Dawn of an Additional Era

My fellow blogger and devoted cinemaphile Movie Idiot (or Rory L. Cline, as he's known in some circles) and I have been debating movies since we were employed at the Wynnsong 16 Movie Theater in Des Moines, IA so many moons ago. And in our debates we discovered one essential thing.

We always disagreed.

It's not that I always liked a particular film while he hated it, or vice versa. Often it was that we did not like or dislike a movie for the same reasons, or to the same degree.

There was, for instance, the famous incident at a Des Moines area Chilis (or was it Cheddars?) in which I nearly wound up jabbing a salad fork into Mr. Cline's neck for refusing to admit that "Million Dollar Baby" was the greatest film of the last 20 years. (Not for refusing to admit that it was merely good, mind you, but that it wasn't the greatest film of the last 20 years. Which it is. Although that goes without saying.)

There was also the famous incident in the projection room of the Wynnsong 16 in which I expressed the notion that Julia Stiles' performance "10 Things I Hate About You" was "mildly affecting" rather than "out-and-out brilliant" which caused Mr. Cline to promptly thwack me over the head with a chair.

Yes, our disagreements are notorious. And that is why at some point during our theater days we decided it would be a fantastic idea for us to have our own movie review television show which we envisioned would end every single time with a vociferous argument followed by a fist-fight. Who wouldn't want to watch that?

And this is why I'm proud to announce the unveiling of Mr. Cline's genius idea, a new blog wherein each week he and I will view a movie and weigh in with our opinions which will, no doubt, be the exact opposite. This could be considered our own Ebert & Roeper, though I like to think of it as a more hostile version of Slate's Movie Club. Of course, you can't have fisticuffs via the web but often verbal sparring is just as entertaining. This new blog is for all those who have wondered exactly what this idiot Prigge is thinking. And I'm okay with that. After all, I'll just take solace in the fact that Mr. Cline is wrong and I'm spectacularly right.

We're up and running and debate involving the new comedy "Knocked Up" will be coming soon. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Cinematic Arena.