All from my lovely and brilliant wife, who is sadly out of step with the Arts page of the New York Times.

“Dreamgirls is a musical?”
“What is Apocalypto? I’ve never heard of that.”
“There was a movie about Marie Antoinette?”
“Remind me what else Martin Scorcese has done.”
“Who is that?” (Repeatedly when new presenters would step up. Not that she would be expected to recognize Jessica Biel.)
“Why haven’t I heard of those movies?”

She, at least, agreed that the shadow puppet dancers and endless montages were a colossal waste of time.

As a serious consumer of arts news, TV news, movie news and even celebrity gossip (we all have a sin…) I can’t expect her to keep up with everything. But if a busy, serious and intelligent person who actually likes seeing movies can’t keep up with what are supposedly the best movies of the last year how can we with interest in the gaming industry expect anyone who doesn’t know the difference between user created content, mods and adult-rated games to really care about the distinction?

And the movies that everyone sees advertised in a typical TV hour aren’t necessarily the good ones. Anyone want to take bets on whether Bridge to Terabithia, Ghostrider, Norbit or the latest slasher film will make the red carpet tour next year? Think back to last winter – how many ads for Dreamgirls did you see compared to Black Christmas or The Hitcher?

Games have it worse since the only places with heavy gaming advertising are the specialist press and enthusiast sites. Major console titles will be promoted ad nauseum, but you’re as likely to see an ad for a console itself as for something you would play on it. Were there ads for Oblivion? Medieval 2? The last PC exclusive ad I saw on US network TV was one for The Sims: Vacation a few years ago. It was on at 2 AM, too.

We shouldn’t be surprised that Senator Obama makes references to playing Gameboy; we should be happy he isn’t too many generations behind.