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

July 21, 2003. Romance has disappeared from the Hollywood menu.  The movies that claim to be love stories are not what they appear.  Even Gigli seems to be little more than a matinee version of Prizzi’s Honor.  Remember honor?  You can take a minute to look it up in the dictionary.  (This is the internet.  You do not need Tivo to keep the page on your screen.)

July 14, 2003. In Los Angeles, the 21^st edition of Outfest has raised its furry flag.  The festival celebrates gay and lesbian cinema every year.  They also give great parties!

June 30, 2003. I am happy to be an American.  On this week we celebrate our freedom to eat too much food, drink too much liquor and watch our children blow their fingers off with firecrackers.

June 23, 2003. What is the difference between an Ashley Judd movie and a Jennifer Connelly movie? Jennifer stands by her psychotics.

June 16, 2003. Y’all know that I am not one to run the feminist flag up the pole to see who will whine.  I looked at all the women who were writing and directing big movies this summer and I still had fingers left to count on one of my dainty little hands.  There were not quite enough fingers left to ball up into a fist to slam into some unsuspecting executive’s face.  I was very close though.

June 2, 2003. The only thing I did not enjoy about The Italian Job was that there were not enough topless scenes with Mr. Mark Wahlberg, Racin’ Jason Statham and Senor Frankie G He Is Beautiful.  It is not that I did not want a slice of beefcake from Donald Sutherland or Mos Def or Pee Wee Seth Green.  But when the Navy comes into port, ladies must know where to lie in wait with a bottle of Mescal. 

May 19, 2003. I have decided that Down With Love is The Matrix for ladies.   It is The Lovetrix.  It is not reality.  There are fabulous clothes that almost nobody can get away with wearing in the real world.  It is filled with men and women living out the romantic notions of our mothers and father who were born into earlier versions of The Lovetrix.   Where else but in The Lovetrix could you the sell the idea of women having sex like men?  I don’t know about y’all, but 30 seconds of foreplay and a 2 second orgasm is not my idea of a perfect world.

May 12, 2003. Y’all might have been expecting a moment-by-moment dissection of the technology of The Matrix Reloaded from me.  I hate to disappoint. 

May 5, 2003. Do y’all think that Lauren Schuler Donner is wandering around Hollywood yelling at everyone, “Have you seen the size of my opening?”   I do not.  I am sure she is thrilled to death with both of her entendres.  In a world full of male members of the industry establishment, women do care about size, if it is used will some style.

April 28, 2003. I love America because personality deprived actors like Luke Wilson and Josh Hartnett can keep getting starring roles in movies because they are so gosh darn good looking.  It is just another example of American women getting stuck using inanimate objects to find sexual gratification.

April 22, 2003. It is an all-girl summer at the movies!  The lovely ladies of La La Land will rule the landscape.  From the Blaque Oscar winner with the shocking white hair to the Oscar winner who traded in her mentally-challenged genius of a husband for a nice guy who turns green when you insist on watching Friends instead of the NBA playoffs. 

April 15, 2003. I have always depended on the anger of strangers. You can only imagine how excited I was to see the super duper high concept film of the decade. The world’s angriest young thespian and the world’s angriest old thespian in a movie about anger. It is enough to make you forget a comb-over!

April 7, 2003. The French stick their flared nostrils up in the air when the subject is the Good Old U.S.A.  But who do, who do they think they are fooling?  The most popular movie here right now is a comedy about a Middle Eastern illegal immigrant drag queen who lives with a priest!  Say what you want about Bringing Down The House, but at least Steve Martin isn’t wearing a dress!

March 31, 2003. I have come to London, looking for Hugh Grant. He told Vanity Fair that he was ready to "settle down and breed" and I have a few eggs left in my basket this Easter. But he has eluded me by hiding out in America, where every British actor who is not in New Zealand seems to be running these days. Running away.

March 24, 2003. My beloved Adrien Brody just made deep kissing in public the hottest accessory in Hollywood!  That skinny-lipped nice Jewish boy from Queens did it all.  He brought his mother to the ceremony and still retained his heterosexuality.  He kissed his presenter.  He kissed a black woman on national television and it didn’t cause a ripple.  (Take that, Robert DeNiro!) He told the orchestra to stop playing him off without seeming arrogant.  He made an anti-war commentary about a personal friend who has actually been in touch during wartime.  He did not make a fictitious political attack.  He was the artist.  He was the lover.  He was a man.  He was the man.  Now every woman in Hollywood is fantasizing about Adrien being her man. 

March 17, 2003. Those Movie City News sperm jockeys spend a lot of time riding their high horses and opening fire on Miramax. It is time for the only egg-carrying columnist in this endeavor to change the channel on the radio while the boys are busy behind the wheel, getting us lost.

March 10, 2003. The stakes need to be higher! How about a human sacrifice of the nominee who gets the least votes? Y’all may think it would be funny to see Eminem singing to a room full of people who would put their hands over their wallets if he walked into an elevator with him. Would it not be even more interesting if we all knew that either he or Paul Simon would be dead by the end of the show?

March 3, 2003. Thank goodness the Academy Awards are over. I was surprised when The Two Towers swept every award it was nominated for, but the real surprise was that write-in win for Yoda as Best Supporting Actor. No one can say that the Academy doesn’t love science fiction anymore!

February 24, 2003. It’s Roman Polanski Rape Week!  The Little Guy could make a great movie out of this story.  It’s right up his alley.  He’s the tragic genius whose wife and child were killed by a maniac.  She’s the 13-year-old who does topless photos.  “No” means “Slip me half a Quaalude.”

February 11, 2003. Hadn't you noticed? Renee Zellweger as a pubescent boy in Chicago, Daniel Day Lewis as a Dr. Seuss character on stilts in Gangs of New York, Ed Harris looking suicidally thin in The Hours (though the rail thin Alison Janney and Claire Danes look fabulous in skin and bones), Adrien Brody as The Pianist Who Could Slide Under A Door In A Crunch and of course, Gollum in Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers.

February 10, 2003. Everyone keeps talking about “heart” movies, but the truth is that the only time that heart matters is when it’s the heart of the Academy members.  I’m willing to bet dollars to donuts that every Academy member who was an abandoned child abused by a foster parent, molested by a teenaged baby sitter and supported by his Navy psychiatrist will vote for Antwone Fisher.  The rest of them will be trying to get the real Antwone to drive them around so that he can be their bessssst friend.

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.

January 27, 2003. Wouldn’t you just love to see how the Bad Boys would have handled the Elian Gonzalez situation?  Michael “Aren’t I Pretty? - Yeah, pretty obnoxious!” Bay woulda blown that house to kingdom come and the only survivor would have been the Latina spitfire cousin. 

January 23, 2003. Well, it’s that Sundance time of year again! Another year of smart girls, horny guys and gay men spending all their time moisturizing. Best of all, my snow boots aren’t going to get stained by any f**king snow. People claim that they come here for the movies, but I know better. They come here to find some people they can fantasize about having sex with when they get back home. (If you break it, you buy it!)

Email Patricia Vidal