By Debbie Schlussel
It’s movie awards time, meaning that as a member of the Detroit Film Critics Society, I have to vote on best movie of the year, best actor, etc.  Every major city has one of these film critics groups, and the decisions get published in the media.  I have UPS and FedEx delivering DVDs to me all day long by various studios, hoping I’ll vote for their movie and take a second look via the DVD.

Sadly, most of the movies are duds, and I can’t give them away or share them with friends.  The studios are very strict.  They’ve digitally watermarked the DVDs and marked them with individual UPC codes.  You have to destroy them or you’ll be banned from their screening lists forever and worse.

So, over the weekend, I cut up perfectly good copies of Warner Brothers’ “The Blind Side” (read my review) and “Where the Wild Things Are” (read my review), two movies I didn’t particularly like, one of which only debuted in theaters on Friday.  I kept “The Informant!” because I liked it (read my review), and it’s one of my top ten movies of the year (my full list will come out at the end of the year–stay tuned).

It seems a shame to cut up and throw out perfectly good copies of current movies.  But I just can’t keep all of these things.  I won’t watch most of them ever again, and my DVD collection is only what I really like.  Wish I could donate them to charity or give them to friends (both of which are strictly prohibited).  But, given this year’s selection of movies, perhaps cutting them up is the best choice, all things considered.

Most of these flicks could never be called “charity.”  More like torture.  Wish I could send them to Guantanamo Bay, but I hear those guys are getting posh treatment and will soon be living the life in New York, while they use their trials as a platform to hate on America.