feeling listless

Film Watching The Day After Tomorrow the other week a glimmer of a thought flashed through the back of my mind. I put it away as quickly as I could, because I knew it was wrong and that terrible things could only ensue if I gave it full reign on my sensibilities. For the purposes of this post I will reveal it to you as long as you too promise that as soon as you've read it you can forget it was even on the screen in front of you. I'm going to paragraphing it just for that purpose...

"Hmm ... those tornadoes look cool. I should watch Twister again."

Isn't it amazing the unspeakable evil which can be summoned up by a fleeting thought. Imagine if that had been my next move -- the forces which might come into play. But luckily I contented myself with the spectacle which played out on the screen in front of me instead.

But what draws us to continually keep watching these horrible films. I mean I know Coyote Ugly is drek, and yet there it sits on my dvd shelf nestled between Plunkett and Macleane and Love Actually, both equally dubious. In a new column for Movie Poop Shoot, Patrick Keller is going out of his way to watch cruddy Hollywood films in an attempt to understand why we continue to watch them to the extent that they continue to be made:

"Yes, bad movies are everywhere these days, and they're flourishing. Kids practically have to be tied to the furniture to stop them from going to see their "Junior Freddie Prinzes" and their "The Rocks" in the latest The Fast and the Furious ripoff or Agent Cody Banks epic. Adults are just as guilty. Someone's going to see all those Costner movies, and I suspect a lot of AARP discounts are involved. Hell, Oprah has even started her own "bad movie club." Every year, the famed talk-show host seeks out that one film she believes to be the worst of the worst. Then she produces it and sometimes even stars in it ... Why is this happening? Where did everyone's taste go? Are they putting something in the Coke served at theaters that causes spontaneous temporary retardation?

Co-incidentally his first film is the tornado epic but I'll let him speak for himself on that epic. I think the answer is that these films are easy to watch. Having sat through Mississippi Mermaid yesterday morning which amounts to (and excuse the potty-mouth) Catherine Denerve prick-teasing the bloke from Godard's Breathless out of his money for two hours (somehow proving that there is a reason these film disappeared for three decades until DVD came along), all we want sometimes is to be entertained in the most non-threatening manner, without the spectre of an ambiguous ending involving snow, hitch-hiking, poverty and suicide.