We all know Chris Matthews is a far left ass hat, but normally his guests aren’t very effective at arguing with him. Matthews bit off more than he could chew when he invited Ari Fleischer on and blamed president Bush for 9/11:

(hat tip Finkel Blog)

The NY Times has a review of Angelina Jolie’s new movie called “Wanted” and based on the review, word-of-mouth, and the trailer, I think it’s safe to say the movie kicks a*ss.

The film is an ultraviolent shoot-’em-up action spectacular complete with Matrix-like special effects courtesy of Russian director Timur Bekmambetov.

Here’s part of what The Times had to say about the movie:

The money shot in “Wanted,” its pièce-de-special-effects-résistance and reason for green-lighted being, appears in the opening minutes of this noisy, ultraviolent shoot-’em-up with Angelina Jolie, her many tattoos and some guys. A man has soared onto the roof of a high-rise where he has laid a handful of others to waste. Suddenly the camera cuts to his face as a bullet exits his forehead in slow motion, his skin stretching forward as the projectile tears through it, going straight for the camera and our already numbed skulls.

Well, that’s one way to get the attention of fickle moviegoers, particularly if, like the director Timur Bekmambetov, you’ve got nothing else going for your big Hollywood debut except Ms. Jolie and a couple of ideas recycled from “The Matrix” and “Fight Club.” Mind you, Ms. Jolie has been perfectly cast as a super-scary, seemingly amoral assassin named (wait for it) Fox. Few American actresses, especially those with such pin-skinny arms, can make beating a guy to the ground look so easy and, yeah, man, like fun. With her mean smiley-sneer and snug clothes, her heels and hieroglyphics, she cuts the kind of disciplinarian figure who can bring antsy boys of all ages to their knees or at least into their theater seats.

Watch two different trailers for “Wanted” below:

and this

I just finished watching “Recount” starring Kevin Spacey that the far-left has been promoting all week. To be honest, I was very surprised how the movie turned out. I figured it would be 90 minutes of red meat for the far-left crowd who still suffer sleepless nights thinking about how Bush “stole” the election in 2000.

Cosmetically the film turned out as I anticipated it would. Democrats were depicted as righteous crusaders who only wanted to do the right thing and make every vote count. Republicans on the other hand led by former Secretary of State James Baker were meant to be depicted as political thugs who used a combination of dirty tricks and favors to get George W. Bush elected.

I emphasize meant because Republicans didn’t come off in the film that way at all. Besides Katherine Harris who was made to look extra foolish in the movie (only extra), everyone else came of looking pretty cool. Republicans looked like the cool customers while the Democrats looked frantic and shrill (like they do now).

What really surprised me about the film was the overall message it conveyed. What “Recount” actually succeeded in doing was totally smashing the far-left’s narrative over the last eight years that Bush “stole” the election.

The Gore camp was depicted in the movie as trying to get a recount in certain Florida counties because those counties were mostly poor minorities who “tend to vote for Democrats.” Throughout the movie Democrats shamelessly used Jessie Jackson to try and get blacks riled up about allegedly being disenfranchised.

The Gore camp purposely tried to swing the vote in Gore’s favor by manipulating poor minorities and fabricating stories of disenfranchisement and crying about dimpled chads.

The movie portrayed Republicans as merely following the law to its conclusion. The Bush camp won because of the excellent legal work by James Baker, as well as a little good old fashioned luck. It was mostly luck that kept the (win at all costs) Gore camp from doing everything short of orchestrating a kidnapping to get Gore a few hundred more votes.

The 2000 election certainly was a debacle and served to expose very serious flaws in our nation’s voting system. In my opinion if your too old, too blind, or too stupid, to punch the right hole on your ballot you probably shouldn’t be voting.

That said, voting is not rocket science and we trust computers to store medical records and classified intelligence. We just successfully landed a new spacecraft on Mars to test soil samples, and our military is the most technologically advanced fighting force the world has ever seen.

All this and the United States of America really cannot design a voting system that everyone can use?

We can fire a cruise missile half-way around the world and into an open window, or drop a GPS guided bomb through an air shaft on a building, but we still can’t create a voting system that’s accurate 99.99% percent of the time?

Maybe the Google guys should start work on “Google Voting” for their next project.

You know they could do it.

-Chris Jones

No matter how many failures they make, Hollywood just won’t give up on the anti-American/anti-war themes. The latest miserable failure is called Stop-Loss, starring Ryan Phillipe.

The movie opened at #7 taking in just $1.6 million dollars on opening night. What Hollywood has yet to understand is that if they made a movie in the spirit of Blackhawk Down about the battle of Fallujah it would be a hit movie.

It’s time for a pro-Iraq war movie about the U.S. military kicking ass all over the middle east. That is something Americans would actually go and see.

-Chris Jones

A variety of news agencies are reporting that Academy Award Winner and controversial filmmaker Oliver Stone is in the final stages of securing the necessary financing to begin shooting a film about President George W. Bush.

Stone who has made movies about Presidents Kennedy and Nixon, promises that the movie will be a fair portrait and not a “hatchet job.”

“It will contain surprises for Bush supporters and his detractors,” said Stone.

It’s not surprising that Oliver Stone would want to do a film about President Bush, but what is strange is the man he’s chosen for the role of George W. Bush.

None other than James Brolin, the husband of legendary left-wing liberal broad Barbra Streisand. Using a far-left ideologue like Brolin to depict the President immediately calls into question the likelihood of a fair depiction.

-Chris Jones

You would think after a string of total box-office bombs, that Hollywood would quit with the anti-war/anti-military movies but it looks like we’re just not that lucky.

We’ve already had Rendition, Redacted, In The Valley Of Ellah, and Lions For Lambs. Next up is a movie called Stop Loss which is about a soldier deserting to another country after the military tries to send him back to Iraq.

Why can’t Hollywood ever make a movie about the siege of Fallujah or something good? Why can’t they for once do a movie about us kicking ass and taking hyphenated names?

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 19 — Jay-Z, the rap superstar and president of Def Jam Records, has quietly returned to the studio to record an album of new songs inspired by the forthcoming movie “American Gangster,” his first “concept” album and second CD in less than a year.

The album, which his label plans to release in early November, came together over the past few weeks after Jay-Z was shown the film, directed by Ridley Scott, in which Denzel Washington portrays Frank Lucas, a early 1970s Harlem heroin kingpin.

Following the underwhelming critical and commercial reception for his “Kingdom Come” CD late last year — and as Jay-Z grapples with whether to stay on in his post at Def Jam — the tie-in to a major motion picture gives him a chance to rebound strong and extend his reach to a wider audience.

At the same time, it could help Universal Pictures excite younger moviegoers, whom it will need to make money on a costly film with a troubled history. Though it’s not uncommon for films to be released alongside “inspired by” albums, it is rare for them to be recorded by a single artist, let alone by a major star who had no role in the movie.

In an hourlong telephone interview, Jay-Z, 37, who has spoken of spending his early years in Brooklyn both rapping and drug dealing, said that the movie had tremendous resonance for him and had sparked a burst of creative activity that even he found surprising. He has already recorded nine tracks, almost every one prompted by a specific scene.

“It was like I was watching the film, and putting it on pause, and giving a back story to the story,” he said.

The movie, set for a Nov. 2 release, depicts the Lucas character as an underworld Horatio Alger and an innovator who, despite keeping a low public profile, rose to such power that he was able to defy the Mafia bosses who had traditionally dominated the New York drug trade before being brought down by a special narcotics task force. (Its leader is played by Russell Crowe.) Jay-Z said he thought his fans would be struck by the image of a black man reaching such heights of success, even on the wrong side of the law, much like such ruthlessly efficient Al Pacino antiheroes as Tony Montana and Michael Corleone.

“It immediately clicked with me,” said Jay-Z, who has made passing references to gangster movies in previous recordings but has never delved so deeply into the genre. “Like ‘Scarface,’ or any one of those films, you take the good out of it, and you can see it as an inspiring film.”

A $100 million gritty period piece that largely takes place before the birth of hip-hop or many of its fans, “American Gangster” marks a sizable gamble for Universal, which fired one director, Antoine Fuqua, and scrapped the project at a cost of $30 million before restarting it with Mr. Scott in charge and with Mr. Crowe in place of Benicio del Toro. (Though they share a name, Universal Pictures and Universal Music Group, the parent of Def Jam, are no longer corporate brethren.)

Mr. Scott said he cast the rappers T. I., RZA and Common in supporting roles, hoping to appeal to a younger audience. But Brian Grazer, the film’s producer, said that Mr. Washington also pressed him more than a year ago to consider asking Jay-Z to do the film’s soundtrack.

“I just didn’t think there’d be enough for Jay-Z to do,” Mr. Grazer said, explaining that he resisted because he and Mr. Scott felt the movie required an authentic 1970s feel.

Instead Jay-Z offered to make his own album and release it in conjunction with the movie; Def Jam is also releasing the film’s official soundtrack, which features songs by Bobby Womack, the Staple Singers and Sam & Dave. Jay-Z plans to attend the film’s premiere but any cross-promotion deals have not been completed, executives said. The movie’s trailer already includes an older Jay-Z song, “Heart of the City.”

Mr. Grazer, who visited Jay-Z in the studio last week and heard seven of the new songs, said he was impressed by how the movie had “ignited all these memories of his childhood and how he grew up and the experiences he had, and the moral crossroads he had constantly in his life that were so parallel to Frank Lucas’s.”

Though Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, said he’d never heard of Mr. Lucas while growing up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, he still glimpsed much of himself in Mr. Washington’s portrayal: “The way he carried himself. The way he went about things. The way he wasn’t loud, but he was very strong.”

Echoing the “stop snitchin’ ” campaign among some hip-hop fans and artists, however, Jay-Z hastened to dissociate himself from Mr. Lucas’s decision to cooperate with the authorities to get a more lenient sentence.

“Me, I believe you choose your path and you walk your path, and whatever happens you got to accept it,” Jay-Z said.

In “No Hook,” a song on the new album, he says:

Please don’t compare me to other rappers. Compare me to trappers.

I’m more Frank Lucas than Ludacris. And Lude is my dude, I ain’t trying to dis.

Just like Frank Lucas is cool, but I ain’t tryin’ to snitch.

I’m-a follow the rules, no matter how much time I’m-a get.

I’m-a live and die with the decisions that I’m-a pick.

Jay-Z’s new album is certain to punctuate what had been a year of relatively slow sales for Def Jam until the huge chart debut this week of Kanye West’s CD “Graduation.” Jay-Z is said to be mulling whether to extend his three-year employment contract, return to recording and touring full time or explore other options. In the interview he deflected questions about his future. “I would love to work it out” and stay at Def Jam, he said, but he added that he was wavering and would do some “soul-searching” after finishing the album.

His decision to record “American Gangster” is a surprise, given that his last album was released less than a year ago. “Kingdom Come” sold about 1.5 million copies, his lowest figure for a full studio album since 1997. And its elaborate marketing campaign, including alliances with Budweiser and ESPN, prompted some suggestions that Jay-Z’s branching-out into other business endeavors, and taste for the jet-setting life, had begun to undermine his street credibility.

He made no apologies for his transformation into a global brand. “Jay doesn’t live in Brooklyn any more,” he said. Rather, he ventured that “Kingdom Come” was a little too “sophisticated” for some listeners. “American Gangster,” he said, would be a return to a tougher, more unflinching view of street life.

“Watching that film, it brought back all these memories,” he said. “It took me back to those emotions.”

Illustrating his point, he launched again into “No Hook”: “ ‘Poor me, Dad was gone, finally got my Dad back, liver bad, he wouldn’t live long, it snatched my Dad back.’ ”

He added that the song “takes you through this journey — his journey, my journey — so many people’s journey that come from the areas that we come from.”

Throughout the interview Jay-Z sounded almost jubilant talking about his creative process, and he repeatedly interrupted himself to try out his latest rhymes:

“ ‘Mindstate of a gangster from the 40’s, meet business mind of Motown’s Berry Gordy,’ ” he rapped from “Pray,” another new song.

“How crazy is that?” he said giddily.

And, in another rap:

This is the genesis of a nemesis

Mother America’s not witnessed since

the Harlem Renaissance

birthed black businesses.

“I’m not even joking with you,” he said, laughing. “It’s out-of-body experiences at this point.”

[NY Times]

Actor-turned-director Sean Penn refrained from smoking during his return to the spotlight at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday, but could have used something to calm his nerves as he repeatedly lashed out at media for distracting him during a news conference.

The intense movie star sucked on ice cubes and swore as he met with dozens of reporters to discuss his riveting new film, “Into The Wild,” featuring a tour de force performance by newcomer Emile Hirsch.

A police officer stood guard outside the room – an unusual sight that one festival spokeswoman said was due to crowd control, and not because of Penn’s controversial appearance at the festival last year.

While promoting the 2006 drama, “All The King’s Men,” the actor lit up and smoked at the same hotel, violating a provincial law that forbids smoking indoors. Penn escaped punishment, but the hotel faced more than $600 in fines.

This time around, Penn was cigarette-less but appeared to have trouble focusing on questions, halting the press conference twice to reprimand observers for distracting him in one way or another.

“You can stop taking pictures because I can’t think,” Penn told photographers as working cameras made clicking noises around him.

“It’s the ugliest music in the world, all of that. OK?”

Later, Penn appeared annoyed by background chatter as he tried to focus on a reporter’s question.

“What’s everybody else talking about? Or are you just interrupting?” Penn said in a calm but forceful tone, his voice trailing off.

Instead of a cigarette, an assistant brought Penn a glass of ice cubes and pop at the start of the press conference.

“Into The Wild,” which Penn wrote and directed (he does not act in the film) is based on the Jon Krakauer book of the same name, in which 23-year-old Christopher McCandless abandons his possessions, gives away $24,000 in savings and hitchhikes to Alaska to live in the wilderness.

Dressed in a black blazer, faded blue jeans and beige construction boots, Penn said a sense of authenticity was important to the film, which was shot at many of the locations McCandless visited.

Hirsch said he prepared for the demanding role (he appears skeletal by the final scenes) with intense endurance training that involved “rigorous, rigorous, rigorous running and hiking.”

He also read the books that inspired McCandless – Jack London’s “Call of the Wild,” and Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden” – and spent a lot of time alone.

“I found this kind of moral core that I feel like is within us all that just kind of had some of the dirt wiped off of it,” Hirsh said.

“And that was something that I feel like McCandless discovered and loved.”

The film also stars William Hurt, Marcia Gay Harden and Catherine Keener, but Penn said it was a challenge to find the right person to play the lead role, admitting that he wasn’t too familiar with young actors.

“Frankly, what I was familiar with, and this might be just the embittered old generation looking back at the … youngsters, but I felt that generally there was a shared weightlessness to most of what I was seeing,” said Penn.

“Nobody that moved me, nobody that gave me great hope in the future.”

“I wanted to photograph somebody while he was on the cusp of boy to man. I want to watch it happen. I wanted his talent and most of all, I wanted somebody who’s weight was their heart.”

All those things were captured by Hirsh, said Penn.

Penn dismissed praise of his directorial turn, saying he’s always resented it when people ask directors how they elicit great performances from their actors.

“Doesn’t happen,” he said, tossing in an expletive for emphasis.

“Directors don’t get performances out of actors. Actors give great performances to directors.”

“I’m just an organizer of a family and everybody builds this thing. And so, when you have that behind you, you don’t look at it as is it hard to get something done? You get your family together and you will it to be done.”

[Canada East Online]

Veteran US director Brian De Palma won the Best Director award at the Venice film festival on Saturday for “Redacted,” his hard-hitting Iraq war film.

The dramatisation of the rape and murder of an Iraqi girl by US soldiers, was also honoured on Friday with the Future Film Festival Digital Award, for the film that makes the best use of animation or visual effects.

De Palma, who is best known for such violent fictions as the psychic thriller “Carrie” and the gangster movie “Scarface” (1983), turns 67 on Tuesday.

The film exposing the ugly reality of the Iraq war seared the big screen at the Venice film festival Friday, with director Brian De Palma saying he hoped it would help end America’s military occupation.

“The pictures are what will stop the war,” De Palma told a news conference after the showing of the movie.

“Redacted,” which is based on the actual March 2006 rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi schoolgirl by US soldiers who also slaughtered her family, is a reaction to what he sees as sanitised media accounts of the war seen in the United States.

“All the images we (currently) have of our war are completely constructed — whitewashed, redacted,” said De Palma.

“One only hopes that these images will get the public incensed enough to get their congressmen to vote against the war,” he added.

De Palma, whose 1989 “Casualties of War” about the Vietnam War also deals with the gang rape and murder of a young civilian girl, responded with “that’s a good question” when asked why the United States seems unable to learn from its mistakes.

“Redacted” hits hard with its dramatic reenactment of the conditions, attitudes and stresses that led up to the real-life crime.

One of the soldiers involved, Private First Class Jesse Spielman, was in early August sentenced to 110 years in prison for his role in the rape and killings.

Shown through the imaginary video lens of one of the soldiers involved in the raid on the girl’s home, De Palma’s dramatisation is interlaced with actual news clips, documentary footage and stills from the war.

The decision to use the device of the videocam arose from De Palma’s research on the Internet. “The blogs, the use of language, it’s all there,” he said.

He explained that legal obstacles in dealing with real people and events meant he was “forced to fictionalise things” to get the movie made.

“Redacted” will initially be distributed nationwide by Magnolia Pictures as a “classic art film,” its producer Jason Kliot said. “If the response is strong one hopes the distribution will grow the film in a big way.”

With a career spanning more than four decades, the prolific De Palma has never been tied to a particular genre, creating anything from thrillers such as “Mission: Impossible” to documentaries, comedies, and sci-fi flicks, breaking into bankability with “Greetings” (1968) for which he won a Silver Bear in Berlin.

[AFP]

I was disappointed to read that Hollywood director Brian De Palma’s latest work is a propaganda piece, highlighting the atrocities that a handful of U.S. soldiers committed in the Iraqi town of Mahmudiyah.

It’s ironic that someone like De Palma who is best known for directing ‘Scarface’ and ‘The Untouchables’ would be an anti-war liberal, but definitely not surprising.

At a time when our country and indeed Brian De Palma’s country is at war with radical Islam, it’s just a shame that he chose to do a film about U.S. soldiers raping and murdering an entire family in Iraq. He uses videos and images taken from the across Internet and from some soldiers’ own blogs to paint the U.S. military as a murderous band of thugs.

The film called ‘Redacted‘ will mainly be shown oversees with only limited release in America. I’m sure the radical elements in the Arab world will be overjoyed at the fresh propaganda they can use from the film to boost terrorist recruitment.

I don’t object to telling what happened in Mahmudiyah, not that it would matter if I did since literally thousands of stories have been printed in every national paper and discussed on every news program. Those involved in the incident are doing anywhere from 10 years to life in a Federal prison for there despicable crimes.

What isn’t fair is to give uninformed and frankly stupid people overseas the impression that our military is nothing but a bunch of rapists and murderers.

The reality is that when you put close to 200,000 people somewhere for any length of time, your gonna have a few thugs come out of the woodwork. What that small group of soldiers did was an absolute disgrace and in my opinion they should have been hanged on the battlefield.

The bottom line is that the horrible events that took place that day in Iraq have been told over and over again, and everyone involved met with swift justice. I just wish that those who are fortunate enough to be Americans would use there right to free speech in a more responsible manner.

Whether you like President Bush or not, the United States collectively is at war meaning it’s all of our war and we should be mindful of how the things we say and do are perceived in the Arab world.

I know raping and killing a family most certainly doesn’t play well in the Arab world or any other world for that matter, but American citizens like Brian De Palma needn’t stoke the flames of Islamic extremism that is already sweeping across the Middle East and Europe.

Being critical of your country’s policies and its leaders is as American as it gets, but deliberately trying to sabotage and undermine your own country is not American at all.

Written By Chris Jones
Editor-In-Chief