So now we have portable phones that play music. We already have phones that take pictures. How soon before they play movies?

I was all set to go on about how we might be taken over by our toys, if we let them, but now it occurs to me that I would love to have a small device to watch movies on. We’d lose a lot of the visual impressiveness that makes some movies great, but I prefer character-driven films anyway, so it’s not such a loss.

I signed up with Netflix a month ago and am having a blast with just one movie a week. What if we could download a movie (legally, and paid for, of course) and watch it while we wait at the doctor’s office? Wearing headphones, of course, so we wouldn’t disturb the others in the waiting room. I imagine this would be lots of fun for folks with lengthy commutes. I tried riding the bus in September (to use less gas), but the trip takes me 25 minutes—it’s only six if I drive. But I will keep doing it once or twice a week. Someday we will run out of oil; maybe I can help stave off that someday a little.

Let’s return to the movie-phone fantasy. It looks as if movie players have been hampered by the need to hold DVDs, which are smaller than their predecessors but not as small as our phones. I’m just glad I won’t be watching movies on a wristwatch-size screen. I predict that a year from now Netflix will have a deal where I can download the movie I want, and it will be good for two playbacks. It will be a snap to transfer it from the hard drive to the phone, and then I can watch it in segments over a day or two.

My friend and I were discussing Casablanca recently. He said it is very much about the characters, dialogue and acting; it could have been set nearly anywhere. I haven’t watched it yet even though I’ve owned it for several years. I look forward to it, and I will watch with an eye toward how it might play on a very small screen. I have clutched my old phone for years now, on a rate plan that does not exist on paper anywhere, but for this, I would upgrade.

Copyright © 2005 Ellyn Ritterskamp, eritterskamp@atpm.com.