Stardate 20030807.0715

(On Screen): John Patterson, writing in The Guardian, tries to claim that the British should reconsider their current political alignment with the US, because America shows its true attitude towards the UK via Hollywood casting.

Patterson claims that in the movies, the heroes are always Americans and the villains are always Brits.

Every time Tony Blair shows up in Washington to exult in his role as top sprig in the Figleaf of the Willing and to enjoy confabs and photo-ops with Gee Dubya, I have to wonder once again what we, the Brits, actually get out of this long-treasured, murkily defined "special relationship" between former imperial oppressor and former colonial upstart. As Tony lurks at Furious George's right hand, calamitously clad in his usual vacationing geography teacher's nerd ensemble, one has to presume he's there simply to make George look good, or just to share the heat. What Blair gains, if anything, is impossible to quantify.

Meanwhile, in Hollywood and London, the movie version of the special relationship has long played itself out in like manner. Our cut-price actors come over and do their dirty work, as villains and baddies and psychopaths, even American ones, while the cream of their prohibitively expensive acting talent Concordes it over the pond to steal the lion's share of our heroic roles. Either way, we lose.

That explains the James Bond films, doesn't it? Or Spy Kids? or The Terminator? Aliens?

Patterson is trying too hard. I guess that's what happens when you're writing to deadline.