MOVIES: CAN GAME SHOW MOVIES BE NEXT?

Movies
First things first: avoid "The Prestige" like it has lice. A movie that in its finality is about something too trivial to imagine told in a ponderous "when will it ever end" manner. Nobody to care about either. No applause at end on opening day in LA, a sure sign of audience boredom.

Now for most movies. I once knew a famous Hungarian still photog who was shooting the stars of a movie I had a line in. He was a delightful guy and full of stories, some true, some which might have been true, and some that were entertainingly false. I got to be really friendly with him and he discussed movies with me from his European perspective. One thing he emphasized:

"Hollywood understands what a movie star is and they know how to use them."

He went on to point out that if you put John Wayne in sack you would still know it was John Wayne, if you saw just an eye of Humphrey Bogart you would instantly know it was Bogart; same was true of the women: try to hide Betty Davis, Rita Hayworth, Joan Crawford and the like. All were not only unique, but simply one of a kind unique. Europe, he continued, has a bunch of people you can't remember and can't pick out of a crowd; the few exceptions being the young Briggete Bardot (shown at left as Mother Teresa) and Adolph Hitler (terrific in the French musical, Buchenwald).

Well that was then and this is now. What we have in The Prestige, The Illusionist, and dam near every movie out this year are interchangeable actors who all look the same and all talking in the same way with no dialogue adjustments---Hungarian accents, Cockney,----to make identification easier. Movies are becoming "A Vast Wasteland", as the late Newton Minnow called TV back in the bad old daze. In The Prestige we even have two look-alike actresses in major supporting roles; they even have the same Brit accents. When we view movies blessed with these cookie cutter personages we are always trying to figure out who they are, something that makes following a movie with a complicated plot even more difficult. So we come to the conclusion that the movie stinks thirty minutes before we might have if the actors were properly cast.

In looking at today's Hollywood output one has to come to one conclusion: they have run out of ideas. What would you expect from everyone who has the exact same philosophy, has the same educations, and the same views of the past. One case in point to consider: Roy Brewer, an exciting and tension filled story that has the Hollywood Communists as the villians, villians who were out to get everyone who disagreed with them.

He said that the party was interested in Hollywood labor because of the economic leverage it wielded. “The communists were absolutely ruthless in dominating those who they could dominate and in destroying those whom they could control,” he wrote. “They would lie or circulate false rumors of anti-Semitism or whatever. Hundreds of careers were destroyed by the communists long before the blacklist was ever heard of.”

Brewer had to get body guards for his kids, worry about being beaten up (the body count of the non-commuists were 150 in the hospital), and excommunication from all of Hollywood.

As an add here to prove a point. Do a Google search on him. You will see that Google features all the smears before running one positive site.