Revisiting An Absolutely Amazing Film..."Raiders Of The Lost Ark"

Growing up, my youth centered around certain things, riding bikes with friends, hiking in the mountain in my backyard, swimming and hanging out in the Penny Arcade at Lagoon all summer long.

And then there were movies.

It's almost hard to believe that the only way to watch movies for me growing up was in the theater. And if you missed it in the theater, you had to wait--literally years--for that film to be shown on one of three television networks, and if you weren't home sitting in front of the TV, you'd miss it. There were no such things as a way to record a movie. You saw it in the theater or on TV and that was it. No other options.

I feel like a great-grandfather talking about nickel candy at the soda bar in the drug store.

These memories came back to me today as I re-watched one of my favorite movies ever, Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's quite simply a masterpiece. I admit--I don't see a lot of films nowadays so I can't with any authority say, "they don't make films like Raiders anymore," but I'll say it anyway. They don't make films like Raiders anymore.

I snapped a picture halfway through the film for this post. I could have included hundreds of pictures from the movie--it's full of scene after scene that invoke memories. The casting was marvelous. The writing--brilliant. And it just looks unlike many of the films that come out now. It's still a joy to watch and take in.

Fast forward to today. In thirty-eight short years I'm sitting in front of a TV using Bluetooth to beam a signal from my iPad to Chromecast to play the movie from Netflix. I can literally watch thousands of films, tens of thousands of TV shows, and millions of videos any time I want. Some shows are good, but most are not, and very few if any rise to the level of the film I saw today. It's like Dickens wrote, "it was the best of times; it was the worst of times," entertainment-ly speaking.

Each year there's a new crop of films. I'm sure there'll be some good ones, but I can always count on Raiders for movie-experiencing enjoyment.

So, We Got The Chromecast...

Last Tuesday I bought this at Best Buy. The ads and concept intrigued me. And, it's only $35!

I should have done my homework.

Now, I'm not saying I wasted my money--not at all. What it does, it does really well, and it's quite a little marvel of technology. What I didn't know is that the device doesn't broadcast everything on your computer to a TV. Sure, you can watch Netflix from your iPhone or Kindle, but not from your laptop. You can watch YouTube videos from your laptop (or iPhone or Kindle...). Also, you can't watch Amazon Prime programs or programs you bought on iTunes on it.

It makes sense, of course. Chrome is run by Google. If I wanted to watch everything on my computer, I should have bought an Apple TV unit, but they're 3X the cost of the Chromecast.

So, in short, I've gotten about 1/3 the use from the Chromecast as I would from Apple TV. I guess it's an okay deal. 

But, I should have done my homework.