President Donald Trump added a radical twist to the annual National Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony last Friday by invoking the divinity of Jesus Christ. You would think revering the season’s central figure would be expected, but you’d be wrong. Although…
In his iconic first novel, The Time Machine, H. G. Wells sends his Victorian protagonist 800,805 years into the future to a parasitic civilization that contributes nothing to knowledge, art, or culture. He could have cut the journey short by…
Last month, the 71st Primetime Emmy Awards show garnered the lowest TV ratings in the event’s history, with less than seven million viewers, a 32-percent drop from the previous year’s record low of 10 million. I didn’t even know the thing…
Pygmies walk the streets of Hollywood where giants once trod. Take Eric McCormack, the bland Canadian actor who in 1998 lucked into the popular sitcom Will & Grace. Rather than appreciate the hard work of the hundreds who enabled his lucrative…
Quentin Tarantino just became the most reactionary major filmmaker this side of Clint Eastwood. His latest film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, portrays the year the counterculture almost broke Hollywood, 1969, and Tarantino may accomplish the same thing five…
In every period between James Bond movies, the progressive chorus starts singing the same tiresome two songs, right on key. Song No. 1 chants that it’s time for a black Bond, a female Bond, or a gay Bond, and they’ve…
All my life, I’ve been an ardent Anglophile. I grew up consuming British literature, first, kid stuff like King Arthur, Robin Hood, and Treasure Island, later more adult but no less marvelous fare — Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells, Tolkien, Agatha…
In my struggling screenwriter days, I lived on Venice Beach, in the Morrison Apartments (named after the pre-Doors rocker who used to jam on its rooftop), and worked at an Indian-owned convenience store across the narrow one-way street. For more…
Hollywood used to confine its hostility toward traditional American values to the screen. It took a hard left turn half a century ago with productions like The Graduate, Easy Rider, Bob and Carol, Ted and Alice, M*A*S*H, and every show…