.Gary Dretzka
.Leonard Klady.
.David Poland
.Ray Pride

February 3, 2003

The size of the platform does not define the weight of a tragedy.  Many people died this weekend.  To each family, the loss was life changing.  Seven members of our national family died together, before our eyes.  But our loss is nothing like the loss of each of the families.  More people will die without a single shot fired if we go to war in Iraq.  It doesn’t matter if you are for or against the war or George W.  We must remember our humanity, whether heroes in the sky or homeless on the street or strangers a world away.  God bless those who have passed.

Is The Core just Armageddon with the rock in the middle of the earth instead of in space?  Better pull those copies of 2001: A Space Odyssey off the video shelves!  There might have been a computer malfunction that caused the crash!  Get rid of Boys Don’t Cry and maybe Hilary Swank won’t be piloting a shuttle in The Core!  Paramount Classics better buy Keith Gordon’s The Singing Detective and never release it because Jon Amiel, who directed The Core, also directed the TV version of The Singing Detective in 1986.  Warner Bros better rethink Michael Gambon as Dumbledore because he was The Singing Detective and that might somehow relate to The Core which has a shot of a shuttle crashing and some lunatic in Pacoima will write a letter!

Do you think that Spike Lee will next make an intimate, personal drama that will have a TV showing the shuttle crashing in the background of a really long dialogue scene?

I finally saw that Irreversible.  Part of it.  When that raunchy old man in the S&M club beats the other man’s head into ground chuck with a fire extinguisher, I said, “Count me out!”

Phil Spector’s Wall of Death.  Do you think he’ll be bunking with Bobby Blake?  L.A. County Jail is turning into a Fox reality series!  If we’re lucky, Roman Polanski will be doing a guest appearance soon!

How about the Joe Millionaire?  Give a girl enough rope…

How cute is that Colin Farrell?  Not only does he love dumb blondes who don’t mind being used like a fuel port in an Indy 500 pit stop, but a gal could buy a new Mercedes Benz turning in all the beer bottles he goes through! 

Love that People Magazine story on losing weight after having a baby!  How much longer before a celebrity uses make-up effects to appear pregnant and just has some poor third-world girl carry the baby and the stretch marks for her?  Somehow, motherhood has become about Baby As Result and the postpartum race to a strapless gown.  No one looks glamorous with poop under their nails and bags under their eyes.  But with everyone rushing to go from “showing” to showing your ribcage, I can smell Joan Crawford giggling in her grave and cackling, “I told you so!"

Thank goodness that Warner Bros. has decided to build a specialty division of their very own!  It wasn’t confusing enough out there.  Deliver Us From Eva is a Fox Searchlight film, right.  No!  Focus Features.  But Dirty Pretty Things must be a UA or Searchlight film?  No!  Miramax.  You never realized that Pluto Nash was really an independent underdog, did you?

Have y’all picked up on the switch in the commercials for The Pianist that now pronounce the word with an accent on the “an?”  The Pee-uh-nist must have been too highbrow!

I only have one question about Gods & Generals.  Does the south win this time?

A note from most of America: “Harvey Weinstein, when will you release Chicago?”

Now that Kevin Kline is signing up to play Cole Porter, do you think even his sweet as pie wife, Phoebe Cates, is saying, “Honey, really, if you are gay, it’s okay.  Honestly, I won’t love you any less.”

That’s all there is, kiddies.  Have a good week.  Be kind to the ones you love.

Email Patricia Vidal