Category: Hollywood

‘Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation’: Tom Cruise and friends continue churning out cool spy flicks

August 8, 2015August 8, 2015by Douglas Ernst7 Comments

Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation not only is a genuinely fun summer spy movie, but it now serves as the cinematic antacid for anyone who made the mistake of seeing Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four. The 5th installment of the Mission: Impossible franchise has everything fans expect from it — great acting, twists and turns, exotic locations, humor, amazing stunts, etc. — and there isn’t one of those levels on which it disappoints.

This time around, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his IMF buddies are tracking the “anti-IMF” known as The Syndicate. There is only one problem: CIA Director Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin) saw to it that the U.S. government officially shut down IMF. If Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), William Brandt (Jeremy Renner), and Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) help Ethan in his quest to bring to the “Rogue Nation,” then they will be committing an act of treason.

One aspect of Rogue Nation that helped guarantee its success was the ability of Rebecca Ferguson to nail the role of Ilsa Faust. She’s convincingly tough as nails, alluring, smart, cunning and athletic. She isn’t just a pretty woman in a fancy dress — she’s a take-no-prisoners, highly-trained intelligence agent (who may or may not have gone rogue).

Rogue Nation’s villain, played Sean Harris, is also impressive. Solomon Lane is convincingly one step ahead of Ethan Hunt throughout the movie, and in general the only thing to really gripe about is his brief time wearing a black turtleneck. No matter how evil a character is, it’s always slightly harder to take him seriously if he looks like the old Mike Meyers Saturday Night Live skit “Sprockets”… Regardless, it says something about a movie when the worst a critic can do is to complain about clothes the villain wore for less than five minutes of screen time.

If you like Tom Cruise movies, then see Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation. If you don’t like Tom Cruise and have just made up your mind that anything starring him is just “bad,” then take a moment to realize that your lack of objectivity is preventing you from seeing a really fun espionage flick.

In short, this movie reviewer hopes that Tom Cruise has a least another two or three Mission: Impossible movies up his sleeve, because Rogue Nation was one of his best efforts yet.

Alan Moore blasts ‘catastrophic’ superhero fixation of a culture on life support

July 23, 2015July 23, 2015by Douglas Ernst16 Comments

A friend of mine sent me a fascinating Alan Moore interview from 2014. The comic industry icon told Pádraig Ó Méalóid at Slovobooks that the heightened popularity of Marvel and DC superheroes may be ‘culturally catastrophic’.

The Guardian reported January 21, 2014:

“To my mind, this embracing of what were unambiguously children’s characters at their mid-20th century inception seems to indicate a retreat from the admittedly overwhelming complexities of modern existence,” he wrote to Ó Méalóid. “It looks to me very much like a significant section of the public, having given up on attempting to understand the reality they are actually living in, have instead reasoned that they might at least be able to comprehend the sprawling, meaningless, but at-least-still-finite ‘universes’ presented by DC or Marvel Comics. I would also observe that it is, potentially, culturally catastrophic to have the ephemera of a previous century squatting possessively on the cultural stage and refusing to allow this surely unprecedented era to develop a culture of its own, relevant and sufficient to its times.”

Mr. Moore is close — he’s so close — but he doesn’t seem ready to acknowledge that the catastrophe has arrived. It is now. We are living through it. An introduction to our cultural implosion can be found in my Nov. 14, 2014 blog post titled: “Rossetta scientist cries over feminist outrage at his shirt: It’s been fun, Western Civilization.” In short: societies that live in perpetual fear of the “micro-aggression” are societies that have seen better days.

For those who want to know just how obsessed our culture is with superheroes, I suggest watching Red Letter Media’s “Nerd Talk: Sequels, Spin-Offs, and Standalones,” which was posted July 22. It perfectly highlights just how much of an industry “nerdom” has become. Other symptoms of Western civilization’s disease might include the preponderance of men who spend inordinate amounts of time playing video games, collecting figurines, endlessly cycling through imgur, or trolling Tumblr — while simultaneously showing little to no interest in expanding their own intellectual horizons.

There is nothing wrong with having an interest in video games or superhero movies, but there is something culturally suicidal when large segments of the population delve deep into fantasy worlds before they have a sound grasp of reality.

In a strange way, technology acts like a double-edged sword: our standard of living is so high and our problems so few and far between that we invent dragons to slay (e.g., political pundits must be excoriated for not being “polite to the pronouns” of transgender individuals). The poorest Americans live better than the kings of old, and so they engage in sad and pathetic wars over whether or not The Dukes of Hazzard is too offensive for television.

As the character Cooper says in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar: “We used to look up in the sky and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt.”

For all intents and purposes, America has become a nation filled with infantile men and women who fight over intellectual belly button lint. They feign outrage over puerile affairs while legitimate threats to the safety and security of future generations mount around them. Bubble-butted celebrities bump serious news stories off the front page. Strange diversity quotas for Star Wars movies that don’t even have finished scripts are more talked about than state-sponsored hackers stealing the personal data of millions of federal employees. To put it more succinctly, we are lost.

If you get a chance, read Mr. Moore’s interview with Pádraig Ó Méalóid. It’s titled ‘Last Alan Moore Interview?’. If it is, then it’s definitely one worthy of the man’s exit from public life. Time and time again, he puts his finger on the pulse of all that ails us, but for whatever reason he doesn’t give his patients a frank diagnosis: Western civilization has a fever. Instead of going to the doctor, its men and women are going to movie theaters, man-caves to play video games, or San Diego Comic-Con.

Daredevil: Charlie Cox and crew give fans a winning Marvel crime drama

April 29, 2015April 29, 2015by Douglas Ernst13 Comments

At some point in time an executive at ABC Studios said, “I think Daredevil would be perfect for Netflix.” That man or woman should be given a raise, because all 13 episodes of the show’s first season come together to form an incredibly entertaining product. Charlie Cox in the starring role does a commendable job as Matt Murdock, and most of his supporting cast delivers solid performances (particularly Vondie Curtis-Hall as Ben Urich).

One of the best scenes that sums up what Daredevil is all about involves courtroom closing arguments in the third episode. Matt and his law partner, Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson), must give an honest defense for a dubious client.

Mr. Murdock says:

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, forgive me if I seem distracted. I’ve been preoccupied as of late with questions of morality. Of right and wrong, good and evil. Sometimes the delineation between the two is a sharp line. Sometimes it’s a blur. And often it’s like pornography — you just know it when you see it.

A man is dead. I don’t mean to make light of that. But these questions — these questions — are vital because they tether us to each other, to humanity. Not everyone feels this way. Not everyone sees the sharp line, only the blur. A man is dead. A man is dead, and my client, John Healy, took his life. This is not in dispute. It is a matter of record. Of fact. And facts have no moral judgment. They merely state what is. Not what we think of them. Not what we feel. They just are. What was in my client’s heart when he took Mr. Prohaszka’s life — whether he is a good man or something else entirely — is irrelevant. These questions of good and evil, as important as they are, have no place in a court of law. Only the facts matter.

My client claimed he acted in self defense. Mr. Prohaszka’s associates have refused to make a statement regarding the incident. The only other witness, a frightened young woman, has stated that my client was pleasant and friendly, and that she only saw the struggle with Mr. Prohaszka after it had started. Those are the facts. Based on these — and these alone — the prosecution has failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that my client wasn’t acting solely in self-defense. And those, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, are the facts. My client, based purely on the sanctity of the law, which we’ve all sworn to uphold, must be acquitted of these charges. Now, beyond that, beyond these walls, he may well face a judgment of his own making. But here, in this courtroom, the judgment is yours and yours alone.” — Daredevil: Episode 3: Rabbit in a Snowstorm.

The fascinating thing about Daredevil is that each character has their own cross to bear, and over the course of the first season viewers get to see how they stumble, fall, get back up again, and continue moving forward while trying to find the righteous path. For Matt that means figuring out how to bring criminals to justice when the system designed to do just that has been corrupted.

Matt Murdock is aided in that task by his Catholicism and a priest he speaks to for guidance. He even jokes with Claire during an exchange in “Cut Man” from Episode 2:

Claire: I find a guy in a dumpster who turns out to be some kind of blind vigilante who can do all sorts of weird shit — like smell cologne through walls and sense whether someone is unconscious or faking it. Slap on top of that he can take an unbelievable amount of punishment without one damn complaint.

Matt Murdock: That last part is the Catholicism.

Daredevil’s writers strike a fine balance throughout the season in terms of addressing Murdock’s faith. It is very much a part of who he is, but it never becomes preachy, nor is it denigrated. This is a welcome surprise; covering themes found in Hubert Van Zeller’s “Suffering, The Cross of Christ and Its Meaning For You,” will only make Daredevil a better show.

While Mr. Murdock draws strength from his spirituality, it is also stressed that all of us need friends and family to lean on in tough times. The crosses we carry can be heavy, and the body is often weak. Without trusted allies, many of us would not be long in this world.

Matt delivers this message during Episode 11’s “The Ones We Leave Behind.”:

Matt Murdock: I had a really shitty night. The kind where you think you’ve seen the bottom of humanity, but the pit keeps on getting deeper. You know? I can’t do this alone. I can’t. I can’t take another step.

Karen: You’re not alone. You never were.

In short, Daredevil is a great fusion of crime drama and superhero fare. If you have Netflix, then it’s worth checking out. If you don’t have Netflix, then you may want to consider getting it when Daredevil’s second season arrives.

Robert Downey Jr. ambushed over politics: Reporters want Iron Man to be a liberal activist

April 22, 2015April 22, 2015by Douglas Ernst9 Comments

I said in 2013 that one of the reasons conservatives defended Robert Downey Jr. was because liberals attacked the man. Perhaps the best example was the 2011 hit piece from Jeffrey Wells’ Hollywood Elsewhere (now flushed down the Memory Hole), in which an anonymous source said the actor’s values “are pure Republican values.” That came after an interview in The New York Times that drove liberals batty, but before the actor attended a fundraiser for President Obama. Apparently Robert Downey Jr’s ideological blasphemy is still stuck in the media’s craw because he was just ambushed during an interview with British reporter Krishnan Guru-Murthy.

The Huffington Post reported Wednesday on the interview, which ended with Marvel Studio’s Iron Man walking out:

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: I’d really like to ask you about a quote you gave to The New York Times. I don’t want to pry so if you don’t want to talk about it that’s fine, but what you said to The New York Times was — it was about, it was after your incarceration and you said that you can’t go from a $2,000 a night hotel suite to a penitentiary and understand it and come out a liberal. I just wondered what you meant by that.”

Robert Downey Jr.: The funny thing is — and I appreciate your point of view — things you said 5-7 years ago or things you said in an interview that made sense to you at the time — I could pick that apart for two hours and I’d be no closer to the truth than I’d be giving you some half-assed answer right now. I couldn’t even really tell you what a liberal is, so therein lies the answer to your question.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: The statement sort of stands by itself, doesn’t it? Does that mean that you’re not a liberal? Or that you came out of a prison not being liberal?

Robert Downey Jr.: Are we promoting a movie? To me the thing is that it’s — I’m certainly not going to backpedal on anything I’ve said, but I wouldn’t say I’m a Republican or a liberal or a Democrat. I think when I was talking to the person who was doing the interview that day and that just happened to be my opinion. That’s the nice thing, you can have opinions and they change and flow.”

Robert Downey Jr. is in a horrible position. A guy who has been to prison probably realizes that hard-core criminals will never adopt the peace-love-dope worldview of liberal beat poetry readings and bongo-circles. Perhaps he’s a fiscal conservative who is socially liberal. Maybe he was against the war in Iraq but he understands that leaving radical Islamic head choppers the their own devices is a bad idea.

How does the man define himself politically, especially when he has to work with hard-core liberal activists like Joss Whedon and Mark Ruffalo? The best thing to do to keep the peace on set is probably to just stay silent and stick to playing Tony Stark really well — but that is not good enough for the media.

Robert Downey Jr. will always have to be on guard against a media ambush because he refuses to use his Twitter feed to lecture people on climate change. He doesn’t get into abortion politics. He doesn’t harangue people about minimum wage laws or demonize Republican politicians. This is unacceptable to pundits who want celebrities to push liberal politics on as many people as possible while they’re in the limelight.

The vast majority of Americans do not want Hollywood stars to lecture them on public policy. They appreciate that Robert Downey Jr. keeps his politics close to the vest. They are glad that he walked out on Krishnan Guru-Murthy and wish more actors would follow his example.

The moral of the story is this: The creative team behind “Avengers: Age of Ultron” could learn a thing or two from Robert Downey Jr. If Marvel’s talent wants independent, libertarian, and conservative fans to continue flocking to Marvel Studio movies, then they should knock it off with the political activism.

Ben Affleck went full-Lex Luthor instead of Batman, pushed PBS to censor slave-owning ancestry

April 20, 2015April 20, 2015by Douglas Ernst5 Comments

I said in August of 2013 that Ben Affleck’s political activism would derail the ability of many people to see Batman v Superman with an open mind. The actor would go on to insult Republican moviegoers by December. He then disappeared to make Gone Girl, only to almost break down into tears while discussing radical Islam with Bill Maher in October, 2014. Mr. Affleck is now in the news with another embarrassing story: he pressured PBS to censor his slave-owning ancestry while filming PBS’s Finding Your Roots series.

USA Today reported April 19 on the newest Wikileaks revelation:

The emails between Finding Your Roots host Henry Louis Gates and Sony chief executive Michael Lynton show Gates’ dealing with the issue of featuring the slave-owning portion of Affleck’s past on the popular PBS program.

“Here’s my dilemma: confidentially, for the first time, one of our guests has asked us to edit out something about one of his ancestors — the fact that he owned slaves,” Gates’ leaked email states. ” Now, four or five of our guests this season descend from slave owners, including Ken Burns. We’ve never had anyone ever try to censor or edit what we found. He’s a megastar. What do we do?” …

“Once we open the door to censorship, we lose control of the brand,” Gates writes in the emails, adding that he wouldn’t “demonize” the slave-owning ancestor.

“Now Anderson Cooper’s ancestor was a real s.o.b.; one of his slaves actually murdered him. Of course, the slave was promptly hanged. And Anderson didn’t miss a beat about that,” Gates writes.

The series ultimately did leave out Ben Affleck’s slave-owning ancestry, laughably saying “We decided to go with the story we used about his fascinating ancestor who became an occultist following the Civil War.” Sorry PBS, but now everyone knows that you have “lost control of the brand.”

A friend of mine asked why Ben Affleck would run from his history instead of embracing it. The answer once again ties back to the actor’s political activism.

Ben Affleck not only runs from history — he tries to revise it. He is the type of person who literally stops himself mid-sentence while saying Americans are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights to say that Americans are “endowed by our forefathers with certain inalienable rights.” Rights don’t come from God, according to Batman — they come from a small group of liberal guys like Ben Affleck in the nation’s capital.

Given that the Hollywood actor is a committed liberal, it’s a safe bet to say that on the right episode of “Real Time” with Bill Maher, he would be happy to lecture Americans on “white privilege.” It’s also likely that when cornered on constitutional debates, he would resort to the tried-and-true red herring that “the founding fathers had slaves” (as if a man’s flaws invalidate the timeless principles he espouses).

Ben Affleck knows that the knowledge of his slave-owning ancestry makes it near-impossible for him to spew spurious racial arguments with impunity. Bloggers like yours truly will always be able to joke, “You know what, Ben? You’re right! We need to do something about white privilege. Why don’t you lead the way by paying reparations to Americans whose ancestors were chained and whipped by Old Man Affleck.”

It is now apparent that Ben Affleck will act manipulatively behind the scenes like a wannabe Lex Luthor when his political activism is threatened. There is no reason for a man to hide from his family’s past unless it threatens to topple the moral pedestal he stands upon while lecturing the rest of us.

If PBS executives are smart, then they will release a version of Finding Your Roots where Ben Affleck is confronted about his slave-owning ancestry. Why would anyone want to watch a show titled “Finding Your Roots” when in reality it should be called “Finding the Roots that Hollywood Wants You To See”? They wouldn’t.

Word of advice for Zack Synder: Tell Ben Affleck to go into his own personal Batcave and not come out until it’s time to promote Batman v Superman. It’s hard to believe Ben Affleck is Bruce Wayne when every few months he strengthens the impression that he’s really just a pampered Hollywood activist.

Michelle Rodriguez calls out Hollywood on lazy diversity shortcuts, apologizes to online babies

March 1, 2015March 1, 2015by Douglas Ernst69 Comments

You can get yourself in trouble by telling the truth in Hollywood. Just ask Michelle Rodriguez of “Fast and Furious” and “Machete” fame. Early Saturday morning she was asked by TMZ if she was going to play the Green Lantern, and her response prompted enough backlash by oversensitive online babies that she apologized on Facebook hours later.

TMZ: Michelle, are you going to be the Green Lantern?

Michelle Rodriguez: **Laughing ** That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.

TMZ: Really?

Michelle Rodriguez: Yeah. I think it’s so stupid for like everybody because of this whole minorities in Hollywood thing…

TMZ: Well, it’s been all over the internet.

Michelle Rodriguez: But it’s so stupid, it’s like, ‘Stop stealing all the white people’s superheroes. Make up your own. You know what I’m saying? What’s up with that?”

Comic book fans are still laughing at how Marvel writer Dan Slott slimed them as racist for having a similar opinion over arbitrarily changing Peter Parker’s race. How long will it be before Mr. Slott starts lecturing Ms. Rodriguez on the importance of turning Guy Gardner into “Lady Gardner,” or John Stewart into “Jane Stewart,” or Kyle Rayner into “Kylie Rayner”?

M Rodriguez — Can you read Michelle Rodriguez’s mind? It says: “I can’t believe I have to apologize to these oversensitive babies for telling the truth.” Since the ‘Fast and Furious’ star is wearing a Nirvana shirt, perhaps it will inspire a screenwriter to pen a tale where Kurt Cobain was born Katy Cobain.

The kind of people who couldn’t sleep at night until a Ghostbusters reboot with an all-female cast was announced obviously started hounding Ms. Rodriguez’s social media accounts because hours later she was posting a sleepy-eyed apology to her Facebook page:

Hey guys, I want to clarify about my comment yesterday. I stuck my foot in my mouth once again. I said that people should stop trying to steal white people’s superheroes. I guess it got taken out of context because a lot of people got offended or whatever. I have a tendency to, you know, speak without a filter — sorry about that. What I really meant was that ultimately at the end of the day there’s a language and the language that you speak in Hollywood is ‘successful franchise.’

I think that there are many cultures in Hollywood that are not white that can come up with their own mythologies. We all get it from the same reservoir of life, the fountain of life. It doesn’t matter what culture you come from. I’m just saying that instead of trying to turn a girl character into a guy — or instead of trying to turn a white character into a black character or latin character I think that people should stop being lazy. People should actually make an effort in Hollywood to develop their own mythology. It’s time to stop. Stop trying to take what’s already there and try to fit a culture into it. I think that it’s time for us to write our own mythology and our own story. Every culture. That’s what I really meant, and I’m sorry if it came off rude or stupid. That’s not what I meant. So, cheers.

When Ms. Rodriguez apologizes for speaking without a filter, what she really means is “I’m sorry for telling the truth.” She laughs at the thought of playing Green Lantern because she knows that she has the creative and intellectual chops to play a new hero — one who will etch out her own special place in American culture — instead of some Green Lantern derivative that is created to appease online diversity activists.

What is more respectable: Michelle Rodriguez playing “Letty Ortiz” in the “Fast and Furious” franchise, or Michelle Rodriguez playing a female Green Lantern knockoff because Warner Bros. dropped the ball with its 2011 attempt? While it is sad that someone like Michelle Rodriguez must apologize to online babies for speaking the truth, it is refreshing to see an artist in Hollywood whose unfiltered self values originality over uninspired diversity.

Marvel inks Spider-Man deal with Sony, but will Amy Pascal become Kevin Feige’s Mephisto?

February 10, 2015June 14, 2018by Douglas Ernst12 Comments

Spider-Man fans are rejoicing today because Sony finally admitted that it has no idea what it’s doing with the world’s most famous wall-crawler. A deal was struck between Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios that will allow Spider-Man to appear in Marvel’s cinematic universe, but it also forces Kevin Feige to produce Sony’s next installment with Amy Pascal.

Question: Will Amy Pascal become Kevin Feige’s Mephisto?

Marvel’s Feb. 10 press release reads:

Under the deal, the new Spider-Man will first appear in a Marvel film from Marvel’s Cinematic Universe (MCU). Sony Pictures will thereafter release the next installment of its $4 billion Spider-Man franchise, on July 28, 2017, in a film that will be co-produced by Kevin Feige and his expert team at Marvel and Amy Pascal, who oversaw the franchise launch for the studio 13 years ago. Together, they will collaborate on a new creative direction for the web slinger. Sony Pictures will continue to finance, distribute, own and have final creative control of the Spider-Man films.

Marvel and Sony Pictures are also exploring opportunities to integrate characters from the MCU into future Spider-Man films.

In the short run, this is great for Marvel. Kevin Feige has done a wonderful job bringing the Marvel universe to the big screen, and there is no reason to believe that he will screw it up with Spider-Man. However, in the long run Sony still has creative control over the character and now the company must deal with Amy Pascal. Sony’s S.S. Spider-Man was foundering and in many ways Marvel may have just come to the rescue of drunk captains who deserved to lose it all.

It will be a sad day if Kevin Feige’s name is attached to future Spider-Man failures because of Amy Pascal’s intransigence. While Spider-Man fans should be thrilled that the character will show up in future Marvel Studios movies, they should seriously ask themselves if Marvel made a deal with the devil when total victory was within reach.

‘American Sniper’: Clint Eastwood does Chris Kyle’s memory proud

January 20, 2015January 20, 2015by Douglas Ernst35 Comments

“American Sniper” Director Clint Eastwood was given a difficult task: he had to somehow squeeze Chris Kyle’s incredible life story into 132 minutes. What could have turned into an incredibly bloated mess had he tried to do too much was successfully streamlined in a way that stayed true to the autobiography while also teasing out the most important themes. Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller both give strong performances, and audiences across the U.S. have rewarded them for all the hard work: “American Sniper” made $105 million in its first four days of wide-release.

Clint Eastwood seemed to have two goals with “American Sniper”:

Show the audience what makes guys like Chris Kyle tick.
Demonstrate the destructive power of combat on the war fighter’s psyche, as well as the family unit.

A glimpse of what Mr. Eastwood was able to transfer from the page to the screen comes towards the end of Chris Kyle’s autobiography, where he writes:

“My regrets are about the people I couldn’t save — Marines, soldiers, my buddies. I still feel their loss. I still ache for my failure to protect them.

I’m not naive and I’m beyond romanticizing war and what I had to do there. The worst moments of my life have come as a SEAL. Losing my buddies. Having a kid die on me.

I’m sure some of the things I went through pale in comparison to what some of the guys went through in World War II and other conflicts. On top of all the shit they went through in Vietnam, they had to come home to a country that spat on them.

When people ask me how the war changed me, I tell them that the biggest thing has to do with my perspective.

You know all those everyday things that stress you here? I don’t give a shit about them. There are bigger and worse things that could happen than to have this timely little problem wreck your life, or even your day. I’ve seen them. More: I’ve lived them,” (Chris Kyle, American Sniper. Harper Collins, 2012. Page 379.)

As I mentioned in my review of the book when it came out in 2012, Chris Kyle said that a guardian angel must have been looking over him on the battlefield on multiple occasions, yet he never really stopped to dwell on just how much of a guardian angel he was to his brothers-in-arms. The pressure he put upon himself to save everyone under his watch — an impossible task —would break any man. Yes, even Navy SEALs have a breaking point.

Families have breaking points, too. Again, Eastwood brings it home in a scene that takes place just before Chris Kyle’s fourth tour in Iraq:

Taya: Do you want to die? Is that what it is?

Chris: No.

Taya: Then just tell me. Tell me why you do it. I want to understand.

Chris: Baby, I do it for you. You know that I do it to protect you.

Taya: No you don’t.

Chris: Yes, I do.

Taya: I’m here. Your family is here. Your children have no father. […] You don’t know when to quit. You did your part. You sacrificed enough. You let somebody else go!

Chris: Let somebody else go?

Taya: Yeah.

Chris: Well, I couldn’t live with myself.

Taya: Well, you find a way. You have to. Okay? I need you — to be human again. I need you here. I need … you here. If you leave again, I don’t think we’ll be here when you get back.

Even to those who are closest to these very special men, it often seems like they have a death wish. But that is not the case. Even those who are supposed to understand what motivates a war fighter, can not. The question becomes: How do you dedicate your life to a man who has dedicated his own to ideas that are bigger than all of us?

At one point during “American Sniper,” Chris laments how obsessed civilians are with their cell phones, trips to the mall, and a variety of other seemingly-trivial things when he should be “over there.” But that’s the conundrum: Just as the principles a SEAL is willing to fight and die for make life worth living, it is also those little moments — a conversation on a lazy Sunday afternoon with your wife, or a quiet night alone with that very same woman — that make it special.

“American Sniper” is about one man’s attempt to successfully balance the desire to selflessly serve one’s country while also living up to the commitment to love and cherish his spouse with all his might.

Clint Eastwood may be an old man, but his latest movie shows that he can still direct better than most people who are half his age. If you get a chance, then you should check out “American Sniper” while it’s in theaters. It is one of the rare war movies within the past decade that is actually worth the price of admission.

Related: ‘American Sniper’ success prompts Michael Moore to take pot shots at deceased hero Chris Kyle

‘American Sniper’ success prompts Michael Moore to take pot shots at deceased hero Chris Kyle

January 19, 2015January 20, 2015by Douglas Ernst22 Comments

“American Sniper” is a box office hit. In four days of wide-release, it has pulled in $105 million. Audiences across the country have been moved by the Bradley Cooper’s portrayal of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle. Director Clint Eastwood did a marvelous job showing the kind of selfless service displayed by American war fighters while also not shying away from the psychological toll that combat takes on them and their loved ones. It’s a stellar film about an American hero, which is why Michael Moore and Seth Rogen responded just as the world expects Hollywood liberals to act: like pathetic men who deep down resent the fact that for all their fame and fortune they are still glorified clowns.

Chris Kyle was a real hero, and instead of just dealing with their envy and jealousy in the privacy of their own home, Michael Moore and Seth Rogen lashed out on Twitter so the world could see how truly petty they are.

Using Michael Moore’s logic, anyone who uses cover and concealment during the course of battle is a “coward.” Perhaps we should do away with camouflage and just wear bright red jackets with white pants in the middle of open fields, but I digress.
Once negative feedback came rolling in, Michael Moore decided to just make it abundantly clear that whenever he talks about cowards, he is really just projecting his own inner demons.

Translation: “What are you so upset about? I wasn’t disparaging Chris Kyle with my sniper comments, even though I made them on the very day millions of Americans were talking about him. Where would you get that idea?”

And then there is Seth Rogen, whose main achievement in life is that he made a dumb movie about North Korea (we all know why he didn’t target Iranian mullahs), which forced millions of Americans to confirm: yes, we will defend Hollywood actors’ right to the freedom of expression, even if they are classless imbeciles.

Seth Rogen’s tweet proves that he did not see “American Sniper,” or that he is a hate-filled buffoon (perhaps both?). The movie wasn’t a celebration of war or a piece of propaganda similar to faux-Nazi films created by Quentin Tarantino; if anything it was a clarion call to policy makers to think long and hard before sending men like Chris Kyle into war zones. Only a miserable person as defined by John Stuart Mill could watch Clint Eastwood’s “American Sniper” and think “coward.”

“The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.” — John Stuart Mill.

C.S. Lewis, who fought and almost died during World War I, puts it another way in his famous essay, “Why I am not a pacifist”:

“For let us make no mistake. All that we fear from all the kinds of adversity, severally, is collected together in the life of a soldier on active service. Like sickness, it threatens pain and death. Like poverty, it threatens ill lodging, cold, heat, thirst, and hunger. Like slavery, it threatens toil, humiliation, injustice, and arbitrary rule. Like exile, it separates you from all you love. Like the gallies, it imprisons you at close quarters with uncongenial companions. It threatens every temporal evil — every evil except dishonor and final perdition, and those who bear it like it no better than you would like it. On the other side, though it may not be your fault, it is certainly a fact that Pacifism threatens you with almost nothing. Some public opprobrium, yes, from people whose opinion you discount and whose society you do not frequent, soon recompensed by the warm mutual approval which exists, inevitably, in any minority group. For the rest it offers you a continuance of the life you know and love, among the people and in the surroundings you know and love.” — C.S. Lewis

Michael Moore and Seth Rogen are very much like the “miserable creatures” referenced in Mill’s “On Liberty.” On many levels they are not worth writing about; they run in social circles with like-minded fools who would never point out that maybe — just maybe — the dough-like man-boys disparaging Navy SEALs might have a few insecurities hiding in those rolls of skin. However, because of their Hollywood connections, men like Michael Moore and Seth Rogen do affect American culture. The bully pulpit they have access to almost demands that those who can push back against their attempts at character assassination, should.

Congratulations, Michael Moore and Seth Rogen: you’re the type of guys who take shots at deceased Navy SEALs and the creative works that respectfully honor their sacrifice. Try doing that outside Hollywood circles and see how much it endears you to the crowd.

Update: Seth Rogen is now backtracking with the incredibly lame “Apples remind me of oranges,” excuse. Next he’ll say that every once-in-awhile he sits down, bites into a banana, and thinks, “Zucchini.”

Did ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ draw inspiration from Operation Focus during the Six-Day War?

November 28, 2014by Douglas Ernst20 Comments

The new teaser trailer for “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” is out, and it looks pretty darn amazing. It’s got a little something old, a little something new, and George Lucas has been replaced by J.J. Abrams. Score. However, the history nerd in me has his interest piqued because of the squadron of X-Wing fighters seemingly headed into battle about 100 feet above a large body of water. Did Mr. Abrams draw inspiration from Israel’s Six-Day War — Operation Focus in particular? If so, then I’m more excited to see the film.

If you’re not familiar with what the Israeli air force did during the Six-Day War in 1967, then look it up. In short, Israel’s air force pulled off a daring operation in which they flew over the Mediterranean — so low that they would not be picked up by Egyptian radar — and then destroyed the entire Egyptian air force.

If J.J. Abrams needed the Rebel Alliance to pull off an inspiring win, then drawing from Operation Focus was a brilliant move. If it turns out to have absolutely nothing to do with the movie, then I guess we’re just left with really cool images of X-Wing Fighters flying over water. It’s a win-win situation.

Let me know what you thought of the trailer below, and make sure to include your thoughts on the new lightsaber as well. I think the crossguard looks cool, but I’m not sure if it would work in battle. Since I’m not a Sith Lord, I’ll withhold judgment until December, 2015.