ON THIS DAY: In 1982, U.S. courts broke up the nationwide telephone monopoly held by AT&T, forcing it to sell off its 22 local "Baby Bells." A lot of people seem to feel, at least by my own unscientific survey of friends and family, that AT&T was a rather beneficial monopoly -- at the very least, it saved us all from the now-nightly routine of being harassed by phone by long-distance companies soliciting our business. And you have to wonder whether the telephone-loving serial killer of SCREAM and its sequels wouldn't have been a tad more worried about making his incriminating phone calls if he hadn't known that the upstart company routing his calls probably wouldn't have been able to trace them, since they were all so busy interrupting folks' dinners and billing them for calls to Japan they never made. [today's movie at IMDb]

[flick filosopher home] [read the flick filosopher's review of today's movie]

February | March | April | May | June | July | August
September | October | November | December

Copyright (c) 2001 MaryAnn Johanson. All rights reserved.