Hollywood

On Sunday night, President Trump issued his second imperial edict of the weekend regarding America’s real forever conflict—our culture war. The first was Friday’s executive order that he would, without apparent legal authority, personally defund two perennial conservative ogres, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and National Public Radio.

Greetings and welcome once again to the Carnival of Fools, our weekly gathering of headline-grabbing political clowns. Look at them tumble and twirl, each of them striving desperately for the spotlight in a world where emotive entertainment has rapidly overtaken sober policymaking as the focus of attention. Perhaps it’s a tribute to the eerily prescient name of this column — thanks for the tip, Rich! — that the worlds of politics and entertainment are now beginning to collide more obviously than ever before, albeit in the least predictable way.

President Trump said he would impose a 100 percent tariff on movies “produced” outside the United States, proclaiming in a social media post on Sunday that the issue posed a national security threat.

Mr. Trump said he had authorized Jamieson Greer, the United States Trade Representative, to begin the process of taxing “any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.” Mr. Trump added, “This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat.”

We can count Emily Ratajkowski among those who aren’t a fan of Monday's all-female Blue Origin space mission. I was waiting for her to weigh in on it before deciding whether I'm a fan of it or not and, thankfully, I now know where she stands.

Lauren Sanchez having her billionaire fiancé Jeff Bezos launch her and her friends into space hasn't been greeted with as much support for the all-female crew as they were probably hoping for before their voyage to space.

Oliver Stone, the Oscar-winning director whose film JFK portrayed the President John F. Kennedy’s assassination as the work of government conspiracy yesterday called for a new congressional investigation into his killing.

Stone, 78, testified at a hearing of the House Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets following last month’s release of thousands of pages of government documents related to the assassination.

American filmmaker Oliver Stone — whose political thriller, “JFK,” made waves more than 30 years ago — will testify on Tuesday before a House committee on the release of new documents related to the assassination of John F. Kennedy Jr., according to a press release from the committee.

The Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets announced on Sunday it will hold a hearing on Tuesday on the so-called “JFK files.”

With all the turmoil besetting the real world, you’d think there might be more important things to inflate into controversies than the pre-release kerfuffles that have plagued “Snow White.” As it turns out, this is one of the better live-action adaptations of a Disney animated feature. And I say that as someone who mostly doesn’t like them. Yes, I’ve enjoyed a couple (“Cinderella,” “The Lion King”).

I don’t actually know how to judge these live-action Disney remakes on any relative scale of quality. The bar is so low, and what people seem to want from them — a tickle of nostalgia, the familiar rendered new on a technicality, 109 minutes of child-friendly distraction — feels so different from the usual standards. So: Snow White is not as bad as it could be, while not being anywhere near good? It’s better than, say, 2019’s Aladdin, which was awful but nevertheless made a literal billion dollars.

At the 11th Academy Awards in 1939, Shirley Temple presented Walt Disney with an honorary Oscar — a statuette accompanied by seven miniatures. It was, of course, a nod to his animation Snow White, which the Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein had called “the greatest film ever made”.

Disney had a Hollywood “premiere” for its new live-action “Snow White” that did not have the usual excitement — no guests were on hand; only Disney’s employees were present. The red carpet remained rolled up.

The House of Mouse took the charming 1937 classic “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” — beloved by millions — and turned it into a feminist rant.

Its star, Rachel Zegler, spouts the most awful drivel.