Utah Stories

Hollywood Never Ceases to Amaze by Stooping to New Lows

It can be hard to find a decent movie to spend your hard-earned cash on, but they do exist.

|


While watching previews, I saw four upcoming films that must have required all of about five minutes each to conjure. A remake of the scary clown movie It. Yes, It looks scary. Clowns are scary. Now I feel even sorrier for all of the out-of-work Ringling Brothers clowns, whose only desire in life was to put a smile on the faces of children.

There is a sequel to “An inconvenient Truth,” where Al Gore appears like a powerful religious figure, and the only man who can save our planet from imminent global destruction caused by Donald Trump not signing the Paris Climate treaty. He points out how his prophecy from his previous film eleven years ago came true, when Hurricane Sandy hit. He predicted eleven years ago that New York would be underwater in the next ten years.

Yes, Hurricane Sandy was foreseen by Al Gore’s prophetic wisdom. My excess of 80 IQ points tells me he was predicting that the entire ocean would rise, flooding New York, not that a single-event would cause temporary water damage. But, he must assume that moviegoers are so dumb as to not remember. Al Gore has attempted to put himself in a position where he would earn millions  if a climate credit exchange were to be enacted in which his company would sell carbon credits.

Gore must consider this film a wise investment, and this film is protecting his status, as not only the inventor of the internet, but the protector of all human-kind. And of course, Hollywood is willing and able to help him spread his propaganda message that only government and Al Gore can save our planet, and not individuals deciding to change their habits.

In another preview for a film called “Snowman,” a serial killer places his victim’s bodies atop a snowman’s body— oooh, so creepy, and so incredibly stupid.

I haven’t been to the movies in about eight months. I love good films, but the stuff that Hollywood is churning out is truly at an all-time low. Nine out of every ten films they make follow such an exact formula, and so few films even attempt to elevate a thought process beyond our primal levels of fear, and hero seeking/worship action/sex.

Comedies have fallen to an all-time-low of banal, fecal, phallic, and sexual humor. Movies appear like clickbait we find when trolling the web, appealing to the lowest common denominator in audiences.

Studios are losing money and they wonder why moviegoers aren’t coming out. It’s not just because I love a big flat-screen TV at home with stereo sound, it’s because they have forgotten how to make good films, where characters and stories drive a unique plot, not cliches and formulas.

Today, I’m sitting in Sugar House’s renovated Movies 10 where all seats are Lazy-Boy recliners, to watch Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk. I actually take time about once a month to seek out movies to see in theaters, including Guardians of the Galaxy Two (because I liked the soundtrack of the last one), and before that, the Imitation Game, which was excellent— I’ve failed to find anything I really want to see. TV is also producing much better content than movies, it’s sad to think back how good movies once were and how poor they are today.

Anyhow, I suppose this is more than just a rant about crappy movies because I did in fact come and see a really great film. Christopher Nolan has earned the status of a premiere film director because not only has he become a master of weaving story lines together, and plot lines through timelines that are very seldom linear, he actually seeks great stories to tell by using unique and interesting characters.

Read more about Dunkirk. Then go and see this very rare, great film

,


Join our newsletter.
Stay informed.


  • Highway 6 and the Midland Trail: Utah’s Transcontinental Highway History

    From Price Canyon to Delta’s desert stretch, Utah played a central role in building the Midland Trail, one of America’s earliest transcontinental highways and the foundation of today’s Highway 6.


  • Utah Acquires US Magnesium Assets in $30M Deal to Protect the Great Salt Lake

    Utah leaders announced the state has successfully won the bid to acquire key assets of the defunct US Magnesium facility on the Great Salt Lake, including its associated water rights and property.


  • Whiskey, Bullets & a Buried Town: Archaeologists Reveal Alta’s Wild Past

    Before Alta was known for powder days and lift lines, it was a silver mining town clinging to the side of a narrow canyon. In the late 1800s, men lived at 8,000 feet, went underground each day, and endured winters that regularly buried buildings in snow. This past summer, that mining town resurfaced — literally — during construction at the Alta Ski Area.

    To understand what Alta really looked like, you don’t begin with legend. You begin with its trash — and this time, that happened almost by accident.

    Alta Ski Area was installing underground water reservoirs to support snowmaking. Because the project sits on Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest land, an archaeologist was required to monitor the excavation. No one expected the trench to produce much.

    But, It did.

    Artifacts began surfacing almost immediately. Enough that the Forest Service contacted the Utah State Historic Preservation Office for help. Lexi Little, who coordinates the Utah Cultural Site Stewardship Program, helped mobilize nearly 30 volunteers to assist with what quickly became a focused two-week excavation.

    Winter deadlines were approaching. The pipes for the reservoirs had to go in the ground. There wasn’t time for a slow, extended dig.

    “It was two weeks of digging in the dirt and helping figure out exactly what we were looking at,” Little said.

    Most of the people screening soil weren’t professional archaeologists. They were trained stewards from around Utah — part of a statewide volunteer network that now approaches 500 people. They poured dirt through shaker screens, scanning for fragments that could piece together a town long buried.

    “Archaeology is human trash,” Little explained. “Archaeologists are very into trash.”

    Alta had left plenty behind.

    https://youtu.be/hzIHzx3OGoo?si=dKcl2CEz-t6FZzYw

    Victorian-style ceramics appeared first — the kind typically used in hotels. Medicine bottles followed. Ink bottles. Hand-blown glass. A porcelain doll’s foot surfaced from the soil, a small detail that shifted the mental image of the town. Families were here. Children were here. This wasn’t only a camp of miners.

    The bottles helped establish time. Manufacturing details — whether glass was hand-blown or mold-made, whether a maker’s mark appeared on the base — allowed archaeologists to date many of the artifacts to the 1870s through the 1890s, when Alta was booming as a silver mining town.

    “That gives you that range of dates for when Alta was really booming,” Little said.

    One reusable soda bottle clearly stamped “Salt Lake City” connected the canyon to the valley economy below.

    Then something unusual rolled out of a dirt pile.

    A corked bottle. Intact. Liquid still inside.

    To access this post, you must purchase Utah Stories (Digital + Print) or 3 month free trial (Digital).


  • The Only Full Bottle of Alcohol Ever Found in Utah Was Unearthed in Alta

    When a backhoe rolled a corked bottle out of the dirt at Alta this summer, no one immediately grasped what they were holding. It wasn’t empty. It wasn’t shattered. It was full. “The bottle that was discovered up at Alta is the only bottle of alcohol ever discovered in an archaeological excavation in the state…