Oh, so? So now you're dissing California liberals are you, Jack? Humph! Next you'll be making demeaning remarks about chimpanzees and calling them "monkeys" and "poop throwers". Yeah, yeah, I know how it works... ;-)

My opinion of Costner has also been formed by watching his movies, naturally. I thought some of them were great...and I thought some of them were okay...and I thought some of them were just downright mediocre or even close to being a complete disaster (like The Postman).

But it all depends which ones.

My general impression is that he was mostly far more effective in his movie parts when he was younger. Some actors and actresses are like that. They have something in their youth that gets lost after awhile. You can say that about some singers too, while others age like fine wine.

But I think people have been unnecessarily cruel to Kevin Costner since not too long after the Robin Hood film came out. I don't think they are disposed to give a fair chance to anything the man does now, simply because it's become cool and fashionable not to. He unwittingly assisted in that process by trying to make a series of futuristic, overblown epics that didn't come off well (Waterworld, The Postman...). In the case of the Wywatt Earp film I think he did a fine biography of the man's life, though. It's the only film I know of that seriously attempted to depict Earp's whole life, rather than just building a drama around the brief events in Tombstone and the gunfight at the OK Corral (an event that took less than half a minute in real life).

A western he did that I was not very impressed with was "Open Range".