Posted 1:34 PM by Gene

When every weekend we obsess over the meaningless inflated movie box-office counts we forget the films at the low end. This weekend in addition to Poseidon (glub-glub) there opened six other pictures, and they give further credence to the notion that on most days you could shoot a cannon off in a popcorn restaurant and not hit anybody. Films with names like Just My Luck and Goal! The Dream Begins seem to have been intentionally made for nobody. But then we go further down the list: somebody at ESPNCorp tried hyping Keeping Up with the Steins as the Jewish My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Perhaps the Steins should have converted to Greek Orthodox. We cannot IMAGINE who turned out for Sketches of Frank Gehry -- possibly artistically inclined vagrants. And even the ad blurbists don't work, and many of the bombs reside in the arthouse division. Recently PEOPLE WARNER ARTHOUSE PICTURES II turned out two masterpieces that elicited considerable activity above the title; together they grossed $2.7 million in the U. S. If King Richard knew of these (we have no doubt He did not), He might have asked, "Who wants to see a Tristram Shandy movie? I hated it in college. Everyone I knew hated it. And don't these idiots realize sex is death in the houses? This isn't 1982 anymore." But no, He (and they) will keep on making such immortalities, to the indifference of movie execs and "audiences" alike.

P. S. After turning a column into THE PAUL DRECK SHOW, CURLEY'S (Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!) STOOGES have the gall to run this:

Universal Pictures and Focus Features are owned by NBC Universal, a joint venture of General Electric Co. and Vivendi Universal [Natch, CURLEY's (Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!) STOOGE gets this wrong -- it's VIVENDI]; DreamWorks is a unit of DreamWorks SKG Inc. [Ditto; it's a unit of VIACON. Where have these people been? Quoting PAUL DRECK?]; Sony Pictures, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount and Paramount Classics are divisions of Viacom Inc.; Disney's parent is The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is a division of The Walt Disney Co.; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight Pictures are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros., New Line and Warner Independent are units of Time Warner Inc.; Lions Gate is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.; IFC Films is owned by Rainbow Media Holdings, a subsidiary of Cablevision Systems Corp.

If all the stories that quoted from other news hacks had similar happy endings they'd get their readers so riled the hacks would look back to this as a golden age.