One-Time Good-Looking World-Saving

　　When the film began I was worried about how to rationalize publicly devoting 2 hours of my life to such a petty pursuit of idleness. Immediately upon entering the movie theater I began to rationalize this escapade to the cinema. Perhaps it was a communion with my long overlooked and increasingly vanishing American culture.

　　That actress and her wrinkly eyes. Whats her name? I hoped I couldn’t remember. Even with those wrinkly eyes. But she did not ask for much, and so it seems, she did not win more than the span of time that she appeared on the screen. However, she did politely stay on her side of the movie screen, and I thank her for that. That we can, in the space of 2 hours, feel some of what Switzerland means to be, and see the warmth of a solitary tropical island, witness a highway chase, gun battle, thwarted enemies, happy parents, does inspire me to like the idea of movies. I commend the producers and thank the director of collecting such a diverse array of impossible experiences into one story, so that I have an excuse to see them, all in a convenient single serving package.

　　It was, altogether, well behaved. It did not attempt to interfere with my reality really at all. I am not like them, the co-stars. I do not save the world in grandiose style and I don’t survive airplane crashes. So it was forgivable, it begged indulgence and in return poked fun at itself and the preposterous careers of its participants. The story was dimly about a new world-saving battery, and more about two aging good-looking people who found each other at long last. When they somehow needed each other.

　　Truth is what it is.

　　This state of cinema, at this moment, when cinema has pervaded all waking moments of our lives, has no future in the present. On the large scale and in some contexts, it annihilates the need for all other things, and it is now functionally a gateway to the possibilities of all other medias. It too far from real and presupposes the consumption of too much energy for it to be properly experienced. I do not drive motorcycles through doors to escape from chasing gunmen very often. Ever. But I can appreciate those who do. Realities far removed from the behaviors that support life will not support cinema, but cinema propagates these escapes from survival.

　　Cinema pushes harder because it needs to push harder. It can only be explosive, can only stimulate belief. Even if and especially if it replaces otherwise natural dreams of life. If you are living at all, you don’t really need cinema. Life is always better than a movie, if you are paying attention. Two hours of Tom Cruze and Cameron Diaz unreality and two hours of your life gives a yield spread of near 100%.

　　Life calls.