Raptus Regaliter

It's interesting that Michel Gondry has recently made a film ("Be Kind Rewind") where two video store employees end up remaking all the films in their store after they've been erased, and then suddenly realise that if they can copy their favorite films, then they can go on to make something original.

It's interesting, because a number of people in the film industry seem to be stuck on making the same film over and over again. Apart from George Lucas, I mean. For example, Paul W.S. Anderson, who seems to have made a career out of sweding "Aliens". He made "Event Horizon", where a group of astronauts, trapped onboard a lost spaceship, gradually meet sticky ends, until only the plucky female co-pilot survives. Then he made "Resident Evil", where a group of Special Ops are trapped in an underground laboratory and gradually meet sticky ends, until only the plucky female guardian of the lab survives. Next he did Alien Vs. Predator, where (are we beginning to see a pattern here, folks?) a group of scientists get trapped in an ancient pyramid at the South Pole, and gradually meet sticky ends, until only (guess what?) the plucky femaie cypher survives. I know he's made other movies, but I haven't seen them - and I'll admit that the ones I've seen are entertaining in a don't-think-too-much-otherwise-you'll-spoil-it way.

Another one who seems to think that we don't have much of a memory is a certain Mr. M. Night Shylaman. Night, you see, likes a twist in his tales. Night likes to ask himself "What if....?". What would happen if, for example, someone is a ghost and doesn't realise it? What if someone has superhero powers? What would happen if there was this village full of people who thought it was still the 1700s? What would happen if everyone just suddenly slipped into a coma (and what if we cast one of the most comatose actors of the last twenty years - Mark Wahlberg - as the lead?) And, worst of all, what would happen if the estate of the late Rod Serling realises that Nighty's been ripping off "The Twilight Zone"?

Because, you see, I'm the film-maker's worst nightmare. I'm the bloke with a memory longer than the average goldfish. I'm the bloke who goes "hang on a minute". I'm the bloke who, during "The Matrix" says "How come Joe Pantyliner (or whatever his name is) managed to sneak into the Matrix to meet Agent Smith, when it's just been clearly established that they need an 'operator' to get in?" I'm the bloke who, during the revelation in "Star Trek 1" that Vejur is an old Voyager probe, and "The Creator" is the carbon-based life that it despises, says "Hang on, how come a supercomputer (admittedly based on 3 crappy old RCA 8-bit cpus) didn't work all that out when it read the Enterprise's databanks?"

And, whilst we're at it, how come they couldn't find writers capable of doing joined-up writing when they made "Star Trek Voyager"?

Answers on a postcard please to Hollywood..

Nah, don't bother. None of them can really read.