So much is being said across the country about this final episode of The Sopranos.

When it ended, when that screen suddenly turned to black, I was pulled off my seat, which I had been sitting on the edge of throughout. And then, when I saw the credits, I felt …. satisfied. It was almost palpable, this feeling of… what? … rightness.

I said to my wife that a lot of people are going to be pissed. At least surprised. That’s certainly the case as everyone is deconstructing the episode’s meaning. However, analyzing this episode, the series, Chase himself is, IMO, futile. We saw what we saw and it pleased us or it didn’t. End of story. Just like the episode. It was what it was.

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How much suspension of disbelief is an audience expected to endure to appreciate any movie? This one had too many and most of them were jaw-droppers.

In Babel, we have a modern, well-to-do American couple who goes on a trip with no backup for the care of their kids other than the nanny/maid, Amelia. That she has to scrounge for someone to watch the kids for a day so she can go to her son’s wedding suggests that the kids have no friends, never had play dates or sleepovers, that the parents had no friends among other parents in the neighborhood or in the school. According to the film, this family lives in a vacuum. It’s San Diego ferGawdsakes, not the boonies? Are they hermits? And if they were, would any parent leave their own kids in such a situation, especially after having recently lost a baby to SIDS? And go to Morroco, of all places? Screenwriter behaving stupidly.

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Television writers are in a constant struggle to create inventive dialogue for their characters. Having done it for close to thirty years I know how hard it is, especially when you’re working on a series going somewhere into its fifth to twelfth year.

However, writers for “Law and Order” –- any version –- have fallen down on the job. I’m speaking specifically about the final line given defense attorneys when they adjourn a meeting with the prosecutors -– “We’re done here.”

You know the scene: Sam Waterson and the eye-candy assistant D.A. of the season righteously spit out the evidence against the defendant for him and his smug attorney. The attorney sneers at the case’s weakness, stands and says, “We’re done here.” And out they go.

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First it was the success of Mel Gibson’s Passion Of the Christ and the box office success of The Nativity. Christian film makers are coming to realize that they can get out the Word and still be entertaining. A consortium of Christian movie makers are in the early stages of bringing “Christ accessible” films to a public yearning for guidance and values. This insider will update you periodically on the films as they’re slated for production, the first being, Starsky and Christ.

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As if seeing The DaVinci Code wasn’t punishment enough, this morning I received an official mortal sin notification from the Vatican condemming me for all eternity, after which it burned up in my hand. How very Mission Impossible, I thought, or maybe it was Satan. Both possibilities left me shaken so I figured I’d just hit the confessional before work, tell the padre, get absolution, say my Hail Mary’s and be on my way. But Father L. wouldn’t absolve me unless I said I was sorry I’d seen the film. Well … okay! I really wasn’t sorry except that I spent nine bucks on a real turkey, but I said it anyway.

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All art is, of course, subjective. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that.

But sometimes a piece of work is done so well that subjectivity is irrelevant and the piece is just damned good, period. In this case, it’s the film United 93, the story about the fourth hijacked 9/11 plane that the passengers brought down before it could reach its target, which some believe was the Capitol itself.

Furious is too lame a word to describe my reaction to the monstrous events of that day and I approached the film cautiously. Would it plunge me into a sadness for all those unnecessary deaths or fill me with a jingoistic hatred for any enemy of my beloved country?

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It’s okay. Better than MI2, not as good as MI1, which wasn’t that great to begin with. What’s discouraging is the action standard by which this and other such films are being judged. Non-stop, special effects and great stunts are the measures, while story and plot are rarely considered. Perhaps it’s because plot and story require that the viewer use his brain to figure out what’s going on. Since the media is doing such a good job formulaizing our expectations, we don’t need to think about story anymore. The simpler the better.

The Real MI Team

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The title reminds me of that old Tennessee Ford song, Sixteen Tons. That’s what this film feels like, sixteen tons of something waiting to happen but never does.

Directed by Richard Donner, who helmed the four “Lethal Weapons,” one might think he’d take us on a pretty good movie ride. He does, but the ride is in a luxury car — smooth, noiseless, comfortable and as long as you’re not driving, a perfect place to catch forty winks.

Bruce Willis plays John Mosley, a heavy-drinking, desk cop with a job-related wounded leg who’s depressed and useless at his now non-descript job. To call him jaded is to give him an energy he doesn’t have. Life seems to have been sucked out of him. This looks like a good character part for Bruce and we wonder what he’ll do with it.

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I was in the mood for a nice, romantic movie, one of those great love stories that Hollywood used to grind out so proficiently in the past. The formula was classic — boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl, the-end. You went home knowing that our lovebirds lived happily-ever-after. These movies — they weren’t films, they were movies — always made you cry and feel good at the same time,

My quest led to Hollywood. Who better to describe the latest in love story flicks than the people who make them? I learned that the classic boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl story is laughably obsolete in the sophisticated, pop culture we’re currently enjoying and doesn’t speak to the contemporary romantic experience.

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