Tag Archives: Hollywood

March 25, 2013 · 7:44 PM

CNN’s Jake Tapper Asks: What Is Hollywood’s ‘Obsession’ With Blowing Up Washington, D.C.?

 

I stopped watching CNN years ago, but Jake Tapper asks a valid question…

Full disclosure: I’m an action movie fan.  I will be seeing Olympus this week-end and White House Down when it comes out in a few weeks.

Mediaite

This year is apparently chock-full of blockbuster movies featuring scenes in which the President of the United States is in peril and/or the city of Washington, D.C., is under attack from aliens or terrorists. CNN’s Jake Tapper noticed that trend today on The Lead and explored Hollywood’s sudden revival of it’s late-’90s “obsession” with “putting the highest office in jeopardy for our entertainment.”

As Tapper noted, the #2 highest-grossing film in America this past weekend was big-budget Olympus Has Fallen, which features Korean terrorists wreaking havoc and holding the fictional president hostage. As any movie prominently featuring Gerard Butler is wont to do, Olympus features a healthy dose of explosions, particularly of buildings in our nation’s capital:

Other White House-endangering summer films include the appropriately named White House Down,Iron Man 3, and G.I. Joe: Retaliation.

During his segment, Tapper suggested multiple reasons as to why now Hollywood is getting “bolder” about putting fictional presidents in peril. Of course, the most likely explanation: money.

But it’s fun to note that the last time there was a giant surge in president-in-peril films, we were in an incredibly similar situation: a Democratic president had just been re-elected.

Observe:

Independence Day (1996)

Mars Attacks! (1996)

Air Force One (1997)

Of course, this is purely coincidental. Just fun to observe. It also serves as a good excuse to show pictures of Hollywood explosions. But don’t let that stop some of the nuttier folks out there from believing Hollywood hates Democrats or whatever one might glean from such a coincidence.

Watch the report below, via CNN

Related articles

Comments Off

Filed under U.S. Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

December 6, 2012 · 9:07 AM

Liberals stole my Oscar!

The movie 2016: Obama’s America seems to be designed for low information voters who could confirm their suspicions about President Obama based on rhetoric, innuendos and fabrications after viewing the movie.

The film makers and Dinesh D’Souza, the author of the book with the same title and “star” of the movie, cannot understand why the movie was not nominated for an Oscar.  Apparently the Academy refused to include the film among their list of best documentaries for the year.

Salon

According to D’Souza, if Hollywood wasn’t so liberal, he would have gotten the Oscar nomination he believes he deserves.

D’Souza’s wildly anti-Obama film “2016: Obama’s America” was snubbed this week when the Academy left it off of the list of 15 documentaries that will advance in the award ceremony’s voting.

“I want to thank the Academy for not nominating our film,” D’Souza said. “By ignoring ’2016,’ the top-performing box-office hit of 2012, and pretending that films like ‘Searching for Sugar Man’ and ‘This Is Not a Film’ are more deserving of an Oscar, our friends in Hollywood have removed any doubt average Americans may have had that liberal political ideology, not excellence, is the true standard of what receives awards.”

The film’s producer, Gerald Molen, who also won an Oscar for producing “Schindler’s List,” agreed: “Dinesh warned me this might happen,” he told the Hollywood Reporter. “The action confirms my opinion that the bias against anything from a conservative point of view is dead on arrival in Hollywood circles. The film’s outstanding success means that America went to see the documentary in spite of how Hollywood feels about it.”

2016 wound up grossing a surprise $33.4 million domestically, but did not do quite so well with the critics: It has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 27 percent.

By way of comparison, the two films D’Souza mentions, “Searching for Sugar Man” and “This Is Not a Film,” have scores of 95 percent and 100 percent, respectively.

Related articles

1 Comment

Filed under Obama Conspiracies

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

September 25, 2011 · 6:39 PM

Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding Jr. On Racism in Hollywood

The two actors spoke at the Congressional Black Caucus’ recent event which honored the Tuskegee Airmen…

Think Progress

At an event the Congressional Black Caucus put togetherto honor the Tuskegee Airmen and to promote George Lucas’s new movie about them, Red Tails, the movie’s stars, Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding, Jr., had some pointed things to say about the way Hollywood approaches black actors and directors. Howard said that Lucas had put together the movie with his own money, and that it would be a critical litmus test for a system that systematically devalues black actors and black stories:

The…problem, and what becomes the undercurrent is that it’s an all-black cast, and the villains are white. Now, Hollywood, for a number of years has maintained the status quo by saying black films do not have an international value. Therefore we’re able to pay black actors less, we can give them less money to make their films…If this film, if George Lucas, who is basically the Parrish of the film industry, as Col. Noel Parrish did for the Tuskeegee Airbase, he put his entire career on the line and stood behind these black pilots, these American pilots. What George Lucas did, he put his entire career on the line…when they wouldn’t distribute it, he put $30 million into distribution. If this film is not successful, it will become a stumbling block for all time where they can say that black films do not have value or merit. It’s important that this film is supported…if George Lucas does not profit from this, then the rest of the industry will see no profit in black people.

And Cuba Gooding, Jr. said that George Lucas had pointed to Tyler Perry as an example of the only way a black director can force Hollywood to listen to him—and even then, Perry faces hurdles to finding advertisers and distributors. And he described his own process of trying to find and cultivate African-American talent:

To strive to promote black independent filmmakers, I go to festivals, I meet them, and then when people offer me projects that don’t have directors, I tell them, what about this guy? [People like director Lee Daniels, with whom Gooding's made several movies], these are the new voices in Hollywood…With Spike Lee, this black director, now that we have him, we don’t have to look anymore. We’ve got one. I’m with CAA, and I tell [Gooding's agent], who’s the next voice? Men and women, let’s get them. Let’s support them in a big studio project.

It was a potent reminder of how high the hurdles for even well-established African-American stars can be. Last week, numbers from the Directors Guild of America revealed that during the last television season, women of color directed just 1 percent of episodes. There remain huge persistent pay gaps between men and women who write for Hollywood, and between white people and people of color. Even hugely bankable stars like Will Smith have been unable to convince Hollywood as a whole that black stars can be consistent box-office draws. I hope Howard is right that huge success for Red Tells could help tear down the barriers that treat black actors, writers, and directors like second-class citizens in Hollywood, though I’m not sure anything will. But I agree with his fears that if the movie tanks, thinks could continue to get worse.

 

Comments Off

Filed under Racism In Hollywood

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

June 20, 2011 · 4:57 AM

Jon Stewart LIVE On Fox News, Tells Host ‘You’re Insane’ (VIDEO)

Jon Stewart took on Fox News Channel’s Chris Wallace this past Sunday.   Stewart 1 – Wallace 0

Huffington Post

The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart entered the proverbial lion’s den, appearing live on Fox News Sunday to debate “media bias” with host Chris Wallace.

Early in the interview, Wallace flashed a previous quote of Stewart’s calling Fox News a “relentless agenda-driven 24 hour news opinion propaganda delivery system,” and asked Stewart, “Where do you come up with this stuff?”

Stewart responded, “Uh, it’s actually quite easy.”

Later, when Wallace argued that a clip about Sarah Palin from the Daily Show was political commentary, Stewart told Wallace, “You’re insane… Here’s the difference between you and I. I’m a comedian first. My comedy is informed by an ideological background, there’s no question about that. But the thing that you will never understand…is that Hollywood, yeah, they’re liberal, but that’s not their primary motivating force. I’m not an activist. I am a comedian.”

“Do I want my voice heard?” Stewart continued later. “Absolutely, that’s why I got into comedy. Am I an activist, in your mind? A partisan ideological activist?” Wallace responded, “Yeah.” “Okay, then I disagree with you,” Stewart said. “You can’t understand, because of the world that you live in, that there is not a designed ideological agenda on my part to affect partisan change because that’s the soup you swim in. And I appreciate that, I understand it. It reminds me of in ideological regimes, they can’t understand that there is free media other places because they receive marching orders.”

However, it was in a later exchange that Stewart got actually angry at Wallace, as he talked about what he called the misinformation that Fox News gave its viewers.

“The embarrassment is that I’m given credibility in this world because of the disappointment that the public has in what the news media does,” he said.

“I don’t think our viewers are the least bit disappointed with us,” Wallace said. “I think our viewers think, finally, they’re getting somebody who tells the other side of the story.”

“Who are the most consistently misinformed media viewers?” Stewart shot back, his voice rising. “The most consistently misinformed? Fox, Fox viewers, consistently, every poll.”

Watch highlights of the interview courtesy of Huff Post Politics:

Full unedited version:

 

Related articles

Comments Off

Filed under Fox News, Jon Stewart

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

May 8, 2011 · 6:52 PM

[Great Movie Scenes] Good Will Hunting – NSA

As I was preparing to go out to dinner with my family, I was watching Good Will Hunting.  The film is one of my all time favorites. 

The scene below is a total mind blower.  Keep in mind that this movie was made in 1997.  Both Ben Affleck and Matt Damon won Academy Awards for the movie for Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen.

Will, a genius from Boston’s working class, who never attended college,  has an interview with the NSA.  The dialogue sounds like it was predicting the Bush era,oil spills, jobs lost overseas for cheaper labor, etc.  In actuality, we were having the same problems back then. 

Watch:

Comments Off

Filed under Movies

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

March 1, 2011 · 9:50 AM

Actually, Every Year Someone Calls The Academy Awards ‘Worst Oscars Ever’

First, let me say that until Sunday night,  I had not seen an Academy Award show since 1999 and that was by choice.  

When I was a little girl I looked forward to seeing the Hollywood glamor and the corny jokes Bob Hope and other hosts made.  I think the entire presentation back in the late 50′s and early 60′s was fantastic!

Then something happened during the 70′s and forward.  Discontent with the Viet Nam War, racism, sexism and other isms had hit Hollywood hard and spilled on to the screen and to the award ceremonies.  For the first time I saw people rejecting Oscars as a form of protest, a guy running across the stage naked (it was called “streaking”) and a host of acceptance speeches that were simply political diatribes. 

By the 90′s I had gotten bored with the productions.  The glamour and panache of the 50′s and 60′s had been passed over to a new dawning, as it were.  A sort of rougher, edgier Hollywood.   The old Hollywood glamour might be coming back.  I saw a number of actresses wearing vintage designer gowns,  so there is hope!

Sunday night’s show was “ok”.  It wasn’t the worst and it certainly wasn’t the best…

Mediaite

If it seemed like everyone was ganging up on James Franco, Anne Hathaway, and the Oscars yesterday, it’s because they were. In one of many brutal takedowns, Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers said, “The stirrings I felt from the 83rd annual Oscar show made me want to puke. How could so many stars bore so many people breathless?” Few critics could find anything positive to say about the ceremony, and many echoed the same declaration of “Worst Oscars Ever.” But that phrase may sound familiar – it’s been summoned on several occasions in years past (it’s also somewhat accepted that 1989’s show was really the worst ever). Here, a look at how reviewers of the annual spectacle have summoned the same refrain:

2010 ceremony: “Worst. Oscars. Ever,” said movie critic Peter Howell in the Toronto Star. “Yes, I know I’ve said this before. But the Academy keeps coming up with new lows.” Hosts Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin led a show that “was a desperate attempt to look hip,” and, at three-and-a-half hours long, it “wasn’t the longest Oscar broadcast ever, but it sure felt like it.” In fairness, “I should qualify my rant slightly. This wasn’t the worst Oscars ever, it was the worst Oscars broadcast ever.” They did pick the right winners. Still, in the spirit of one of the year’s most popular films, I wish we had “our own avatars to watch the show in our place, saving us from having to endure it ourselves.”

2009 ceremony: In a piece titled “The Worst Oscars Ever,” The Daily Beast’s Lee Siegel said the “show was an embarrassingly contrived spectacle that only served to prove how insecure Hollywood is about its own future.” Hoping to re-establish “cultural relevance they used to” have, the organizers “desperately seized on a whole new format.” It was a “disaster,” to say the least. “No wonder the show’s main sponsor was JC Penney, who it seems is embarking on an ad campaign to rebrand itself from a downscale discount outlet to an upscale discount outlet.” The night concluded with the airing of trailers for some upcoming films, which “was like watching a nervous breakdown.”

2008 ceremony: “[A]ll in all, it was The Worst Oscars Ever in the History of Hollywood,” said Nikki Finke in LA Weekly. It was the lowest-rated, partially “because this was really the 11th-hour Oscars” thrown together “after the sudden and unexpected settlement” of the writers’ strike. Putting on a show with just two-weeks notice is tough, and it showed. Most of the time, host Jon Stewart “just stood there uncomfortably, searching for a few words to say.” But this “debacle” wasn’t all Stewart’s fault. It’s about the movies, and No Country for Old Men took home top honors. Would it really “kill the academy to include crowd-pleasers” like action films or comedies? “Usually, academy voters are painfully out of touch with the tastes of the American public. Now the show is a pathetic anachronism too.”

2007 ceremony: “This was the most tedious Oscars show ever,” said Rolling Stone’s Rob Sheffield. There’s a lot to complain about here. “Dumb montages. Dumb comedy bits. And sorry, but after two speeches by Al Gore, several speeches about him and a Melissa Etheridge song,” I’d had enough. “Christ, Al, would it have killed you to just win Tennessee?” Spare us, please.

Does that make Jon Stewart’s 2006 show the best ever?

Related Articles

Comments Off

Filed under The Academy Awards 2011

Tagged as , , , , , ,

January 16, 2011 · 3:38 AM

Reggie Doucet Jr, 25-Year-Old Hollywood Model And College Football Star, Shot To Death By LAPD In Front Of Playa Vista Home

:::Sigh::: 

LA Weekly

Update: A revised LAPD report says Doucet tried to take the black officer’s gun during the fight — for that, he was immediately killed.

Updated after the jump: LAPD officers are out of the hospital — they were both punched in the head by Doucet. The officer who shot him was a black male who had only been on the force for 17 months. Doucet had no weapon.

Reginald Doucet, Jr, a 25-year-old Playa Vista resident, posted this video to his Twitter account on his way out in Hollywood last night — just hours before he was shot and killed by an LAPD officer:  

I live for this,” he says in the video. “I could be dead right now, and I’m still doing what I’m doing.”

Doucet was apparently on his way to Drai’s Hollywood, the rooftop nightclub at the W Hotel. When he returned home to Playa Vista later that night, he engaged in an argument with his cab driver. That’s when a nearby resident both the driver and nearby residents called the police.

Read more here…

Related Articles

7 Comments

Filed under U.S. Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,

November 17, 2010 · 7:11 PM

In her new book, Sarah Palin rails on American Idol, among other things…

Sarah Palin’s new book: America By Heart seems to be a “stomach turner according to Palingates.  It’s no secret that Mrs. Palin should be getting her own house in order before slamming other Americans and iconic American television shows.

Palin dishes on American Idol contestants, praises her family and slams Levi Johnston and Hollywood.

Another excerpt:

And what a read it is. The book is, I will say, not boring, but it’s still one of the most stomach-turning reading experiences you will ever encounter in your life.
After this stressful evening with the Palinbots manipulating the DWTS competition and also Bristol’s and Willow’s horrific comments on Facebook (alternative download HERE), it’s the perfect evening for another revelation:
Sarah Palin has to be the most delusional, petty and self-righteous person in the whole wide United States of America.
So that there can be no doubt about this fact, she apparently felt compelled to present the final evidence in the form of this new book, which really should have been called: Praising myself and my family and dishing out on all the others, and presenting myself as the one and only leader of the American nation.

It’s Sarah Palin’s “Mein Kampf.”

Related Articles

Comments Off

Filed under Sarah Palin

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

November 7, 2010 · 5:20 AM

Peggy Noonan: Sarah Palin A ‘Nincompoop’ For Reagan Reduction

Peggy Noonan finally says something I agree with…

Huffington Post

Conservative columnist and former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan doesn’t like people demeaning the Gipper’s legacy, not even Sarah Palin, and not even if she’s only talking about the former president’s Hollywood career.

She writes in her latest column of a recent incident in which Sarah Palin attempted to explain away a Karl Rove criticism over her “reality show” by drawing parallels to former president Ronald Reagan’s silver screen career, including his roles in movies such as “Bedtimes for Bonzo, bozo or something”:

Excuse me, but this was ignorant even for Mrs. Palin. Reagan people quietly flipped their lids, but I’ll voice their consternation to make a larger point. Ronald Reagan was an artist who willed himself into leadership as president of a major American labor union (Screen Actors Guild, seven terms, 1947-59.) He led that union successfully through major upheavals (the Hollywood communist wars, labor-management struggles); discovered and honed his ability to speak persuasively by talking to workers on the line at General Electric for eight years; was elected to and completed two full terms as governor of California; challenged and almost unseated an incumbent president of his own party; and went on to popularize modern conservative political philosophy without the help of a conservative infrastructure. Then he was elected president.

“The point is not ‘He was a great man and you are a nincompoop,’ though that is true,” Noonan continues. “The point is that Reagan’s career is a guide, not only for the tea party but for all in politics. He brought his fully mature, fully seasoned self into politics with him. He wasn’t in search of a life when he ran for office, and he wasn’t in search of fame; he’d already lived a life, he was already well known, he’d accomplished things in the world.”

Though Noonan’s piece is not simply a jab at Palin, but rather a larger message about the real political significance of one’s actions and accomplishments, as well as the necessity to “earn your way into politics,” it’s also worth noting that Noonan has never shied away from writing confrontational columns about the former Alaska Governor.

From Palin’s coming out party until her decision to step down as Governor of the Frontier State, Noonan has made it clear that she doesn’t jive with the “mama grizzly” brand of politics.

Related Articles

Comments Off

Filed under Sarah Palin

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,