Free Republic

I’m really confused about the new movie trailer for the leftist insurgency fantasy flick “Civil War” because it seems to think that the military guy who is hassling journalists with his M4 is the bad guy. I must have got that wrong. Clearly, whoever is opposed to the regime media is the hero, right? Maybe his weird, red Elton John glasses are supposed to signal to me that he’s evil, but I’m just not seeing it. At one point, one of the reporters tells him they are Americans and he asks, “What kind of American?” Frankly, that seems like a...

The UK government was warned Tuesday by the U.N. that handing out long jail sentences to climate protesters could stifle public displays of dissent. The Just Stop Oil protesters in question caused traffic gridlock after scaling the Dartford Crossing Bridge for almost 40 hours in October last year, as Breitbart News reported. They were later accused of having “blood on their hands” after two women died in car crashes after being diverted from the bridge after the anti-fossil fuel activists had shut it down. Eco-extremists in Britain have a history of blocking motorways, junctions, and city centre intersections. The BBC...

President Biden cheered on a tentative deal reached between striking Hollywood writers and big studios that was first reported on Sunday night. “I applaud the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers for reaching a tentative agreement that will allow writers to return to the important work of telling the stories of our nation, our world – and of all of us,” Biden said in a statement released Monday morning. Writers with the WGA had been striking over access to profits in the form of royalties and residuals for products distributed over online and...

The recently released anti-child-trafficking drama, “Sound of Freedom,” starring Jim Caviezel, has faced a widespread boycott from major film critics. Notable outlets such as the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and The Hollywood Reporter have chosen not to run reviews of the film, while only a few outlets, including Variety, Rolling Stone, and RogerEbert.com, have provided reviews since its release on July 4. The reasons for the boycott and lack of coverage remain unclear, as critics and film editors have not responded to inquiries

For the past decade, Disney has been the Teflon movie studio, remarkably adept at withstanding the tectonic changes impacting the film industry, and well fortified by its arsenal of key properties such as Marvel, Lucasfilm and Pixar. But this year, the long-reigning titan of the box office has shown cracks as four of its biggest releases from those brands and others have struggled in theaters. There was the dispiriting release of “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” a rare Marvel movie to likely lose tens of millions in its theatrical run; “The Little Mermaid,” a remake of the 1989 animated classic...

Before the WGA writers strike and nominally sincere, Pride-branded content take hold, soak up the torrent of LGBTQ content premiering in May. Streamers and studios appear to be gearing up for Pride Month early this year, as May offers a feast of queer content in the form of groundbreaking reality series, stand-up specials and poignant art films. Netflix is unleashing a torrent of programming, with a new Anna Nicole Smith documentary; two sapphic-minded comedy titles; a new “Queer Eye”; and even a messy, highly commercial dating show. And other streamers have taken note: Hulu, for example, might have the most...

Gay journalist, Isaac Grafstein, has tried to explain why Billy Eichner's “Bros” tanked at the box office. Despite opening in more than 3,000 theaters, with a $22 million budget, not to mention an intense marketing campaign by Universal, “Bros” has so far grossed a limp $10.8 million. As Grafstein notes, “Bros” is definitely not 'groundbreaking'. When Jack tells Ennis, in Brokeback Mountain, 'I wish I knew how to quit you'—that was groundbreaking. There are moments when Bros is funny—a self-deprecating lampoon of gay life. But mostly it’s a preachy, self-indulgent dumpster fire. At one point, Bobby harangues Aaron’s mother about...

Los Angeles Police Department says it is believed both women were given drugs and overdosed. On Nov. 13, masked men in a black Toyota Prius with no plates dropped off Giles’ body outside a hospital in Culver City. Two hours later, Cabrales was left unconscious and in critical condition at a different hospital in West Los Angeles. She died later that month after being declared brain dead. The women were taken to the hospitals more than 12 hours after anyone had heard from them. The pair had been at a warehouse party when they met a man and planned to...

Nowhere is the blurring of distinctions between industries more apparent than in the guest list of an exclusive, invitation-only summer retreat for corporate titans in Sun Valley, Idaho. Conceived in the early 1980s by banker Herbert Allen as a week-long mingling of Hollywood's elite, the 24th annual gathering kicks off this week with a group of executives unlikely to rub shoulders at other conferences.The informal event, which begins with presentations on Wednesday on topics ranging from healthcare to dependence on oil, was once dominated by media industry chatter. But this year's guest list suggests the topic du jour will likely...

by Lynn Foster “The Communist Manifesto” got a shoutout during the 2020 Oscars. Julia Reichert, the co-director of best documentary winner “American Factory,” which was produced by former President Barack Obama’s new film company, apparently quoted from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ infamous book during her acceptance speech on Sunday night. “Working people have it harder and harder these days — and we believe that things will get better when workers of the world unite,” Reichert said. The quote was a riff on the last lines of the 1848 political document, which are frequently translated from German as “Workers of the...

I am curious to see if PARASITE wins anything. I am also interested in Best Song Category...Idina Mendel will perform. Will TOY STORY 4 win? Will Rene Z win Best Actress? I liked PARASITE more than 1917 or JOKER.

Ed Buck, a donor to the Democrats, was arrested late Sept. 17 after a third man overdosed at his home in California. Buck, 65, was charged with operating a drug house, battery causing serious injury, and providing methamphetamine to a 37-year-old man who suffered a drug overdose last week, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. Prosecutors said Buck injected the victim with meth at his apartment in West Hollywood on Sept. 11. The man overdosed but survived.

It seems that Hollywood never learns its lesson. The anti-military "Green Zone" has now become but the latest of such movies to bomb bigtime at the box office. This report from a Los Angeles Times blog chronicles how "Green Zones" has joined a list of similar financial disasters such as "In the Valley of Elah," "Rendition," and "Redacted": "Green Zone" is the last drama set to be released by a major studio related to the Iraq war, and Hollywood is undoubtedly grateful for it after the picture, directed by Paul Greengrass and starring Matt Damon, opened to just $14.5 million...

The snubs are always the big story in Oscar nominations. I’ve included some other milestones here. No nod for Morgan Neville’s award winning doc about Mister Rogers, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor”? It’s a shock. “Three Identical Strangers” was also kept out. Bradley Cooper was not nominated for Best Director, but picked up Best Actor, Screenplay and Picture for “A Star is Born” “A Quiet Place” was totally shut out. Emily Blunt didn’t make Best Supporting Actress or Best Actress for “Mary Poppins.” Aside from song and below the line, “Poppins” pooped out.

A man’s body was found early Monday in the West Hollywood home of prominent Democratic donor Ed Buck, authorities said. Deputies from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s West Hollywood station responded to the Laurel Avenue apartment complex at 1:05 a.m. in response to a report of a person not breathing, the department said in a statement. At some point, the 911 caller performed CPR, the department said. Paramedics pronounced a man dead at the scene. The cause of death was not yet known. The dead man’s name has not been released, but Nicole Nishida, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s...

Michael Avenatti, the attorney representing Stormy Daniels in her lawsuit against President Donald Trump, revealed another pre-2016 election “hush money” development in the ongoing scandal enveloping Trump during an appearance in West Hollywood Thursday night. “We represent three additional women that you haven’t heard about yet. We’re in the process of getting clearance from those clients to release details relating to those payments and the efforts to silence those women by AMI, Donald Trump, and Michael Cohen, and I will tell you that at least one of those women claimed to be pregnant at the time, “Avenati said. “So we’re...

Actor and comedian Tom Arnold claimed in an interview on Friday to have unreleased recordings of President Trump similar to the infamous "Access Hollywood" tape released during the 2016 election. In an interview with CNN, the actor was asked directly by CNN's Poppy Harlow whether he had "any tapes of the president that the public is not already aware of." "Yes," Arnold responded. Asked whether the unreleased recordings related to Trump's time as host and executive producer of NBC's "The Apprentice," Arnold replied, "We have a lot of things." In an earlier interview with NBC News, Arnold had said of...

Hollywood projects famously come in pairs, from movies about asteroids to movies about Hercules, and that rule apparently holds true even when it comes to the highly specific subgenre of TV series envisioning an alternate end to the American Civil War. For the last two weeks, HBO and Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have been dealing with the backlash over the announcement of Confederate, a TV series set in a United States where the South successfully seceded and slavery remains legal below the Mason-Dixon Line. And now Amazon has revealed that it’s planning Black America, a...

Kathy Griffin attacked TMZ founder Harvey Levin and leaked his personal phone number in a video posted online Saturday, accusing the media personality of being “in bed” both with Hollywood figures and President Donald Trump. In the 17-minute video, titled “A Hell of a Story,” Griffin played a voicemail from Levin — long considered one of the most influential media personalities in Hollywood — in which his personal phone number could be heard. “So, that’s his number. I don’t have a minute to call him. Maybe you do,” Griffin says in the clip. TMZ was instrumental in breaking the news...

Seniors suffer the consequences of the way they are portrayed in the movies WASHINGTON, DC, Mar 3 – Hollywood’s entertainment elite appears to be increasingly dismissive of America’s aging population, according to a new study by Humana and the University of Southern California. “I came across the research and then it hit me: perhaps all of their incessant whining over the election of President Donald Trump has roots in the vanity that oftentimes goes hand-in-hand with being a so-called star.  The fact is that many of the movies produced in Tinseltown in recent years have indeed been increasingly disdainful of...