Topic: Grunts, rants, and others
Granted, I will watch almost anything the movie moguls care to serve up. If not in the theaters then on the small screen or the idiot tube. It has been a minor obsession since I first could reach the on switch on our first TV, way back when. But - I said almost!
This year's helpings have been especially poor and - if on will place faith in the official statistics - the rest of the movie-going public agrees with my assessment. The paying numbers have declined seriously; the rise of DVD, both pirated and legit, plus in particular Hollywood's continued inability to gauge public tastes have served notice that change is not only necessary but inevitable.
Of course, the paymasters will not take notice until some major studio fails catastrophically. Even then it is doubtful that the managers and bean counters will be able to fathom the real reasons for their failures: Lincoln's Axiom. This states quite clearly that you cannot please all the people all the time. And still the studios try it by neutralizing every concept or sentiment, pandering only to the lowest possible denominator, thus trying to do just that. What will it take for them to realize that once you dumbed everything down to rock-bottom lower no longer exists?
The past few weekends have brought us The 40-Year Old Virgin (would you believe that there are some forty-one year old real virgins planning to sue the studio for defamation?). We have been offered the Great (melodramatic) Raid. Plus an American male prostitute's take on Amsterdam, and Two Imbeciles And A Wedding. Add to that the countless failed attempts on remakes, sequels, re-interpretations, and other plagiarism, and you have the Sum of the Summer of 2005, digitally re-mastered.
There were a few, very few exceptions; accidents of cooperations between directors and actors. Tim Burton's candied-up Johnny Depp showed us the bittersweet side of Roald Dahl; Jessica Lange managed to curb Kevin Costner's baseball tongue enough to permit Mike Binder to create one of the view real movies of the year. And even the abominable showman, Chris Rock, was coxed into producing a memorable line in the animated take on New Yorkers called Madagascar. Bill Murray made two memorable attempts to revive the dying audiences with The Life Aquatic and Broken Flowers. Unfortunately for him the Land of Super-sizing Everything failed to comprehend his minimalist messaging.
The outlook for the remaining year is bleak: Zorro is coming back for no reason at all; more ghosts and ghouls are heading for the silver screen; and we are heading head on into the schmaltz season - as already announced last February - with this years crop of Christmas movies. I do not know exactly what the ensuing skirmishes for the Oscars of 2006 will try to shove past our eyeballs, but I am sure it will be worse, a lot worse than what we have seen since last Labor Day. Makes me wish I could truly watch almost anything.
Unfortunately I cannot.
