Movies

Summer Movie Season (SMS) is always like a trip to an amusement park for me. For most of the time, it's awesome. I look forward to each movie with childlike anticipatory glee. I danced in my pants for Iron Man, and am continuing to do the same kind of celebratory pants-dance for Batman. There were so many movies in between those two... Prince Caspian, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Sex and the City, The Incredible Hulk, Wanted, Hancock. So... many... movies...

It's great but they're starting to blur together for me. So it's probably good that SMS is coming to an end soon. I think there's only a couple more movies on my gotta-see list for the summer. Then we gear up again in November with Harry Potter and James Bond. God I love movies. Not everyone understands why I'm not willing to wait until the big ones come out on DVD, but those of you that are also cinemaphiles know why I do what I do. There's nothing like a huge screen, surround sound, semi-comfortable seat, bag of popcorn, box of raisinets... all at the same time while being entertained in a giant dark room. But it's also the feeling of camraderie that I get with my fellow movie goers. These are people I don't know, that I'll never see again. Nameless, faceless blurs in the dark. But I share this experience with them... this story... this feeling of being caught up in something larger than myself. We are entertained together, disgusted together, amused together, shocked together, amazed together. We are vulnerable together, there, in the dark. We all share something close and indefinable for those hundred and twenty (or so) minutes. A common bond that may, one day, define the start of a friendship between us. Even though I know I didn't see Big Fish in the same theater as my friend Shaggy, because we've both seen it and loved it we're both a little closer to one another as friends. And the person I did go see that movie with - we laughed, we jumped, we were spellbound and we shed tears together - well, hell, we started being friends right at that moment, even though we barely knew each other. And now, four and a half years later, she's still "my girl in the river".