"Harlan Ellison's Watching"

Harlan Ellison's Watching is a collection of film criticism by the author. I do not always agree with his opinions, but I agree with him more often than not. After reading what he wrote about some of the films I want to see quite a few movies that I have not seen. After reading some of the others I am glad that I have not seen some of them. I agree with what he said about "Star Trek - The Motion Picture," but he was not aware of some of the things that caused it to be a rather boring movie. Close to the time when it came out I met George Takei at a science fiction convention at eh banquet before the con. He said that there were things that were taken out of the film script, because the studio insisted on the film having a G rating. Because of this some things that were said in the movie did not make sense. There were times when a character would walk on screen then walk off without saying or doing anything, because what they said or did had been cut. I agree with him about "Star Wars." (That is what it was called when it was released, so that is what I am going to call it.) I still have not watched it from beginning to end in one sitting. It is not a bad movie, but nothing outstanding. On the other hand I do not agree with him about "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" He said that if you did not love it your opinion about anything was worthless. I liked that movie, but I did not love it. I preferred Ralph Bakshi's "Cool World." He listed "The Wizard of Oz" as one of his favorites. It is one of my least favorite. It does give me some satisfaction to read opinions that are similar to my own when those opinions do not reflect the opinions of the majority of people. Harlan Ellison was always an entertaining writer with great integrity. Fortunately his books are still around to entertain us.