Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks at the White House
Every seat of the White House Movie Theater was taken by, in Tom Hanks’ memorable words, "some sort of honcho and big shot" on Thursday evening for a screening of the first episode of HBO’s new miniseries The Pacific. Produced by Hanks and Steven Spielberg, the 10 part series tells the story of the brave Americans who fought in [...]
Roman Polanski’s "Pure Entertainment"
I recently complained about the tendency of filmmakers to deny the authorial intent of their films; it's one thing to make a truly ambiguous movie and then challenge the audience to discover for itself the meaning, but it's another thing entirely to simply deny the obvious point that you are making in your film.
We see another [...]
New GOP ad celebrating stimulus anniversary: ‘Boondoggle’
It was only a year ago that President Obama and Democrats in Washington pushed through their massive $787 billion, “must-pass,” largely unsuccessful, stimulus package, claiming that the stimulus bill was the silver bullet to fix the economy and bring back jobs. In their misguided little liberal minds they believed and claimed the best way to [...]
From Graham Road Elementary School to a less mature place
I suppose it’s still possible for a president to give a boffo State of the Union address and thereby boost his popularity, but much conspires against experiencing such success. The biggest headwind is the fact that, these days, Congress isn’t just the audience, it is an active participant.
The problem begins before the [...]
Time to Stop This Fight
On Tuesday evening, the disparity between Fox News’ ratings and those of its cable news competitors was remarkable:
More people watched Fox News than all of its cable news competitors combined, and CNN came in a dismal fourth. CNN’s ratings have been in a tailspin. Shockingly, CNN finished October out of the list of [...]
Lowdown in Minneapolis
We saw Boz Scaggs perform live with a jazz combo in Minneapolis at the Dakota Restaurant and Jazz Club earlier this year. Boz put on an awesome show in an intimate setting, covering some of the standards he has recorded in recent years as well as reinterpreting his hits of the 1970’s. We [...]
