Jackson ends up telling NO story - just a vomit of computer-guided coloured lights. Sound and fury, signifying nothing...

I was more worried about replenishing Red Vines, than seeing what happened next.

As a result, the money is stolen not from the customers, but from the bank itself.

"Party on, Garth."

Bizarre argumentation. One hardly knows where to begin with your assumptions and red-herring analogies.

To address your first point - with it's ill-considered implications of parity between democracy, capitalism and actual worth or value: Commercial success at this scale simply indicate how thoroughly that vulgarity and thoughtlessness have been cultivated and encouraged by this media-driven culture over the past 90-100 years or so.

When people make "free choices" in such a society, they do so in appalling ignorance, with a maximum of empty stimulation. This is the post-Edward Bernays world.

The vulgarity of this decadent age. So? He rapes the corpse of JRR Tolkien and that's just fine if it earns a bauble and a penny?

That was a case of "resource constraint".

Exactly.

I AM one of those "small musicians and authors".

I have the attention span of a housefly. I had heard and already forgotten about two of them.

We will never do major exploration of deep space where we get closer to another star than to this one. If we do, humanity can define two constants in file headers.

(I know, but whenever I see 'black and white' in a ST context, I reflexively go to Frank Gorshin.)

Historically, that is correct, but the term is still in use, and its meaning has shifted. To whit (sp?):

"B movie noun
: a movie that costs little money to make and that is usually not considered to be very good"

C'mon, it's just as likely that he's too fat to bend down that far if he drops the soap.

Wait, are you asking for a grim and gritty reboot of "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield"?