tone that the segment would take:

"Former Vice President Al Gore and his wife Tipper are telling you about an inconvenient truth that could destroy the entire planet."

Barbara Walters, at 11:17AM EDT, described Mr. and Mrs. Gore this way:

"Former Vice President Al Gore and his wife Tipper have been forces of nature in the fight to save the planet. And there is a wonderful movie you all have to see called An Inconvenient Truth. And in it, the Vice President, the former Vice President, lays out a compelling, horrifying, but ultimately hopeful case for finding a way to save an Earth that's on the brink of disaster. And that means saving our lives and our children's lives."

I’ve been warning people a lot lately to be careful to not spit their coffee on their keyboards as I present the hysterical rantings of hysterical ranters. Today it is my keyboard taking the bath as it were.

The following is highly typical of the liberal elites in our country: when Americans aren’t interested in a movie, book, or piece of journalism that they believe is either fabulous or socially important, give it an award. Such has happened to Al Gore’s recent piece of …science fiction which, judging from its meager sub-$7 million dollars worth of ticket sales after three weeks, is being shunned by moviegoers much as members of his party typically are at the polls every two years.

As reported by the Associated Press: “The Al Gore documentary 'An Inconvenient Truth' will receive a rare recognition from the Humanitas Prize, which honors screenwriting that helps 'liberate, enrich and unify society.'"

Yes, there's nothing like using junk science and inflammatory rhetoric for making a politic point that benefits you while debasing and castigating others to "liberate, enrich, and unify society." However, here’s the truly delicious punch line with emphasis mine (put your coffee down now):

The National Center for Policy Analysis writes about the rise of "docu-ganda" films, movies that are portrayed as "just the facts" filmmaking, but actually have an agenda and make no attempt to carry both sides. In this way, they are like the news media. Both docu-ganda filmmakers and news reporters strive to be thought of as dispassioned observers, and want to be regarded as speaking with the "voice of God."

Documentary films promise to tell an "untold" story, but is it the full story, asks Daniel Wood of the Christian Science Monitor?

Don't count on it; the days when "documentary" reliably meant "inform the audience" are over. Today, makers of such films feel little or no obligation to heed documentary-film traditions like point-by-point rebuttal or formal reality checks, says Wood.

The world has taken another turn for the bizarre. CNSNews reported on Friday (hat tip to NB reader RJ) that a new family movie about football, “Facing the Giants,” has been given a “PG” rating by the Motion Picture Association of America apparently for having too much religious content.

Too much religious content? Are you kidding me?

This story appears to have first been reported by Terry Mattingly at the Scripps Howard News Service on Wednesday: “‘What the MPAA said is that the movie contained strong 'thematic elements' that might disturb some parents,’ said Kris Fuhr, vice president for marketing at Provident Films, which is owned by Sony Pictures. Provident plans to open the film next fall in 380 theaters nationwide with the help of Samuel Goldwyn Films, which has worked with indie movies like ‘The Squid and the Whale.’"

Just what kind of “thematic elements” are present? The article elaborated:

Friday’s New York Times profile of NPR star Garrison Keillor (well, American Public Media, to be exact, but heard on many NPR stations) underlines how public broadcasting can be a very lucrative business. On the cusp of Keillor’s "Prairie Home Companion" movie coming out in a week, Times writer Joyce Wadler traveled to St. Paul to do the feature "At Home with Garrison Keillor," which truly underlines the Keillor wealth.

Keillor, to put it in a Midwesterner’s terms, is a lutefisk-and-lefse limousine liberal. His latest political book, Homegrown Democrat, proclaims his love for the Donkey Party and was summed up by one critic as "a masterful diatribe against the Republican party and narcissistic, greed-driven, mean-spirited ‘conservatism.’" (Brent Bozell pegged Keillor’s odd mix of socialist theorizing and capitalist merchandising here.) Minnesota Public Radio, the parent company of American Public Media, hasn’t been a pioneer in disclosing financial particulars, but Wadler brings it into some focus:

Box Office Mojo estimates that the box office receipts for "The DaVinci Code" for this weekend will drop to $33.5 million, a 56.5 percent drop from last weekend's opening, and the biggest percentage drop among the top ten movies. One reason is the fourth-largest opening on record for "X-Men 3: The Last Stand," estimated to land $107 million.

If the blog seems too slow for you on the holiday weekend, there's always the opportunity to read our report on "The Trashing of the Christ," or how the networks rained fire on "The Passion" and gleefully went on the road for the "Code."

Kelly Boggs of Baptist Press surveyed how film critics were disappointed that someone sanded down the jagged anti-Christian edges of Dan Brown's novel.