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movie review - Two Days in the Valley

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Toronto, 1997.04.08

For a formulaic Hollywood flick, this one is an entertaining, slick film. The interesting ensemble cast plays off each other in a series of crosses, mis-cues, and attempted murder. But, overall it's a low-budget knock-off of a Tarantino film, or perhaps an Elmore Leonard story and doesn't compare.

Not recommended.

rand()m quote

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

—Michael Crichton