The Subjective Lightness Of Being: Non Fiction is more entertaining than it used to be

Monday, June 09, 2008

Non Fiction is more entertaining than it used to be

I think this goes hand in hand with realizing I've reached an age milestone a couple years back that I never thought I would. When I was a child, my mother would listen to talk radio in the car and it was so boring. Yet, now, I listen to NPR way to much. I watch mostly news related shows on TV, and I've grown quite fond of The Food Network and Discovery Channel.

All this being said, I am now obsessed with the radio show turned tv show on Showtime called "This American Life".

Maybe it's because television sucks more and more. Maybe it's because in growing older and more conscious of the world around me, I yearn for my forms of entertainment to contain more substance that resonates the world around me. Maybe it's the concept of bridging different documentary style stories into an episode that centers around an overall theme. Maybe it's all of these things combined, but this show is just brilliant to me.

I recently added a handful of documentaries to my Netflix list. I just finished watching "When We Were Kings".

I find myself perusing History and Non Fiction books at book stores now as opposed to the horror fiction I used to indulge myself in. What has become of me? I'm officially a thirty something.

I am right now trying to get through Munich on DVD. It's the latest movie I rented and I fell asleep in the middle of it. I know, I'm a bad Jew. I am more looking forward to the other documentaries on my list, especially one called "The Power Of Nightmares". It's not even available yet on DVD but I read a review of it on Patton Oswalt's blog and it really sounds intriguing.

Seriously, with movies like the one above being released, it's hard for me to find entertainment in the fleeting piles of crap being released all over. Yet, I know there's a place for good escapist fun. I enjoyed Indy, Iron Man, and am sure to enjoy The Dark Knight. But there's a difference between brief escapism, and permanent ignorance.

Anyway, I'll be sure to post a review of this movie once I receive it...but it's quite far down on my queue and I still have to finish Munich.