Posted 5:46 PM by Gene

Think of all the great movies Warner Bros. once made. Casablanca -- well that's too easy. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Maltese Falcon, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Robin Hood -- you could go on and on. If Lauren had been a real person instead of these wanna-be NIKKI!!!!!s (or Jeff Robinovs, whose name NIKKI!!!!! once misspelled in a URL), she might have asked this question: "Jeff [or maybe Jeff old pal, if it would make him feel any better], your company once made Casablanca, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Maltese Falcon, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Robin Hood. Now you have the itch to make Justice League of America and Batman vs. Superman. WHY?" The result would be a supremely embarrassing moment, or a moment for spin so frantic it would nonplus Wile E. Coyote -- but a "reporter" looking to be at minimum the next LAURA LANDRO obviously will not embarrass her future boss -- subjects, and therefore she gloats endlessly about all the wonders Warners would churn out if PEOPLE WARNER's biggest business weren't mismanagement. Of course it doesn't hurt that YOUR BOSS likes making idiot pictures too on His own decreasing dime. Once the hacks could laze back on the excuse the TWXSTERS made AHTHOUSE FILLUMS, but they don't anymore (possibly because they didn't make any money, even if Jeff "Rhymes with Stole" Skoll made so many of them -- or especially), but happily having such a profound case of CULTURAL STOCKHOLM SYNDROME they can convince us that we're living in a GENIUS age -- even as moviemaking increasingly resembles an airport men's-room stall. Somewhere Harry, Al, Sam and Jack must wonder why they opened that first nickelodeon in New Castle, Pennsylvania -- which is still standing, far more than we can say for SUPERMAN RETURNS.

Indeed on the evidence Lauren so lovingly presents we wonder why the TWXSTERS don't reorganize their fillum biz so that Warners becomes a wholly-owned subsid of DC COMICS.

Anyhow, Laurens must ape Lauras, and therefore -- a NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD!

(AHTHOUSE link via AHTSJournal)