Free Republic

On July 24, 1952, Stanley Kramer’s High Noon was released and subsequently won 4 Oscars. Wikipedia reports that the film was “one of the first 25 films (selected) for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” in 1989, the NFR’s first year of existence.” As I see it, the greatness of the movie is in showing how good government depends on the performance of exceptional individuals and just how hard modern centuries make it for those individuals to want to stay in government. The heroes we need are getting harder and harder...

Will Smith, Denzel Washington, Jamie Foxx and Morgan Freeman all owe a debt of gratitude to James Edwards. Today, two of Hollywood's five highest-paid stars are black: Will Smith and Denzel Washington. Jamie Foxx (Ray) and Morgan Freeman (Million Dollar Baby) are the front-runners for the best actor and best supporting actor Oscars, respectively. (And while I have yet to see Ray, I did see Million Dollar Baby, and can tell you that Freeman is every bit as good as his press). Smith, Washington, Foxx and Freeman all owe a debt of gratitude to James Edwards.Three years ago, Halle Berry...

Filed at 3:35 p.m. ET LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A ghost is haunting Hollywood -- the specter of the long-abandoned anti-communist blacklist of the 1950s. In a testament to the staying power of the controversial list, the widow of famed liberal film producer Stanley Kramer is thinking of suing the Public Broadcasting Service for a documentary she calls ``a hatchet job'' on her late husband and his relationships with a blacklisted writer of that era. Karen Sharpe Kramer says that the documentary, ``Darkness at High Noon: The Carl Foreman Documents,'' scheduled to air on PBS Sept. 17, defames her husband...