When Louis Lumiere invented the Cinematographe in 1895, he famously remarked, "The cinema is an invention without a future," a quote which, until now, has seemed as ill-conceived as an Ozymandiasian boast, but, with the release of Dinner for Schmucks, has redefined itself as a paradigm of prescience, allowing Monsieur Lumiere to claim his place in history beside the Delphic Oracle for the acuity of his prognostication. Cinema, like Scrooge's business partner, is dead as a doornail, and now threatens to visit this reviewer as a ghost extracting repentance merely for having remained seated throughout this abomination, albeit with a sense of nausea that would make Sartre's protagonist eupeptic by comparison. Wittgenstein famously remarked, "If dogs could talk, we would not understand them." Were he alive today, he might expand his observation to cover actors appearing in the cinema that Louis Lumiere launched with so little enthusiasm.
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