Movies

Patricia Arquette just can’t stop poor-mouthing—and also putting her foot in her mouth. She turned her Oscar-acceptance speech for best supporting actress (Boyhood) into a 77-cents-on-the-dollar political mini-harangue about women’s supposed unequal-pay problems.

Entertainment Weekly's Anthony Breznican blasted conservatives on Monday's CNN Tonight for criticizing actress Patricia Arquette for her politicized acceptance speech at the Oscars. Breznican actually went after Don Lemon for stating that "winners and presenters bring their often-liberal-leaning political and social issues to the ceremony." Breznican asserted: "I can't really think of anything…

Oh, Hollywood, you're racist and you don't even know it! That was the undercurrent of post-Oscars analysis delivered by Chris Hayes and panelists on the Monday, February 23 edition of All In. From emcee Neil Patrick Harris's opening joke to a running bit with Octavia Spencer to Sean Penn's "green card" joke, the faculty-lounge lefties assembled on set lectured the Academy Awards for being too…

On the Monday after the Oscars, MSNBC Morning Joe co-host Mika Brezinski appeared on her colleague Ronan Farrow's canceled-but-still-broadcasting to promote her "Know Your Value" campaign to teach women how to be more effective negotiators in the marketplace for better pay and benefits. During her chat with Farrow, the issue of "pay inequality" in Hollywood was discussed, including the allegation…

On Thursday, HLN – the network formerly known as CNN Headline News – premiered a new program: News and a Movie. A Tuesday press release from CNN detailed that "each News and a Movie presentation...features a dedicated celebrity media panel primed to explore issues sparked by the film, its place in pop culture, and the current creative and critical climate of Hollywood."

Jon Perr of Daily Kos writes that Walker, like the Republican base, “believes his Democratic foes aren't just wrong, but unambiguously evil...He talks and fights tough, which for the right wing is not a means but an end in itself.”

A New York Times military correspondent filed a useful story on the problem of military veterans being stereotyped as violent and troubled on movies and TV. But what about when the Times was guilty of doing the same thing on its Sunday front page, smearing veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan as killers on "a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak"?

The UK-based Economist magazine took a snotty tone trying to explain the popularity of American Sniper to its sophisticated worldwide audience, attributing the movie's popularity to mindless pro-American jingoism, mocking it as "more John Wayne than Wilfred Owen." Isn't the whole "John Wayne" caricature getting old?

Vice Magazine has posted a long, fawning interview with limousine leftist documentary maker Michael Moore, infamous for his recent Twitter attack on U.S. Navy Seal Chris Kyle. Maintaining the offensiveness, Moore found American Sniper to be a racist "mess" and discredits the heroism of marksmen like Kyle, calling snipers "chicken-shit," saying the U.S. was the bad guy in Iraq. And on his Facebook…

Ayman Mohyeldin has suggested that Chris Kyle, the real "American Sniper," was a "racist" whose military missions were nothing less than "killing sprees."  With opinions like that, you might imagine Mohyeldin to be some unhinged bloviator from the bowels of the anti-American far left. Or, an NBC foreign correspondent [who formerly worked for Al Jazeera] who regularly reports on events in the…

On the January 27 edition of Hardball, former DNC chairman Howard Dean issued a tepid half-apology regarding his recent ill-advised statement on Real Time with Bill Maher wherein he blasted as "angry" the moviehouse audiences that have made American Sniper a runaway hit. 

Paul Bedard at the Washington Examiner reports “A new Ipsos/Reuters poll throws cold water on the racially-charged #OscarsSoWhite trend and other campaigns suggesting that the overly liberal Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was biased this year against blacks and other minorities in picking Oscar nominees.”

In an article for Salon, Penn State professor Sophia McClennen claims the box-office blockbuster has “no nuance, no context and no subtlety” and that its director, Clint Eastwood, “represents a dark, disturbing feature of the GOP mind-set.”

Comedian Jim Gaffigan got off a great zinger on Twitter yesterday aimed straight at Hollywood folks who look down on the average American who has given American Sniper their vote at the box office.