Over-50

"Salmon Fishing in Yemen" - Human beings in mid-life

"Salmon Fishing in Yemen" is being called a Baby Boomer film.  The people in it are not young. 

Dr. Alfred Jones, the fishing expert, is described by his wife as going through a midlife crisis.  That marriage is drifting away from both of them but neither is making a move.  Harriet is the traditional successful career woman.  She embarks on an affair with a man who might go off to war.  Sheik Muhammed has a vision of bringing life to the desert.

The three join together in the first step in modernization.  That's to make it possible to fly fish in the desert.  In the process they change.  From the searching during the middle years come fresh starts.

"The Separation" - What beliefs are still constraining our choices?

Set in contemporary Iran, "The Separation" captures decent people being destroyed by primitive belief systems.  They use cell phones and get in traffic jams in new cars.  But the women have to cover their heads and ask their husband's permission to take a job.  A son is convinced he must care for his demented father at home.  An 11- year-old girl's adolescent years are way more stressful than need be.

As you watch this film you look back over beliefs that nearly destroyed us Baby Boomers. For me, one was that I had to enjoy my work.  That led to too many job changes, with no pension.  Then you get to wonder what current beliefs are ruining our lives.  For me, that has been that I should be as successful professionally as I had been in middle age, ranging from a high profile to compensation.  Research shows that isn't typical.

Finally, I had to ask myself why we, the first educated and free generation, still default to beliefs.  In May is my 67th birthday.  I hope by then I can figure out how to believe less and do more of what I want to do.

"The Artist" - What does it take for us to let help in?

"The Artist" is a story about a man and his career.  When the career tanks, the man takes a detour away from life.  Not that he was ever that much into life before his professional crash.  He was a perfect fit for being a star in the era of silent film.  He didn't have to speak.  His wife left him because he never talked.  His one relationship is with a dog.  Briefly he touched the life a young actress.  He leveraged his star power so that she could remain in the picture.

Several times both the dog and that actress turned star reach out to him to help.  He turns away.  There's no telling why he finally broke open to help but he did.  His career returned.  And he even began to talk, a little.

What does it take for us Baby Boomers to let the world enter our little worlds?

SuperBowl XLVI: Not your father's commercials

For SuperBowl XLVI, those 30-second commercials costing an average of $3.5 million will just be the platform for much more extensive marketing and messaging.  Much of all the rest will happen through social media, online video, and smartphone apps.  This will not the viewing experience your father and you had years ago.

I deconstruct the new kind of commercial outreach for financial information powerhouse Motley Fool.  Here you can read all about it.

Mary Tyler Moore Wins Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award

We met Mary Tyler Moore, now 75, as the very young wife of an ad executive.  Then she went on to portray the single woman who goes to the city in search of a career.  Later she went on to film roles such as the cold wife in "Ordinary People." 

Tonight, that lifetime of acting was recognized by the Screen Actors Guild.  Dick Van Dyke, who played that ad executive much nicer than Don Draper, presented her with that recognition for so many years of achievement.

In our hearts, we threw up our hats as Mary Richards did when she realized that she was going to make it after all.

"Shame," not a Baby Boomer story line, does well at box office

"Shame," a film about an empty sex addict in New York, is not our story line.  For us Baby Boomers, sex with the person we cared about was plenty enough in a post-Eisenhower, post-pill era.

With some the film is resonating.  Box office gross receipts for the opening have totaled $361,181, which is supposedly good for a NC-17 rated movie.   Time will tell if the multiple flashes of male full frontal nudity helped or hindered profits.

"Shame" - Our generation just wanted sex, not compulsively

This the good-feeling holiday season, an odd time for "Shame" to be opening.  Also odd is that this movie about sex addiction contains multiple flashes of the male member. 

NEW YORK Magazine covers that, with a puzzled tone.  Sure the long legs of a blonde might sell lots of tickets across the nation.  But how would male full frontal nudity do?  That's not been tried before with a mass audience.

We are all watching box-office receipts this weekend when "Shame" opens.  Sexual addiction is not one of the problems of our generation.  The men wanted sex but not compulsively.  New to the freedom of the pill, we women were just grateful to have sex with the man we intended to marry, before the knot was tied.

Will we take in "Shame?"  No interest there.