From the Editor

There are lots of suggestions for passing the time nowadays. One of the most popular is listing 10, 25, or 100 movies to watch. There are numerous contributors and I usually don’t agree with most of them. Of a list published in USA Today, I checked off 27 out of the 100 movies on their list. Their editors broke the 100 into categories and while I checked 5 out of the 10 offered under “When you need something out of this world,” I checked none of those under “When you need a good scare.”
The category “When you need a change of scenery” had me visiting Oz, Hogwarts, Middle Earth, and post-apocalyptic Australia. I time traveled with “Back to the Future” and “Star Trek.” I laughed at high school hijinks with Ferris Bueller, the Breakfast Club detainees, and Heath Ledger in “10 Things I Hate about You.” (A great introduction to Shakespeare.)
My heroes (Han Solo and Cpt. Kirk included) were portrayed by Kurt Russell in “Tombstone” and “Big Trouble in Little China” and Patrick Swayze in “Dirty Dancing” and “Roadhouse.” Just plain great movies included the “Die Hard” series and Harrison Ford in the Indiana Jones series. Also in that list were older standouts, “Casablanca” and “Singing in the Rain.”
I don’t watch a lot of football if the players aren’t wearing Mark Twain Blue, but I love the movies “Friday Night Lights,” “Varsity Blues,” and “Necessary Roughness.” Baseball? Give me “Bull Durham” any day. You would think with all the high school and college basketball I watch that I’d have dozens of basketball movies on my list. None. Any suggestions?
Let’s face it the movies we choose are a lot like the songs we listen to, it all depends on the mood we’re in. I pick up a book and skim 30 or so pages and lay it aside only to pick it up months later and finish it in a matter of days.
So, what were my choices from the 10 on the pandemic list of movies? “Outbreak” and “Contagion.”