Hollywood Diatribe

Big Frank went to the movies this evening. He had scanned the reviews in the local Spokane paper - The Inlander - to see what was recommended. Now Big Frank is aware that most movies out there are total crap, but there ought to be at least one movie that is worth watching on a Friday night. So one of the paper's "diamond picks" is Wanted. This is what the review said, "Wow! This is a thrill ride of a movie that is as smart and as surprising as it is visually stylish and viscerally electrifying." Sounds pretty good, not? Well, actually very not! This movie is a complete load of crap! Typical Hollywood swill: a few name actors including Angela Jolie and Morgan Freeman (talk about selling out), lots of chase scenes, typical plot turns, and lots and lots and lots of killing - including whole train-loads of innocent people of which not one word is said. The point of the whole thing: there is no point except to get people into the movie and get their money. Why? Big Frank walked in the middle.

Here is what Czesław Miłosz had to say about Hollywood in "Roadside-Dog":

Hollywood

Let us imagine a poet gets in his hands the Hollywood crowd, those financiers, directors, actors and acresses. And that he is fully aware of the crime perpetrated every day on millions of human beings by money, which act not in the name of any ideology but exclusively for the purpose of multiplying itself. What penalty would be adequate? He hesitates between slitting their bellies and disemboweling them; locking them together behind barbed wire in the hope that they would start to eat each other, beginning with the fattest potentates; grilling them on a small fire; throwing them, bound, onto an anthill. However, as he interrogates them and sees them humble, trembling, obsequious, fawning, not at all remembering their own arrogance, he is discouraged. Their guilt is as elusive as that of the party bureaucrats in an authoritarian state. The closes thing to justice might be to kill the whole lot. He shrugs, and sets them free.