Free Republic

I still remember the day the “Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” was released; I was the first in line, with my adult son. It was a marvelous masterpiece of a movie. I know that Prince Caspian will be even better. I told Doug during our interview, that I am so excited about seeing this film that I feel like a child again. He laughed and told me I will be thrilled. He continued “...the enemy has tried to steal the film industry, but he has not succeeded. Many in our day seem to think that it is political leaders...

ONE OF THE great joys of the movies is their ability to convince us that we know the people on screen. Even the varied performances of the most versatile stars are often not strong enough to prevail against the overarching image we’ve formed of them. When Joan Didion met John Wayne on the set of the 1965 The Sons of Katie Elder, she wrote of having the sense that his face was more familiar to her than her husband’s. And yet Wayne, whose centenary occurred this past spring, remains in some ways the most undefined of iconic movie stars. When...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Buoyed by the blockbuster success of "Iron Man" over the weekend, Marvel Studios on Monday announced plans for a string of superhero properties, including an "Iron Man" sequel set for April 2010. "Iron Man 2" will be followed in June 2010 by the big-screen adaptation of another of Marvel's popular comic book characters, "Thor," the mighty, hammer-wielding hero based on the Nordic god of the same name, the company said. "Captain America" and "The Avengers" are next in line for the summer of 2011. The nearly $99 million opening weekend of "Iron Man," Marvel's first fully...

IRON MAN, Batman, Big Angry Green Man — to judge from the new popcorn season it seems as if Hollywood has realized that the best way to deal with its female troubles is to not have any, women, that is. Not that it hasn’t tried to make nice with the leading ladies, in films like “The Invasion” (with Nicole Kidman) and “The Brave One” (Jodie Foster). Yet, after those Warner Brothers titles fizzled, the online chatter was that the studio’s president for production, Jeff Robinov, had vowed it would no longer make movies with female leads. A studio representative denied...

Like movies about kids who spell or athletes in wheelchairs, a non-fiction film about old people who sing rock, funk, punk, and blues in a community chorus that has dazzled international audiences on concert tours comes formidably fortified by its ironclad charm factor. To be honest, I settled in skeptically, expecting to be gummed into submission. Two dozen or so amateur singers, based in Northampton, Mass., lend their group's name to Stephen Walker's surprisingly profound documentary.............................

POSTCARDS FROM THE FUTURE Sometime in the near future, humankind will set foot again on the Moon. As part of NASA's New Vision for Space Exploration, they will build a permanent base on the moon, to test, research and invent new technologies for manned missions to Mars and beyond. The task will not be easy - there will be danger and hardships and broken lives, but these modern-day pioneers would have it no other way. Because for all the hardships that they must endure, they know that the Grand Vision extends beyond them - that they are but a small...

Seth Kleg is a Hollywood casting director who has founded The Christian Studio to produce films that have a positive moral vision. The end result will be a nonstop stream of excellent movies released with budgets ranging from $100,000 to $25,000,000. There are a lot of good people working in the motion picture industry who are working to make it better. However, the messages in most of the PG-13 and R-rated movies reflect a total disregard for God and His commandments. The numerous times God’s name is taken in vain, the use of four-letter words, exploitation of sex and violence,...

ERNEST Hemingway and Hollywood had a tempestuous relationship - but his utter hatred of the movies made from his famed novels is now just coming to light. In "The Good Life According to Hemingway," out next month, A.E. Hotchner, who traveled the globe with him, bares a series of never-before-published slaps Hemingway took at the film business. When producer David O. Selznick crowed that his wife, Jennifer Jones, was starring in "A Farewell to Arms" and he'd pay Hemingway a $50,000 bonus from any profits, the novelist wrote back: "If by some miracle, your movie, which stars 41-year-old Mrs....

We can hope our favorite movie will come away with the big prize, but in the long run, some of the best pictures ever made did not receive Best Picture Oscars. A good example would be the AFI’s choice for number one movie of all time, Citizen Kane.

I just thought that if there were any other fans of this movie, they might like to know that: 'Boondock Saints' will air on Spike TV at 2pm EDT tonight/Sat morning..for night owls and those that know how to use their TV recording equipment. :o)

Seems like Dr. Uwe Boll has been navigating the globe for about seven months with his Postal / Seed double feature tucked under his arm. He pops up at various festivals and conventions, shows off his new masterworks, and then hops a plane to another continent. And he does lots of interviews, most of which are pretty damn amusing. The latest Q&A with the king of krapola appears on FEARnet, and it's there you'll find some solid questions about animal abuse, Nazi humor, and all those crazy German tax shelters. But the best part of the interview comes near the...

So they're making a damned Monopoly movie. Is there a worse idea for a movie adaptation? Almost certainly. We asked you to plumb the darkest corners of your imaginations, and photoshop up the worst of the worst...

RT was among a group of journalists invited to the factory that Luxo built: Pixar Animation Studios. We were given the whirlwind tour as the company winds up for its big summer release Wall-E, set to pop on June 27, 2008, and also got to see the first 30 minutes of the film. Finally, we ended with an intimate Q+A session with the film's writer/director Andrew Stanton. "Small on the massive backdrop..." Andrew Stanton said that during our interview in reference to a story element in Wall-E but he could has just as easily been describing Pixar's clean, green, and...

Seeing how I live in China and one of the main things I can do to kill the boredom is watch movies I have started a movie review section. However, this is China so the movies I buy are all pirated. Do I feel like a thief, hmm No not really. Do I feel a little guilty at all. NOPE not one bit. To tell the truth I enjoy the 5 rmb(75 cent) move purchase. So on to the first review. DVD Title: "The Golden Compass" Director: Chris Weitz Cast: Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Dakota Blue Richards

After seeing a new non-fiction film starring Comedy Central’s Ben Stein, you may not only be able to win his money, but also his career. Stein is that whiny little guy with the monotone voice that makes him seem funny and an unlikely "character" for TV appearances. But that career may be over come April 18 when a movie he co-wrote, narrates and appears in, called "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," is released. Directed by one Nathan Frankowski, "Expelled" is a sloppy, all-over-the-place, poorly made (and not just a little boring) "expose" of the scientific community. It’s not very exciting. But...

TCM Host Robert Osborne: Actor Was ‘Genuine Movie Star’ By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 4/7/2008 2:44:00 PM Turner Classic Movies slated a 15-hour marathon April 11-12 (2:30 p.m.-5:30 a.m. April 12) to salute the late Charlton Heston. Heston, who died over the weekend at age 84, was an Oscar-winning actor whose imposing frame and voice made him the film industry's choice for a number of classic roles. TCM's lineup includes an interview and lesser-known films -- The Buccaneer, Major Dundee, The Hawaiians (such tributes are circumscribed by the films to which a channel has rights) -- bracketing his...

We've spent days of our lives scouring the world for news of sequels that you may not have heard of. And here are 30 films in various states of production... The domination of sequels in the big summer and winter schedules continues, and if the following - in particular order - is anything to go by, it's going to carry on for many years to come... The Brazilian Job: the follow up to Paramount’s US remake of The Italian Job is still on the cards, and it’s got a 2009 release date marked. Jason Statham, Mos Def, Mark Wahlberg and...

You may or may not have heard: last week Tom Cruise and his former boss, Sumner Redstone, broke bread. They had lunch some 18 months after Redstone didn’t pick up Cruise’s contract as on-lot producer. The reason was that Redstone had had enough of Cruise the couch-jumping Scientologist who berated Matt Lauer on the "Today" show. That was in addition to the strange Katie Holmes courtship and so on. But now I am told that a renewed Paramount deal for Cruise and a possible “Mission: Impossible 4” are not so likely. For one thing, sources tell me it was Cruise...

Some of the most memorable women in black entertainment have been played by men. This drag tradition with roots in minstrelsy harks back to '70s TV star Flip Wilson's sassy Geraldine character, and most recently has hoisted chitlin auteur Tyler Perry's Mabel Simmons, aka Madea, to superstardom. The sharp-tongued matriarch that Perry has portrayed in six hugely popular movies and a long-running TV show makes a cameo appearance in his new film, "Meet the Browns." Madea, the seemingly inimitable Aretha Franklin of faux femmes, has yet to inspire knockoffs, but similar drag acts continue to pop up -- the corpulent...

...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...

I'm told Stop-Loss opened to only $1.6 million Friday from just 1,291 plays. 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.

Director Oliver Stone has set James Cromwell to play George Herbert Walker Bush and Ellen Burstyn to play former first lady Barbara Bush in "W," a drama about the formative years of their son, President George W. Bush. Josh Brolin is playing the title character, and Elizabeth Banks will play first lady Laura Bush. Stone will direct from a script by his “Wall Street” co-writer Stanley Weiser. Moritz Borman is producing with Bill Block and Jon Kilik.

Less than two weeks before the United States and its allies invaded Iraq, in March of 2003, Sony Pictures released a war movie called Tears of the Sun. The director was Antoine Fuqua, fresh off the success of 2001’s Training Day; the star was Bruce Willis, playing a Navy SEAL lieutenant whose platoon is assigned to extricate an American caught up in a Nigerian civil war. The plot was a straightforward brief for moralistic interventionism Tears of the Sun was a relatively modest film, budgeted in the tens rather than the hundreds of millions, but it was significant even so...

Shanghai Daily Young movie fans in China are thumbing their noses at the Government over its ban of horror movies. The Chinese Government banned these movies last month with a statement from The General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP). I Think it is truely amazing how out of touch the Chinese Government is with its own people and the world. Surely the GAPP knows that the people will just download the movies or buy the illegal DVDs. One student said "The ban won't make much difference," says Yang. "We'll just download our movies from the Internet."

  Dutch anti-Islamic film's Internet site suspended Mar 23 10:20 AM US/Eastern     An American network provider Sunday said it had suspended a website that Dutch MP Geert Wilders had reserved to post his anti-Islamic film, which has sparked wide condemnation and fears of a backlash. "Network Solutions has received a number of complaints regarding this site that are under investigation," the provider said a message posted on the Internet. Although his website is offline, Wilders on Sunday insisted he still wants to put the movie "on the internet quickly" but did not specify how. He also told the...

TropicThunder.comTrailer at Yahoo Movies

More than 20 years of data is in – and the conventional wisdom is wrong. The chances a Hollywood movie will win big at the box office are greatly enhanced by a family-friendly rating and strong moral content, defying the notion the entertainment industry is merely serving up what consumers want when they produce so many R-rated movies full of foul language, sex, drugs and immorality, shows a new study by the Christian Film and Television Commission, publishers of Movieguide. According to the study, G-rated movies averaged nearly $92.2 million, more than 438 percent better than R-rated movies, making only...

Oscar-winning director Anthony Minghella, who turned such literary works as "The English Patient," "The Talented Mr. Ripley" and "Cold Mountain" into acclaimed movies, has died. He was 54. Minghella's death was confirmed Tuesday by his agent, Judy Daish. No other details were immediately available. "The English Patient," the 1996 World War II drama, won nine Academy Awards, including best director for Minghella, best picture and best supporting actress for Juliette Binoche. Based on the celebrated novel by Canadian writer Michael Ondaatje, the movie tells of a burn victim's tortured recollections of his misdeeds in time of war. Minghella (pronounced min-GELL'-ah)...

Saw a matinee of the new Horton Hears a Who movie. Is Hillary the inspiration for the Sour Kangaroo? She'll take that speck (containing a microscopic city) away from Horton...for the common good! Oh, and why would she do that? Well, it's "...for the children". I'm not kidding: actual dialogue! It's been stated before that "a person's a person, no matter how small" is a good argument for pro-life...AND maybe this film can have a subliminal political message: We may be doomed but THE ELEPHANT can save us! (At one point there's a bit of global COOLING in the movie,...

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - The final "Harry Potter" book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," will be adapted into two films, Warner Bros. said Wednesday. Titled "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1" and "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2," the movies are set to be released in November 2010 and May 2011. They will be shot back-to-back by David Yates, who is directing the adaptation of the sixth novel, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," due in theatres November 21. Steve Kloves, who has written all but one of the "Potter" movies, also is returning...

Time Warner Inc. has consolidated its Warner Bros. Entertainment and New Line Cinema, the studio behind the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, in an effort to cut costs and boost revenue. New Line Co-Chairmen Robert Shaye and Michael Lynne, two Hollywood veterans who have long been the core of the studio, will leave but are in talks for possible future business relationships with the company. The contracts of Mr. Shaye, 68 years old, and his one-time attorney Mr. Lynne, 66, are up at the end of the year. They said they would explore new entrepreneurial opportunities. They added, "New Line...

Often enough I hear my pro-RKBA, libertarian, and conservative/patriot friends complaining that Hollywood doesn't make movies for us and that the movies they do make are hostile to our core values.Here's your chance to turn that tide by supporting some new movies made by friends who do share our values.First up is the new comedy Witless Protection, starring Larry the Cable Guy, Jenny McCarthy, and Yaphet Kotto, released this past weekend by LionsGate. (This is the same studio that is producing Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.) The writer/director of Witless Protection is Charles Carner, a friend I met through our...

This season continues to be no country for network award shows. Following the lowest-rated Emmys since 1990, the strike-hindered ratings performance of a severely truncated version of the Golden Globes and a nonstruck airing of the Grammys that nonetheless disappointed, Sunday night's presentation of the 80th Annual Academy Awards on ABC hit an all-time ratings low. According to overnight fast national ratings, the awards averaged a 10.7 rating among adults 18 to 49 and was seen by 32 million viewers. In the demo, that's down a sharp 24% from last year and the lowest on record. Among viewers, that's a...

It's an Oscar Party!Warning: might contain snark and/or discussions about fashion.Best Picture:"Atonement""Juno""Michael Clayton""No Country for Old Men""There Will Be Blood" Best Actor:George Clooney, "Michael Clayton"Daniel Day-Lewis, "There Will Be Blood"Johnny Depp, "Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street"Tommy Lee Jones, "In the Valley of Elah"Viggo Mortensen, "Eastern Promises" Best Actress:Cate Blanchett, "Elizabeth: The Golden Age"Julie Christie, "Away From Her"Marion Cotillard, "La Vie en Rose"Laura Linney, "The Savages"Ellen Page, "Juno" Best Supporting Actor:Casey Affleck, "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford"Javier Bardem, "No Country for Old Men"Hal Holbrook, "Into the Wild"Philip Seymour Hoffman, "Charlie Wilson's War"Tom Wilkinson,...

Which websites are best for viewing/downloading movies with the most bang for the buck?

Join your freeper friends for an evening of cokes, cracks, cocktails and comments as we enjoy a trip down memory lane with Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind. Turner Classic Movies shows one of our favorites at 8 pm est, tonight. Made in 1939 and released in 41, the hit novel tells the tale of a manipulative southern belle who struggles after the Civil War, to return her family's estate to its original splendor. Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Leslie Howard, Olivia de Havilland.

The world's most famous Israeli-born actress is joining the ranks of Hollywood stars getting behind the camera, but with a major difference: she'll be doing it in Hebrew. Natalie Portman reveals in the March issue of W magazine that she'll make her directorial debut with A Tale of Love and Darkness, bringing to the big screen Amos Oz's memoir about growing up in 1940s and Fifties Jerusalem. Portman told the fashion magazine that she plans to preserve the language of the memoir by directing the film in Hebrew. "I've been reading Oz since high school, and when I read his...

LOS ANGELES - The estate of "Lord of the Rings" creator J.R.R. Tolkien is suing the film studio that released the trilogy based on his books, claiming the company hasn't paid it a penny from the estimated $6 billion the films have grossed worldwide. The suit, filed Monday, claims New Line was required to pay 7.5 percent of gross receipts to Tolkien's estate and other plaintiffs, who contend they only received an upfront payment of $62,500 for the three movies before production began. The writer's estate, a British charity dubbed The Tolkien Trust, and original "Lord of the Rings" publisher...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark., Feb. 10 (UPI) -- Actor Roy Scheider, the star of such films as "Jaws" and "All That Jazz," died Sunday at 75 in Little Rock, Ark., his wife told The New York Times. Scheider, who lived in Sag Harbor, N.Y., died of complications from a staph infection, Brenda Scheider told the newspaper. Scheider had suffered from multiple myeloma. Scheider came to prominence in such '70s films as "Klute" and "The French Connection" -- for which he earned an Oscar nomination as Buddy Russo, the partner of police Detective Popeye Doyle, played by Gene Hackman. Scheider may have...

Last night I watched on cable for the first time, The Lost City. It was directed by and starred Andy Garcia. This movie was about a nightclub owner at the time prior and after the takeover of Cuba by Fidel Castro. It was the most realistic portrayal of the Fidelistas I have ever seen and therefore one of the best, if not THE best anti-communist movie ever made which is why it was shunned by Hollyweird. Despite the rarity of anti-communist movies from Hollywood, there have been a few. Which of these anti-communist movies do you think is the best?...

Hollywood’s anti-American war films don’t measure up to the glories of its patriotic era. Hollywood has gone back to war. And this time, it’s appalling. All autumn long, the film industry released movies about America’s battle against global jihad. With one exception—the competent actioner The Kingdom—each of these movies distorted an urgent, ongoing historical enterprise through the lens of a filmmaker’s unthinking leftism. Redacted, Rendition, In the Valley of Elah, and Lions for Lambs characterize our soldiers and government agents as rapists, madmen, murderers, torturers of the innocent, or simply victims caught up in a venal and bloodthirsty American foreign...

WASHINGTON, D.C., February 1, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Harry Forbes, the Director of the USCCB Office for Film and Broadcasting, who provoked disbelief from U.S. Catholics when he praised both "Brokeback Mountain" and the explicitly anti-Catholic "The Golden Compass," has again endorsed movies rife with explicit sexuality and extreme violence, this time in the USCCB's just released yearly top-10 movie listing.The USCCB reviewer introduces his January 25 top-10 list by praising the quality and "morally grounded" nature of such films as "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" and "Eastern Promises". "Though on-screen violence, like sexuality, can often be gratuitous, 2007 saw a...

By Burt Prelutsky Some years ago, I was a movie reviewer. I started out at UCLA, reviewing for the Daily Bruin, and then moved on to be the first critic for Los Angeles magazine. All told, I stuck it out for about a dozen years. I was always struck by the fact that my readers would insist that I never liked movies, even after I’d just written a rave about, say, “The Apartment� or “Some Like It Hot.� The fact of the matter is that pans are simply more memorable than raves. For instance, I have friends who still recall...

....It's pretty likely that some people will be heartily offended by Rambo; once again an American hero is mowing down hordes of brown skinned people who have no redeeming qualities or humanity. The leader of the Burmese troops is not only a killer and an %#%^!, he's a gay pedophile! I believe the guy had a mustache but I don't remember it being twirled. But the fact is nobody expects - or wants - reality or complexity in a Rambo movie. Hell, one of the main themes of this movie is that killing is necessary, and missionaries who spend the...

Some years ago, I was a movie reviewer. I started out at UCLA, reviewing for the Daily Bruin, and then moved on to be the first critic for Los Angeles magazine. All told, I stuck it out for about a dozen years. What I didn’t realize at the time was that, all in all, I had had it pretty good. But it took seeing a rash of movies recently to drive that point home. At least back then, the inflated egos of the director and the star didn’t make it inevitable that every movie would run well over two hours....

10 Best Films of 2007 1. Atonement 2. Amazing Grace 3. The Kite Runner 4. Ratatouille 5. The Assassination of Jesse James 6. Gone Baby Gone 7. 3.10 to Yuma 8. Breach 9. American Gangster 10. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 10 Worst Films of 2007 1. Bug 2. Georgia Rule 3. The Number 23 4. Hannibal Rising 5. Epic Movie 6. El Cantante 7. Redacted 8. Hot Rod 9. License to Wed 10. The Heartbreak Kid

Unlike the sensitive folks over at Media Matters, we NewsBusters are a relatively thick-skinned lot. And no one's ever confused me with Gloria Steinem. So we're not going to overreact to Willie Geist's comment this morning and demand a Matthewsesque mea culpa. However . . . Willie did manage to diss the intelligence of his compatriots on today's Morning Joe. A Friday show tradition is for Geist and MSNBC celebrity correspondent Courtney Hazlett [a personal fave in the genre for her intelligent perspective] to predict which movie will score best at the box office during the coming weekend. Hazlett today...

The Hollywood writers' strike claimed its biggest casualty this past week when the threat of picket lines forced NBC to pare back the annual Golden Globes awards ceremony. The network will air an hour-long news conference Sunday night instead of the star-studded, hours-long dinner event that drew 20 million viewers last year. The upending of the awards season comes as more television shows air their remaining first-run episodes produced before the strike began on Nov. 5. Popular entertainers such as Jay Leno, meanwhile, have faced criticism for crossing picket lines and returning to work earlier this month after showing reruns...

From a review by someone who claims to have seen a screening: " had an opportunity to attend an advanced screening of this film yesterday in Boulder CO. I am not in any way affiliated with film industry or the critique. I was just a lucky walk in. I've seen a preview of this movie a few days before and was not impressed by the trailer. It looked like another belated anti-war movie (better late then never), with youthful actors looking ruggedly pretty for the camera."