• Libertas Launches A Broadside

    It's been a while since we checked in with Libertas, the perpetually frowning film blog of the culture-warrin' right wing.  Not that we want our dear readers to think we're getting lazy, it's just that usually, you don't actually have to read the site to know what Jason Apuzzo and company are panty-knotting about:  the filth coming off of our screens is a perennial favorite (usually in the form of homo-, or at least metro-, -sexuality), second only to their incessent blare about how Hollywood is full of treasonous terror-abetting monsters who want to weaken our resolve to win in Iraq.  (This is usually accompanied by a similar, if slightly contradictory, bit of crowing about how out of step these al-Q'aeda-loving movie producers and/or directors are, with Exhibit A being the allegedly dismal performance of some anti-war documentary that played on eight screens.  If these guys are so powerless and out of touch with the heartland of America, who cares that they won't make pro-war propaganda?  Do we really need the rah-rahing of 38 people on the Upper West Side to achieve final victory in the global war on terror?)

    But it just goes to show you:  with right-wing crazies, as with the Jerry Lewis telethon, you miss a little and you miss a lot.  Jason has a new complaint about the world of moviemaking:  there are no good roles for women.  But unlike some people, who would blame this on rampant ageism, sexism, the flattening of available roles, the narrowing demographic focus of blockbuster movies, or even the fact that movies, as a rule, tend to kind of suck, thus leaving no good roles for anyone.  No, Jason knows where the real trouble lies:  with feminism.  Or, to put it another way, with women themselves.  "As far as I’m concerned the complaining needs to stop at '…more female executives in Hollywood than ever before'," he says, making it clear that there is no need to look any further for the cause of sexism in Hollywood than the obvious fact that women are bad.

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  • Jailbait to Jailbird: Catching Up with Joe "Girls Gone Wild" Francis

    Joe Francis, the man behind the Girls Gone Wild videos, is the contemporary king of softcore, though he's had trouble lately being left alone to enjoy his ill-gotten booty. (Take it away, Beavis and Butt-Head!) Francis managed to spend most of the past year in a prison in Reno, Nevada, basically for having pissed off a judge. Francis had been charged with some seventy counts, but when the charges started dropping off and the smoke cleared, all that was left standing were a couple of felony charges and a couple of prostitution charges that stemmed from a Girls Gone Wild cameraman having filmed a pair of seventeen-year-olds with fake I.D.s Joel Stein reports that "When the underage girls sued Francis for $70 million and a judge, in a bizarre move, ordered the parties to go to mediation, Francis arrived at a hearing and made only one offer to the girls’ lawyers: 'Suck my dick'...

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