-By Warner Todd Huston
Channel 2 News is reporting that Eleventh Ward Alderman James Balcer is railing against the new movie Avatar because it portrays U.S. Marines as murderous villains.
Bachler is a decorated Marine that served in Vietnam and is outraged how the Corps is treated in James Cameron’s film.
Balcer says the film makes Marines “look like lunatics.” In reality, he said, “We are a good, generous country that helps people.”
Of course Ald. Balcer is right. This movie is a technical wonder, certainly. But the story line could have been written by a 10-year-old from Berkeley. It is blatantly anti-capitalist, anti-American, anti-Marine, and anti-military. In fact, it is anti-human. Worse it is based on the simple minded “White man saves the natives” storyline where a white guy discovers the simple, noble natives and turns himself into one of them then turns around to oppose his own people in order to “save” the natives.
This story has been done a thousand times and been done better. Dances With Wolves is that story, the Tom Cruise movie The Last Samurai is that story, to a degree Lawrence of Arabia is that story and all were done better than Avatar.
So good for Ald. Balcer.
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Chgo Alderman Knocks Movie Avatar”
Blame it on my British husband for turning me into a fan of Guy Ritchie as a director but I just love his movies! Sure, they’re violent but so is the news and if what is being done to the US Constitution by our ruling elites doesn’t qualify as excessively brutal, I don’t know what is. So, what can a maturing director, whose movies have convoluted plots and Dickensian characters, do but combine 1892 Victorian London and the greatest fictional detective of all, Sherlock Holmes? The mix works and it is magic. Sherlock Holmes is director Guy Ritchie’s masterpiece of grit, grime and gigantic characters all grinding together in an exciting mystery adventure film complete with ersatz occult magic hinting at New World Order trickery.
I have to admit it. I am jealous of former Vice President Al Gore. I want what he’s got, at least in a generalized way. 
When DVDs first began to contain those now ubiquitous special features, those mini documentaries, series of interviews, or behind the scenes shoots, it seemed like such an exciting idea, especially for film buffs (or series fans). But now that they have become fairly common and now that I’ve seen a lot of them, I have to say that they are almost entirely worthless for anything other than time-wasting, disc stuffers.
Roland Emmerich’s new end-of-the-world disaster film 2012 has a rollicking good time destroying every monument to man’s architectural genius in the world. The Sistine Chapel goes kablooie, as does the Vatican and the giant Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro. The White House gets flattened, too. All man’s most well known landmarks get turned to dust by Emmerich’s over-the-top movie effects team.
But by the time the year 2012 rolls around, director Roland Emmerich is obviously saying that Islam has already been wiped off the face of the Earth before the end came. There are no Saudi scenes of mayhem and destruction in his film. No Iranian landmarks get caved in, no destruction of Mecca and Medina are shown in Emmerich’s mashup masterpiece.
Michael Moore fancies himself a man of the left. He’s many times claimed to be the best friend to all unions. He’s claimed to be a man of the people… well, one that’s a mutli millionaire that rides about in limos, anyway. He’s even trying to advertise his new film by giving free tickets to union members. But, one union is refusing to accept those free tickets. Why? Because 
Orlando Sentinel movie reviewer Roger Moore was excited to report on the efforts of some Harry Potter fans that want to “
Way back when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, way back before personal computers, way back before cyberspace became the new frontier, there was Science Fiction and I was addicted to it. I read everything that I could get my hands on. I cut my baby teeth on Jules Verne and H.G. Wells but came to love all of Isaac Asimov’s works, read Heinlein until dizzy, lingered over Ray Bradbury’s prose-poetry, consumed A. E. Van Vogt, enjoyed Kurt Vonnegut’s quirky extrapolations, got into compare-and-contrast mode between Aldous Huxley and George Orwell’s dystopias, fantasized my way through Tolkein and C.S. Lewis and always made a beeline for anything written by Theodore Sturgeon, Philip K. Dick, Fritz Leiber, Harlan Ellison and Larry Niven. I was the first in line at the local news agent for the latest monthly editions of Amazing Adventures, Analog, and Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine.
I like the NBC series 
This year comedian Wanda Sykes was given the spotlight for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. This made everyone wonder if she’d throw a barb or two Obama’s way as is customary. All past hosts have spared no opportunity to skewer the current commander in chief and his administration. That is what the thing is for, after all. But with the kid gloves that the Old Media and Hollywood have handled Obama with thus far, the question reamained: would Sykes slap Obama?
I suppose if I was the ruler of the free world, I’d want it too. I mean, if I controlled all I survey, if the nation bowed before me, if the illiterati gave an obedient chuckle at my every quip, yet paused thoughtfully at my pretensions at seriousness, if the world placed me on my rightful pedestal, I’d imagine that the producers of the hottest new movie premiering this month would be similarly overawed that I’d like to see their little film.
Baltimore Sun TV critic David Zurawik should check into a clinic somewhere to have his delicate mental balance checked. Maybe they might have some nice medication he can take to temper his Palin Derangement Syndrome? His is so bad he can’t even write about a little reality TV show without 
I respect Polish concert pianist Krystian Zimmerman’s moxie. Oh, he hasn’t a clue what he is talking about, but he has the courage of his convictions at least, which is more than I can say for all those wild-eyed, half-informed, hypocrites in the American entertainment industry.
Proving the old adage that instead of sitting quietly letting everyone think you are an idiot one should speak up and prove it, funnyman John Cleese and Kung Fu action star Jackie Chan recently did some talking that they should probably have avoided. Apparently unaware that they’ve left office, Cleese unloaded on George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and seemed to say U.S. Marines weren’t very sophisticated at a recent visit to Cornell University. For his part, Jackie Chan announced to the world that Chinese people “needed controlling” because all that darn democracy is just too “chaotic” for them. One wonders where Jackie thinks all his many millions of dollars have come from: communism or democracy?
Personally, I am thankful to providence for bestowing Woody Harrelson, zombie fighter, unto this earth to defend us all from those wayward and dangerous zombie paparazzi. Why, we’d be overrun with the shuffling menaces were it not for the brave and selfless actions of Woody Harrelson, zombie fighter!
In a case of entertainment imitating entertainment, Arron Sorkin — maker of the faux president series West Wing — has hinted that he is soon to start development of another one of those behind-the-scenes TV shows, this one to be the goings on with a TV pundit show ala Keith Olbermann’s Count Down spectacle on MSNBC. So says 
OK, now by that headline you are most likely assuming that I am calling del Toro, Carrey and Penn Hollywood stooges and making fun of them. Of course, we already know that Penn and del Toro are stooges on the “useful idiot” level, but you may wonder why I am slapping Carrey? Well, I mean it in the strictest sense — that Hollywood is casting for a 
The self-aggrandizing denizens of Hollywood constantly scold Americans over a lack of national healthcare. It is the biggest failure of American society ever that there is no cradle to the grave program for free health care, they constantly tell us. And now, in keeping with these nearly universal Hollywood “principles,” to prove how Hollywood is far more moral than we lowly citizens of flyover country, and to show that they are better than the great unwashed in the backwaters of America… 
If you thought the last Batman movie, The Dark Knight, was dark and cynical, wait until you see Watchmen, arriving in theaters on March 6, 2009. Brooding Bruce Wayne will have nothing on a “hero” that rapes his sidekick, another one that has no interest in mankind at all, one that is a megalomaniac, one that is psychotic, and one that is overweight and sexually impotent all set against a backdrop of a United States that is many shades of despair and evil. It makes Batman, The Dark Knight, seem like a festival of sweetness and light. This is