A year or so ago, I kinda got annoyed at myself that I had so many volumes of movie reviews on my shelves, and yet I fairly often watched old movies and didn't subsequently read all the reviews. Why do I have these books if, after watching a movie, I don't look at them? So now, for every oldie I watch, I take 30 seconds and scribble out a list of the places I can read about the movie afterwards: VARIETY, NEW YORK TIMES, HARRISON'S REPORTS, MOTION PICTURE EXHIBITOR, etc. The movie ends, and I spend a pleasant 15, 20 minutes reading all the old reviews.

Well, more and more lately, I notice that they're often all the same review.

I just watched the Western THE COMMAND (1954) and every review said the same thing: CinemaScope makes this something special 'cause without it, it'd be a standard cavalry-Indians Western, praises the same actors and not others, praises the same scenes and not others, uses a lot of the same adjectives. It's as if one guy wrote it, and then re-wrote it for another paper, and then for a third, and then for a fourth. I'm sure one guy didn't write all of them, but it does seem like whoever was first to write a review had it copied by all the rest.

In other words, this stuff has been happening forever, from the top on down (waaay down) to our level.

Last Edited By: TomWeaver999 Oct 23 13 5:25 PM. Edited 1 times.