金玉其外，敗絮其中

每年的暑期通常是商業(yè)片泛濫的時候，這些不追求內(nèi)涵只注重票房的影片又被稱為“爆米花電影”（Popcorn movie），意思是適合邊吃爆米花邊喝可樂，消磨時間時看的電影。這種影片通常集合了多種商業(yè)元素，如當紅明星、知名導(dǎo)演、眩技特效、巨額投資，甚至全球同步上映等等。

我們并不排斥商業(yè)片的存在，許多經(jīng)典的商業(yè)片不僅至今仍被影迷津津樂道，還推動了電影本身的發(fā)展。然而時至今日，片面追求票房收入的趨勢使得越來越多的所謂大片變成了一堆堆“華麗的垃圾”，甚至反過來阻礙了小成本高質(zhì)量電影的發(fā)展。

暑期電影的路越走越狹窄，長此以往，其出路又在何方？

THE SUMMER of 2008 is shaping up as an unusual one for me. I’m actually looking forward to seeing several of the films on offer.

After all， who wouldn’t want to see the first Indiana Jones film in nearly 20 years， the wonders the gifted 1)Guillermo del Toro has cooked up for Hellboy II: The Golden Army， Russian director 2)Timur Bekmambetov’s American debut in Wanted or what director 3)Christopher Nolan and Batman 4)Christian Bale have in store for The Dark Knight?

Even comedies are looking more promising than usual. Will Smith as a 5)grumpy superhero in Hancock， Steve Carell as secret agent Maxwell Smart in Get Smar and Adam Sandler as a Israel agent turned Manhattan hairdresser in You Don’t Mess With the Zohan look to be ideally cast (fingers crossed， of course， about the movies themselves). And a new picture from Pixar (this one’s about a robot named WALL#8226;E) is always the best bet of any season.

It used to be that every summer held this high degree of anticipation for me. In fact， I used to look forward to everything coming out， no matter what the season. Though critics are often

6)derided as people who don’t like films， the truth is you couldn’t have this job unless you cared passionately enough about movies to sit through the waves of nonsense that routinely get tossed at today’s audiences.

But over the last few years， I’ve noticed a change in what the studios were doing with the

summer， the season Hollywood counts on for

making most of its money. In a business in which the average cost of making and marketing a studio film is more than $100 million， the summer movies have been tailored more and more to the mindlessness often associated with the tastes of young males， still Hollywood’s most loyal audience.

This youth-pandering has become so relentless that it has 7)put a crimp into one of my favorite rituals: walking through theater lobbies in the spring and looking at the posters for upcoming summer films. In some years things got so 8)dire that I couldn’t find a film I even wanted to see， let alone review.

As if this tendency weren’t bad enough in and of itself， it began leaking into and infecting the rest of the year. The reality is that， except for the 9)ghettoized adult window in the fall， this dumber-is-better attitude is threatening to take over all of the major studios’ output. Not to put too fine a point on it， but the summer is killing American movie culture.

With corporate owners demanding predictable profits， the studios have understandably narrowed their focus to the kinds of undemanding entertainments favored by the 25-and-younger audience that dominates theatrical attendance. And they are not just doing it during the summer， they’re doing it almost year-round.

In all likelihood that tendency is even contributing to the nationwide loss of film-critic jobs that’s been so commented on of late. With so many films coming out that don’t really demand serious examination， and an

aging readership that is going to fewer and fewer movies， newspaper editors in cities where (unlike Los Angeles， New York and a few other places) films are not an

10)intrinsic part of local culture are probably figuring

that it’s not worth the expense of paying anyone to examine them. And if critics go， the mechanism for encouraging audiences to go to good small films， for creating a demand for alternatives to what critic 11)Richard Schickel has called Hollywood’s “big clanking machines” goes with them.

Is there any way out?

If this summer turns out the way it might， it could encourage the studios to give films to people who could actually do a good job of writing and directing them， not just to the latest music video or commercial phenomenon who likely as not has as much interest in the human condition as a stone. As always， it would help enormously if the adult audience did its part to patronize intelligent films， even at the risk of going to ones that they might not like.

The kids who made 12)Prom Night the No. 1 film in the country a few weeks ago didn’t 13)agonize about how satisfying it might be or whether perhaps a more involving film might be

14)coming down the pike the following week. They saw the name and they went. That’s why another Prom Night movie is probably in the works and the people who made 15)Stop-Loss are trying to figure out why their audience didn’t show up.

對于我來說，2008年的夏季會很不尋常，因為對今年要上映的一些電影我居然會心懷期待。

畢竟在相隔近20年之后，有誰不愿意觀看第一部印第安納#8226;瓊斯系列電影的續(xù)集呢？還有天才導(dǎo)演吉爾莫#8226;德爾#8226;托羅精心制作的《地獄男爵2：黃金軍團》，俄羅斯導(dǎo)演提莫#8226;貝克曼貝托夫的第一部美國影片《通緝犯》，或者克里斯托弗#8226;諾蘭和“蝙蝠俠”克里斯蒂安#8226;貝爾通力合作的《蝙蝠俠前傳2：黑暗騎士》？

即便是喜劇看起來都比以前要值得期待。威爾#8226;史密斯在《全民超人》中扮演脾氣暴躁的超人、史蒂夫#8226;卡瑞爾在《糊涂偵探》中扮演特工麥克斯韋#8226;精明，而亞當#8226;桑德勒則在《別惹佐漢》中扮演以色列特工跑到曼哈頓去做發(fā)型師，看起來演員陣容都很完美（當然了，還是交叉一下手指，祈禱影片本身也不錯）。……