Crossing my fingers....

...that I can bag "Dear Zachary" this week. It sounds like a tough one....it's a documentary done by one man for his friend's son...The friend was murdered before the boy was born. There's A LOT more to it than that....there are some extraordinary circumstances surrounding the father's death...but as always, I'm leery of revealing too much, lest I spoil the viewing experience for others.

For the record: I sympathize with reviewers who feel they need to reveal certain plot elements in order to talk intelligently about a film. It's hard to write abstractly about this stuff. But it's just egregious how MUCH revealing goes on.

Paul, who is sitting across from me, just "arghed" a minute ago, because he was innocently reading a piece about actors and how they prepare for roles when the writer revealed the crucial plot element in a play about to hit Broadway.

I just don't get it. Sure, you can still enjoy a movie or play if you know what happens, but it does strip away one level of the experience--before you've even bought your ticket.