Devoted to show business and the entertainment industry

With the increasing importance of the Internet in connection with the motion picture industry, it is causing some strains and breaks with old allies.

Many movies are now being offered without passing them by the critics or promoting them in print. This is already drawing some battlelines as the critics struck back at Hollywood using "The Da vinci Code" as the place to draw the line.

One of the things that provoked it was Sony's snubbing of the critics until the night before it was released at Cannes. This is probably one of the reasons that they gave it such a poor rating. They may have received a measure of revenge though as the next week the "Code" dropped by 66 percent the next week.

Most of us have know idea how this is all going to shake out. Old alliances are breaking and new ones being formed. Who know really if Hollywood itself will survive; it's an assumption to believe they can. They will never be what they were ever again. It's way past time for that.

The one thing that has helped it was the debacle concerning the music industry that they may have learned from, which only saw the threat that the Internet presented but not the extraordinary opportunities.

Here is one recent development that may give some insight into part of the future ahead for Hollywood. Take the movie called "Snakes on a Plane," which is being parodied and promoted by a Web site called "SnakesonaBlog.com." It is already receiving 500,000 hits and created a cult classic and the movie still has till August before it is released.

All New Line Cinema has to do is to stay out of the way and let the thing go. You couldn't pay for that type of free promotion and advertising. It's the new critics and fans that are offering their own user-generated content and input that is making it such a hit.

This is sure to extend the life of the movie far beyond what a show like this would have enjoyed.