Friday, May 6, 2011

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MOVIES?

When I was a kid, I loved the movies.

I loved John Wayne, and Lauren Bacall, and Humphrey Bogart, and Elizabeth Taylor, and Richard Burton, and Burt Lancaster, and many others, too many to name.

I used to walk to the Tower Theater, in Wichita, KS, and see the Saturday afternoon matinee. It was wonderful.

I remember getting old enough to go with a buddy on the bus downtown to see double features, and going early so we could see them twice.

Wow, what movies. I learned much of what I "knew" about the world, and love affairs, and adventure, and how to be a man from the movies.

But now? Who even goes to the movies now-a-days?

Who has even heard of these movies? "The Beaver"? Is that what I think it is? "Thor"? What? It makes me thor to say it. "There Be Dragons"? Huh? Isn't there a word left out?

The last movie I saw in a theater was "Black Swan," which I thought was powerful and memorable, a tour de force piece of film-making.

The movies started to lose me about ten years ago, and it's been a long slow downhill slide. Maybe part of it is that I'm an old fart. I have seen too much, and been too many places, and loved too much, and lived too much life to feel that there are many things to learn or many things I haven't already experienced in real life.

Most of the time, I'd rather read. There's never enough time for books. You can always find good writers, but you can't always find a good movie.

I don't know why that is.

-- Roger


© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

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