A New Family Comedy from Stanley Kubrick

Proof that you can never trust a trailer to accurately represent the actual movie: Shining

A quick take on the whole Hollywood-box-office-is-failing-we're-all-doomed thing, just to consolidate my thoughts.

First off, John August's canonical take on the whole thing, wherein he points out that, yeah, there's no story here.

Second, even if the numbers are massaged to look as b ad as possible, so what? The studios make far more of their money off DVD sales of movies than they do off box office revenues. The theatrical release is an advertisement for the DVD release down the road. Okay, so box office is down. Are total revenues down? Are the studios going to stop making movies now? No, and no.

This is a non-issue non-story. Why do the likes of the New York Times -- the New York Friggin' Times -- feel it necessary to have yet another story every other week bemoaning the imminent end of Hollywood? Maybe it's because it's dire-sounding news, which always sells, but come on.

Not that the studios are run by super-geniuses, but it bugs the crap out of me to hear the usual "Well the movies all suck" justification. Like, yeah, the $9.4 billion in box office they grossed last year -- what morons! Like you could do better.