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Some members of a Hollywood organization are questioning whether to honor Ted Cruz. The Caucus for Producers, Writers & Directors this year chose the conservative Senator from Texas as one of its recipients of its annual "American Spirit Award." Another is to go to liberal Calif. governor Jerry Brown. The Caucus, founded three decades ago by Norman Lear, Aaron Spelling and others, has set a meeting Monday to determine whether to stick with its plan to give a Spirit award to Cruz after some of its more liberal members objected to the selection, and some threatened to quit if the...

...While the controversy-generating doc director doesn’t like Sniper or snipers, he is a big supporter of fellow Best Picture nominee Selma..."

But Academy members seem to be paying attention to the criticism that Eastwood and star/producer Bradley Cooper shouldn’t be celebrating a man who wrote that killing hundreds of Iraqis was “fun.” “He seems like he may be a sociopath,” one Academy member told TheWrap, adding he had not yet seen the film but had read the article, which is being passed around. Neither distributor Warner Bros. nor the filmmakers have responded to TheWrap’s request for comment, though the studio said they intended to make someone available. A piece in The Guardian by author Lindy West was an early critic of...

Canadian entertainment icon died Saturday after a battle with cancer

UPDATED: Following the success of Fox’s 24 limited series, the network is looking to bring back another iconic drama series, The X-Files. Fox TV Group chairman Gary Newman today confirmed chatter that the network is in talks for a new installment of Chris Carter’s cult supernatural drama, which starred David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson. Newman went on to say he was “hopeful” about the outcome.

The Hollywood Reporter calls it a “shocker” that a patriotic movie by one of the best directors working today, about an American hero who kills jihadists, is really, really popular. To me, that sounds like a formula for success, but Hollywood still thinks tender stories about gay males coming of age are what the public demands, along with cartoonish special effects-laden, nine-figure-budget mind candy.

The creative team behind the Oscar-nominated film will march in Selma on Monday, as an homage to the events depicted in the film.The filmmakers of “Selma" will celebrate civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. on his birthday by marching in his honor. The creative team behind the drama, which received an Oscar nod for best picture but was snubbed in other major categories, will march in Selma, Ala., on Monday to commemorate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

Considering that the movie American Sniper written about Chris Kyle, and directed by Clint Eastwood has been out since the last week of December, I may be late to the game expressing an opinion. I'll say it anyway, this is one of the best movies I've ever experienced. Notice I say, 'experienced, vs just 'seen', because the film becomes exactly that, something anticipated, tolerated, endured and later celebrated. Certain portions of the film resemble riding along with the police during their night shifts, or at least what most people expect these shifts to be like. I know very little about...

Bogie, Bette Davis, Carole Lombard, Claudette Colbert, Errol Flynn, Claude Rains, Kay Francis, Edward G. Robinson, Jane Wyman, George Brent, Merle Oberon, Patricia Neal, Mickey Rooney, Jimmy Stewart

In director Clint Eastwood’s best films (“Gran Torino,” “Million Dollar Baby,” “Unforgiven,” “The Outlaw Josey Wales”), the multiple Oscar-winner is able to make us feel both the righteousness of justified violence and the heavy emotional price paid by those committing it. “American Sniper,” which is undoubtedly Eastwood’s best picture since “Million Dollar Baby” (2004), and might just be his best since “Unforgiven” (1992), faithfully constructs and respectfully deconstructs “The Legend”: Chris Kyle, the deadliest sniper in the history of the U.S. Military. “American Sniper” opens during the worst days of Fallujah in Iraq. Kyle (Bradley Cooper) is the eye in...

War movies often focus on battles over personalities. In great films like Lone Survivor (2013) and Saving Private Ryan (1998), some of the battle sequences are so real and devastating that it’s easy to get lost in them and lose focus on the individual soldiers trying to survive. Those films often attempt to show viewers what it must be like to be in the midst of an intense and devastating battle. American Sniper, which only yesterday was nominated for six Academy Awards,is different. It’s more of a character study than a war film with the main character being a Texan...

NBC’s Al Sharpton, President Obama’s go-to man on race and the ring-leader behind the Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown race hoaxes, is furious over the Oscar nominations and has called for an emergency meeting in Hollywood to extort money address the issue. “The movie industry is like the Rocky Mountains, the higher you get, the whiter it gets,” America’s top tax-cheat declared, ” I have called an emergency meeting early next week in Hollywood with the task force to discuss possible action around the Academy Awards.” Because Sharpton and Obama never fail to work in tandem, the President is hosting...

In response to the whitest Oscar nominations in 17 years, Al Sharpton has issued a statement expressing his disappointment in the nominations and calling for a meeting to address the lack of diversity in Hollywood. “The lack of diversity in today’s Oscar nominations is appalling, and while it is good that Selma was nominated for ‘Best Picture,’ it’s ironic that they nominated a story about the racial shutout around voting while there is a racial shutout around the Oscar nominations,” Sharpton said in a statement. “With all of the talent in Selma and other Black movies this year, it is...

There are similarities and some stark differences between the debut of the fourth season of HBO’s Girls on Sunday and the Season 3 launch last year. In the similarities category, series creator Lena Dunham was up for Golden Globes awards both this year and last year with no wins either time. In both cases, Girls debuted against the Golden Globes. In the difference category, last year saw the Season 3 of Girls premiering at 10 PM after the debut of the heavily promoted True Detective. That wasn’t the case this year and it showed – with Girls as well as...

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One of the things I will miss most about the late Joan Rivers is that she almost never apologized. She was literally unapologetic, not unapologetic in the way that Hollywood usually pats itself on the back for, when they’ve just posted another sharply worded admonition of Donald Rumsfeld on Huffington Post. By not apologizing, the octogenarian provacateur was free to go on provoking in our hypersensitive day and age. She defused imminent outrage explosions with one finger— the middle one. Despite her success, very few seemed to follow her example.This week, I was glad to see two Hollywood women,...

Spouting off to an empty chair at the 2012 Republican National Convention, Clint Eastwood looked as if he were slipping into doddering dementia, but he’s shrewder and more focused than ever in his Iraq War picture American Sniper. It’s a cracker­jack piece of filmmaking, a declaration that he’s not yet ready to be classified as an Old Master, that he can out-Bigelow Kathryn Bigelow. Morally, though, he has regressed from the heights of Letters From Iwo Jima (2006). In more ways than one, the Iraq occupation is seen through the sight of a high-powered rifle. The movie is scandalously blinkered....

For only the second time in nearly two decades, the 20 Academy Awards acting nominations went to a group made up entirely of white actors and actresses.

Which Movies Make Grown Men Cry? After an evening at Grassroots Tavern, some friends and I got into a heated argument about “Love Actually,” which I contend is a good movie. This eventually became a slightly less heated argument about which movies make people cry. The consensus was that everyone has at least one movie that gets them. The lone dissenter was my friend Alex Kaufman, who claimed he had never cried during a movie. After we listed approximately half the films on IMDb, he eventually recanted, saying that “Saving Private Ryan” had, at points, briefly broken his steely resolve....

The Rev. Al Sharpton was left fuming mad after the Oscars revealed its all-white list of nominees for this year's Oscar awards on Thursday. "The movie industry is like the Rocky Mountains, the higher you get, the whiter it gets," Sharpton quipped in a statement released later in the afternoon. Sharpton, a critic of the lack of diversity in Hollywood, also announced he was holding an "emergency meeting" next week to address the issue.