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What do you do when you're a fat, washed up actor who could never act, is tired of waxing your back, and now can't attract movie-goers? Oh, and you can no longer attract media attention as Mr. J-Lo a/k/a Ben-Lo? Well, if you're Ben Affleck, you become a reporter for ABC News. Affleck has been hired by the network news division to shoot a "documentary" (sounds like Michael Moore, only not as fat . . . yet) for "Nightline," the ABC's latenight news show. Yup, sadly, I had to "read" the July 14, 2008 issue of Us Magazine to learn...

As he headed to a Hollywood fundraiser, Sen. Barack Obama downplayed the idea that he hobnobs with actress Scarlett Johansson. The movie star, who campaigns actively for the Illinois senator, recently told the website Politico, "You'd imagine that someone like the senator who is constantly traveling and constantly 'on' - how can he return these personal emails? But he does, and in his off-time I know he also calls people who have donated the minimum to thank them." snip But speaking to reporters aboard his campaign plane, Obama said the actress doesn't have his personal email address. "She sent one...

LOS ANGELES, April 10 (UPI) -- The son of the man who directed the 1959 Hollywood film classic "Ben-Hur" said he is producing a new version of the story as a $30 million TV miniseries. David Wyler, son of director William Wyler, is producing the remake with Alchemy TV, Variety.com reported Thursday..... http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Entertainment/2008/04/10/ben-hur_headed_for_tv_miniseries_remake/2178/

This is a posting of a liberal bias warning. I just returned from a week of vacation in Myrtle Beach and went to the new IMAX 3D theater at Broadway at the Beach one day to see a film on the Grand Canyon. I thought I would be seeing a film show casing the 3D technology and images. What I got was a biased political screed from Robert Redford on the dangers on Anthropogenic Global Warming and the evil dangers of mankind to the planet. There was no balance and the whole program was about what we could do to...

Top 20 Countdown host Lance Smith joins the cast of Stop-Loss, on top of the famous Riot Hyatt hotel overlooking Sunset Boulevard for a special edition of Top 20. The movie features Iraq war hero Sgt. Brandon King, who is played by Ryan Phillippe, as he makes his long awaited return home only to find out the Army has ordered him back to duty in Iraq, which devastates not only him but his family and friends.

...I'm told #7 Stop-Loss opened to only $1.6 million Friday from just 1,291 plays and should eke out $4+M. Although the drama from MTV Films was the best-reviewed movie opening this weekend, Paramount wasn't expecting much because no Iraq war-themed movie has yet to perform at the box office. "It's not looking good," a studio source told me before the weekend. "No one wants to see Iraq war movies. No matter what we put out there in terms of great cast or trailers, people were completely turned off. It's a function of the marketplace not being ready to address this...

INDIANOLA, Iowa (CNN) — He may be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but Superman can’t caucus. Actor and Iowa native Brandon Routh is better-known for his role as Superman, but Sunday night he made a cameo appearance on the campaign trail, speaking on behalf of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama at a rally in Indianola, Iowa. Routh says he is "sad" that he can't caucus any more because he no longer lives in the Hawkeye State, but he says he's "excited" by Obama's ability to unite the country. He also says he likes that Obama is not...

Conservative officials who served in the Reagan administration are upset by the left-wing slant of the new movie about the covert action program that helped Afghan guerrillas defeat the Soviet army during the 1980s. "Charlie Wilson's War," out Friday, is based on a book about former Rep. Charles Wilson, Texas Democrat, known widely on Capitol Hill during his tenure as "Good Time Charlie" and who helped fund the semi-secret war that ultimately helped fell the Soviet Union. The Reagan-era officials said the movie promotes the left-wing myth that the CIA-led operation funded Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda and ultimately...

Vanessa Redgrave helps Guantanamo suspects By Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor  Last Updated: 7:55pm GMT 20/12/2007     Two suspected al-Qa’eda operatives released from Guantanamo Bay have walked free from court although they are still wanted in Spain on terrorism-related offences. Profile: Vanessa Redgrave, human rights campaigner Profiles: The Guantanamo four Philip Johnston: Why should Guantanamo detainees return? One of the men, who is accused of distributing extremist propaganda produced by Osama bin Laden, had half of his £50,000 bail surety met by the actress Vanessa Redgrave.   Redgrave met half of Jamil el-Banna's bail Jamil el-Banna, 45, who was...

The guns of war have fallen silent for Hollywood. Studio executives, who could once count on Americans filling theaters for just about any war movie they produced, are finding this year's war flicks to be a bunch of duds. "Lions for Lambs," Robert Redford's case against the war in Afghanistan, is a flop. It stars Mr. Redford, Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise and may not make back its $35 million price tag. Brian De Palma's "Redacted" played to empty seats. Even "The War," Ken Burns's much-anticipated World War II documentary that aired on PBS in September, met a less-than-explosive reception....

Hollywood misreads response to war on terror Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 12/11/2007 Hollywood has misjudged the public's appetite for films about Iraq and the war on terror, Cathering Elsworth says, as a slew of new movies have flopped at the box office. The latest casualty, Robert Redford's "verbose" Lions for Lambs, starring Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise, took just over 2 million dollars when it debuted on Friday, lagging far behind the animated adventure Bee Movie, which opened the week before. Cruise, Redford and Streep in Lions for Lambs Despite its a-list cast - Redford not only directs but stars...

LOS ANGELES — Bill Maher can add "security guard" to his job description alongside comedian and political commentator. Maher on Friday night helped security remove a rowdy protester from the studio during his weekly HBO show "Real Time with Bill Maher," and it was all captured on live television. Maher was talking science during one of his weekly panel discussions when a protester in his audience stood up, held up a smuggled-in sign reading "9/11 is a cover up fraud" and shouted comments to the same effect. The host tried to shout down the audience member, who only became more...

September 25, 2007 Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan is making celebrity endorsements a key facet of her long-shot bid to defeat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) next year. In a recent interview with The Hill, Sheehan said she has been endorsed by actress Roseanne Barr, country crooner Willie Nelson and Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello. Sheehan added that White House hopeful Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and former Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) are also backing her. “Celebrities bring a certain kind of — good or bad, it seems like our lives are centered around TV and movies — I think...

Brian De Palma wants to stop the war, and he thinks his new movie about an Iraqi girl's rape can help, regardless of the consequences or the rights and privacy of Iraqis. In a Friday August 31 Reuters article, De Palma asserted “The movie is an attempt to bring the reality of what is happening in Iraq to the American people. Sky News online picked up the thread that he hoped his film "Redacted" will alert people about “these horrible things things that are happening, this horrible war that I am financing as an American citizen.”De Palma's comments were made...

Brian DePalma was born on SEPTEMBER 11, 1940. Brian DePalma has decided to do what most liberals are afraid to do and that is to tell the truth about who they are and what they believe. Liberals hate the American soldier. Liberals hope for more dead troops if it results in their gaining power. Liberals will lie repeatedly in order to get their way. Liberals pretend to support the troops as they call their performance in Iraq a failure. Liberals only find value in reporting on troops in Iraq when their either DIE or 'SCREW UP'. The Daily DEAD FAILURE...

"[C]onscience," agonizes Hamlet in Act III, Scene I, "does make cowards of us all; / And thus the native hue of resolution / Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, / And enterprises of great pith and moment / With this regard their currents turn awry, / And lose the name of action." The tragedy of Hamlet is the tragedy of overweening self-criticism. "If Hamlet is sick," writes theater critic Walter Kerr in his masterpiece, "Tragedy and Comedy," "he is sick with a passion for perfection." Hamlet waits for the perfect moment to kill Claudius, says Kerr, and...

As New York Times critic A.O. Scott wrote recently, forty years ago this summer the movie that changed the movies premiered. Anybody old enough to remember films before Bonnie and Clyde can testify to the jolting power of Arthur Penn’s kinetic blend of blue-grass slapstick, Depression-era nostalgia, and gruesome, stylized violence. But something else was revealed then, something that I, 14 at the time, was too callow and ignorant to notice behind the cinematic innovations––the moral idiocy that has since come to define pretty much most of American popular culture. Bonnie and Clyde staked a claim to a moral seriousness...

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio has decided not to campaign for any of the 2008 U.S. presidential candidates, because none of the politicians in the running "inspire" him. The Blood Diamond star, 32, was a staunch advocate of Democratic hopeful Senator John Kerry during 2004's presidential election and even traveled across 14 states to rally support and raise funds for him. But DiCaprio admits the frontrunners for 2008's election - Democratic candidates Senator Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and Republican Ron Paul - have yet to catch his attention with their environmental policies. He says, "I'm still on the fence about it,...

Perhaps we should have expected this but apparently The Bourne Ultimatum which opened this weekend is chock full of liberal proganda. So who is making this charge? Some vicious rightwinger with an axe to grind against liberal Hollywood producers? Nope. This is the claim of a liberal movie reviewer, Anthony Kaufman, who wrote the following in his Huffington Post blog, Jason Bourne: An Anti-Cheney American Hero? A stinging rebuke against Cheney-esque black ops and torture tactics, Universal Pictures' The Bourne Ultimatum is more than just a heart-stopping international espionage thriller: It is Hollywood's most direct attack against the Bush Regime...

Lions For Lambs Trailer link

Tinseltown Deifies a Mass Murderer By IGS IGS | July 30, 2007 Not content with only one disingenuous biography of mass executioner Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Hollywood's now got plans for another Che-flattering flick. In Tinseltown, historical reality routinely loses out to radical chic. The real lowdown is that Guevara helped Castro come to power in Cuba and personally carried out executions for him. The same group that wanted California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to stop the execution of multiple murderer Tookie Williams because of opposition to capital punishment have no problem walking around in Che T-shirts, despite the fact that on...

Within the next few months, Hollywood studios will launch several movies that take a sober and thoughtful look at the war in Iraq and the war on terror. So Hollywood presumably will have done its civic duty. But two key questions: Is the audience ready to embrace these films? And how should the studios go about selling them? Par Vantage's "A Mighty Heart" was a smart, emotional and well-crafted look at the Middle East situation, but its wide release and low per-screen average delivered a harsh reality check to all the studios. The slew of upcoming current-events movies (see chart)...

Hollywood to Launch Raft of Anti-military, Anti-war Movies By Matthew Sheffield | July 26, 2007 - 09:41 ET First it was the traumatized Vietnam veteran, now are Iraq vets set to become the next "progressive" cliché?Being the strapping patriot sort of folks that they are, the Hollywood left is gearing up to release a bunch of anti-military movies that portray veterans of the Iraq war as deranged psychopaths, screwed up by an "unjust" war. The New York Times's Michael Cieply reports (h/t Instapundit): Now some in Hollywood want moviegoers to decide if the killing is emblematic of a war gone...

FOR Dixie Chicks frontwoman Natalie Maines, there is nothing quite like buzzing with adrenalin before, during and after an energetic performance to a packed arena. But she knows that feeling can be stripped away in an instant, especially upon receiving a death threat. This is the traumatic situation Maines has had to live with since 2003, when she let loose a missile that saw explosions of outrage throughout America.

On a night four years ago, five soldiers back from three months in Iraq went drinking at a Hooters restaurant and a topless bar near Fort Benning, Ga. Before the night was over, one of them, Specialist Richard R. Davis, was dead of at least 33 stab wounds, his body doused with lighter fluid and burned. Two of the group would eventually be convicted of the murder, another pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and the last confessed to concealing the crime. Now some in Hollywood want moviegoers to decide if the killing is emblematic of a war gone bad, part of...

PLOT OUTLINE: Back home in Texas after fighting in Iraq, a soldier refuses to return to battle despite the government mandate requiring him to do so. RELEASE DATE: 28 March 2008 (USA) Status Updated:15 May 2007 Note:Because this project is categorized as being in production, the data is subject to change; some data could be removed completely.

An Oneonta man who helped produce a 9/11 conspiracy documentary that became an Internet hit was arrested Monday for allegedly deserting the Army. Korey Rowe, 24, a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq, was picked up by deputies at about 10:45 p.m. Monday, Otsego County Sheriff Richard Devlin Jr. said… Rowe was arrested on a “military warrant” that Devlin said was brought to the attention of deputies by the Oneonta Police Department, who received information from a source outside of that department… After deputies received the information from Oneonta police, they reached out to the Army, and officials from Fort Knox...

They've learned about global warming from animated penguins and woolly mammoths. Are cartoons and toys turning them into stewards of the environment? Forget "Mommy, where do babies come from?" These days, kids can explain how penguins kiss and make mini-penguins. Or how the polar ice caps are melting. Or how your SUV guzzles too much gas, Mom! Saving the world is chic with the PB&J set. And for every environmental morsel taught in school, there's a TV show or movie with an elementary take on the natural world. The characters are snuggly animals or audacious kids. They're happy-go-lucky -- even...

Opening weekend numbers: JUNE 2007 Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday 17  18  19  20  21 Rank  Daily Gross Change Y/L* Theaters / Average Gross-to-date  22 10  $1,207,775 - / - 1,355 / $891 $1,207,775 / 1 23 10  $1,641,759 35.9% / - 1,355 / $1,212 $2,849,534 / 2 24 10  $1,099,329 -33% / - 1,355 / $811 $3,948,863 / 3 25 10  $397,391 -63.9% / - 1,355 / $293

Filmmaker and activist Robert Greenwald has produced an ad urging pressure on Home Depot to stop advertising on Fox News because of a purported editorial stance skeptical of man-made global warming.

His thirst for the limelight has driven him to launch a multilingual blog and issue a string of headline-grabbing statements. But Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was surprisingly camera-shy when his extrovert persona drew the attention of Hollywood, turning down a request by Oliver Stone, the director of JFK, Nixon and Platoon, to make a documentary film about him. He dismissed the American film-maker as "part of the Great Satan", the Iranian regime's standard term of abuse for the US. Mr Ahmadinejad's aides said Stone had requested special access to the president after contacting his office through intermediaries in the Iranian...

irst it was Conan the Barbarian. Then it was Fidel Castro. And now, according to one foreign report, filmmaker Oliver Stone's next movie subject might well be Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Oscar winning director is seeking permission to start work on a proposed documentary about Ahmadinejad, according to a report from Iran. The Iranian Student News Agency said today Stone's project would be a profile of the president who has called for Israel to be destroyed. Permission is being sought to move forward with the project. "The request was made some three months ago. Stone is a professional filmmaker...

I can’t help passing along this passage from Wednesday’s Variety: Cathy Schulman has made her first hires and promotions as president of Mandalay Pictures and Mandalay Independent Pictures. A highlight of the Mandalay Pictures’ slate at Universal is the remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds,” scheduled to be in production by early fall. “We think we have a very contemporary take,” Schulman said. “In the original, the birds just showed up, and it was kind of like, why are the birds here? This time, there’s a reason why they’re here and (people) have had something to do with it. There’s...

A movie that includes a violent rape scene with 12-year-old actress Dakota Fanning as the victim has premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and even though published reports have quoted a prosecutor saying there were no child pornography laws broken, there still remain big questions, according to experts. "Right away, I will tell you: 12-year-old Dakota Fanning plays a girl who endures a graphically suggested rape. If that's not enough, she is also filmed sleeping dreamily while a half dozen real snakes slither all over her," wrote Fox News' Roger Friedman in his review of the film. "The rape scene,...

TEL AVIV (EJP)--- A group of Israeli filmmakers were dropped from the schedule of the Documentary Film Festival in the French town of Lussas last week with their films replaced by movies by Palestinian and Lebanese filmmakers. The directors received a letter from the directors of the festival explaining that they were dropped because of the latest Middle East crisis. In what appears to be the latest in a long list of cultural boycotts against Israeli artists, the letter informed the Israelis that their films would be replaced. Lack of detachment According to Ynet News, the letter, signed by the...

The recent Locarno Film Festival dropped Israel as the co-sponsor of one of the programs because of the retaliatory bombing against Hizbullah targets in Lebanon. Lebanese and other Arabs filmmakers protested Israel's participation in the Swiss event. Israel was listed as a co-sponsoring the Leopards of Tomorrow program. Organizers of the Edinburgh International Film Festival have also cancelled Israeli Embassy sponsorship of their program and returned the Israeli check following a protest. The Edinburgh branches of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign and the Stop the War Coalition had planned to picket all major film festival events if the link with...

It’s funny how celebrities who run for political office frequently elect to have an “R” as opposed to a “D” next to their name; i.e., Ronald Reagan, Sonny Bono, Fred Thompson and Arnold Schwarzenegger, among others. Maybe it’s because celebrity conservatives aren’t in the habit of making lame excuses. Actor, activist and much ballyhooed potential political candidate Warren Beatty is offering an explanation as to why he’s been a loud talker, but not much of a walker, when it comes to running for office. Beatty is quoted in Amy Wilentz’s book, “I Feel Earthquakes More Often Than They Happen,” as...

Behold how the American left lends moral support to the enemy. BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An Iraqi militant group has produced an elaborate video of what it said were attacks on U.S. troops, in the latest example of the increasingly sophisticated propaganda war being waged by Iraqi insurgents. ?The Code of Silence? was posted on the Internet by the Rashedeen Army, thought to be a relatively small Sunni group which has produced videos in the past of attacks it claims to have carried out. At almost an hour in length, it is the longest and most professionally made of recent postings...

SNIP.... MINOR EDITINGMAC Cosmetics has censored Sandra Bernhard for bashing the GOP. The cosmetics giant, owned by Estée Lauder, got hundreds of complaints after it posted an online ad this week for its Plushglass lip gloss in which the balloon-lipped comic does some free-form ranting, including a riff about an "intimidated, frightened, right-wing Republican thin-lipped bitch." But Mac oddly didn't cut a line in which Bernhard cheekily discusses the bodily fluids of a horny barnyard bird.

It's good to have friends in high places. Just ask Arnold Schwarzenegger. The California governor, a Republican, has been endorsed in his re-election bid by three of Hollywood's biggest political forces -- all of whom are noted for their big-wallet donations to the Democratic Party. According to the Los Angeles Times, Schwarzeneger has received the backing of Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and media mogul Haim Saban. Such party defections will hurt Schwarzenegger's opponent, state Treasurer Phil Angelides. "It starts with a personal relationship. They are friends," Andy Spahn, a spokesman for both Spielberg and Katzenberg, told the Times. According to...

May 22, 2003, 8:45 a.m. My Evening with Castro The experience of a lifetime. By Cheryl Flake Oliver Stone calls him "one of the earth's wisest people." Jack Nicholson has dubbed him a "genius." "An experience of a lifetime" is how Kevin Costner described his own meeting. I recently spent an evening with the same man, Fidel Castro. I came away convinced it must be more than Cuban cigars that these Hollywood types are smoking on their visits to Havana. Two months ago I accompanied my husband, Rep. Jeff Flake, and seven other members of Congress on a visit to...

The Ant Bully: Rise of the Prolitari-Ant. Easily one of the most bizarre kids films I’ve seen in a long time, The Ant Bully is your typical, by the numbers CG kids film thinly disguising a delightful work of subversive fiction. It’s one of those films, that as it unfolds, causes you to look around the theatre at the other adults and ask: I’m not the only one seeing what I’m seeing am I? You know those Bibles they make for kids? The ones with the simple stories and colorful artwork that leaves out all of the complex and adult...

If Hollywood has a "DaVinci Code," Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has cracked it. Top stars such as Tom Hanks, Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson donated to the New York senator in recent months, generating the kind of cash usually associated with a major box office opening - or a potential presidential bid in 2008. Clinton, who doesn't face much of a challenge in her re-election, received $4,200 from "The DaVinci Code" star Hanks, the Academy Award-winning actor, and his wife, Rita Wilson. The itemized donations were made public Wednesday, with the paperwork for April through June more than 4,000...

op stars donated to Sen. Hillary Clinton By DEVLIN BARRETT, Associated Press Writer 32 minutes ago If Hollywood has a "DaVinci Code," Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has cracked it. Top stars such as Tom Hanks, Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson donated to the New York senator in recent months, generating the kind of cash usually associated with a major box office opening — or a potential presidential bid in 2008. Clinton, who doesn't face much of a challenge in her re-election, received $4,200 from "The DaVinci Code" star Hanks, the Academy Award-winning actor, and his wife, Rita Wilson. The...

Some famous people are trying to help Greenwich businessman Ned Lamont defeat three-term U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman in next month's primary. Entertainer Barbra Streisand, actor Paul Newman, billionaire financier George Soros, television producer Norman Lear and singer Jackson Browne all contributed to Lamont's campaign, according to campaign finance data filed Saturday with the Federal Election Commission. Streisand, Soros and Lear, producer of "All in the Family" and "Maude," each contributed $1,000. Newman, who lives in Westport, Conn., gave $2,100, while Browne, known for hits such as "Running on Empty" and "Lawyers in Love" contributed $500. Lamont's campaign released a breakdown...

Much to the dismay some members of the taxpayer-supported Public Broadcasting System (PBS) bigwigs and Hollywood's far left entertainment community, President Bush has nominated a staunch conservative to serve on the PBS board just a year after another conservative was forced to resign as board chairman because he was accused of injecting partisanship into the agency. Warren Bell, an ABC sitcom producer who the Los Angeles Times reports describes himself as "thoroughly conservative in ways that strike horror into the hearts of my Hollywood colleagues," also contributes to the online edition of the conservative National Review magazine. Getting necessary approval...

Outrage of the summer: The new "Superman" movie edited out "The American Way" from the Krypton immigrant's rally cry. The Daily Planet editor says Supe's now all about "Truth, Justice and all that stuff." Makes perfect sense. Consider the foreign markets, where "The American Way" means Abu Ghraib and McDonald's. Don't remind them! They might burn the theater. (If that's their way.) Besides, it makes sense to have a newspaper editor treat the line with gruff dismissal, because hard-bitten editors don't get starry-eyed over patriotic hogwash. Except when discussing the people's right to know the GPS coordinates of Superman's fort....

In Superman Returns, editor of the Daily Planet Perry White says, "Truth, justice and … all of that stuff." And I found out the omission was no accident. I went straight to the writers, Mike Dougherty and Dan Harris: Mike: "When it comes to the American way, that's tricky." Dan: "I don't think 'the American way' means what it meant in 1945." Mike: "He's not just for Metropolis, and not just for America." Dan: "He's an alien, from Krypton; he has come to Earth to be kind of a savior for this world, not our country … And he has...

Well, it's here. Right in the middle of us, and spreading. It's a fowl contagion and can be very dangerous. It's hard to prevent and even harder to cure. It's no respecter of persons; it can affect people of any age, economic background or culture. There's no vaccine, though there is something you can take to combat it – but I'll come to that later. I'm not referring to the dreaded avian flu, the one we've been reading about that's transmitted from bird to bird, and possibly to some humans or other creatures. No, I'm talking about another affliction....

Sunday, May 28, 2006 THE NEW WORLD DISORDERMichael Douglas backs U.N. gun banTV commercial 'spotlights the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons' Posted: May 28, 20061:00 a.m. Eastern © 2006 WorldNetDaily.com Michael Douglas Actor Michael Douglas – who for many years has been designated by the United Nations as a "U.N. peace messenger" – is backing the global body's upcoming conference on small arms trafficking. In a public service announcement, Douglas "spotlights the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons and promotes an upcoming U.N. conference aimed at addressing the problem," according to the U.N. News Center. The...