I consider myself a movie afficionado, and I got the street cred to back it up. I dare say I’m a film snob.
This evening I went to see Bend it Like Beckham. Its a very good movie. Go see it, thumbs up, yadda yadda. However, while I was watching it, it dawned on me just how unbalanced the quality of indie movies has become compared to Hollywood. I’m sure there are plenty of crappy indie movies, but they never make it to the theater, whereas, there doesn’t appear to be any crap filter in Hollywood.
What I find amazing, is that you can smell a crappy Hollywood movie from a mile away, yet people still go to see them and they still keep churning them out. What’s amazing is that the entertainment industry seems willingly ignorant about the whole thing. They can’t say that Gigli is a hunk of crap, because they really just want an excuse to talk about Ben Afleck and JLo. So long as you have an A list star in the film, it gets a free pass. It doesn’t’ mean that anyone is going to see it, but good luck finding a negative word about it on Entertainment Tonight.
Its a real shame that so few people ever bother to see any of the good films that are out there. By failing to go watch them, they are just giving incentive to Hollywood to produce more crap.
One of my favorite questions to ask people is “what are your three favorite movies made from before you were born?” What answer they give isn’t as important as them just having an answer, and coming up with it relatively quickly. I’m even more impressed if they can come up with their three favorite black and white movies, and super impressed if they have even seen three silent films.