Hollywood: May 2008 Archives

Also known as what I did at the beginning of Chris' vacation while helping fill in for him and the news desk computer system was crashing down around our ears: Read about my Monday night (we're talking till midnight) at the Academy screening here at Pajamas Media. The tidbits offered by Tarantino and company afterward were, as I write, juicier than a Big Kahuna Burger!!

Could one love L.A. any more???

My column from a few weeks' back about Ben Stein's "Expelled" -- which posited that the movie should be taken as satire -- has been affirmed by none other than its screenwriter, Kevin Miller, who calls my review "brilliant."

This is, I think, a remarkable endorsement, considering that I called the movie's tactics "nasty" and "unfair," and described some of its main arguments "a stretch" and "a cheap shot."

That Miller doesn't take offense to these descriptions suggest that I was right in my understanding of the movie:

Stein's film is part parody of, part rebuttal to, the crusading atheists who have risen to prominence in recent years - such as Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. And it employs the same nasty tactics they have perfected.

By the way, some have asked where they can find the video I wrote about in my column's lead. Here ya go: