So many movies....

What a great list of movies we have on the list! The Martian notes that he has seen a number of them and has 'heard of' most. Some of them, I hadn't even heard of, so it will be fun to look them up.

The funny thing is that seeing the list was like seeing a list of favorite music. Just seeing/hearing/thinking the name of the movie (or song) evokes some memory of where you were, who you were when you first saw it, or how you felt after you saw it.

Some of those "Great American Movies" are films that I saw in history classes. The older movies made you *feel* something: Pride, often; shame, sometimes, or maybe just a wish that the world was not such a cruel place. Even when a movie ends with ET waving good-bye and promising he'll always he in a little boy's heart, you wish, you wish, you wish the world had not chased him away. You wish nobody ever had a reason to make American History X or Birth of a Nation. You wish the world were a different place. So we make movies where we may struggle a bit, and some may not live to see it, but in the end, everybody lives happily ever after.

I like our optimism.

Blockbuster has extended my "Rewards" membership for six months, free! Because I'm such a good customer (who has not rented a movie in ... a long time). This special add-on to a normal Blockbuster membership gets you one free movie a month and then some specials for rent-one-get-x-free and some other random, occasional discounts. When the Danish hordes descended on my house last summer, it was a great deal because everybody seemed to like to watch movies in the evenings. But I don't really watch all that many movies alone.

However, the 'media room' in mom & dad's new house, with its 92-in. high-definition monster screen and leather recliners with cup-holders, is pretty awesome. And as long as I bring over a new movie every time I visit, I might be able to avoid seeing "Top Gun" for the 200th time....