The New York Times runs its now seemingly annual article on Hollywood's summer of discontent. While the growth of the Long Tail will tend to decrease the number of blockbusters, it's not like Hollywood is without fault itself, as Mickey Kaus notes about Paramount's odd--to say the least--decision to hire Oliver Stone to be their director on World Trade Center:

But Stone apparently stuck to the script and didn't indulge in wacky-left conspiracizing--ed. Maybe they shouldn't have hired a director so wacky-left-conspiratorial he had to be tied down to a mediocre script lest he blame 9/11 on Michael Eisner!

Elsewhere, conservative film blog Libertas has a great moment in headlines: "Snakes on a Plane--the Howard Dean of Movies?"

In one sense, though, that's an incredibly cheap shot: with well over 1.5 million ticket buyers this past weekend, that's more than double the number of people who were constituents of Dean in Vermont!

Update: In contrast to Mickey Kaus, Hugh Hewitt is singing World Trade Center's praises. Just keep scrolling.