MoL has noticed that the worlds of film and television exist in a parallel universe quite outside electronic time and proceed at an almost nineteenth century pace, akin to dealing with the Court of St Petersburg in 1895, with festivals the equivalent to winter and summer palaces. Philip French just retired as film critic of the Observer after years and years. MoL finds the concept of vocational film critic almost impossible to comprehend. Five, six years getting paid to watch movies, okay, but twenty, thirty, forty is too much being a galley slave. French was heroic in that he had no stringer or kid to dump on. He sat through every film and wrote about it, and where thirty years ago there were five or six a week tops, now it can be ten and more. Many of MoL’s acquaintances complain about cinema having become too dumbed down. MoL disagrees. Even the stupid is too clever. Too many bright people work in the business and what they produce isn’t dumb enough, even when pretending otherwise, so even a recent remake of The Three Stooges was too knowing. MoL also asks when are film critics going to stop writing so much about the plot, which is the least interesting part of the film.