Daily News Brief for Tuesday, January 9th, 2024

This is Garrison Hardie with your CrossPolitic Daily News Brief for Tuesday, January 9th, 2024. 
 
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https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2024/01/07/nolte-existential-crisis-woke-hollywood-loses-moviegoers/
 
‘Existential Crisis’ as Woke Hollywood Loses 20% of Moviegoers
 
The start of the COVID pandemic is about four years in the rearview and still being blamed for Hollywood losing 20 percent of moviegoers.
 
“One out of every five moviegoers has vanished since the pandemic, according to research compiled by one Hollywood studio,” reports the far-left Hollywood Reporter. “Whether they’ll ever return to see a film on the big screen is anyone’s guess — and, if they do, when.”
 
Compared to the last pre-pandemic year of 2019, the domestic box office is down 21 percent.
 
The lengthy article is full of facts and figures. It also accidentally answers the question it asks about why this is happening and how to fix it, but it never acknowledges the answer.
 
The answer is right here: Spider-Man: No Way Home, Barbie, Oppenheimer, John Wick 4, Top Gun: Maverick, and Sound of Freedom. Those titles were monster hits during and after the pandemic for one very simple reason: people wanted to see them.
 
The idea that the reasons behind this drop in moviegoing ranks is a whodunnit is absurd. The titles above prove that people will still turn out in droves if they find something appealing. So, how can anyone still blame the pandemic for the drop in moviegoing? If the pandemic was to blame, nothing could succeed in theaters.
 
Plus, Taylor Swift’s big 2023 concert tour proves the moviegoing demo isn’t afraid to congregate or come out of their homes. She’s packing them in up to the rafters.
The article also suggests moviegoers are tired of aging franchises. How can that be true when the fifth biggest global blockbuster of 2023 was the tenth chapter in the 24-year-old Fast & Furious franchise?
 
The article suggests moviegoers are tired of superheroes. How can that be true when Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 was 2023’s fourth biggest global blockbuster?
 
Audiences worn out by franchises and superhero movies would not go to see any aging franchise or superhero movie. Fast X and Guardians became hits because people wanted to see them. But why Fast X and Guardians 3, and not Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny? Another simple answer… Dial of Destiny emasculated and shamed its hero with an unappealing girl sidekick, while Fast X and Guardians 3 remained true to their characters and what made them iconic.
 
The “existential” truth, and we all know it, is this: Ever since Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, Hollywood has sought to punish, insult, and alienate Trump voters (half the country) by way of cinematic tantrums that scold and dehumanize us due to our gender, faith, political beliefs, and overall normalcy.
 
Hollywood’s insane crusade against decent people (and decency) hit warp speed after the murder of George Floyd with a legion of movies where no one behaves or interacts normally. In order to push its social and political agenda, everyone’s a simple-minded stand-in for us evil normal people or the oh-so noble BIPOCLGBTQTARDs. Disney is now “queering” our children. Indiana Jones is criticized as a colonialist. Luke Skywalker is a child murderer. Buzz Lightyear is a GLAAD crusader. Thor learns to wear an apron.
 
On top of that, movie after movie tells us sexual deviancy, mental illness, and narcissism are virtues. Worst of all, our heroes, the very characters that made these franchises golden geese for decades, are deconstructed, portrayed as bigots, and replaced with girls and racial minorities for no good reason other than tokenism. Sometimes, as the Equalizer franchise proved, there is a good reason — Denzel Washington is awesome. Mostly, though, the tokenism is so ham-handed and off-putting that the bad taste in our mouths tells us not to bother purchasing a ticket.
 
There’s no mystery here: movies suck.
 
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2024/01/07/two-hikers-killed-by-avalanche-in-the-italian-alps-near-switzerland/
 
Two Hikers Killed by Avalanche in the Italian Alps Near Switzerland
 
Two hikers on snowshoes were killed by an avalanche in the Italian Alps near Switzerland, a rescue service said Sunday.
 
The avalanche occurred around noon on Sunday at the 2,200-meter (7,200-foot) level in the Formazza valley in the Piedmont region, said Federico Catania, a spokesperson for Italy’s alpine rescue service.
 
The force of the avalanche pushed one of the victims into a lake near the bottom of the slope, while the other body was found in the mass of snow, he said.
 
Despite strong winds, a helicopter was able to lower a rescue team aided by a dog unit.
 
The identities of the two victims weren’t immediately released.
 
A search operation was launched after guards at a nearby dike reported seeing an avalanche strike two hikers, Catania said. An initial search by foot failed to find the hikers, prompting the use of the helicopter.
 
A firefighters helicopter carrying divers was dispatched to recover the body from the lake, rescuers said.
 
https://americanmilitarynews.com/2024/01/iran-sends-warship-to-red-sea-after-us-sinks-houthi-boats/#google_vignette
 
Iran sends warship to Red Sea after US sinks Houthi boats
 
Iran dispatched a warship to the Red Sea after the U.S. Navy destroyed three Houthi boats, a move that risks ratcheting up tensions and complicates Washington’s goal of securing a waterway that’s vital to global trade.
 
The Alborz destroyer traversed the Bab El-Mandeb strait, a narrow choke point between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, on Monday, Iranian state media said without providing further information on the vessel’s mission.
 
Iran’s foray into the Red Sea a day after the U.S. action compounds a highly volatile situation in the channel that handles about 12% of the world’s commerce. The move could be seen as a challenge to the U.S.-led maritime task force established last month to halt attacks on ships by the Tehran-backed Houthi rebels who control a swath of Yemen’s northwest, including the capital Sanaa and the Red Sea port of Al-Hudaydah.
 
The Houthis, in November, began attacking vessels they claimed were headed to or owned by entities in Israel in a bid to end an Israeli offensive in Gaza, after Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group, staged a shock attack inside Israel on Oct. 7.
 
In one month, the Houthis hijacked one container ship and launched more than 100 drone and ballistic missile attacks, targeting 10 merchant vessels involving more than 35 different nations, according to the Pentagon.
 
Operation Prosperity Guardian, involving the navies of the U.S. and nine other nations, swung into action from Dec. 19 and had a fierce encounter with the militants on Sunday.
 
Helicopters aboard two U.S. destroyers in the Red Sea, the USS Eisenhower and the USS Gravely, responded to a distress call by the Maersk Hangzhou as Houthis in four speedboats tried to board the vessel, according to the U.S. military. Houthi fighters ignored verbal warnings, fired at the aircraft and triggered a lethal response in which three of the boats were sunk.
 
It was the Houthis’ second major shipping attack in less than 24 hours and came after Denmark announced it was sending a frigate to the Red Sea to join the U.S.-led maritime coalition.
 
The U.S. has accused Iran of being “deeply involved” in the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, which Tehran has denied, but said that it understood the reason for their actions. Iran hasn’t denied supporting the Houthis since the group ousted the internationally recognized government of Yemen in 2014.
 
A Houthi spokesperson, Yahya Saree, confirmed the incident and said 10 of the group’s fighters were dead or missing. He called on Yemenis, Arabs and Muslims to be “ready for all options in confronting the American escalation.”
 
Iran’s show of force in the Red Sea coincided with a visit to Tehran by Mohammed Abdulsalam, a Houthi movement spokesperson and chief negotiator. On Monday, he met with officials at Iran’s foreign ministry following talks with Ali Akbar Ahmadian, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, according to Iran’s Nour News.
 
On Sunday Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian denounced what he called double standards by the U.S. and some Western governments after a telephone conversation with the U.K. Foreign Secretary David Cameron, who urged Iran to rein in the Houthis. “Israel can’t be allowed to massacre women and children and carry out a genocide in Gaza and set fire to the region, but consider stopping an Israeli ship in the Red Sea as endangering the security of this economic waterway,” said Amirabdollahian.
 
Tehran’s moves are ultimately in the service of its own agenda of projecting power and driving Washington out of the region, says Joel Rayburn, a former US diplomat and military officer.
 
“This is what the Iranian regime has always been intending to do with their outpost in Yemen,” said Rayburn. Iran thinks it can establish itself as “a great power sitting astride the region and its waterways.”