I can't remember a year when there was no Oscar hype for any movie....Maybe the Fall will be better?

... I pop in to read Salon's movie features to remind myself how vapid Stephanie Zacharek really is. And never have I been disappointed.

Haven't we heard this lament about the movie business -- how the summer blockbuster is going to drain Hollywood of anything worth watching -- since, oh, let's go with, since Jaws came out? I don't have blockbuster fatigue, whatever that is. I just go to the movies every few weeks and try to find something enjoyable. I guess I avoid being dulled into ennui by the hype by -- and this is radical here -- not paying attention to the hype. It works wonders.

But then how could I ever write another self-indulgent deep "review" of the movie biz? Sigh.

I've found this an excellent year for blockbusters, thanks to The Dark Knight (I know you didn't like it, but you have to admit your opinion is in the minority), wALL-E, Iron Man, and Indiana Jones. OTOH, I skipped the Mummy movie.

I don't believe that the quality of blockbusters are generally worse than the quality of other types of films, and I think blockbusters are better now as a rule than they were 10 or 20 years ago. I'm talking about better writing and acting, not special effects.

The difference is that bad low-budget independent art films get very little exposure, if they get any at all. Bad blockbusters are in our faces constantly. We can't ignore them.

Lincoln

I have spoken.

Seriously. This must have been the best summer for Hollywood "blockbuster" movies in at least 10 years. In the same season you have Iron Man, The Dark Night, and WALL-E, in addition to Hell Boy 2.

On the surface, to a reactionary contrarian, such as Ms. Zacharek, these are typical teen-boy Hollywood fare with art and humanity subverted to the soul sucking commercialism of the modern movie industry. If you believe this then you haven't been paying attention. Ms Zacharek should turn in her critic credentials post-haste.

I am more than certain that Guillermo del Toro didn't make Hellboy 2 strictly for the money. You don't craft a world like this if you didn't have vision and were just after a paycheck.

The animators at PIXAR, with their gourmet lunches and trips to Paris as part of their typical workday aren't Hollywood dilettantes trying to cash-in. They are artists.

But they are all monetarily successful artists and that's where I feel the resentment comes in. Whereas Ms. Zacharek sees them as agents of a corrupt system feeding crap to the masses of Middle America, I see them as intermediaries between the "high-art" aesthetic and the multiplex where most Americans seek out culture.

For Ms. Zacharek, if a film is seen by more than three people, it's somehow suspect. But maybe that just means it's worth watching.

I have fatigue fatigue.

I'm tired of Salon telling me I need to be tired of things, like blockbusters and Barack Obama.

(I'm also kind of tired of Stephanie Zacharek... Yes, she hates film. We get it.)

Stephanie Zacharek is still puzzled. She's tired of reviewing movies she hates, so today she takes time out to psychoanalyze the audiences that she doesn't understand.

Her professional diagnosis: We're fatigued. And yet, strangely exhilarated by one or two movies -- enough to make one of them the second biggest blockbuster in Hollywood history! Perhaps this sporadic ennui only afflicts audiences in the presence of mediocrity?

No, there must be other reasons. Let's start with a dismissive truism:

That's the purpose of the summer blockbuster: To movie studios, they're commerce; to us, they're a chance to escape for a few hours into another, bigger world, or at least just into air conditioning.

ok, I finally get where Zacharek has been coming from all year: she writing to us from 1926, when movie palaces promised a retreat from the sweltering heat. (And here I thought the only reason to go see The Dark Knight was so we could sit in the back row and make out.)

Yeah, I know, Stephanie's little quip is tongue in cheek; and I guess that's a prettier use for that tongue than blowing raspberries for the past 3 months. But it's not a lot deeper or more analytically useful, is it?

Do I suffer from blockbuster fatigue? Nope. This summer I'm suffering from Zacharek fatigue.

Love your writing, Steph, but only when you're writing about movies you love. You have every right to decide for yourself which summer movies feel "nonsensical and assaultive." But please understand that an assaultive disdainful review is as exhausting for your readers as many of the movies we admire are to you.

This essay comes at such an odd time that I'm a little puzzled by it. I've seen more good movies this summer than I've seen in any past summer I can remember. I'm glad Hollywood is making more good movies and not less. I'll take variety over nostalgia (for something that probably never existed) any day.

And do we really have to bring out that tired old bromide: "Blame Steven"? Oh yeah, sure. There were certainly never high-budget super-productions before Spielberg started making movies. Before Spielberg, the men who ran the studios were benevolent father figures who loved art and tossed cash to would be film-makers like candy at a parade. They certainly never wanted to do anything so vulgar as make money by appealing to massive amounts of people.

I think if you were to look back at the history of writing about film, you'd probably find a version of this essay appearing periodically every five years or so: "Hollywood sucks. They don't make 'em like they used to. I'm sick of Hollywood movies."

The funny thing about hype...all you have to do is ignore it.

I seriously doubt that there are very many people beside movie critics who suffer from "blockbuster fatigue" because anyone else who goes to see all of 2008's big summer movies does so because they like those sorts of films. In terms of people reading this, most probably saw "The Dark Knight," most (but not all) of those people probably saw "Iron Man," a much smaller percentage of those people maybe saw "Hellboy II," then your number drops significantly (not to mention the many people who probably only saw one of the above). In reality you're talking about people having maybe seen between one and three "blockbusters" this summer, and they are probably not tired. To anyone else shares Stephanie Zacharek's opinion I can't help but ask why, if you were posessed of the temperment to become fatigued by summer blockbusters, did you go to see all of them in the first place? I mean, Ms. Zacharek has to go for work, what's your excuse?