Some great news for our friend Andrew Klavan and his many fans, from Just So You Know: Klavan’s action-packed book series, The Homelanders, is the next collection of novels to hit the big screen. Summit Entertainment, the studio that brought you the Twilight movies, has optioned the young adult series for film. Considering Summit’s golden track record, could The Homelanders be as explosive as Twilight?
Shelby Steele returns to the pages of the Wall Street Journal with another provocative essay on the Barack Obama Phenomenon. But is freedom really in conflict with "the good"? Or is something else going on?
Jay Leno’s Tonight Show continued increasing its audience lead over Late Night with David Letterman in the most recent Nielsen ratings report.
I am proud to be a heterosexual man. This is something worth celebrating. Allowing myself to be seduced by fear and insecurity became a self-fulfilling prophecy of sabotage. Today I take full responsibility for my decisions and my actions. To keep this a secret from my public, as I did up until today, would be to indirectly diminish the glow that my kids were born with. These years in silence and reflection made me stronger and reminded me that acceptance has to come from within and that this kind of truth gives me the power to conquer emotions I didn’t even know existed. Just thought you’d like to know. This sort of thing is news, evidently.
Do you know an aspiring actor or actress? Heartland Truly Moving Pictures is holding a seminar and networking lunch on April 15 in Indianapolis, Indiana. Information here.
A bit of video is circulating the ‘net in which America Hating Leftist and Dictator Apologist Extraordinaire Sean Penn expresses his desire to see critics of Venezuelan Communist Dictator Hugo Chavez go “to prison” for expressing their views. Here’s the entire exchange from the March 5th, 2010 “Real Time with Bill Maher:” Sean: “Everyday this elected leader is called a … a dictator here, and we just accept it and accept it. And this is Main Stream Media who should … truly there should be a bar by which they … one goes to prison for these kinds of lies.” Bill: “I … I gotta move … to the panel cause I … we’ve … uh … we’re hoping … Sean: “Sorry” Bill: “No, No, No. Someday we’ll have you back, and we’ll ask you in more depth if he’s a dictator or not.” ‘If’ he’s a dictator, Mr. Maher? Did you miss the bit about shredding the Constitution’s First Amendment and throwing journalists in prison for dissenting from Sean Penn’s worldview? Maybe it’s a bit much to expect one Ignorant Leftist to confront another Ignorant Leftist on the niceties of Freedom of Speech. Instead Maher shifts subjects, giving Penn
It's a well-done movie, worthy of its source. The performances are excellent, the Boston locations perfect. I think (my memory may be fooling me) that the final crisis may have been presented with more ambivalence in the book. As it stands here, Kenzie's ultimate decision seems a little hard to understand.
Fantasy still dominates the U.S. movie box office. Leading in ticket revenue during its opening weekend, the Dreamworks animated adventure-comedy How to Train Your Dragon handily beat the raunchy comedy Hot Tub Time Machine, which was also in its opening weekend. Dragon brought in a healthy though not monumental or unexpected $43.3 million, while Time Machine came in below expectations, finishing third with only $13.7 million. The number 1 film of the previous three weeks, Alice in Wonderland, dropped to second place with a $17.3 million box office take. But don’t feel too sorry for the filmmakers—it has already swagged $656 million worldwide in just three weeks. A big reason for the drop in Alice attendance was . . . the debut of How to Train Your Dragon. U.S. movie theaters have a total of approximately 4,000 3D screens available nationwide, which means that when a warmly anticipated new 3D film appears, the reigning king of 3D gets bumped from many theaters, reducing revenues. James Cameron’s Avatar dropped out of the top 10 altogether, thanks at least in part to the shortage of 3D venues. Despite the shortage of screens, 3D movies have led the U.S. box office for nine
Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, doing his acclaimed step dance in 1932, back when dancing was still considered a manly thing to do. From Harlem Is Heaven:
… at least on Fox come May after the conclusion of it’s eighth “day,” otherwise known as a season. From The Hollywood Reporter: Tick, tick, tick … and done. After eight seasons, Fox’s “24” is coming to an end. The groundbreaking action drama will air its final real-time episode in May, the victim of a confluence of circumstances: a swelling budget, declining ratings and creative fatigue. BOOOOO!!!!! Apparently, due to the fact that salaries spiral upward dramatically the longer a show is on television (especially after the fifth season), Fox was paying an incredible $5 million an episode for this year’s installments. Let’s see … 5 million times 24 episode equals …. A LOT! But Jack Bauer himself, as he’s proven countless times on “24″ is hard to kill: Yet for fans of Jack Bauer, there remains hope. Studio 20th TV is developing a theatrical film that takes Bauer to Europe, and showrunner and executive producer Howard Gordon says other possibilities are being explored as well. “There are other possible iterations of Jack Bauer and his world,” Gordon said. The producers of “24″ have long begged off shifting Jack Bauer to the big screen because it would screw up the
This week: * Monday—Buster Keaton becomes a … detective? * Tuesday—A rare example of a film noir musical. * Wednesday—An account of a no-account count. * Thursday—Ginger Rogers gets tough. * Friday—Bogie can’t resist the Resistance. * Saturday—Robert Mitchum finds out who his friends are. * Sunday—A straight cop goes crooked to straighten out a crooked system. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Monday—March 29th 12:00 AM—Sherlock, Jr. (1924) In this silent film, a movie projectionist dreams himself into a mystery movie. 6:00 AM—Doctor X (1932) A reporter investigates a series of cannibalistic murders at a medical college. 8:00 PM—Monkey Business (1931) Four stowaways get mixed up with gangsters while running riot on an ocean liner. ———- Tuesday—March 30th 6:00 AM—Bluebeard (1944) A 19th-century Parisian puppeteer is killing the young women he employs. 9:00 AM—Blues in the Night (1941) The members of a traveling jazz band try to keep their leader from drinking himself to death. 2:30 PM—The Blue Gardenia (1953) A telephone operator kills in self-defense but can’t remember the details of the encounter. 4:00 PM—The Blue Dahlia (1946) A veteran fights to prove he didn’t kill his cheating wife. ———- Wednesday—March 31st 4:30 PM—Dark Purpose (1964) An American tourist falls in love with
Today’s Fiction Friday newsletter from the Culture Alliance included pieces from the Claremont Review of Books archives, back when that journal regularly reviewed fiction, and an excerpt from a Clark Ashton Smith short story with a main character some might identify. Once upon a time, the Claremont Review of Books regularly reviewed fiction and movies. Today if you subscribe to CRB or are able to find a copy at your local bookstore, you’ll note that fiction reviews are few and far between. Claremont’s archive unveiled the regular inclusion of opinion on novels released during the 1980′s as well as classics of Western literature in that journal’s pages. As this excellent journal matured, it seems to have left fiction behind. Instead, it devoted its energy to non-fiction and essays on current politics and public policy. As much as folks enjoy a good polemic or scholarly work on history and political philosophy, time must also be taken to explore, in the context of compelling fiction, what it is that makes us human. In “A Medieval Murder Mystery,” a review of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose from CRB Vol. III, No. 1 (Winter, 1984) , J.
Recent Comments