We Still Call Them Movies

I like the fact that the English speaking world still uses the term "movies" for these two hour blocks of audio-visual entertainment.

One could play an endless language game with what counts as a movie. Once some level of audience interactivity is involved doesn't it cease to be a movie and become a "video game"? Do we want to privilege av entertainment designed to be shown (as first run) in a theater, as a collective experience, over stuff made for television? The former are still called "movies" without adjective, the latter are usually called "TV movies" or something else. Or is that distinction fading as obsolete?

Language games aside, I like the fact that we still use the term "movies" because it reminds us of the longer expression "motion pictures" and THAT in turn reminds us of the original surprise that the first viewers more than a century ago might have expressed. "Wow! ... those pictures MOVE!"

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