The End of Hollywood is an Opportunity for Catholics
AI, Digital Actors, and the Future of Storytelling
The Latest Hollywood Writers Strike Is Doomed to Fail
The Hollywood Writers Guild wants to go back to the good ol’ days where the work was steady, the audiences were guaranteed, and they didn’t have to compete with other options. However, those days are over.
America, the Northern Kingdom
Scholars and pundits for generations have been making comparisons between the United States and the late Roman Empire. Such analogies date back to America’s Founding Fathers, notes Andrew Sullivan in a recent piece for New York Magazine. These men were deeply conscious of the decline of the Roman Republic, brought on by bitter and bloody … Read more
Michelle Williams Doesn’t Speak for Me
I don’t watch Hollywood award shows anymore, although there was a time in my life when I did. In my early college days, I would turn on the television to gape at the pre-awards red carpet glamor, and then chow on popcorn while relishing every acceptance speech over the next few hours, all the while … Read more
Bye Bye, Stranger Things
Halfway through season two of the Netflix hit series Stranger Things, I made the decision to stop watching. Owing to monstrous laziness, I kept putting off writing down the reasons why I stopped. This month, I dumped Netflix altogether. You could say scuttling Stranger Things was of a piece with nixing Netflix (a lovely idea … Read more
The Moral Confusion of Avengers: Endgame
Editor’s note: The following Avengers: Endgame movie review contains spoilers. Disney’s Avengers: Endgame is currently shattering domestic and global box office records. In one sense, this is a very positive sign of our culture’s health. The twenty-one previous entries in The Marvel Cinematic Universe are mostly unobjectionable, laudable depictions of heroic moral virtue, clean humor, … Read more
The Cultural Train Wreck That Is Hollywood
Ours is a tragic age, but based on my cultural observations over the Christmas holidays hardly anyone appears to be taking it tragically. Instead, people are blissfully adrift: eating, drinking, marrying, and being given in marriage. Few seem to be noticing the red tide rising. The holidays always afford me the opportunity to take the … Read more
Life Lessons Learned from Hollywood’s Golden Age
“You young devils,” says Satan, the wily old misanthrope, wise in the ways of man, “believe you can damn the human vermin with reasoned arguments. Reason, as you should know, and for your own sake you had better remember, is of the Enemy. When we fight with it, we fight with his own weapons. What … Read more
Gosnell—A Good Film Stops Short of Unforgettable
It can be said with safety that no other movie completed within the last three years has faced the obstacles of the Gosnell film in finally making it to the “big screen.” Produced by Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney and ready for distribution as far back as October 2015, the movie may be a minor … Read more
Harvey Weinstein and the Diabolic Imagination
In his Redeeming the Time, Russell Kirk remarks of our age that rather than nuclear fallout or mass destruction, “The grimmer and more immediate prospect is that men and women may be reduced to a sub-human state through limitless indulgence in their own vices—with ruinous consequences to society generally.” He goes on to say, however, … Read more
Blessed are the “Pure” for They Shall See Oscar
The 90th Academy Awards ceremony took place last night at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, at 5 p.m. PST. The awards of late have become more politicized than ever. In the past, what was needed to win an Academy Award was a good movie—plus a considerable budget to promote it amongst members of the academy. In latter … Read more
The Real Source of Sexual Misconduct in Hollywood
If you had James Franco in your office pool as the next Hollywood mogul who would be accused of sexual misconduct then, congratulations, you win! Five women, in interviews with the Los Angeles Times, accused Franco “of behavior they found to be inappropriate or sexually exploitative.” About the allegations, Franco said on the Stephen Colbert … Read more
The Toxic Ideas that Enabled Weinstein and Others
The Media-Entertainment Complex claims to be “shocked, shocked, I tell you,” to learn that powerful Hollywood men like Harvey Weinstein engage in a systematic pattern of sexual assault. Those of us outside Hollywood are not the slightest bit shocked. In fact, a lot of us in Fly-Over Country are just waiting for other powerful men … Read more
Islam, Hollywood and Choice
Once in a while there is an article that defends the practice of Muslim women covering her hair. If they really want to be insulting, there is a picture of a nun in a habit right next to a beautiful woman in hijab. “What is the difference?” they ask. “It is the choice,” I answer. … Read more
On the Death and Resurrection of Hollywood
It came as a shock to Hollywood’s liberal establishment: the casting couch is still extant. The outrage at the alleged behaviors of an errant film producer is of course, justified. Nevertheless, the shock expressed by some over Harvey Weinstein’s alleged actions is the real surprise. Others who are closer to the source of the recent … Read more
A Response to Hollywood’s War Against Christianity
Viggo Mortensen, the same actor who played Strider/Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, seems to enjoy getting naked in his non-Tolkien films, evincing, perhaps, certain latent exhibitionist fantasies: In Eastern Promises, he fought off, el fresco, two Russian mobsters in a steam bath; in The Road, he chucked it all to swim out … Read more
Beauty and the Beast’s Obeisance to the Big Gay Machine
My son and I saw the new Beauty and the Beast. It was lovely, magical, following the 1991 cartoon, almost scene for scene, song for song. This is the story everyone wants to hear: darkness and evil and selfishness transformed by love into light and good and self-surrender. Life and love conquer death and fear. … Read more
Of Friendship, Faith, and Death: A Film Series for the Ages
Let your acquaintances be many, but one in a thousand your confidant (Sirach). I heard last month about the Academy Awards and the Big Flub. I suppose it would’ve been fun to witness it live instead of on YouTube, but not fun enough to regret skipping the broadcast altogether. Frankly, I couldn’t care less about … Read more
What We Talk About When We Talk About The Young Pope
Hollywood’s brush tends to paint the Vatican in colors dark and foreboding, a lavishly decorated place of simony and secret sexual sins. The papal throne is made to look smug and malevolent, even diabolical. Catholic priests are either buffoons or sex-crazed loonies. The laity are gullible, superstitious, or secretly Protestant. The HBO limited series The Young … Read more
Some Consciences Count More Than Others
On Friday, January 20 at 12 o’clock noon, Donald J. Trump will become the 45th president of the United States. Rarely in modern times has a presidential succession generated such polarized division, though I can imagine that the advent of Thomas Jefferson in 1801, Andrew Jackson in 1829, and especially Abraham Lincoln in 1861 might rival … Read more
