Free Republic

Greg Gutfeld on the communist and the actor who plays him.

Hollywood films rarely even attempt the sweep and heartbreak of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a bewitching, at times overpowering movie that seems likely to win about 50 Oscars. There aren’t actually that many Oscars to hand out, but I wouldn’t put it past the Academy to invent some new categories. Based on but greatly expanded from an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, the film by Fight Club director David Fincher proves that this gifted director can deploy all of his visual gifts to create a richly satisfying, emotionally engaging, and more than a bit schmaltzy old-time romance with...

Opening on Christmas Day, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is the result of an unexpected cinematic collaboration between scriptwriter Eric Roth, who penned Forrest Gump, and director David Fincher, whose credits include Se7en, Fight Club, and Zodiac. Very loosely based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald story, and starring Brad Pitt as Button, the film is about a life lived in reverse. Born with the physical features of a man in his eighties, Button grows backward into middle age, youth, and infancy. Fincher and Roth turn Button’s peculiar life, at the center of which is his star-crossed love for Daisy...

While Al “Globull Fraud” Gore continues to make the following public statement: "Washington needs a breath of fresh air. Al Franken is a great man, a great activist, and will be a great leader in the U.S. Senate" … it is important to remember the real Al Franken. The fact is Franken has been an unsuccessful hack his entire life. His only “accomplishment” in life was video taping sex with Arianna “The Greek Leona Helmsley” Huffington. Now Franken, and the Democrats-Soros Shadow Party, wants America to believe that “the new Al” is fit to be a U.S. Senator of...

LOS ANGELES, (AP) -- Ellen DeGeneres has made a public service announcement urging California voters to oppose a ballot initiative that would ban same-sex marriage. DeGeneres married actress Portia de Rossi on Aug. 16, two months after the California Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay marriage took effect. In recent days, the popular talk show host has been criticized in the gay press for not giving money to the campaign to defeat Proposition 8 or otherwise lending her star presence to the cause.

Scrapped Golden Globe ceremony hits Hollywood hard --- REUTERS By Jill SerjeantTue Jan 8, 10:06 PM ET LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Hollywood scrambled on Tuesday to assess the fallout from the decision to scrap the glittering Golden Globe movie and TV awards ceremony and hold only a news conference that few stars are likely to attend. Caterers, limousine drivers, stylists, hotels and dozens of magazines and TV shows found themselves out of work when this Sunday's star-studded Golden Globes gala dinner and red carpet walk-up fell victim to the nine-week-old screenwriters strike. "There are a lot of people being...

anuary 2, 2008 -- FRIDAY is judgment day for Nickelodeon when "Zoey 101" and its knocked-up teen star, Jamie Lynn Spears, return to the air. But even with Britney Spears' 16-year-old sister pregnant with her on-again, off-again boyfriend's baby - the network has no plans to yank "Zoey" from its schedule, nor are officials there expecting trouble....

"It could be the worst movie I've ever seen" ... "[T]he out and out worst, most disgusting, most hateful, most incompetent, most revolting, most loathsome, most reprehensible cinematic work I have ever encountered." ... "It portrays the members of our Marine Corps in the most disgusting way imaginable." ... "This film is an atrocity. It is zero stars." ... "I honestly was close to vomiting when I saw the film." ... "It is a slander on the United States of America." ... "Everyone associated with this film ought to be ashamed." ... "Will it inspire future terrorists? Of course it...

At a time when disproportionate numbers of Muslim immigrants are raping their host societies’ women and girls, “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” decides it would be timely to re-broadcast an episode in which a Serb — having raped Muslim women in Bosnia — is now raping American women. This is the sort of thing I’ve described in the past as Hollywood’s/TV Land’s wishful thinking, which they try to turn into reality, at least on-screen: Unable to deal with reality as it is, they create an alternate reality in the movies and on TV. This is the whole point of retreating...

TMZ was in L.A. County Superior Courtroom moments ago, where a pregnant Nicole Richie faced the music for her wrong-way DUI bust in December -- her second DUI conviction in 4 years. A court commissioner sentenced Richie to serve four days in the City or County Jail (her choice!) -- she got credit for a fifth day, for the six hours she served after being busted. Richie was also fined $2,048, was ordered back to school for 21 days to an alcohol education course and on three years probation. Richie must report to serve her time by September 28. The...

Rosie O'Donnell, Bill Maher Back Al Franken for Senate In an April episode of ABC's "The View," Bill Maher and Rosie O'Donnell professed their support for Al Franken's 2008 Minnesota Senate candidacy, with O'Donnell saying she was "maxing out" to the comedian-turned-candidate. O'Donnell kept to her word, contributing $2,300 to his campaign, the maximum donation for the primary, while Maher chipped in $1,000. They were among the more than 50 contributions that Franken, a former "Saturday Night Live" star, received from actors, writers, producers and others in the last reporting period, his campaign finance report shows. The man that Franken...

Angelina Jolie's "Understanding" @ pro-HAMAS Arab Children's Conference Hate-Fest in Jordan, 2004 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. As one would expect from the Jolie-Pitts, "A Mighty Heart" is mostly NOT about the Al-Qaeda murder of Daniel Pearl, killed in cold blood specifically because...

John Travolta says the solution to global warming is domed cities and other planets.

Crowds are flocking to see the film 300 about the ancient Spartans? last stand at the pass at Thermopylae against an invading Persian army. Yet many critics, in panning 300, have alleged that the film is essentially historically inaccurate. Are they right? Here are some answers. But first two qualifiers. I wrote an introduction to a book about the making of 300 after being shown a rough cut of the movie in October. And, second, remember that 300 does not claim to follow exactly ancient accounts of the battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. Instead, it is an impressionistic take...

Having recently written about the politicization of various awards, I decided to sit in on Sunday night's Academy Awards just to verify that my criticism was justified. All I can say to those who wrote to me vociferously denying the politicization of awards such as the OscarsTM is that one would have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to recoil from the orgy of liberal self-congratulation on display. As predicted, former Vice-President Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth won the award for Best Documentary. All political messages aside, the documentary itself (which I forced myself to sit through for the...

LOS ANGELES - "An Inconvenient Truth," the documentary that turned former vice president Al Gore's power-point presentation on global warming into an engaging and entertaining film, won the Oscar Sunday night. The best-documentary win was a triumph for Gore, who has kept a sense of humor about his loss in the 2000 election that was decided in George W. Bush's favor by a U.S. Supreme Court decision. "I am Al Gore. I used to be the next president of the United States of America," Gore says in the film, repeating a line he has used often. Sunday, Gore used the...

LOS ANGELES -- Most Golden State drivers go out of their way to avoid the California Highway Patrol, but Erik Estrada can't seem to stay away. Estrada, who experiences the reality of law enforcement in his new unscripted CBS series "Armed & Famous," told reporters on Thursday that he's looking forward to the upcoming feature film version of his seminal series "CHiPs." "I tell you what -- I think that Wilmer Valderrama's gonna do a fine job," Estrada says. "I think he'll do a fine job as Ponch. And the script, I've read the script and I'm not in the...

And the Oscar for Most Dishonest Performance By a Spoiled Expatriate American Actress Trying to Dig Herself Out of a Public Relations Hole goes to . . . Gwyneth Paltrow. Over the weekend, the international press sent out word that Paltrow had trashed her native country during a press event in Spain. "I love the English lifestyle, it's not as capitalistic as America. People don't talk about work and money, they talk about interesting things at dinner," the Shallow Gal was quoted as telling NS, the weekend magazine supplement of daily Portuguese newspaper Diario de Noticias. "I like living here...

Posted: Wed., Oct. 4, 2006, 4:52pm PT Lucas: Let's get small Helmer sees shrinking pic biz By DAVID S. COHEN George Lucas has a message for studios that are cutting their slates and shifting toward big-budget tentpoles and franchises: You've got it all wrong. The creator of "Star Wars," which stamped the template for the franchise-tentpole film, says many small films and Web distribution are the future. And in case anyone doubts he means it, Lucasfilm is getting out of the movie business. "We don't want to make movies. We're about to get into television. As far as Lucasfilm is...

Los Angeles - Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber always had a moral message in their long-running "Veggie-Tales" video series. But now that the vegetable stars have hit network television, they can't speak as freely as they once did, and that's got the Parents Television Council steamed. The conservative media-watchdog group issued a statement Sept. 20 blasting NBC, which airs "VeggieTales," for editing out some references to God from the children's animated show. "What struck me and continues to strike me is the inanity of ripping the heart and soul out of a successful product and not thinking that...