April 3^rd, 2008  a Thursday

My partner and the Dutchman go to a lot of movies.  Almost all of them.  I go along most of the time.  Some times I choose just to stay home and signify (for the Suns if it is a game day or Barack if it is primary day) or meditate about things that I think are more important than that particular movie.  It is hard to choose not to go because it is fun to go to the movies.  But I have been disappointed so many times in the past few years, it starts to make you doubt your love for the movie going experience.  Maybe by being a little more picky, I am trying to preserve that. 

Yesterday we saw a little movie about a down and out security guard who smoked and never remembered his keys and regretted leaving his pregnant girlfriend at the altar years before.  It was directed by a former cast member of “Friends” whose attempts at big comedy often messed up the story and didn’t really fit in. But the message was sweet so it was ok.  I like to look at all the posters of movies that will becoming soon so I can have something to look forward to.  That’s not going so well.

First of all, you can hardly even recognize the faces of the movie stars on the posters because so much work has been done to them to make them look perfect.  I remember a long time ago, there was a movie about a lady in red and she appeared on the poster in a sexy red dress that was kind of short.  It came out later that those were not her real legs.  They had been “photoshopped” with someone else’s legs.  And then the actress, Kate Winslett, got really mad when she did an interview for a women’s magazine and they altered her body on the cover to make her look thinner without her permission.  She said she was proud to be a full figured woman and wished to be shown as her natural self. It’s one thing to mess with movie posters to sell tickets, but remember when the terrible tsunami hit and someone altered a photo to look like they captured the big wave hitting from far away and it was exposed as a phony.  Now that’s not ok.  Anyway, back to movies. 

You can see the categories that the big studios like the best (as in make the most money).  There’s slapstick comedy (where people laugh at how stupid people are) usually starring Ben Stiller or Mike Myers, teen horror flicks (usually involving prom night, ax murders or a group of kids doing something they shouldn’t), romantic comedies (leaving you feeling depressed because you know things never really happen like that and rarely do people look like that),  violent shoot-em-ups (usually justified as either cop stories, mafia/gangster stories, or character studies of mass murderers), action movies (such as the Jason Bourne series, James Bond or Mission Impossible…see also violent shoot-em-up category), and the ever popular black comedies (filled with black stereotypes that don’t seem to bother anyone politically probably because black filmmakers are in charge).  It seems these kinds of movies used to be a lot better.  Remember “Carrie” starring Sissy Spacek who later won an Oscar?  Remember the Katherine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy romantic comedies where they never got past the sexual tension stage?  And what about the old James Bond movies starring Sean Connery or Gene Hackman in The French Connection?  Hope I don’t sound like a baby boomer, talking about the good ole days.  In some ways, I think I am a boomer bear.  (I admit to being disappointed that Barack told Ann Curry that he was a Stones guy, not a Beatles guy.  I am trying hard not to hold that against him but he’s not actually a boomer so maybe he just doesn’t know better.)

Not long ago we were in the bathroom after seeing a movie.  We saw this little girl who was all dressed up because it was her ninth birthday.  She had on a crown and a long skirt and looked like a princess. She was all sparkly because it was her special day and she was really friendly and wanted to tell everyone about it.  So my partner pulled me out of her bag and introduced me to the birthday girl.  She fussed over me and my outfit and didn’t think it was the least bit strange that a bear was at the movies just like her.  As we left, I was thinking how much I hoped that when that little girl becomes a woman that she will still remember just how she feels on this birthday at the movieswith her family and won’t change too much.  Maybe going to the movies is still a magical experience after all.  

GR