Movies

It would have been shocking if the abortion comedy Obvious Child hadn’t been celebrated on Melissa Harris-Perry’s weekend show on MSNBC. But the spin on Sunday morning’s program could not have been expected. “MHP” wanted to know if abortion opponents just couldn’t handle the uncomfortable truth about women’s sexuality and how women’s bodies operate. She asked Obvious filmmaker Gillian…

Gillian Robespierre, the feminist director of the abortion comedy Obvious Child, is not a fan of Fox News, as she revealed in an interview with Matt Juul Wednesday in the Boston Globe. Asked about sexism and feminist hashtags on Twitter, she said "like, I’m watching a lot of CNBC and Fox News in these [expletive] hotel rooms and it’s just making my head spin. It just makes me really sad. It…

After several tantrums about how movies with keep-the-baby messages spread “consoling fictions,” Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday was duty-bound to adore the “abortion comedy” Obvious Child, but did she have to embarrass herself by insisting it “may be the most pro-life movie of the year”? Somehow, the movie Juno presented abortion as a “non-option,” but Hornaday loves a movie where…

How radical is Hollywood? There are two competing movie projects sure to lionize Edward Snowden betraying America’s secrets. Naturally, one of them is helmed by Oliver Stone, who bows to no one in casting America as a global supervillain. See his Untold History of the United States bilge on Showtime. "This is one of the greatest stories of our time," said the leftist director. "A real…

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Correction appended. Seth Rogen did not send the tweet mentioned below.) Lights, action - cue the Leftists! Or, what comes around, goes around. Seth Rogen, a Hollywood favorite as star or a supporting player in such gems as Knocked Up, The Green Hornet,The 40 Year Old Virgin and more, is having  what one might call a Martin Niemoller moment. Niemoller was the German…

Feminist Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday was the first one to see Hollywood sexism in the stabbings and shootings of one sick young man at the University of California-Santa Barbara who killed six. Hornaday tweeted out her article: “In a shooter's videotaped diatribe, reflections of the sexism, insecurity and entitlement that plague Hollywood.” Hornaday wrote that as Elliot Rodger…

A new biopic about Ronald Reagan is in pre-production, and Paul Bond at The Hollywood Reporter relayed that Manifest Film Sales has picked up international sales rights and will introduce the project to buyers at the Cannes Film Festival. The producers of the $25 million film, simply called Reagan, "inked a deal for a U.S. release on 3,000 screens and $35 million in prints and advertising."…

In Saturday’s Washington Post, they published a letter to the editor from a Paul Whittemore in Spotsylvania, Virginia, who noticed the Post’s movie critics never attempted a movie review of God’s Not Dead, which has so far grossed $55.5 million at the box office and tiptoed back into the top ten this weekend. On March 21, the Post could only report “This movie did not screen in time for…

Ten years ago, Mel Gibson unveiled his massively successful movie The Passion of The Christ. It came out on Ash Wednesday (February 25, 2004), but is often re-viewed on Good Friday. It had a worldwide box-office gross of over $611 million. In our Special Report on religion coverage that year, we explored how the TV networks attacked Gibson's movie as extreme, divisive, and potentially harmful…

In the world of Hollywood politics, U.S. News & World Report is hyping "Peter Pan's Lily-White Tiger Lily Problem."  Warner Brothers is making a movie called "Pan" (due in July 2015), and the Indian princess Tiger Lily is being played by white actress Rooney Mara. “This casting choice is particularly shameful for a children’s movie,” an outraged petition said. “Telling children their role…

So who ya gonna believe: Paramount or Director Darren Aronofsky?  Either “Noah” is sure to be a hit with the 86 percent of religious people who are aware of the film (Paramount), or it’s the “least Biblical Biblical film ever made” (Aronofsky). It's all a bit confusing right now for the film whose ending has been reshot and recut, gone one way and another, signalled a Hollywood re-embrace of…

In a fun feature on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live, “Lie Witness News,” he sends a camera crew out onto the streets of Los Angeles to ask pedestrians about events that have not happened. But the people are too embarrassed or ill-informed to realize the fake-out and offer their opinions on the non-existent premise. Monday’s (March 3) Special Report with Bret Baier ended with an excerpt from an “…

In the Washington Post’s free commuter tabloid Express on Thursday, writer Kristen Page-Kirby wrote a little “Film Riffs” feature about Jesus movies headlined “Jesus Is Magic” (yep, also a title of a snide Sarah Silverman special). Page-Kirby explained that “In ‘Son of God,’ out Friday, Diogo Morgado plays Jesus of Nazareth, a homeless rabbi who spent a chunk of his childhood as a refugee.…

Reading the transcript isn't enough. Roll the video, listen carefully, and at the end you'll catch Ronan Farrow's nervous little laugh as he asks an African-American guest whether, in assessing movie-industry diversity, it "matters" that Steve McQueen, the black director whose film has been nominated for an Oscar, is British. Such are the PC pitfalls once one wades into the bog of diversity…