Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.
Before Fred Astaire became a star, it was normal for movie dance sequences to be shot in bits and pieces, with the camera moving around from feet to face, and intermixing other scenes, all to hide the fact that the dancer could not dance. Fred put an end to that.
Continue readingWhy isn’t anyone in Hollywood making movies about the abuses the terrorists within Iraq perpetrate against Americans and Iraqis? How honest is it to take one incident involving Americans and then to build a Riefenstahl-esque propaganda film about it, when you have hundreds, perhaps thousands, of incidents in which Islamists
Continue readingI was a Jane Austen fan long before it became trendy to be a Jane Austen fan. I’ve read Pride & Prejudice at least 20 times, and read all the other books at least 5 or 6 times (except for Northanger Abbey, which I’ve just never liked very much). I’m
Continue readingWell, fans, it’s over for James Bond. The suave, charming lady’s man who long protected the West from Communists and megalomaniac bad guys has been outed as a bad guy himself: Matt Damon has dismissed James Bond as being stuck in the 1960s while promoting his own new spy film.
Continue readingI’ve been amusing myself re-reading Gone With the Wind. The racism in the book is undoubtedly offensive, but it is otherwise a rip-roaring, fantastically good story, whether as a character study (and Scarlett’s quite a character), as a romance, or as a portrayal of a culture falling apart in war
Continue readingWe’re halfway through Happy Feet. Up to the halfway mark, I wasn’t really liking it. It’s got a lot of wailing soul style music, and that’s not my kind of sound. And considering that it’s a kids’ movie, I found the song choices rather surprising, since a lot of them
Continue readingAs an added incentive to you to go to the Indoctrinate U website, and let them know that, in your community, there is at least one person who wants to see the movie about some of the things that happen in American universities, here’s the movie trailer: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHZGepplG2Q] Remember, distributors
Continue readingEvan Coyne Maloney has spent the last three years working on a film about American universities, and the complete breakdown of freedom of speech or thought at those publicly funded institutions. Unfortunately, the same distributors that are all over Michael Moore (even though his films only get mileage in blue
Continue readingWhen I hear of a long-term relationship, I think in terms of decades — multiples of them. So when I read the headline that “Uma Thurman and long-time beau split up,” I assumed that we were talking about one of those bizarre Hollywood relationships whose years can actually be counted
Continue readingI don’t know what Tina Fey’s politics are, and I don’t want to know. The NBC show 30 Rock, which she writes and in which she stars is one of the best social satires around, which includes repeated deft and funny political asides. The show skewers both parties with such
Continue readingOh, you silly, naive Christians who actually think Jesus is the Messiah and you unenlightened Jews who are still waiting for the Messiah. You’re wrong, all wrong! How do I know this? Because I’m about to join the Church of Tom Cruise: TOM Cruise is the new
Continue readingI’m happily reading Carolly Erickson’s Royal Panoply: Brief Lives of the English Monarchs, a delightful jaunt through British history, as viewed through brief bios of its Kings and Queens. (Erickson is one of the absolute best writers about early British rulers, by the way.) I’m up to Richard II, who
Continue readingSince I questioned Gwynneth Paltrow’s wisdom in deriding Americans, I hasten to point out now that she denies ever having done so: Gwyneth Paltrow is “deeply upset” over stories claiming she made anti-American remarks, and tells PEOPLE exclusively that she never said anything against her native country. “First of all
Continue readingJust a few months ago, the younger set in our neighborhood was very, very excited about High School Musical. The one family that actually owned the DVD was kept busy loaning it out to everyone. Never having heard of it, I was careful to sit with my kids as they
Continue readingAs you may recall, I did a post on the way Sacha Cohen (as Borat), rather than exposing truly dangerous anti-Semitism, may be showing anti-Semites a way to get their feelings out into the open without fear of criticism or analysis. Aside from agreeing with my post, many of my
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