NOTE: David Sirota's new book Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now is just out this week. This post draws on the research he did for his book about the deep connections between the Pentagon and the entertainment industry - connections that intensified in the 1980s and still shape our culture today.

All the buzz in the entertainment/tech world about the blockbuster new video game Homefront brings back memories of the 1984 film Red Dawn - and rightly so. The creator of Homefront is none other than John Milius, the writer/director of the 1984 film that later became the deliberate namesake of the most famous operation in today's Iraq War. But it should also bring back memories of the larger militarist themes that continue to define our entertainment culture - themes that ultimately bring up the direct but little-examined connections between the Pentagon and the entertainment industry. It is the legacy of those connections, first intensified in the 1980s, that continue to embed militarism in seemingly non-political products like video games and action movies.

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Via Curbed LA: This $5.5 million mansion in the Holmby Hills of Bel-Air is a real estate double-whammy. Not only was it designed by Wallace Neff, "the architect of California's Golden Age," but it has a celebrity-filled pedigree of past owners. Curbed LA reports that the Bel-Air home was commissioned by American darling Judy Garland in 1938 at the tender age of 16, "the year she was cast as Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz." Other celeb homeowners include music industry heavyweights Quincy Jones and Marvin Gaye.

Curbed LA points us to Bluetramontana Style, which has photos of Judy Garland posing in her Wallace Neff home. The Julie Garland Database also chronicles all the homes Garland has ever lived in, from her childhood home in Grand Rapids, Minnesota to her flat on Cadogan Lane in London, where she passed away at the age of 47.

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Once upon a time in Hollywood the black list was a very bad thing. If your name was on the black list (that supposedly never existed) you couldn't get a gig in Hollywood. It was a sucky time and should always be remembered and never repeated.

Enter the "new" black list created by Franklin Leonard in 2005 to bring attention to the best unproduced screenplays. Great idea...in theory. But the list has morphed over the years into a typical Hollywood list filled with guys with agents and managers whose films have been picked up by studios. Now lots of the film of the list are even in production (One Day is already done and has a release date and Margin Call will be at Sundance) or about to be in production. Films that have been on previous blacklists include Juno and Lars and the Real Girl and the 2009 list included The Social Network (like Aaron Sorkin ever needed the help) and Cedar Rapids which will premiere at Sundance in January. There was only one woman in the top 10 last year, Ellen Rapoport who wrote Desperados which from what I can tell is not close to being made.

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When Fox News host Glenn Beck held his Aug. 28 Restoring Honor rally on the National Mall, many observers noted that it seemed more religious than political, comparing it to a "revival" and saying Beck "sounded like Billy Graham." But a new poll finds that the vast majority of Americans aren't quite ready to walk into the church of Glenn Beck quite yet.

Fewer than one in five Americans (17 percent) say Beck is "the right person to lead a religious movement" according to the PRRI/RNS Religion News Poll, conducted Sept. 9-12. Even his biggest supporters are skeptical. "Among white evangelical Protestants, the religious group registering the highest favorability for Beck, only about 1-in-4 (26 percent) say Beck is the right person to lead a religious movement," notes the Public Religion Research Institute. "Among Republicans, the overall group registering the highest favorability for Beck, only 29 percent say he is the right person to lead a religious movement."

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