News The Lord of the Rings Ralph Bakshi’s Remastered The Lord of the Rings on Blu-ray Includes Exciting Bonus Interview Get the behind-the-scenes scoop from Bakshi himself. By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on June 23, 2025 Screenshot: United Artists Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: United Artists Before Peter Jackson brought a live-action adaptation of The Lord of the Rings trilogy to the big screen, there was Ralph Bakshi’s 1978 animated adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s first two books: The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, which was summed up under the title, The Lord of the Rings. If you’re of a certain age, Bakshi’s animated feature holds a certain place in your heart, along with his 1977 animated rendition of The Hobbit co-directed by Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass (and perhaps less so, the 1980 direct-to-television feature, The Return of the King from Rankin and Bass). These animated features came out over four decades ago, and Bakshi’s The Lord of the Rings (which, I might add, comes from a screenplay written by Peter S. Beagle and Chris Conkling) is getting a glow-up. Starting on June 24, 2025 (per Collider), a remastered rendering of the movie will come out on Blu-ray. This version will be in 1080 HD resolution, and includes a bonus interview with Bakshi titled, Forging Through the Darkness: The Ralph Bakshi Vision for The Lord of the Rings. In it, according to the jacket copy, Bakshi will explore “his concept for creating an illustrated film, his pioneering rotoscoping process, and inspirations for his visual storytelling.” The price tag for this one seems reasonable ($22.49), especially since it doesn’t look like the feature is available for streaming anywhere at the moment. You can preorder here, if you’re so inclined. [end-mark] The post Ralph Bakshi’s Remastered <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> on Blu-ray Includes Exciting Bonus Interview appeared first on Reactor.

News Disney Follow Pinocchio Through This Tour of the Walt Disney Archives Walt Disney Archives turns fifty-five years old this year. By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on June 23, 2025 Credit: Disney Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Disney Since its founding on June 22, 1970, Walt Disney Archives has housed numerous artifacts and memorabilia from Disney projects. Within its walls, archivists collect, preserve, and prepare some for exhibition. We see all of this, and more than a few Easter eggs, in an almost five-minute clip largely shown from the point of view of an artifact: a tiny figurine of Pinocchio. The video’s summary describes what we see as we follow the puppet who turned into a boy: From a bustling research room to a treasure-filled storage facility, our plucky hero journeys through the storied spaces where Disney history is collected and preserved. But when the item reaches a formidable digital preservation lab, chaos erupts—sparking a wild chase through the Archives’ cavernous warehouses. At last, the object finds its rightful place: a new home where it will be protected and celebrated—and be reunited with a long-lost friend. Is this video a little cheesy? Yes! Is it also kind of cute? Also yes! There are an innumerable number of worse ways to spend five minutes, so go ahead and give the video a watch. As the quote from Walt reminds us at the end, “I hope we never lose some of the things from the past.” This Pinocchio figurine is one of those things. Check out the clip below.[end-mark] The post Follow Pinocchio Through This Tour of the Walt Disney Archives appeared first on Reactor.

The Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust lawsuit against Meta centers on a simple premise: Meta built and maintains its monopoly through anticompetitive practices. For over a decade, Mark Zuckerberg has pursued a deliberate “buy or bury” strategy that has systematically eliminated meaningful competition. With the Meta v. FTC case wrapping up at the end of May, the stakes of this court decision couldn’t be higher. If Meta wins, Americans will have to confront a digital future defined by diminished privacy, manipulated information, and compromised child safety—all while anticompetitive practices are legitimized across the entire tech sector. In a revealing 2008 email, Zuckerberg declared that “it is better to buy than compete.” Zuckerberg followed through on this statement with the acquisition of Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014, eliminating two of Meta’s most promising competitors at the time. But Meta’s anticompetitive practices extend beyond acquisitions. The company has weaponized its Application Programming Interface access to strangle emerging competitors. When Circle, a local social networking app, gained traction in 2013 with 800,000 downloads in a single day, Meta moved swiftly to cut off its API access. Similarly, when Path, founded by a former Facebook manager, began attracting users, Meta terminated its API privileges, causing Path’s growth to stagnate. This monopolization has devastating consequences for American consumers and their privacy. Meta’s opening statement slideshow claims their services are “free,” but as the saying goes, when you’re not paying for the product, you are the product. The real cost is your personal data, harvested on an industrial scale. Meta’s 2013 acquisition of Onavo illustrates this perfectly. Onavo marketed itself as providing secure virtual private networking services, but it secretly tracked users’ online activity across the internet. After acquiring the company, Meta used this surveillance apparatus to monitor user behavior patterns and identify competitive threats. This data harvesting practice generates staggering profits for Meta via targeted digital advertising, which made the company $162 billion in 2024 alone. Every status update, every photo, and every comment feeds Meta’s advertising algorithms, and now, with their AI chatbots, even your most intimate thoughts can become data points for monetization. Without competitive pressure, Meta faces no incentive to improve privacy protections—a fact clearly demonstrated in countless privacy scandals that continue to occur to this day. Although internal Meta documents claim user engagement is unaffected by such scandals, this isn’t because Americans don’t care about privacy. It’s because they have nowhere else to go. Despite this forced loyalty, Americans’ distrust of Meta runs deep. 2022 internal Facebook surveys show that consumers viewed Facebook as one of the worst brands in the U.S. But because there are no comparable alternatives, this justified skepticism does not lead to market consequences. And the implications of noncompetitive practices extend far beyond individual privacy concerns. Rather, this company’s unprecedented concentration of information control poses profound risks to democratic discourse. Today, Facebook alone has 3.07 billion monthly active users, while Instagram has about 2 billion. That means one company’s algorithms now determine what billions of people see, think, and believe. Meta’s content moderation decisions directly shape public opinion on critical issues—a fact we’ve seen play out in real life. At the Biden administration’s request, Mark Zuckerberg (by his own admission) censored COVID-19 related content and suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story, effectively shaping how Americans discussed pivotal political issues. Americans deserve access to information so they can form their own opinions. When a single corporation controls the flow of information to billions of people, and when no viable competitors exist to provide alternative perspectives, the foundation of democratic discourse crumbles. Perhaps the most troubling is Meta’s treatment of the most vulnerable population—children and teenagers. Without competitive pressure, Meta has repeatedly prioritized engagement and their profitability over child safety. Former Meta director Sara Wynn-Williams revealed that the company actively identifies when teenagers feel “worthless or helpless or like a failure” and shares this emotional vulnerability data with advertisers. Meta deliberately targets young girls struggling with body image issues with weight loss advertisements, exploiting their insecurities for profit. The company’s algorithms have recommended children to pedophiliac accounts to boost engagement metrics. Even more recently, Meta’s AI chatbots sent inappropriate sexual messages to minors. These incidents represent a systematic pattern of prioritizing revenue over child welfare. If Meta faced genuine competition, protecting children would become a competitive advantage because parents could migrate their children to safer platforms, forcing social media companies to prioritize child safety. Instead, Meta’s monopoly position eliminates this market pressure, leaving children vulnerable to exploitation. Americans deserve better than Meta’s monopoly. We deserve genuine choice, meaningful privacy protections, and platforms that prioritize user welfare over engagement metrics. We deserve a tech sector that embodies the principles of healthy capitalism rather than the illusion of choice. We deserve a digital age that isn’t rotting with consumer exploitation. The Meta v. FTC case is about just that: preserving the competitive marketplace that has historically driven American innovation and protected consumer interests. The post What Americans Have To Lose if Meta Wins Its Antitrust Case appeared first on The Daily Signal.

“I look at the Democrats in front of me, and I realize there is absolutely nothing I can say to make them happy or to make them stand or smile or applaud, nothing I can do,” President Donald Trump told a Joint Session of Congress on March 4. Democrats recently proved Trump’s point through their contradictory responses to his handling of the National Guard—yesterday and today. Democrats excoriated Trump for not dispatching the National Guard to neutralize the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. •Noting the National Guard’s absence, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York declared: “We’re like a Third World country here.” •“The three-hour-and-19-minute delay in authorizing the deployment of the National Guard … left police, members of Congress, staff, and the public in danger and is without question completely unacceptable,” said Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan. •Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California asked, “Why weren’t the National Guard there to begin with?” •“After a series of delays, the National Guard did not arrive until 5:20 p.m., more than four hours after the Capitol perimeter was breached,” House Oversight Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney of New York told CNN. “This is a shocking failure.” •“Donald Trump sat on his hands … and refused to send out the National Guard,” CNN’s Kaitlan Collins stated. “Despite desperate calls … Trump did nothing.”  Actually, Trump authorized up to 10,000 National Guard troops to “make sure it’s safe” on Jan. 6, 2021. Nonetheless, Trump internalized Democrats’ complaints: In case of civil unrest, mobilize the National Guard—chop chop. Flash forward to June 6, 2025, when anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement riots exploded in Los Angeles. Masked thugs with hammers attacked sidewalks and the protective bollards around federal buildings. They harvested hunks of concrete and hurled them at law-enforcement vehicles. Domestic terrorists on an overpass chucked projectiles onto police cars on Highway 101. Others launched fireworks at cops. One skateboard-wielding punk shattered the windows at LAPD headquarters. These nihilistic vermin summoned three driverless Waymo sedans, lined them up, and set them ablaze. Rioters waved large Mexican and Palestinian flags and repeatedly torched the Stars and Stripes. (Parenthetically, why did these ICE-hating hoodlums attack Waymo? These adorable cars are not ICE property. Any illegal alien who stepped into an unchauffeured ICE vehicle deserves immediate deportation—not for invading America but for being terminally stupid.) While Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass ordered the LAPD to stand down, Trump quickly deployed the National Guard. Democrats, naturally, were thrilled to see Trump follow their advice. Oh, wait. The exact opposite ensued.  Democrats were enraged that Trump did in Los Angeles on June 7, 2025, precisely what they demanded in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. •“This is an abuse of power by the President of the United States,” Gov. Gavin Newsom of California thundered. “He is using the National Guard as a political pawn, trying to provoke further unrest.” •“This is intentional chaos,” Bass said. “There was no need to federalize troops.” •Trump’s National Guard deployment, without gubernatorial permission, is “unprecedented,” Sen. Adam Schiff of California lied. (In reality, Democrats Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were among the 11 U.S. presidents who have sent federal troops and National Guardsmen to restore domestic tranquility, often stymieing governors and local officials.) “This action is designed to inflame tensions, sow chaos, and escalate the situation.” •Rep. Maxine Waters told CNN: “There’s no reason to be here with the National Guard. The president of the United States is cruel.” •“Federalizing and deploying the National Guard will only make matters much worse. It’s Un-American and reeks of fascism,” said California State Senate Pro Tem Mike McGuire. •Los Angeles-based TV host Jimmy Kimmel said: “When we had the wildfires that devastated big chunks of our city, [Trump] did absolutely nothing. Now that we’re in the middle of a non-emergency, ‘Send in the National Guard!’” Kimmel is absolutely right. As Altadena and Pacific Palisades went up in smoke, Trump utterly failed to dispatch the National Guard.  Why? These hellfires erupted last Jan. 7—13 days before Trump returned to the White House. As a then-private citizen, Trump could not send in the Girl Scouts, much less the National Guard. Either Kimmel is too boneheaded to understand that Trump was powerless to deploy anyone anywhere last Jan. 7, or he regards his audience as too foolish to recognize when he hisses lies on his late-night “comedy show.” Top Democrats slammed Trump for not deploying the National Guard during a riot and then bashed him for deploying the National Guard during a riot. This confirms that today’s Democrats are not powered by principle. Something else propels them: red-hot hatred of Donald Trump. The post Trump Cannot Deploy National Guard Swiftly nor Slowly Enough to Please Democrats appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The House of Representatives is set to vote this week on a resolution condemning the recent Los Angeles riots and thanking law enforcement. The resolution, sponsored by Rep. Young Kim, R-Calif., “condemns unequivocally the violence perpetrated against federal, state, and local law enforcement” and “calls on local and state elected leadership to work with the federal government to end the violent riots and restore peace.” “Peaceful protests are a constitutional right, but vandalism, looting, violence, and other crimes are not. Protecting public safety shouldn’t be controversial, which is why I am leading the California Republican delegation in a resolution to support law and order as we continue to see unrest,” Kim told The Daily Signal.  “I hope [California Gov. Gavin] Newsom can come together with President [Donald] Trump to stop the riots, lower the temperature, and keep our communities safe,” the congresswoman continued.  “Let’s be clear: The riots escalated before the National Guard was sent in and were enabled by California’s soft-on-crime policies—peddled for years by Gov. Newsom, Sacramento, and local prosecutors—that have allowed for lawlessness and endangered public safety of hardworking Californians,” Kim added.  A spokeswoman for Kim, who represents a district southeast of Los Angeles, said the resolution is expected to be brought up to the floor for a vote on Friday. The move comes after a federal appeals court determined that President Donald Trump had lawfully deployed the National Guard to California to secure Los Angeles from the rioters. Newsom had initiated the challenge to Trump’s action. The resolution also expresses gratitude to the law enforcement officers who intervened to help quell the riots, including “the Los Angeles Police Department, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, California Highway Patrol, Orange County Sheriff’s Department, and other local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies.” It notes that the “protests quickly escalated into violent riots across Los Angeles, where acts of arson, widespread looting, property destruction, and vandalism were committed, blocking streets and highways, lighting streets on fire, throwing rocks at law enforcement vehicles, and assaulting federal and local peace officers.”  Kim’s resolution goes on to castigate rioters who “have shot commercial grade fireworks and thrown Molotov cocktails at Los Angeles Police Department officers and assaulted federal agents” and “burned American flags, an act that disrespects the nation that protects their freedom.” It also critiques Newsom, quoting him as saying that local law enforcement did not need any help. The resolution also captures the extent of the people involved in illegal activity noting that more than 561 have been arrested.  The post House Set to Vote on Resolution Condemning LA Riots, Commending Law Enforcement appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Los Angeles Sheriff Department No Es Bueno

Monday’s CBS Mornings played the proverbial role of the skunk at the garden party by scoffing at Saturday night’s U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, cheering “several countries across the Middle East” siding with Iran and blaming the U.S. for Iranian strikes this past weekend in Israel. Senior foreign correspondent Debora Patta — who’s shown since October 7, 2023 a clear disgust with Israel and Jews — boasted “several countries across the Middle East have criticized the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites calling for diplomacy amid fears the war could spiral out of control.” “This morning, sirens warned of another wave of Iranian missiles. This one exploding in Ashdod. And just hours after the weekend’s U.S. strikes, Iran unleashed a barrage of rockets, devastating a huge residential neighborhood in Tel Aviv. All that remained of this building were the hollowed out shells of apartments where people once lived,” she fretted. Given her years of sympathetic coverage for Hamas terrorists amid a years-long war with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), it’s rich to see her show concern for buildings being hit in Israel. She made sure to tout the pro-regime thugs: Israel has also not let up its bombing campaign on Iran and thousands of Iranians rallied in Tehran to protest Israeli and U.S. strikes. “The U.S. has no right to tell us what to do,” said Ali. “We must slap America hard.” Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Aragchi, is in Moscow today for talks with president Vladimir Putin...while Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has thanked the U.S. for stepping in and offered prayers for President Trump, saying he had driven out evil from the world. Netanyahu has also flirted with regime change in Iran. Senior White House correspondent Weijia Jiang doubled down on this, focusing on what co-host Gayle King called the “mixed messages” about any future U.S. intervention given President Trump’s Sunday tweet about regime change.     Jiang made sure to repeatedly tout congressional Democrats worked into a tizzy whether this was constitutional (which they, at most, issued tepid to semi-stern statements when foreign strikes happened in, say, Libya, Syria, and Yemen (click “expand”): JIANG: President made the final decision to attack just a few hours earlier, giving the green light to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth while aboard Marine One. Democratic Senator Adam Schiff slammed Trump for striking Iran without approval from Congress. SENATOR ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA) [on CNN’s State of the Union, 06/22/25]: This was not constitutional. It was not lawful in the absence of a declaration by Congress. JIANG: On Face the Nation, Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended Trump’s decision to carry out the operation. SECRETARY OF STATE MARCO RUBIO [on CBS’s Face the Nation, 06/22/25]: Well, we have intelligence that they have everything they need to build a nuclear weapon. That’s more than enough. JIANG: And he said the administration is not looking to overthrow the Iranian government. RUBIO [on CBS’s Face the Nation, 06/22/25]: What we are focused on is not the changing of the regime. That’s up to the Iranian people if they want to do that. That’s not what we’re focused on. JIANG: But then, in mixed messaging, Trump floated the idea in a social media post Sunday night saying, “if the current Iranian regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change???” Earlier, his Vice President said America’s sole focus is ensuring Iran does not develop a nuclear weapon. VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE [on ABC’s This Week, 06/22/25]: We’re not at war with Iran, Jon. We’re at war with Iran’s nuclear program. SENATOR TIM KAINE (D-VA) [on CBS’s Face the Nation, 06/22/25]: I think it’s BS, and I think anybody hearing it would conclude the same thing. When you’re bombing another nation, ask them if they think it’s war. To see the relevant CBS transcript from June 22, click here.

Talk about getting Jim Cramered. The Atlantic’s pompous loudmouth of a staff writer David Frum committed an unforced error by publicly showcasing how he literally knows nothing about the Trump Doctrine on military strategy or foreign policy. Frum attempted to make it seem like Iran had President Trump’s number in a June 21 screed published at 9:00 am ET, “The mullahs of Iran join the bet that Trump always chickens out.” Frum was responding to Trump’s retrospectively deceptive tactic to make it appear he was waiting two weeks before making a decision on whether the U.S. would conduct targeted strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. “A dramatic victory seemed poised to tumble into [Israel’s] lap. Why not his? But as the hours passed, Trump reconsidered. Instead of acting, he postponed. He said that a decision would come within ‘two weeks,’” Frum chirped.  Frum, behaving like he got a zinger in at Trump, mocked how “Trump is vulnerable to the negotiate-to-delay strategy because he has not taken any of the necessary steps to lead the nation into the war he once seemed ready to join.” Just hours later, U.S. B-2 bombers would strike three of Iran’s nuclear sites with 30,000 pound bunker-buster bombs on Trump’s orders.  On the “two-weeks” deception, a Trump adviser admitted to Axios that “[i]t was a headfake … [Trump] knew the media couldn't resist amplifying it. He knew the Iranians might think he was bluffing. Well, everyone was wrong." No kidding. But Frum's take was a faceplant. "Two weeks" is what Trump says when he's backing away from a commitment he did not mean, whether sanctions on Russia - a healthcare plan - or an infrastructure bill. — David Frum (@davidfrum) June 21, 2025 Now Frum is the butt of the joke on social media, similar to CNBC’s Cramer when another of his stock predictions goes kaput. Reading Frum’s diatribe like he was some kind of authority on Trump’s thought process in the first place is sure to evoke some giggles: Time for diplomacy to work? Perhaps that might be the case in another administration. In this one, as attentive Trump watchers have learned, the ‘two weeks’ promise is a way of shirking a decision altogether, whether on Russia sanctions (deadline lapsed June 11, without action), trade deals (deadline lapsed June 12, without result), or a much-heralded infrastructure program (deadline lapsed May 20, 2017, without action then or ever). Yeesh. This is like watching Sideshow Bob from The Simpsons stepping on rakes.    In fact, Trump’s decision would constitute “the largest B-2 operational strike in U.S. history and the second-largest B-2 mission ever flown, exceeded only by missions after 9/11,” according to NBC News. But Frum was adamant that “Trump seems to recognize that he cannot unify the nation and therefore dares not lead it into any arduous or hazardous undertaking. That may be the secret self-awareness behind Trump’s ‘two weeks’ hesitation.” He continued: “But in the absence of any strategic planning or preparedness, that self-awareness is all we have to guide the country through the next fortnight and, very possibly, a long succession of ‘two weeks’ after that.” Enjoy the smorgasbord of crow, you alleged "expert."

Former President Joe Biden and the rest of his left-wing comrades may be out of office, but cancel culture is still alive and well — especially in states like Washington.The case of Matthew Mastronardi, who is a Spanish teacher in Washington state, couldn’t make this clearer. Mastronardi was “canceled” for reading from the book “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Specifically, he quoted a passage that contained the N-word.“It takes a special person to appreciate context, and that’s really what is necessary to understand this story,” Mastronardi tells BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales on “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered.”“On April 17, I was walking around my classroom, pacing the room, and the students were working on an independent assignment,” Mastronardi continues. “I overheard this conversation between these two girls, and they were talking about the book ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’”The girls were discussing the book since they’d been assigned to read it in their English class, and Mastronardi overheard them say they were forced to skip over a certain word.“And I just thought, ‘That’s silly.’ Like, you are told to read these books, and you’re told to skip words, and as a lover of literature myself, I think that undermines the historical context. You distance yourself from what the author intended you to feel,” he explains.“So I just sort of calmly expressed disagreement, and it started a whole conversation about it,” he continues. “And a girl asked me point blank in front of the class, ‘Well, if you were reading the book, would you say the word?’”“And I sort of laughed, but I said, ‘Of course, I would read every word if I was reading from the book,’” he says, explaining that’s when another student whipped out his copy and asked him to read it.That’s when Mastronardi did it, as he wanted to show his students that “you can read books honestly.”“So I was secretly recorded, and that video made its rounds, and now I’m facing the loss of my job,” he tells Gonzales. “I received a verbal reprimand, saying that I behaved unprofessionally and uncivil with students.”“I thought that was the end of it, I disagreed with it, but at least I still had my job,” he continues, noting that it's only escalated since. “Now, I’m facing my final appeal at the school," he says, adding, "Pray for me."Want more from Sara Gonzales?To enjoy more of Sara's no-holds-barred take to news and culture, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

NYC's Mayoral Race Goes Full Jihadi: DeSantis Braces for Blue-State Refugees to Flood Florida