"$200 million down the drain" was the comment a good friend of mine made today about the new Transformers movie. the film made $60.6 million on its opening day and for something described by critics as "loud, tedious and 147 minutes way too long", i agree that it's a lot of money wasted.
what i'm now wondering is: if 'Revenge of the fallen' was actually fantastic, would we still consider all that money to be a waste? how do we justify spending 200 million dollars on our own entertainment?
now i'm by no means a soldier for making poverty history. i'm as selfish and greedy as the next person so i'm not exempting myself from this accusation.
isn't there something fundamentally wrong with us when we can spend billions of dollars on movies and television every year and not spare a cent of that money for people who can't even afford to eat? how can we sit in the cinema with a clear conscience as we watch the funds that could feed millions be acted away in front of us? there are people in the world starving for our entertainment.
so i'm setting myself a challenge. i'm not sure if it's the best way to respond but it's all i've got. for every dollar i spend on entertainment each week (eg cinema, buying dvds & music etc) i'll put $1 aside to be donated to a charity (yet to be chosen) at the end of the year. it will be interesting to see how much money i spend on my own entertaiment. i shall keep you posted
on a totally different note, how weird are eyebrows?! i've never really realised before! random bits of hair in the middle of your face. i'd love to know what God's purpose for eyebrows is. i suppose it has something to do with sweat. man we are funny looking. i'm glad we all have eyebrows because i'd be freaking out if i was the only person with random strips of hair on my face.
thats all for now. trying to get as much sleep as possible this weekend. grace be with you all :D
.jpg)
i want to point out that the movie was totally rad! were you watching a different movie? as a person who dressed as margaret pomeranz for a disco i dont condone her comments on the moivie. but your point is totally valid. good thinking!
ReplyDelete2.5 billion dollars was spent on creating the facilities needed for the Olympics in China...This figure doesn't include the money spent on flying athletes to the country, providing them with food,accommodation, sports therapy,outings, the merchandise and the hundreds of people who worked on the grounds of the Olympics...All of this for it's 5 week duration. It's estimated that the opening ceremony cost 100 Million American dollars...The closing around the same. Tickets for the ceremony were available at prices as high as $750 American Dollars.
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying the Olympics should be eradicated, I think it has merit, as do films and CD's etc. but the question still stands...how much are we willing to spend on our own entertainment or self glorification? If someone from another planet were to take a look at our world from the outside what a horrific and bizarre thing they would see. People starving because all they have is pest infected grain to eat once a day, if that. People dying of completely preventable diseases. Other people spending hundreds of dollars in order to look good whilst cheering at an animal as it races past, hoping that the $1000 they bet on it will pay off. People spending $200 million on a film and then collectively almost meeting that in order to look great, arrive in style and receive the best goodie bags at the awards or premiers...
While the Olympics or Logies probably doesn't concern us, making it easy to pretend we don't have anything to do with this issue I would suggest it requires us to question what we value. Perhaps our growing wealth is slowly cheapening us...enslaving us to the world of entertainment.
I am also glad we all have eyebrows...but I wish no one discovered plucking them so that everyone could just have naturally hideous and oversized ones and everyone could avoid the cost and pain!
Taire
Actually, for a long time, I couldn't work out what made Grima Wormtongue in The Two Towers so incredibly creepy. He has no eyebrows. And it is freaking weird.
ReplyDeletelook its mys first comment!!!!1
ReplyDeleteIf you're going to be so interesting miss Jennifer you need to write more...I get withdrawals!
ReplyDeleteThere are so few movies that appeal to me nowdays, I think I must be getting old. Another magical super hero, another girl with big hair, another epic car chase... I used to love all this stuff!
ReplyDeleteI used to hate my black eyebrows, but now I like them, cos somebody tole me good eyebrows draw attention to your eyes, or something. So now they are my friends.
I actually rather like plucking! It's a bit satisfying. Although it's a pain to keep up the maintenance.
I'm so opinionated.