is there any hope?

Sometimes I think not, especially on days like last Monday. Last Monday’s Variety made me sick to my stomach. The whole damn thing was nothing but a big ass kissing to Brett “I make cookie cutter movies” Ratner. And why you might wonder, well simple, we are in a town where the only thing celebrated is money, nothing else, nothing more, just plain old money. Make money in this town and you will be more acclaimed than Martin Scorsese. Write the next Charlie’s Angels or Rush Hour and you will be more celebrated than William Goldman or Scott Frank. So back to Brett “I direct by the numbers” Ratner, he was “honored” as been Variety Billion Dollar director, they dedicated him a whole number.
Among his achievements to amount to that are those hideous Rush Hour movie (please God, please let the third one be a bigger flop than Gigli), that I still don’t understand why they made so much money, well I guess Homer Simpson likes those kind of movies. They mention that he took over the X-Men franchise, and that his X-Men movie, the Last Stand, made more money than the other two. That is true, but they fail to mention that Last Stand doubled in budget United and almost tripled the first one, so in a ratio of budget to gross Last Stand in the one that made the least amount of money. They also seem to not realize that even if Allan Smithee would have directed Last Stand it would have made a ton of money. They dared to say that he followed on the steps of Demme and Ridley Scott in the Lecter franchise. Well I believe that putting Scott’s name next to the Ratt’s name in any sentence is disrespectful in itself. Never mind that Red Dragon was a remake of a Michael Mann movie, never mind that is by far the worst of the Lecter’s films (and please don’t bring up Hannibal Rising, just compare the amount of talent in each movie), never mind that Silence of the Lambs is one of the best movies ever made, and never mind that even though Red Dragon was the one with the biggest budget of the three, it is the one that grossed the least. So on days like Monday I truly believe there’s no hope in this town. I feel that the more I know about Hollywood the more I want to make movies out of it.
But then my optimistic side kicks in, and I think hey for every Ratt, we have a Joe Carnahan, who declined to direct the next Wolverine movie (can you image how bad ass a Carnahan Wolverine would have been), because he knew it would have never been his movie. For every Michael Bay we have a Chris Nolan, for every Michael Steven Johnson we have a Guillermo del Toro. And even though Antonioni and Bergman died and they only received half pages in Variety while the boy from South Beach got a full number, we still have Francis Ford Coppola, Marty Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Clint Eastwood, Ridley Scott, Sidney Lummet, Sidney Pollack, alive and making movies, let’s hope they live many more years.
So to close I think us as an audience should show the suites at the studios and those who acclaimed no talent that we are not going to take it anymore, that been a blockbuster is not an excuse to make shitty movies, so start next weekend, and please don’t go see Rush Hour.