When elected President, Donald Trump claimed that America would win so often that citizens would grow sick of winning. To date, however, Trump has lost twice in key court rulings. On Thursday night, San Francisco’s 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the suspension of the President's travel ban, which prevented people from seven mostly Muslim nations from entering the United States. The three judges, a mixture of Democrats and Republicans, voted unanimously against the administration. And, as you'll see below, Hollywood was nearly unanimous in its response to this legal decision… 1. Donald Trump SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE! 2. Hillary Clinton 3-0. 3. Michael Moore A victory against hate. Appeals Court rules against Trump. His Muslim Ban can not be enforced for the time being. 4. Debra Messing TRUMP LOSES. Reinstatement of the ban is DENIED by Court. 5. Josh Gad Always good 2 end my day w/ a solid bitch slap. I can sleep soundly knowing Trump is now throwing Jane Adams vases across the WH dining room. 6. Judd Apatow Oh shit— he is using caps! Someone explained the caps lock to our so called President baby. View Slideshow
As you may have heard, Michael Moore’s criticism of American Sniper has pissed off plenty of very vocal patriots. Even esteemed cultural critic and noted devil without a cause Kid Rock offered his two cents, suggesting that Moore had been molested by his uncle, for some reason. Never one to back down from a controversy (Controversy is kinda his thing.), Moore addressed the film and its director again today on his Facebook page, and spoke for the first time about an incident that may have influenced his opinion on Sniper: “Ten years ago this past week,” Moore writes. “Clint Eastwood stood in front of the National Board of Review awards dinner and announced to me and to the crowd that he would ‘kill’ me if I ever came to his house with my camera for an interview.” “‘I’ll kill you,’ he declared. The crowd laughed nervously…’I mean it,’ he barked, and the audience grew more quiet. ‘I’ll shoot you.'” We don’t know about you, but we may have wet ourselves a bit just reading that description. From the sound of things, Clint stopped just short of asking Moore if he feels lucky, punk. Based on the video of Eastwood yelling at invisible Obama at the 2012 RNC, we knew there was a possibility getting a bit flighty in his old age, but we didn’t realize the line between his movies and his real life had disappeared entirely. Hopefully, Moore knows to avoid any run-ins with Clint. We’d hate to see him unwittingly cast as a slow-on-the-draw villain in The Good, the Bad, and the Overweight Documentarian. * ooo-wee-ooo-wee-ooooo * Celebrities Who Have Deleted Political Messages 1. Rihanna Rihanna claims she never meant to Tweet #FreePalestine. The message was taken down immediately after going up.
Lea Michele is officially singing a very serious tune when it comes to relatively new boyfriend Matthew Paetz . The couple has moved in together! Insiders confirm to People that Michele now resides in Paetz’s Hollywood Hills home, despite having only dated the aspiring actor for four months. Lea Michele Shacks Up with Matthew Paetz “They are really happy and they make a great team,” an insider tells the magazine. Michele met her new man on the set of her music video for the single “On My Way” in April and the two have since vacationed in Italy and Cabo together. They also enjoy hiking in Los Angeles. In August, Michele and Paetz attended Justin Timberlake’s 20/20 Experience concert at the Staples Center. “They were super sweet and affectionate, taking selfies together and hanging out with a group of friends,” a witness confirms. Michele, of course, was dating Cory Monteith at the time of his tragic death from a heroin overdose in July 2013. She’s in the middle of filming Glee Season 6 , which will mark the final run of this once-great FOX series. As you can see here, meanwhile, Paetz is a lucky man… Lea Michele Bikini Photos 1. Lea Michele from the Rear Nice rear end, Lea Michele! The actress happily shows it off in this Instagram picture.
We’ve heard of people dialing 911 for ridiculous reasons before. But this is a new one: Grant O’Connor was in the middle of a drug deal this week when he butt-dialed the emergency number, prompting dispatchers to hear every word of his illegal conversation and trace the call to O’Connor’s location, a Mexican restaurant in Mt. Pleasant Tennessee. When authorities arrived on the scene, they found O’Connor and a female friend pulling out of the parking lot. They stopped the vehicle and discovered inside a small bag of marijuana, along with assorted drug paraphernalia. O’Connor, who said he had no clue he accidentally dialed 911 with his rear end, was arrested and charged with simple possession and possession of paraphernalia. His friend was released without getting into any legal trouble. But with an amazing story to tell everyone she’s ever met. Strange But True News Hall of Fame 1. Drunk Man Tries to Urinate Out of Cop Car Window Devin Langford, a drunk man in custody, tried to urinate out of the rear passenger side window of a moving police car because he was drunk. It did not go as planned.
Michael Moore doesn’t mince words, and that includes when talking about President Barack Obama, a man you’d think he would mostly see eye-to-eye with. Not so much. Asked by The Hollywood Reporter about Obama’s claim to have saved Detroit, the Michigan native and liberal filmmaker bristled. “I wrote Obama a letter and I said, ‘Dear President Obama, God Bless you, but you did not save Detroit. You saved General Motors. You saved Chrysler.'” “Detroit at this point would stand a better chance,” the 60-year-old Moore said , “if it were an Iraqi or Syrian city in term of getting some sort of help.” “And I think Obama sadly has done many, many good things, but he’s also been a huge disappointment,” Moore added, not holding back on the POTUS. “I really wish somebody would say to him – maybe I’ll say to him in case he’s watching, you do read The Hollywood Reporter Mr. President, don’t you?” “When the history is written of this era this is how you’ll be remembered: he was the first black president. OK, not a bad accomplishment, but that’s it.” “That’s it, Mr. Obama. A hundred years from now, he was the first black American that got elected president. And that’s it.” The Fahrenheit 9/11 producer added the following message to Obama: “Eight years of your life and that’s what people are going to remember.” “Boy, I got a feeling knowing you that you probably wished you were remembered for a few other things, a few other things you could’ve done.” “So it is on that level of a big disappointment.” Ouch. Do you agree with Michael? President Obama: Best of White House Correspondents’ Dinner Quotes We rolled out HealthCare.gov. That could’ve gone better. In 2008 my slogan was ‘Yes, We Can.’ In 2013, my slogan was ‘Control, Alt, Delete. President Obama Permalink: Yes we can? Added: May 04, 2014 1. Yes we can? We rolled out HealthCare.gov. That could’ve gone better. In 2008 my slogan was ‘Yes, We Can.’ In 2013, my slogan was ‘Control, Alt, Delete.
Hopefully, this announcement will lead to a more thorough investigation of this young black man’s brutal death . U.S. Attorney To Make Announcement In Georgia Teen’s Gym Death This case has had so many twist and turns from his death being ruled accidental to the disrespectfully released crime scene photos. According to CNN: Michael Moore, the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Georgia, is expected to make an announcement Thursday in the case of Kendrick Johnson. The Georgia teen was found dead inside a rolled-up high school gym mat this year. It’s unclear what exactly Moore will say. He has previously said he was reviewing the case and weighing whether to open an investigation. A news conference is scheduled for 1 p.m. ET Thursday. Surveillance images and other materials that could shed light on the January death must be released to the boy’s parents, a Lowndes County judge ruled Wednesday. “We are happy to hear we are one step closer to the truth,” Kendrick Johnson’s father, Kenneth Johnson, said after the hearing. A state medical examiner ruled Kendrick, a high school athlete, suffocated after getting stuck in the gym mat. His parents — who believe he was murdered — disputed the findings and won a court order to have their son’s body exhumed for another autopsy. The materials to be released by the judge — photographs from inside the gym at Lowndes County High School, surveillance video from outside and investigative documents — are unlikely to prove what happened to the boy, attorney Chevene King said. We want justice. None of the imagery is believed to show what led to Kendrick’s death, King said. But the materials could cast doubt on the official explanation and nudge officials toward reclassifying Kendrick’s death to allow a new investigation into what happened, King said. “Essentially, it shifts the focus from what the sheriff had offered to other theories that were not explored and that have I think begun to slowly creep to the surface,” King said after the hearing. CNN has obtained surveillance video showing Kendrick walking along a school hallway and into the gym where he was later found dead. Another student is seen walking in ahead of him. The video also shows Kendrick inside the gym, walking out of the shot, and other students playing basketball. The school district and sheriff’s office had refused to release some of the materials, citing state law that exempts the release of “education records of a minor child.” CNN filed a motion last week to join the family’s lawsuit seeking investigative files related to the case, including the surveillance records. The motion was granted. Kendrick’s parents will be among those who will review the images.You can’t prepare yourself for it,” he told reporters. “It’s just something we have to do. We’re fighting for Kendrick to the end.” This family has gone through enough and needs answers. Continue reading →
Make way, Michael Moore! Move over, Morgan Spurlock! There’s a new documentary film-maker on the block and he’s half your size! Zachary Maxwell, 11, spent six months secretly filming the lunches being served at PS 130 in New York City. The food he was served may not have gotten many raves, but his covert expose’ “Yuck: A 4th Grader’s Documentary About School Lunches” sure has critics buzzing. Yuck – School Lunch Documentary Maxwell, at the encouragement and aid of his parents, used a hidden camera to record dozens of lunches served to himself and his classmates at his public school in New York’s Little Italy. While the menu descriptions read like those of gourmet restaurants, the reality on their trays left little to be desired. The New York City Department of Education responded to the film stating that they believe they serve healthy recipes and “delicious school meals that are low in fat, sodium and calories” and that they have “more than 1,000 salad bars in our schools to provide more healthful options to students.” Just not in PS 130, we guess? It’s an important topic in any case. The American Medical Association recently classified obesity as a disease , one which 17 percent of all U.S. kids suffer from. Maxwell’s 19-minute film, edited by himself and his father, has been shown at several film festivals already and will be screened at the Manhattan Film Festival on June 21. The 5th grader is quite proud of his accomplishments and is already working on his next project: A video yearbook of his class that each student will have as they all head off into the wild blue yonder of middle school. The budding filmmaker already has plans for that awkward period of his life, too. A film about “adolescence, puberty, and what middle school girls think about guys with braces.” So, The Real World meets Wonder Year s, then. Best of lunch luck to you, Zachary!
With the out-of-nowhere success of 2016: Obama’s America , the nation could finally have a conservative counterpart to Michael Moore . I say the nation rather than the Republicans, because a balanced box office is good for us all, at least as a reminder of our right to oppose the current government and make a profit in doing so. Similar to Moore’s release of Fahrenheit 9/11 during the summer of 2004, author-turned-filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza offers a one-sided, first-person documentary that challenges the incumbent President during his campaign for re-election. Unlike his liberal predecessor, however, D’Souza, who co-directs with writer/producer John Sullivan ( Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed ), doesn’t have much to fall back on in the way of entertainment value and so only delivers a transient attraction for the anti-Obama crowd. You could say that a film like 2016 shouldn’t be entertaining, and maybe it is true that the left’s overdependence on jokesters and satire have hurt their efforts in the past. But while Fahrenheit 9/11 might not have influenced enough voters eight years ago, it remains a popular work of cinema in its own right primarily because of Moore’s appeal to a certain audience both personally and stylistically. D’Souza is neither engaging as a character nor as a storyteller, but even worse here is his lack of intensity. As a pressing piece of propaganda, the film could use a louder voice and edgier tone. To truly be an effective Moore equivalent, frankly, D’Souza could stand to be more of a nuisance. Basing the documentary on his best-selling books The Roots of Obama’s Rage and Obama’s America: Unmaking the American Dream , D’Souza, retains a very subjective angle for his exploration of the President’s true identity and political motives. In fact, before really even addressing the titular subject, the filmmaker takes the first portion of the film to set up his own biographical relevance, which aside from his being born outside the U.S. (oh, hush) corresponds quite uncannily as a way of comparing his own background to Barack Obama’s and then raising the question of how they ended up on such contrary idealistic paths. Through interpretation of passages from Obama’s book Dreams From My Father and an interview with a psychologist, D’Souza comes up with a thesis involving the President’s daddy issues. Paralleling the last administration’s critics, 2016 at times comes off like a slightly deeper kin to Oliver Stone’s W. without the fun of caricaturistic portrayals. More complex than Bush’s supposed need to make his still-living father proud, the deal with Obama is that he’s apparently impaired by a romanticized adoration of his never-there father as well as a desire to honor the elder Obama’s anti-colonial principles. On that track to expose the President’s ultimate goal of turning America into a flaccid, non-imperialistic country that is run with outdated collectivist policies, D’Souza’s intended ace in the hole is an appearance from Obama’s half-brother George, whose tiny abode in Kenya D’Souza refers to as “something out of Slumdog Millionaire .” The filmmaker fails to get the young man to talk negatively of his powerful brother’s neglect of poor family members abroad, even with literal attempts to “rephrase the question.” Finally, he settles on simply revealing George’s belief that the third world was better off under colonial rule. So what? Other than potentially inspiring an interesting and metaphorical novel about two brothers with divergent relationships to an unknown father in a long-post-colonial world, the disconnect between geographically and temporally distant siblings doesn’t provide much substance for the film’s argument that the President is the worst leader in U.S. history. And really neither does Obama’s presumed paternal problem, which borders on an obsession for D’Souza. Still, it’s a reflection of a certain concern Americans have with the singularity of the executive branch and our compulsion to focus on the individual character of our Presidents over the plans and actions of their overall administrations. Eventually, 2016 does get into real criticisms with Obama’s initial election, which is basically credited to white guilt and the allure for people to be a part of history, and with his first term, which, it’s claimed, shows hints of a larger anti-colonialist agenda. A shot at the relevancy of NASA seems especially misdirected given the excitement of the Curiosity rover landing on Mars earlier this month, however. And further speculation of the President’s full-on dismantling of the U.S. as a superpower once he’s over the hump of re-election is again too hypothetical. Meanwhile, given the concentration of the Romney/Ryan campaign, it’s unfortunate that only a couple minutes near the end of the film are devoted to Obama’s handling of the national deficit. Of course, this isn’t a documentary in support of Mitt Romney or any Republican candidate so much as it’s an extensive attack ad against Barack Obama. It should illuminate just how much of a repeat this election year is of 2004. Then, it wasn’t about voting for Kerry; it was about voting against Bush. Now it’s just politically reversed, not about voting for Romney but against Obama. And if Romney does win, someone, whether Michael Moore or another liberal filmmaker, will give us the next documentary in the cycle of opposition. If there is one major thing I’ll give 2016 credit for, it’s that much of the film plays almost as well to a pro-Obama audience as to those against him. It preaches to both choirs in that a lot of the intentions and policies of the President, which D’Souza sees as negative, are those which the leader’s fans see as positive. Much of the left would surely love it if Obama truly transformed the United States into a nuke-free nation with socialized medicine and education. Some might watch this documentary and think, “well, yes, that’s our Obama.” Of course, there is the occasional blast of clear vitriol, such as when the President is baselessly said to be less concerned with helping the poor than stripping the wealth of the rich. But that’s to be expected with these films, which are less concerned with what kind of President is good for America than what kind of President is not. And I’m sure it’s expected of me to be less focused on what would have made this a good film than what makes it a bad one. I can only say it’s not a very memorable one, and regardless of the outcome this November, after Election Day I guess it doesn’t need to be. Christopher Campbell is an Atlanta-based movie blogger specializing in documentary. Follow him on Twitter @thefilmcynic . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Two-time Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul made full use of his final campaign rally on Sunday to take his final shots at an establishment that never quite delivered on promises to include him and his libertarian followers. His rally at the University of Southern Florida’s SunDome drew over 7,000 fans, an event staged in response to a Republican convention that will not include Paul. Mitt Romney ‘s campaign offered him a speaking slot at the national event this week on condition that he provide his remarks to them in advance for their approval. Paul declined. Ron Paul Speech in Tampa He’ll still be honored in a video tribute on Tuesday night, but his convention presence – or lack thereof – was one of the first subjects Paul covered Sunday. “Today I was very excited to get a call from the RNC,” Paul said, before cracking a joke related to the weather-related postponement of Monday events. “They said they changed their mind. They’re going to give me a whole hour and I can say whatever I want – tomorrow night! Just kidding.” Paul directly referenced rules changes that may keep similarly insurgent delegates from succeeding in future elections, seeming stung by disappointment. The RNC “learned how to bend rules, break rules, and now they want to rewrite the rules,” the 77-year-old said. “That’s what we have to stop.” He also nodded to the view, common among Paul supporters, that votes had been miscounted or improperly counted in multiple primary states. “Ultimately numbers do count,” he said. “And numbers do count even when they don’t count all the votes as well. Because we do have the numbers!” Paul may be angry that after years of effort and compromise, insiders are not letting him in. But he’s also now able to speak unfiltered – even by his standards. He took full advantage on Sunday, filling 67 minutes with a laundry list of historical references, bits of his stump speech, and nostalgic philosophizing. The retiring Texas Congressman frequently wandered into territory only he will go, from criticizing Federal Reserve policies to defending WikiLeaks. Leak source Bradley Manning, Paul said, “is in the military so there are probably some debates on exactly how and what to do, but let me tell you.” “Bradley Manning didn’t kill anybody, Bradley Manning hasn’t caused the death of anybody, and what he has exposed, he is the equivalent to Daniel Ellsberg, who told us the truth about Vietnam.” “I’m afraid that if we took a poll across the country and said ‘Should we try Assange for treason?’ that most Americans would say oh yes he’s a bad guy, he’s telling us all these secrets. But guess what, he’s an Australian citizen.” On liberty,” Paul said, “When it returns, once again you’ll be able to drink raw milk. You’ll be able to make a rope out of hemp. You’ll be able to feel secure in your house because the federal government will not be able to spy on you.” On foreign policy: “People say that If people listened to me, Osama bin Laden would still be alive. You know what I say? So would the 3,000 people killed on 9/11!” On the threat of fascism: “I do think we have to worry about fascism, an expansion of what we have which is corporatism.” On his legion of young fans, and mainstreaming his movement: “Wouldn’t you say that if there was a party that said ‘We have an open tent, we want new people to come in, we want to appeal to young people’ – don’t you think they would be begging and pleading that they come into the big tent?” “We will get into the tent, believe me. Because we will become the tent.” With his retirement, becoming the tent is a task that will now fall to Paul’s son Rand, the junior senator from Kentucky, and on a host of younger candidates and members of Congress who count Paul as an influence. “The worst thing we could do is be silent,” Paul said. He left the stage to thunderous applause.
The Expendables 2 once again took a machine gun to its box office competitors this weekend, taking in the most money for a second consecutive Friday and Saturday, this time by about $4 million over The Bourne Legacy . But it was a mostly quiet weekend in Hollywood, with few new films opening and Sylvester Stallone’s sequel winning the weekend with a haul of just $13.9 million. The major movie news instead centered around 2016: Obama’s America , a conservative documentary that cracked the top 10 overall, earning $6.2 million and enjoying an impressive per-theater average of over $5,700.
