'War of the Worlds' Number One - No Accounting for Taste

It's no secret how little I cared for the latest movie of 'War of the Worlds'. And as it turns out I wasn't alone. My little brother Erick informed me that beacon of journalistic excellence, the Ga. Tech Technique didn't care too much for it either. But that didn't stop people from seeing it (after all I paid to see it so I could then gripe about the experience) to the tune of $113 million through July 4th. This falls short of last year's July 4th movie, 'Spiderman 2', which earned $180 million during the same period. And this will, of course, be the 19th consecutive week that box office receipts have been lower than the same week last year.

It's reported it cost $135 million to make this movie. My hope is that the movie makes little more than that if for no other reason than to dissuade the Hollywood movie moguls not to make any more movies like this one. The movie business is hungry to keep the movie machine making billions, and this year the trends have been going down, not up. So get ready for even more formulaic clones of perceived successes, such as this one. I can hardly wait.