Movies

So I am sitting here on the balcony of our hotel room in Maui staring at the ocean lost in thought. There are so many stressful thing occurring in our lives right now that I don't want to think about anymore. The kids are still asleep which I am grateful for. We are on day 3 here and the kids are sunburned and wiped out. The only problem is that leaves me alone with my thoughts. So, instead I am going to ponder the relevance of movies. Sounds fun, don't it?

I am the kid of girl that loves black and white movies. In the 30's -50's directors cared about character development and developing a story line that moved you through a movie much like a novel does. The language is also great and it makes me sad that we don't talk so purposefully anymore. They are also witty and funny and don't rely on sex to let you know that a couple is in love. I have also discovered that a good portion of movies we watch today were once a b&w movie and in every case that I have found, the b&w is always better than the current version. This theory doesn't hold for movie from the 60's and 70's that get remade. Sometimes the remake has been better than the original.

What got me thinking about this? We had a 7 hour and 42 min flight on the way here so I decided to read a novel from an author that I always swear I will never read anything by him again and then always give in. He is notorious for his sappy love stories and the girl is always irrational and stupid and the guy always chases her. The kind of story line that makes every girl wish there was a guy out there like that for her but knowing if she actually met that guy she would be annoyed by his lack of a spine. So, I found myself reading this novel knowing that I would Netflix the movie that was made when I was done. I finished up the uber sappy yet, oh so delicious novel and then
turned on the movie. Big mistake. I know that it never turns out well to see a movie so soon after reading a book, but I had nothing better to
do in my room last night while the kids were watching kid stuff. First of all, the actors that were chosen speaks to the age of girls
they were expecting to see for this film, not for my age group. I see the lead too much on the Disney channel and don't care to see her in
any movies! Anyway, talk about a complete lack of character development and hardly any mention of the purpose of the entire movie which
also was the title. 30 minutes could have easily been added to slow down and take some time to tell the story instead of changing the entire
thing to try and tell the story faster. So annoying and a complete waste of time. Not to mention a major thread in the novel was a religious
one and the movie completely left that out. Do directors expect you to have read the book so they don't have to even bother with trying to
tell a cohesive story? Is the world so fast paced that we refuse to see movies over 90 minutes long? It certainly seems like it to me
especially after this last experience.