• Movies last a specific amount of time. Knowing that I will be done with a mediocre movie in 86 minutes makes it easier to bear. Ambiguity around the time investment works against books.
• Movies require less attention, so I can do other things while I (kinda sorta) watch. Eating, light conversation, light internetting, intermittent texting, etc.
• Because there are fewer produced, movies make better conversation topics. They have better cultural currency. More people are more likely to have seen or at least be familiar with a given movie. So there’s a higher social cost for not being familiar with it.
• Movies have a better entertainment/time ratio.
• My priorities are out of whack.
• I am subconsciously addressing an innate human need for stories. Most of my reading is nonfiction, so I’m using cinema-fiction to make up for the lack of text-fiction.
• Eye candy.
• Movies involve more people, more money, more compromises, more constraints on time and budget, and thus they are less likely to have nonessential bloat. Though I can easily see this argument going the other way, too.

Other possibilities?

Putting WALL-E up against Bolt and Kung Fu Panda rather than letting it compete against Slumdog Millionaire and Benjamin Button is like requiring a 13-year-old chess prodigy to compete only against other children, regardless whether he could stand his own against adult grandmasters.

One day backstage in the ’30s, Larry, Shemp, and Moe were playing cards. Shemp accused Larry of cheating. After a heated argument, Shemp reached over and stuck his fingers in Larry’s eyes. Moe, watching, thought it was hilarious … and that’s how the famous poke-in-the-eyes routine was born.

The origin of the Three Stooges. [via marginal revolution]

You see them getting ready, then holing up in the house, then moving to the attic when the levee breaks a few blocks away from their home and their house fills with water, then escaping to even higher ground, then finally leaving New Orleans, and coming back years later. It goes astray with some too-obvious, too-easy critiques of the political bumbling toward the end. The criticism is well-deserved, of course, but not nearly as interesting as seeing their stories unfold, seeing them meet strangers and help each other out, and how they find strength in each other and in their faith. The protagonists are pretty lovable. Go see it in your neighborhood.

Here’s the trailer for King Corn, and an Boing Boing interview with Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, the filmmakers.