Hollywood
December 17, 2012 — Scott Johnson
New York Post film critic Kyle Smith has seen two previews of Zero Dark Thirty, the Osama bin Laden manhunt thriller that is opening in New York and Los Angeles just in time for Oscar consideration. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow and written by Mark Boal, the team responsible for The Hurt Locker, the film promised to be something more than an advertisement for Barack Obama, although the filmmakers famously had
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December 9, 2012 — Scott Johnson
I think that just about everything President Obama “knows” about American history comes from left-wing academics like American University professor Peter Kuznick, the co-author with Oliver Stone of The Untold History of the United States. The book is a companion to Stone’s Showtime series. At American University, incidentally, Kuznick teaches the “path-breaking course Oliver Stone’s America.” On Showtime, Stone presents Peter Kuznick’s America. They have got a circle of love
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October 14, 2012 — Scott Johnson
We went to see the film Argo last night. The film takes us back to the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979 for a sidebar (“the Canadian caper”) regarding the rescue of six State Department employees who had escaped from the American embassy at the time of the embassy’s takeover. The true story of their return from Tehran to the United States courtesy of the CIA was declassified by President Clinton
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October 4, 2012 — Steven Hayward
I’m still working my way through all the Tweets and twaddle from last night, but this one may take the prize:
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September 16, 2012 — Scott Johnson
“I am Nakoula Basseley Nakoula” doesn’t quite have the ring of “I am Spartacus,” or even of “I am Sam Bacile.” In the face of the Obama administration’s apologetics and intimidation, Roger Simon stands up in a manner reminiscent of the Hollywood depiction of the Roman slave rebellion. Simon proclaims: Hillary Clinton, I insist that you have me arrested. I am thinking of making a movie about Mohammed. I don’t
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September 2, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry films have an underlying theme. I would say it is the need to go outside the rules set by the hidebound bureaucrats and politicians of the administrative state to get the job done. Harry Callahan is, after all, a detective in the San Francisco police department. It’s the San Francisco of the early ’70s, to be sure, at least in the first Dirty Harry film, when
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August 10, 2012 — Steven Hayward
A couple years back I got briefly up close and personal with then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger at an event at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, and in framing a question about what he might do after leaving office, told him the story of Gov. Ronald Reagan’s appearance on the Tonight Show in 1973. Carson asked Reagan if he might return to Hollywood to make movies after leaving the governorship. Reagan displayed
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July 5, 2012 — Scott Johnson
The death of Andy Griffith earlier this week prompts a look back at the highlight of Griffith’s acting career. I join Richard Corliss over at Time in taking the occasion to to revisit the 1957 film A Face in the Crowd. Budd Schulberg wrote the screenplay for the film based on his story “Your Arkansas Traveler.” According to Richard Schickel, Schulberg’s story was inspired by Will Rogers. It featured Lonesome
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June 8, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Someone near and dear to me created the video featured in “A Wintour’s Tale,” a therapeutic mash-up of Anna Wintour’s unbelievably obnoxious invitation to dinner with Sarah Jessica Parker and their White House BFFs. She has gone back to work to bring us the video below, mashed up from Sarah Jessica Parker’s invitation to the same event. Please check it out.
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June 6, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Someone with an attitude seems to have gotten hold of the video invitation to the special dinner with a few of Barack Obama’s closest friends. We wrote about it here. That certain someone has mashed it up to good effect. Please check it out. UPDATE: And if that whets your appetite for the accompanying apparel, you will want to visit the Obama caampaign designer collection.
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May 14, 2012 — Steven Hayward
Star Trek changed everything, as William Shatner once reminded us in a classic routine about Star Wars, but one thing neither sci-fi world could change was the NIMBYism of Marin County, California. Despite the fact that George Lucas is perhaps Marin’s pre-eminent citizen, prolonged local opposition to his proposal to build a new film studio on his large ranch land has led him finally to let out a Wookie-howl and
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April 30, 2012 — Steven Hayward
Can it really be 30 years since Blade Runner? Since the original anyway–there have been so many different “director’s cuts” now that I’ve lost track of the thing. I remember being, as the cliche goes, “blown away” by it when seeing it in the theater on opening night, and being not quite sure what to make of it. It is standard operating procedure for most writers to disdain the film
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March 17, 2012 — Steven Hayward
I was flipping through some of my digital photos on my old laptop, and had completely forgotten about this one of Andrew and his son, which I snapped on a visit together to the Reagan Ranch north of Santa Barbara back in the summer of 2007. I especially recall coveting his t-shirt, and being disappointed to find out that Duke Lacrosse shirts were in such high demand that they were
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March 16, 2012 — John Hinderaker
The Republican National Committee put out this satirical poster, ridiculing the professionally-produced Obama campaign movie called “The Road We’ve Traveled.” It is really very funny. Maybe there is hope for the Republicans after all!
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March 7, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Once upon a time, young readers enjoyed the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Poe’s “tales of terror” are both horrifying and unforgettable; they bear the stamp of deeply felt nightmares. Poe’s “tales of ratiocination” are fascinating as detective stories, and Poe was of course the inventor of the genre. Not even being required to read Poe in school could destroy the pleasure provided by his work. Does anyone now
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March 1, 2012 — Scott Johnson
I got to know Andrew Breitbart five years ago on a whirlwind tour of Israel during which we became friends. Andrew was one of a kind, a big lovable bear of a man with the heart and soul of a warrior. His death leaves me distraught. It leaves the conservative movement, in which Andrew exerted his leadership with a convert’s zeal and a Falstaffian wit, bereft of an irreplaceable presence.
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February 26, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Occasional contributor Bill Katz holds down the fort at Urgent Agenda. Bill is a man of many parts, a few of which go back to his days as a producer on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Bill is back on the show biz beat with reflections on tonight’s Academy Awards show: The Oscars are on this Sunday night. Aren’t you excited? No? Why not? Can’t you sense the excitement
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