Star Wars
Hear the bad news:

It opens next week. I saw it, and here's the thing: It's unbelievably bad. O I'm telling you this because movie critics won't. So far all the early reviews -- all of them, from Variety to the Hollywood Reporter to Time magazine -- have been favorable. Why? Because while the movie critics of my long-ago youth were middlebrow snobs suspicious of populist entertainment, today's critics have turned into toadies. They are afraid of being on an audience's bad side, afraid that a movie they will pan might really strike a chord. Since it's a foregone conclusion that the final Star Wars is going to make a jillion dollars, the safe thing for critics to do is say nice things about it. The only nice thing I can think to say about it is that it's not quite as mindspinningly wretched as its predecessor, Attack of the Clones, but it's plenty awful anyway. Even Yoda gives a rotten performance. Go see it if you must when it opens next week, but at least you got one fair warning here.

I agree with him with respect to critics and I strongly suspect I will agree with him regarding the film. It's gonna suck, folks.

This points to a broad problem with entertainment these days - a lot of the people judging have no taste whatsoever. It's not just critics that are toadies, it's the academy as well. My understanding of the voting for Million Dollar Baby was that people at the last minute voted based upon who they thought was going to win...to be on the "winning" side.

I liked the movie, so I don't necessarily have a problem with the result, but the process - winning by a bunch of dumbshit choads voting between Marty and Clint because they want to be on the right side of a popularity contest, reeks to me. And they wonder why films suck - because the people behind them suck. Plain and simple.