Conservative magazine National Review Online has come out with a list of the best 25 movies with conservative themes. Hollywood has long been a target for the right wing, which accuses it of producing films with a liberal bent, and the magazine took up that line of argument in its opening sentence.

“Once in a blue moon, Hollywood releases a conservative movie, or at least a film that resonates with conservatives in a particular way,” the article said.

But given the many blockbuster movies on the magazine’s list, it appears that the themes in National Review’s top 25 could appeal to movie goers of all political persuasions.

Topping the list is 2007 German film “The Lives of Others,” which chronicles the harsh realities of life in Communist East Germany during the 1980s, when secret monitoring poisoned the relationships between the country’s citizens.

Hollywood is well represented on National Review’s list, which includes the 2004 animated movie “The Incredibles,” the 1994 Oscar-winner for best picture ”Forrest Gump,”  the 2007 blockbuster action hit “300″ and the 2008 Batman movie “The Dark Knight.”

In the case of “The Incredibles,” a movie about a family of superheroes, the magazine mentioned the film’s celebration of “marriage, courage, responsibility and high achievement.”

What is conservative about “Forrest Gump”? Well, the magazine notes that the title character played by Tom Hanks is an “amiable dunce who is far too smart to embrace the lethal values of the 1960s.” As for his love interest, she embraces the ’60s and becomes “a drug-addled hippie, with disastrous results,” the magazine said.

The magazine singles out “300″ because the publication argues that Hollywood recently “neglected the heroism of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan,” but the film presents an allegory to that bravery in its depiction of greatly outnumbered Spartan fighters taking on Persian invaders. Incidentally, the film drew criticism from the Iranian government, an entity that is not popular with Western conservatives.

In “The Dark Knight,” the magazine said that Batman’s story resembles that of former President George Bush, because he keeps the city safe from a terrorist (The Joker) and must endure the animosity of the press and the public.

Other titles on the list include “Groundhog Day” (1993), “The Pursuit of Happyness” (2006), “Ghostbusters” (1984), “Master and Commander” (2003), ”The Lord of the Rings” trilogy (early 2000s), “United 93″ (2006) and “Gran Torino” (2008).

National Review said it came up with the list by asking readers to submit nominations, and then sorting through the results. Also, the magazine said it makes no claims that any of the filmmakers involved in the titles are themselves politically conservative, which is probably a safe disclaimer.  

For instance, aside from starring as Forrest Gump, Hanks has advocated for gay rights and he endorsed  Barack Obama during the Democrat’s successful run for president.

(Writing and reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis)

After winning key awards from the Producers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild this past weekend, “Slumdog Millionaire” is a favorite to win best picture at the Oscars. But don’t tell that to everyday movie fans. The think Oscar voters are a bunch of elitists, and they have their own favorites from among the movies and performers shut out of Oscar nominations.
    
Movie fans picked Batman movie “The Dark Knight” as the year’s biggest Oscar snub, in a poll released on Monday by online ticket seller MovieTickets.com. Fans also said Clint Eastwood should have been nominated for best actor for his movie “Gran Torino,” Leonardo DiCaprio should have earned a nod for “Revolutionary Road,” Christopher Nolan should have been nominated best director for “The Dark Knight” and singer Bruce Springsteen should have been on the list of best original song nominees for “The Wrestler.”
    
Eastwood has long been a favorite with Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voters, with two best director and best film awards, but he got zero nominations for “Gran Torino,” a snub that has irked fans. Still, fans have rewarded Eastwood at the box office, with “Gran Torino” earning nearly $100 million since it opened on Dec. 12.  
    
This weekend, the critically panned comedy “Mall Cop” ruled the box office for a second week in a row, taking in a strong U.S. and Canada total of $64.8 million in two weeks. There’s no chance that “Mall Cop” will be nominated for best picture next year, but in only a couple weekends it has outperformed the $72.8 million worldwide total for “Slumdog Millionaire,” the tale of an Indian orphan who beats the odds to win love and a game show. Still, with best picture wins at the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild awards, ”Slumdog” from director Danny Boyle is currently the frontrunner in the race to Oscars.

It was perhaps the biggest snub of the Oscar nominations, actor/director Clint Eastwood’s “Gran Torino” was overlooked by voters at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with no — zero — nominations. Or, was it?

(For a slideshow of nominees, click here, and for a list of nominees, click here.)

For weeks, as the road to Oscars’ Feb. 22 ceremony in Hollywood has laid out in front of award watchers, critics and industry groups have continually turned their heads as “Gran Torino” drove by — no Golden Globes or Broadcast Critics Choice awards, no nominations by producers, directors, actors or writers guilds. You could see the roadkill on the highway.

Yet, Eastwood is a favorite of the Motion Picture Academy voters. He has won two best director and best film awards (”Unforgiven” and “Million Dollar Baby”), but never won for acting. He was the star of “Gran Torino,” and the movie and his performance have earned mostly good reviews. Moreover, the film has been a hit with moviegoers who vote with their dollars at box offices ($78 million and climbing). As a result, many award watchers believed Academy voters would make Clint’s day. But they didn’t. And the question is, did they get it right or wrong?

“The Reader,” which has been seen by few people, earned a nomination for best picture over “Gran Torino” and Richard Jenkins in “The Visitor” – a well-respected actor but hardly a household name — was nominated over Clint for best actor. Was that right?

In other surprises, Leonardo DiCaprio was shut out of the best actor category after turning in a strong performance in dark drama “Revolutionary Road,” and that film, which also starred Kate Winslet, also failed to make it in the best film and best director category with its filmmaker Sam Mendes (Winslet’s husband). Winslet did, however, land in the best actress race for “The Reader.”

And what about Batman movie “The Dark Knight.” It was 2008’s No. 1 movie at box offices, but was shut out of best director (Christopher Nolan) and best picture. The movie’s nominations — except for supporting actor for Heath Ledger – came mostly in technical categories like makeup, visual effects and sound-editing.

So, the race for Oscars is on, and the checkered flag will wave on Feb. 22, but now is your chance to get in your own votes on Fan Fare: “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “Slumdog Millionaire,” “Frost/Nixon,” “Milk,” and so on. Let us know what you think were Oscar’s hits and misses.

The studio behind Batman movie “The Dark Knight” has set Jan. 23 as the date for the movie’s re-release in IMAX and conventional theaters.

Studios often re-release movies in the lead-up to the Oscars, and “The Dark Knight” has been talked about for a number of trophies.

The biggest buzz surrounds the late Heath Ledger, who played Batman’s Machiavellian arch enemy The Joker and died last year of an overdose of prescription drugs. His performance already won him a posthumous Golden Globe award for best supporting actor, and Ledger could get an Oscar nomination as well.

Industry watchers expect the re-release of “The Dark Knight” to push the film past the $1 billion mark in worldwide box office sales. The film is already the second-highest grossing movie behind the 1997 film “Titanic.”

“The Dark Knight” will play in 255 theaters in the U.S. and Canada, including 142 IMAX theaters, said studio Warner Bros. The movie will play in about 32 IMAX locations internationally, the studio said.

Segments of the film were shot in IMAX, a giant screen format that Hollywood has increasingly turned to in recent years. “The Dark Knight” last year made more than $48 million in U.S. and Canada box office sales from IMAX showings.

(Writing and reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis)

PHOTO:REUTERS/Danny Moloshok

Hollywood’s movie awards season got seriously underway with the Golden Globe nominations on Thursday. But have those who pick the best movies and actors of the year got it right?

Some pundits are already crying foul over the absence of Australian actress Cate Blanchett, Brad Pitt’s co-star in ”The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”,  from the Golden Globe contenders, not to mention the fact that the San Francisco gay drama “Milk” got just one nomination, for actor Sean Penn.

And how about “The Dark Knight” –  the biggest box office success of the year — which picked up a single nomination for the late, beloved actor Heath Ledger but came away empty-handed otherwise?.

Since several of the movies, including “Benjamin Button” and “Revolutionary Road” haven’t been released in theaters yet (awards voters get sneak previews of those arriving at the end of the year), it’s hard for regular movie goers to make a fair assessment at this stage of the game.

This year’s list of Golden Globe nominees is top-heavy with A-list stars. Everyone from Brad and Angelina to Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway will likely be walking the red carpet when the awards are handed out on January 11.

But who do you think got unfairly shut out,  and which nominations were most surprising? Most importantly who deserves to win the top Golden Globes, or Oscars, for 2008?

As Hollywood’s summer movie season draws to a close — only two weekends to go — box office watchers are expecting slightly more than $4 billion in total revenue largely because of superhero blockbusters “The Dark Knight,” “Iron Man” and “Hancock”
     
A final number around last year’s record $4.18 billion would approximate last summer’s record box office, but it’s important to note that while revenues are up, attendance — the number of people actually going to movies — is down about 3 percent from last summer. What accounted for the difference? Higher average ticket prices.

The decline in attendance leads us to think that maybe, despite the success of “Dark Knight,” “Iron Man,” and even “Sex and the City,” maybe audiences weren’t too thrilled with Hollywood’s summer. Can anyone say “Speed Racer”?

Or, how about Indy’s fourth movie? Was it worth it for director Steven Spielberg and actor Harrison Ford to team up again for “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”? 

Maybe the moviegoing experience just wasn’t worth the price of admission, which is $10 or more depending on the theater and location. Or, maybe the Olympics were just too much late night competition for late-summer movies such as “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor,” slowing momentum from June and July.

In any case, we’re curious as to what moviegoers thought about Hollywood’s summer movies. Let us know.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis)
     

The hype around Friday’s release of the “The Dark Knight” has reached a fever pitch, with Heath Ledger’s dark turn as the Joker generating an avalanche of posthumous Oscar buzz.

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone has called Ledger’s performance “mad-crazy-blazing brilliant,” while the sequel’s director Christopher Nolan has raved in the New York Times that Ledger’s portrayal of the sadistic makeup-caked villain is “stunning” and “iconic”.

The big-ticket Academy Award categories have typically been bereft of summer blockbuster nominees.

But is Ledger’s performance so bone-chillingly remarkable that it can survive the hype and the action-movie stigma?

As the 2006 best-picture shunning of “Dreamgirls” demonstrated, presumptive hype can lead to a snub when the Academy Award nominations are announced.

The Internet Oscar buzz alone for the Australian actor - lead by a gallery of fans likely still reeling from the shock of his untimely death in January - has eclipsed the praise of traditional critics, elevating the risk that Ledger will become a target for backlash.

The film is likely to surge above the $100-million mark during its opening weekend, placing the film in the same mega-earning category as “Iron Man” and “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”.

Writing Ledger’s name on a ballot will perhaps become more palatable for Academy voters given the length of time between opening weekend and when Oscar nomination polls close on Jan.12, 2009.

This may be one time when fading memories are deemed an advantage amongst the fickle Hollywood elite - cementing Ledger’s legacy as an Oscar-worthy talent.

For full coverage of “The Dark Knight”, click here.

The new Batman movie “The Dark Knight” has already impressed critics in advance of its Friday opening, but at its New York premier, the family of late Australian actor Heath Ledger gave the film their mark of approval. 
 
The performance of Ledger  as Batman’s nemesis The Joker has sparked speculation among critics that he could win an Oscar posthumously.
 
Kim Ledger attended the premier of his son’s movie in New York on Monday with his wife, Ines, who was Heath’s step-mother. The actor’s mother, Sally Bell, and his sister, Kate Ledger, also attended. The only close family not there was Ledger’s  former partner Michelle Williams, and mother of his daughter, Matilda.

After the movie, the Ledgers released a statement quoted in various media outlets saying: “‘The Dark Knight’ is everything we hoped it would be and more. Heath loved the experience of creating this character and working on the film. We are so proud of our boy.”
 
Kim Ledger also reportedly gave a thumbs-up sign at the premier when asked what he thought of “Dark Knight.”
 
Ledger, 28,  died alone in his Manhattan apartment in January from an accidental overdose of prescription medications. If Ledger is nominated for an Oscar for his role as The Joker, it would not be his first. He also won a nomination for his role as a gay cowboy in the 2005 film “Brokeback Mountain.”

Since before the summer movie season began in May, new Batman movie “The Dark Knight,” starring Christian Bale, has been one of the most anticipated films by movie fans. With good early reviews and an apparently strong performance by Heath Ledger as Batman’s nemesis The Joker, fan interest keeps growing.

Online ticket seller Fandango said on Wednesday that its advance ticket sales for the film are on pace to blast past blockbusters like “Iron Man” and “Sex and the City” — two of the summer’s biggest box office hits.

“The Dark Knight” opens officially on July 18, but theaters across the United States are scheduling midnight screenings on Thursday and many of those shows are already sold out, Fandango said. In response, theaters are adding 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. shows, so fans can catch the movie before dawn.

“The ‘Dark Knight’ may be responsible for a lot of bleary eyes at work next Friday morning,” Rick Butler, chief operating officer for Fandango said in a statement.

Ticket demand is high in small U.S. cities such as Boise, Idaho and in big cities like New York and Los Angeles.

In a survey of 3,000 fans at Fandango.com, 92 percent said they expect Ledger to win an Oscar posthumously for his role as the Joker — even though most of those fans presumably have yet to see his performance. Ledger died of an accidental drug overdose earlier this year in New York.