In the (Greensboro, North Carolina) News & Record last Sunday, Lewis Beale of Newsday wrote about how "War films can be hard for Hollywood to peddle."  It seems that "of the four films released in the past six months dealing with the current world situation — all with big-name stars and the full Hollywood studio push — none earned a profit in its initial theatrical release."

Stephen Bochco explains the failure of these war films (as of his own TV series on the war, "Over There") by saying, "It's a hugely unpopular war, and there's a staggering amount of depressing coverage .... I don't know if you can do a serious drama about this war and locate any angle that would overcome the negativity about it."

And Dennis Rice of United Artists adds, "Anytime you believe a movie is going to be the same story as what you get for free on CNN 24 hours a day, people will ask, 'Why spend $10 to go see that?'"

Beale then lists successful World War II era films like Mrs. Miniver, Casablanca, and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.

But ... wait ... maybe the difference isn't that we all hate this war.  Maybe the difference is that we hate Hollywood's attitude toward the war.

Mrs. Miniver is a powerfully emotional story about love and loss in wartime.  It pulls no punches.  But nobody doubts whose side the film is on.  It isn't about blaming the government for getting us into the war.  The film accepts that the war is being fought and then shows real nobility of spirit among those supporting it.

Need I point out that in Casablanca, it's clear that the Nazis and those who support them are the embodiment of evil, so that anyone on the other side is at least partly good?

And in Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo there's no problem with a heroic story about bombing the heavily populated capital city of the nation that sneak-attacked us at Pearl Harbor and death-marched our soldiers from Bataan.

Here's a thought.  What if Hollywood made a movie in which the people fighting the war thought that the U.S. was the good guys, that fighting Osama's terrorists in Iraq was way better than fighting them in Manhattan, and that the men and women who volunteer for service in our military are devoted servants of our country?

Bochco's and Rice's logic is like that of the researcher who trained a grasshopper to jump when he yelled "jump."  He pulled off one leg; the grasshopper still jumped on command; he kept pulling off legs until the grasshopper stopped jumping.

The researcher's conclusion?

Grasshoppers with no legs can't hear.

Wrong conclusion, dimwit!

Remember what happened after Passion of the Christ made half a billion dollars at the box office?  ABC dusted off an abandoned TV movie about Judas Iscariot — and nobody watched.

What did Hollywood learn from this?  That there's no market for "Bible movies"; Passion was just a fluke.

Can you believe anything so stupid?  Passion of the Christ brought millions of people to the theaters who never went to see normal Hollywood films —because they've given up on finding movies that tell stories they can believe in and care about.  They trusted Mel Gibson to deliver a believer's movie — so they went.

ABC's Judas Iscariot project, though, was obviously not for believers in the divinity of Christ.  Christians avoided a film clearly designed to shock and offend them, and non-Christians didn't care enough to watch.

The audience is way more sophisticated than Hollywood: They want biblical movies; they just don't want anti-Christian ones.  Likewise, they want war movies, they just don't want anti-American ones.

Here's a complete refutation of the idea that Hollywood's war films keep failing because the War on Terror is so "hugely unpopular": "The Unit."

It may not get the top ratings numbers, but it's a realistic TV series about Special Ops soldiers who are fighting the War on Terror.  The writers make it clear now and then that they share Hollywood's disapproval of the Bush administration — but they treat the soldiers sympathetically and show the bad guys as murderous jihadists.  In short, they're honest.

I believe if you tell the truth about the war and the kind of people who are fighting it, the audience will come.  People can deal with heartbreak, with gritty reality — as long as they don't think they're seeing enemy propaganda.

But as long as Leftist Hollywood lies about the war, treating it as a fraud or a mistake instead of a war being fought by soldiers who believe it is as essential to our future security as World War II, then they'll find that nobody wants to see their stupid movies.

As long as Hollywood filmmakers, like the Democrats in Congress, are against American victory, they'll get treated like Tokyo Rose.  As long as they amuse us, we'll listen; when they propagandize us, they get only our backs.

Stalking Santa

Perhaps it's not quite as funny as Christopher Guest's mockumentaries ( A Mighty Wind ; Best in Show ; Waiting for Guffman ), but it's close.  Stalking Santa shares the device in all these movies that the subjects of the supposed documentary don't realize just how comical and tragical they are.

The great thing is that you can watch this even with true-believer children in the room (though really young children would be bored out of their minds — it is a documentary, after all).

It's not Santa who's being ridiculed here — it's bad scientists, who relentlessly search for the desired outcome, despite all evidence to the contrary.

There are also great clips of interviews with kids about what they believe about Santa Claus.

But the heart of Stalking Santa is the story of the scientist and his family, and how his obsession is hurting them all.

Funniest moment: When an "elf" chews out the scientist for bothering him.

Go to http://www.stalkingsanta.com, and you can see the trailer — or click here and buy the DVD.  It's fifteen bucks — if three people watch the one DVD, you just saved money over going to the theater.