Well, mine sure is! Okay, seriously: interesting essay by a film critic who's sick of invasive security screenings at the movie theater, intended to keep feature films from being taped and then leaked online.
An open letter to the Hollywood studios: Stop going through my purse. I mean it. I don't like strangers rifling through my belongings without a very good reason. Keeping terrorists off airplanes qualifies. Keeping "Freaky Friday" off the Internet does not. I've been a film critic for only six years, but I remember a time when I could get into a preview screening without going through a security gauntlet. Sure, high-profile stuff like the "Star Wars" and "Lord of the Rings" movies were shrouded in top-secret mystery, but that was just part of the hype. It only happened a couple of times a year, and nobody thought anything of it, except that it was kind of amusing to see how paranoid you were about your franchises. But when uniformed guards showed up at "The In-Laws," it officially wasn't funny anymore.
I know you're just trying to stop the recording of your films, but that's been going on for years now, with people sneaking into theaters with camcorders and taping the movies straight off the screen, then selling copies on street corners or at conventions. Strangely, you didn't seem to notice or care about this phenomenon until high-speed Internet connections became common, and people began downloading films at home. Like the record industry before you, you've suddenly decided to freak out now that those scary computers are involved.
