The John Batchelor Show

VIDEO: Hollywood Goes to War

February 12, 2015

Thursday  12 February 2015  / Hour 1, Block A: Mary Kissel, WSJ, in re:  This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate ... the Oscars are coming up later this month and one movie in particular ... is creating a lot of consternation with in the Academy ... arts in Review Editor Eric Kingston joins me Eric so American Sniper were all talking about it ... I in this is this issue when for a lot of awards ... well it's been nominated for gone for six or something like that but it's it's very gets ... the most interesting Oscar race because ... it's created a Copel split of a kind I've never seen a new meaning the cyclicals well on the one hand it's been blowing out the box office in it hasn't been on general release even a market that already the highest gross gross and no film of all I think they got numbers on that will put that up on the screen but ... um at the same time you've got what you might call the store when will we people like ... Howard Dean and Bill Maher and and Michael Moore denouncing it does ... warmongering so did the analytical split here you gotta put it this way and and um ... Hollywood is famously known as being ... leaning one out of the The Fair Hollywood Hollywood is given other ... and ... you know conservative I can use that term ... war films awards haven't ... they have and they haven't that's that's what makes this so fasting because on the one hand ... you have a movie light on the hurt locker the was nominated for nine Oscars one six ... but then zero dark thirty was nominated for sixty one we Wall e I didn't understand I was so ... that that's kind of ... that that there's a split there and then the other interesting thing answers there is a wild card here in the form of ... Clint Eastwood that his film he directed that he ... co produced it ... so ... it's beyond all these nominations for his last movie Gran Torino which has occurred riffic film and widely claimed ... did you get a single and why is that because Connie's has a Republican is that is up a winding in Trondheim well I think I think Grant Reno was seen as politically incorrect somehow he this this this kind of ... this Korean War veteran who seemed ... to be racist at the beginning but ... in fact is the redeems him self but I think Hollywood most of ... the two top so it so when he comes to American Sniper ... it is a toxic because it shows ... the sniper ... field confronting more all ... the land mines in the movie is a is it because the anti seen shooting women in church on any what is it about this movie will settle SEC will well I think I think what upsets the people who ... have been upset by is that it's good this man is ... when women and children what ... what ... appeals to people about it is the moral clarity because the enemy is showing doing things the enemy is doing ... that we are reading about ... ice is doing in the media day and day out and ... get it dramatize is the conflict as an office no film has previously it's the film as ... moral clarity a great producer ... it's it's killing at the box office and in were still adding in discussion and then we