Movies

A reminder this week Hollywood moguls aren’t just enthralled with Barack Obama. They are also ideological liberals who have disgust for conservatives and are especially enraged by the Tea Party’s success. Explaining his $2 million donation to a left-wing political action committee, DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg told USA Today he was motivated by how “outside Republican spending…

They say the movie theatres make more money on popcorn, candy, and soft drinks than they do on the movie tickets. If that’s true, theatre owners really ought to reconsider the previews they’re airing. They can make you sick to your stomach. I don’t know why Hollywood moviemakers are so fascinated by with flatulence and excrement. It’s become almost an obsession, a formality of sorts in the “…

“Page One,” a new documentary about a year in the life of the New York Times directed by Andrew Rossi, is showing at the sleek new Lincoln Center theatre on Manhattan’s Upper West Side for a mere $13. While not openly partisan or even political (there were no Obama stickers spotted on desks, no rants about the paper’s myriad conservative critics), “Page One,” which captures in semi-compellingif…

Last week, NewsBusters explored how the new Pixar cartoon Cars 2 promoted a Big Oil vs. Alternative Fuel plot. But blogger Josh Berta of the Design Observer Group has an entirely different worry. He thinks the cartoon is promoting the religious view of an Intelligent Designer who made the world: While it was less than loved by critics, there is no question it was a commercial success. In fact…

Debuting in theaters this Friday, the seemingly innocuous Disney-Pixar film 'Cars 2' has become a tool to wedge a fight against fossil fuels in favor of alternative forms of energy. When John Lasseter moved from executive producer to executive director last year, he overhauled major portions of the plot into a good vs. evil story against big oil.

More than any other Republican presidential prospect, Sarah Palin draws white-hot journalistic loathing. She’s too red-state, too gun-toting, too religious, and too unwilling to abort a disabled “fetus.” Even so, filmmaker Steve Bannon remains deeply optimistic his forthcoming Palin documentary “The Undefeated” will sway the media to see Palin in a different light. Bannon, a former Goldman…

On Sunday, New York Times movie critic John Anderson issued a favorable profile of “If a Tree Falls,” a partisan documentary from Marshall Curry featuring convicted arsonist Daniel McGowan of the environmental terrorist group Earth Liberation Front: “Activist or Terrorist, Rendered in Red, White and Green.” When Daniel McGowan moved in with his sister after college, he was so passionate about…

Joyless New York Times movie critic Manohla Dargis took to the Sunday Arts & Leisure page to spoil yet another summer movie season by ranting about the alleged paucity of roles for women on film: “The Living Is Easy; The Women Are Missing.” If you’re a woman who roared, snorted or sniggered at 'Bridesmaids,' if you like watching other women on screen, you should see it again. Because that…

Hollywood actress Jennifer Garner applauded President Barack Obama for already committing $500 million to federally funded education programs for "toddlers" but argued that it is "not enough."

Acclaimed playwright David Mamet is featured in the New York Times Sunday magazine’s "Talk" feature (formerly "Q&A") on the eve of the publication of "The Secret Knowledge," his dramatic intellectual break with the political left. Early reviews suggest Mamet’s message is bracing, and the left has responded in kind with vicious cries of sellout. Perhaps that’s why Andrew Goldman’s Q&A…

The notion that conservative political views can stunt one's acting career in ultra-liberal Hollywood is occasionally derided as exaggeration at best, or conspiracy-mongering at worst. So it behooves us to point out the actual victims of this sort of McCarthyite blacklisting. The latest person to provoke the wrath of Hollywood's thought police - or at least to reveal the consequences of that…

In the 10AM ET hour on NBC's Today on Monday, co-host Kathie Lee Gifford applauded the new HBO movie on the 2008 financial crisis, 'Too Big to Fail,' as "not a partisan film at all." However, after asserting that "It didn't take one side or the other," she touted the liberal moral of the story: "that greed is what got us there and lack of regulation." Left-wing actor Ed Asner, who plays the…

New York Times movie critics Manohla Dargis and A. O. Scott spray the new crop of summer flicks with a dose of liberal guilt in Sunday’s “Gosh, Sweetie, That’s a Big Gun.” Dargis in particular just can’t be pleased with how women are portrayed by Hollywood. Three years ago she greeted the summer season with "Is There a Real Woman in This Multiplex?”  On Sunday she lamented that the women on…

In a report designed to separate fact from fiction on Wednesday's NBC Nightly News, White House correspondent Savannah Guthrie decided to blur fantasy and reality as she compared President Obama's press conference announcing the release of his birth certificate to a moment from the 1995 movie, "The American President." [Audio available here] After a clip was played of Obama declaring: "We…