The Summer of 2013, An Autopsy...

Took me a while to gather my thoughts, but I suspect, just suspect that the Summer of 2013 will go down in the Annals as the very moment when Hollywood went over the hump, never to return. The litany of catastrophe and humiliation is a long and appalling one, an Iron Man sequel that pit a worthy like Robert Downey Jr against genetically engineered lava-men, a Lone Ranger movie that Will Live In Infamy and "The Man of Steel", a film that compares unfavorably with self induced blunt force impact trauma with a ball peen hammer. The list goes on seemingly endless and indistinguishable Pixar animated epics, a collection of horror films seemingly shot on a smartphone in the same clothes closet and of course, a Brad Pitt zombie movie...as if that is brand enhancement. The collapse has been in truth, a long time a-comin', the rise of committee rule extending it's top down iron clad rule to even the most trivial film projects, a foolish bid to ingratiate with overseas audiences and a editing zeitgeist that favors running the film stock thru a lawn mower. To say nothing of the millions being wasted time after time...more and more spent to achieve less and less. Tinseltown's answer to this season's debacle, Ben Affleck as Batman in the upcoming "Batman versus Superman" epic. Unlike everyone else on the internet, I'm fine with Affleck at Batman, he might even be good at it, he certainly won't do the role any disservice. No my issue is with Zack Snyder et all, they'll make a the same gruesome ruin of "The World's Finest Heroes" that they made of "Man of Steel". I'm convinced Affleck did it to secure financing for some directorial project to be named later... No the best action film I saw this summer was the much reviled "KickAss 2"...mostly because the filmmakers managed to match up the semi inept KickAss (Aaron Taylor Johnson) with weedy Wall Cox-esque Christopher Mintz-Plasse whilst Hit Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz)finally gets a fight worthy of her homicidal skill set, a one eyed female Russian bodybuilder. Subtle just won't do in the KickAssverse. Sheee-it I got myself invested in a line up like that... Critics hate the KickAss "franchise" mostly because they prefer their foulmouthed killer vigilantes be Hugh Jackman and not a teenaged Chloe Grace Moretz...me I love the girl, she is pure screen violence done right. Nope the last bastion of creativity in Hollywood is among the comedies, "The Heat", "The World's End" and "The Way Way Back" all had a strong auteur feel to them, the writing was universally tight in each case...but lets face facts, It's the Twilight of the Gods Out There in Beverly Hills...and hearty laughter always attends on the End Times.