Mark Tapson

Working undercover meant more than a fake driver’s license and a fictitious name. It was living life as a liar for hours, days, even months at a time. It meant becoming one of them without becoming one of them. Distance

My father Roger E. Tapson, a former United States Army Staff Sergeant and veteran of World War II, died seven years ago and was buried near a small lake in the rolling, pastoral grounds of the Dallas-Ft. Worth National Cemetery

Patrick Goldstein, the Minister of Hollywood Disinformation at the L.A. Times, is obsessed with convincing you that leftist dominance of Hollywood is a whiny conservative myth. Big Hollywood‘s indefatigable John Nolte, among others, has taken down Goldstein in numerous columns

Can a comedy about jihad make us laugh? Certainly there’s not an iota of humor to be found in the ruins of the World Trade Center, or the massacres in Mumbai or London or Madrid or Ft. Hood or Beslan

This week marks the anniversary of an epic event that’s no longer commonly known but which nonetheless shaped the future of the Western world, and which may still hold inspiration for the West today. After the death of the Muslim

Last week the Sundance Channel aired a five-and-a-half hour miniseries about the brutal and charismatic real-life terrorist known to the world as Carlos the Jackal. Starring Edgar Ramirez (from Domino and The Bourne Ultimatum) and directed by French filmmaker Olivier

The brilliant Humberto Fontova tells a story in one of his books (I believe it’s Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him), about guitarist Carlos Santana being confronted once about wearing the iconic Che T-shirt.

Thanks to a heads-up from terrorism expert Steven Emerson and his organization IPT, the Investigative Project on Terrorism, I learned that in late July Nihad Awad, the unctuous executive director and co-founder of CAIR, gave a lecture at Jordan’s Kuta

Like the unhinged Rosie O’Donnell, the waningly influential Michael Moore is almost too easy a target to bother with anymore – and yet he keeps handing us such tempting ammunition. In an interview published the day after Independence Day, which

“I’m not presenting the Islamic system as one of the alternatives – or an alternative. This is a defeatist and apologetic approach. The Islamic system is the only alternative for mankind.” – A speaker at the Hizb ut Tahrir Khalifa

Beginning in June 2007, filmmaker Tim Hetherington and war correspondent Sebastian Junger embedded themselves with a U.S. Army platoon in the truly God-forsaken Korengal Valley of Afghanistan near the Pakistan border. A companion piece to Junger’s new book War, Restrepo

President Obama called the murder of a soldier in Little Rock by a self-proclaimed jihadist “a senseless tragedy.” The Christmas bomber, “an isolated extremist.” The Ft. Hood shooting, a “horrific outburst of violence.” Daniel Pearl’s beheading, an act which “captured

Gee, we Hollywood conservatives can’t get a break. Over at IFC’s The Independent Eye, in a short piece titled “The disingenuousness of Jafar Panahi’s right-wing advocates,” contributing writer Vadim Rizov takes Big Hollywood to task for our support of courageous

The political thriller Fair Game premiered at Cannes today. (Pause for giant, collective yawn from Big Hollywood readers…) The Sean Penn-Naomi Watts “starrer” (hey, it’s fun using unnecessarily awkward Variety-speak!) revisits the Valerie Plame Wilson scandal, an episode I’m not

We sent a clear message to the West regarding the red lines that should not be crossed. That was the arrogant declaration of victory from the Organization of the Islamic Conference nearly two years ago, regarding the shrewdly orchestrated Muslim

“We sent a clear message to the West regarding the red lines that should not be crossed.” That was the arrogant declaration of victory from the Organization of the Islamic Conference nearly two years ago, regarding the shrewdly orchestrated Muslim

[Editor’s Note: Script reviews of upcoming projects have been around for as long as there’s been an Internet. Therefore it’s no secret that a film can evolve into something quite different from its screenplay. Please keep in mind that this

While audiences in America flock to the escapist eye candy known as Avatar, it’s sobering to realize that in the real world, far away from James Cameron’s utopian dreamscape and the cozy cocoons of our multiplex theaters, another film’s message

While audiences in America flock to the escapist eye candy known as Avatar, it’s sobering to realize that in the real world, far away from James Cameron’s utopian dreamscape and the cozy cocoons of our multiplex theaters, another film’s message

Twelve years ago in his breakout performance as an arrogant young genius in Good Will Hunting, struggling fresh-faced actor Matt Damon sneered at his Boston psychiatrist for “surrounding yourself with all the wrong f__kin’ books. You wanna read a real

Almost before the echo of gunfire from the massacre at Ft. Hood had faded, the news media launched a pre-emptive rationalization for the slaughter committed by Muslim traitor Nidal Malik Hasan. To divert attention from the shooter’s inconvenient name (“I

This past January, London’s Daily Star tabloid announced urgently that an upcoming episode – “the most controversial episode ever”! – of The Simpsons on the Sky1 network “pokes fun at Islam” and “is certain to enrage Muslim fanatics.” As anyone

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” – William Faulkner “We will write our own future, and the future will be what we want it to be.” – Barack Obama In a quiet and seemingly innocuous gesture, President

When I learned of a new NBC-TV series called “The Wanted,” about an elite investigative team tracking down terrorists-at-large, I naturally assumed the terrorists in question would be Homeland Security priorities: white Christian conservatives building abortion clinic bombs in church

My father Roger E. Tapson, a former United States Army Staff Sergeant and veteran of World War II, died five years ago and was buried near a small lake in the rolling, pastoral grounds of the Dallas-Ft. Worth National Cemetery

While Iranian-American protesters packed streetcorners in Westwood last Saturday afternoon in support of the revolution currently playing out in the streets of Tehran, an historical drama about stoning in Iran got underway at the Los Angeles Film Festival mere blocks

Since our country’s having a heated conversation about torture, and especially since that conversation seems certain to devolve into a parade of politicized, self-flagellating show trials that will broadcast our divided weakness to the world, it’s time to get some

As President Obama takes his victory lap abroad, the cheerleading media line up to shake their pompoms. The Huffington Post says “this is what real diplomacy looks like.” Slate calls it “the return of statecraft.” Here’s another way to describe

First, President Obama jettisoned the admittedly empty and useless phrase “war on terror,” a label which pleased pretty much no one, primarily because it didn’t specify an enemy; it’s often been pointed out that the phrase was like calling World

Inspired perhaps by President Obama’s “unclenched hand” approach to reaching out to “countries that don’t like us very much,” as his former opponent John McCain tepidly used to put it, an unofficial delegation from Hollywood’s Academy of Motion Picture Arts

Jude, Gabriel is in the audience but he refused to perform only 45 seconds of his song. It was the whole thing or nothing.

Bravo, Andrew, for your comment about the Mumbai attacks…

Valentine’s Day was the 20th anniversary of the death fatwa issued against The Satanic Verses novelist Salman Rushdie by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, whose stern expression glowered down from many a wall-sized banner throughout his country, and whose declaration, “There is