This blog will have to be about something different. Something cooler than last time... something less nerdy... this one will have to be about Hollywood and its superior skills at deceiving people with the simplest of tricks. The first completely overused tactic employed by Hollywood is the use of coincidence. This can be seen in just about any movie ever, but a prime example of it showing up is during the movie Training Day. The major coincidence in this movie is when the main character Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke) is about to be executed by three gangsters, when they suddenly rifle through his wallet and find a picture of one of their cousins. The gangsters then call the younger female cousin to check Hoyt's story while holding him at gunpoint, then have a sudden change of heart right before finishing the deed. Yeah, that happens. Here is the way it really works: they off the cop, loot his wallet and throw it in with the body. Sun rise, sun set. Nothing quite like filling a plot hole with a total after-thought of an escape mechanism. Which brings me to my next point of movie magic...

Plot holes are created and filled with a simple wave of the hand! So, let's revisit any modern horror movie created within the last decade or so. Have you ever noticed how many folks suffer from terrible cell reception? A wonderful example of this can be seen in this video (some language in this clip may not be acceptable for children!) Hmmmm... awfully convenient plot hole. Quite coincidental that the main characters are all not only in no-cell-reception zones, but only gain reception once they have finally reached a certain, often dramatic point in their journey. A nice easy tap of the magic wand of Hollywood and POW! the phone/radio/internet/walkie-talkie suddenly works for just long enough to create a bit of suspense! The only way you are not going to have cell reception in this modern world is to have a new iPhone wrapped in tinfoil in a lead building (also at that point, treat your electronics better and probably do not lick the walls). Of course, we can also just keep shoveling dollars into Hollywoods mouths as it is easier than analyzing the simplest of details. Which perfectly does not create a segue into my next point...

Hollywood forces an opinion of a character on to movie viewers and fools you into believing it! How many of us have seen the heart-warming flick The Pursuit of Happyness? What a great movie, eh? Will Smith keeps at his dream of becoming a stockbroker to support his son in the most expensive city in the country. What a great piece of movie magic, able to fill us with so much happiness when Will Smith finally makes it! The part of this movie that I find odd is that throughout it, he and his son are forced to live in absolute squalor, spending nights in public bathrooms, barely managing to survive off the humble wage from a pizza parlor, all the while attempting to achieve the American dream for himself and his son.

Heart-warming! Oh, wait a second, what was that about forcing your child to live like a Middle-Ages peasant while you focus on your own set of goals? Yep, that is being a responsible parent. He could have just moved to a cheaper region, that would have been easy. Or perhaps if he really has his heart set on New York he could take on a few extra jobs, rent a cheap apartment and provide for his kid until at the very least his kid is old enough to take care of himself or perhaps even help out with the bills? This once again creates a wonderful lack of segue to my next point...

Hollywood has next to no new ideas! Avatar, District 9, Glory, and so many other movies are incredibly guilty of this. So essentially the story for these three films goes as follows: A group of people/aliens are oppressed and looked down upon. The main character, who also just so happens to be empathetic to their plight, believes in them and sticks with them through their hardships until the very end. In the end, we see that the oppressed group are in fact a great group of people/aliens and we can stand to learn a ton from them! Wonderful, except that we have been seeing this same plot used almost as many times as Lindsay Lohan has appeared in court. It's a great idea for a plot, it teaches many people a ton about understanding and embracing differences, and that is great. The problem is that it is the same story, characters, and basically dialogue, except you change the names. If I were to re-write The Lord of The Rings and simply make the characters female with appropriate names and change their quest to throw a bracelet into a river it would be the same movie, there is no new idea, not even any creativity, just simple mimicing.

Hollywood is a great thing in many respects (though I loathe most celebrities, but that is for another blog): it keeps us entertained, it provides tons of jobs, and it has, on rare occasions, given us great, brand new ideas that made absolutely flawless movies (by the way, watch Inception). The business as a whole just needs to take a step toward the ledge, create some new ideas and actually try and challenge the state that movies are in currently.

-- A fed-up nerd and electronics buyer for the Flagstaff store (a.k.a. Great Scott!)