Salon's TV maven, and Blue Devil Fanatic, Heather Havrilesky, notes what has been an obvious trend for some time, that what's on TV is generally smarter and better for you than what gets screened in movie houses, but provides enough examples to convince even the most jaded of film geeks. The cineplex is in the same position today that the drive-in was fifteen years ago, and the bricks-and-mortor record store was five years ago, a technologically obsolete mode of technology that services an increasingly narrower and narrower group. Because of the competition provided by thousands of cable and network channels, television offers more choices, is more willing to take risks on unknown talent, and has more time to develop storylines and characters than even the best films, all of which are crippled by the two-hour straightjacket.

Five will get you ten that Tom Cruise being fired yesterday has more to do with a multinational corporation deciding that it could no longer justify paying any film star $12 million a picture than for any bizarre behavior the Scientology acolyte has been accused recently. The beginning of the end for motion pictures occurred the day AMPAS relented on the screener ban; when the core constituency of the film industry realized they could cast an informed vote on the best movies of a year based on what they viewed on their DVD player, rather than hauling their lazy asses to Westwood, the jig was clearly up.