And now for something completely different: film criticism!

The subject only comes up now because, due to budgetary limitations, I share my home with two relatives, one of whom is a techno-savvy videophile who's installed his own high-definition satellite TV system. Unfortunately the layout here means that when he's watching his big set, while I'm on my computer and listening mostly to classical music, it's sometimes hard for me to ignore the TV/movie noise from the next room. A few weeks ago he decided to watch a certain critically-acclaimed work from the mid-90s by--let's call him--Quincy Turpentine. (I recall at least one of the nation's most famous film critics [who would be known in my family as "Dead Gene and Fat Roger"] taking a scene from this yarn about two hit men some years back and explaining how it showed the director's art; the movie wasn't just a pointlessly violent piece of junk!)

Well, I had a problem with the opening/closing scene (the story, I guess, mostly takes place in flashback)--in which, thanks to filmmaker string-pulling, the central pair of professional gunmen happen to be minding their own business in a funky diner when an unlikely couple of amateurs tries to rob the place. I think even an ignorant wannabe gang-banger would realize a robbery doesn't go down as depicted here. Snub-nosed revolvers? Try "broad side of a barn." And don't go waving it in *my* face; it's "use it or lose it"--and I wouldn't wait. But Mr. Turpentine has to go for a cliche that Dead Gene and Fat Roger, in an interesting show I once happened to see, labeled the "talking killer." Just when we'd like to see a crook get his head blown off, we get a speech instead, and it seems to drag on for minutes. (Funny, nobody comes through the door now.) Hollywood persists in regarding weapons as dramatic devices to enhance character interaction: Violence is cool! Huh-huh....