Hollywood

Biden Plays to His Base

Featured image Tonight is the State of the Union speech. I know it’s hard to contain your excitement. Many Bingo and drinking games suggest themselves. We all know that Joe Biden is a pretend president, so just who in the White House thought it was a good idea to have him have a Zoom call with actual pretend presidents—Hollywood actors who have played the president, soliciting their advice on how to approach »

Life of Loretta

Featured image Monty Python veteran John Cleese has been planning a stage production of Life of Brian, and several American actors advised him to cut the “Loretta scene.” Cleese said he had “no intention” of cutting the scene, which involves the Grumpy People’s Front of Judea: JUDITH: (Sue Jones-Davies): I do feel, Reg (John Cleese) that any anti-imperialist group like ours must reflect such a divergence of interests within its power-base. REG: »

When Oscar Met Monty

Featured image The annual Academy Awards show, coming up on March 10, has defied satire for decades. Back in 1973, the Monty Python players had a go with “The British Showbiz Awards,” hosted by “Dickie” Attenborough, wonderfully played by Eric Idle: Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Chairman, friends of the society, your dummy Royal Highness. Once again, the year has come full circle, and for me there can be no greater privilege, and »

Richard Lewis, RIP

Featured image The comedian Richard Lewis died this past Tuesday evening of a heart attack at the age of 76. The New York Times has posted a good obituary by Clay Risen here. Variety’s obituary is posted here. Richard told the story of his personal struggles in The Other Great Depression: How I’m overcoming, on a daily basis, at least a million addictions and dysfunctions and finding a spiritual (sometimes) life. Lewis »

A perfect picture

Featured image There’s nothing wrong with the picture Network (1976). The talent on display in the film is formidable. With a screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky, directed by Sidney Lumet, starring Peter Finch, William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Robert Duvall, Ned Beatty, and others, it’s an irresistible satire of television news as show business. I’ve had the opening scene playing in my head over the past week. “Don’t do it, buddy!” In the opening »

Biden on the Big Screen

Featured image Steve finds fearful symmetry to Biden in Frank Sinatra’s description of Raymond Shaw, one of the most “repulsive human beings” he had ever seen. Other movie characters might also apply to the allegedly “sharp” and “focused” 81-year-old Democrat from Delaware. Consider, for example, the take of Louise (Ruth Attaway) on Chauncey Gardiner (Peter Sellers), when she spots him on television. No, sir. Had no brains at all. Was stuffed with »

A note on “Shane”

Featured image I recorded Shane off TCM and watched it for about the tenth time last night. The film was directed by George Stevens with a script by A.B. Guthrie, Jr. Alan Ladd plays Shane, the gunfighter with a mysterious past who is looking for a new life in Wyoming circa 1889. A variety of currents and undercurrents run through the film. Some of them conflict. Indians have been cleared from the »

Thinkin’ about “Lincoln”

Featured image I wrote the post below when the film Lincoln was released in 2012. I thought some readers might find it of interest today. My purpose here was to take up the movie in the context of Richard Hofstadter’s famous essay on Lincoln — an essay which is all that bright high-school students may ever learn about him. I have inserted links to the publisher’s pages of the books cited. We »

Oscar Injustice

Featured image As Steve notes in his piece on American Fiction, Academy Award nominations now attach a “diversity requirement.” As film fans should know, long before this woke nonsense black actors were turning in performances that should have gained nominations. Consider, for example, Roscoe Lee Browne as Jebediah Nightlinger in The Cowboys, from 1972. When the ranch hands of Wil Andersen (John Wayne) run off to search for gold, the rancher hires »

Go See “American Fiction”

Featured image If you follow the Academy Awards. . . okay, stop right there! I know what you’re thinking after just six words: Who is their right mind would give a tinker’s cuss about the Oscars any more? I get it, but indulge me a bit. If you follow the Academy Awards, you’ll know they have instituted a “diversity” requirement to qualify to be a nominee for Best Picture, by which is »

Blazing Saddles History Month

Featured image What in the wide, wide world of sports is a-going on here? I hired you people to get a bit of track laid, not to jump around like a bunch of Kansas City faggots! That was railroad boss Taggart (Slim Pickens) in Blazing Saddles, which opened on February 7, 1974, a full 50 years ago next month. The Mel Brooks film would not be made today, more reason to revisit »

Still funny after all these years

Featured image Lloyd Billingsley draws on Woody Allen’s Bananas (1971) to trace the outline of a mania — the mania of Democrat orthodoxy. I was thinking about Bananas over the weekend as I revisited Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936) and reread Kenneth Lynn’s (great) Charlie Chaplin and His Times. Early in Bananas Allen pays tribute to Chaplin and Modern Times. Allen plays Fielding Mellish, a “research tester” for General Equipment. In the »

Hunter Biden: The movie

Featured image When the Rathergate movie Truth was released in 2015 — with Robert Redford playing Dan Rather and Cate Blanchett playing Mary Mapes as the heroes of the story — I turned to Edward Jay Epstein for advice. Ed has devoted three books to the assassination of JFK. I asked him how he had dealt with the likes of Oliver Stone and his film JFK, in which New Orleans district attorney »

There’s something about film noir

Featured image Before Eddie Muller took over the Saturday night/Sunday morning niche on TCM with his Noir Alley, I was only familiar with a few classics of film noir such as Double Indemnity (directed by Billy Wilder, starring Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck) and The Postman Always Rings Twice (directed by Tay Garnett, starring John Garfield and Lana Turner). Whoever loves well-made movies with a kick must love those films. Following Muller’s »

The lessons of “Casablanca”

Featured image Cliff May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times. He is a veteran reporter, foreign correspondent, and editor for the New York Times and other publications. Cliff’s current column is “The lessons of ‘Casablanca'” (at FDD, where it is posted with links). Cliff has kindly given us his permission to post his column on Power Line. He writes: »

Hymietown Revisted

Featured image As Steve observes, “there’s not much comedy to be had from the ugliness of the current outburst of anti-Semitism in the aftermath of October 7.” As it happens,  there was a time when an outburst of anti-Semitism brought on a rapid comic response. In 1984 the Rev. Jesse Jackson ran for president. During a conversation with Washington Post reporter Milton Coleman, Jackson referred to Jews as “Hymies,” and New York City »

American Fiction, Part Deux

Featured image With lines such as “the dumber I behave the richer I get,” Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction does sound like cinematic dynamite. What this film does for the literary world, Robert Townsend’s Hollywood Shuffle, from 1987, has already performed for the movie industry. Townsend plays aspiring actor Bobby Taylor, who finds that Hollywood prefers to cast blacks in gang movies. Script in hand, the eloquent Bobby must rehearse lines such as, »