Midway through a routine 1942 programmer shot on the backlot of Warner Brothers and certain to be immeasurably improved forthwith with that certain Touch Of Esther, Humphrey Bogart bitterly sighs, "I bet they're asleep in New York. I'd bet they're asleep all over America." Well, they've certainly been asleep in Hollywood since 9/11/01. As I wrote a while back, Hollywood essentially wrote this decade off, creatively. And the repercussions for such narcolepsy are mounting.

First up, Ryan Vlastelica of Market Hubs asks, "Are curtains coming down on movie theaters?"

Hollywood is able, at the end of most Decembers, to proclaim the previous year its most successful ever. While true, at least on the surface, it masks a long-term problem: People just aren’t going to movies much anymore.

Movie attendance levels occasionally rise from the previous year, but the general trend has been downward. The biggest movie-going year was way back in 1946, when enough tickets were sold for an astonishing 90 million people to go every week. Then television came in and stole the theater’s audience, followed by competition in the form of video games, computers and a general lessening of audience amazement. Total 2007 attendance was down 8% from the year earlier, and the current year’s box office looks unlikely to top last year.

Which is why Shawn Levy's "Film Criticism Death Watch" post on the Oregonian's blog shouldn't be at all surprising. Of course, when Levy writes, "the idea of fewer platforms for varied voices depresses me", he's discounting the notion that, thanks to the Blogosphere, film criticism is actually infinitely more democratic than ever, even as he's typing his thoughts into his newspaper's blog.

He's right that there probably won't be many more Pauline Kaels, individual critics whom Hollywood actually loses sleep over (or buy off with a meaningless back-office studio gig as Warren Beatty actually did to quiet Kael), but for those who want to get some outside assistance into the decision as to whether or not to plunk down $30 to $40 for tickets and concessions for a night at the movies, there are plenty of opinions available.

Some of which actually vary from the Official, Accepted Hollywood Party Line, as hard as that is to imagine.