Ryan's Journal

Entertainment is strange in this society because it's so mass-marketed and virtually reproducible. Everybody sees the same movie in the movie theater and hears the same music on a CD player, unlike the olden days of stage theater and orchestral performances. Only reading and comic books have remained unchanged, and many of those are frequently getting revamped into a movie treatment.

I dug through my old movie ticket stubs last night, noting I didn't actually enjoy most of the shows I wasted my money on. You'd think we'd listen to each other about the quality of what we purchase for entertainment, especially because it's guaranteed to be the exact same performance, yet we don't. We're driven by false urgency, some perceived need to see a film in the theaters before it comes out on DVD, to know what everybody else knows, to experience what the media says everybody else experienced. I tried to warn seven people who were trouping to a showing of the latest Bond film that it wasn't worth it (it isn't), but there was no chance they'd listen to me. I haven't asked, but I would wager they were all disappointed with spending $10 on a waste of time and brain space.

That's why I don't write any qualitative reviews about movies I've watched, just broad categorizations of good or waste of time, or, rarely, worth owning and watching again. Nobody is listening to reviews. They're reading, but the concepts aren't actually going in. People who want to go watch a movie don't listen to professional critics or their friends, regardless of the negative reviews they're given, sometimes because of them. I can only think of one movie that I decided against seeing because of what I'd heard, The Brotherhood of the Wolf. Maybe I'll just decide to not watch movies and stick solely to my awaited list of unreleased films. The agenda-driven movie watcher, that's me.

Oh, and the latest Harry Potter is good for small children. The rest of you should wait until it plays on network television for Thanksgiving three years from now. You'll be much more entertained in the comfort of your own home. Really. You should listen to me.

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