I was sitting down to a lunch the other day, and I took a drink from my Lara Croft cup and a bite from my Atlantis hot ham, and cheese sandwich and for desert I ate my Shrek blue ice cream. After all this crap, it is no wonder my stomach is so upset after this summer’s movie season. With Hollywood spending so much time on marketing movies, it has forgotten how to actually make a good cohesive blockbuster. It is no wonder that this summer’s blockbusters maintain all the buoyancy at the box office of Marlon Brando in water wings. What happened to the days when the summer blockbusters were a breeding ground for revolutionary special effects with a great story to accompany (case in point: Jurassic Park and T2). It would seem that the boys at ILM have been sitting on their duffs for the last ten years and every other special effects house in La-La-land just rode on their coat tails. Okay, effects notwithstanding, what about stories? Whoever told these studio heads to green light projects with substandard storylines? Just because we were all fooled by Titanic doesn’t mean we should try our luck again with such a personal subject as the attack on Pearl Harbor. And finally there is star-power. It appears that several films were given the go-ahead because the big stars' schedules coincided at a certain time and scripts were not yet complete. I have news for the studios, other actors are just as competent as the likes of DeNiro and Brando(Just pick any number of the hardworking actors on the VCA). A good film can be a success without big name stars; see Memento, The Full Monty, , and Pulp Fiction(when this film came out John Travolta was a has-been and Sammy J. was a never-was). While I do appreciate the eye-candy of this summer season, I do not appreciate the studios literally cramming summer trash down my throat. Just because I eat the sandwich, this will not make for a better film. I do not think that all films this summer were a failure (some were quite good: Moulin Rouge and Planet of the Apes, but this has been the most disappointing summer in recent history.

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