Dear Hollywood, Look, I know we’ve had our differences over the years.  I know I make fun of you, and mock you sometimes for selling to the lowest denominator and even trying to lower the denominator.  But I like to think our differences have been professional, respectful.  I recognize that you have billions of dollars […]

Movie theaters have, as everyone knows, grown more and more desperate to lure people back to theaters in recent years.  Attendance has particularly dropped as home theaters have grown more sophisticated and less full of awful people who won’t shut up and oh my god seriously you’re going to answer your phone?  During the finale? […]

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away… right around the end of The Empire Strikes Back… Luke: Leia, Chewie, C3P0, R2D2, Lando, thanks for meeting.  Okay, it’s been a rough couple months, I know we’re all pretty shaken.  C3P0 got blown to bits, Han’s frozen in carbonite— Chebacca:  Graawwnk! Luke: I know, […]

Hey, remember playing Battleship when you were a kid?  Remember the subtlety; the intricate, complex layers; the sense of narrative?  The feeling that you weren’t just playing a game, your were telling a story – creating a world? No?  Huh.  Weird.  You remember it going a little more like this? “A8.” “Miss. C1.” “Miss.  J6.” […]

I went to the movies last night and when I exited – this is about 11:00 pm – the lobby of the theater was filled with people. People lining up, people getting snacks, people milling. The parking lot was a flurry of activity. And why? I finally backtracked and looked at the head of the […]

So, put yourself in this position and ask yourself what the appropriate response would be:  A friend of mine was telling me about a few years back when she and her (then) husband were at Disneyland.  They’re in line for whatever.  The husband sees an man of Asian ethnicity a few places ahead of them […]

Last night there was a major breakthrough in the battle against Alzheimers.  What?  No, there isn’t some new medicine, or the announcement that we all now need to eat six pounds of asparagus a day, or anything like that.  Come on.  No, no, what happened was, I was able to remember the name of the […]

Is it possible that Hollywood is simply one giant cry for help?  That the only reason many of the films that get made do so is because there’s an industry wide attempt to get us to stop them?  You know, like a kid who announces that he’s going to go hit the side of the […]