Bixby Bridge

I like to watch movies, I always have. I have watched many of them. When I was young, I would watch movies on TV. When I was in high school, I loved Bill Kennedy’s afternoon movie on WKBD (Channel 50) in Detroit. When I met Anne and had someone to go to the movies with, we would go to a movie theater almost every week. First came love, then came marriage, then came le Marquis pushing a baby carriage. Fortunately, the boys’ arrival coincided with the age of Blockbuster. VHS technology morphed to DVD, which has now been subsumed by online streaming services like Netflix and Amazon. This brings us up to the present, where I find myself watching more movies than ever.

Longtime readers of this blog will know that when I find a particularly noteworthy show, I like to comment on it. I don’t think that I am violating the Video Privacy Protection Act, when I do this. The what, you ask? Please note that I said video privacy and not video piracy. The Video Privacy Protection Act is a general ban on the disclosure of personally identifiable rental information unless the consumer consents specifically and in writing.

It was originally enacted to protect people like me from Blockbuster who wanted to sell our rental information. Netflix is lobbying to change the law, so that it can share viewing history on Facebook. I guess with the idea that if I watch a movie and Netflix/Facebook broadcasts it then they’ll want to watch it too. I figure that I’m OK with my blogging about the movies that I watch, because in these cases I am the consumer and I write about each specific movie. I’m no lawyer, but I watch lawyers in movies.

Last weekend a friend from work, at least I think that we are still friends, wrote on my Facebook wall, “You lie!” He had attempted to watch a movie that I had recommended and had also blogged about, “Iron Sky“. I’ll be the first to admit that this movie is really out there. It is campy and certainly not for everyone, but I thought that it would work for this friend. I guess that I’m just a poor judge of taste, when it comes to Nazis from outer space. Don’t worry; I have no intention to report said person’s violation of the Video Privacy Protection Act.

Moving along, I do have a new movie to recommend, “Man from Earth”. This movie is also in the science fiction genre. Here is a brief synopsis: an impromptu goodbye party for a college professor becomes a mysterious interrogation after the retiring scholar reveals to his colleagues he never ages and has walked the earth for 14,000 years. Another friend from work had recommended it to me and it sounded so good that I watched it that night. It was produced in 2007. It looks like a made for TV movie, but the cast is good; you’ll recognize their faces, if not their names. This movie is a thought piece, there is no action, just dialog. It is the dying work of writer, Jerome Bixby. I wished that I could have somehow worked Bill Bixby, star of the TV series, “My Favorite Martian”, into this post. Oh wait, I just did.

Jerome Bixby’s The Man from Earth