A Movie Moment

Movies. In our lives they're just about a thing of the past. There's so much pointless promiscuous sex, just plain lousy obscene language, rudeness to each other, a cheapening of life to the point of venerating suicide, incredible bloody violence, out of wedlock children (there's even a so-called COMEDY about a pregnant teenager--I'm sorry, pregnant teenagers are not funny), most films are just disgusting. I know that attitude merely further confirms our advanced years but the fact remains that we grew up in a world where many attitudes might have been hidden and repressed (thank God) but we were just lot nicer to each other. I've also noted that most futurist writers see the world of tomorrow as a horrible place full of terrorists, pollution, criminals, horrible mutant creatures. What ever happened to looking for a tomorrow that was better and brighter than today?

Recently we have ventured out to see several motion pictures that

The Bucket List

caught our fancy: The Bucket List (Yeah, it's about old guys about to die so hits close to our current state of being).

More recently we viewed the latest edition of National Treasure (not because it's a great film, it isn't, but because we saw the first and it was

National Treasure

a funny fantasy adventure that made us laugh).

Neither of these films disappointed. We laughed and laughed (and wept and wept) over the Bucket List, and merely laughed a lot at National Treasure.

The reason we enjoyed both is that they were entertaining. That's our message to the entertainment industry as it appears that the Writers Guild is about to return to work. I'm tired of being disgusted, grossed out, shocked to my moral center, and revolted to the point of nausea. I want to be entertained when I spend my entertainment dollar. It can be touchingly sad, it can have silly car chases where all sorts of hilarious and unbelievable mahem occurs, or it can be gritty and realistic but when any of those things become merely gratuitius it ceases to entertain.

For example, it's Nascar Season again and Daytona Speed week is underway. Here there's laughter, violence, competition, characters galore, to entertain me for hours and hours each weekend. Is it real? NO, "THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT" as they used to say.

Carl Edwards, driver of the Roush Racing #99 Ford Fusion NASCAR Sprint Cup racer