Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Hollywood is Out of Ideas, Part 3,193

 

Diane Lane continues her slide back towards the B list with a new 'thriller' whose plot is stolen outright from an old Millennium episode called 'The Mikado'.


I realize the writers have been on strike the past few months and they have my full sympathy, but can't anyone come out with a single frickin' original idea out there? Or is the psychic malaise that is destroying popular culture finally reached a crisis point when fresh ideas and concepts are seen as terrifying and alien? 

There was a column in a recent Entertainment Weekly lamenting the lack of originality in scifi, but why not extend that to the entire industry? It's not like there aren't a host of novels, comics and plays out there still waiting to catch Hollywood's eye. 

 I've been collecting some old Playboy magazines and saw one issue that reviewed Marathon Man, Rollerball and Dog Day Afternoon, along with a host of less well-known but still memorable films all in a single column. It depressed the hell out of me- those three classics came out in the same month? Unbelievable. I can't think of three films in all of 2007 that approach that level of quality. 

This is what happens when the bean counters take over. Say what you will about moguls like Louis B. Mayer or Jack Warner, but don't say they didn't love movies. And there's certainly no room in that town for a visionary like Robert Evans anymore. Here's how it will go: The suits will continue to dominate every single aspect of film-making and produce more and more tired old hash like Untraceable and people will stop going to the movies altogether and play Wii instead.

 

Not that I blame Diane, one of the many sirens of my adolescent years. And my post-adolescent years..