See the Carlos Mencia journal entry. I frequently find myself wondering how some people get the credibility they do. I'll cite a few examples outside of the previously mentioned Mencia.

Leonardo DiCaprio is now a figurehead in representing the militant elitist green movement. I cannot stand him because if you watch his documentary "Welcome to Greensburg" on Planet Green, you'll see that his Hollywood elitism has truly gotten to his head. He speaks as if everybody has the resources he has, and we all make a king's ransom for hardly a day's work. The answer to global warming, apparently, is that we all get six-acre properties and build solar farms in our sprawling Malibu hills backyards. And it's YOUR fault that you're so dirt poor and don't make a seven-digit annual salary, and it's YOUR impoverished middle-class carcass that is destroying the Earth.

After a ridiculous pro-Kerry campaign in 2004, it doesn't take that much brain power to know the volatile combination of politics and those who professionally work to create alternate realities.

Many times I find myself not upset at actors, though. Actors are easy to ignore. They're idiots. They can't do anything else outside of read scripts and complain. But it's tough to ignore some of the more prominent critics that act as the intermediary between the Hollywood morons and the decent folk of the general public. We depend upon our critics to be intelligent, compassionate, and able to empathize with the whims and habits of the movie-going public.

If I were to ask you to name five famous critics, I doubt the majority of you readers would be able to. That's fine. I couldn't name that many, neither. But I'm sure many of you pondered it for one second, and thought of one guy. Like Carlos Mencia, this is a man who does not deserve his own TV Show, and THANK GOD does not contribute to it anymore.

Roger Ebert.

Yes, I know, Ebert quit the TV show because he has lung cancer. I am also very aware that I am ridiculing a guy who HAS cancer, and praising the fact he had cancer so he couldn't rub his misguiding perceptions in our face. Yet for many years, I've never understood why, even when he was in perfect health, the esteemed masses never held his feet to the fire for having a really bad recommendation rap sheet.



So frequently, I hear people say "big deal. I don't listen to critics anyway." So what's the point of giving gargantuan heaps of compensation for providing a service nobody wants anyway? Here's the issue this brings up. We have a necessity amongst the populace to have a definitive voice in what is good and what isn't. Mysteriously, those who get such a recognition are notorious for inaccuracy, while marketing departments are so adamant to quote them to trick us to seeing bad movies.

Here's what I hate about Hollywood. They're tricking us just to see their crap. And nothing enables them to create such an illusion of greatness when they can so easily quote Roger Ebert. The Hammer, one of the more enjoyable films I've seen this year, and one of the more highly rated endeavors, had a dissapointing turn-out because they didn't put forth the effort to TRICK us to see it. It was a genuinely great movie, with genuinely memorable acting, genuine non-DiCaprio actors, and you'd assume no trickery would be needed. It was the movie we needed, the movie we beg for.

It seems critics don't have a place with them, though. Critics only act as fluff and filler for really BAD movies to coerce us to waste our time with them. It is these critics, and their relationship with those who market sheer crap, that puts them in a contemptible disposition with the public.

The Happening, the movie by M. Night Shyamalan that came out last night, is one of the most horrendous duds of the year. Look at it this way. Imagine if you went to go see Cloverfield, getting all this hype about a giant ass monster. And instead, you realize that it's not a monster, but mind-controlling plants.

Yes, genius. I just RUINED The Happening for you. YOU'RE WELCOME, GOD DAMMIT.

Yet the legacy of Roger Ebert continues. I'd be willing to bet that in upcoming ad slots, you read this.



Idiot.

It's time to retire, old man. And it's time to equate the phrase "raves Roger Ebert" to the dread delivered by "from director Uwe Boll."

Heads up, movie producers. If that phony's name appears anywhere in your advertising campaign, you have obliterated all my desire to see your film.