Pat Dollard - The message is "the coolest, f**king most badass and most noble thing you can be today is a combat Marine. Period.”

Pat Dollard - Holly wood agent. Pat Dollard - hardcore combat film maker Pat Dollard - crazy person.....its all good. via Vanity Fair: Pat Dollard's War

In 2004, having made his name as Steven Soderbergh’s agent, Pat Dollard was the stereotypical Hollywood operator: coked-up, Armani-sheathed, separated from his fourth wife, and rapidly self-destructing. But when he hit bottom, Dollard didn’t go back to rehab; he went to Iraq, embedded with the Marines, and filmed a pro-war documentary... Young Americans

...Dollard was once a “doctrinaire liberal” who could even boast of close ties to Robert Kennedy Jr., but now speaks of his pro-war stance in the most militant terms: “This is a propaganda war, and if I can fight with a camera the same as a Marine with his rifle, I will.”

The message of my movie is simple: "If you’re a young person in America, the coolest, fucking most badass and most noble thing you can be today is a combat Marine. Period.”

21 Things We Learned From Hollywood

I have them posted here.

Redacted SUCKS!

UPDATE: THE MOVIE SUCKS! EVERYONE THINKS ITS A BOMB! ALL PROBABLE 3000 WATCHERS......NATIONWIDE! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! DE PALMA IS AN IDIOT!

Outside The Wire beats Redacted
Written by JD Johannes
Monday, 26 November 2007

Brian DePalma's award winning anti-war movie earned $25,628.
It was made for $5,000,000.

That is a .5% return.

My first documentary cost $35,000 to make, and thanks to the supporters of the Outside the Wire project, has made $23,464 or 67% return.

When one guy with a camera is beating Hollywood in rate of return and almost beating Hollywood in gross receipts--Hollywood has a problem

(previously posted)
As mentioned earlier, Brian De Palma is showing yet another P.O.S. anti-war movie. Yet this time, the movie will provide aid and comfort to the enemy. Confederate Yankee has a good take:

...As sweat drips in the eyes of soldiers and Marines as they attempt to bring peace to a land that has rarely known it, their enemies will be watching pirated and crudely-dubbed bootlegs of Redacted in training camps in Syria, in mosques in Saudi Arabia, and in homes throughout the Arab world, who already take a suspicious view of the American soldier in Iraq.

We will not see the pictures that would actually win the war, of an Iraqi father wrapping his arms around a suicide bomber to keep him from entering a mosque, or of the Iraqi interpreter who proudly dreams of becoming an American Marine. We won't see American ssaving Iraqi lives, or Iraqis saving American lives, or the brutality of those we fight.

Those, you see, are the pictures that Brian de Palma has redacted.

Hollywood Strike

Just sayin':

I don't really care if the writers' strike EVER ends. Do you? And why?

Music Industry In Your Pocket Again

Hat Tip: Drudge


Music industry entertainment-types are making another full court press to get into the wallet of Ameircan by force and recoup some of the money they feel they are losing due to slow record/CD sales.

With the aid of legislation like the Digital Millenium Copyrite Act, record companies -- with the aid of Hollywood "artists" -- have been suing P2P download sites like Napster almost out of business, then going after college students, old people, and anyone else downloading "pirated" music, and, lately filing suits -- and winning -- against internet radio stations that play music over the internet. Now, the fourth wave is beginning.

An entertainment industry group called Ameican Socitey of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) are filing suits against D.J.s who play music at parties, restaurants who play backgrouond music, and music played on "hold" lines on the phone, claiming that "Without a special license, owners of bars, clubs and restaurants could be sued for playing any one of 8 million recorded songs, even from their own CDs."

Quote:

"On Monday, ASCAP said it had filed 26 separate infringement actions against nightclubs, bars and restaurants in 17 states. Among them is a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Seattle against the Ibiza Dinner Club downtown. ...ASCAP says that besides broadcasting songs over the radio, television and Internet, the definition of performing copyrighted music includes playing it 'any place where people gather,' with the exception of small private groups.For restaurants, that includes playing songs as background music, by a DJ and even music-on-hold over phone lines, according to ASCAP's Web site.'As long as it's [played] outside a direct circle of friends and family, it is considered a public performance,' Candilora said. 'A musical composition is somebody's property.'

ASCAP alleged that a DJ at Ibiza played three copyrighted pop songs without paying a licensing fee, which Candilora calculated would have cost Ibiza $979 a year, considering the size of the venue and the type of performance."I think it's absurd," said Eshagi. "Not only DJs have bought that music, I also subscribe to an online music-use service, and I'm also paying the cable company for the same thing. I don't know how many times we have to pay for a song."

ASCAP, whose 300,000 members include such artists as Coldplay, Dr. Dre, Avril Lavigne and Elvis Costello, has investigators working in cities across the country to identify new restaurants, bars, theme parks or other establishments where music is used, Candilora said.
They visit venues to find out what songs are being played, then check to see whether the owner paid for a license." [Emphasis added.]

End quote.

Looks like Hollywood is again taking a lesson from government (or vice versa) by learing how to tax orinary people over and over again on the same money. Not long form now, it will be a federal offence -- literally -- to hum your summer favorites in public. I have long ditched the record industry in so far as buying music. I can't remember the last full CD that I bought. But if the industry really wanted to improve sales they could do what the rest of industry does: market a better product and a better price. As the average price for a Cd nears $20 each, and the level of Hollywood performances playable in public goes down, their answer is not to look at themselves, it is to see what segment of their own audience they can isolate and peeve-off by whining about not making enough money. This at the same time that channels like E! and VH1 have shows about the money and extravagance that goes into Hollywood weddings, alone!
Somehow, my heart doesn't bleed for them. I know there are struggling artists who want every dime they can get to go on, but somehow I don't think Elvis Costello and Coldplay count in that category.

Go ahead "artists." Piss-off the public with lawsuits and stories of your stolen earnings by the very people who promote and support your "work." The only one that loses in the end is you. We can still freely humm.

Hollywood Promising More Anti-War Movies

Hollywood Promising More Anti-War Movies


Hat Tip: Drudge

Drudge linked to an article this morning in the New York Times where the Hollywood elites in the movie industry promise to be even more brazenly anti-war and anti-American than they have already been (If that’s possible!)

“LOS ANGELES, July 25 — On a night four years ago, five soldiers back from three months in Iraq went drinking at a Hooters restaurant and a topless bar near Fort Benning, Ga.
Before the night was over, one of them, Specialist Richard R. Davis, was dead of at least 33 stab wounds, his body doused with lighter fluid and burned. Two of the group would eventually be convicted of the murder, another pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and the last confessed to concealing the crime.
Now some in Hollywood want moviegoers to decide if the killing is emblematic of a war gone bad, part of a new and perhaps risky willingness in the entertainment business to push even the touchiest debates about post-9/11 security, Iraq and the troops’ status from the confines of documentaries into the realm of mainstream political drama.”

Personally, I don’t know how anyone could have looked at “Jarhead” and felt Hollywood was patting our troops on the back. If you haven’t seen it, don’t bother. Our soldiers are portrayed as sexually crazed, murderous killers whose great hope in life in to get laid one more time, and, oh yeah, maybe I can kill someone today. As the end credits roll you don’t exactly feel like cheering to be an American. Boy, we’ve come a long way from “Missing In Action,” “Rambo 2” and “Uncommon Valor.” (And this is giving these movies the benefit of the doubt; the story lines revolve around an American government covering up or refusing to rescue soldiers in captivity. As a redeeming quality, they at least feature a main character who says “screw you” to the government and goes off to rescue their comrades at arms on their own, or with limited help.)

Hollywood is (or should be) thanking the Bush administration for one thing, though: giving them a new setting for their anti-war propaganda; they can finally throw away all those sets and stages of Vietnam. The list of movies NOT encouraging you to raise your flag on Memorial Day:

Full Metal Jacket
Apocalypse Now
and the award winning Platoon. (Never has a movie successfully gone to such great lengths to show the real enemy is the soldier beside you, not the one firing the AK-47.)
Throw in the myriad of comedy’s that show American soldiers stealing everything in Bagdad, or invading third-world countries and you can see how we have gotten to where we are. Yes, I know the latter movie was a comedy and was meant to be funny to us, but run that movie in, say, Fallujah, and it would be the “shock and awe” equivalent of our Hogan’s Heroes did with our opinion of the Germans. Add that to the fact that laughter, much less humor is a foreign concept to jihadists and what you have is propaganda, not a fun night in front of the tube.)

In it’s dedication to broadcasting it’s operation plans to the enemy, the left’s beginning salvo of rocket fire to frag the American psyche for a left-wing political victory begins on Sept 14th with the release of Warner Brothers’ “In the Valley of Elah”:

“On Sept. 14, Warner Independent Pictures expects to release “In the Valley of Elah,” a drama inspired by the Davis murder, written and directed by Paul Haggis, whose “Crash” won the Academy Award for best picture in 2006. The film stars Tommy Lee Jones as a retired veteran who defies Army bureaucrats and local officials in a search for his son’s killers. In one of the movie’s defining images, the American flag is flown upside down in the heartland, the signal of extreme distress.”
You have got to be kidding me!! The only people I know of who use this form of “extreme distress” are gullible left-wing nut jobs who thought “Loose Change” was great, the Palestinian “militants” really want peace, and illegal aliens who are afraid we will actually ask them to come through the front door into this country a few at a time instead of bum-rushing the border.

What else is on tap? Hollywood will revise and re-introduce the military victim again; more veterans coming home mal-adjusted, unable to adapt and cope with society, and waiting for the least little thing to set them off into a murderous rampage on men, women, children, and pets: more vibrant and frightening versions of “Born on the 4th of July” and the first “Rambo.” That will make you feel real good the next time your daughter brings home a sharp-dressed career oriented military man. (You know the only safe bets for well adjusted grandchildren are the long-haired dope-smoking rockers who are more concerned with the preservation of brush fields in Brazil than putting your grandkids into a private school that will teach them to actually read and write at their grade level.)

More movies to look forward to:
* “New Line Cinema will release “Rendition,” in which Reese Witherspoon plays a woman whose Egyptian-born husband is snared by a runaway counterterrorism apparatus.”
* “In “Grace Is Gone,” directed by James C. Strouse and due in October from the Weinstein Company, John Cusack and two daughters struggle with the loss of a wife and mother who is killed on duty.”
* Kimberly Peirce’s “Stop-Loss,” set for release in March by Paramount, meanwhile, casts Ryan Phillippe as a veteran who defies an order that would send him back to Iraq.
* “Paul Greengrass, the director of “The Bourne Ultimatum,” in which the bad guys belong to a similar rogue unit, is adapting Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s book about the Green Zone in Baghdad, “Imperial Life in the Emerald City,” for Universal Pictures.”
* “Brian De Palma’s “Redacted,” focusing on an Army squad that persecutes an Iraqi family, is to be released in December by Magnolia Pictures.”
* “Sony Pictures is developing a film based on the story of Richard A. Clarke, the former national security official and Bush administration critic.”

Neither is Hollywood hiding the fact that these movies are designed to move the audience to question American policy toward the Iraq War, our involvement in Iraq, and the current occupants of the "Oval Office." Indeed several movies are timed to come out during party elections, and the general election for President. Scott Ruddin who produced the movie “Stop Loss” says about the timing of the upcoming anti-war movies, since we are still involved in the conflict: “Media in general responds much more quickly [to current events] than ever before” adding “Why shouldn’t movies do the same.” His movie is also one timed to come out during the presidential campaign. Director Paul Haggis (he directed “Crash” and has been noted for his opposition to the war) says “This is not one of our brightest moments in America.” “We should not have gotten involved.” He goes even further revealing to writer Michael Cieply that “Valley of Elah” “is meant to raise questions about ‘what it does to these kids’ to be deployed in a situation where enemies are often indistinguishable from neutral civilians, and the rules of engagement may force decisions that are difficult to live with.”
So the latest attempt will be to use “the tear-jerker” and the difficulty of adjusting to life with war injuries and amputations, to roll back support for a war that was meant to secure our country and the world against terrorists who want to have “September 11th”-style attacks every day.

So what’s the answer here? Every red-blooded American who believes in the troop, the war, and/or the president, is going to have to go into flag waving overtime, to compete with the added onslaught of negativity and anti-war/anti-America fervor that will kick up starting in only a few weeks. We are going to have to take our actions to the people and make them as high-profile as possible. Don’t miss an opportunity to speak out because your opposition is not. You might even have to politely get “in the face” of your local activists, but meet them with believe, courage, and conviction. Your cause is right, theirs, though with the best of intentions, maybe, IS NOT.

No Lindsey, None of the Time

I bent my own rules to talk about Paris "you-know-who."
On Lindsey, I will not budge.
No Lindsey, none of the time.

Zip, sero, nada.

She's Out -- After 5 Days

I don’t generally blog about Hollywood-related issues, because, quite frankly, Hollywood bores me. However, with the latest developments in the Paris Hilton “Jail” saga, I have just had enough. If I don’t vent now, my head will explode. Paris, after spending 5 days of her 45-day jail sentence in a “special needs” detention facility will now spend the other 40 days sentenced to life at her home wearing an ankle bracelet, due to “unspecified medical” conditions.

UPDATE*** 6/8/07
I hear she's getting hauled back into court this morning. Maybe we might see some justice after all.
************
Here’s the details:

“LOS ANGELES (Map, News) - Paris Hilton was released from a Los Angeles County jail early Thursday because of an unspecified medical problem and will fulfill the reminder of her sentence in home confinement, a sheriff's spokesman said.
The 26-year-old hotel heiress was sent home shortly after 2 a.m. fitted with an electronic monitoring bracelet. She had spent five days at the Century Regional Detention Facility in suburban Los Angeles for violating probation in an alcohol-related reckless driving case.

"I can't specifically talk about the medical situation other than to say that, yes, it played a part in this," said sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore.

Hilton had been sentenced to 45 days behind bars, but had been expected to serve 23 days because of state rules allowing shorter sentences for good behavior.

Whitmore said that under the new agreement, Hilton would be confined to her home for 40 days.

"Because she has agreed to this through her attorney, her sentence is now back up to the 45 days. She has served already five days so that's 40 days," he explained.

Hilton checked into the Century Regional Detention Facility just after 11:30 p.m. Sunday. She had surrendered to authorities with little fanfare after a surprise appearance at the MTV Movie Awards, where she worked the red carpet in a strapless designer gown.

"I am trying to be strong right now," she told reporters at the time. "I'm ready to face my sentence. Even though this is a really hard time, I have my family, my friends and my fans to support me, and that's really helpful."”

***


I challenge anyone not a “Holly-s**t” celebrity to get a DUI, drive on a suspended license and get caught (after an accident) and be able to report to jail at 11:30pm when you are done chasing other celebs at the MTV Movie Awards.

Let’s be honest: if there was anyone in the world who could serve 45 days in jail and suffer no lasting consequences, it’s Paris Hilton. She has nowhere to go, nothing to loose, and it will – more than likely – be an enhancement to her “career” rather than a hindrance.

1. She will not suffer and significant financial consequences for being “locked up” for 45 days! She doesn’t work a 40 hour a week job for $50K a year. She won’t loose her home, car, family, and livelihood. She is an heiress to the Hilton Hotel fortune, in addition to what she has made on her own in television, a few movies, and the possible royalties from the video tape distribution of her and a former boyfriend having sex.

2. She was not serving 45 days in San Quinton. She was not going to serve her time with the ladies of “Set It Off.”; she was being sent to a special facility that catered to those who could not be mixed with the general prison population. “Hilton was housed in the "special needs" unit of the 13-year-old jail, separate from most of its 2,200 inmates. The unit contains 12 two-person cells reserved for police officers, public officials, celebrities and other high-profile inmates. She didn't have a cellmate.” Heck, a lot of inmates would kill – Oops, did I say that? – to have only themselves in one of those tiny two-person cells.

3. What medical need – except hospice, maybe – could she possibly get at home that could not be provided to her in the city jail system? It’s Los Angeles, CALIFORNIA for crying out loud! They spend tons on taking care of people in jail that they are yet to provide for those who are on the outside. Since the sentence was changed for medical reasons, unless Paris blabs, the reason in question is hidden from the world’s scrutiny due to medical privacy laws. The rest of the nation has no way to know if the Cali legal system gave in to pressure uphold the law and it’s own sentencing. It sure doesn’t look like it did so far.

The one thing that might even this out might be chaining her to her designer sofa and making her watch Court TV for the whole remaining 45 days – including the 2am “info-mericals.” That would seem tougher than her punishment so far. Right now, it looks as another case of special treatment.
That’s a shame. The court had an opportunity to show that the same law – including sentencing – applied to everyone and not just the rank-and-file (which is really needed) while dealing with someone who both deserved it due to her act (no pun intended) and would suffer the least lifestyle consequences.

"300" Movie; Iran Upset At 'Psycological Warfare' by U.S.

Looks like the Iranians are not happy with “300.” Imitating members of the “tin foil hat” crowd, Iranian officials are calling the movie a conspiracy between “Hollywood and ‘cultural authorities’ in the U.S. Little did he know, Hollywood considers itself to be the cultural authority of the US, and is already (for the most part) in the back pocket of the Islamic regime.


“An Iranian official on Sunday lashed out at the Hollywood movie "300" for insulting the Persian civilization, local Fars News Agency reported.
Javad Shamqadri, an art advisor to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, accused the new movie of being "part of a comprehensive U.S. psychological war aimed at Iranian culture", said the report.
Shamqadri was quoted as saying "following the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Hollywood and cultural authorities in the U.S. initiated studies to figure out how to attack Iranian culture," adding "certainly, the recent movie is a product of such studies."
The movie's effort wound be fruitless, because "values in Iranian culture and the Islamic Revolution are too strongly seated to be damaged by such plans", said the Iranin official.”

I hadn't seen the movie yet, as I have been busy, but if it makes "Iranian official" Shamqadri upset, I like it already. Seeing "300" now moves to the top of my list of things to do. BUT, what can you expect: Islamics didn't like "24" either.

Goodnight Godfather

Before we get down to business, I wanted to make a short statement about the passing of James Brown on Christmas Day. I normally don’t get into Hollywood that much. Quite frankly, they don’t interest me a whole lot. While there are some good people in Hollywood (a few) but a lot of them are ruthless, over-indulged, sex and drug addicts, who aren’t the greatest people to go to, to get answers on life’s toughest questions.

With this said, I know James Brown could be a great example of what you shouldn’t do in a lot of areas in life. He was known as much for controversy in his personal life as he was for his great showmanship. The “Godfather of Soul” went through messy divorces, run-ins with the law, and had a very public drug addiction that cost him a lot. He had his failings as all people do.

But there is another part of his life where he shined at, and this was not so much as to his music, as it was as him being one of the first blacks to really make it big in show business. Most blacks up till that time never really had anything to show for all their hard work and big hits. The company’s that produced their records made more money than the artists of his time did. ‘The Godfather” was one of the people who helped turn this around. In the end, he became popular enough to begin to demand more for his work, instead of letting big conglomerate decide what he was worth. His music sold well, and the people who liked his music would show up at the concerts from all over; he was a star with draw-power. He learned to harness that power and use it to demand better than what racism and treatment of black entertainers at the time usually got. This, as is usually the case, became a light for others to follow. For that, those in his business who know, should be thankful. So, while those in Hollywood thank him for his music, they have something else to thank him for. Let’s see who remembers.