Rating: 
Summary: Excellent book and a great read
Review: The author is not only engaging and entertaining, he is also insightful. Why does Hollywood continue to release foul raunchy movies? They say that it's because people want to watch them. Medved points out that this isn't true. "Striptease", "Showgirls", and "Boogie Nights" all bombed at the box office, but Hollywood keeps churning out the trash. Compare that with the 1998 re-release of "Star Wars" - a 20-year-old movie on TV and VHS - which made more box office money in its 1998 re-release alone than ALL FIVE of that same year's Oscar-nominated films for best picture - COMBINED. Why? The "best films" were all rated R. The top grossing films of any year tend to be rated G - "Babe", "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers", "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", etc. So why does Hollywood keep doing it? Medved explores why, with facts and figures.
Rating: 
Summary: excellent picture, dangerous trend of argument
Review: The scene that opens this book could not be more significant of the self-created gulf between Southern California's inbred colony of pseudo-artists and the majority of their fellow-citizens, which is Medved's subject. Having gone out of their way to outrage any and every Christian sensitivity with an artsy but artistically vile product called THE LAST TEMPTATION OF JESUS, the clever people in Hollywood worked themselves into a frenzy of terror when they saw the members of the religion they had insulted actually turn up on their streets, in an orderly and perfectly peaceful demonstration. Victimized by their own self-created images of Christians as vicious bloodthirsty persecutors, they quivered in their glass offices, expecting any minute to be stormed and mobbed to death; and then the demonstrators, having made peaceful lawful use of their democratic right to peacefully assemble and protest, dispersed - leaving moguls and artistes to their masturbatory fantasies of Inquisition tortures and burnings at the stake.
This is the core of Medved's argument: not so much that Hollywood's relentless plumbing of the depths is an assault on common decency and universal morality, as that it is commercially disastrous, as being a separation from the common life experience of the average American (and, I would add, the average European, Asian, African and Australian - the average Antarctican, if there were any); producing movies and TV material that the average human being simply does not want to see. In terms of argument, it is a magnificent strategy. The average Hollywood person lives in a world where normal morality does not get much of a show, where greed is as natural as betrayal, and vanity as common as adultery; not much may be expected from their moral reactions, which have to be cauterised in the first place to allow them a career. Call them enemies of sense and morality, and they will in all likelihood preen themselves on being serious artist who see beyond common conventions; but charge them with making commercially ruinous choices - and they may listen.
May, not will. For Medved identifies with great precision the Hollywood quirk which insures that putrid material such as THE LAST TEMPTATION, or THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, or THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE AND HER LOVER will continue to be produced: the lust to be seen as ARTISTS. I have seen this at work in comics; it seems to be, if anything, even more furiously operative in movies. The cranks and crooks, the hustlers and chancers and Wiccans, that make up Hollywood, have a desperate itch to be seen in the light of the few, all too few, real artists among them. They want respect even more than commercial success; they want to be artists even more than they want to be rich. Now to be an artist is not in anyone's gift; talent, like winning at the lottery, is given at random. (One of the better Hollywood movies of the last thirty years, AMEDEUS, might be taken to express the rage of Hollywood professionals at this.) But there is one thing that anyone can do to pretend to it: just as nothing fakes wisdom more convincingly than a posture of conscious disenchantment, of having simply seen through anything and everything (very popular, therefore, among teen-agers trying to pretend that they are already adult), so too nothing can ape more easily the daring and intellectual independence of a real artist than a deliberate assault on what are perceived as conventional postures - "conventional" morality, "conventional" religion. What gives away the inner deadness of this kind of superficial daring is that it actually generates more clichés than the "conventional" genres which it attacks - as Medved does not fail to notice: the Religious Fanatic, the Screwed-Up Vietnam Vet, the Corrupt Catholic Priest (or the Idealistic Catholic Priest Driven From The Church By The Corrupt Catholic Priests). Aggressive intensity of expression serves to mimic depth of content; and superficial critics co-operate. To put an end to the perpetual race further and further down the gutter would threaten Hollywood egos, close off the well-beaten avenue to ARTISTE reputation; and that, much more than any commercial reason, is why it will be strenuously resisted.
Yet there is another reason for such things as THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. Ask yourselves: which environment most closely approaches a cannibalistic lifestyle? Answer (obviously): show business. The capitalistic environment in general is fairly heartless; but nowhere are human beings so brutally used and discarded, pushed up to be cast down, than in entertainment. Even the time of glory has something cannibalistic about it, as men and women are placed up to be seen by the crowd in every kind of position, naked inside and outside, stripping in movies and exposed in their private lives by paparazzi and gossip columns; and it is the very matter of cliché - exposed repeatedly by classics from Hollywood itself - that when the glory is over, stars are discarded as mercilessly as used-up dishcloths. Hollywood eats human beings. That is, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS has very little to do with the life experience of the ordinary human being, but is a perfect allegory for showbiz, with Hannibal Lecter as the ultimate Hollywood survivor. That is one reason why these people find it so easy to see such thing as quality, artistic, daring projects.
Medved's strategy of argument has serious limits. By criticizing Hollywood's casual viciousness not as immoral but as uncommercial, he risks endorsing the 0pposite - saccharine, common-minded pap. There is one startling instance of what might happen: Medved criticizes THE LITTLE MERMAID - perhaps the greatest Disney movie ever made - for showing a teen-ager in revolt against her father. But my dear sir, this has been the stuff of comedy since time out of mind! Nonetheless, the analysis in this book is in the main acute and damaging - which is why it has become so unpopular.
Rating:
Summary: generally on target
Review: This book by Medved is a solid critique of Hollywood and how many of its movies undermine traditional values concerning sex marriage religion and other subjects. I disagree with some of his opinions; I felt Silence of the Lambs was a very good movie because of the acting and tsome of the writing especially in the confrontations between Lecter and Clarice Starling. The book is well written and well argued in most of its pages and I strongly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Great!
Review: This book has totally changed the way I view the entertainment industry and has strengthened my moral convictions as to my television- and movie-watching habits. I still watch shows and movies with adult themes, some should probably be on at 10:00 p.m., but have started dropping shows where the objective is, for example, the viewer to root for the breakup of a marriage (i.e., Caroline in the City, Friends). The appear light hearted, however, the underlying message is not good for our society and especially our young folk.
Rating:
Summary: Good Intentions Fall Short
Review: This book is typical conservative "Blame the left for everything" wrong in today's society. I did agree with some of Mr. Medved's points. Like I would like to see a teen character who is a virgin but not ridiculed, however it is not realistic, because teens DO ridicule other teens for that and other things. I would like to point out one flaw in the book. The Cosby Show DID so mention religion. Cliff and Clair Huxtable talked about their church activities when they were kid, Clair Huxtable is a member of the church choir as well, and when one of Cliff's old relatives came to visit the ending took place in a church complete with choir references. So, maybe Mr. Medved wasn't a regular viewer of Must See Thursday back in the day, but religion was mentioned in a positive context on The Cosby Show. I don't like how he blames the media for all of the ills on society, it all comes down to parenting, same as for another great book called "Branded" about the commercialization of teenagers. Yes, there are things in the media I don't care for, but I don't believe in censorship. I do think things are too PC today and that is the real problem. But stop blaming the media for all of today's ills!
Rating:
Summary: Good Intentions Fall Short
Review: This book is typical conservative "Blame the left for everything" wrong in today's society. I did agree with some of Mr. Medved's points. Like I would like to see a teen character who is a virgin but not ridiculed, however it is not realistic, because teens DO ridicule other teens for that and other things. I would like to point out one flaw in the book. The Cosby Show DID so mention religion. Cliff and Clair Huxtable talked about their church activities when they were kid, Clair Huxtable is a member of the church choir as well, and when one of Cliff's old relatives came to visit the ending took place in a church complete with choir references. So, maybe Mr. Medved wasn't a regular viewer of Must See Thursday back in the day, but religion was mentioned in a positive context on The Cosby Show. I don't like how he blames the media for all of the ills on society, it all comes down to parenting, same as for another great book called "Branded" about the commercialization of teenagers. Yes, there are things in the media I don't care for, but I don't believe in censorship. I do think things are too PC today and that is the real problem. But stop blaming the media for all of today's ills!
Rating: 
Summary: GOLDEN TURKEY AWARD
Review: This book marks "film-critic" Michael Medved's official move from the word of Bad-Movie insult-maven to "big-time" right-wing culture-warrior. By taking aim at the preferred target of rightist anti-Semites, "Blasphemous" (Jewish) Hollywood, the conservative Jewish Medved managed to get himself onto Talk-Shows, from CROSSFIRE to repeated trips to the couch of good friend, PAT ROBERTSON, grabbed a spot on the hate-group lecture circuit, and weedled out a short, grim after-life for his dying PBS movie-review program. The Fate of his SOUL is another matter. We can only speculate on that (or ask Pat, I guess). Already hopelessly dated, impossible to read or to take seriously, this book is not worth the few minutes of my life I am taking to WARN YOU AGAINST IT. A GOLDEN TURKEY if there ever was one, Medved has already been assigned to the dustbin of history. SHUN HIM, SHUN THIS BOOK.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome, accurate and stunning critique of Hollywood
Review: This is an excellent book and presents a considerable body of evidence that proves Hollywood's obsession with exploiting sex and violence and other harmful trends. He convincingly refutes the standard Hollywood claim of "just making what people want". A fantastic book, give it to your most liberal friends.
Rating:
Summary: very biased...
Review: This is undoubedly the most biased book I have ever read yet. I am a media scholar, but I don't base arguments on the preceptive, non-universal paradigm of morality. Morality varies from person to person depending on class, age, gender, ethnicity, etc... This book is entirely based on an old, out-of-date theory of media influence which has been scientifically dis-proven. (Hypodermic theory). In short, not everyone interprets the content on the screen the same way. "Audiences negotiate meaning."
Rating:
Summary: Just the Facts.
Review: Traveling through America and talking to people about entertainment, the general consensus you will find is that most people are sick of all the garbage they hear on the radio and see on television and the movies. Yet, it seems that no matter how much people complain, the situation doesn't improve much. In HOLLYWOOD VS. AMERICAN, Michael Medved explores why Hollywood is no longer in tune with the rest of America. In doing so, he also illustrates (with great statistical accuracy) the ignorance behind all the excuses the entertainment establishment gives for producing much of the garbage it does. Yet, in doing so, Medved never questions the right of people to create the garbage they do. He displays that the establishment has forgotten that with rights come great responsibilities; responsibilites that many entertainers rather seem to ignore. A great, informative, insightful, and memorable book.
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