Overrated
I know I'm begging for the wrath of Breakfast Clubbers and erstwhile Molly Ringwald obsessives, especially since the director of1980s Brat Packer screen staples died so recently. But I've always thought that John Hughes was deemed a bigger screenwriting/directing god than he really was, and I'm not just thinking of his last two credits, "Drillbit Taylor" and "Beethoven 5." I've never been able to summon even half a smile at "Bueller. Bueller. Bueller," repeated in monotone. Premature death, as it so often does, has expanded Hughes' talents and status. Exception: His sad sack/class clown symbiosis with John Candy in "Uncle Buck" and "Planes, Trains and Automobiles."
UNDERRATED
Many have tried to hitch their own meager stars to "Avatar." But none quite so ingeniously as the Dongria Kondh, a tribe from eastern India, who, under imminent threat of having their sacred mountain mined for bauxite, last week appealed to the most powerful potential benefactor they could think of -- director James Cameron, whose vision of the Na'vi echos their real-life situation, minus the blue skin. The 8,000-member indigenous tribe took out an ad in Variety, drawing parallels and pleading for help. After all he's raked in lately, how can Cameron not do so without looking like a cad of Col. Quaritch proportions?
KRISTIN TILLOTSON
