i'll restate, sort of, briefly. i don't see an equivalence between high-tech fx and dumbness. to john's question/statement,abt the "high point" being jurassic park, and the normalization of fx. not even. notso long ago, star wars was the ultimate fx extravaganza. now it looks piddling. cameron and lucas are continuing to cook this stuff up, in dueling labs (digital domain and ilm, repectively). and spielberg can't stay out of it. the fact that such effects are even beginning to look regular suggests the leap of logic and expectation that they've initiated. those gimmicky techniques, split screens etc, they are profoundly less integral to a reshaping of film/video as a concept, than digitizing is. not to be prophetic, but digitizing is the future--of production, distribution, and consumption. and i don't see that this means movies/videos will be dumb-by-def. robocop 3: bad movie. but robocop 2? now that's a mean movie, and funny. it takes the verhoeven over the top.