Cultural and political bias in motion pictures

I wouldn't make a very interesting movie critic.

In my opinion, be it ever so humble, there hasn't been a really good movie made since the 1960's.  Even if the ticket prices were reasonable, and popcorn was free, nearly every movie produced these days is a complete waste of time — or worse.  Most of the movies made in the last ten years have been nothing more or less than leftist propaganda films, and unfortunately today's poorly educated young people don't recognize propaganda when they see it.

The recipe for a motion picture seems to start with nudity, profanity, pointless violence, and blasphemy.  The plot (if any) is added later.  Television shows are apparently built from the same blueprints, with a little less nudity.  Evidently the goal of the motion picture industry is to normalize deviant and promiscuous behavior, coarse language, reckless driving, explosions, and rapid gunfire.

This is probably why so many of today's teenagers act like thugs and prostitutes.  With all the fist fights, gun fights, car chases, profanity, alcohol consumption, tobacco, drugs and fornication depicted in the movies, it's bound to have an effect on the movie-going youth of America.  Movie plots are loaded with crooked cops and lovable criminals.  In the movies, mothers are strong, so fathers are irrelevant.  The kids are smart and the adults are dumb.  Regular movie-goers naturally come away with a skewed perception of reality, and more importantly, people in other countries get a warped impression of our culture here in the U.S.

It amazes me to see movie stars pontificate about "senseless gun violence" in America's big cities, even though that's an essential ingredient in most of their films.

Then there are problems with the theaters themselves.  The last time I saw a movie in a theater, the sound was too loud and too bassy.  The film was scratched and dirty, the picture wobbled around on the screen, and it was out of focus around the edges.  The floor was sticky and the lady in front of me was on her cell phone checking for messages every fifteen minutes.

Movie theaters show advertising to people who have paid for admission.  Why do people tolerate that?  You can't just go see one movie, because you will be required to view "trailers" for several other upcoming movies.  The advertised starting time for the show is actually the starting time for the commercials and trailers.  And in my opinion, no movie is so spectacular that it would be worth five dollars to see it.  Like I said, I wouldn't make a very interesting movie critic.



Updated 3/13/2006:
This page has been split (again) so that the material about cultural and political bias on television (as opposed to the movies) is now on its own page.

In an earlier split, the material about the V-Chip was moved to this page.

Updated 5/31/2006:
Environmental propaganda movie reviews are now located here.



Obama's New Movie, Same Message:  Blame White People.  Netflix unveiled a movie last month called Leave the World Behind that was about as subtle as an Antifa-thrown brick through a windshield:  societal chaos and global disaster are heading our way. [...] Since its release, the movie has sparked a fever pitch of commentary.  Hated by some and loved by others, a recurring complaint is that the movie is all build-up without any pay-off.  It crawls along with a Hitchcockian rhythm of rising suspense and then abruptly ends without any explanation.  Between beginning and end, a tiny community outside of New York City is hit with an Internet blackout, an out-of-control oil tanker running aground, electric grid failures, unusual animal behavior, strange ear-piercing noises that appear to cause mental confusion and tooth-loss, self-driving Teslas blocking highway escape, and menacing drones dropping red leaflets purportedly from foreign powers claiming responsibility for all the craziness.  Oh, and Julia Roberts utters a bunch of lines to make sure that every viewer in the world knows white people are racist.

Oh Look, Another Anti-White Movie From Hollywood.  American Fiction, the next movie no one should see.  [Video clip]

Put a Chick in it and Make Her Gay.  And Lame.  [Scroll down]  The sight of Reese Witherspoon peeking terrified around a corner in their version of J6 (Nazis!!) infuriated me.  Because it's news I'm invested, and [...] are these women ridiculous.  Jennifer Aniston pretending to have intellectual substance is laughable.  She plays intelligence as resentment.  The cast is stocked with people of color, and they know better, have better instincts about everything.  This is the extent of the analysis of the "writers".  And every single member of the cast is stuffed up to the nose holes with self-righteousness.  I want to slap them.  Then send them back to school with a reading list.  I wouldn't care except our entire culture lies in the hands of these women.  The pretty boys stood up as "leaders" are elected by them.  Trudeau, Rishi, Macron, Obama were made in a lab to appeal to women who call themselves "feminists".  Most of them — remember Obama's cradle-to grave Julia? — are childless, and/or without a partner; the rest terrorize their families into quiescence.  Honey, all the battles have been won and were won thirty years ago — you are just cosplaying actual feminists who opened the professions for women.  I mean there is even a spacewalk team that is women.  They dropped their tool box into space, but never mind, they were women.

Disney-Pixar's 'Elemental' is a beautiful, sensible, and very leftist movie.  The newest movie from Pixar for Disney is Elemental, which was released in the spring.  However, since I never voluntarily watch these movies, I ended up seeing it now because I'm staying with people who wanted to watch it.  It was a fascinating film because, combined with surprising common sense, it reflects so much about leftist values and how leftists impose them on Americans, especially on children.  For those who know nothing about the movie, the setting is a place called Element City, in which actual elements live: water, air, earth, and fire.  A fire husband and his pregnant wife (Bernie and Cinder) escape their obviously third-world country and come to Element City, only to find that they're not welcome anywhere because they're perceived as so destructive.  They find a slum building and, through hard work and devotion to their core fire values, build a prosperous store and are the heart of a thriving fire community.

Why Did Superhero Movies Get So Bad?  Coastal elites have always heavily skewed leftwing, a fact which no serious person denies.  As such, for decades, American entertainment has jabbed at anyone to the right-of-center but generally kept the criticism relatively tongue-in-cheek.  After all, being blatantly adversarial to half of the country is a risky calculation — Republicans watch movies, too.  But, naturally, as unabashed left-wing radicalism spilled into the mainstream during this time, the people tasked with creating entertainment jumped the shark and crammed it into every medium we consume.  And studios embrace it — recall Disney executives proudly touting their "not-at-all-secret gay agenda."  Story and immersion took a backseat to "representation" of "marginalized" people and hardly veiled leftist commentaries replaced character development.  The goal became lecturing, not entertaining.

Am I the only one not rushing to Saturday Night at the Movies?  Remember when movies were fun?  Dinner and a movie was everyone's favorite date night.  No more.  I guess that's what happens when every script promotes a left-wing agenda or reminds you that capitalism is responsible for global warming.  Or when white men are responsible for every sin in history.  Honestly, the movies are so predictable these days that it takes away all the excitement.  A remake of Poseidon would probably blame the wave on climate change.  The Sting would have half of characters preaching homosexuality.  Saturday Night Fever would probably preach bail reform.  Too much politics and not enough else!  So don't blame me if I spend my money doing something else.

Hollywood may be in its death throes, and deservedly so.  Throughout the 1920s and into the very early 1930s, movie plots got progressively more sordid.  However, in the face of combined pressure from consumers and politicians, Hollywood cleaned up its act, producing family- and America-friendly movies for the next 35 or so years until the social compact started falling apart in the mid-1960s.  Beginning in the mid-1960s, Hollywood turned against America.  This was in part because industry followed the Baby Boomers, who were a huge source of funds and who were moving left at warp speed.  The trend accelerated as Hollywood actors, few of whom were credentialed, figured that they could give themselves an intellectual gloss if they followed campus social and political trends.  With bully pulpits, publicists, and unbounded egos, they gave unsavory, unwashed, and unhinged academic intellectuals glamor and reach.

Lightning and the Lightning Bug.  Disney has decided that they are no longer a company that tells stories, but a screeching, scolding schoolmarm, more interested in enforcing discipline than education.  Second, if they want to be a propaganda organ for the progressive movement, the people who run Disney are sure making a mess of the job. [...] Disney is just a pale, pathetic reflection of the glory, the magic it once seemed to produce so effortlessly.

Woke-Poisoned Hollywood Has Doomed the Once-Unbeatable Movie Industry.  Hollywood, specifically the film industry, is going through a legitimate, serious, and potentially fatal phase.  No one likes the movies anymore.  The key to a healthy industry — audience goodwill — is evaporating quickly.

Disney Fully Caves to China for Upcoming Ant-Man Movie with Pro-Socialism Message.  Disney seems to have learned a lesson about going woke and going broke, albeit it seems to have discovered the wrong one.  They seem to have concluded that "if American audiences don't applaud radical leftist ideas, then perhaps China will."  Disney/Marvel's upcoming superhero flick "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" seems to do just that.  While China doesn't tolerate LGBT messaging, what it does like to hear is that political systems that lead to communism are a good thing.  This is exactly what Disney/Marvel decided to get across in the movie with a line from a character.  According to YouTube Valliant Renegade who got an early viewing of the flick, one character delivers a very serious line in the film.  "Unpopular take, but hear me out: Socialism is a good thing," says the character.  [Tweet]

Hunter Biden, victim.  Conservatives wonder why Hollywood no longer makes original, family-friendly TV shows and movies.  The reason is the writing talent today is so thin that the movie and TV studios are reduced to playing to the LGBT crowd or taking old movies and slapping POC faces on the characters.  Sometimes both.  Audiences are bored by it.  They want to be entertained, not indoctrinated.

Hollywood is all about glitz, glamour and gore.  Theaters, empty.  Projectionists don't even show up.  In some places the popcorn last popped when "Casablanca" opened.  "Glass Onion" in the city's greatest most perfect theater — the Paris, 58th off Fifth — had 10 patrons.  Russell Crowe's statuette might not increase the size of roles offered but the size of eggs laid.  Why?  Because he actually keeps the thing in his chicken barn.  Our population today?  Migrants.  Think they're eager to see films on artificial intelligence?  Think seniors rush to see stars they don't know, can't pronounce, have unfamiliar backgrounds and every reel is stabbing, killing, dismembering?  What ever happened to June, moon, spoon and customers?  Hollywood.  Where actresses of 22 are considered senior citizens.  Where there's such jealousy that they stab you in the front.  Where vasectomies are sold door to door — and this is what decides what ordinary souls want to see?

Abortion propaganda film 'Call Jane' flops at the box office.  Perhaps the film flopped for two reasons.  The first could be that Jane's Revenge is not a group to emulate.  It frequently engages in violence while promoting the violent act of abortion.  Last year, Live Action News reported on multiple occasions how the group has taken responsibility for attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers.  While the group portrayed in the film officially disbanded in 1971 and members were never indicted of a crime, it is clear that they inspired today's Jane's Revenge and its terrorist activities.  The second reason the movie may have flopped is because American moviegoers have never seemed overly interested in movies that glorify the death of a child through abortion.  While most Americans want abortion to remain legal, they also overwhelmingly support significant limits on the deadly procedure.  In general, Americans become more and more uncomfortable with abortion as pregnancy progresses.

Movie Attendance Collapses 48% over Four Very Woke Years.  Between 2018 and 2022, movie theater attendance dropped in half, and I do not want to hear any excuses about the pandemic.  People will go to the theater to see a movie that appeals to them.  Spider-Man: No Way Home proved this last year.  Top Gun: Maverick proved it this year.  Avatar: Way of the Water is proving it right now.  And those are just the blockbusters. [...] In other words, blaming streaming or the China Flu on the collapse of the movie business is anti-science, so please do shut up.

Disney's first animated movie with a prominent gay character bombs.  In 2021, Disney greenlit Strange World, an animated movie about a family journeying through a mysterious land to save a resource that's losing its energy.  Bob Iger, who is returning to Disney to "save" it from Bob Chapek's sad tenure, was still on board in 2021, so he must have greenlit it.  That's a relevant fact because the movie bombed at the box office.  Coincidentally or not, the movie has an openly gay subtext as one of the main male characters crushes on another boy.  Before the movie opened, the media wanted audiences to know about the gay romance, probably under the mistaken belief that audiences would care:  [Numerous tweets]  My suspicion is that, while many parents don't want their kids to have thrust upon them even more pro-LGBTQ material than they're already receiving in school, a big reason for the box office bomb may be that most heterosexuals just aren't that interested in gay romance.  They can't relate to it, and they're not impressed with Disney making such a niche film.  Despite the left's relentless "gay, gay, gay" push, gays are, on average, no more interesting than any other people, and things that are of unique interest to them, such as same-sex relationships, don't change that fact.  But yeah, thinking about it some more, it's probable that the failure is mostly because Disney isn't supposed to be pushing children into a lifestyle that is unhealthy.  No matter how the LGBTQ crowd tries to dress it up, we know that they have more substance abuse, partner abuse, depression, and suicide than the general population — and that's true no matter how supportive the greater culture is.

Hollywood's Latest Attempt at a Woke Feminist Movie Is the Worst Bomb Yet.  No matter how many times Hollywood tries to push them on us, these films with woke messaging bomb at the box office over and over again.  These mistakes cost studios and the companies that back them millions and millions of dollars and yet they continue to pump out these expensive movies, paying giant losses all in an effort to roll out "the message."

Our Summer of Cultural Suicide.  Hollywood should have been ecstatic over 21st-century globalization, which should have made filmmakers and stars even richer and more popular, with a potential audience of more than seven billion.  But quarantine has shut down most theaters.  Amazon, Netflix and Facebook, along with cable TV, have sent theater revenues diving for years.  Silicon Valley can create filmmakers who have no need to get near Southern California.  In response, Hollywood counts on bringing comic books to the big screen, or on making poor remakes of old classics.  When directors try to make a serious new movie, the result is often the monotony and boredom of thinly veiled woke propaganda.  Viewers can take only so many heroic green crusaders, diverse superhumans, and beautiful feminists — and only so many villainous cardboard-cutout Russian oligarchs, toothless and twangy Southern Neanderthals, and corporate yes-men.  The hypocrisy gets worse when the Chinese government often adjudicates movie content as the price of entering a Chinese market with more than a billion potential customers.  But viewers do seek out theaters for more lectures from beautiful multimillionaires on their racist, sexist, homophobic country.

Another feminist movie bombs at the box office.  [Scroll down]  I have not seen and don't plan to see this movie.  I saw one trailer about the "superwoman" theme and decided that watching a Stars hockey game was better for me.  Why are young women staying away?  My guess is that a lot of young women are sick and tired of the message.  So I have a message for the people of who financed this movie:  First, stop making films with predictable dialogue.  We know that Hollywood hates Trump and believes in climate change.  How many times do you have to tell us directly or indirectly?  Second, I would change the title overseas to something like "Charlie's Angels Defends the World from Trump."

Hollywood's Dark Fate Foretold in Box Office Performance of 'Dark Fate'.  Judgement Day is upon the Border Patrol, or at least that's the message in "Terminator:  Dark Fate."  The latest installment of the series features Border Patrol agents being slaughtered by a Mexican-American actor while illegal aliens flee a detention center.  The people who protect our borders, it seems, are even less human than the film's cybernetic antagonist.  The message was received loud and clear by the "woke" press, who appreciated the bloodbath but thought Hollywood should have taken this fiction further.  "It'd be fascinating to see a world where the Terminators are working as ICE agents," wrote one critic, "the ultimate purveyors of evil."

Young Adults Fed Up with SJW and LGBTQ Tyranny.  The new "Batwoman" TV series featuring an openly lesbian Batwoman is failing big-time.  I was pleasantly surprised to learn that young adults are turned off by the show's extreme woke and SJW (social justice warrior) politically correct messaging.  "Woke" means you are aware of social and racial injustice.  "Woke" also means straight white men are the source of all evil and must be punished.  Women and minorities are perfect in every way.  Woke culture says anyone who dares criticize a woman or a minority hates women and minorities.  Batman fans are outraged over the "Batwoman" TV series trashing Batman and its in-your-face trashing of men.

The Editor says...
In other words, it's a "made for TV" movie.  Just about every Saturday afternoon filler movie on TV is a man-bashing chick flick, peppered with man-bashing commercials.

Coming Soon to an Empty Theatre Near You.  Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the movie theatre, for entertainment and not progressive indoctrination, think again.  Netflix just paid a record $10 million for a hagiographic documentary on Democratic starlet Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  After the demonization of Dick Cheney in Vice and canonization of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in On the Basis of Sex both deservedly flopped last year, Hollywood is going full speed ahead on political fare, as always only in the left lane.  Studio bosses never let such trifles as box-office poison change their social justice warrior ways.  Netflix outbid Hulu, Focus, and Amazon to pick up Knock Down the House, after it stunned absolutely no one by taking the 2019 Sundance Film Festival Favorite Award.

More than half of movies have been R-rated in the past 50 years.  The MPAA is marking the 50th anniversary of its film ratings by releasing data on how movies have been rated over the last half-century.  The R rating has been placed on by far and away the majority of the movies since then, more than half of the almost 30,000 titles that have been given classifications.  The breakdown:  Since 1968, the first year of the rating classifications, there have been 17,202 movies rated R, 5,578 rated M/GP/PG, 4,913 rated PG-13 and 1,574 rated G.  Just 524 movies have been rated X or NC-17, reflecting the reluctance of exhibitors to carry those titles.

45 Hollywood Groups Sign Letter Demanding Transgender Inclusion In Movies.  The pressure is on for Hollywood to portray transgender characters in movies and television more positively.  In concert with GLAAD, a recent manifesto signed by more than 45 groups, talent agencies, and production companies state that the age of Trump makes the need for transgender characters more dire than ever before, according to LifeSiteNews.  "As a community, trans people are fighting every day to be seen and accepted as human beings," the letter says.

Confronting Leftist Lies.  Movies and TV shows are no longer mindless entertainment.  Ninety-nine percent of what comes out of Hollywood is lies; designed to seduce Americans into embracing Leftists' ungodly agenda.  Hollywood relentlessly demonizes Christians, America, mainstream Americans, and Trump. [...] The 6 o'clock news was on the TV in the background while I was chatting with a relative at his home Folks, it was a truly painful experience.  Every news story was liberal spin and/or lies.  Programming after the news was seductive liberal propaganda.  I watched my relatives unknowingly soaking in all the Leftist beautifully presented excrement.

Propaganda film:
Disney Debuts 'First Boy Princess' in 'Star vs. the Forces of Evil'.  I'm sorry, but what the heck has happened to cartoons?  Not only are they hideously ugly to look at and filled with vulgar humor, but they all seem to be spewing some sort of leftist ideology.  I mean, seriously, what's wrong with slipping on banana peels and having anvils fall on your head?  Is that not funny anymore?  Why does everything have to have a sanctimonious message?  Take Star vs.  The Forces of Evil, which airs on Disney XD, for example.  The latest episode of this show is being lauded all over the internet for depicting Disney's "first boy princess."

Oscar Contender:  Movie About 30-Yr Old Guy Who Seduces Teenage Boy.  How can it be that in the midst of the firestorm of accusations of sexual harassment and sexual assault all over Hollywood and beyond, that a movie about a gay man "seducing" a teenage boy is now being deemed Oscar-worthy?

Will Hollywood get the message?  Summer movie revenue plummets.  By the end of this coming holiday weekend, Hollywood's domestic summer box office will be down a whopping — and historic — 16% from last year.  That's the worst decline in modern times and the first time since 2006 that midyear movie box office failed to reach $4 billion.  Summer totals will probably limp in around $3.7 billion, which still seems like a fortune to us schlumps who are balking at paying $13 or more for a worn seat on a sticky floor and twice as much for a popcorn and drink.

Hollywood pumps cash to save Senate majority for Democrats.  Hollywood is pouring money into the midterm elections, with A-listers such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Gwyneth Paltrow, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Barbra Streisand all coughing up blockbuster bucks.  The donations are largely aimed at keeping the Senate in Democratic hands.

British filmmakers ordered to provide gay, racial diversity on screen.  British filmmakers must now meet new targets for ethnic minority, gay and female characters on- and off-screen if they wish to continue receiving funding from Britain's largest public film fund.  The British Film Institute has revealed its "Three Ticks" scheme, which will be implemented in September to ensure diversity in films and behind the scenes, The Telegraph reported.  Films must "tick" at least two of three criteria: on-screen diversity; off-screen diversity and "creating opportunities and social mobility," the paper reported.

16 Reasons Why the United States is Going to Hell in a Handbasket.  [#3]  Everywhere we turn today we (and our children) are bombarded with images of sex and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, music, and TV.  This constant bombardment has promoted promiscuity, and corrupted the minds of the American people and made us into a nation a degenerates and perverts.

What Fed Up Gets Wrong About the Food Industry.  There's enough to dislike about Fed Up — a New York Daily News critic gives the film two stars — that I suspect viewers like you will find it is the film you don't want you to see.  Fed Up features a who's who of well-known supporters of increased food regulations, including Marion Nestle, Kelly Brownell, and Michael Pollan.  That's to be expected.  But it gives little screen time to opponents of increased regulation.  And when it does, the treatment they receive is unfair by any objective measure.  The film's brief gotcha moment, for example, centers on Professor David Allison of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, whose public-health research the filmmakers targeted because, the filmmakers say, it's been funded by food companies.

'Noah' Review: Brilliantly Sinister Anti-Christian Filmmaking.  [Scroll down]  The Message is everything.  And this is where Aronofsky is the snake in the garden.  Using $135 million, he and Paramount have brilliantly and deviously disguised the Pagan god Gaia as the God of the Old Testament ... as THE God.  And let's give the Devil his due: using the story of Noah to twist Christianity into something it is not, is a genius piece of propagandizing that is sure to lead many away from God under the mistaken belief that through left-wing environmentalism they are coming closer to Him.

New Noah epic awash in flood of criticism for green agenda and taking liberties with Bible.  [E]ven before it opens in America this week and Britain on April 4, Noah, a $130 million blockbuster with Russell Crowe in the lead role, is already awash in a turbulent sea of controversy. [...] Noah's director Darren Aronofsky, a self-described atheist who made the Oscar-nominated hit The Black Swan, has described the movie as is "the least biblical biblical film ever made" and called Noah "the first environmentalist".  According to one early review, the name "God" is not actually spoken at any stage.

Beck Continues Crusade Against Noah Film: It's the 'Babylonian Chainsaw Massacre'.  Glenn Beck panned the new film Noah last Friday [3/21/2014], but over the weekend he saw the movie to see if it was better than the reviews said.  Beck came out of that experience bewildered at some of the creative license in the film and how Noah was portrayed as a "homicidal maniac."  Someone at Paramount reached out to Beck and invited him to watch the movie, but Beck found it hard to contain his shock as the film unfolded, even giggling at parts involving the "rock people" sent by God to help out Noah. Beck credited the movie for not being the climate change propaganda some reviews made it out to be, but aside from that, he said, "If you are looking for a biblical movie, this is definitely not it."

Tinseltown's Propaganda Problem.  The legendary media tycoon William Randolph Hearst believed America needed a strongman and that Franklin D. Roosevelt would fit the bill.  He ordered his newspapers to support FDR and the New Deal. [...] Hearst also believed the voters had to be made to see what could be gained from a president with a free hand.  So he financed the film Gabriel Over the White House, starring Walter Huston.  The film depicts an FDR look-alike president who, after a coma-inducing car accident, is transformed from a passive Warren Harding type into a hands-on dictator.  The reborn commander-in-chief suspends the Constitution, violently wipes out corruption, and revives the economy through a national socialist agenda.  When Congress tries to impeach him, he dissolves Congress.

Exclusive: Hollywood Brainstorms 'Portraying ObamaCare in TV & Film'.  The intent here is obvious and deadly serious, and the American people should brace themselves for a propaganda push in their film and television entertainment that is meant only to aid and abet Obama's federal government.  This invitation should serve as a reminder that, with rare exceptions (that only prove the rule), Hollywood is not filled with brave rebels, iconoclasts, and individual thinkers; but rather they are servants eager to do their government's bidding and who understand that success in the entertainment business means never coloring outside the lines of left-wing conformity.

7 Lies Liberals Tell Young Americans.  [#3]  Faith isn't relevant anymore:  Hollywood almost universally makes Christians look bad in TV shows and movies, liberalism has become reflexively hostile to Christianity, and militant atheists work overtime to attack people of faith.  Yet and still, this nation has been a success in large part because of Christianity.  If not for this nation's Protestant work ethic, fundamental Christian decency and biblically inspired dedication to human rights, we would have never been so successful.

Harvey Weinstein has secret film project to destroy NRA.  The "Shakespeare in Love" producer told Howard Stern on his radio show Wednesday [1/15/2014] that the NRA is a "disaster area" before revealing a secret project.  "I shouldn't say this, but I'll tell it to you, Howard," he said.  "I'm going to make a movie with Meryl Streep, and we're going to take this head-on.  And they're going to wish they weren't alive after I'm done with them."

Harvey Weinstein Has Change of Heart On Violent Content In Films.  A day after he announced he was going to make a film taking on the NRA with Meryl Streep, Harvey Weinstein — the producer of the violent Quentin Tarantino movies such as Django Unchained, Pulp Fiction, Reservior [sic] Dogs, Kill Bill and Inglorious Bastards — told CNN's Piers Morgan in an interview to air tonight [1/17/2014] that he has had a change of heart about violent content in film.

The Editor says...
The text in the article above has now been revised, and the long list of movie titles has been deleted.  I haven't seen any of those films, nor would I care to watch them even if the theaters were clean, cell phones were prohibited, and admission was free.  But as I understand it, each of the movies named in the article immediately above is replete with gunfire (and, I would assume, those perfectly white and smokeless muzzle flashes from every gun), and the central heroic figure(s) triumph in the end through their use of bigger and better firearms than those employed by their many enemies.  And now the producer of those many movies, who has made a great quantity of money from their production, says that he has had a change of heart.  Let's all wait and see if this man never again makes another violent film that's saturated with senseless gun violence.

Harvey Weinstein and Meryl Streep new movie to make NRA 'wish they weren't alive'.  Mr. Weinstein has been watching too many movies if he thinks the good guys find fully loaded firearms in convenient locations to use only when necessary.  Before Mr. Weinstein and Miss Streep start production of their multimillion-dollar effort to persuade Americans to give up their guns, they might want to look at the history books of what happens when you do.

The Hypocrisy of Hollywood.  That Hollywood is no longer a source of entertainment but now a source of (liberal) propaganda isn't exactly news.  Even avowed leftists will admit that film and television are solidly the domain of progressive liberalism and that progressive messaging is embedded in just about everything Hollywood produces.  From children's programming to the gratuitous "awards shows" that basically feature writers, actors, and producers giving awards to one another, it's either bold and in-your-face or latent and just beneath the surface — but its there.  The overt liberalism that is the entertainment industry is indisputable.

Reality Bites Gays.  Image control has been crucial to gay activists.  In 1980 Hollywood produced, Cruising, a big budget film that showed the seamier side of gay life. [...] Since then, any filmmaker who does not conform his gay characters to a positive and largely asexual template is likely to be criticized.  The arrival of the AIDS pandemic helped reinforce this pressure by offering up a new version of a time honored movie stereotype — the terminally ill secular saint.  Today it is allowable to use a gay drama queen as a comedic foil, but only if he is also shown to have a heart of gold.  Otherwise gay characters have to be positive.  In recent years such gay characters have been everywhere on TV and in movies.

Hollywood and the New Racism.  If you believe press reports, Twelve Years a Slave is undeniably one of the greatest — perhaps the greatest — film of 2013. [...] [I]t joins a number of other recent pictures such as The Help and The Butler, and even, in a twisted way, Django.  These films are all examples of a generally unrecognized subgenre of the propaganda film.  They are racial films designed to raise an admonishing finger toward the white audience regarding its "legacy" as slaveholders while bolstering the blacks in their conviction of victimhood.

Hollywood Fanning Flames Of Racial Hatred With False History.  Slavery's stain on American history cannot and should not be whitewashed.  But neither should it be portrayed as worse than it was to serve a political agenda.  And yet this is what Hollywood is doing with its slate of horror films about slavery and its legacy. [...] The movie ["The Butler"], heavily influenced by Obama cheerleader Oprah Winfrey, ends with what looks like a campaign commercial for Obama.

Hollywood Goes Bankrupt.  In her new book, Sleepless in Hollywood, [Lynda] Obst says that thanks to the crash and burn of the DVD industry, the entire Hollywood profit model is at risk. [...] Because the business model of film is changing, the only way to make money is to cash in theatrically.  That's why we've seen an uptick in the number of 3D movies, no matter how poorly made — they allow theaters to charge in excess of $15 per ticket in major metropolitan areas.

Lesbian love epic wins Cannes' top prize.  An uncompromisingly explicit film about a love affair between two teenage girls has won the top award at the Cannes film Festival, which finished on Sunday [5/26/2013].

Relativism: America's new 'religion'.  It is unlikely that many Americans would consciously choose a culture of coarseness, so why is American culture — TV, radio, films, books and advertising — so immersed in violence, indiscriminate sex, superficiality, pornography and ugliness?  There is much talk about our freedom to choose, but we rarely hear that we can't choose the consequences of our choices.  When relativism is adopted by a society, it does not produce beauty, but coarseness, if not as the desired outcome, then as an unintended consequence.  One can see this occurring in America, in a descent to the lowest common denominator when it comes to art, music, literature, public discourse and entertainment.

The President Gives Hollywood a Pass on Violence.  The president's campaign against gun violence has produced a stale debate marked by lots of speeches with little achieved.  A more creative chief executive would have used this moment to widen the discussion by drawing attention to the increasingly graphic violence so pervasive in television shows, movies and videogames.  Mr. Obama is particularly well positioned to challenge Hollywood because of his special relationship with the media world's elites.

20 Reasons America Is Becoming An Increasingly Nonfunctional Society.  [#8]  Our movies, music, and TV shows are provided by people who are almost universally hostile to conservatism, Christianity, and traditional American values.

Stone-faced lies.  In the wake of World War II, quite a few people failed to recognize the threat posed by Communist ideology.  In their eyes, Marxist/Leninist societies were emancipating workers from capitalism.  This view turned out to be wrong as well, and in the Soviet Union, China, North Korea and Cambodia, tens of millions were massacred as a result.  Today, of course, we see the world more clearly, don't we?  Well, some do, some don't.

5 Signs Of Societal Degeneration In America.  [#3]  Decay In Entertainment: During WWII, when we had troops in the field, Hollywood made movies portraying them as heroes fighting for a just cause.  Today, Hollywood undermines the war effort and talks about the troops like unstable drones.  Actors openly encourage hatred against the country where they became rich and famous.

Hollywood's cynicism is breeding disconcerting cultural standards.  By the time they are 18, American children — who watch an average of four hours of television per day — will see 16,000 simulated murders and 200,000 acts of violence, according to the American Psychiatric Association.  The consequences of this exposure to violence, which only increases with age, are not insignificant, as the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry points out:  Such exposure not only desensitizes viewers to violence, but it leads to more violence in the real world.  When it comes to violence, life imitates art.

Obama's Historical Fiction.  The political left has a long history of using plays, movies, and TV series to push their agenda because dramatic media showcase their agenda items to good effect.  Many audience members get so wrapped up in the images, characters, and action that they don't stop to think about the huge dose of political propaganda being served on the side.

Hollywood: Driving the Homosexual Agenda for 40 Years.  Hollywood celebrities exuberantly celebrated President Obama's recent declaration of support for gay marriage.  But Hollywood did not have to come out of the closet and support homosexuality — it has long used its influence to purposely swing public opinion in favor of homosexuality.  For several decades, Hollywood has shown its overt support for homosexuality.  Brokeback Mountain was nominated for Best Picture for its unabashedly sympathetic portrayal of a doomed gay relationship.  Newt Gingrich's half-sister officiated at a gay wedding on "Friends" in the 1990s.  More recently, late night talk show host Conan O'Brian officiated at an actual gay wedding.

Obama's Historical Fiction.  The political left has a long history of using plays, movies, and TV series to push their agenda because dramatic media showcase their agenda items to good effect.  Many audience members get so wrapped up in the images, characters, and action that they don't stop to think about the huge dose of political propaganda being served on the side.  This is one reason why the left talks so much of narratives.  The political right, on the other hand, completely dominates the emotionally cooler medium of talk radio, where words alone have to carry the message.

The Unseen Message of The Hunger Games.  Though the liberal media and leftist Hollywood are wrapping themselves in The Hunger Games, the book series' pro-individualism, anti-socialist/communist/totalitarianism message has thus far eluded them — but the legions of children reading the books are getting the message. ... The author is starkly clear in this anti-oppressive government premise, and at no time during the reading of the books are you left with any sense this is a greedy rich vs. righteous poor tale.  No, this series is about the children of a once-free American culture wrestling their own destiny back from the iron grip of government totalitarianism.

Why the Left Loves the Titanic Disaster.  The Titanic storyline embraced by left-leaning filmmakers, writers, and university professors is right out of "Das Kapital."  To them, the disaster happened because heartless capitalist put profits ahead of human lives.  They falsely claim that this is why the Titanic had too few lifeboats.  Above all, leftist ideologues vilify the Titanic's rich first-class passengers.  They falsely claim they got first crack at lifeboats — and as a consequence, passengers in second class and steerage died in large numbers.  In this interpretation, the Titanic's legacy was not about women-and-children first.  It was about first-class passengers going first.  This false narrative was embraced by filmmaker James Cameron in his 1997 epic "Titanic" — a view that many impressionable movie goers now take as fact.

Liberals Decide They Don't Like PropagandaAct of Valor opened last weekend to an enthusiastic response from moviegoers — it topped all films with a $24.5 million gross — but a less enthusiastic reaction from liberal critics and pundits. ... Well, the movie is certainly pro-SEALs.  Whether that makes it propaganda, you can decide for yourself.  What is funny about this, however, is that quite a few movies have been made about post-September 11 warfare in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world.  Virtually every one of them has been shameless propaganda.

Top 10 Ways Hollywood Can Win Its Audience Back.  [#4]  Keep Politics Out of Children's Movies.  You loaded up "The Muppets," "Cars 2," and "Happy Feet 2" with political sucker punching and left a ton of money on the table as soon as word got out.

Red Tails Nosedives.  Red Tails flew into the movie theatres January 20 with a ton of fanfare, via free publicity from a gushing Main Stream Media eager to promote the  true  story of Black World War II pilots overcoming white racism and segregation to make the world safe for Democracy.

Why Businessmen Wear Black Hats in Today's Movies.  It is hardly surprising that pop culture protesters in zombie makeup are now intent on Occupying Wall Street.  For the past decade, Hollywood has been casting financiers as the demonic villains of society.  They have even replaced terrorists as villains.  In the Warner Bros. political thriller "Syriana," for example, the villain is not al Qaeda, an enemy state, the mafia, or even a psychotic serial killer.  Rather, it's the big oil companies who manipulate terrorism, wars, and social unrest to drive up oil prices.

Movie Review of Current Blockbuster Movie "The Help".  I found "The Help" a ridiculously one-sided examination of a serious subject in order to pursue an agenda.  The nonstop stereotypes were so annoying I walked out early. ... Every possible stereotype imaginable was used from the dumb blonde to the wise noble negro having to put up with treacherous, stupid whites.  Strong sensible black women dealing with overly freckled cruel, vindictive white women was the flavor of the day.

Horror as Stimulant.  A recent newspaper article discusses recent scholarship on horror films, how they have grown more graphic, and what is their appeal to audiences.  A new peer-reviewed journal, Horror Studies, started last year.  One theory not mentioned, because it wouldn't suit left-liberal insistence that much of America teeters on poverty, desperation, and despair, is that life has actually grown too comfortable in our country, up and down the social ladder.  Challenges are few, and people have a lot of time on their hands.  They seek increasing levels of horror, violence, profanity, obscenity, and other kinds of extremism in entertainment in order to feel alive.

NBC's Diversity Bet Fails.  NBC's past season, from Fall 2010 to Spring 2011, was a massive bust.  NBC's big bet on diversity failed. ... Sooner or later someone at a network will take a gamble on men, and provide a staple of cheap, entertaining, and amusing male-skewing shows.  The country will be better off, because traditional male-oriented shows for the most part must embody fairly conservative values.  Honor your word, show physical and emotional courage, stand up and fight, protect the weak, punish the wicked.  Those are the stories men of all ages are interested in, and are almost completely absent on the TV screen every night.

In 'Cars 2,' John Lasseter Says Big Oil is the 'Uber Bad Guy'.  I kept thinking about, "OK. A spy movie in the world where cars are alive.  What would be a really good kind of über bad guy?  Who is an über bad guy?"  I kept going to big oil. ... And so I thought, well, that could be really cool in that you could have big oil versus alternative fuel.  That's when we kind of crafted the bad guy's story.

Review of Kung Fu Panda 2.  Christian parents may be a bit concerned with the film's reliance on Taoism and pagan beliefs.  For example, there is a heavy emphasis on finding one's "inner peace" and using that peace to accomplish seemingly impossible tasks.  It also references finding harmony in the universe and includes pagan ideas involving a soothsayer that can predict one's future.  Naturally, for those who believe that inner peace and harmony can only be achieved by a close relationship with Christ, this element of the film may be a bit disconcerting.

Killing Politicians and Other Guilty Pleasures.  [Scroll down]  I am not referring to the British faux-documentary Death of a President (2006) that has been mentioned by some this last week, in which President George W. Bush is assassinated.  I am writing of two American-made films in which characters presented as right-wing elected officials were killed, by either the hero of the movie (Shooter) or by one of the right-wing politician's own minions in a scene intended to be humorous (Machete).  In both films, the killing of the elected official was meant to be enjoyed by the audience, and for many on the left, that was precisely the case.

Spike Lee Attacks NRA.  Director Spike Lee, along with his wife Tonya, came on Wednesday's [1/12/2011] Today show to promote their new children's book, but he couldn't leave without blaming the NRA for the Gabrielle Giffords shooting and slamming the United States of America for being "the most violent country in the history of civilization."

How Leftist Hollywood Betrayed Post-9/11 America.  Never has an industry been more cravenly political and morally blind than Hollywood during our present struggle to defeat Islamic extremism.  Tinseltown's response to President Bush and America and our troops has been nothing short of the middle finger of betrayal.

Hollywood's Love Affair with Obama.  Sen. Barack Obama promised us "Hope and Change" during the 2008 presidential campaign.  A gaggle of celebrities from Tom Hanks to Spike Lee predicted more than that if voters pulled the lever for Obama.  They said the senator would "change the world."  Voters assumed they meant for the better.  But after 16 months of the Obama Administration in action — high unemployment, allies rebuffed, promises shattered, chaos in Afghanistan and mind-numbing deficits — these very same celebrities owe us an apology.

It's fine to abuse young girls, as long as you're a great film director.  So now we know.  If you are a 44-year-old man, you can drug and anally rape a terrified 13-year-old girl as she sobs, says "No, no, no," and pleads for her asthma medication — all according to the victim's sworn testimony — and face no punishment at all.  You just have to meet two criteria — (a) you have to run away and stay away for a few decades; and (b) you need to direct some good films.  If you do, not only will you walk free, there will be a huge campaign to protect you from the "witch-hunt" and you will be lauded as a hero.

Hollywood:  Whose Side Are You On?  Once upon a time Hollywood movies were often about American heroes vanquishing our enemies.  Now they make movies attacking Americans while ignoring the real people who attack America.  Once upon a time Hollywood had no problem distinguishing our enemies from our allies.  Now our allies are often shown to be feckless and evil while our enemies are either ignored or made out to be mere puppets of our evil leaders.

It Takes a Village of Idiots.  I have always found it odd that whenever the producers of TV, movies and records, are accused of setting a bad example for the kids, they always insist that their product is simply entertainment and that entertainment in no way influences youthful behavior.  If they really believed it, they'd have to be even stupider than they are.

Nazis And Commies.  The real danger since the end of World War II has been the KGB, not imaginary Nazis.  There must be hundreds of films and books that rely on or mention the theme that Nazi fascist brotherhoods are everywhere — even today, more than 65 years after Hitler was defeated. ... But no real Nazi threat has appeared anywhere except in books and movies.  It's always the Nazis, never the Communists, although the murderous rampages of Stalin make Hitler seem tame in comparison.

The New Hollywood Blacklist.  Hollywood can still mount a soapbox and recall the dark days when people lost their jobs in show business for daring to take an unpopular political position that was outside the mainstream.  Whenever they're criticized, they proclaim, "McCarthyism," accuse their critics of "blacklisting," and condemn the deplorable "intolerance."  Hollywood has yet to accept, perhaps even to understand, that it is the entertainment industry that excels at this slanderous behavior.

Woody Allen thinks Obama would get much more done as dictator.  "It would be good...if (Obama) could be dictator for a few years because he could do a lot of good things quickly," Allen is quoted as saying.

Woody Allen says President Obama should be granted dictatorial powers (seriously).  Woody Allen has a strange take on the democracy that allowed him to become rich and famous.  The "Scoop" director said it would be a cool idea for President Barack Obama to be dictator for for a few years.  Why?  So he could get things done without all the hassle of opposing views getting in the way.

One hand washes the other:
Emergency Bill to Close Tax 'Loopholes' Includes $46 Million Tax Loophole.  A bill titled "The American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act of 2010" that will add $115 billion to the federal deficit between now and October 2011, and that the Democratic leadership intends to push through Congress before they leave for their week-long Memorial Day recess, includes a special $46 million tax loophole for Hollywood movie and television producers.

Hollywood Once Hailed Offshore Drilling.  In energy production, Louisiana has been well ahead of the learning curve for decades, and offers ready proof regarding its much-hyped "perils."  The first offshore oil production platforms went up off the Louisiana coast in 1947.  By 1953 Hollywood (no less!) was already hailing the pioneering wildcatters who moved major mountains — technological, logistical, psychological, cultural — to tap and reap this source that today provides a quarter of America's domestic petroleum, without causing a single major oil spill in the process.

Milk.  Timing is everything, and I doubt it's a coincidence that Hollywood — without knowing the election outcome — chose a few weeks after the election on California's Proposition 8, to release this very heavy-handed gay rights propaganda flick.  To say this movie is "flamboyant" would be the understatement of the year.

Squaring Off With Obama:  Hollywood is a peculiar place where celebrities who treat their own assistants and household help like underpaid coolies, are constantly demanding that Washington should do more for the poor and the oppressed.  Hollywood is where actors think God was created in their image, while actresses are so full of plastic and collagen that even their own dogs can't pick them out of a crowd.  I'm sure that Sean Penn thinks he should be ambassador to Cuba, and if only he owed back taxes, I'm certain this administration would give him the gig.

George Soros, Movie Mogul:  Philanthropist George Soros wants the medium of film to advance his goal of tilting America to the left. … Most of the documentaries that receive Sundance funding are highly critical of some aspect of American life, capitalism or Western culture.  The projects generally share George Soros's worldview that America is a troubling if not sinister influence in the world, that the War on Terror is a fraud and terrorists are misunderstood freedom fighters, and that markets are fundamentally unjust.

Help!  I'm a Hollywood Republican.  I'm a Republican. A heretofore secret Hollywood Republican. I know men and women who are heavy drug addicts and they have no problem finding employment in Hollywood.  I know men and women who are gambling addicts and they work pretty regularly.  There's even a director who was arrested for child molestation and yet was hired by Disney — yes, Disney — to helm a picture, and people defended this decision by saying even child molesters have a right to work.  I would bet my bottom dollar that all these people are on the correct side of the political spectrum.  They are liberal democrats.

A Right Turn On Hollywood And Vine.  Not everybody in Hollywood loves Hillary or thinks that "An Inconvenient Truth" is the only truth.  So a growing number of Tinseltown conservatives have launched a counterattack to what they call leftist films like "Fahrenheit 9/11" and "Syriana."

Hollywood stars attack Palin.  Hollywood is liberal and right now there is no love for the conservative Alaskan Governor who made history last month by becoming the first woman on the Republican party's US presidential ticket.  Governor Palin may have the look of a mum in one of those cheesy US sitcoms, but everyone who's anyone in Tinseltown is barracking for Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama.

Hollywood heavyweights set to rake in cash.  One of the first major fund-raisers for the budding Barack Obama presidential campaign will be hosted by entertainment moguls David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg — that's the Hollywood buzz.

Obama sowing socialist seeds in young people.  The Democratic Party, in its quest for power, has managed a propaganda campaign with subliminal messages, creating a God-like figure in a man who falls short in every way.  It seems to me that if Mr. Obama wins the presidential election, then Messrs. Farrakhan, Wright, Ayers and Pfleger will gain power for their need to demoralize this country and help create a socialist America.

The Editor says...
When Jon Voight wrote the article above, he stirred up quite a controversy in Hollywood, where dissenting opinions are evidently not permitted. The article below includes a discussion of the effort to blacklist Mr. Voight for expressing those opinions.

Enemy of the State.  Last Monday on these pages, my article "Blacklist Then and Now" coincidentally appeared the same day as an op-ed penned by screen legend Jon Voight.  Since his Oscar-winning turn in the 1978 antiwar film "Coming Home," the venerable actor has come to the conclusion that he and many in the "so-called peace movement" were manipulated by Marxist propaganda.

Bill Maher's Anti-Religion Movie.  "Religion is detrimental to the progress of society."  That's my favorite quote from Bill Maher's often brilliant, but often unfocused "documentary," called "Religulous." … Maher sends up everything outrageous and unusual in religion, cherry-picking the fringe elements wherever he can find them.  There's no question that he's serious in his endeavors, and for a while following him feels like it's going to lead somewhere.  Alas, it doesn't.

Gere and Theron Bash Bush in Venice.  Richard Gere and Charlize Theron added their voices to a chorus of stars taking swipes at the Bush administration at the Venice Film Festival.  "How did we elect Bush twice?"  Gere asked rhetorically while promoting his new film, "The Hunting Party."

Elites vs. America:  Hollywood, which significantly supported its country in World War II, today practically requires anti-war, anti-American activism among its ranks.  Some days, it seems The New York Times exists to divulge secret US war plans and to portray efforts aimed at our enemies as hopeless.

Soros Anti-American Horror Propaganda Coming to a Theater Near You.  Not too many commentators seem to have noticed that George Soros is slowly but surely becoming the mainstream media that is the focus of the analysis we do at NewsBusters.  The liberal billionaire-turned-philanthropist has been buying up media properties for years in order to drive home his message to the American public that they are too materialistic, too wasteful, too selfish, and too stupid to decide for themselves how to run their own lives.

Drives You Up AWOL.  After five years of news footage and documentaries coming from the war in Iraq, "Stop-Loss" is as phony as a re-enactment with finger puppets.  "Stop-Loss" is a highly patriotic film, if you happen to dream of the restored caliphate as you sleep in your Osama bin Laden pajamas.

War is hell at the box office.  This is the Hollywood primary and the results are in.  Americans simply will not head to their local Cineplex to watch anything to do with the war in Iraq, the plight faced by veterans returning home or the broader George W. Bush war on terror.

Oliver Stone's W 'won't recoup'.  If recent trends continue Hollywood may be looking for a government handout.  A surge of liberal style patriotism has gripped the movers and shakers in Hollywood, they have produced movie after movie critical of the war in Iraq.  Every one a box office dud.

Hollywood Explodes With Anti-War Venom.  Recall, when our actors voluntarily joined the armed forces (Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable), when actresses manned USO canteens, when producers filmed patriotic movies to support the troops and give America a sense of pride and shared battles.  So yesterday!

The Iraq Movie Flop:  The Robert Redford movie "Lions for Lambs" has been a box-office disappointment. … It is not ordinarily big news when a movie does poorly.  Indeed, Mr. Redford's film has been savaged by critics, which makes its paltry ticket sales even less of a surprise.  Still, its weakness at the box office has been the focus of attention.

If you like old movies, read this.
Hollywood's Red Decade:  As movie-goers, theatre owners and studio shareholders endure yet another wave of anti-American box office duds, like Rendition and Lions for Lambs, it is worth remembering that left wing propaganda has real roots in Hollywood.  And thanks to the character of our media and cultural establishment, we rarely get to hear about them.

Three cultural trends that finally died in '07.  In the last year, Hollywood dropped enough anti-war bombs to launch its own Shock and Awe campaign.  Robert Redford's star-studded Lions for Lambs was panned by critics and moviegoers across the ideological spectrum.  But the bunker-buster of box-office bombs was Brian De Palma's Redacted, which grossed a staggeringly paltry $65,000.

War Porn:  Brian De Palma's Redacted is a movie that gives war criticism a bad name.  It's a nasty piece of work — and not in a good way. He means to shock, but his film is merely distasteful. … Some have denounced the film as anti-American or as propaganda for al-Qaida, but that exaggerates its potency.

'Redacted' is Repulsive.  Brian DePalma's "Redacted" did something that is not easy to do: It left me briefly at a loss for words.  But given that words are what a movie review is made of, I shall select a few:  Repugnant, repulsive, anti-American propaganda.  Whereas "Lions for Lambs" could have been written by a first-year college film class, "Redacted" could have been written by the "Ministry of Information" of Iran or Hamas.

Redacted Ad Absurdum.  This fall, the Hollywood left once again cranked up its propaganda machine, flooding American theaters with anti-military, anti-Iraqi Freedom films in hopes of capitalizing on the perceived abysmal public opinion of the War on Terror, the Bush Administration, and the United States military.  The latest of these was Redacted, which opened in fifteen theaters on November 16.

Hollywood in all-out assault on America's 'war on terror':  A generation ago, Hollywood movies doubting the goodwill and sincerity of the American government were invariably shot through with a sense of paranoia — nervy, unsettling films such as The Conversation, or All the President's Men.  Now, though, with the Iraq war dragging on, the bad faith of the US government seems to be almost a given in the movie business.

Hollywood is casualty of war as movie-goers shun Iraq films.  The wave of recent films set against the backdrop of war in Iraq and post-9/11 security has failed to win over film-goers keen to escape grim news headlines when they go to the movies, analysts say. … Almost without exception … the crop of movies have struggled to turn a profit at the box-office and in many cases have received a mauling from unimpressed critics as well.

Howard Zinn's Revisionist 'A People's History' Comes to TV.  Hollywood doesn't learn.  Even though the latest round of America-hating movies flopped, Project Greenlight producer Chris Moore will turn "A People's History of the United States" by pop historian and Karl Marx fanboy Howard Zinn into a TV miniseries and a feature-length documentary.

An Unmighty Film.  I went to the screening of "A Mighty Heart" — activists Brad Pitt's and Angelina Jolie's movie on the Al-Qaeda murder of Daniel Pearl — expecting a movie with an agenda.  And that is exactly what I got.  That, plus a Lifetime Channel weepy-damsel-in-distress movie of the week.  Muslims are the heroes — NOT the perpetrators — in this "Can't we all just get along?" kumbaya film ostensibly about terrorism.

'False theology' sinks Evan.  Despite the trend among ministries to get on board with Evan Almighty, the American Family Association is not reserving space for this weekend's release of what is billed as "a comedy of biblical proportions."  AFA cites both false theology and objectionable content in the modern-day portrayal of the Great Flood.

Hollywood Strikes Out Again in Effort to Appeal to Faith-Based Audience.  I've produced three books ... making the case for lowering the wall of separation between faith and entertainment.  But if the result is both dumbed-down religion and comedy as in the box office flop Evan Almighty, it may be the strongest argument yet for reinstating that wall and keeping religion and the movies as far apart as possible.

Tell a lie often enough and it becomes the celluloid truth.  Don't hold your breath waiting for the U.S. Treasury Department to charge filmmaker Michael Moore with treason for a trip to Cuba that may have violated a U.S. embargo.  In a country where both Democrats and Republicans work for amnesty, treason flew out the window with Benedict Arnold.

Hillary and Barack battle it out for Hollywood elite's millions.  Barack Obama's surging campaign for the White House is winning him new friends in Hollywood, where chequebooks speak louder than political opinions and some of the most influential entertainment industry figures are already promising big-money contributions that might otherwise be going to Hillary Clinton.

Hollywood Hil's?  Barack is gaining.  Hollywood has been a cash-spewing ATM for Sen. Hillary Clinton, but Sen. Barack Obama may challenge her top billing when it comes to Tinseltown cash.  Powerhouse agent Ari Emanuel, whose client stable includes A-listers like Michael Douglas, Martin Scorsese, Larry David and Paris Hilton, is set to throw a sure-to-be-star-studded bash for Obama (D-Ill.) next month.

Hollywood Export Undermines America.  According to the Pew Global Attitudes Project, foreign opinion of Americans has been declining — especially in Europe. … When viewers turn on their TV sets in London, Paris or Berlin, they see an endless stream of anti-free enterprise and anti-American propaganda packaged in some of our most popular TV dramas.  Maybe that has something to do with it.

Dusk for the Sundance Kid:  Once again, Hollywood is on a "let's make America look bad" binge. This is directly caused by loathing for the Bush administration, which the entertainment left sees as a combination of the Third Reich and Emperor Nero.  Thus, a series of earnest "America is a human-rights violator" films are coming to a theater near you, and the odds are you will ignore them.

Hollywood economics:  The irony is that the average Hollywood star who is making anti-business movies is far wealthier than the average owners of those businesses, who are half the population of the country.  The Los Angeles Times refers to documentary "films" that are "critical of corporate power."  But just what does this vague word "power" mean when it comes to businesses?

Movie Rated PG for Christianity, Group Says.  The American Family Association is outraged. It accuses the Motion Picture Association of America — the movie raters — of putting Christianity on the same level as sex, violence, and profanity because it might offend non-believers.

Judge rules against film sanitizers.  Sanitizing movies on DVD or VHS tape violates federal copyright laws, and several companies that scrub films must turn over their inventory to Hollywood studios, an appeals judge ruled.  Editing movies to delete objectionable language, sex and violence is an "illegitimate business" that hurts Hollywood studios and directors who own the movie rights, said U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch in a decision released Thursday [7/6/2006] in Denver.

What a Friend We Have in Hollywood.  After years of cursing the darkness about profanity, nudity and violence coming out of what collectively is called "Hollywood" — whether the films are produced there or elsewhere — evangelicals and others who like quality films are beginning to develop and produce their own.  Two of the better ones will be released next month.

Crooks in suits:  From oil tycoon J.R. Ewing in Dallas to corporate raider Gordon Gekko in Wall Street, businessmen have been Hollywood's stock villains for decades.  An occasional doctor, lawyer, mechanic, or teacher will be the bad guy in a TV drama or movie, but studies show that Hollywood holds a particular hostility toward the corporate world.

Never Mind PG, MPAA Goes P.C.!  The movie was made by Provident Films, a Tennessee-based production company that specializes in faith-based entertainment and is owned by Sony. … The same Sony that put out The Da Vinci Code.  … Anyway, it seems that when Facing the Giants was submitted to the MPAA, the producers … anticipated receiving a family-friendly "G" — meaning there was nothing in the film to concern parents with young children.  Instead, the board issued a "PG" rating — because of "thematic" elements.  And what elements were those?  Not drugs, not violence and not sex — but religion.

Anti-business films are the new muckrakers.  "Black Gold," now being screened at festivals and art houses, is the latest in a growing genre of documentary films shaking up the business world.  They are taking critiques of corporate power that would once have been the province of newspapers and magazines to movie theaters and DVD shops, where they're finding an increasingly receptive audience.

Bush is the villain of Katrina film.  Tears marked his 70-year-old cheeks as Arthur Brown, leaning on a walking stick, walked from the film that sought to tell his story.  "I think it's a great movie," said Brown, on Spike Lee's documentary When the Levees Broke:  A Requiem in Four Acts.

Much more about Hurricane Katrina.

Nobody runs against Hollywood.  The problem is that lawmakers in Washington, D.C., face two constituencies with wildly differing levels of enthusiasm.  On the outside are the American people.  Across the ideological spectrum, they are fed up with Hollywood's assault on their values, using the public airwaves they own.  On the inside are the lobbyists for the entertainment industry giants, plying members of Congress with satchels of campaign cash and demanding only … inaction.  Which has a greater effect in politics today?

The Hollywood Left and the Real Blacklist.  Hollywood's film colony has had a long romance with the Left.  Today's Hollywood, with the help of the "mainstream" media, regularly savages those who stand up to America's enemies.

Why Hollywood doesn't need the heartland.  There was George Clooney, comically puffing his chest out for being an 'out of touch' liberal — while receiving his Oscar for a left-leaning, niche film ("Syriana") that relatively few people had seen.  There was Rachel Weisz, picking up a statuette for playing a shrill, anti-corporate activist in another left-leaning, niche film ("The Constant Gardener") nobody had seen.

The impending death of Fidel Castro:  Castro may survive, but freedom-loving people the world over hope and pray that he does not.  We cannot count members of the Hollywood elite among those freedom-loving people.  In November 2002, Steven Spielberg flouted the American travel ban to Cuba by visiting Castro personally.

How does he sleep at night?  Do you think Michael Moore sleeps well at night?  I've often wondered how the America-hating filmmaker could live with himself.  After all, this is a guy who has made enormous sums of money by manipulating Columbine massacre victims and American soldiers into being pawns in his hateful "documentaries."

The American way:  The world of mid-twentieth century television was clean — safe for viewing no matter what your age.  Parents simply did not have to worry about what their children were watching, or what messages they were receiving through their televisions.  The 1950s, however, are long over and modern Hollywood can't resist tampering with American icons.  They want to tear them down and rebuild them in their own image.

The Era of Big Cinema Is Over.  As a company town, Hollywood has always tilted to some extent or another to the left, but the studio heads who ran it from the 1930s through the 1950s understood that its product must resonate with the American public as a whole to make money, regardless of their filmmakers' personal politics.  Or as Sam Goldwyn is frequently attributed as saying, "Pictures are for entertainment, messages should be delivered by Western Union".  For Hollywood, the late 1960s began to mark a retreat from that philosophy.

D.C. - on screen and unfiltered.  Showing "moral majority" types as closeted bigots, perverts and hypocrites is a grand cinematic pastime.  What seems unfathomable to many liberals in Hollywood is that many religious conservatives are in fact decent, pleasant people and that nastiness is almost an entirely independent variable from ideology.  Man-of-the-people Michael Moore is a notoriously nasty boss, while "virtuecrat" Bill Bennett is famously fun to work for.

The Academy Awards:  "Out of Touch" and Proud of It.  Maybe the Academy wanted it be a "safe show," to counter the perception that Hollywood is overly provocative and out of touch with America.  The fact that many of the prominent movies made political statements and their host a liberal political humorist made them play it safe, but it was boring nonetheless.

Family values, Hollywood style.  Be forewarned:  this modern Shaggy Dog is really just a shabby story — one part political correctness, one part Tinseltown morality, and one part hogwash — all wrapped up and cunningly disguised under a pretty little Disney bow.

Entertainment as indoctrination:  Entertainment is the subtlest and most effective means of ideological indoctrinating.  It creates a psychological opening through which cultural messages bypass the intellectual filters that arrest most input for critical analysis.  Because the context for these messages is "entertainment," they get a free pass into the mind's cultural framework, where they compete, at a subconscious level, with established ethical and moral standards.

An Uprising on the Right in a World That Leans Left.  Something besides liberal bias is responsible for the striking shortage of conservative nonfiction cinema at a time when filmmakers on the other end of the spectrum are flooding screens with messages about global warming, the war in Iraq and the downside of Wal-Mart.

Blasphemy and Sexual Immorality are Good Reasons to Miss the Da Vinci Code.  A well-known pro-family media critic advises Christians to forego seeing the movie screen adaptation of Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code, and he says they should warn others to avoid the film as well.

The DaVinci Code:  An attack on the fundamental concepts of Christianity.  The DaVinci Code, authored by Dan Brown, has become one of the best selling fiction based novels of all time.  However, the key word here is fiction.  The DaVinci Code is not based on historical fact, but some have elevated Brown's book into a factual narrative of Jesus Christ's life.  The DaVinci Code is not only fiction, it is also a demeaning attempt to revise history.  More important, the novel attacks the very pillars of Christianity.

Why Ears Itch for the Theology of The Da Vinci Code Film.  When a book as popular as The Da Vinci Code claims that aspects of its story are based on fact, it may as well have thrown down a gauntlet to relentless hordes of apologists and historians.  The response didn't take long.  The major source material for The Da Vinci Code is Holy Blood, Holy Grail, a book that was dismissed by historians as pseudo-history shortly after its publication in 1982.

The Da Vinci Code:  What it Means … And What it Doesn't.  While people do think Brown's work is fiction, they fear that other people will think it's real history and they're threatened by the very possibility.  To that end, there was a real stink raised over the popularity of the book.  A variety of books were published in "response" to "The Da Vinci Code," most of them claiming to "debunk" the book.  Of course, by claiming the book needed debunking at all just lent further credibility to what is still just a work of fiction!  But that didn't seem to matter to those who were worried.

The Top Ten Da Vinci Code Distortions:  Dan Brown's murder mystery novel presents a problem for Christians.  A 2005 Canadian survey showed that one-third of those who have read the book believe that it is factual.  The Da Vinci Code has sold more than 42 million copies. … Serious Christians will see through the many lies and historical fictions that Brown plants throughout the book, but millions will believe that this profoundly dishonest book contains at least some "truth" about Jesus and the church.

"The Da Vinci Code":  Cashing in on defaming Christ.  Speaking lies to spark a controversy may sell books, but it also breaks a law written even before Mary Magdalene was born:  "Thou shall not bear false witness against your neighbor."  "The Da Vinci Code" bears false witness because it falsifies the historical record of Christ, who is both true God and true man.  In violating the Eighth Commandment, it strikes at the First and Second.

No passion against the "code".  When Mel Gibson introduced "The Passion of the Christ" into the public conversation, Hollywood had a lot to say about it.  Now Hollywood is offering its response with the upcoming release of "The DaVinci Code," inviting commentary not on that movie, but on Hollywood itself.

Critics Universally Pan 'The Da Vinci Code' Movie.  Ron Howard's movie, "The Da Vinci Code" … has been roundly condemned by critics who previewed it.

"V" for Vicious Propaganda.  If you liked the politics of last weekend's Oscar nominees, you'll love "V for Vendetta."  It's an exciting, quality Bin Laden film.  But if you're like the rest of mainstream America — you support our troops, believe in firmly responding to terrorists on our own shores, and/or respect Christianity — then, don't waste your time at this piece of garbage masquerading as a superhero movie.  It is anything but.

Terrorist Heroes:  Hollywood has positioned the comic-book world as a farm team for its big-screen blockbusters.  It was only a matter of time, then, before the world of costumed heroes collided with the film industry's increasingly dominant political consciousness.  The result is "V for Vendetta," a mildly entertaining dystopian pulp adventure weighed down by some of the most muddled political messages to land on multiplex screens in a long time.

V is for Read the Book Instead.  "People shouldn't fear their governments, governments should fear their people."  This line from the movie "V for Vendetta" seems to have convinced libertarian luminaries like the Ludwig von Mises Institute and Lew Rockwell that it is a libertarian movie.  It isn't.  The thing is, it could have been.  In bringing it to the screen, the Wachowski Brothers have insulted a great work.

V for Vendetta:  You know the film has gone far astray when writer Alan Moore, a self-confessed anarchist, criticizes the film's politics. … Originally conceived as an extreme, anarchistic response to an extreme, fascist government in the near future, V for Vendetta has been translated, with a terrorist hero at its center, into a vicious, thinly veiled attack on American conservatives and Christians.

The Top 10 Unhinged Celebrities.

When playing the race card doesn't work.  I can't prove it, but I have a theory that Freedomland, an over-the-top allegory on racism clumsily wrapped in thriller garb, was supposed to be one of Sony's Academy award contenders this year.

Go Left, Young Men.  Hollywood salutes the sexually perverse and politically correct in Oscar nominations.

Syriana feeds our enemies hatred.  Nothing tells you more about Hollywood than what it chooses to honor.  Nominated for best foreign film is "Paradise Now," a sympathetic portrayal of two suicide bombers.  Nominated for best picture is "Munich," a sympathetic portrayal of yesterday's fashion in barbarism:  homicide terrorism.  But until you see "Syriana," nominated for best screenplay … you have no idea how self-flagellation and self-loathing pass for complexity and moral seriousness in Hollywood.

Losers and Perverts in Hollywood:  Sick and tired of Hollywood's assault on traditional values?  A group in Rochester, New York decided to do something about it.  Viewers Insulted by Loser Entertainment, known by the acronym VILE, staged a protest at a local theater against the pro-homosexual propaganda film, "Brokeback Mountain," which is up for an Academy Award on March 5 and has already received four Golden Globes.

Rev. Sheldon Speaks Out Against "Brokeback Mountain".  The homosexual/bisexual-themed film "Brokeback Mountain" is being showered with awards and has already earned eight Oscar nominations.  The politically-correct film is simply one more example of Hollywood's efforts to normalize homosexual behaviors and to vilify any one who criticizes homosexual behaviors.

"Brokeback" Awarded GLAAD PrizeBrokeback Mountain took home the top honor at the 17th Annual GLAAD Media Awards Monday [3/27/2006] … "Finally, an award that actually means something to me," the director [Ang Lee] said. … Oprah Winfrey also managed to get in on the award action, nabbing a trophy for Outstanding Talk Show Episode thanks to a coming-out-themed show titled "When I Knew I Was Gay."

Breakouts:  While admittedly, Brokeback did well at the box office, its audience was exactly whom you would have predicted all along:  people in the Northeast and on the West Coast.  The film made far more money in Canada than in the Great Plains or the Rocky Mountain states.

And the Oscar Goes to … Liberalism and Deviant Sex?  This year's Oscar nominees include stories of homosexual sheep herders, a transvestite, and Japanese prostitutes.  Still other nominees promote a liberal bias on the issues of terrorism, police brutality, and communism during the Cold War.

A 'Brokeback' backlash:  Fate is indeed fickle.  Who would have guessed that in this year's Oscar voting, "Brokeback Mountain," a fine risky movie about a gay love affair, would surge ahead of "Capote," a movie about a gay celebrity journalist, only to be edged out for the best-movie Oscar by a fine, yet risky, movie about racism?

Blowback Mountain:
61,061 Protest Brokeback Mountain Oscar Nominations.  More than 61,000 Americans joined Dr. Gary Cass today [3/3/2006] in a letter of outrage protesting the eight Oscar nominations for Brokeback Mountain, a film that movie critic Ted Baehr has called a "twisted, laughable, frustrating, plotless and boring piece of homosexual, neo-Marxist propaganda."

Losers and Perverts in Hollywood:  Sick and tired of Hollywood's assault on traditional values?  A group in Rochester, New York decided to do something about it.  Viewers Insulted by Loser Entertainment, known by the acronym VILE, staged a protest at a local theater against the pro-homosexual propaganda film, "Brokeback Mountain," which is up for an Academy Award on March 5 and has already received four Golden Globes.

Oscar's thumbs up for pimps.  Prostitution may be the world's oldest profession, but now, apparently, it's also an honorable one — at least in the eyes of the pushers of pop culture, who have discovered its rebellious charm.

Protecting Muhammad:  We see a big storm brewing, brought on by the Danish newspaper's publication of caricatures of Muhammad. … Iconoclastic expressions in America are broadly condemned as being in bad taste.  However, there is certainly freedom in America to deride Christ.  This is done every day on Broadway, and every other day in Hollywood.  Americans do not take up arms in protest.  Derisory material at the expense of Jews is permitted only if the executioner is a Jewish comedian.

Golden Globes Goes Political.  Concerned Women for America (CWA) says that by winning four awards, Brokeback Mountain was the clear victor at last night?s Golden Globes award ceremony.  About male homosexual sheepherders who hide their affair for decades, the movie has garnered critical accolades with limited showings in selected theatres, while a massive public relations campaign paves the way for more mainstream success — and, seemingly more important, spreading acceptance of homosexuality.

Unfair and unbalanced:  George Clooney has become the commander in chief of Hollywood's anti-Bush forces.  In the conspiracy thriller Syriana, he porks up to put his weight as an actor behind the idea that the Iraq war was fought for oil and that the CIA assassinates foreign politicians who threaten the Texaco flow.

Al Gore:  the second coming.  Celebrity took an unusually nerdy form at this year's Sundance Film Festival.  The man everyone wanted to meet, talk to and be seen with wasn't a film star or daring new director.  It was a politician, who is in his sixth year of retirement and more famous for what he didn't achieve than for what he did.

[Why do leftist politicians and film makers go hand in hand?]

Politics Makes For Bad Movies; Bad Movies Make For Worse Politics.  First, Hollywood loves to make lefty movies that the elites love and the masses loathe.  Second, even though the movies don't do well financially, they do succeed in fouling the political climate such that drug companies put themselves and their shareholders' money at risk by getting into the media crosshairs.  And third, the diseases that are thereby neglected get worse, and millions of people die.

Clooney Smears Senator McCarthy.  Anyone viewing the George Clooney film, "Good Night and Good Luck," should bear in mind that media skill does not necessarily reflect historical truth. … The movie begins with an outright falsehood and ends with a monumental disingenuous half-truth that insults one's intelligence.

Hollywood Surrenders to Terrorists.  Steven Spielberg is a gifted and influential filmmaker.  His latest creation, Munich, about the aftermath of the bloody attack on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972, is superbly crafted, as one would expect.  But … it is typical liberal Hollywood propaganda, designed to convince the public that the real threat to America comes from the Bush Administration, not the terrorists that it seeks to capture or kill.

Harry Belafonte:  Bush is "the Greatest Terrorist in the World".  During a visit with Venezuela's far-left President Hugo Chavez, actor/singer Harry Belafonte, a UNICEF "goodwill ambassador," denounced President George W. Bush as "the greatest tyrant in the world" and "the greatest terrorist in the world" and proclaimed to Chavez that "millions of the American people, millions support your revolution."

Munich lies.  The camera always lies.  That is one of my most dearly held beliefs, and an early screening of Steven Spielberg's "Munich," which I saw last week, provides me with more evidence.  The camera always lies — and Steven Spielberg lies quite a lot too, at least when he uses a camera pursuant to his Art.

Hollywood still leery of religion.  You can have school teachers assign students to read books about rape, drug addiction, and accepting homosexuality as normal, but there better not be a Christian metaphor on the reading list.

Ban Torture?  Not on the Silver Screen.  What does Hollywood think about torture? … Politically, the entertainment community is fairly two-dimensional in its liberalism.  But artistically — and to its credit — Hollywood seems to grasp that life can be morally complicated.  After all, tactics that qualify as torture for the "anti" crowd show up in film and television every day.

Ratings Offers Parents Poor Guide to Movie Content.  [Ed Vitagliano] warns that parents should not be convinced of a movie's propriety for family viewing based solely on its rating.  He says more and more moms and dads are experiencing a growing sense of "ratings creep," where what was once unacceptable for a certain movie rating is increasingly seen under that rating, until it becomes commonplace.

Hollywood:  rotten to the Corps.  It's pretty clear that those making movies in Tinsel Town don't know any real men like Aaron Mankin.  They apparently prefer cowardice over courage; witless whiners to real patriots; gutless wimps and hollow phonies to men who know the meaning of self-sacrifice and integrity.  That's the only conclusion one can draw after seeing Hollywood's latest anti-military travesty — "Jarhead."
Movies advance a world view that derides patriotism, faith, and traditional American values.
Unserious Syriana:  How hopeless is Hollywood?  More than four years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, America's movie moguls seem to have not a clue about who attacked us or why, or what sort of war we're fighting.

Are you now or have you ever been a second-rate filmmaker?  As noted here previously, George Clooney's movie "Good Night, and Good Luck," about pious parson Edward R. Murrow and Sen. Joseph McCarthy, failed to produce one person unjustly accused by McCarthy.  Since I described McCarthy as a great American patriot defamed by liberals in my 2003 book, "Treason," liberals have had two more years to produce a person — just one person — falsely accused by McCarthy.  They still can't do it.

Why run away from a "G"?.  A new study by the Dove Foundation demonstrated that Hollywood may not love money as much as it loves its "adult" themes of sexual perversion, violent death and ear-bending profanity.

Fewer dirty words equals bigger box office for PG films.  A new study by The Nielsen Co. found that the PG-rated movies with the least profanity made the most money at the U.S. box office.  Sexuality or violence in those films had less to do with success than the language, the Nielsen PreView group said in a study being released today [3/13/2008].

Hollywood's Real Motive — It's Not Money.  Why do producers consistently claim they're "just giving moviegoers what they wanted"? … They are motivated by the desire to impact viewers with a message — their "artistic vision" of reality.  Now we know the real reason the movie industry eschews family friendly films for movies steeped in sexuality, brutality and obscenity.  The driving force for too many directors is an agenda that not only calls into question, but also undermines traditional morality.

Hollywood's eye contact with social issues:  One of my favorite tidbits about Hollywood that I've gleaned from the starstruck press is that a great many of its most accomplished stars don't allow their staffs to look them in the eye.  I'm not making this up.  It has been reported that Barbra Streisand not only discourages eye contact among staff, but that she required hotel workers to leave her presence only by walking backward.

Hollywood family values.  At the Oscars, George Clooney declared he was "proud to be out of touch."  Movies and TV, he suggested, can help change the world, one wicked human heart at a time.

Do movies cause smoking?  Anti-smoking activists assert that smoking is more common in movies than it is in real life.

 Editor's Note:   Find a TV station that shows re-runs of Perry Mason.  It's entertaining, but evidently the show was originally sponsored by a cigarette manufacturer, because the show leaves you with the impression that in 1960, everybody smoked.  (And there was a gun in every desk drawer.)  Remember, many of these same "activists" are the people who made fun of Vice President Quayle when they accused him of not knowing that Murphy Brown was a ficitional character, after Murphy Brown flaunted her unmarried state of maternity.  You do remember that, right?

Flicks and ashes:  Is it even conceivable that exposure to movies and advertising causes 86 percent of smoking?  That all other factors in life together contribute only 14 percent?  At least as offensive as such patently absurd claims is the premise that every filmmaker should make his work conform to the dictates of the health nannies.

Shut up and act.  Hollywood keeps trying to remake the world in its own image, even if it doesn't sell to the viewing audience.  And it's not just political shows that fall flat.  NBC's new series "The Book of Daniel" has not only flopped in the ratings battle, it has scared off viewers and sponsors with its in-your-face iconoclasm.

Help!  I'm a Hollywood Republican!  Hollywood people are glamorous.  But that's about it.  They are ill informed about jihad.  They are ill informed about Islam.  They are ill informed about Israel, the PA, Iraq, Afghanistan.  They are ill informed about U.S. history, the Constitution, etc.  The truth is, the movie people I've met are ignorant about most everything — save the weekend grosses of the top ten films.  That they know like human computers.

Michael Jackson:  Hollywood's man in the mirror.  The Michael Jackson story is an extremely exaggerated microcosm of Hollywood's moral climate.  Hollywood is ruled by a class of people who believe that money solves problems and that the worst sin in the world is to judge another person's behavior.

The MJ in the rest of us:  Celebrity, high and low, is judged by double standards.  We forgive the talented their sins because we appreciate their talents.

For politics' sake:  Artists can't fathom why John Kerry lost.  The prize for the most unintentionally humorous reason given by a liberal for why President Bush defeated John Kerry — in a contest with many entries — has to go to Alan Woods, an Ohio State drama professor quoted in the Chicago Tribune:  "We are now reaping, in election results, the consequences of the colossal reductions in art education."  Mr. Woods was trying to figure out why Americans reelected the president even though the nation's artists told them not to.

The re-whitewashing of Alfred Kinsey:  Hollywood has long been a purveyor of cultural poison, and a magnet for individuals to whom shame is a foreign concept.  The trap of letting the facts get in the way of the weaving of a yarn that serves their ends is one they have always dodged quite artfully, but never has the disconnect between image and reality been as acute as in one of their latest efforts, Kinsey.

Promoting Kinsey, Censoring Grandma.  It isn't the acting, the directing, or the "production values" that are creating all the media buzz about this supposedly must-see "biopic."  No, the major media have been hyping this movie to the skies because of its subjects:  Kinsey himself and the "sexual revolution" that Kinsey was so instrumental in spawning.  Kinsey has become a sort of god for the sex cult that dominates the higher circles of our major cultural and educational institutions:  the media/entertainment cartel and academia.

Author Calls Kinsey Film Propaganda for a Pervert.  A movie about controversial sex researcher Alfred Kinsey is opening this weekend [11/20/2004] across the United States.  Meanwhile, his leading critic claims the cover-up of the truth about Kinsey continues.  Dr. Judith Reisman is a researcher and author who been working for more than 20 years to debunk what she terms Dr. Alfred Kinsey's "junk science."  She has written a number of books that expose the facts about the doctor's so-called research and says the new film, Kinsey, is just the latest attempt to conceal the facts about the man who has been undeservedly touted and lionized as a pioneer in the exploration of human sexuality.

Bush bashing during shows could backfire for Democrats.  As frustrating as it is for the liberal activists sponsoring the tour to acknowledge, they know most voters aren't especially attracted by that kind of message.  It's even likely that a significant number of people buying tickets don't hate the president at all.  They just like music.

Does America Need Hollywood?  Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) argued in the House Judiciary Committee that the issue is not about "one company or one technology.  "It has always been about the ultimate rights of parents to limit the profanity, sex, and violence that their children are exposed to in the privacy of their own home?  No one can argue with a straight face that it should be against the law to skip over a few pages or even entire chapters of a book.  So, too, it should not be illegal to skip over a few words or scenes in a movie."

Bush vs. Clark's kooks.  Turning reality upside down is easy when you live in the world of people like actress Janeane Garofalo, who proclaimed on MSNBC just hours after the inauguration festivities:  "George W. Bush is unelectable, in my opinion."  This isn't dissent.  It's beyond denial.  Welcome to liberal dementia.

American Film Renaissance:  For the good or bad, in today's America, the film industry profoundly influences the pace and direction of American cultural life.  Our movie screens have now become the primary front in the cultural war waged between the traditional and the modern, the spiritual and the secular.  For far too long, the film industry has used its influence to create movies advancing a world view that derides patriotism, faith, and traditional American values.  But for filmmakers and movie-goers alike, the AFR offers an opportunity to consider film works encompassing a view of America that represents pride, humility, and appreciation for our great nation.

Shut Up and Sing:  How Elites from Hollywood, Politics, and the UN are Subverting America.  Meet the elites.  They think you're stupid.  They think all freedom loving Americans are stupid.  They think patriotism is stupid.  They think churchgoing is stupid.  They think flag-flying is stupid.  They despise families with more than two children.  They are sure that where we live - anywhere but near or in a few major cities - is an insipid cultural wasteland.  In this refreshing book Ingraham probes the condescending elitism of liberals in politics and entertainment.

Flustered film critics and "The Passion":  Ann Hornaday of the Washington Post complained first not about the artistry but the history.  The film "engages in some troubling assumptions, for starters, by treating the Bible's four Gospels as literal eyewitness accounts of Jesus' arrest, torture and crucifixion."  A reader might wonder:  If critics like Hornaday were so tremendously concerned with historical accuracy, what would she have said about "The Last Temptation of Christ," Martin Scorsese's Christ-mangling film of 1988?

More Hollywood Hate for Kerry to Ignore:  Beat "Madman" Bush.  The pro-Kerry outfit MoveOn has teamed with Hollywood heavyweights including Rob Reiner, Matt Damon, Kevin Bacon, Scarlett Johansson, John Sayles, Ed Asner, Margaret Cho and Al Franken to unleash Bush-bashing ads (10 of them, according to the Associated Press; 14, according to USA Today) for TV and the Internet.

Rock of Hatred.  Liberal-leaning artists, includingBruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam, R.E.M. and the Dixie Chicks, have announced that they will tour under the banner "Vote for Change" with the express purpose of replacing President Bush with Sen. John Kerry.  [They] are entitled to express their views, but it is hypocritical and arrogant of them to demand that others refrain from criticizing them.  Artists who have made millions from fans of all political views must be willing to pay the price for injecting politics into their performances.

They like the music, not the politics.  One local man who makes his living pretending to be Bruce Springsteen won't be attending Springsteen's concert Tuesday in St. Paul.  Tim Sigler, lead singer of the Minnesota Springsteen tribute band Lucky Town, said he won't buy a ticket.  He may find a way to sneak in between his own shows, but he doesn't want to pay to support the organizations that will benefit from the concert:  progressive organizations MoveOn.org and America Coming Together.

The lost patriots of Hollywood:  Box-office patriotism is dead.  And so I ask:  If Hollywood refuses to support America, why should we support Hollywood?

GOP Hijacked by "Fundamentalist Wackos," Actor Says.  Actor Alec Baldwin slammed the influence of religious conservatives on Wednesday [July 28, during the Democrats' convention], telling Democrats that the Republican Party "has been hijacked by these fundamentalist wackos."  The audience, which included Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe, greeted Baldwin's comment with sustained applause.

 Editor's Note:   Isn't this the guy who said he would leave the country if George W. Bush won the election?  What's the holdup?

Cider House:  Rotten to the Core.  The Cider House Rules, recently released by Disney subsidiary Miramax, portrays abortion as "the work of the Lord," in hope that pregnant women will seek out the "miracle" of death.

Farenheit 9/11: All heat, no light.  Fahrenheit 9/11 is disgusting, pathetic propaganda without the slightest shred of integrity.  Reasonable arguments against the war in Iraq exist — but this unbalanced screed displays none of them.

Review of "Fahrenheit 9/11".  Imagine the squealing from the left if someone made a real documentary showing Democrat vote-recounters eating chads, a dozen high-powered Democrat lawyers landing in Florida minutes after the polls closed and little old Jewish ladies from West Palm Beach lying about how they could not figure out the ballot and meant to vote for Gore (these same ladies have no problem controlling 25 BINGO cards at a time).  Many of these Florida fibsters actually did vote for Pat Buchanan on purpose, and not mistakenly as they purported.  In fact, in a previous election, Buchanan got just as many votes in that same area.  Not to mention, the ballot was drawn up and certified by a leading Palm Beach County Democrat.

Unfairenheit 9/11: The lies of Michael Moore.  To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability.  To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious.  Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness.  It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.

Tables turned on Fahrenheit 9/11's maker.  The latest assault on Moore's film-making techniques has come from an unexpected quarter.  In Manufacturing Dissent, a documentary to be shown for the first time at a Texas film festival on Saturday, a pair of left-wing Canadian film-makers take Moore to task for what they describe as a disturbing pattern of fact-fudging and misrepresentation.

Independence Institute finds 56 Deceits In "Fahrenheit 911".  There are many articles which have pointed out the distortions, falsehoods, and lies in the film Fahrenheit 911.  This report compiles the Fahrenheit 911 deceits which have been identified by a wide variety of reviewers.  In addition, author Dave Kopel identifies some inaccuracies which have not been addressed by other writers.  The report follows the approximate order in which the movie covers particular topics:  the Bush family, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Iraq.  This report focuses solely on factual issues, and not on aesthetic criticism of the film.

Michael Moore Lies & Distortions Documented.

The Mainstream Media and the War:  The conclusions of Fahrenheit 9/11 have no basis in fact or reality.  Michael Moore presents Iraq as a peaceful, beautiful nation destroyed by American military action.  President Bush is portrayed as a warmonger, slaughtering innocent civilians — including women and children — to enrich the oil industry.  Moore has positioned himself as the American spokesman for al Qaeda.

Fahrenheit 9/11 is Having a "Devastating" Impact on Military Morale.  A soldier deployed overseas says "young and impressionable" soldiers just returned from Iraq deployments are "being made to feel ashamed" of their service.

Michael Moore's Trashy Movie:  The movie's diatribes, sometimes amusing and sometimes manifestly unfair, will not change any views.  They will simply cheapen the national debate and reinforce the opinions on both sides.

Giuliani Doesn't Need Moore to Tell Him About 9/11.  Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani made a splash Thursday morning [7/29/2004] when he told a roomful of cheering Republicans that Michael Moore's " Fahrenheit 9/11" film would carry no weight with him.

Yes, I Gave Michael Moore Money.  The danger in Fahrenheit 9/11 is not that everyone who sees it will go home believing that the Saudis "own seven percent of America" and control our foreign policy, or that President Bush is a lazy idiot.  Anyone who believes this is already beyond help.  Rather, what we have to worry about is the uninformed people who will see the movie — or even hear about it from others — and allow such lies and propaganda to dissuade them from supporting the War on Terror that we must win.

"Fahrenheit 9/11" Shown on Prime Time TV in Cuba.  U.S. director Michael Moore's anti-Bush documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" was shown on prime time Cuban state-run television on July 28 [2004] after playing to packed cinemas for a week.  In a country with a deep-seated distrust of U.S. governments, the film has generated widespread public interest and added to a recent barrage of official criticism of President Bush.

Newspaper:  Moore faked its headline.  An Illinois newspaper has accused filmmaker Michael Moore of "falsely representing" its front page in his blockbuster "Fahrenheit 9/11."

Liberals hate fellow Americans more than Islamists.  Theaters are filling up with fans of Michael Moore — a propagandist who makes Oliver Stone look like Alistair Cooke.  Moore is, of course, free to say that the war on terror is a clever cover story for George W. Bush's attempt to line his own pockets.  Or to suggest that as nasty as bin Laden is, he is nowhere near as bad as our president.

Moore Distortions in Fahrenheit 9/11Fahrenheit 9/11 cheapens genuine debate and belittles those who died from terrorist aggression.

Pinstripes and Black Hats:  Businessmen are Hollywood's Favorite Bad Guys.  The Washington-based Media Institute has found that by the age of 18, the average TV viewer has seen businessmen attempt more than ten thousand murders and countless lesser offenses, all in the name of greed.

The Michael Moore of Fast Food:  How does a film-industry nobody become the liberal elite's favorite filmmaker?  By trashing the world's most successful corporation.

This is an original compilation, Copyright © 2013 by Andrew K. Dart


The Gulf Stream's existence is a consequence of the large-scale wind system over the North Atlantic Ocean, and of the nature of fluid motion on a rotating planet. The only way to produce an ocean circulation without a Gulf Stream is either to turn off the wind system, or to stop the Earth's rotation, or both.

-- Carl Wunsch  
Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences,  
Massachusetts Institute of Technology   *


Hollywood Heads in the Sand:  Can anyone remember the last time Hollywood seemed so bummed out over a film making a boatload of money at the box-office?  ... Hollywood may not have learned much from the success of The Passion.  But we've learned a lot about Hollywood.

All of a Sudden, Newsweek is Concerned About Kids Viewing R-rated Movies.  Newsweek's mockery of Mel Gibson's effort to convey an accurate depiction of the last 12 hours of Christ's life reflects the magazine's uneasiness with religion.  But it is no wonder why a film like The Passion of the Christ literally terrifies liberal elites.

Hollywood's death row fetish:  Celebrity hairdos and hemlines may change, but there's one fashion accessory that never goes out of style at the Oscars:  Death Row inmates.

Stopping movie "ratings creep":  In a survey of movies from 1992 to 2003, Professor Kimberly Thompson found "today's movies contain significantly more violence, sex and profanity on average than movies of the same rating a decade ago."  But more importantly, today's PG-13 movies pack about the same dose of sex, violence and foul language that used to earn films an R rating a decade ago, a problem defined as "ratings creep."

Quotas for Hollywood:  Name a business group more identifiably liberal than the folks who run Hollywood.  One would be hard-pressed to name a "conservative" executive — outside of Rupert Murdoch — in Tinseltown.  Hollywood historically gives far more money to Democrats than to Republicans.

Whatever Happened to the Family Film?  Of the top 20 moneymaking films of all time, not a single one is rated R, and of the top 50, only five are rated R - with the remainder being G or PG.  Don't these figures make you wonder what's wrong with Hollywood just from a business point of view?  Why, in the face of these statistics, does Hollywood keep putting out so many non-family oriented movies?

Movie snack business suffering from declining box-office numbers.  Moviegoers tend to stuff themselves full of salty popcorn and sweet candy.  But when people steer clear of the multiplex — as audiences have done for three consecutive years — manufacturers of theater snacks are left with a sour taste in their mouths.

[Here's an idea:  Just show good movies, and snack bar profits won't be a problem.  On the other hand, perhaps the consumers are just saying $3.00 for Milk Duds is a little too much.

Michael Moore's Call to Arms:  While Michael Moore was delivering his infamous speech at the Academy Awards, every single documentary filmmaker nominated for an Oscar stood behind him in solidarity.  The fact that liberals dominate the industry is even more significant given the recent changes in campaign finance laws.  Moore and his fellow filmmakers are free to embed their opinions in movies, but citizens who want to finance political ads will discover new limits to their freedom of speech.

Murder and the "anti-gay":  Academics who study popular culture marvel at how Hollywood has used its propagandistic powers to sell social issues.  This normally means persuading by any dramatic means necessary that traditional values are not only wrong but archaic, even dangerous.

SUVs and Terrorism:  Arianna Huffington Version 5.0.  If Arianna is really concerned about U.S. use of Saudi oil or even foreign oil in general, she could support exploration in areas of the United States such as barren stretches of Alaska or off all three of our major coasts.  Or she might try to encourage her friends to sell their 10,000-square-foot houses in Bel Air and live in apartment buildings.  Or get them to stop flying in fuel-guzzling private jets.  She might want to tell producer Norman Lear, one of her financial backers, to tear down what the Los Angeles Times reports is "a garage for 21 cars... which stands 45 feet tall."  As a minor sacrifice, her Hollywood pals might actually drive those little hybrid cars they have bought instead of taking limousines.  Or take the bus.

Misleading movie ratings:  It is a fact that R-rated movies do significantly worse at the box office on average than do movies with PG or G ratings.  Nevertheless, despite that fact, Hollywood makes mostly R-rated movies.  In other words, Hollywood disregards its own economic incentives to make wholesome, family-friendly movies in favor of making the kinds of movies people in Hollywood like.

Backstreet Boy's Off-Key Junk Science Crusade:  It's time for this overgrown Boy to shave his goatee, go back to school, and get out of the spotlight.

Hollywood Leftists: You Pay, We Insult.  Some celebrities embrace feel-good liberal causes as a way of saying, "Don't hate me because I'm rich and famous."

Hollywood Actors:  False American Idols.  "How could such a destructive man be so popular with the American people?" singer Barbra Striesand asks about George W. Bush's popularity.  After all, she didn't vote for him.  This arrogant mind-set is reminiscent of theater critic Pauline Kael's reaction to Richard Nixon's landslide presidential victory over George McGovern in 1972.  "How can that be?" she supposedly said.  "No one I know voted for Nixon."

Elia Kazan Should Be Honored Because of His Testimony.  Almost without exception, the obituaries of Elia Kazan — while praising his enormous talent as a director — are critical of his testimony against Hollywood communists.  According to some, Kazan, a former member of the Communist Party, should never be forgiven for naming names of fellow party-members before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Who Should Run America?  Hollywood or the White House?  As American troops and our allies prepare to write a new future for the people of Iraq and throughout the Middle East, who would you prefer to make the critical decisions?  The White House lead by President Bush or the anti-war protesters led by a gaggle of Hollywood actors and singers?

When Hollywood Went to War:  It only took 60 years for Hollywood to go from producing war heroes to a group of hypocrites and pacifists, none of whom would be free to make movies without America's Revolutionary War.

Antidotes for Jessica Simpson syndrome:  The same "progressive" Hollywood celebrities who sneer at President Bush's mediocre college grades work in an industry that has long prided itself on, and profited from, popularizing anti-intellectualism.

Betting Against the U.S. Could Be Detrimental to One's Hollywood Career:  A media watchdog says several Hollywood celebrities have egg on their faces, now that their predictions of gloom and doom in Iraq have turned out to be completely wrong.

Hollywood Appeasers Cash In on Anti-U.S. Rants.  Don't believe the whining of Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon and other Tinseltown leftists who claim they're paying a price for opposing Operation Iraqi Freedom.  They're getting rich from their anti-U.S. activism, according to the liberal Washington Post.

Time's "Person" of the Year: American Values, or Media Values?  I remember as a child eagerly awaiting Time magazine's choice of its Man of the Year each year. I believed that there were great men and great events in the world that I needed to know about, and that there was a great arbiter of them -- Time -- that somehow make the great even greater by recognizing them as great.

Hollywood Westerns, Guns, and Property Rights:  The death of the western movie has matched the replacement of courage in this culture -- and the replacement of justice.  The masters of the media prefer disarmed citizens.

Shallow Hollywood Double Standard:  "Shallow Hal" attributes no character flaws to people who consume too much food and burn too little energy, the primary cause of obesity.  But cigarette smoking, that's different.

In Movie Theater Ads, Actor Martin Sheen Attacks Proposed ANWR Drilling.

Hollywood's Celebrity Bush Bashers:  Speaking of embarrassments, has Alec Baldwin defected to Cuba yet?  The actor was one of dozens of celebrity blowhards who reportedly threatened to leave the country if Bush were elected [the first time].

Intolerant Hollywood Hounds Actress Suspected of Being - Gasp! - a Republican

Hypocrites & Wackos Top NRA Rosie Awards List

Somewhat related:
10 Cinematic Clichés That Must Die!  As a writer and consumer of entertainment, I really hate clichés and stereotypes.  They're only useful for misdirection, making readers believe the story is going a certain way so you can fool them.  But Hollywood keeps trotting out the following lame tropes over and over again.  It's about time they were called on the carpet for this stupidity.

More Clichés That Must Die:  If you read part one of this essay, you know I hate clichés and stereotypes.  They're the products of hack writers, lazy minds, and innate bigotry.  Part one was about how Hollywood looks at "conservative America."  That is, anything to the right of them is "conservative."  Part 2 is mostly about how they look at themselves and society.

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Updated January 4, 2024.

©2024 by Andrew K. Dart