Tyler Perry's “Madea Goes to Jail” and Liam Neeson’s “Taken” snagged the No. 1 and No. 2 spots at the box office this past weekend.
“Madea” took in $41.1 million, the highest-grossing film for Perry since his 2005 “Diary of a Mad Black Woman.”
“Taken” brought in $11.4 mil, jacking up the movie’s domestic take to more than $95 million.
Perry releases his films independently through Lionsgate, partly because the big studios won’t produce his Christian-oriented scripts.
So he has let it be known: “If you don’t want my God here, you don’t want me here.”
Meanwhile, Neeson, in an interview with German publication Bild, called his action-drama “Taken” a “very politically incorrect film.”
It features a character who is willing to do anything and everything to rescue the most important thing in his life: his daughter.
By the way, it also happens to be a PG-13 rated flick with no nudity or profanity.
“We live in a time in which no one wants to take responsibility,” Neeson explained. “Everyone passes the blame onto someone else, the circumstances, the fate. My hero acts. He does what he can do best: kill. But he has a heart of gold.”
MSNBC trashed the movie and sneered that “Bushies” would love it.
Judging by the box office, more cinema-tailored fare should be coming Bushies’ way in the near future.
In a cable network diss of a different kind it was “Oops, it’s showing again.”
CNN’s bias, that is.
The network recently rejected an advertising spot from the group CatholicVote.org.
Using President Obama’s life story to make its point, the ad illustrates the intrinsic value and potentiality encompassed within each human being despite any humble beginnings or tragic misfortunes.
The ad reads: “This child's future is a broken home. He will be abandoned by his father. His single mother will struggle to raise him. Despite the hardships he will endure . . . this child . . . will become . . . the first African-American President.”
It concludes with the simple phrase, “Life: Imagine the Potential.”
In 2005 CNN aired an ad sponsored by pro-abort pep squad NARAL, which painted then-Judge John Roberts with a violent anti-abortion brush.
FactCheck.org described the NARAL ad in the following way: “An abortion-rights group is running an attack ad accusing Supreme Court nominee John Roberts of filing legal papers 'supporting . . . a convicted clinic bomber' and of having an ideology that ‘leads him to excuse violence against other Americans.’ It shows images of a bombed clinic in Birmingham, Alabama. The ad is false.”
The ad attributed views to Roberts that were in no way his, and NARAL, not CNN, ultimately pulled it.
Brian Burch, a spokesman for CatholicVote, says, “CNN is willing to run ads insinuating that a federal judge supports violent criminal activity, but it won't allow an ad celebrating the life of Barack Obama. It's a double standard from Bizarro World.”
On DC comics’ fictional cube-shaped planet Htrae (Earth spelled backwards), activities adhere to the Bizarro Code: “Us do opposite of all earthly things! Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness! Is big crime to make anything perfect on Bizarro World.”
A perfect fit with the mainstream media, in my earthly opinion.
James Hirsen, J.D., M.A. in media psychology, is a media analyst, teacher of mass media and entertainment law at Biola University, and professor at Trinity Law School. Visit: Newsmax TV Hollywood: http://www.youtube.com/user/NMHollywood.
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