THAT's WHAT BOOKS ARE FOR

A famous Hollywood producer once said "The most important thing in this town is SINCERITY. Once you can fake that, you've got it made." Well, there sure is a lot of faking going on in the movie industry and it is not working with me. I tried to watch several films last night at the North Beach Theatre (our apartment for those who are new to this site) and pulled the plug on each one of these turkeys within the first half hour. Are we as a people so dumb and easily lead that we buy any and every piece of crap they turn out just because some BIG name star needs a paycheck? I know that America has been undergoing a dumbing down process over the years, but even chewers of lead paint can't find much to watch that does not in the process make you even dumber.

In one movie, which shall remain nameless, it begins with a convicted serial killer, who looks like Hanibal Lechter and who shouldn't be guarded by any less than the entire State Militia, being transported by a single police officer in a sedan in the middle of a rainy night... the roads become impassible and they have to stop at a motel and CLICK.. are you F'ing kidding me? In the next one, a guy gets the ability to Jump from place to place at will... and everything he has in his hands, like money from a bank heist for example, passes through walls with him....CLICK. The other night, we watched one where a family got a box delivered to their home and pushed a button and got a million dollars and some stranger died as a result... Oh, puleeeze.

Now I am not trying to eliminate the genre of exceptional powers and superheroes all together...amazingly, we accepted through Superman 1,2,3,4, etc. that Superman could disguise himself as Clark Kent by donning a pair of glasses and acting nerdy...but there was a quality to most of these movies that was lacking in the films I tried to watch last night. And that quality is, they didn't suck. They did not start out with some goofy premise like those horror movies where some coed comes home and finds a dark house and the front door is open and she goes in and.....reee, reee.

And we can't wait to celebrate these people in Film Festivals, like the one going on now in Nantucket, or that unabashed self-promotional black-slap marathon, the Academy Awards... "I would like to thank Sol Shapiro and the entire team at Phonymax for allowing me to make this film..." Jay Leno once said "Politics is show business for ugly people." We as Americans are starting to hold our politicians feet to the fire and are on the verge of throwing the bums out. We should do the same thing with Film makers. When you go out to rent a film and you pop the DVD into your home player and it is AWFUL, take it back to the video rental store and ask for your money back. You usually get it. When you go to the movies in a theater and you are a 1/2 hour into the movie and it is Crapola, leave and ask for your money back. Julia Roberts and Mel Gibson are going to be OK, don't worry. And as for all these actors we never heard of, most of them I hope we never see again. Don't give up your day job, Homer. Consider picking up a book and reading instead of sitting numbly as your intelligence is drained from your body by some film-merde, Get entertained elsewhere. That's what books are for.