Movies

New York Times entertainment reporters Brooks Barnes and Michael Cieply reviewed the year at the box office on Monday, another record year of almost $11 billion spent on movie tickets. The top five grossing movies were all sequels (or in the case of “Monsters University,” a prequel), but the article got a little weird when they called it a “tough year for the good-behavior watchdogs of…

Let's assess the winners in losers in American culture for 2013. Our first obvious winner is "Duck Dynasty" and its Phil Robertson. He's a winner for standing by his Christian principles after some inartful remarks about homosexuality. A&E suspended him and put the usual statement that they are "champions" of the gay agenda -- and proceeded to start running "Duck Dynasty" marathons. Mark…

Quality movies routinely get snubbed this time of year as organizations release their "best of the year" proclamations. It's still interesting to note that Philomena, a movie that accuses the Catholic Church of cruel adoption policies, and much worse, received several key nominations from the Golden Globes while Lone Survivor got shut out.

Potemkin Village, anyone?  Joe Scarborough has offered a scathing simile for the new-'n-improved Obamacare website.  On today's Morning Joe, he likened the site to the set of a Hollywood Western--pushing back the facade reveals that there's nothing behind it. Even former Obama spox Robert Gibbs—proudly sporting an Auburn jersey—acknowledged that big chunks of the system, including the…

The modern movie ratings system was put in place by the Motion Picture Association of America in 1968 for parents to protect children under 18 from ultraviolent or sexually explicit material. Since 1968, avant-garde leftists have been trying to knock this voluntary system down. The most recent example came with the raging ten-minute lesbian-sex scene that wowed the Cannes Film Festival (and…

The “Newseum” in Washington is, like it sounds, a museum about journalism. Unlike most DC museums, it’s not free (or taxpayer-funded). It costs $21.95 for an adult to see exhibits like a reconstruction of the late NBC host Tim Russert’s office. Since this doesn’t sound like a hot tourist destination, they’re now putting on the shamelessly Will-Ferrell- movie-promoting “Anchorman: The Exhibit…

Even as American movie theatres rebel against abiding by the NC-17 rating to keep high-school kids away from sex-drenched French movies, AP's Malin Rising reports (positively) that the Left would love to impose its own cultural standards on the movie industry: "movie theaters in equality-minded Sweden are introducing a new rating to highlight gender bias, or rather the absence of it." To get…

Do movie critics ever watch the trailers of their movies? Do they think their readers can’t Google search for the trailers? On Friday, Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday hailed a pro-abortionist propaganda film. "'After Tiller,' a lucid, even-tempered portrait of physicians who perform late-term abortions, exemplifies the crucial role documentaries have come to play in civic discourse,…

For anyone who thought WikiLeaks was a fascinating cinematic subject, The Hollywood Reporter is already offering an obituary: “The Fifth Estate quickly died, grossing a paltry $1.7 million from 1,769 theaters -- the worst opening of the year so far for a movie opening in more than 1,500 theaters.” WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has repeatedly criticized Bill Condon's film for Disney’s…

If you’re sick and tired of TV news broadcasts spewing pro-Obamacare propaganda, get ready to be inundated with even more progressive health care proselytizing in the dramas and comedies that follow those news shows. For this you have the left-wing California Endowment to thank. The radical philanthropy is in the news because it is funding Obamacare public outreach efforts.

The Hollywood Reporter forwards the buzz that there are two film projects about the “wildly popular” Pope Francis in the works. Writer and producer Christian Peschken, a Catholic convert from Pope Benedict's native Germany, is reported to be at work on a $34 million production with the working title Friend of the Poor.

In Time’s “Ten Questions” interview in the September 23 edition, Time editor-at-large Belinda Luscombe asked Hugh Jackman about his new movie “Prisoners,” in which “Your character tortures a guy to try to find his kidnapped daughter.” Luscombe asked if this instinct kicks when his children are faced with the paparazzi. Then Belinda – like Jackman, a native of Australia – went geopolitical and…

Hollywood hypocrisy is nothing new but that doesn’t mean that seeing it does not amuse. That is why your humble correspondent couldn’t help but smile upon reading the news out of North Carolina that the notoriously left-wing film industry is fighting desperately to preserve its tax subsidies in the Tarheel State. Even more delightsome is the rationale that the Motion Picture Association of…

Anyone who’s actually seen the cartoonish Sarah Palin as a mentally imbalanced fruitcake in the HBO movie “Game Change” would laugh (or throw their remote-control) at the sound of the movie’s Jay Roach appearing on the PBS NewsHour on Tuesday night. PBS assembled a panel of political-entertainment makers.   Anchor Jeffrey Brown asked Roach, “How do you fictionalize what you see, you said you…