Dark City. A look at how editing can be the salvation, soul, and damnation of cinema.

Roger Ebert is one of the great pundits of the twentieth century. His work spans a number of different subjects, but I am sure that if he and I were engaged in conversation about it, he would not dispute my statement that for him, the bread and butter has always been in film criticism.

Remakes and such

It is almost like when one of the children in a school class gets sick. In a matter of days, if not hours, every child in the class is sick. And when a film enjoys some vestige of success, sequels, remakes, or spin-offs follow like stench follows shit. People who do not understand the nature of the film and media businesses will moan endlessly about the reasons for this, but when you get down to it, it really is astonishingly simple. Hollywood does not remake films because they want to improve or even repeat the good points of a film, be it an old classic or a foreign hit. No, the real reason the film studios in Hollywood remake any film is because they want to remake the money that the film they are remaking made. The cut-throat nature of the entertainment industry means that a studio literally lives from hit to hit, not the quality of the hits, nor the magnitude of them. I have already made reference to the subject of how profits are not made in the cinema, but rather on home video or television licensing. This is a major part of the reason why the unregulated market that is the American film market does not produce any innovative, interesting, or unusual material. If you do want a film that meets any of these criteria, you generally have to go to foreign markets.