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Aronofsky and Paramount's mother! is coming in behind expectations after becoming one of a dozen or so films to ever get slapped with an F CinemaScore from audiences. The prestige title grossed an estimated $3 million from 2,368 theaters on Friday for a projected $8 million debut (mother! had been tracking to open in the low teens). Also featuring Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer, mother! made its world premiere earlier this month at the Venice Film Festival before screening at the Toronto International Film Festival to generally strong reviews, even if it has divided some critics.

Not much is known about the new film "Mother!" Director Darren Aronofsky has remained silent about many of the details, but he has released a disturbing poem which twists the Lord's Prayer. "Our mother who art underfoot, hallowed be thy names, thy seasons come, thy will be done, within us as around us, thank you for our daily bread, our water, our air, and our lives and so much beauty; lead us not into selfish craving and the destructions that are the hungers of the glutted, but deliver us from wonton consumption of thy vast but finite bounty, for thine...

Although the entertainment media will never admit it, will do everything in its sycophantic power to write all around it (see: Line, Dead), the chickens have finally come home to roost for Jennifer Lawrence’s hateful mouth. The once-bright superstar who could open even a poorly reviewed piece of low-budget horror-junk like House at the End of the Street to $12.2 million, has just hit a devastating career low (for a wide release), a humiliating $8 million opening for her latest, the critically-lauded, psychological horror-thriller Mother! This is a catastrophe for Lawrence, one of Hollywood’s most stridently bigoted (former) stars. The...

From the idiotic drug-addict hokum Requiem for a Dream to the overrated, overwrought and over-hyped Black Swan.....the films of wack job Darren Aronofsky have shown a dark passion for exploring twisted souls in torment. But nothing he’s done before to poison the ozone layer prepared me for mother!, an exercise in torture and hysteria so over the top that I didn’t know whether to scream or laugh out loud. ... [F]reak show is two hours of pretentious twaddle that tackles religion, paranoia, lust, rebellion, and a thirst for blood in a circus of grotesque debauchery to prove that being a...

From the idiotic drug-addict hokum Requiem for a Dream to the overrated, overwrought and over-hyped Black Swan, which I called “a lavishly staged Repulsion in toe shoes,” the films of wack job Darren Aronofsky have shown a dark passion for exploring twisted souls in torment. But nothing he’s done before to poison the ozone layer prepared me for mother!, an exercise in torture and hysteria so over the top that I didn’t know whether to scream or laugh out loud. Stealing ideas from Polanski, Fellini and Kubrick, he’s jerrybuilt an absurd Freudian nightmare that is more wet dream than bad...

Mother, an exercise in torture porn, may be the vilest movie ever released by a major Hollywood studio. Ordinarily when a filmmaker goes trampling all over your senses with an eye toward maximizing disgust, it’s for the purpose of producing some cheap scares. In Mother, though, the aim is a macabre pastiche of people’s most cherished and deeply held beliefs. Deliberately grotesque and nauseating, and seemingly engineered to outrage Christians, especially Catholics, Mother represents a stain on the reputation of Paramount Pictures, which once produced Going My Way. It may be the most vile and contemptible motion picture ever released...

UPDATED: Sean Penn’s humanitarian romance “The Last Face” is being savaged on Twitter after premiering Friday at the Cannes Film Festival. Commenters on social media are describing the film, which stars Charlize Theron and Javier Bardem, as the worst of the fest. Others are also quipping that the picture is so awful that it destroyed Penn’s relationship with Theron. The duo broke up a year ago. When critics weighed in, they largely echoed the flash reactions that bubbled up online.

Actor Jon Voight is a conservative. That, in and of itself, is a rarity in Hollywood. But Voight is also an outspoken supporter of Israel. As a result, after fellow-actors Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz denounced Israeli “genocide” in an open letter last week, Voight couldn’t help but respond. Here are excerpts, via The Hollywood Reporter: I am heartsick that people like Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem could incite anti-Semitism all over the world and are oblivious to the damage they have caused. They are obviously ignorant of the whole story of Israel’s birth, when in 1948 the Jewish people...

The ongoing battle between Israel and Hamas in Gaza has moved several high profile actors and filmmakers to voice their opinions. Now, one of the most strident, Jon Voight, has taken to attack the Spanish contingent that has spoken about the bloodshed, and blamed Israel for a campaign of genocide. In response to the strongly-worded July 29 letter blaming Israel for the genocide on the Gaza Strip, which was signed by Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz and published in a Spanish newspaper, Voight blasted the actors this morning with his own statement saying they have defamed the only democratic country...

Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Pedro Almodovar, and other members of the Spanish film industry sent a public letter to the European Union on Tuesday denouncing Israel for “genocide.” Dozens of Spanish actors, writers, musicians, directors, and other entertainment representatives asked the EU to “condemn the bombing by land, sea, and air against the Palestinian civilian population in the Gaza Strip.”

Javier Bardem is apparently the strong contender to play Roland Deshain in "The Dark Tower". After he was mentioned as frontrunner along with Viggo Mortensen, he is now reported to have been officially offered the lead role. Deadline Hollywood says formal negotiations haven't yet begun but the filmmakers have shown great enthusiasm that they have found the right actor.

Our political discourse suffers from an impasse prohibiting genuine progress. That impasse is political correctness or, more accurately, cultural Marxism. It is the priority of emotion over reason. It is the assertion that, if someone is offended by an argument or the language used to articulate it, the argument is inherently incorrect. It is a retarding force upon intellect. Political correctness is an effective force because most decent people do not want to offend and will make what seem to be reasonable concessions in order to maintain civility. There is also a tendency to confuse arguments based on emotion...