At the Movies...

Excuse me, could you hold this while I step onto the bandwagon?

It’s been chattered about for a couple of years now here and there, and I personally am hearing more about it day in and day out, so here goes.

Movies. Getting worse?

I’ll start by saying that from an early age I have been completely addicted to good cinema. It was a natural progression from my love of books and stories in general. I can remember watching certain movies over and over until my parents would take them from me and force me to actually play outside for an hour. (Every minute of which I would pretend I was in the movie).

As I got older my love of movies led me to work at the local theater, a brand new 10 screen with state of the art everything (at the time). I started taking tickets but soon (along with AeroSarge) moved upstairs to run the projectors. By the time we graduated, the Sarge and I had pulled every one of the projectors apart to fix something or another and had probably saved the theater about $10,000 in repair costs. It was a great job because it allowed you to preview movies weeks before they hit the screen.

P.S. – Ask AeroSarge what happens when you ground out a 5/16 wrench on the 8000 volt rectifier….

Anyway, the widespread tussle lately has been over how bloody awful the Hollywood movie machine has become. I like to think of myself as open minded when it comes to movies, though Whit might have something to say about that, but still I tend to like things that make movie critics soil their depends. When in the right mood I’m fairly easy to entertain and therefore watch and enjoy things that many people wouldn’t dare line their bird cages with.

That being said; lately I’ve just been disappointed with Hollywood’s offerings. When Whit and I first started dating up until we’d been married for a couple of years we watched one or two movies a week in the theater. Now it seems that we make it at Most once a month if that. I’ve never stopped loving good stories. In fact, I read three times as many books as I watch movies. So if I haven’t changed fundamentally, then something else must have…

It would seem that Hollywood is falling into a trap set by those it seeks to illuminate…Pimps. The so called ‘artists’ who create the celluloid dreams on which we all should base our opinions and *cough* politics, are taking good ideas (well, some of them at least), dolling them up in too much makeup, and sending them off to indoctrination camp with the ‘elite’ actors of our time. During this metamorphosis, a once ingenious idea starts to take on extra baggage. This baggage comes in the form of social commentary, liberal ideology, and blatant pandering to a clutch of small minded individuals. By the time the movie makes it out of ‘finishing school’ it has left all semblance of entertainment behind and is now a full fledged whore for the politic.

Then the press conferences start, the actors mug for cameras and extol the virtues of the characters, how they raised their voice against injustice, broke the mold, and gave the finger to rich, white America. Then the stars of the film will feign interest in a charity or two that sounds close enough to the film’s “cause” and call it a day.

Now, lately this process seems to come full circle back to the news media with this question: “Why do you think the movie did as poorly as it did in the box office?” To which the actors and director puff themselves up with all the dignity that playing make believe for a living can offer and say something about how backwards most of the country is and how people just don’t understand what the movie is trying to say or, of course, it’s George Bush’s fault.

This last bit is something I find a bit more entertaining than the movies themselves. So here we are, a country whose entertainment machine is running dry because, like the government its chosen politic so dearly wants to enlarge, it knows better than we do what is best for us. The question stands, what will we all do while we’re not seeing movies? Will we read? Will we learn? Will we look around us at all that has been happening in our world for decades while we drooled in front of a movie screen? Doubtful. But at least the left coast movie barons will be forced to rethink their methods and learn to be a bit more tactful about their propaganda.

I think Ann Coulter has a great take on the Oscar scene this past week; check it out here.

Cheers,


Captain