RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/infidel-unites-best-both-mainstream-and-faith-mark-tapson/

It is increasingly difficult these days for conservatives to enjoy anything from mainstream Hollywood, which has made its contempt for all those white supremacist Trump supporters in the flyover states very clear. Conservative viewers have had enough of movies and TV series that denigrate, ridicule, and demonize their faith and values. They’re done with being bludgeoned by social justice messaging from hypocritical, elitist actors and filmmakers. They’ve canceled their cable TV and their Netflix subscriptions over increasingly vile, nihilistic content. The only entertainment refuge those viewers are left with, however, is bland “faith-based” programming aimed squarely at conservatives, that too often suffers from low budgets, amateurish quality, and heavy-handed messaging of its own.

So when a movie comes along that merges the best of both mainstream and faith-based filmmaking (but doesn’t fit neatly into either category), that unites strong storytelling and a respect for conservative belief and values, and that doesn’t sucker-punch us with a message of moral equivalence, we need to throw our support behind it and spread the word. Infidel, which opens nationwide today, September 18, is one of those rarities.

Executive produced by Dinesh D’Souza’s media company, and written and directed by Cyrus Nowrasteh, whose 2006 ABC miniseries The Path to 9/11 sparked front-page controversy and sent Bill Clinton and his former administration cronies into paroxysms of anger, the R-rated Infidel is a Middle East thriller starring Jim Caviezel as an American prisoner of the Iranian regime, falsely accused of spying for the CIA. His only way out is to sign a confession – and publicly renounce his faith and convert to Islam.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/social-media-not-cause-our-social-dilemmas-jason-d-hill/

Jeff Orlowski’s documentary The Social Dilemma on Netflix is an interesting panoptic exploration of ways in which human minds are allegedly twisted, manipulated, and directed by social media to produce outcomes by programmed algorithms whose creators, in the end, must have had nefarious  motives. On the surface, we may cast them as players in a medieval morality play between good and evil. The evil operatives are the gnomic know-it-alls who somehow must have known that with the invention of the “Like” button on various social media pages and media outlets, they could send recipients into waves of euphoria — while those receiving a “thumbs down” could be sent into paroxysms of rage or, more commonly, paralyzing depression. The social media creators in the film, however, claim that they only wanted to “spread positivity and love in the world.”

The basic thematic thrust of the documentary is predicated on a dubious premise: the idea of an addictive media, the manipulative machinations of its architects and their unwillingness to confront their culpability in creating an addictive social media culture, and the latter’s contribution to the polarization of our society and the proliferation of “fake news.”

This film, which purports to gain some philosophical respectability by an identification with the anti-conceptual moniker, “surveillance capitalism,” presupposes a world of mindless victims; automatons in need of global marketplace regulation from “data extraction” invisible vectors that somehow predict our behaviors and, well, coerce us to do things that we would not do had our brains not been improperly hijacked by the artificially-driven analytics.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/critics-rush-defend-netflixs-pre-teen-twerking-mark-tapson/

The brilliant satirical website Babylon Bee recently posted another gem of a faux headline:  “Awesome: Netflix Will Now Just Pump Septic Waste Straight Into Your Living Room,” poking fun at the streaming entertainment service’s reputation for pushing increasingly controversial and offensive content. But Netflix’s latest offering is no joke: a French flick that veers into the realm of child pornography.

Cuties (originally Mignonnes), which debuted Thursday on Netflix, is the story of Amy, 11, a Senegalese girl growing up in Paris who rebels against her conservative Muslim immigrant family and seeks the approval of a bullying quartet of fellow 11-year-old girls who are absolutely clueless about sex but who nevertheless believe dressing and acting like prostitutes is the key to popularity (the ages of the actresses at the time of filming are unclear, but reportedly range from 11-14). Their aimless lives center on rehearsing sexed-up choreography to a rap song for a local dance contest.

As Amy becomes desperate to escape the stultifying, traditional expectations of the women in her family, she exhibits increasingly wanton behavior, such as posting a pic of her genitalia on social media and teaching the other girls how to rev up their dance routine by twerking (if you are mercifully ignorant about twerking, it’s a very popular move derived from strip-club lap dancing, in which females squat and shake their rear ends up and down like primates presenting themselves for mating; needless to say, this is wildly inappropriate for pre-teens). The movie culminates in an extended, raunchy dance performance in which the camera lingers repellently on the scantily-clad little girls’ pelvic gyrations, come-hither looks, and suggestive touching – of themselves and each other.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/09/emcutiesem_is_child_pornography_netflix_look_it_up.html

Netflix is distributing the film Cuties, which includes scenes focusing on the pubic areas of 11-year-old girls, including numerous scenes of girls “twerking” and “humping” in skimpy costumes.

The public outrage and massive cancellations of Netflix subscriptions have prompted Netflix and its media allies to “justify” Cuties as “social commentary” that exposes the sexual exploitation of children. They’re sexually exploiting children in order to protect them from exploitation. We right-wing rubes just don’t get it.

The claim is as indefensible as a scientist who poisons individuals and pleads that he was merely demonstrating that poison is harmful.

Netflix is essentially claiming that Cuties, taken as a whole, has a serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.  Assuming for the sake of argument that it might have such value, that does not constitute a defense to the production, distribution, transportation, advertisement or possession of child pornography, nor does the prosecution have to prove that, taken as a whole, it has no such value.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/the-coming-backlash-to-the-oscars-diversity-mandate/

Far from appeasing the hashtag activists, the Oscars have merely announced that the quota wars have begun.

I t’s easy to make fun of the Oscars’ new set of diversity requirements: Are we going to have to watch Lieutenant Colonel Anne Hathaway tossing grenades at Jerry in the next WWI movie? In the media, the initial response has been to gush praise for this “landmark,” “watershed” moment in which the Academy Awards have mandated hiring quotas for any film that wishes to be eligible for Best Picture (but not any of the other awards).

In about ten seconds, I predict, the Left is going to be furious. “We’ve been had,” they’ll surely scream. Let’s look at the details.

In order to qualify for Best Picture consideration, films will have to meet two out of four specified criteria. The first is the showiest but also the silliest, calling for diversity in casting and themes; it’s unworkable if you’re starting, as do a great many Oscar contenders, with an established historical record. You can’t pretend that Ford v. Ferrari or The Irishman was about minorities or women or gay liberation or handicapped people. Most producers of top-quality films will simply laugh off that top-line requirement and try to hit two of the other three. Which won’t be that hard.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/09/it_didnt_seem_possible_but_the_oscars_are_going_to_be_even_woker_than_ever.html

The 92nd Academy Awards show was one of the last big events in 2020 before life stopped for the Wuhan Virus. If people had known about a future of masks and isolation, maybe more Americans would have watched than the record low of 23.6 million viewers. But then again, perhaps not, given that winners cannot seem to stop lecturing Americans for being hate-filled, racist, misogynistic yutzes.

The smart thing for the Academy to do in the face of a seemingly unstoppable ratings hemorrhage would be to make the Oscar show more friendly to the viewers. The Academy could nominate movies people like to watch and then limit the speeches to conform to the old rule that, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” Instead, as part of its “Academy Aperture 2025” initiative, the Academy has opted to make the nominations even more politically correct, promising Americans that future films will showcase stifling politically-correct orthodoxy.

On Tuesday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences put out a press release announcing all of its impossibly woke requirements for movies beginning in 2022 (meaning films produced in 2021).

The press release has created four “standards”:

“On-screen representation, themes and narratives”
“Creative leadership and project team”
“Industry access and opportunities”
“Audience development (i.e., marketing”)

Under each standard, the Academy lists a variety of mix-and-match quotas that must be met for a specific standard to qualify for Oscar consideration. For example, lead actors must include one of every victim-identity race or ethnicity group. Ensembles must include gay people and handicapped people. Storylines have to touch upon intersectionality, victim-identity issues. Apprenticeships and internships must have all the underrepresented people represented. Thirty percent of a film’s crew has to meet victim-centric intersectionality metrics. Here, for example, is the buffet menu for movie-makers listing the choice of possible requirements for what the audience sees:

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/08/larry_elders_uncle_tom_the_little_movie_that_could.html

Did you know that there’s a documentary called Uncle Tom that IMDB ranks as one of America’s top documentaries? Released only six weeks ago, it’s currently the sixth-highest rated documentary on IMDB, with over 2,000 viewers giving it an extraordinary 9.5-star rating. The movie also doubled Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine opening box office revenue. Nevertheless, not a single mainstream news or entertainment media film critic has acknowledged it. I spoke with Mr. Elder to learn more about the movie and the media’s passive-aggressive efforts to ignore it into extinction.

One would think that, when a nationally-known radio and TV personality, who is also a best-selling author and columnist, writes and produces a documentary about blacks in America, the media would be all over it. That doesn’t happen, though, if he challenges the mainstream narrative that the Democrat party is American blacks’ only friend.

Uncle Tom’s use of historical footage, contemporary political events, and interviews with black conservatives both well known and unknown exposes viewers to the reality that’s unacceptable to the monolithic Democrat media: Since 1856, Republican Party policies allowed American blacks to thrive, while Democrat party policies consistently harmed them.