“I voted for Obama last time although he got to be all things to all people then,” Affleck said in an interview to promote his new film Argo. “And now he’s got a record which makes it really different … I obviously have more complicated feelings.”

Affleck says Romney’s inability to connect with everyday Americans is reminiscent of past failed candidates.

“I think Republicans really had a chance to win,” Affleck said. “And they kind of ended up with like a sort of Mike Dukakis, Al Gore, Bob Dole type - who just couldn’t get people to see him as a real person somehow. Romney just had…

While attending a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colo. this summer, Stephen Barton was shot in the face and neck. But compared to several other victims, he was lucky; Barton lived, and now he’s working to raise awareness of gun violence. According to his new PSA, 48,000 Americans will be shot and murdered during the next four years — “enough to fill over 200 theaters.” He urges viewers to visit DemandAPlan.org, an organization that’s working to end gun violence. See Barton’s poignant PSA below.

Because we just absolutely have to take a tragedy and make it…

Making his first press appearance since that headline-grabbing Republican National Convention speech, Clint Eastwood laughed off his rambling, off-the-cuff missive to an invisible Obama. “It didn’t get the response I wanted,” joked the 82 year-old actor and filmmaker at a press conference for his upcoming baseball flick Trouble With The Curve, “because I was hoping they’d nominate me.”

...

Eastwood explained what he’d been trying to convey when he improvised an exchange with an empty chair on the RNC stage: “My only message was [that] I wanted people to take the idolizing factor out…

I’m thinking the movie is going to be the sort of movie I have been anticipating. It will tell a story of Lincoln the way we want to be told he was — not necessarily how he actually was.

It’s very difficult to address historical figures. Someone like Lincoln is still relatable to Americans today. We see his image on our currency, and we hear stories of his kindness, honesty, and sincerity. We are glad to quickly overlook that this president made the country go to war with itself. Obviously it could not have been an easy choice (or his first choice), but it still gives me pause enough to…

Days after his empty chair speech made Clint Eastwood a polarizing symbol of the Republican National Convention, hometown paper The Carmel Pine Cone scored an exclusive follow-up with the 82 year-old former Mayor. His explanation? He made it up on the fly moments before taking the stage. You don’t say! “They vet most of the people, but I told them, ‘You can’t do that with me, because I don’t know what I’m going to say’... There was a stool there, and some fella kept asking me if I wanted to sit down. When I saw the stool sitting there, it gave me the idea. I’ll just put the stool out there…

More from my “politics in Hollywood” series, here’s three stars speaking at the DNC.

Oscar-winner George Clooney lent his voice to President Obama’s campaign for a video introduction Thursday night to close out the Democratic National Convention, but it was a trio of leading ladies — Kerry Washington, Scarlett Johansson, and Eva Longoria — who gave the DNC a rousing jolt of star power in Charlotte, NC.

Washington, who manages political crises on ABC’s Scandal, introduced herself as “not just as an actress but as a woman, an African-American, a granddaughter of immigrants who came…

Clint Eastwood made a surprise appearance at the Republican National Convention Thursday night, calling unemployment in America “a national disgrace” before interviewing an empty chair he addressed as “President Obama.”

“I got Mr. Obama sitting here and I was gonna ask him a couple questions,” Eastwood drawled, turning his head toward the bare stool.

Boy he sure stammers a lot these days. What’s worse is he isn’t making me feel any better about ‘conservatives’ in Hollywood. Interviewing an invisible Obama is just about the lamest thing I have ever seen an actor do. Much as I don’t…

The actor and active Democratic fundraiser is in discussions to star as the actor-turned-Republican President Ronald Reagan in the indie Reykjavik. Brit helmer Mike Newell (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) is in talks to direct the film that once was being eyed by Ridley Scott as a directing vehicle.

Okay, so aside from possibly hiring a director who is obviously an idiot (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is the worst of the Harry Potter movies, and not because Goblet was a bad book), does anyone else find it really stupid that they want to get someone known for his left-wing…

Conservatives often complain that Hollywood is in the bag for the Democrats, but when it comes to internet freedom, the motion-picture industry likes what the Republican Party has to say. Chris Dodd, chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America (and former Democratic senator from Connecticut), officially embraced the Republican Party’s campaign platform on intellectual property and internet freedom…

Excuse me for getting into politics…

I’m a conservative through and through, but if nothing else has scared you about the Republican Party this week, perhaps this should.…