Ghost Rider and Barack Obama
Burbank, California—The nation's top earning picture, writer and director Mark Steven Johnson's Ghost Rider, is a solid, comics-based thriller. Combining irony and action with Nicolas Cage reading Faust and igniting while riding for justice on a roaring motorcycle, Ghost Rider burns rubber.
It is too safe and the multi-genre script—part comics, part action, part Western—hits a few bumps. With dazzling effects, and with Cage in the lead and Peter Fonda as the Devil with whom Cage's character cuts a deal, it is frivolous. Eva Mendes hams as Cage's ex-lover while Sam Elliott steps forward to good effect as a mysterious cemetery man.
Cage nails his daredevil part, which could have been too much and isn't, as a part-time carrier for the Devil who makes the job his own and soothes his pain with candy and the Carpenters. Packed with overfilled ashtrays, beer cans and burning Texas skies, Ghost Rider sets the tone and it never idles for long. This night biker fires up like a Winston and, taking on the movie's bland bunch of hellboys (the weakest link), whips a chain into a Lone Star lasso.
Fiery fun—one rescued crime victim sports a t-shirt that says "I Leave Bite Marks"—and strong, pro-police moral clarity, as dusty as a Fifties Western, fuel the appeal. I admit I knew next to nothing about this movie and less about the comic book it's based on but it has the horsepower for an enjoyable ride.
News Notes
A government report drafted this week recommends more restrictions on the freedom of speech, this time urging the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to regulate violence on television. Of course, the report was lapped up by Republican FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and Democratic Commissioner Michael Copps, both of whom were interviewed by the Associated Press (AP).
Copps told AP that he has noticed an increased demand among the public for government control of speech: "People really feel strongly about this issue all across this land." So goes the lame justification that the state should censor speech based on a bureaucrat's perception of the public's emotional response.
Where do the 2008 presidential candidates stand on absolute free speech? We know New York Senator Hillary Clinton vows to "fight the culture of sex and violence in the media" which, in a society based on man's rights, is a declaration of war on free speech.
Nanny-statist Clinton, who once sought to ban divorce for couples with children, has proposed expanded censorship with the Senate's trio of religious zealots (Lieberman, Brownback, Santorum). With Lieberman, she sought to authorize the Federal Trade Commission to penalize movie studios that market adult entertainment to kids and with the others she proposed censorship of video games—and it was her husband that mandated that the V-chip be implanted into TV sets (long before he tried to intimidate ABC into spiking a TV movie). Republicans have long opposed free speech based on religious morality.
What are the views of Barack Obama, the United States senator from Illinois who breezed into Tinseltown this week to raise $1.3 million for his presidential campaign, dwarfing Clinton's reported take of well below a million? Would the unpretentious Democratic candidate, who favors socialized medicine and pulling out of Iraq, end the jihad against freedom of speech and leave Hollywood alone?
That is a question for Sen. Obama's Hollywood donors, including Paramount chief Brad Grey, Universal Pictures President Ron Meyer and Disney Chairman Dick Cook as well as movie stars—who seem ready to end the era of Clinton/Bush—to think over.
But at least Obama, whose full views are still unknown, spoke in favor of free speech during an address to the American Library Association in 2005, when he described a public library as a place "where we are free to read and consider what we please, without the fear of Big Brother peering menacingly over our shoulders." Whether the senator from the Land of Lincoln applies the same principle to movies and television could make this week's Obamamania a partial cause for celebration.
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RELATED LINKS
• ABC News - Report Urges FCC to Regulate TV Violence
• Sen. Barack Obama Campaign Web Site
• Scott Holleran Column Index
It is too safe and the multi-genre script—part comics, part action, part Western—hits a few bumps. With dazzling effects, and with Cage in the lead and Peter Fonda as the Devil with whom Cage's character cuts a deal, it is frivolous. Eva Mendes hams as Cage's ex-lover while Sam Elliott steps forward to good effect as a mysterious cemetery man.
Cage nails his daredevil part, which could have been too much and isn't, as a part-time carrier for the Devil who makes the job his own and soothes his pain with candy and the Carpenters. Packed with overfilled ashtrays, beer cans and burning Texas skies, Ghost Rider sets the tone and it never idles for long. This night biker fires up like a Winston and, taking on the movie's bland bunch of hellboys (the weakest link), whips a chain into a Lone Star lasso.
Fiery fun—one rescued crime victim sports a t-shirt that says "I Leave Bite Marks"—and strong, pro-police moral clarity, as dusty as a Fifties Western, fuel the appeal. I admit I knew next to nothing about this movie and less about the comic book it's based on but it has the horsepower for an enjoyable ride.
News Notes
A government report drafted this week recommends more restrictions on the freedom of speech, this time urging the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to regulate violence on television. Of course, the report was lapped up by Republican FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and Democratic Commissioner Michael Copps, both of whom were interviewed by the Associated Press (AP).
Copps told AP that he has noticed an increased demand among the public for government control of speech: "People really feel strongly about this issue all across this land." So goes the lame justification that the state should censor speech based on a bureaucrat's perception of the public's emotional response.
Where do the 2008 presidential candidates stand on absolute free speech? We know New York Senator Hillary Clinton vows to "fight the culture of sex and violence in the media" which, in a society based on man's rights, is a declaration of war on free speech.
Nanny-statist Clinton, who once sought to ban divorce for couples with children, has proposed expanded censorship with the Senate's trio of religious zealots (Lieberman, Brownback, Santorum). With Lieberman, she sought to authorize the Federal Trade Commission to penalize movie studios that market adult entertainment to kids and with the others she proposed censorship of video games—and it was her husband that mandated that the V-chip be implanted into TV sets (long before he tried to intimidate ABC into spiking a TV movie). Republicans have long opposed free speech based on religious morality.
What are the views of Barack Obama, the United States senator from Illinois who breezed into Tinseltown this week to raise $1.3 million for his presidential campaign, dwarfing Clinton's reported take of well below a million? Would the unpretentious Democratic candidate, who favors socialized medicine and pulling out of Iraq, end the jihad against freedom of speech and leave Hollywood alone?
That is a question for Sen. Obama's Hollywood donors, including Paramount chief Brad Grey, Universal Pictures President Ron Meyer and Disney Chairman Dick Cook as well as movie stars—who seem ready to end the era of Clinton/Bush—to think over.
But at least Obama, whose full views are still unknown, spoke in favor of free speech during an address to the American Library Association in 2005, when he described a public library as a place "where we are free to read and consider what we please, without the fear of Big Brother peering menacingly over our shoulders." Whether the senator from the Land of Lincoln applies the same principle to movies and television could make this week's Obamamania a partial cause for celebration.
$
RELATED LINKS
• ABC News - Report Urges FCC to Regulate TV Violence
• Sen. Barack Obama Campaign Web Site
• Scott Holleran Column Index
