Legendary director Ridley Scott has hit out at the state of the movie world in general this week during the Venice Film Festival.

The Blade Runner and American Gangster director took a swipe at the increasing use of mobile video technology like iPods; "We try to do films which are in support of cinema, in a large room with good sound and a big picture. But we're fighting technology. While it has been wonderful in many aspects, it also has some big negative downsides."

Then he took a great big swipe at the Hollywood machine, before making a swift backpedal to preserve his Hollywood machine links; "I think movies are getting dumber, actually. Where it used to be 50/50, now it's 3% good, 97% stupid. I'm not criticising Hollywood because I work there. But I'm saying this is the way it is, commerce is taking over art."

I don't think the arguement that the video iPod is killing cinema has weight, because lets face it, nobody in their right mind is going to choose to watch a movie on that over their 50" LCD HD TV with surround sound. However it's always nice to see someone in the industry acknowledge that the studios' insistance on chasing the mighty dollar at whatever the cost is creating a culture of inferior, recycled crap that panders to the lowest common denominator.