Back in the early 00s, I had the supreme pleasure of discovering Alec Guinness as George Smiley in the BBC’s miniseries masterpiece Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy from 1979, then the sequel and conclusion three years later, Smiley’s People, not as transcendent but then again, how could it equal, let alone surpass, perfection.

Around 2010, my first reaction upon hearing of a remake was of complete disdain - “here is an already perfect miniseries, what is it with this incessant compulsion to remake everything?”
So I didn’t watch the Gary Oldman movie until a couple of years after it came out, it was playing on TV and decided to give it a try.

To my utter astonishment, I realized I was watching what was to become my favorite film of the entire decade. What an achievement!
Now I love the film and the miniseries equally, as separate mountaintops.

Echoes of - “The internet is not a dump truck, it’s a series of tubes”.

Refusal to cancel attacks on Ukraine and democracies worldwide shows kremlin does not want peace.

Imagine going from sleeping in this, to sleeping in a prison bunk.
The drop-off must be astonishingly jarring.
What an idiot. This is what happens when your appetites and cravings are a bottomless pit, while lacking any self-control and any sense of scale.

It’s like Pi (yeah, that one, 3.1416)…
Whether it’s a tiny circle or one the size of the universe, Pi remains constant. Like with this guy, the appetite remains this constant mindless thing at every size and price level.

Crazy to think that Jaws was rated PG, but it’s true.

Now there’s some food for thought… The Exorcist could have been the first modern blockbuster, it had all the ingredients, only it was one year too early, the immediate precursor before they tried what they did with Jaws.

Yes they did, indeedy!

Take MGM during the heyday of the old studio system, it had almost 30 soundstages on the lot, always active or under construction and would be cranking films out constantly, and that doesn’t include location shooting around the wildly different environments near LA - deserts and chaparral, forests and mountains, etc.

Now add to that Warner, RKO (later renamed to Universal), Paramount, United Artists, etc.
Directors and stars were under contract for wages, would be in several films each and every year.

Now add to that all the lower budget studios cranking out cheap-o b-movies, mostly horror and noir.

Bluntly manipulative melodramatic tripe that ejects me completely from the movie, just as with Titanic. James Cameron decided to keep churning out the modern cgi version of a top hat-wearing villain cackling and twirling his mustache as he leaves the damsel tied to the train tracks, and it is kind of dismaying that he got so thoroughly rewarded for it.

You’ve heard of a “walled garden”.
But this… this has become a “walled right-wing dumpster”.