Bookworm on Jul 14 2008 | Filed under: Hollywood
Andrew Breitbart has written an upfront, in your face demand that Hollywood open the door to the last remaining closet in that company town: conservatism. In it, he points out that Hollywood finds everything forgiveable except for a failure to conform to the prevailing Progressive political orthodoxy:
But in this land of superficiality and augmented assets, [...]
Bookworm on Jun 30 2008 | Filed under: Hollywood
We went yesterday to see Pixar’s newest offering — WALL*E. I can tell you that everything the critics have said about it is true: It’s amazingly beautiful, with animation of such sophistication that one is continuously impressed; and the story is imaginative and goes far beyond the usual children’s fare of screams and pratfalls. It [...]
Bookworm on Jun 27 2008 | Filed under: Hollywood
If only these products (especially the laundry machine) were real, and not just more items from the prodigious collective imagination of the Pixar crew. I’m getting the feeling that WALL*E is a movie worth watching, if only for the extraordinary visual beauty about which each critic rhapsodizes. It’s not often a movie gets a 97% [...]
Bookworm on Jun 18 2008 | Filed under: Hollywood
I’m a huge fan of Hollywood musicals, and one of my favorite numbers has long been “Dancing in the Dark,” from the Band Wagon (with Cyd Charisse and Fred Astaire). Turns out it was her favorite too. Here it is for those of you who haven’t seen it before or haven’t seen it recently:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duLFwcsc6Nc
Those were [...]
Bookworm on Jun 12 2008 | Filed under: Hollywood
Hollywood just came out with another movie that relentlessly demonizes the enemy — which would be a good thing if the Hollywood types had figured out that America’s enemy is radical Islam, which has been very open about its desire to kill our citizens and take over our government. The problem with Hollywood — [...]
Bookworm on Jun 08 2008 | Filed under: Hollywood
Paul Newman has managed to emerge from Hollywood as one of the good guys. Ridiculously handsome in his youth, he aged into an equally good looking old man. In a milieu characterized by disposable weddings, he’s had one wife. He’s raised millions for charity, without making a big political statement about that fact. He started [...]
Bookworm on May 29 2008 | Filed under: Hollywood, Nazis, World War II
In a comment to my earlier post about talk with an ideological foe being dangerous, Gringo mentioned a classic anti-Nazi piece of Hollywood propaganda (made when Hollywood viewed America as the ally, not the enemy). I found it at YouTube (of course), and share it with you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZiRiIpZVF4
And for those of you who are I Love [...]
Bookworm on Apr 11 2008 | Filed under: Hollywood, Media matters
Yes, yes — it really happened . . . in movieland. The Times raves about a movie in which a depressed white man is lifted from his funk by sharing his life with two illegal immigrants whose arrest (for being illegally here), lifts him out of his torpor and, in the act of trying to [...]
Bookworm on Mar 13 2008 | Filed under: Hollywood
In a delightful essay, which he sets out as the antidote to the grim news out of Jerusalem and the world at large, Robert Avrech examines hair in early Hollywood, from Mary Pickford’s romantic curls, to Colleen Moore’s perky bob, to Louise Brooks’ slinky helmet. If you like old Hollywood, you should check out all [...]
Bookworm on Mar 07 2008 | Filed under: Hollywood
Last night, I caught a Busby Berkeley movie I’ve never seen before: 1933’s Footlight Parade, with a charismatic, manically energized Jimmy Cagney as the producer of “prologues,” live stage acts paired with “talking” pictures, all for 50 cents a show. Joan Blondell does a great job as his witty, put-upon secretary, and Dick [...]
Bookworm on Mar 05 2008 | Filed under: Hollywood, Men, World War II
Almost exactly a year ago, I did a post I entitled Manly men, Girly men and Peter Pan. In it, I tried, ineffectively, I admit, to figure out America’s cultural trends regarding men. There’s the manly trend, exemplified by the Marines and much admired in certain romance novel genres; the Peter Pan trend, [...]
Bookworm on Feb 10 2008 | Filed under: Hollywood
I like my Pandora radio, and was sufficiently curious about one of the repeating ads for a new TV show, Eli Stone, to track it down. At the website, I discovered that if you’re an evil corporate attorney, but have a brain aneurysm that causes you to become a prophet, you magically transform into a [...]
Bookworm on Feb 07 2008 | Filed under: Hollywood
Robert Avrech, who blogs at Seraphic Secret, understands Hollywood. Although he is an openly observant Jew, a Zionist, and a conservative, he nevertheless lives, writes and works in that town. For that reason, when he writes about the increasingly famous intersection at Hollywood and Politics, it’s definitely worth reading what he has to say. Here [...]
Bookworm on Feb 04 2008 | Filed under: Hollywood, Immigration
I’ve been re-reading a wonderful book that I first read when it was published a little more than a decade ago: As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin, by Laurence Bergreen. As anyone who enjoys popular music knows, Irving Berlin was one of the most extraordinary composers on the popular music [...]
Bookworm on Jan 01 2008 | Filed under: Hollywood
I was going to try to build up my own post around Big Lizard’s The Best Years of their Lives : Hollywood and Franklin’s War, but I can’t. It’s a complete package, and I don’t have anything to add that wouldn’t be idle twittering. It’s a really stellar post in which BL takes on the [...]
Bookworm on Dec 29 2007 | Filed under: Hollywood
The conservative side of the internet has been enjoying the fact that Americans have rather consistently been rejecting the anti-War films oozing out of Hollywood. There’s a flip-side to this story, which is that Hollywood is slowly figuring out the wholesomeness sells:
The family values era is dead - with Britney Spears and her little sister [...]
Bookworm on Dec 27 2007 | Filed under: Hollywood
He died at 92, and he’d retired long ago, but I still feel a sense of loss that Michael Kidd, the brilliant choreographer, has died:
Michael Kidd, the award-winning choreographer of exuberant dance numbers for Broadway shows like “Finian’s Rainbow” and “Guys and Dolls” and Hollywood musicals including “The Band Wagon” and “Seven Brides for Seven [...]
Bookworm on Dec 06 2007 | Filed under: Hollywood, Media matters, World War II
Did you hear the story about Irving Berlin’s lunch with Winston Churchill during WWII? It’s a very funny story, it’s true, and it’s part of the larger and very wonderful story of Irving Berlin’s musical This is the Army. Berlin wrote This is the Army both to boost American morale and to raise [...]
Bookworm on Dec 05 2007 | Filed under: Anti-war, Hollywood
I wrote generally about the gap between critics and the rest of us. Patrick has taken one critic, deconstructed his criticism, and explained precisely why that gap looms so large.
Sphere: Related Content
Bookworm on Nov 25 2007 | Filed under: Anti-war, Hollywood, Media matters
Rotten Tomatoes is an aggregator that assembles movie reviews and then, depending on the number of positive or negative reviews, assigns any given film a “freshness rating. ” The higher the rating, the more favorable the majority of reviews are.
For example, as of today (11/25 at 18:06 PST), Enchanted gets a 93% freshness rating [...]
Bookworm on Nov 23 2007 | Filed under: Hollywood
I’ve seen two movies over the past couple of days, one that was newly released on DVD and one that just opened in the theaters. Both are being sold as family fare, but I think the first movie has some problems in that category, while the second movie is truly good family entertainment.
The first movie [...]
Bookworm on Nov 08 2007 | Filed under: Hollywood
If you have time to read only one post today, read this one that Laer wrote about Hollywood’s abandonment of America — and America’s abandonment of Hollywood.
Bookworm on Nov 05 2007 | Filed under: Hollywood
When former President Calvin Coolidge (aka “Silent Cal”) died, the witty Dorothy Parker cruelly asked “How can they tell?” I had a slightly similar question when I heard about the screenwriters’ strike in Hollywood: “Why should we care?”
I know that the strike is not a good thing for the Hollywood economy, in that it will [...]
Bookworm on Oct 29 2007 | Filed under: Barack Obama, Hollywood, Media matters
The LA Times has a story today that has just an incredibly funny title:
Polls don’t reflect Obama’s star power.
Maybe, if the polls don’t reflect Obama’s star power, it’s because he doesn’t have any. In other words, what makes a star a star, at least in the Hollywood world (and that is the world geographically [...]
Bookworm on Oct 26 2007 | Filed under: Hollywood, Jimmy Carter, Media matters
I like to tweak NY Times movie reviews (heck, any MSM movie reviews), because of the relentless Progressive punditry that characterizes them, regardless of the movie’s actual content. With a movie about Jimmy Carter on the table, I was therefore prepared for a full frontal case of anti-Bush commentary in the review. It wasn’t there. [...]
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