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Once upon a time there were men. And one was born this very day in 1907.

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Those Gyllenhaal kids seem awfully determined to change my mind about them this year. First there was Maggie, whose wonderfully mature and earthy turn in “Crazy Heart” finally won me over after being completely immune to her charms since day one. And now Jake does what few of us ever thought possible: delivers convincingly as a charming, masculine action hero in the entertaining though nothing-special “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time,” which opens everywhere Friday and is deserving of many extra points for not being in 3D.

The mystical adventure, based on a popular 1989 video game, is set in ancient Persia and surrounds the quest for a magic dagger capable of doing all sorts of things that include, naturally, bringing about the end of the world. Keeping its awesome powers to do both good and evil out of the hands of evildoers is left to Dastan (Gyllenhaal), the wrongfully accused Prince of Persia currently on the run from his own brothers, and Tamina (Gemma Arterton), the drop dead gorgeous Princess of Alamuta – a sacred city that holds the magic sand needed to make the dagger work.

In that sexually charged kind of way, things are a little tense between Prince and Princess. But that has to do with the fact that the adventurous Dastan was the one who led his country’s invasion and occupation of her’s. He’s roguish and in need of wisdom, she’s tough but a little spoiled. You’ve seen it all before but that’s because the dynamic works so well. And so in-between the many action set-pieces, banter and sparks must fly. (more…)

Ogden Nash

My son Matthew wasn’t all that impressed by the Ogden Nash poem, Roundabout. Aside from Nash’s slapstick turn on human divinity:

You may think of yourself as an immortal creature

But you’re just a cartoon

Between a double feature! 

Nash appeared to be, at least in my son’s opinion, almost unworthy of Lena Horne’s attention.

I’m sure, when he hears Vernon Duke’s musical setting for these words, wallows in Ms. Horne’s loving rendition and Michael Renzi’s piano accompaniment, he might reconsider.

My personally favorite phrase in Roundabout is: (more…)

“Objection, your honor.” - Jack McCoy

Law & Order devotees have subconsciously felt this moment coming for some time, but now that the axe has finally fallen, many of us are grappling with television-induced heartache.

NBC confirmed Friday that it had canceled the original “Law & Order,” bringing an end to a 20-year-old television drama that jump-started an era of television production in New York City.

“Law & Order” was on the verge of becoming the longest-running drama in prime-time television history, surpassing “Gunsmoke.” But it appears that the “Law & Order” executive producer, Dick Wolf, has settled for a tie. The final episode of the series will be shown on May 24, NBC confirmed in a news release Friday.

As I ponder the unwelcome reality that one of my favorite shows is, well, done-done,  I’m struggling to get past the unsatisfying fact that one of television’s longest running programs was unceremoniously dropped–with neither fanfare nor closure.   As the process shook out, the final episode ended up being shot before NBC decided to pull the plug.  The end result: What was initially written and produced as a season finale (which was excellent, especially S. Epatha Merkerson’s moving performance and Sam Waterson’s epic rant) became the de facto series finale.  Law & Order’s cast, crew, and fans deserve better. (more…)

Ed. Note: Today and tomorrow Big Hollywood is running exclusive excerpts from Greg Gutfeld’s new book, ”The Bible of Unspeakable Truths,” which is available now. Leigh Scott’s review is here. Rep. Thaddeus McCotter’s review is here.

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Garry Trudeau Is an Untalented Sack of Poop 

If Doonesbury did not relentlessly spout knee-jerk liberal tripe in every panel, it would not exist. It’s the only cartoon given tenure—in that the media cut Garry Trudeau slack because they all believe his heart is in the right place, even though his stuff sucks harder than something that really sucks. 

But in our hearts, we all know the truth: The strip is neither amusing nor interesting. Worse, the dude can’t draw for shit. Essentially, Trudeau has been a recipient of comic strip welfare his entire career. No one has had the guts to cut him off. It’s too bad, because Funky Winkerbean really deserves his spot.  (more…)

CNN:

Martin Scorsese has “‘demanded the immediate release’ of fellow filmmaker Roman Polanski, who was arrested in Switzerland on a U.S. arrest warrant related to a 1977 child sex charge.”

The Smoking Gun [EXPLICIT content warning]:

The teenager’s troubling [Ed. Note: she was 13] –and contemporaneous–account of her abuse at Polanski’s hands begins with her posing twice for topless photos that the director said were for French Vogue. The girl then told prosecutors how Polanski directed her to, “Take off your underwear” and enter the Jacuzzi, where he photographed her naked. Soon, the director, who was then 43, joined her in the hot tub. He also wasn’t wearing any clothes and, according to Gailey’s testimony, wrapped his hands around the child’s waist.

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One of the most enjoyable parts of both “Iron Man” and “Iron Man 2” is the hero at the core of the two films. Played by a charismatic Robert Downey Jr., Tony Stark (aka Iron Man) is both egotistical and immensely likable. Although he has some personal flaws, he is a hero worth believing in. However, in a review of “Iron Man 2,” one Washington Post critic recently denounced Tony Stark comparing him to a well-known criminal: Jack Abramoff.

Tony Stark, left; Jack Abramoff, right

In the second “Iron Man,” Tony Stark is the same cocky hero that we know from the first film. Towards the beginning of the film, Stark is asked by an elected official to give up his Iron Man suit. Not only does Stark refuse to give it up, he openly cracks jokes with the official and makes him look like a fool. Even when his life is threatened, Stark does not lose his self-assuredness. However, despite his overt cockiness, Stark remains a strong hero that people can relate to. He may be arrogant but he is still a hero who fights against the villains in this movie and he uses his suit for the good of man. (more…)

In Hollywood, being a conservative is the kiss of death. — Jonathan Kahn

Today’s entertainment-industry conservatives can only wish they lived under the same type of blacklist practiced in the 1950s. As terribly misguided as that was, there was at least an honesty to it. There was an actual list and when you were on it you were told you were on it and understood why your phone had stopped ringing. This gave its victims something to fight against and better yet, no one tried to stereotype them as untalented, paranoid whiners for daring to mention its existence.  

Today’s Progressive Hollywood Blacklist is a much more insidious thing. By design it functions in a way that still punishes those who stray from the ideological plantation but like the elephant behind Jimmy Durante, remains hidden well enough in plain sight so that when you try to point it out, the progressive blacklisters can say, “What elephant?” even as they laugh in your face.

As we witnessed with Jonathan Kahn’s coming out in the Wall Street Journal last week, the Progressive Hollywood Blacklist is a system upheld with no small amount of help from the entertainment media. They are Leftist Hollywood’s professional character assassins specialized in the dark art of keeping the industry ideologically pure through the stereotyping of conservatives. (more…)

My last column offered hypotheses on why America feels that the entertainment industry is having a negative effect on the way things are going in the country these days.  I theorized that many Americans feel that the entertainment industry does not reflect their values, and consequently avoid paying for its content.  I provided support for this argument in the form of several different studies.

Matt Damon and Director Paul Greengrass on the set of the 2010 flop “Green Zone”

There is little doubt that the arts attract people with more liberal perspectives.  That their values should appear in content is therefore not surprising.  These values, including political ideology, may take many forms.  In some cases, they are simply a one-off joke about Sarah Palin.  In other cases, there are full-blown television episodes and movies that directly espouse values, morals, or political ideology often associated with the left-wing of our political spectrum.  I’ve been in countless story sessions for both TV and film.  Some writer-producers are eager to inject their ideology into the content.  Some are not.  But the ones that do are always Liberal.  Sometimes that’s just fine. You can’t make Bulworth or Bob Roberts, under-appreciated and entertaining films, without Warren and Tim and their Liberal ideals. (more…)

Before Season 6, my wife was a die-hard “Lost” fan.  For five years, during the appointed hour, I wasn’t allowed to so much as breathe.  And heaven help me if I had to walk past the TV screen.  Suddenly, my normally mild-mannered wife could hurl the remote with notable precision and ferocity.

Five years of secret hatches.  Ancient four-toed statues.  Teleporting cabins.  A string of lottery numbers popping up everywhere.  Weird pseudo-science. Steampunk technology.  The Dharma Initiative.  (Remember that?)  And what the heck was a polar bear doing on a tropical island?

“Lost” was a major brain tease, too.  Naming so many of the characters after philosophers (Locke, Rousseau, Hume, etc.) was a stroke of genius – paper-thin genius, I later learned, as few of the characters had much to do with their namesakes.  (My favorite character name was Charlotte Staples Lewis, i.e., C. S. Lewis – incidentally, his middle name really was Staples.)

As the show’s intellectual promise faded, my interest flagged, but it really took a tumble during Season 5, when time travel, the last refuge of a desperate sci-fi writer, reared its inevitable head. (more…)

In 2008, when Woody Allen last spoke of Barack Obama to a group of Spanish journalists, he declared that it would be a “disgrace” if the then-U.S. Senator failed in his quest to become the 44th President of the United States. Now, 16th months into Obama’s first term, Allen has apparently mistaken La Vanguardia, a Spanish newspaper, for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

The famous director proclaimed in a recent interview:

“It would be good…if (Obama) could be dictator for a few years because he could do a lot of good things quickly.”

If Allen had any regard whatsoever for the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, he would never fathom such a scenario. The day that the citizenry of this nation is forced to live under a tyrannical dictatorship, the great American experiment would suffer an unimaginably horrible demise; our cherished land of the free and home of the brave would be relegated to nothing more than dirt and real estate.

For whom exactly would an Obama dictatorship be good for? (more…)

24 is now officially over.  As with so many of the previous seasons, this final one ended with Jack Bauer wounded, bereft of sleep, separated from his family, barely hanging on to see another day, but hanging on with his enemies including his own countrymen continuing in their pursuit of him.

Through all the years, the sheer genius of 24 lay in the fact that viewers returned show after show, even though they already knew its outcome.  No matter what the odds, no matter how dire the circumstances, no matter how evil the enemy, Jack Bauer was going to find a way to survive. 

What is it about this character that so captivated the American public?  It was not Jack Bauer himself but the ideals he represented.

Jack was good, and there is still something embedded deep within the American spirit that makes us long to see this good triumph over evil.  Regardless of the political correctness of the program in recent years, and regardless of the bastardizing of those who strive for truth, justice and morality in popular culture, there are still Americans out there of all political stripes that understand that in this world there is good and evil.  Every human being is nuanced, and man’s imperfection is endemic, but we still intuitively know that there are real heroes, protectors, patriots. (more…)

One:

How do the haters not understand that forgiveness and letting go, particularly after decades of natural healing and the universe having moved on, is an essential tenet of a humane and compassionate philosophy/attitude? Especially when the victim herself has been saying “give it up” for years?

Two:

Polanski was, in 1977 and ‘78, simply a brilliant obsessive with certain wounds and bruises and perverse inclinations who one night acted like a brute and a pig and probably damaged a young girl’s psyche, although apparently not to a great extent, to judge by her own statements about the incident.

Three: (more…)

There’s no confusion about who the villain is in Machete – it’s you.

More specifically, it’s you and the other 69% or so of American citizens who agree that we should have a say in who does and doesn’t come into our country by enforcing our immigration laws.  There’s been a lot written about the race war angle of Machete, including a lot of back-pedaling from writer/director Robert Rodriguez himself.  But it’s hard to see this script as anything but a sick MEChA-approved fantasy in which every Anglo man is a slobbering borderline savage who tortures Mexicans when not slaughtering them outright, and every Anglo woman a nymphomaniac yearning to strip down and have a crack at our hero Machete’s macho Mexican manhood.

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Perhaps Rodriguez isn’t making an explicit plea for racial warfare, but Rodriguez’s crude racial stereotypes make Hitler’s Der Stürmer propaganda look like a subtle, sophisticated and affectionate commentary on Jewish culture.  The script does not bat an eye as Machete butchers nearly every Anglo, innocent or “guilty,” who is unfortunate enough to cross his path.  In the end, there is no doubt that Rodriguez is making the most overtly, outrageously and unrepentantly racist film in modern Hollywood history.

But Rodriguez does deserve props for one thing – in purely technical terms, this is one of the best-written scripts I’ve ever seen.  It is vivid, coherent and flows smoothly, unlike the majority of unreadable Final Draft failures out there.  There is not an ounce of flab.  The “jokes” mostly fall flat, but Rodriguez will likely direct it with flair and style.  It’s just too bad this movie combines the racial insights of a 1942 Robert Byrd with the collective moral sense of Enron’s Board of Directors. (more…)

A few weeks back, Big Hollywood editor John Nolte asked me for my address. He wanted to send me an advanced copy of Greg Gutfeld’s new book “The Bible of Unspeakable Truths.” I thought “sweet, free book.”

But if you’ve ever read, as I have, Milton Friedman you would know that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Everything has a cost. This is a simple fact. A fact I wish people who supported Obamacare understood.

Anyway, he wanted me to read the book and review it. A ha…not so free anymore is it?

Book reviews have always bothered me. Reviewing a movie or an album is okay because the written review criticizes a different medium. Whenever I read a book review, I can’t help but wonder how bitter the reviewer must be. After all, who wants to write 1000 word reviews of books for loser papers like the New York Times? Wouldn’t the same person, a person who has dedicated their life to wordsmithing rather have their thoughts printed in a fancy hard covered edition? Instead, their stuff is printed on something you use to pick up the presents that Fido leaves on the neighbor’s lawn. Book critics are bitter losers. I’m glad I’m not one of them.

This review is particularly strange because instead of reading this, you could have already read one of Greg’s amusing and insightful observations and anecdotes. Unlike most books, his is a collection of short little parables that use humor to make a point. Some of them are a page. Some of them are a few sentences. All of them are really funny and smart.

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Left-wing film site Cinematical:

Here’s a film I expect to annoy some religious groups: Sweet Baby Jesus, which will star Bette Midler, Kim Cattrall and British actress/singer Pixie Lott (pictured) in a modernized telling of the Nativity. Well, it’s kind of modernized, at least relative to the original story, but the comedy is set in the 1970s and in this setting Mary (Lott) is a pregnant hippie chick whose condition was mysteriously not caused by her boyfriend, Joe, who Deadline now claims might be played by Sam Rockwell, who is more than 22-years Lott’s senior.

Instead of giving birth in a manger in the little Middle Eastern town of Bethlehem, Mary, along with Joe, is staying in a guesthouse at a woman’s (Midler) house in Bethlehem, Maryland, after being denied room at her mother’s (Cattrall). At Christmas, of course. According to Variety, Sweet Baby Jesus will be directed by Peter Hewitt (Garfield), who is quoted as saying, “The script has such fun subverting the treasured details of the Nativity, posing the question, ‘What would we do if it all happened again?’” ….

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The irony of the most anti-capitalist industry in America begging for tax credits/incentives/welfare in order to keep pumping out their anti-corporate/American product is just too rich. Nevertheless, from this story, it’s obvious “Machete” creator Robert Rodriguez is very much counting on mucho tax dollars to make his film… And may still receive them:

Oddly, Machete may have been shot in a different state if not for Perry, who signed a bill last year giving his office the ability to grant larger tax incentives to lure filmmakers to shoot in Texas.

Perry signed the bill at an April 2009 ceremony at Rodriguez’s Troublemaker Studios. Rodriguez told The Associated Press at the time that, without the bill, he would have had to move the production of projects including Machete to another state.

“Thanks to this bill, I don’t have to go shoot out of the state,” Rodriguez said.