I WAKE UP STREAMING

It’s official — I’m superfluous!

I’ve been a film critic since dinosaurs roamed the earth. But now the theaters are shuttered (temporarily, we hope), so nobody needs to know my opinion of a movie they can stream from the privacy of their own couch. It’s not like they have to pay to get in!

So my newspaper column is suspended until further notice, and my Rotten Tomatoes page will not be updated for awhile. If we, as a town/state/country/ planet ever achieve normalcy again, I expect to be back on the job, but who knows how long that will take?

In the meantime, I encourage housebound film fans to boldly go into the archives of the  product-delivery service of your choice — Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, You Tube, Viewmaster, whatever — and explore titles from over a century of vibrant cinema.

Silent films, for instance, are astonishingly creative!  Check out anything from about the turn of the last century through the 1920s, back when the pictures were first learning to move, and they were making it all up as they went along. You’ll be amazed at their ingenuity!

Then there are Errol Flynn swashbucklers, Film Noir, MGM musicals, French New Wave, Hitchcock, Fellini, the Marx Brothers; they’re all out there, just waiting to be discovered.

Be adventurous! If something doesn’t grab you in the first 20 minutes, dial up something else. There won’t be a quiz, and there isn’t anywhere else you have to be.

Me, I’ve been catching up on movies I missed the first time around. The other night it was The Greatest Showman, an utterly berserk fantasia on the imagined life if P. T. Barnum, staged as a Hollywood musical. Famed 19th Century opera diva Jenny Lind (Rebecca Ferguson) sings a power ballad. Keala Settle as at the Bearded Lady leads a chorus of Barnum’s circus sideshow attractions in an empowering Millenial-style anthem.

But, hey, in the midst of it all, there’s Hugh Jackman in the top hat and ringmaster’s outfit, singing and dancing up a storm. I’m home alone — I have to have some fun!

Sure, I’d much rather be watching movies as God intended, on a great big theater screen. And I fervently hope all this enforced home viewing doesn’t signal the end of the neighborhood movie house, somewhere down the road, as viewers get even more accustomed to not interacting with each other in public.

Still, there’s something to be said for watching a move with a cat on your lap — as long as she doesn’t mind the occasional popcorn kernel bouncing off her head.