There is a big piece about how Hollywood did over the summer by Michael Jennings, for Samizdata. And how did Hollywood do? Well, put it this way, the piece is called Thoughts on Hollywood's lousy summer. So: lousy.

First paragraph:

It is the end of August, and the Labor Day holiday weekend is here. This is considered by the film industry to be the end of the summer movie season. Since Steven Spielberg invented the modern blockbuster when he made Jaws in 1975 (and due to the near-coincidental arrival of air-conditioning in most movie theatres), this has been the most important season for the Hollywood film studios. I am going to be mildly self-indulgent and give the readers of Samizdata a lengthy overview of what I think happened to Hollywood this summer, largely from a business point of view, but also from a creative point of view. This is going to be much longer than a normal Samizdata article, but I am assuming that my editors will indulge me just this once. Or maybe I shall receive what is known in Samizdata speak as an "editorial spanking". We shall see. However, I think most of the following is quite interesting.

As do I. The rule with Jennings is simple: if the subject interests you, you'll probably learn a lot that you didn't know, and you are recommended to read it. I am interested in the doings of Hollywood, and I did learn things. For example, I didn't know that Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle was a flop until now. I also learned more about the economic significance to Hollywood of DVDs.

If Jennings is right, and Jennings is always right about factual matters, then things don't seem to have changed much since the late nineties, when William Goldman wrote The Big Picture.

Or to put it another way, 9/11, for Hollywood, seems to have been a dog that didn't bark. When it happened, there was much talk about how it might change how Hollywood did things, and also that it might change what people wanted to see. But so far, apart from a bit of furniture shifting for Spiderman, no change. Jennings doesn't, unless my memory is fooling me, mention the phrase "9/11" even once. Before 9/11, people liked movies they liked, and disliked movies they disliked, and it's been the same since.

The only drearily factual thing I can sometimes do better than Jennings is spelling. He had Jim Carrey as Jim Carey, until I used my Samizdata editing super-powers to correct that.

Such blemishes aside, and speaking as a Samizdata regular myself, I thought this was a very classy piece of writing. Occasional long pieces of this sort, I think, only add to Samizdata's weight, punch, clout, significance, presence, and general formidableness.

I also agree with Jennings about the lovely Claire Danes – Juliette to DiCaprio's Romeo, and before that the star of the excellent My So-Called Life.