The movie that most surprised me this year was Open Water. It knocked me over; couldn’t even speak for hours.

She does get too thin quite often. Although she was near perfect in “The House of Sand and Fog”. Roaarrr! I suspect she diets so that women don’t feel as intimidated by her. As a guess.

Quality of Recent Movies:

I disagree with Roger here. LOTR anyone? A Beautiful Mind? City of God? Going earlier…

Shawshank Redemption? Schindler? Pulp Fiction? Usual Suspects? Goodfellas? Memento?

What about Airplane, Top Secret or Team America? Airplane pretty much created a genre.

I think in large part it’s because the movies cater to young men these days, and many of the commenters here no longer fit that demographic.

No disagreement on the animations though. Perhaps that’s partially due to the creative process itself. You can kind of edit it on the fly to get a sense of how good a particular scene is, correct?

For a long time the populace accepted being force-fed this garbage as “entertainment”, but those days are over. Same thing applies to dull, illogical columnists at major newspapers.

Yup.

And David Niven/Lala Liz and the streaker.

Hope and Carson never needed to swear.

Lowest common denominator.

Then the most popular movies (the one take make hundreds of millions) are always relagated to the “technical” awards, while the “tales from the far end of the Guassian curve” or “freak show” productions are awarded for “art”. Then there are factors like “British and boring”.

In a world where my time is most precious, I have bigger fish to fry.

That is so interesting. I heard he died of ADL. When asked how he was doing he told a friend he fell down a lot. When I was very young, I thought he was so cool.

You know come to think of it I did hear he came from a well connected family that looked down on his acting. Maybe he was trying to do something useful.

Amen, Roger. Most movies today are aimed at children and young adults with the cultural depth of a child. This was not the case in the era of Coppolla, Bogdanovich, Polanski, et al. Prior to the mid-80s, any film that was so dumb as to appeal to kids only was, well, a kids’ movie: whether Disney or “porky’s” fare, the premise was that kids were one, relatively minor, target demographic. Today, the mass market that really matters is the uneducated 16-25 year old market.

David Niven was more then an actor. He mixed his acting career with his other profession… Special Air Service. Niven was in special operations through a good deal of his career. When he died they found a true “chest full of medals” in his home.

I loved the Lord of the Rings, but then I love the books too. Maybe what we miss are the stories.

My favorite Oscar moment was years ago when David Niven walked up to the podium and opened his white dinner jacket displaying pots and pans hanging fromm the lining. He smiled at the crowd saying ‘My lucky charms’. The crowd loved it.

Now, there was an actor.

Jennifer is beautifull and a good actress but she seems to be following the trend of many actresses towards maximum exposure of the skeleton structure. Check her out in “A Beautifull Mind” and some of her latest photo’s. Borderline anoxeria is not attractive.