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"Today's movies are not built to last."

Summer Summary

**When they're over, they're over. What's next?**

Review by Duncan Shepherd

September 16, 2004

Duncan Shepherd looks in the rearview mirror

Is it me or is it movies? Something pretty close to parity seems to have come over the contemporary cinemascape, even more than over (where we usually hear about it) the professional footballscape. It would be nice -- it would be a sign of robust good health -- to be able to perceive a clear separation between movies (thumbs up or thumbs down, hot or not, yea or nay, excellent or execrable), with of course a graceful arc of foothills connecting the flatlands to the mountaintops. That, no doubt, is how it would look in a cultural scene as exciting as, say, the Sixties and early Seventies. But then came Jaws and Star Wars, and everything changed forever: the commodification of the art form. The sky was no longer the limit, if only financially.

Excitement, whether visceral or intellectual, the kind of excitement that lingers long after the curtain has closed (when theaters still had curtains), is not to be manufactured on a schedule, like factory quotas of balloons and noisemakers. Nor is it to be feigned.



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Topic - "Today's movies are not built to last." - clarkjohnsen 09:56:51 09/16/04 (29)


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