Frogs (1972)

Director: George McCowan (Fantasy Island (T.V.), Charlie's Angels (T.V.))
Writer: Robert Hutchison (Outside In and Frogs...that's his entire resume)

Starring: Sam Elliot (Roadhouse, Tombstone); Ray Milland (Dial M for Murder, Rich Man, Poor Man); Joan Van Ark (Dallas, Knots Landing)

What can be less menacing than a frog? When was the last time you looked at a frog with anything but optimism? Have you ever seen a frog hopping toward you and thought, "Oh, shit! Here comes a frog--run!" Apparently frogs were scary back in 1972. Actually, the frogs never really do anything aggressive at all, even though Sam Elliott says, "Frogs attacking windows, snakes hanging from chandeliers...what's next?" The frogs weren't attacking the windows, they were pretty much just leaning against them. In fact, the frogs are more like the pigs in Animal Farm than anything...they sit around looking bored while all the other reptiles (and some spiders) attack the people (and before you jump in my shit, yes I know frogs are amphibians). Seriously, has anyone in history ever been scared by a frog? Maybe Ramses back when Moses brought the hordes upon Egypt...but since then...not so much.

The premise is pretty cut & dry: Sam Elliott's a free-lance photographer who's floating around some island in the Everglades (I'm assuming...it's never really revealed where exactly they are) taking photos of the wildlife and the pollution. His canoe gets swamped by rich boy Clint Crockett (Adam Roarke). He & his sister (Joan Van Ark) tow him to their rich grandfather Jason Crockett's (Ray Milland) house on the island, where they offer him clothes, food & drink. At lunch, the frog population is discussed with much concern (again, the frogs never kill anybody), and Jason asks Pickett (Sam Elliott) to check things out, since he's not only a photographer, he's somewhat of an environmentalist as well. A whole lot of nothin' happens for quite some time, then the killings begin. I will list them individually, because they're all so ridiculous, they deserve their own description.

Pickett finds Grover, the groundskeeper, dead in the swamp...but remember, this is 1972, so dead folks are played by live actors, so even though Grover's dead, you can see him breathing. Next to die is one of the grandsons...Ken, I think. He's sent out to look for Grover (before Sam Elliott finds him). This moron trips & shoots himself in the shin with the rifle he's carrying. As he's lying on the ground, bleeding and generally being a pussy, a ton of tarantulas drop down from the trees, bite him and then SPIN A WEB AROUND HIM. Never you mind that tarantulas don't live in trees. Next is cousin Mike, who goes into the greenhouse to cut some orchids for the 4th of July celebration. He's followed by some geckos & a couple of monitor lizards (not indigenous to the U.S., and not observed here in the wild until the '90s). The monitor lizard climbs up on the shelves of the green house & knocks over a bunch of poisons...therefor asphyxiating Mike. Grandma is next to go...she's out chasing butterflies & completely panics when she sees a rattlesnake. Ironically, it's that same rattler that kills her. Next is all the black folk, but they don't show what kills them. Then it's Clints turn: another monitor chews his boat rope; the boat floats out into the middle of the lake; Clint swims to it & is bitten by a snake in the water. Clint's wife gets it next, she trips over a snapping turtle (I had just said out loud, "Where the hell are the turtles?") and is bitten by a snake as well. Ray Milland dies of an apparent heart attack, and the "malevolent" frogs converge upon him...to do what, I don't know. Perhaps to pee on him...that's about as malevolent as a frog can be. (I know there are poisonous frogs in the world, but the only frogs in this movie were bullfrogs & leopard frogs & such...all the benign breeds.

Here's a question: where the hell are all the mammals on this island? Really...no squirrels, racoons...nothin'. Odd.

Highlights: Joan Van Ark in 1972 looked pretty good & wore a bunch of tight fitting clothes.

Lowlights: All the non-indigenous reptiles...monitor lizards & black mambas in the Everglades in 1972? Really? And the tarantulas falling out of the trees...epic fail on that one. And the frogs...really. Frogs are like zombies, you can totally outrun them, regardless how "malevolent" the plot scenario portrays them to be. The acting is piss poor, which is surprising, considering the fact that Ray Milland won the best actor Oscar in 1945 for his role in The Lost Weekend (he was up against Bing Crosby, Gene Kelly & Gregory Peck) and Sam Elliott turned out to be quite the likeable actor as well.

The ending is boring and predictable, Sam Elliott, Joan Van Ark & her nephew & niece get away in the canoe...they come across one snake in a moronic plot twist that has Sam paddling the canoe into shallow waters. They reach the mainland & are picked up by a passing motorist & her kid, who's holding (what else?) a huge bullfrog...cue menacing music.

Really...frogs? I saw this movie when I was about 8 or 9 years old, and it kinda freaked me out...now that I'm 40 & fancy myself a movie critic, I probably would've laughed at myself at nine and called me a pussy. Frogs are anything but malevolent, unless you happen to be in the rain forest...then look out.

This movie has all the production value of a '70s porno...without the boning. It's sloppily shot & horribly acted. The characters are predictable & cartoonish. If you watch it, don't go into it with the attitude that you're watching Jaws or Psycho or something...watch it for what it is: a poorly made, pulp-fiction type cult film.

Check out the trailer: Frogs!

Gone (2007)

Director: Ringan Ledwidge (directorial debut)

Writers: James Watkins (The Descent, Part 2; Eden Lake) & Andrew Upton (Bangers)

Starring: Shaun Evans (The Virgin Queen; Being Julia); Scott Mechlowicz (EuroTrip; Mean Creek); Amelia Warner (Quills; Aeon Flux)

I literally could've eaten a box of Alpha-bits cereal and crapped out a better script than this movie had...and it had TWO writers. It had to be the most boring movie I've ever seen in my life...and I've watched the English Patient.

Generously billed as a "contemporary psychological thriller", Gone could have been 15 minutes long and still delivered the exact same impact. You'd be better off watching flies fornicate than wasting your time on this film.

Here's the premise: A young Brit is backpacking through Australia when he meets an American who ingratiates himself on every aspect of this kid's trip. They get drunk and pass out with a couple of girls (the Brit is engaged, and supposedly meeting up with his fiancee during the trip), the American (Taylor, played by Scott Mechlowicz) snaps a polaroid of the Brit (Alex, played by Shaun Evans), and has him sign it...evidently, that's his "thing"; he takes polaroids of the people he meets and has them write on them. They meet up with Alex's fiancee, Sophie (Amelia Warner) and some chick named Ingrid (Zoe Tuckwell-Smith). Taylor invites himself on the remainder of the trip (he owns a car, so I guess it's ok), but when they go to leave the next morning, he tells Alex & Sophie that Ingrid decided to go off on her own. What follows is around an hour and ten minutes of driving footage, hotel stays, and limited, boring dialogue until about the last ten minutes of the movie, when shit actually starts to happen.

Highlights: Unless you're into the beauty of coastal Australia, ZERO.

Lowlights: This movie moves slower than a snail on heroin, the music is more menacing than it needs to be, Taylor is an annoying little prick throughout...and where the FUCK is Ingrid? I mean, we know Taylor killed her...but where the hell is she?

The term "psychological thriller" is WAY over used these days, kinda like the word "Diva". Psycho was a psychological thriller, and a good one at that; The Minus Man with Owen Wilson was a psycological thriller. Gone is just a bland "what if" interpretation of somebody's boring ass road-trip: "Hey...what if we met a really annoying American serial killer while on holiday?" Please.

And to make matters worse, the ending is SOOO predictable: Taylor shows Alex the polaroid of him and the drunk girl spooning (he was supposed to have thrown it away when the trip started, Alex freaks out, hits a kangaroo, has to tell Sophie about the girl, Sophie gets pissed, won't share a room with Alex, Taylor kills Alex, has sex with Sophie, Sophie discovers Taylor killed Alex, and after a less-than-thrilling segment where Taylor almost gets her, she kills Taylor with his own car.

It's like Mad Max--but without the excitement, car chases and any semblance of an actual thrill--on an entire bottle of valium to boot. I've seen more thrilling curling matches. I would have killed for a cheap boo moment, and we all know how much I hate those. At one point, I turned to my girlfriend and said, "If something doesn't happen soon, I'm gonna slap somebody."

Do yourself a favor: if you ever get the urge to see this piece of crap, put a piece of bread in the toaster oven and watch it turn brown...you'll be more entertained, and you won't waste as much time.

Check out the trailer: Gone. It almost makes the movie worth watching...don't be fooled.

Peace.

Night of the Living Dead (1990)

Director: Tom Savini (best known for his special effects & make up in movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre & Friday the 13th; he was also "Sex Machine" in From Dusk 'til Dawn...he's a legend)

Writers: George Romero (he co-wrote the original 1968 film; Day of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead) & John Russo (he co-wrote the earlier screenplay; Voodoo Dawn, Santa Claws)

Starring: Tony Todd (Candyman, Platoon) as Ben; Patricia Tallman (Army of Darkness, Roadhouse) as Barbara; Tom Towles (Dog Day Afternoon, Rob Zombie's Halloween) as Harry Cooper.

IMDB user rating: 6.6 out of 10 stars.

"They're coming for you Barbara!"

Even though I'm not a huge fan of re-makes, 1990's Night of the Living Dead is pretty true to the original in a time when so few are. So sit back and relax, this is not going to be the typical slam-fest review. I'm a big fan of not only George Romero, but of Tom Savini & Tony Todd.

Just in case you've been living under a rock since 1968, I'll set up the plot of Night of the Living Dead for you. A brother and sister drive two hours to place flowers at their mother's grave. Zombies show up, eat the brother, chase Barbara, she ends up in a seemingly abandoned farm house, black guy shows up, people come up from the basement, zombies converge upon the house, people board up the house, shoot the zombies.

With the exception of a few differences, like I said, this movie is pretty true to the original. Barbara's a little more pro-active in the 1990 version, there are more people in the house, and it's shot primarily during the day.

Highlights: Decent time progression (lots of movies jump all over the place due to tight shooting schedules, and we the viewers suffer), there are a couple of funny lines: "They're SO slow, we could walk right past them" (but they never do in zombie movies) & "They're dead but they're comin' right for us!!" Nice. The kid who lives in the farmhouse is given the task of getting out to the gas pump, but it's locked & he has the wrong keys...so what does he do? Shoots the lock. Gas goes everywhere, sprays the torch in the back of the pickup...KABOOM! Dumb kid. The ending is awesome, it's like a zombie jamboree...there's a roach coach, zombie fights, a pig roast & zombie shooting gallery (they hang zombies from a tree and plug away).

Lowlights: As much as I love George Romero, he's not quite a master of dialogue...the script is cheesy. There's a scene where the local news is broadcasting about the zombies, making fun of the scientist that theorize the possibility of people arising from the dead. The reason this is a lowlight is due to the fact that it's what would really happen; even with evidence staring them in the face, people always scoff at the new found reality...remember Independence Day when they made fun of Randy Quaid as he's ranting about being abducted by aliens...all the while there's an alien spaceship hovering in the background? Stupid people.

The ending is same but different: less military, more rednecks. Tony Todd is locked in the basement with a fatal gunshot wound, lights up a smoke & sees the gas pump key hanging on the wall...oh sweet irony.

See this movie, you won't regret it...especially if you love zombies as much as I love zombies.

Check out the trailer: Night of the Living Dead Trailer

Baghead (2008)

Directors/Writers: Jay & Mark Duplass (The Intervention, The Puffy Chair)

Starring: Steve Zissis as Chad (Momma's Boy, The Intervention); Ross Partridge as Matt (Prom Night, Kuffs); Greta Gerwig as Michelle (Hannah Takes the Stairs, Nights & Weekends) & Elise Muller as Catherine (Baywatch Nights, I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant)

IMDB User Rating: 5.9 out of 10 stars.

When my friends ask me how and why I started blogging bad movies, I usually start the answer with today's movie, Baghead. I was still awake at around 3am one morning, and amazingly enough, Baghead was really the only thing that caught my eye enough to watch...I needed something mindless; something I didn't care if I fell asleep while watching...Baghead fit that bill.

I have to give the Duplass brothers credit for a somewhat original (if not completely disappointing) concept: Four morons decide to make a film at a cabin in the woods where they're stalked by a man with a bag on his head. Notice I did not call the man a killer...that's part of the disappointment. And that's it...that's the plot in a nutshell. In essence, it's really a movie about itself--a paradox. I could end this review here, and you would be completely up to speed. But then I wouldn't have the chance to go off on one of my infamous rants & slag someone else's hard work, now would I?

It starts with our four movie maker friends at a movie theater, watching another really crappy indie film at which the film maker himself (Jett Garner, played by Jett Garner) is present. One of my favorite lines in the movie comes during the Q & A with Jett, when Matt asks him how he made the movie so cheap (he claimed to have made it for less than $1,000, which was twice as much as he wanted to spend), he explains that he used his parents' camera, natural light, real people...here's the line: "Hollywood has us convinced that it takes a million dollars to make a quality piece of art--and that's a crap statement, as you just saw". Wait a minute...did this guy just call a thousand dollar home movie in which he appears naked a quality piece of art? Yes, yes he did. And it just keeps getting better from there.

Highlights: Ross Partridge's acting isn't bad, but then again, it's in comparison to the rest of the cast, so...who knows, really. There's one boob scene...not bad, but not spectacular.

Lowlights: WAY too many closeups...like, almost the whole film is shot zoomed in...I don't get why. The dialogue is so contrived, you wonder if the Duplass brothers watched too much Curb Your Enthusiasm before they wrote the screenplay and just let the actors go; I'm sure it's meant to be improved and realistic, but it comes out clumsy and embarrassing, and the characters can't seem to gel. In addition to there being way too many close ups, the camera work is shaky and confusing and looks like my dog shot it (not every movie needs a steady cam, but at least invest in a mono pod). The brainstorming sessions our four film making friends have are childish, and again, embarrassing. And there are cheap "boo" moments, and we all know how I feel about those.

You think this movie is gonna be a slasher flick...you know, some psycho out in the woods, wearing a bag on his head for some reason or another, cutting up the people unfortunate enough to be in his neck of the woods that particular weekend. That would have been a good movie.

What we get instead is a huge set-up by Matt: he has a friend of his to come out and scare the shit out of his friends so he can get their genuine reactions and use them in a screenplay. None of them is aware of what's going on until--while running away from Baghead--Chad gets hit by a car. It's all fun and games until the awkward fat guy with the fro gets hurt...I've seen it a thousand times before...

The end is just as uneventful and awkward as the beginning...Chad is lying in the hospital with a bunch of bruises and a cast or two. Matt explains the whole thing to him...and instead of being pissed, he proclaims it to be a brilliant scheme, asks to see the footage, and tells Matt all is forgiven as long as he goes and gets him some ice cream.

I'm warning you, if you decide to watch this movie, you're going to be super pissed when it's over...really. Out of all the movies I've reviewed, only Bram Stoker's Way of the Vampire is worse...IMDB users gave it an unbelievable 5.9 out of 10 stars...I give it a 3...and that's being generous.

Thanks for reading, next up is 1990's remake of Night of the Living Dead.

Baghead Movie Trailer

Living Death (2006)

Director: Erin Berry (Trinity Dogs, Time Bomb)
Writers: Erin Berry (Time Bomb, Silent But Deadly), Leo Scherman (lots of T.V.)

Starring: Kristy Swanson (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Chase, Big Daddy), Greg Bryk (The Incredible Hulk, Saw V), Joshua Peace (The Brady Bunch in the White House, The Sentinel)

IMDB user rating: 4.1 out of 10 stars.

"Stretch me...but be gentle."

As bad as this movie is, it could've been so much better. The concept is actually not half bad: Rich asshole inherits daddy's money, his abused wife and his lawyer conspire to kill him but mess it up, he comes back seemingly from the dead to exact revenge. Sounds solid, right? Wrong! Bad direction and even worse acting stands in the way once again to ruin what could have been a pretty decent movie.

The opening scene is ridiculous: Victor (the rich asshole played by Greg Bryk) is trying to impress some buxom chick (Kelsey Matheson--Dracula 2000) with his collection of torture devices he keeps in his attic; he has a 17th century rack that she leans over & says (are you ready?) "Nice rack". Somehow he talks her into getting on the damned thing, straps her in, and starts to stretch her. Just as it's starting to really hurt, his wife Elizabeth (Kristy Swanson) comes in & startles him, causing him to lean on the rack's lever, which stretches the girl so much, her tibia rips right through her damn skin! GROSS! But I'm hooked at this point.

Conveniently, Victor has his lawyer Roman (Joshua Peace) re-draft his will to allow him to go out the way he came in...no embalming, no make up, "Just put me in my best Italian suit and throw me in the ground". Fair enough...not unheard of at all...but convenient given the plot.

Roman decides the best way to take Victor out is with a drug, especially since the will disallows an autopsy. The scene at his drug dealer's place is out of this world; Roman asks his dealer (Rajiv Narang) for a "totally new high", stating he's tired of the coke, the meth & the crack. Dealer (that's how he's credited) tells him about this "extremely rare" neurotoxin that comes from blow fish called tetrodotoxin (TTX). He gives the back story about how if it's not prepared right, the sushi that comes from this fish can kill you; in fact, one blow fish contains enough TTX to kill 30 people. I checked this out, and it's true. Here's where the science fiction comes in: Dealer tells Roman that TTX can make a person appear dead..."Like a zombie?" Roman asks. "No, not like a zombie! Zombie's are dead, asshole". I love it when people talk about zombies like they're real. But again, TTX is extremely rare and almost impossible to get a hold of...which he basically tells Roman as he's reaching into his refrigerator to grab a vial of the stuff. I also love the fact that some skanky drug dealer in the valley can get his hands on TTX. Roman takes the drug, Dealer warns him one more time about the side effects, no money is exchanged (?), and Roman is on his way.

Well, Roman & Elizabeth put this shit in Victor's Pad Thai, he keels over & they think he's a goner...but we get to see the movie from his point of view here and there until he wakes up...very reminiscent of Serpent and the Rainbow. The medical examiner is there soon & wants to "do a full autopsy, of course". Roman puts the kibosh on that one, telling the M.E. about Victor's will, even going so far as to put an injunction on the autopsy. Pretty iron clad, one would think. But at the funeral home, (the buxom blonde with the broken leg shows up & spits on Victor in his coffin) here comes the M.E. with a court order that supercedes Roman's injunction, and he and his assistants proceed to close the casket and take it to the morgue! It's the movie's most priceless moment.

Back at the morgue, Victor's toe tag gets switched with a dead homeless guy so the M.E.'s assistant & his medical school classmates can practice surgery on a "pristine" corpse. But remember, Victor's still alive, so after they slice open his abdomen, evicerate him and are about to crack open his chest, he wakes up, gets three fingers sawed off & completely freaks out the students. They quickly give him a shot of thorazine or something to knock him out, shove his guts back inside his body, and decide the better decision is to bag him and bury him alive. As they're throwing him in the grave, he cuts his way out of the body bag, kills all three of them, cauterizes his fingers with a car cigarette lighter (after lighting up a smoke, of course), and sets out to seek his revenge...and gets it.

Highlights: there's a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor that makes the film somewhat worth watching; some pretty decent gore; the drug dealer is actually a pretty good actor...he plays the part well; and Greg Bryk plays a great asshole...he makes you hate him about ten minutes into the movie...that takes skill.

Lowlights: what the hell happened to Kristy Swanson? She looks like shit in this movie, and it's her worst acting since Buffy. I'm a little perplexed at the torture devices...can you really have a working rack in your home? The acting never really gells, almost like instead of working toward a common goal, everybody's trying to win the Oscar single-handedly...very sloppy.

The ending is predictable...but not. Victor kills the buxom blonde, calls his house from her apartment and discovers that Roman & Elizabeth are making grass sandwiches behind his back. He makes it back to his house, ties Elizabeth up, and when Roman comes to her aid, Roman ends up on the rack himself. Victor obviously has nothing to lose at this point, he's supposed to be dead, remember, so he rips Roman's arm off with the rack, and is about to turn his attention on Elizabeth when she elbows him in the gut, therefore splitting his wound open and spilling his intestines all down his front. She grabs a HUGE battleaxe from the wall & splits Victor's wig with it.

You think it's over, but the last scene is Elizabeth getting out of her car--pregnant--with a bunch of shopping bags and going into her (um...Victor's) house. End credits.

Here's my problem with this movie: After Victor changes his will and ends up dead(ish) like--the next day, and his attorney and his widow shack up together...how come nobody's investigating them? In the real world, the feds would be all over these two morons, especially since they're so damn sloppy about the whole thing.

Regardless of that, my advice is to go ahead and see this one. The subliminal humor & the plot actually make for a semi-entertaining film. No nudity, but enough gore to make up for it.

Enjoy & thanks for reading.

Check out the trailer: Living Death

Bram Stoker's Way of the Vampire (2005)

Directors: Sarah Nean Bruce, Eduardo Durao (directorial debut for both)
Writers: Karrie Melendrez (writing debut), Sherri Strain (sophomore writing effort)
Starring: Rhett Giles (lots of T.V.); Paul Logan (Syfy original Mega Piranha & he was in a movie called Aliens on Crack...I'm DYING to see it); Denise Boutte (ironically in a film entitled 15 Minutes of Fame...wonder when hers will run out)

I knew as soon as I reviewed a vampire movie, even one as horrible as Vampire Diary, I knew I was going to be attacked. The wannabe vampire counterculture is a protective one, and will no doubt continue to rail against my reviews of their beloved movies. Which brings us to my next review, Bram Stoker's Way of the Vampire.

Way of the Vampire is living proof that not all books or ideas should be made into movies...especially vampire stories. I'm sorry to keep picking on this particular genre, but it's been my experience that literary vampires usually do not translate well (don't make me cite Tom Cruise as Lestat again, please), with very few exceptions, i.e. Gary Oldman as Dracula. This movie's only redeeming quality was the clever consumption of holy water in order to make one's spit acidic to the undead creatures. But THAT'S IT.

The film opens with Van Helsing & his band of vampire slayers getting ready to go do battle with Dracula & his minions. Mrs. Van Helsing is intentionally left with the one person who is "enamored by her beauty" simply because he's the most skilled vampire slayer of them all. What a powerful dichotomy. To make matters worse, as Van Helsing and his crew are searching Dracula's "lair", we are treated to visions of electrical outlets and drywall clad walls (apparently they used one of the movie crew's home to shoot that scene), and one of the girl vampires has chemically straightened hair...mind you, this scene is set in the late 19th century.

Switch to present day Los Angeles, where Van Helsing is working in a phlebotomy lab, keeping a keen eye on modern-day vampires, who coincidentally now reside in the P.J.s. Dracula's blood line is still alive in Sebastian (Andreas Beckett), who was the vampire that destroyed Mrs. Van Helsing many moons ago. Sebastian is dying of thirst, when he's convinced by his right-hand vamp, Arianna (Denise Boutte) to begin the hunt anew...humans are food, she reminds him & the battle rages once again; Van Helsing recruits members of the Knights Templar (yes...the Knights Templar) as new vampire slayers & after one full afternoon of training, they're ready to kill them some vampires! I think it's important to note that after dining on his first new victim, Sebastian literally beats on his chest like a gorilla...and it just gets better from there.

Highlights: the writers stay loyal to Stoker's vampire rules; the soundtrack isn't bad...very dramatic & gothic; & the use of holy water in this film is actually quite clever.

Lowlights: It's no surprise this is a directorial debut for both directors...there's very little direction at all...in fact, the actors don't seem to know they're in a movie...there's a definite stage quality to their performances (the stabbing is the worst...very theatrical); the prosthetic fangs the vampires wear must be those toy fangs we used to get for Halloween, because they make the actors sound ridiculous; the lighting and the sound are borderline childish; and there's a ton of scene recycling.

This movie makes all the other movies I've reviewed look like Oscar contenders. I will give the filmmakers credit for squeezing 82 minutes of excrement out of a short story written in the late 19th century. Pathetically cheap acting, photography, lighting & sound make this one a definite "no" on the watch list...don't waste your time.

I would love to include a trailer for you to watch, but unfortunately it contains nudity, and I'm not yet sure about the rules governing this particular carrier in that arena. It's available at youtube.com, you just have to create an account.

Thanks for reading...my next post will be a murder-mystery review starring Kristy Swanson...be ready...it's a baaaaad movie.

The Importance of Film & Television

Some people may think that having a blog about watching movies on T.V. is a colossal waste of time, in fact, people I know personally think watching T.V. at all is a mindless, frivolous way to piss away one's life. To them, television has no value or redeeming qualities whatsoever (amazingly enough, lots of people who think this way have children who watch at least five hours of T.V. per day...ironic, don't you think?)

It is my personal opinion that sending and receiving flowers is probably one of the worst ways anyone can spend money. I'm not talking about growing flowers in your backyard, just the buying of cut flowers as the means to a gift. But that's just me. A vast majority of our country find it so gratifying that it's a multi-million dollar industry. Because of that particular definition, it cannot be wrong; if it brings happiness, jobs and prosperity to people, it absolutely has value...just like movies & television.

Think about it, television has the capacity to educate, to motivate & to raise awareness. Speaking personally, I learned how to read from a little green Muppet named Kermit when I was about 3 or 4. And think about the awareness that was raised by FarmAid, LiveAid and Comic Relief, just to name a few. In my opinion, it's not the amount of T.V. one watches that "rots your brain"...it's the quality (or lack thereof) of programming we digest. I personally watch pretty much only movies, documentaries and educational programming...I admit, I have a few guilty pleasures, like cartoons and one reality show...but since T.V. is also meant to entertain, I'll buy the ticket & take the ride.

Movies, in my humble opinion, are a valuable, accurate audio/visual account of our history...a sort of living encyclopedia, if you will. Without movies as an historical vehicle, we wouldn't still be talking about Dracula a couple thousand years after his death. Film immortalizes our heroes & villains for us & allows us to root for or against them at will.

Film also allows us a glimpse into the vernacular climate of the period in which the film was made. I'll give an example: I recently watched The Fly (1958) with Vincent Price. Now, 1958 was a pretty amazing time, technologically speaking, as voiced by Patricia Owens' character, Helene: "first television & satellites out in space...supersonic speed and now this (speaking about her husband's molecular transporter), I just don't know if I'm ready for it all to happen." Very much the climate of the times. Fast forward to the tumultuous late '60s; Night of the Living Dead, by George Romero's admission, was a highly political film with a bunch of zombies in it (it had a black hero at a time in our history when black people were demonized)...Romero was trying to prove that no matter what the color of our skin, an individual can rise above all the rest, even in the fight against zombies. Even cartoon movies aren't safe from social commentary...ever seen Wall-E? Talk about a strong message hidden in a super-cute animated feature.

If not for movies and television, I may not be inspired to read in the manner that I do. After watching The Aviator with Leonardo DiCaprio, I read everything about Howard Hughes I could get my hands on; after watching a documentary entitled How Bruce Lee Changed the World, I read the Tao of Jeet Kune Do, which changed my life; thanks to what I learned from Cesar Milan's show The Dog Whisperer, my dog is amazing.

My point is this: regardless of opinion, movies and television not only entertain, they're a modern art form that's more powerful than any that preceded. The Mona Lisa is an amazing painting, and the skill that went into it is apparent, but the computer generated animation in Beowulf with Ray Winstone & Anthony Hopkins is mind-boggling, and it brought a classic literary tale to life for a new generation; Morgan Sperlock's documentary Supersize Me brought awareness of the dangers of over consumption to a shocking new light...whereas, while beautiful, the Mona Lisa simply hangs on a wall in Paris, viewed by those fortunate to either live there or visit...roses sent to a loved one wither and die with time.

I'm not trying to convert anyone here. I'm also not trying to get you to let your kids watch T.V. instead of going out to play. All I'm saying is this: the next time your friend talks to you about the cool show or movie he just saw on television, indulge him or her instead of being condescending or dismissive. In fact, try to remember the last time you brought up something you were passionate about...remember, you have to give respect to get it.