Moviefone News Moviefone Copyright 2011, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. Moviefone Good old fashioned elbow grease. <![CDATA[Really Pro-Life? Ban Masturbation, Require Penis Probes]]> announced a proposed ban on vasectomies, as a response to the state Republicans' efforts to limit abortion rights. They argued that, if the state had the right to control women's sexual health rights in the "interest" of the rights of unborn children, men should be placed under the same limits.

It was a clever point, to be sure, but I believe that, in light of the national attack on women's reproductive rights, did not go far enough. With Virginia seeking to force vaginal probes on its women and the nation-at-large at war over birth control, it has become clear that every drip of potential life is now legally sacred, and so our next logical step has to be to ban male masturbation.

After all, if contraception catches that life-giving discharge, denying the millions of potential little babies in its stream a chance at conception, isn't it just as bad to release by one's self? And in fact, if, as certain organizations insist, it should only be summoned from its testicular dwelling during acts of true and mutual love, isn't self-love a worse offense than sex?

But here's where it gets tricky. Unfortunately, given the sheer number of heathens now living in America (just as Rick "Satan is coming" Santorum predicted, of course), it'd be hard to live by the honor system on this one. Aside from everyone's grossest frat brother, few people come out and admit it each time they administer self-pleasure. So, just as Virginia is proposing, the state will have to take measures into its own hands.

Now that we've cleared a certain threshold in which probing the most intimate areas can be state-mandated, it should present no legal problem at all to require the urethral probing of adult men. While socks can be hidden and tissues flushed, it would be hard to hide the traces of sperm in the inner tubing leading to the tip of the penis. And to be sure that not a single life is wasted, inserting a probe inside the penis seems like a small sacrifice.

Indeed, we are at a crucial time for the Pro-Life movement. The same tired, one-side propositions aren't enough to gain public support or, most critically, save every possible human life; there are 20 to 150 million sperm in each millimeter of semen, making every stroke a genocide. No, if we're going to be serious about saving every single microscope bead of baby aspiration, we must ban masturbation.

And yes, starring in your own political advertisements counts.]]> Thu, 23 Feb 2012 09:35:44 EST 1296125 <![CDATA[President Obama's Super PAC Flip-Flop (VIDEO)]]>
Obama, an immediate critic of the Supreme Court's "Citizens United" decision that allows a sea of corporate and special interest money in political campaigns, toured the nation in 2010, warning Americans about the dangers that unfettered cash donations posed to discourse and representative government. At the time, Republicans were taking in the vast majority of the money, primarily through super PACs, which could support individual candidates.

Fast-forward to earlier this month, and Obama is now encouraging his own supporters to donate to a super PAC that supports his re-election. It's a major reversal, and given his GOP rivals' huge super PAC fundraising, perhaps an obvious one for someone seeking an even playing field. But it also represents something beyond a flip-flop. It sanctions special interest influence at the highest levels of government.

Neither Obama and his wife Michelle, nor Vice President Joe Biden and his wife Jill, will attend the super PAC fundraising events, but campaign staff and some cabinet members will.

Watch the video above as Obama rails against the campaign finance system -- and then abruptly changes course when it comes time for re-election.

CORRECTION: This video has been updated to correct the dates of two video clips.
]]> Wed, 22 Feb 2012 15:37:02 EST 1294614 <![CDATA['John Carter' Producers On Budget Rumors & Creating Mars]]>
And to read the rumors surrounding the film's four years in production, the story of how the epic Disney movie got made seems nearly as legendary a tale.

"It's frustrating, because it's wrong," Lindsey Collins, one of the film's co-producers, says of years of trade reports that the film, the first live-action effort from Oscar-winning "WALL-E" director Andrew Stanton, was a bloated, over-budget mess.

"There's no way to talk about it without sounding defensive, but I'm going to sound defensive for a second and say this movie was made on budget," Collins asserted. "I think Disney took a huge leap of faith with us early on and said, Okay, we believe your number and it's higher than we wanted but we believe it so make it for that ... And in fact, in most areas, it came in under, and the one area we came in slightly over was offset by all the underages of the others, so it came within I think two percent of the budget."

The budget they say they hit was $250 million, which went into live shoots in desert locations and massive computer graphic work to create an elaborate world in which a leather-clad Taylor Kitsch, as Carter, leaps into a war between two rival nations and a race of green, horned, four-armed natives. Barsoom, as Mars is called by its inhabitants, is a rocky desert-scape littered with ornate cities, mystical ruins and anachronistic flying machines. And it's one that took over seventy five years of technological development to make believable on the screen.

Various attempts at adapting Burroughs' seminal, serial adventure series have been made since MGM and "Looney Toons" director Bob Clampett approached Burroughs in 1935 with the idea of making a cartoon feature from the Civil War veteran-turned-space hero's exploits. The test footage, however, did not impress, and the movie was scrapped. The property was acquired by Disney in the '80s -- Tom Cruise was wooed to star -- but that fell through, as did Paramount's attempts to make it, with both Robert Rodriguez and Jon Favreau attached to direct at different points.

Stanton, the current director, grew up a massive fan of the stories, and had always wanted to make the movie himself. Once that was mentioned to Pixar's chief John Lasseter, a quick meeting with then-Disney exec Dick Cook led to the studio scooping up the rights to the seemingly impossible-to-make movie.

"The Curse of John Carter? Yeah, I think everybody felt that the fact that this was a huge property," co-producer Collins laughed, adding that a meeting with Danton Burroughs, the author's grandson, gave her a sense of the books' long legacy. "If it's not done right, it's just going to seem silly and campy, you're never going to buy a live action person sitting next to a CG person. And at least that part, I completely appreciated. I was like, oh my god, how the hell are we going to do this?"

Luckily, Collins' co-producer on "John Carter" was Jim Morris, a Pixar exec who spent nearly two decades working for and then running leading special-effects house Industrial Light & Magic (ironically, "Star Wars" creator George Lucas' company -- how things come full circle).

"Our basic theory was that we wanted to have real stuff under peoples' feet and around them at all times," Morris said. "So what we did was shot them in these big landscapes and just did a little bit of enhancement. We would add ruins here and there and take natural formations and turn them into ruins, and the interior stuff, whether it's in the palace or light or whether it's in chambers, that work we shot on stage [in front of a green screen]."

It requires a certain buy-in from the viewer -- Carter has Superman-level leaping ability, he's often surrounded by the CGI aliens and the plot is tied together with magic thread -- but Morris and Stanton didn't want people to necessarily think of space when they watched it, even if it did take place on Mars.

"One of the ways that gave it a grit and a reality that differentiated it from some of the other films in the genre was to just shoot it like a period piece -- just a period that you didn't know existed," he explained.

The production did have some issues -- Morris explained that they had to condense story lines, give Kitsch's Carter a more sympathetic arc as a Civil War soldier who lost his family, and spend a bit more time on re-shoots than they had planned. The real challenge, however, has come in selling the film to the public.

"It's been tricky. It's been really tricky to market," Collins admitted.

The first step was changing the name. Initially called "John Carter of Mars," Disney chopped off the second half of the title, fearful that the inclusion of the planet's name would mean "people wouldn't give it the chance or the time of day to see that it was multifaceted," she explained.

Pixar's Morris acknowledges that the film's audience is still likely to skew toward young males, though he says Kitsch's hunk appeal has elicited positive responses from women in test audiences. His producing partner believes that they still have a chance to sell based on the long legacy of Burroughs' work.

"What we're trying to get across is that there's a strong story there. I've always been coming at it from the point of, look, I think women don't go see action films because ultimately there's no story, and I think the more we can be convincing, showing people by the fact that there's a good story," Collins said. "We'll see. It's tough. Hopefully the word of mouth will help us, too, because everyone goes in and says, 'Holy shit, that's not what I expected.'"
]]> Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:05:18 EST 1293248 <![CDATA[ESPN's Linsane Headline Not an Isolated Lincident]]> ESPN.com ran a headline on their mobile application about Knicks sensation Jeremy Lin, the 23-year-old, out-of-nowhere point guard who has lit up the league and lifted a disappointing team to national prominence once again. He's got legitimate NBA size and build, and real game, too, with the ability to drive hard to the basket, make impressive passes and nail last second three pointers. He's been the key to the Knicks' sudden seven game winning streak, and ball-crazy New York -- along with the sensation-crazy Internet -- has been going nuts for Lin, including finding every conceivable pun for a last name that stretches across his jersey alone in a league of Andersons, Jameses and Millers.

Jeremy Lin is Asian -- a Taiwanese-American from Palo Alto, California who went to Harvard -- and after a turnover-laden game that marked his first loss as a Knicks starter, ESPN.com splashed the words "A Chink in the Armor" underneath a photo of him mishandling the basketball. The Internet -- the same Internet that has turned a God-loving novice into a search term that out-Googles Jesus -- is outraged. And, of course, the headline was egregious, offensive and downright racist. But to act as if this gross mistake wasn't coming, to fake shock that anyone could even think of his race, is nearly as bad an offense.

As a sports-crazed kid growing up around New York City in the early part of the previous decade, I had posters and carefully-scissored Post and Daily News back pages chronicling the brief and glorious run of the 2000 National League Champion Mets lining my bedroom walls. I had Mike Piazza, the super star, Edgardo Alfonzo, the quiet rock, and Robin Ventura, the charismatic face of the team, staring at me from all directions, as if to say, we couldn't have done it without you, Jordan.

My real sports idols, however, were Gary Cohen and Howie Rose, the play-by-play broadcasters who wove those tales of hardball glory over WFAN, the radio station I'd listen to with the TV on mute and was the number one pre-set on all the various radios that I kept stashed under my pillow for all those extra-inning games on school nights. As a scrawny Jewish kid, I knew from an early age that my best chance to make it in pro sports wasn't on the field, but in the media (and I was already blogging, before that was a word).

Sure, I was a decent Little League player, with a few game-winning hits and a weird love for taking grounders, but I knew that the seemingly ironically titled Jewish Sports Heroes book that my grandfather once bought me during a stretch of illness wasn't something that required frequent reprint for new chapters dedicated to the new heroes. My dad took me to the batting cages far more than my average bat speed and slap-single power warranted, but there was no pretense that hard work and some help from those Fred McGriff-approved Tom Emanski training videos would put me on a path to actually being paid to play baseball. Those over-priced, green-bronze cage tokens were an investment in keeping me busy and bolstering a warped teenage self-confidence, not a down payment that would return the gold and treasure given out liberally to first round draft picks.

So, when a skinny kid began hitting homeruns miles out of Toronto's Skydome, and then cashed in with a massive contract in the Hollywood spotlight of Dodger Stadium, I was surprised, elated and proud to call myself a Shawn Green fan. Sure, he didn't play for my Mets, but he was a member of the other underdog team I was born into: the Jews, traditionally an even more hapless group of athletes. Now, I wasn't at all religious then and I still only know when the high holidays are here when I see my little brother tweet about a day off from school in late September, but damnit, I could reasonably imagine that this guy, unlike seemingly every other ballplayer, was just like me: he probably had zany relatives, was constantly called by a nervous-but-loving mom, spent half his childhood learning about the Holocaust and felt weirdly proprietary over bagels, especially when all the kids who got to celebrate Christmas were eating them before homeroom.

Green was one of the National League's best sluggers for a few years, and he'd have been a star no matter what. But naturally, because he was different, the media gave him special attention. Whether he liked it or not, he was the face of Jewish athletics, this generation's Sandy Koufax, who, over 30 years after his retirement, was still the gold standard for big league Yids. No doubt, he was covered as someone, something, different.

After a while, it began to grate on me: why couldn't we just appreciate his talent, and let him be a regular ballplayer, who gets interviewed and highlighted after a game winning RBI, with puns made on anything but the different religious symbol he wore on a silver chain underneath his jersey -- especially when huge, silver and diamond crosses were known to thump the chests of half of the league's players when they ran around the bases?

And when he came to the Mets, during their momentous (and then soul-crushing) 2006 run to the NLCS, forget it; I was interning for the team that summer, and one of my sharpest memories amidst all the winning and celebrating was the attention paid to the diminished right fielder who became the toast of the most Jewish part of the country.

I felt that, instead of being a star who happened to be Jewish, Green was famous for being the Jewish star. And the same thing is happening to Jeremy Lin, but a million times worse.

Lin, as I said, can ball. No doubt. And when boxer Floyd Mayweather said that Lin is only getting hyped because he's Asian, he rightly got smacked by the media and fans on Twitter. But the fact is that, Mayweather, probably quite accidentally, raised a valid point. Lin, with his monster numbers, buzzer-beating heroics and winning ways, not to mention feel-good, anyone-can-do-it populist story, would be celebrated regardless of his race, especially in a town that, quite literally, gives its sports heroes keys to the city. But it's hard for me to not think that Lin is also being viewed by some as a novelty act, a high-flying world-beater who, in street clothes, might be mistaken for a math major.

It's a quiet racism when compared to the injustices our country has legally and tacitly sanctioned, but Asian-Americans do indeed face their own uphill struggle against stereotypes and prejudice. And so Lin, in breaking all those stereotypes, is being giddily greeted as some sort of "Amasian" ninja (he's been called the Linja), his seemingly inexplicable success amplified by the fact that he looks different from anyone else on the court -- or, for the most part, any court throughout the nation.

I'm a Knicks fan and have enjoyed this run as much as anyone, especially after all the years I've suffered with this team. I've even made my fair share of Lin puns, which, in isolation, aren't particularly egregious. And I have had plenty of conversations with fellow liberal New Yorkers who wouldn't dream of making a racial slur but can't help but get excited over the bizarre and thrilling adventure on which this kid has led the Knicks.

We'd love him regardless of his race, because he's damn talented and a winner, but we should at least admit that the goofiness, the puns, the sudden inclusion on the national stage of All-Star weekend and the dedicated merchandise booth at Madison Square Garden -- all that is undoubtedly linked, in part, to his race. And it's okay to celebrate it -- every kid, regardless of race or religion, deserves a sports role model -- but don't act surprised when it suddenly goes awry, like it did with ESPN's headline. Yes, the writer has since been fired, but that doesn't mean the rest of us don't have some important lessons to learn as well.

A version of this story first appeared at The Merkinist. The author can be contacted here.]]> Mon, 20 Feb 2012 12:27:38 EST 1288800 <![CDATA['Act Of Valor' And The Military's Long Hollywood Mission]]> Fri, 17 Feb 2012 09:13:35 EST 1284338