Is Hollywood really so bad?
I'm tired of hearing that Hollywood is so this or so that. Yes, I've had bad experiences with Hollywood movies. Most notable for me lately was the Ahnold movie "The Sixth Day." My wife and I decided it was a total recall of Total Recall. Every scene and line of dialogue came from one of his previous movies.
But I think Hollywood gets a bum rap (bum wrap? - nevermind). This industry provides such amazing entertainment to us in such vast quantities that I think maybe we're just spoiled. We've watched several heart-stoppingly wonderful movies in the past month - Vanilla Sky (Tom Cruise), Titus (Anthony Hopkins), The Big Kahuna (Kevin Spacey) and Memento (Guy Pearce). The writing was excellent, they messed with stories and plotlines and reality/dreams until I didn't know really what I was watching anymore. In some cases (like Titus) I wasn't even sure I liked it until I had time to think about it later. Then, I understood what I had seen and appreciated it fully.
Yes, Titus was confusing. Waa. Yes, the Big Kahuna is just three salesmen talking in a hotel room. Double-waa. Yes, Vanilla Sky is a scene-for-scene remake of a Spanish film. Does that make it bad? Yes, Memento is hard to follow.
I feel like we North Americans (and probably the world) have a crazy love-hate relationship with Hollywood. We eat up everything they feed us, then we complain about being full. Hollywood tries really hard and produces a lot of really neat stuff. Plus it adapts very quickly to our needs and tastes. Oh, you liked that indie film, Crying Game? We can do a bunch more of those until you're sick of them. Oh, you're pissed because we only have pretty boys in action movies anymore, ala Sum of All Fears, Bourne Identity and James Bond? We'll give you hunks. Here's Vin Diesel in XXX. Y'like? It seems like the words were barely out of peoples' mouths (where are the hunks?) and blammo! there they were. Now that's service!
So, here we have an industry that gives us high-quality entertainment in wide variety and instantly adapts to our tastes, and we diss them. I don't mean to say Hollywood is hard-done-by, but jeez, don't they deserve some credit?
11:03:35 PM 
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