You need to give me some money. And you need to do it right now. Let’s be clear – this is an emergency. The time for debate is over. The time for action is now. There is a clear consensus
Somewhere over the last 25 years, the idea of what constitutes a “celebrity” changed from a person with some kind of history of achievement to pretty much anyone with a pulse who manages to get his, her or its mug
As a trial lawyer, I am jealous of Tom Friedman, that prophet of painfully conventional “wisdom” whose insights grace the ever dustier New York Times op-ed pages. His latest column, “Global Weirding Is Here“, has managed to achieve what I
It is more than just interesting how advertisers are rebelling against free television’s current crop of lurid, creepy content. For the Hollywood elite, this is a canary in the coal mine, and they should heed that figurative dead bird’s warning.
The payoff for sitting through a dozen craptacular releases is that one movie where you actually say, “Damn, that was worth the $11.50 and the kidney I spent to see it.” As a modern moviegoer, you must be an eternal
Some people will tell you that there is no such thing as a stupid question. They’re wrong. People ask stupid questions all the time. It becomes a problem when people do it on purpose. The “we’re just asking questions” rationale
A great performance sticks with you long after you’ve scraped the theater floor-gum off your Keds. But too often, professional drama geeks and mainstream media critics will bestow their blessing on freaky, idiosyncratic performances that hew to the party line
It’s hard to know what to make of a rich Hollywood mogul who announces that he “believe[s] in eco-terrorism” yet has a carbon footprint of his own that does to the environment what Godzilla did to Bambi. As Pam Meister
I love to grab a weekend lunch at the fabulous Tomboy’s Burgers in Manhattan Beach, and when I’m there I always pick up one of the discarded LA Times front sections lying by the bottles of Tapitio hot sauce. “Maybe
The Citizens United decision is a powerful rebuke to the forces that believe our Constitution is less a solid foundation of our democracy then a political pretzel to be bent and twisted into any form the politicians choose. Sadly, far
We can look back today and see that George W. Bush’s departure from Washington on 1/20/09 was when the oceans stopped rising, the Earth began healing and, for Hollywood, when an unprecedented era of right-wing oppression and stifling conservative ideological
Surging Massachusetts Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown has served more than thirty years in the Army National Guard, but to commentators like the Boston Globe’s Joan Vennochi, this is merely “pretty packaging” and part of how “Brown’s glossy veneer conceals
Oliver Stone’s latest desperate grasp at relevance is a new cable series that, among other things, promises to finally place der Furher into der context. Now, this is where I’m supposed to be outraged, but I’m just not feeling it.
Hope springs eternal for the future of the journalism whenever I eat at Tomboy’s Burgers. It’s not only the gloriously greasy burgers and hearty, artery-clogging breakfasts that draw me to Manhattan Beach a couple of weekends a month. It’s the
As we say goodbye to the first decade of the new century – and I don’t wanna hear any revisionist bellyaching about the decade not ending until December 2010 – we also say hello to the mainstream media movie critics’
There’s no hiding that Avatar is a politically correct piece of semi-coherent agit-prop lurking behind a lot of over-praised CGI effects. While the fanboys hype it as the next great leap forward in filmmaking, it actually takes a huge step
You have seen John Nolte’s countdown of the Top 25 Christmas Movies, but this list is something else – a list of movies worth watching that take place in or around Christmas but aren’t about Christmas itself. They don’t necessarily
Stop the servers! Jackson Williams at the Huffington Post has a newsflash: Actor Matthew Marsden Hides His Right-Wing Political Views. This raises a couple of questions. The first is, “Who is Mathew Marsden?” Well, he was an up-and-coming young English
Have you seen the previews for the movies coming out this holiday season? December movies were once second in quality only to the summer releases, with a raft of comedies, dramas and a few big-budget blockbusters to choose from. You
A trial lawyer reading through the hacked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) will immediately, almost unconsciously, begin generating a list of questions he would love to ask the authors if he were able to
Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday. Sure, Canada and a couple other nations have adopted their own weird versions of it too, but the notion of a nation setting aside a day to give thanks for its blessings could only
The men and women who earn the right to wear eagle, globe and anchor of the United States Marine Corps are a special breed. To those outside the Corps, they talk funny. They look funny. They are extremely impressed with
So, when it came time for our little girl to watch her first grown-up movie, I was torn between Saving Private Ryan and a film I have loved since I was a kid, Godzilla, King of the Monsters. Now, Private
In a world of Starland Vocal Bands, Lady GaGas, Bon Jovis, Snoop Doggs and 1910 Fruitgum Companies, it takes real talent to write a song so unbelievably horrible that it transcends mere awfulness and crosses the frontier into a whole
People have it all wrong about Richard Heene. He’s not the perpetrator of a poorly-executed hoax, but a victim, a victim of America’s callous disregard for those who suffer from the silent plague that is Media Absence Disorder (MAD). Sadly,
Chairman Rocco Landesman National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Washington, D.C. Dear Chairman Landesman: With all this fuss on Big Hollywood.com, Big Government.com and elsewhere over the NEA’s government-funded forays into partisan political propaganda, I thought maybe we could help
I hate football. Not as much as I detest baseball and basketball and NASCAR, but the mere thought of sitting in a stadium watching a football match or game or whatever it’s called makes me dream of the sweet release
Levi Johnston’s shameless exploitation by the liberal media is more than just a convenient cudgel for bashing Sarah Palin. It’s a modern minstrel show, with “Middle American” substituted for “African-American” as Levi capers for his condescending media “friends” wearing figurative
Just when it looks like Roman Polanski has re-set the bar for personal behavior so low that it’s practically subterranean, the late John Phillips comes along and somehow finds a way to slink underneath it. Maybe. Maybe, because his accuser
The only surprising thing about hearing that Law & Order was going to take on the Bush administration over “torture” is the realization that Law & Order is still on the air. This car-wreck of a series has been bouncing
There are still these things called newspapers out there. Yeah, I was surprised too – I gave up hardcopy papers way back when dissent was still patriotic. But out for a Sunday lunch at one of our favorite places in
There was a time when an “adult film” meant a movie by, for and about adults, not a tawdry tale of some tatted-up, dead-eyed 19-year old with daddy issues numbly coupling in front of a video camera for the gratification
The most annoying creature in the pantheon of Hollywood cliches is the “free spirit,” the heedless, hedonistic waif whose responsibility-free lifestyle shows us uptight squares just how empty and soulless our lives of meeting obligations and delaying gratification truly are.
A close reading of the President’s speech to schoolchildren today reveals some notable things. As a trial lawyer, it’s professionally interesting to see how he makes his case – and to see what case he is actually making. And as
The members of the ruling class of the British Isles seem to be committed to demonstrating that they are nothing but hopeless neo-socialists busy sacrificing their green and pleasant land on the altar of nanny-state multiculturalism. It seems that every
It’s time to take on the most important issue facing American conservatives today: Can a self-respecting right-winger be a fan of Alec Baldwin? The answer is “yes.” Allow me to demonstrate why: [youtube QTj47rcuM-4 nolink] — Now, that clip from
Our political leaders need a quick block of instruction in the concept of the chain of command. It goes like this, in descending order of rank: #1: Us Citizens. #2: You elected officials. [youtube HWIlGnJDRzw nolink] I really prefer writing
Only a tiresome poseur like Quentin Tarantino could think that the Hollywood pretty boys he cast in his soon-to-be released opus The Inglorious Basterds are convincing movie tough guys. Where is Lee Marvin when we need him? You’ve probably experienced
Those damn kids today and their strange and frightening music raise an important question for me: When did I become my dad? Back in the eighties – when popular music reached its pinnacle of achievement – I would be home