Little Hawk, I can sort of agree about Hollywood and all, but don't you get frustrated and depressed hoping to see really good movies? I tend to go back and forth, sometimes watching movies of a lesser god, just to stay conversational, then eventually you begin to feel--Where are the movies I'd want my grandkids to see? Ones that will still seem to matter? Usually I read more in that phase, not because I suppose reading is a higher thing, but there's a bigger backlog of good stuff around. For me mediocre stuff is sometimes more tiresome than really lousy stuff. I confess I sometimes read about movies instead of seeing them, and when they actually come around I think, oh yeah, I sort of liked that one. I liked the idea of the plastic bag in American Beauty much more when I read about it than it looked on film, where it's doing a slightly comical little dance. It looked like a funny thing that anyone might notice, whereas seeing the beauty of a random piece of litter, garbage, requires setting aside the general idea of it. Joeseph Albers used to have his art students at Black mountain College practice something like that, for an exercise.

I seem to take a middle view on American Beauty--I don't see an intent to directly address issues of glamour and violence, while actually exploiting those things--I count on Oliver Stone to do that. I think it meant, very ambitiously, to address values, how to live, what is a good life, and this was largely played out in the Spacey-Bennet relationship, sure. But it has something the matter with it, for me.

Here's one thing, the movie starts out with a video clip of the two young characters talking about killing the father, we later find out, facetiously. And it sets up a frame around the story, when in the end the father is dead, the two abruptly leave town, and there exists this disturbing, possibly incriminating tape. Male menopause doesn't explain why the movie does this device.

I supposed that it may be meant that the story exposes a truth behind the appearances and ugliness of so-called "trash t.v." and sensational "reality" images. So I can see how you might find that it attempts to address things like violence and if not "glamour" maybe "sensationalism" and fails to be convincing. I was calling this kind of thing mere cleverness--it's a clever device--but it may come to the same thing--it just doesn't all add up right, in the end, some things seem wrong about it, it leaves a sour taste;

does anyone believe the way the daughter just stands there in the room with her murdered father while her boyfriend takes a long moment to appreciate the beauty of it? That may be the worst, wrongest, most absurd moment in it for me. But there are a few others--lingering over that Nazi plate seemed odd. But I agree also that there were very good things, elements, threads, mostly the acting was fantastic.

I liked Fight Club in the beginning, when Norton and Bonham Carter were going to support groups, and I wish it had just kept going with them, but the doppelganger identity thing ruined it for me, by the end I couldn't remember or care what it was about at all. Womanly jiggles?

I like the way some b.s. topics spin off into other things, isn't that the art of b.s., anyway? how most people talk and think? I really enjoyed the stuff I got to read today, and appreciate being tolerated too.