Now Playing: Theme Music from Le Grand Bleu..
Topic: Rambling Rumminations
..but thank the (cinematographic) gods that the summer is over! While I dread the idea of waking up to the misery that is called winter in along the north-eastern shore of the US of A, in terms of movie going the end of the summer is a blessing.
Maybe we can attribute the dearth of decent home-grown films to a general overheating of Hollywood brains (or is that an oximoron?). At any rate we suddenly find an albeit small barrage of good movies hitting the screens: Capote, with a spectacular performance by Philip Seymor Hoffman; Good Night, And Good Luck, finally making an actor out of George Clooney; Broken Flowers, with minimalist Bill Murray at is most minimalisitc; and yes, even the timely return of Wallace and Gromit in the The Return of the Wererabbit. Then there was the ever cantankerous Shirley McClaine in In Her Shoes (which unfortunately has us endure tha dittzy Diaz thingy). Even Tim Burton's two recent outpourings (The Corpse Bride, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory) were timely distractions from the morass the other media tend to serve us.
Is there thus hope for Hollywood? I doubt it. Except for the claymation heroes (and they are British), only Tim Burton could claim box office success. Even the usually successful animation genre begins to pale - or why else would someone try to make a good daily comic - Over The Edge - into what promises to be a second-rate feature film?
While the Indies are still far from main street, Hollywood needs to rethink its strident opposition to good movie making, as practiced in Europe and elsewhere in the world. Otherwise the box office receipts could twindle into the red in a matter of a few bad years such as 2005 has been.
