Free Republic

This week on NRO, we're going to count down the 25 best conservative movies of the last 25 years, starting with #25 later this morning and finishing with #1 on Friday.

In classical Athens, hubris was a crime and considered the greatest sin in Greek society. In American society it is simply defined as an arrogant self-confidence, an overweening excessive pride. As most Americans know by now, you’re most likely to see it displayed on Wall Street, in Hollywood, or in the nation’s capitol where Wall Street and Hollywood collided with a vengeance during the most recent election. As we’ve now seen with “the stimuli,” including the current bill in Washington, there are a great many people in D.C. who want all our money and that of future generations to use...

In her new book, “Guilty,” Ann Coulter committed the major heresy of suggesting that children should ideally be raised by a mother and a father, not by two men or two women or even by one woman. She created a firestorm, as she usually does when she’s releasing a new book, with crowds of single women coming after her with torches and pitchforks and other crowds lining up at Borders and Barnes & Noble.

...The movie's difficulty is that from Nixon's furtive glance after giving the victory sign as he boarded the helicopter on the day of his resignation to the vignette about the Gucci loafers, its most dramatic moments bear little resemblance to what actually happened during the interviews themselves. How can we know this for sure? For those caring to look, there are three primary sources—all prepared by Frost or one of his researchers. First, a DVD exists of the actual broadcasts, issued in Great Britain with an afterword by Sir David Frost. While readily available, apparently none of the movie's reviewers...

Four hundred years ago, Miguel Cervantes described an archetypal delirious fruitcake who wanted to change the world by turning the clock back to the idealized Utopian times that never really existed. Imagine what Cervantes would write today about the futility of his satirical effort, if he were to learn that four centuries later, a whole movement would arise that emulated his loony character and elected one of their kind as the leader of the free world.

Article about Palin from Ziegler with video clips. Must see!!

...No. I’m going to say it. I’m going to say what millions know in the front of their brains, and many, many more millions know in the depths of their hearts…but won’t allow themselves to think it, much less feel it. And believe me, I know I’ll be hated for saying it, I’ll be hated by people who don’t know me, have never worked with me, have never golfed with me, had a drink with me, shot the shit with me. They’ve never met me, don’t want to meet me…but they will hate me. I’m going to say it anyway:...

As someone who did not vote for President Obama, I don’t want to be lumped in with the haters, so here is a list of examples showing just how much I support our President: 1. I support him as much as Code Pink supports our troops. 2. I support him as much as N.O.W. supports Ayaan Hirsi Ali. 3. I support him as much as the Hollywood community supported Theo Van Gogh. 4. I support him as much as Nancy Pelosi supports the Catholic Church’s teachings on life. 5. I support him as much as Al Gore supports cutting...

Tomorrow’s Inauguration and Comediansby Rodney Lee Conover Talk show writers and hosts, including “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” and “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” have been lamenting how they would love to bust President-elect Barack Obama’s chops more, but he just doesn’t do anything to make fun of. No matter what he says at the coronation tomorrow, there’s no material here… move along. Let’s be honest. #1: They love Barack Obama. #2: He’s African-American. That’s the bottom line and everybody knows it. The facts are, Barack Obama is a gaffe machine and has done more flip-flopping in the...

Here’s my list to of the ten best movies I screened in 2008. I have to admit that I did not see one contemporary release that comes close to the quality and passion of these older films. And keep in mind that most of these classic movies were produced on modest budgets, never intended as studio blockbusters. These ten products of Hollywood’s golden age are what Hollywood used to do best: solid, unpretentious entertainment. 10. The Man From Down Under, (1943) starring Charles Laughton and Donna Reed.

Once upon a time, in what used to be a far away land called Hollywood (but is now a state of mind and everywhere), a young actor was handed a script and asked to bring to life a character called Starbuck. I am that actor. The script was called “Battlestar Galactica.” Fortunately, I was young, my imagination fertile and adrenal glands strong, because bringing Starbuck to life was over the dead imaginations of a lot of Network Executives... Witness the “re-imagined” “Battlestar Galactica,” bleak, miserable, despairing, angry and confused. Which is to say, it reflects in microcosm the complete change...

It was two degrees this morning when I left Poca, West Virginia, for work at six. But that was not as cold as I felt after reading this at noon on the Fox News site: “Tom Hanks Says Mormon Supporters of Proposition 8 ‘Un-American’.” Now I am willing to sacrifice my life, if necessary, to defend his right to spew whatever vile, hateful, ignorant, demented, loathsome, ugly and foolish remarks he may make. But I also reserve my right to call his remarks vile, hateful, ignorant, demented, loathsome, ugly and foolish. Readers can decide for themselves whether what he said...

But Hollywood’s Chattering Classes are thoroughly, completely and spectacularly wrong. And therein lies the source of a looming tragedy so great it would take a thousand movies to simply sketch it out… were it not for the fact that if Hollywood as it now exists continues to do what it is doing unopposed, there will be no more movies because there will be no more electricity.

As a professional filmmaker, I have to say I was as stunned as you when I read that the film industry suffered through another lackluster box office year in 2008. The chief reasons for this appear to be the economy and Internet pirates, or possibly that Raisinette ebola scare. Whatever the cause it’s safe to say that it had nothing to do with the screen product, because 2008 was also a landmark year for the kind of ponderous, preachy, high-quality cinema that Americans from Santa Monica to Silverlake are clamoring for. Don’t take my word for it — just look...

This is a tale of two cultures. Both cultures are faced with the threat of Islamic terrorism. Both have watched their soldiers fight and die. Both have watched their citizens burn alive. But one culture has rejected a far-left film establishment that seeks to undermine its war on terror – the other has embraced it. The first culture – the culture that rejects its morally relativistic artists – is America. The second culture – the culture that accepts and encourages its morally relativistic artists – is Israel. Hollywood may make tons of movies like In the Valley of Elah, Rendition,...

Blacklisting Myself: Memoir of a Hollywood Apostate in the Age of Terror, by Roger L. Simon (Encounter Books, 250 pp., $25.95) The philosopher Diogenes is said to have wandered the streets of Athens with a lamp, looking for an honest man. Had he lived in Hollywood, he’d have needed two searchlights, a pack of bloodhounds, and a net. Or he could have just read Roger L. Simon’s new autobiography.

Several years ago, after I emerged from the fog of knee-jerk Liberalism that envelops most of the entertainment business, I began to wonder why it was that so many of my colleagues remained mired in the magical thinking that so often seems to characterize the Left. After all, many of my colleagues were reasonable, kind, and intelligent people. Among my friends, were musicians, actors, photographers, and writers - all of whom were highly creative and dedicated to their craft yet, as is typical of those on the Left, they couldn’t be swayed by facts if those facts contradicted the prevailing...

On Sunday afternoon Weekly Standard editor and New York Times columnist Bill Kristol — in an email exchange with Big Hollywood — agreed to debate Matt Damon on his Hollywood home turf after being informed the 38-year old actor ridiculed Kristol in an interview in the Miami Herald. As the sponsor of the event, Big Hollywood is offering $100,000 to Damon (or to the charity or carbon credit of his choice) to publicly debate Kristol at a mutually agreed upon time, date and venue. During the last election cycle the liberal activist Damon — who briefly attended Harvard University —...

ANNOUNCEMENT: Dirty Harry Moves To ‘Big Hollywood’ Jan 6th Posted by Dirty Harry on Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008 I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask all of you to move with me one last time. Tuesday, January 6th, 2009, Dirty Harry’s Place will shutter closed as I assume the full-time duties of Editor-In-Chief at Big Hollywood, a group blog and brain child of Andrew Breitbart that will examine the effect of pop culture on our society and politics, and the effect of politics on our pop culture. I’ll pass on more information as we move closer to launch but...

Breitbart’s big, red Hollywood By Kris Kitto After playing supporting roles to big names in media and politics, Andrew Breitbart is poised to become the protagonist in his own story. The publisher of the online news aggregator Breitbart.com helped launch and run two of today’s most influential media and political punditry websites, Arianna Huffington’s left-leaning The Huffington Post and Matt Drudge’s right-leaning Drudge Report. He offers little about his past with Drudge, where he was a part-time editor who once at a dinner party jokingly called himself “Matt Drudge’s bitch.” He compares the comment to President-elect Barack Obama speechwriter Jon...