I wanted to chat with y’all this evening about movies. But I’m not quite sure what it is I want to talk about.
Our family got rid of cable a few years ago, substituting the paid outlets of Amazon Prime and Netflix as our entertainment kingdoms, along with an every day antenna that pulls in local channels like Grit and ME-TV. I’m sure you all have similar guilty pleasures as far as movies and old TV shows go, too.
The other day I thought I’d wander through some off the free, off-channels that are offered on various networks.
Holy Smokes, did I find the movies.
I would say I discovered hundreds — nay, thousands — of movies that I’ve never heard of. Movies I never dreamt existed.
All genres were represented on a number of free movie streaming services: drama, horror, comedy, documentaries, the black experience. I imagine the time frame stretched back ten, maybe even twenty or thirty years.
That’s a lot of movies…. a lot of movies I’ve never heard of.
Who made these movies? Who were these actors and actresses? Who wrote these stories and how did they ever get funded and made?
The world of movies is vast. I mean universe-vast. Like any other topic you can think of, us mere mortals usually only watch the tip of the iceberg. For every Titanic or Top Gun that steals the attention of the media, there are film names like Pete’s Meteor and In the Fade and Evil Bong 666 that make you add several question marks after the title.
It’s almost scary.
Like the bazillions of microbes that exist on earth (Dr. Universe says there are about a billion microbes in a teaspoon of soil), there are stories upon stories that have found their way from some obscure movie studio to a movie screen somewhere to today’s free movie land.
That doesn’t even cover the dozens of episodes on hundreds and thousands of old television shows you can watch, too.
But I digress.
There are dozens of free movie channels at our fingertips; if you don’t mind watching commercials, these avenues are wide open for you to explore.
Not that you will want to, mind you. We all have a million other things we’d rather do — and should be doing — than waste brain cells watching movies that probably never saw the light of day.
I know I won’t be exploring those worlds any time soon.
But still … like the billions of microbes floating around in our soil and air, they still exist. Waiting silently for you to click and watch.
Doesn’t that give you the creeps? Just a little?