The Golden Globes, the SAG Awards, the BAFTAs and the Academy Awards have come and gone, and I guess all the favorites won, with the semi-surprise exception of ‘Parasite' taking the award for Best Picture.

I saw Korean director Bong Joon-ho's film ‘Parasite' and it was an amazing, dark and humorous look at the haves and the have-nots. My grandmother used to say that some people “live by their wits”, which is to say that they take their chances where they find them. This is certainly the case in this film when a young man from a poor family gets a job as a tutor for the daughter of a wealthy family, and finagles to get his sister, mother and father jobs working for the family as well. As you might imagine when such worlds collide, there is an explosion.

However good Parasite was, I wish the Sam Mendes film ‘1917' had won the Oscar for Best Picture. The story of two British soldiers sent on a perilous mission to the front to stop an ill-fated attack is riveting from beginning to end. But what do awards really mean, anyway?

The great thing about movies now is how quickly they go to a streaming service. You can watch ‘Parasite' (for a fee) on Amazon Prime. ‘Marriage Story' (another great film) is on Netflix. ‘Ford vs. Ferrari' is also available online.

The whole business of movie making has been transformed with the advances in technology, and we are all the better for it.

When I was a girl, we waited for a special showing of ‘The Wizard of Oz' at our local theater. Same with ‘Gone with the Wind.' ‘Wizard' didn't appear on television until the mid-1950's; GWTW was first on TV in 1976.

Television back then was three or four fuzzy channels on a “huge” 16-inch screen, and the only movies I remember watching on it were the B movies on The Early Show, the Vincent Price collection on Thriller Theater on Channel 5 on Saturday afternoon, and Million Dollar Movie, which played the same RKO film for a week.

If we wanted a bigger screen, we had to go to the Harden Theater in downtown Callicoon. I can remember as a twelve-year-old walking with my cousins from Grandma's over to the movies on Christmas Day to see ‘Lover, Come Back' starring Doris Day and Rock Hudson. That was something special.

To see a foreign film such as ‘Parasite' was unheard of. The only ‘foreign' films we watched were James Bond movies. I don't think I saw a subtitled movie until I went to the movies in the Netherlands with Uncle Bob in 1972.

Nowadays, studios put their films in theaters for a minute just so they can be eligible for movie awards, but before you know it, they are streaming on TV. On our 500-inch HDTVs, that is. I'd say we're all winners in this modern world of movies.