Bad and the Beautiful, The

I drove to Palo Alto mostly to charge my car battery, and ended up going to Stanford Theatre. The Bad and the Beautiful is well-made in an old-fashioned way, with good acting (it took me an hour to realize that Kirk Douglas looks like Michael Douglas.) But for the movie to work, you must firmly believe that the whole universe revolves around Hollywood, and that your worth is measured in Oscars and, to a lesser extent, in Pulitzer prizes. And it just didn't work for me.

One star to the bad, one star to the beautiful — 2.0 total. And my car died twice on the way home from Palo Alto.