Thanksgiving Box Office: Red Dawn, Silver Linings Playbook, Life of Pi, The Flat, Rise of the Guardians

Here is an interesting article from http://www.debbieschlussel.com/ reviewing some of the movies that came out over the past weekend. This follows this post about some of the movies from last week and THIS POST about some movies that have been released over the past few years that you might have missed! This all follows this post about guidelines to chosing good movies to watch yourself!


Thanksgiving Box Office: Red Dawn, Silver Linings Playbook, Life of Pi, The Flat, Rise of the Guardians


By Debbie Schlussel



No MARXES for any of the new movies at theaters today for Thanksgiving. All of them were decent, some of them good.


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* “Red Dawn“: While this was better than I expected, it’s still somewhat schlocky and isn’t nearly as good as the original 1984 “Red Dawn”, which was much panned by liberal mainstream media movie critics but was actually a very good movie that stands the test of time. As you may know, this was filmed in Michigan and heavily subsidized by the Michigan Film Tax Credit. (A former trainer from my gym, Michael Knight, plays a Russian military figure.) It also sat on the shelves for about two years and wasn’t even going to be released except on video. But that changed, when its stars, particularly Chris Hemsworth and Josh Hutcherson, became big stars. So, now, it’s a Thanksgiving movie, even though it doesn’t deserve that slot. And, as you’ve probably heard, this originally featured the Chinese invading America, but for international ticket sales reasons was changed to North Koreans (the movie used Detroit-based Asians of all varieties, many of whom look Chinese to me, not Korean).



The story: North Koreans invade America, particularly Spokane, Washington, the setting of this movie. Several teens (Hemsworth, Hutcherson, and several lesser knowns) form “The Wolverines,” a group of rebels who fight the North Koreans.



My reservations with this movie, as I’ve noted before on this site: our major enemies are Muslims and Chi-Coms, NOT the North Koreans, although they are bad. So the plot is absurd. It’s not even plausible that the North Koreans could afford to carry out such a major scale invasion of America. And all of the Wolverines in this movie wear keffiyehs, the Islamic scarf of death. Um, since when did the keffiyeh become the symbol of American freedom? The movie would have been far more credible had the movie been about an invasion of Muslims. But Hollywood would NEVER have the cojones to present Muslims as the invaders. Not politically correct. Plus, they have tickets to sell to Arab and Muslim moviegoers around the wrold. Back in 1984, Soviet Communism was the major threat we faced. Now, it is Islam and the Chinese. And the Chinese are doing it financially, not through a military invasion. So, this movie seems kind of comical.



It’s an entertaining movie with giant holes in it, and silliness, such as plenty of North Korean planes suddenly invading our airspace with zero response from the U.S. military. Then, there are thousands of HumVees, suddenly on the streets of America with North Korean military emblems on them. How did that suddenly happen without anyone knowing.



I liked that it shows a Marine who served in Afghanistan (Hemsworth) in a positive, patriotic light. But this movie is a cubic zirconium imitation of the original “Red Dawn.” Nothing too objectionable about it. But you should see the original, instead. There was absolutely no reason to remake it, other than that Tom Cruise’s son needed a gig, and Hollywood can’t come up with anything new.



ONE REAGAN


* “Silver Linings Playbook“: This movie is strictly for adults because of language and themes. It’s rated “R” for a reason. But it’s absolutely hilarious. I laughed and laughed. And, while I found it depressing at the beginning, it turned into a very happy, entertaining–if weird–movie.



Bradley Cooper plays a crazy guy who is released from a mental hospital to freedom, after severely beating his then-wife’s lover, after he walks in on the two of them taking a shower together. Cooper is delusional and still thinks his now-ex-wife still loves him and he wants to go see her. But there’s a restraining order out on him. Cooper’s parents are Robert De Niro (who, in a novel role for him, plays an Italian bookie) and Jacki Weaver (who looks and sounds like a dead ringer for Sally Struthers in this movie). Cooper drives his parents crazy, and soon his friends try to set him up with a mysterious woman (Jennifer Lawrence) whose husband cheated on her. She wants Cooper to dance with her in a dancing competition, and she and the dance practice are getting in the way of his obsession with finding his ex-wife.



Like I said, this is very funny, after being extremely depressing at first. But there is a lot of yelling and melodrama, which I could have done without. If you want a movie that is completely relaxing, this isn’t it. But it ends with a relaxing, happy conclusion.



TWO-AND-A-HALF REAGANS



* “Life of Pi“: After a storm kills most of his family and other passengers on an ocean liner, an Indian teenaged boy gets marooned on a boat in the middle of the ocean. He must endure and survive nearly a year of little food, plus he must find a way to live with a hungry tiger who is also on the tiny boat.



This is a lot like “Castaway,” but set on a boat and with a tiger instead of a volleyball. It was a good adventure and definitely thrilling, but most of it takes place on the boat in the ocean. And the ending is very annoying and a silly attempt to philosophize and play with your mind (which doesn’t work too well). The movie was a little slow and long, but it was entertaining. While it’s aimed at families and also kids, I wondered if kids might be scared by some of the violent animal attacks in a few scenes. It’s not a spectacular movie, but it’s okay.



ONE-AND-A-HALF REAGANS




* “The Flat“: It’s difficult to review this documentary without giving away the whole thing and engaging in spoilers. So, I’m limited in what I can say about it. I thought it was a fascinating, interesting movie, which made me think. At first, it blew my mind. But after I saw it and did some research into the object of criticism in the movie, I found that things were a little different than portrayed.



An Israeli Jewish director, Arnon Goldfinger, goes with his mother and other relatives to clean out the apartment of his maternal grandmother’s apartment after she passes away. His grandparents were proud German citizens who left Germany as the Nazis came to power, but despite living in Palestine and then Israel, they still thought of themselves as Germans. But, while going through his grandmother’s things, he notices something odd and disturbing, which he looks into further. And the more he looks, the more disturbing it gets. Goldfinger finds out some disturbing things about his grandparents and their friends, having to do with the Holocaust and the Nazis. With this movie, he’s opened a hornets’ nest. And after the research I did after the movie, I’m not entirely sure that Goldfinger is entirely fair to his grandparents. Plus, they aren’t around to answer.



I believe that part of this documentary was staged because, I wondered, did Goldfinger really have the cameras rolling, just in case they found something interesting in his grandmother’s apartment . . . or did they re-enact that part, once they did find that “something interesting?” It’s something I always wonder with these documentaries in which the cameras are already rolling when something “just comes up” that becomes the basis of the documentary.



Go see this movie and let me know what you think.



TWO-AND-A-HALF REAGANS



* “Rise of the Guardians“: This animated movie is aimed at kids and families with kids. The animation and 3D are fabulous and amazing. Can’t say as much for the story, which was fine and not objectionable in any way. It’s just that it was dull, and I felt like I’d seen it a million times before. Also, beware that uber-liberal maniac Alec Baldwin voices the Santa character (called “North” in this movie).



The story: when the bogeyman (called “Pitch”) turns kids’ dreams into nightmares and makes them stop believing in Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, the Sandman, and other imaginary characters. Those characters, including Jack Frost, are the “Immortial Guardians” of children, and Jack Frost leads them to stop this and fight off Pitch.



Fine for kids and families.



ONE REAGAN

“Team America” Rocks: Tribute to Kim Jung Il

Here is an interesting article from http://www.debbieschlussel.com/ about a movie depicting Kim Jong Il called "Team America." This follows this post about the case for stores such as Blockbuster. This follows THIS POST about some movies that have been released over the past few years that you might have missed! This all  follows this post about guidelines to chosing good movies to watch yourself!



“Team America” Rocks

By Debbie Schlussel

No wonder Sean Penn is miffed at Matt Stone and Trey Parker.



He and other liberal airhead celebs–like Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, and Alec Baldwin–finally get their comeuppance.



They’re dismembered, incinerated, and otherwise tortuously eliminated by the “South Park” creators.



Unfortunately, it’s just the puppet version. And it’s only on celluloid. The real-life versions of these self-righteous glitterati pains in the rear are still with us.



But it’s always nice to fantasize — as Stone and Parker do in Team America: World Police, a cinematic political satire, which debuts Friday.



Just like in real-life (though they won’t admit it), George Clooney, Matt Damon, Samuel L. Jackson, and other assorted idiotic Hollywoodites, are working with the terrorists. In this film, they are literally working with the terrorists—led by Baldwin and North Korean Communist leader Kim Jong-Il—to destroy us.



Reminiscent of John Kerry, power-mad marionette versions of Baldwin and his fellow Hollywooders kvetch that the War on Terror has made the world hate us. But the puppet-celebs hate us with equal vigor and work to stop Team America.



Penn constantly spouts off about his trip to Iraq, last year. On a Peter Jennings (who strangely escapes Stone’s and Parker’s ire) broadcast, Penn fertilizes lyrical on Iraqi life before “Team America”: “They had rivers of chocolate,” and the children had “gumdrop smiles.”  Sounds more like the set of “Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.”



As members of the “Film Actors Guild”, they are all FAGs.



Mustard-stained Michael Moore is a homicide bomber, blowing himself to bits (after stuffing himself with hot dogs, while protesting the War on Terror)!



I think I’ve just found my new fave filmmakers.



In the past, I’ve criticized Stone and Parker.  They created the absurd “That’s My Bush” for Comedy Central, planning to portray the Bush daughters as incestuous lesbian lovers.  But angry e-mails and phone calls appealed to the network’s better judgment, and the lesbian plot line was dropped.  Deservedly, the series failed and was cancelled after only a few episodes.



This time, Stone and Parker have chosen their targets with aplomb.



And they’ve redeemed themselves in other ways. In a recent Rolling Stone interview, they ripped Sean “P. Diddy” Colmes’ “Vote or Die” campaign. What P. Diddy really means is “Dummies Register to Vote Kerry or Die,” though those options might not be mutually exclusive.



Stone said he didn’t think uninformed people should be encouraged to go to the polls. And I agree. It’s only the liberals who want to register every Spicoli (that means you, Sean Penn) who can’t even decide the next place to pierce or tattoo, much less choose the next leader of the Free World. Remember Bill Clinton’s Motor Voter Bill? It’s helped P. Diddy on his way to getting a Million Moron March into the booth to pull the lever.



Ads for “Team America” announce: “The movie liberal Hollywood doesn’t want you to see. Conservatives fear it.”



Wrong! This conservative loved it.



If you are prudish, this movie is not for you. (Among other things, “multi-positioned” marionette sex scenes narrowly avoided an NC-17 rating and would be X-rated with human actors.)



But for the rest of us, this movie is hilarious. The laughs are at the expense of UN weapons inspectors, liberal Hollywood elites, smarmy Broadway shows with silly social messages, Communist and Islamic terrorists, and yes, our government:



Hans Blix, denied inspection access to Kim Jong Il’s palace, threatens to send a nasty letter from UN leaders. Amused by this impotence, Kim Jong Il feeds Blix to his pet sharks. How about adding Scott Ritter and Mohammed El-Baradei for dessert?

Janeane Garofalo, in a male voice, tells her fellow actors (FAGs) to read the newspaper and then present the information as their own opinions.

“Team America’s” hero, Gary Johnston, is plucked to fight terror from Broadway where he is starring in an absurd musical about AIDS (“Lease: The Musical”). A noblesse-oblige audience in suits and pearls is moved to tears over a ludicrous song, with lyrics “AIDS, AIDS, AIDS, AIDS, AIDS, everyone’s dead.” He’s “the perfect weapon” against terror, since he’s an actor who double-majored in theater and world languages at the University of Iowa.

In spying on terrorists in Egypt, Team America is pretty obtrusive. They wear red, white, blue and silver uniforms. The protagonist’s Middle Eastern disguise consists of black cotton-balls glued on his face. That’s a dig at our government’s incompetent agents, inadequate human intelligence, and the obtrusive Sky Marshalls we’ve been reading about –with their stiff cheap suits on flights.

Special-effects bonus: Downtown Paris gets destroyed (ditto for an Egyptian Pyramid). While Team America is fighting Islamic terrorists with WMDs, French men and women on Parisian streets are oblivious and clueless amidst the terror. Art imitates life.



Stone and Parker get it right. While they make fun of the government and how it conducts the War on Terror, their message is clear: Regardless of our faults, the terrorists are real bad guys, not us. That’s something Hollywood and the left don’t get. Stone and Parker have a field day with the self-hatred amongst that slice of so-called Americans.



“I’m sick of hearing actors talk about s–t they don’t know about," Stone says. "And we’ve been on the ‘bash Michael Moore’ bandwagon for a long time." “It’s fine and good for everyone to hate us (Americans) and think we’re (jerks), but there is a big difference between (jerks) and (psychos)” like Osama Bin Laden, Parker said.



Finally somebody’s teaching Hollywood the difference.

Alec Baldwin’s Race Card Game

An interesting post from http://bighollywood.breitbart.com about racism being falsely thrown around in Hollywood.


Alec Baldwin’s Race Card Game
by James Hudnall
After enduring another self immolating Bill Maher monologue on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” Alec Baldwin was asked if Rush Limbaugh is a racist. To which Alec fell into that trap so many of his peers have in recent days:
“I think you need to always distinguish the rank and file of the Republican Party and conservatives and voters from their media representation and media stars and I believe that the people who are in the media and prominent in the media in the conservative community, speaking on behalf of the Republican Party, have a very clear racist stripe through their commentary, consistently. Not just Limbaugh but all of those people. But I don’t think that their rank and file Republicans are like that.”
Well, at least he didn’t accuse all Republicans. I guess he wanted them to keep some of them watching his show.
If there’s a sure fire way to look old and busted in today’s media world it’s to make the sweeping generalization that people who disagree with your politics are racist. It’s such a 20th Century argument. Calling someone a racist with no proof is hack. It’s like calling someone evil just because they don’t agree with you. Oh, wait–the race card hustlers do that too! They look for any evidence they can, no matter how vague or slight, to blow up into an incident. And if they can’t find one, well, they just make it up.
None of the quotes attributed to Limbaugh were proven and in fact, they were retracted by the people who made the accusation.
But Baldwin, ever late to the game, had to throw it out there again. Way to be current, Alec! Got any Spiro Agnew accusations while you’re at it?
But let’s not pick on poor Alec, he’s not alone in his dated and lame arguments, We can add such youthful and hip (replacement candidates) as Jimmy Carter, Charlie Rangel, Maureen Dowd, Charlie Gibson, Bill Maher, Janeane Garofalo and Maxine Waters to the race card tournament. Just to name a few.
They want us to believe that anyone who disagrees with President Obama is a racist because he’s black. Hmm…that’s odd. Only two years ago the lefties didn’t think he was. That’s the power of magical thinking. You can change people’s color or invent quotes from thin air just by wishing them to be.
But it still makes you look like fools for doing it.
Fortunately, the president wisely came out and said that the critics of his policies are mostly not attacking him because of his race. He’s correct.
But there is a racist component here. And it’s actually coming from race card holders. They’re attacking Obama’s critics because of their race. They’re assuming that they’re all white. This is wrong for two reasons.
1. Not all of them are white, so in their minds, any Black, Asian, Latinos in the mix must be “race traitors,” which is a racist term.
2. It’s racist to assume white people’s motivations are always racist when it comes to people of color. A common claim from race card hustlers.
If white people were so racist they never would have abolished slavery, in fact, it’s an insult to the many who fought and died to end slavery. Oh, and by the way, the Republican party was founded on an abolition platform. President Abe Lincoln was a Republican.
If whites were so racist, they wouldn’t have voted for civil rights. Oh, and by the way, civil rights laws wouldn’t have passed without the help of Republicans. Many Democrats voted against the bills.
Oh, and by the way, it was progressive President Woodrow Wilson who segregated our military in the early 20th Century. He was a Democrat. Don’t you hate it when that happens? So was President Johnson who enslaved a several generations to the welfare state, which among other things devastated the black family. Progressives, and their social engineering. It has fail written all over it.
Calling Republicans racist when their current leader is black is as lame as calling Limbaugh a racist based on fabricated quotes that were already retracted.
Racism used to be such a radioactive thing. But because the left has so overplayed their hand, and used the race card to the point of hilarity, they’ve almost rendered it inert. People used to be cowed by the racism charge. Now they’re fighting back. Soon they will laugh at it. They risk making it cool to be called racist, when it’s lame-os that like to throw the term around.
When the left loses one of its most potent weapons, it becomes a laughing stock. It becomes the target of backlash.
They are the establishment now. They can’t blame Republicans now. The Democrats are in charge. As such, they can no longer hide behind the skirts of the oppressed. They are the oppressors.
Let’s face it, white guilt is based on a lie. Yes, you heard that right.
No other Western nation would have voted for a black man before America did. America is the least racist nation on earth. Why else do people of every color want to flock here?
Those who keep bringing up slavery and other things from generations past conveniently ignore the fact that those conditions were everywhere. Not just America. In many instances, it was much worse than here. In fact, slavery still exists in many other nations. At least America worked hard to change and improve ourselves. We’re ahead of the world in that regard.
The next time some politician or celebrity throws out the race card, they’ve revealed their irrelevance. They are old and busted.
The new hotness is to make them regret ever using it.