Movies

I don't have to explain to anyone how television is much more risque, with some programs being downright lewd, than it was decades ago. But I want to tell you about something that can change the course of values in television and movies. Once upon a time, about as edgy as it got was Barbara Eden's "I Dream of Jeannie" character, who showed her trim tummy, and Elvis swinging his pelvis on "The…

In a world where Woody Allen can get a lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globes at the same time his adopted daughter accuses him of sexually abusing her when she was a child (Allen has repeatedly denied it), and where a film "The Wolf of Wall Street" sets a record for use of the F-word, it is a wonderment that an obscure, low-budget film called "Alone Yet Not Alone" has had its Best…

Yesterday my colleague Scott Whitlock noted how the CBS This Morning program had sidestepped a controversy in Hollywood regarding the revocation of an Oscar nomination for a song featured in a Christian-produced motion picture titled Alone Yet Not Alone. Academy officials charge it was improperly promoted But apparently not every liberal media outlet is ignoring the story. Some, like the…

Although to date there has been no evidence directly tying him to either matter, Chris Christie has been accused of playing politics with the GW bridge closure and the granting of hurricane-relief funds to Hoboken.  So naturally it's fair game to analogize Christie to the head of cinema's most infamous, murderous crime syndicate. Fair game, if you're MSNBC that is.  Today's Morning Joe…

What happens when a teenager who came into the world as an unplanned teenage pregnancy ends up with an unplanned pregnancy of her own? Will she bend to all the “helpful” insistence that she needs to exercise her “right to choose” before she is, as one callous presidential contender put it, “punished with a baby”? This is the plot of “Gimme Shelter,” a new movie that departs from the feminist…

A few years back, during the Media Research Center's annual gala I was honored to pay tribute to the family of a real American hero, Michael Murphy, the Navy SEAL posthumously awarded the first Congressional Medal of Honor for service in Afghanistan, and the first since the Vietnam War. Few in the room knew the story because only Fox and a handful of other outlets told it. When the medal was…

CNN’s Jake Tapper would have done well to read “Lone Survivor,” rather than just seeing the new movie, before interviewing former Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell last week. If he had, Tapper might have been more careful than to describe the deaths of Luttrell’s SEAL comrades in Afghanistan as “senseless.” And he would have been wary of Luttrell’s contempt for the liberal media. The film “Lone…

Inside twisted Tinseltown, Martin Scorsese has marked a new career achievement. His new film "The Wolf of Wall Street" includes a mighty 506 uses of the F-bomb in its three-hour running time. That's almost three curse words a minute. Someone has proclaimed this the new record for F-bombs. Another Hollywood high mark. Scorsese often has hundreds of F-bombs in his films about crooks. But this…

New York Times entertainment reporters Brooks Barnes and Michael Cieply reviewed the year at the box office on Monday, another record year of almost $11 billion spent on movie tickets. The top five grossing movies were all sequels (or in the case of “Monsters University,” a prequel), but the article got a little weird when they called it a “tough year for the good-behavior watchdogs of…

Let's assess the winners in losers in American culture for 2013. Our first obvious winner is "Duck Dynasty" and its Phil Robertson. He's a winner for standing by his Christian principles after some inartful remarks about homosexuality. A&E suspended him and put the usual statement that they are "champions" of the gay agenda -- and proceeded to start running "Duck Dynasty" marathons. Mark…

Quality movies routinely get snubbed this time of year as organizations release their "best of the year" proclamations. It's still interesting to note that Philomena, a movie that accuses the Catholic Church of cruel adoption policies, and much worse, received several key nominations from the Golden Globes while Lone Survivor got shut out.

Potemkin Village, anyone?  Joe Scarborough has offered a scathing simile for the new-'n-improved Obamacare website.  On today's Morning Joe, he likened the site to the set of a Hollywood Western--pushing back the facade reveals that there's nothing behind it. Even former Obama spox Robert Gibbs—proudly sporting an Auburn jersey—acknowledged that big chunks of the system, including the…

The modern movie ratings system was put in place by the Motion Picture Association of America in 1968 for parents to protect children under 18 from ultraviolent or sexually explicit material. Since 1968, avant-garde leftists have been trying to knock this voluntary system down. The most recent example came with the raging ten-minute lesbian-sex scene that wowed the Cannes Film Festival (and…

The “Newseum” in Washington is, like it sounds, a museum about journalism. Unlike most DC museums, it’s not free (or taxpayer-funded). It costs $21.95 for an adult to see exhibits like a reconstruction of the late NBC host Tim Russert’s office. Since this doesn’t sound like a hot tourist destination, they’re now putting on the shamelessly Will-Ferrell- movie-promoting “Anchorman: The Exhibit…