Haven't rented any movies in a long time....for one thing with all the DVD extras it takes longer and longer to watch the darn things.  And then American filmmaking gets so....old?

Has anyone else noticed how often hollywood promotes movies that are about hollywood?  Take "Adaptation."  What a mediocre flick and the hollywood people kept going on about how "great" it was. 

Another thing is how American movies spend so much times on close-ups.  Non-verbal communication is said to be around 90 per cent of communication, so what do American filmmakers focus on?  The American face.  And rarely do American filmmakers let scenery over take actors.  Go and take at the filming of "The Searchers" or John Ford pictures.  He was really good at using the landscape.

One last area is that of how American filmakers run like hell from real life when compared to foreign filmmakers.  You know, good endings are a must; the hero must make a remarkable recovery after getting shot five times, dragged behind a truck and ran over by a locomotive. 

Hell, I just saw this one foreign film drama where the man and woman in love split up and spend the entire rest of the film trying to find each other.  At the very end he finds her and just as they see each other she gets taken out by a bus.  It was like a hammer; but in an American film the bus would have stopped an inch from her body and happily ever after...

But I do love the movies..