"$150-$200 to take a family to the movies in NYC to see one movie one time or ten months of Netflix to watch unlimited movies with on my big giant affordable TV? It’s a no brainer for the majority of families."
Writes one commenter at this column by Ross Douthat, "We Aren’t Just Watching the Decline of the Oscars. We’re Watching the End of the Movies."
Douthat's focus is our changing culture:
One of my formative experiences as a moviegoer came in college, sitting in a darkened lecture hall, watching “Blade Runner” and “When We Were Kings” as a cinematic supplement to a course on heroism in ancient Greece. At that moment, in 1998, I was still encountering American culture’s dominant popular art form; today a student having the same experience would be encountering an art form whose dominance belongs somewhat to the past. But that’s true as well of so much else we would want that student to encounter, from the “Iliad” and Aeschylus to Shakespeare and the 19th-century novel and beyond.
Where did Ross Douthat go to college? I had to look it up: Harvard.
I appreciate the high-tone elite solution that says to cherish the great art of the past. It's all still there for us. That's not beyond agreement with the commenter I quoted. You can screen the old movies on your TV, and the best of all of the 100+ years of movies can be called up on demand. There's no reason anymore to care about what's coming out right now. Show your kids the classics! It costs next to nothing.
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The classic "dinner and a movie" date can easily run $80-$100 for two people. $40 for dinner, $30 for tickets, another $20 for popcorn and two drinks.
For a kid working part time in HS or college at $9/hr that's crazy. Part of the reason dating has died.
Show your kids the classics!
One of the best thing about the pandemic effect on theaters was they ended up showing more classics on the big screens. This gave a chance to see the films in the forum they were intended. Most modern movies are actually made for their inevitable future on television.
This is a very interesting topic to me, but not because I care about the movie industry or its product. I spend most my time marveling how these brands are so effective at destroying themselves. For instance, watching Disney wade into a debate that it should have avoided in the way they avoid talking about farm subsidies or TSA regulations. It takes real imagination to destroy your brand in such a way. That kind of creativity is interesting to me.
Leland said...
"...these brands are so effective at destroying themselves"
Not just the companies, their products must also be woke or they can't be shown. If you don't pay homage in some way to the current ritual of diversity, you can't make movies or have them distributed.
Get Smart (2008). The up-tight woman pro dismissive of the amateur guy enthusiast.
Interwoven with gag-writers dismissing the guy. Two audiences. It's got to sneak past the feminists.
The last time I actually sat in a movie theater I noted the posters for upcoming movies and watched the previews. 100% sequels prequels,and remakes.
Heavy on the "Marvel Universe" or other comic book movies.
I can afford the movies, but there is danged little bang for the buck.
Meanwhile I'm introducing our 31 year old to "Adam's Rib", the "African Queen" and the Thin Man series.
Lots of fertile ground available on streaming.
I haven't been to a movie theater since Witches of Eastwick. I have no desire, and don't watch many movies, because I can't stand half of the actors who spew nonsense, and pretty much tell us how much we are hated by them. No thanks. I have better things to do with my free time, then help them get rich.
How does it cost 150-200 to take a family to the movies?
This June will be 9 years since I stopped watching movies in theaters. I don't think I have watched a movie produced in the last 5 years. It isn't that I don't like watching movies, it is just that nothing produced in the last several years said "must see" to me. In fact, the last time I felt that "must see" feeling was over a decade ago when the last Harry Potter films were released.
Hawkeye, it is amazing when they do pay homage to the ritual of diversity only to get it somehow wrong and then the whole project gets scrapped. A recent example was the "Snow White" remake, in which Snow White would not be White, but it couldn't get made because it was wrong to have roles for 7 little people, who rarely get roles, and call them drawfs. At least so says the tallest little actor that typically takes the few roles available. Just like that, the IP of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" becomes problematic and unmarketable. Even older versions of the IP and related subjects such as the munchkins of "The Wizard of Oz" becomes problematic for both screen and stage. That level of destruction is just a sight to behold.
Why would I want to watch a pack of over-rated Meryl Streepian wealthy leftist ivory tower woke Cancel Commies lecture me?
& hand each other golden statues?
Ricky G. had it exactly right a few years ago when he hosted the golden globes.
F off hillary-Biden-PelosiLAND wankers.
He’s not wrong. Show them the classics! Friends, Petticoat Junction, Fresh Prince…
Reddington- I find tickets in Manhattan are about $15 for a normal Friday night- family of 4 that is 60 bucks for just the tickets and another 60 for movie snacks is probably not far off. I am guessing the writer exaggerated some, but not an outrageous amount.
Our local theater closed two years ago at the beginning of the insanity. Going to a theater to watch a movie is now a non-issue. There is a RedBox in front of our dollar store. The rare occasion when I have paused to scan the offerings, has left me with a big "MEH". I don't recognize any of the titles and don't know what they are about. We don't have TV so Netflix is out. For recent movies, that leaves Youtube's "Movies and Shows". Again, only a few appear to be worth a try and I bailed on most of those before getting halfway.
The only movies I watch all the way through are almost always a classic and I find many of these on the Internet Archive. But, I still have my library of classic VHS tapes to fall back on. In a nutshell, it may be time for a lot of people in the movie industry to learn to code.
$200 to take a family to the movies in NYC to see one movie or my big giant affordable TV?
interesting. You can buy a pretty good 32 inch TV for less than $200
On the other hand; when i go to the Elkader Cinema in downtown Elkader, it costs $6 for the regular show, and and for $12, you can get the 'snak pak' (small popcorn (actually pretty big), small soda (apb), and a box of candy ( i like good and plenty, but dots are good too).
Free parking too. So, less than $20/person. If you brought your family, they have the Large popcorn (about a 1/2 bushel)
The theater was renovated in 2019 (JUST in time, to be closed for a year ), so you have to sit in lazyboy recliners; which is kinda neat
Also, check out Schera's Algerian American Restaurant beforehand, if you're hankering for some Rabbit & Butternut Squash Tagine (which is pretty good, but pricy $22)
[This message was brought to you by the GET OUT OF NYC AND MOVE TO NORTHEAST IOWA CO]
belfast is closer to the profile, of the type of film, the oscars preferred, branaghs love letter to the times before the troubles,
Douthat got his start with his semi-autobiographic Harvard book, Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class. It might be worth a look.
Moviegoing is dead or dying. The movies replaced live entertainment with more central production, and now they are being replaced by a much more decentralized distribution. Reel-to-reel film as a physical medium is also largely dead, replaced by digital streams.
Beyond that, though, people seem to prefer long-arc, multi-episode series to stand-alone 90-120 minute films. Maybe it's similar to how short stories lost out to novels among those who still read fiction. Attention spans in general are getting shorter, but people tend to bother less and less with the shorter forms that one might think would be better suited to today's attention economy. If you take the trouble to invest your time, attention and emotions in entertainment, you want it to pay off over a longer period, rather than have to look for something else to occupy you so soon afterwards.
Barney Miller, Rockford Files, The Fall Guy, Eight is Enough…
"Show your kids the classics! It costs next to nothing."
Or listen to them. The whole history of Western music at your fingertips, previously available to only the most accomplished professionals: stunning progress.
Of course, progs mean to tear it down. But for now, it's all there.
Oh I forgot! You can rent out the ENTIRE theater for $250* (your choice of movie**)
250* that's the Minimum ($150 movie, $100 concessions). If you have more than 30 people in your group than it's $5 more per person (and you'll probably need more candy$ too)
choice of movie ** If you want to see an older movie, it may take up to 2 weeks to book and receive the movie from the studio
[This message was brought to you by the GET OUT OF NYC AND MOVE TO NORTHEAST IOWA CO]
Speaking of classics, I do recommend seeing the new West Side Story in a theater, if you can. A classic remake of a classic.
I liked Belfast, but couldn't help wondering how much it would have gained or lost if Branagh had delegated the writing or the directing to someone else. It might have been more polished and less sentimental, but it could have lost the personal touch and sense of personal authenticity.
I saw Dune and thought it was pretty much just another sci-fi epic. Plus, I liked the cast of the earlier version better, at least in retrospect.
I haven't seen any of the other nominees. I wonder if Biden will record a message to the academy for the show and if he will get the year wrong, like he usually does.
it was his passion project, so he wouldn't have delegated it to anyone else,
I thought villeneuve was much better on the pacing, the sound design, some of the casting was curious,
'Blade Runner', really? Good movie, but hardly one to open the eyes of the 19yr old college student. My film appreciation course in 1981 introduced me to the original 'Front Page', Buster Keaton, etc. And at a time when you still had to wait 9-10 months for the current movies and television to come back around. A time before TCM and AMC made old movies readily available. I learned to appreciate B&W movies and the use of shadows in film noir. 'M', 'Stagecoach', 'This Gun for Hire', and when I bought the DVD, to see the pre-code movies.
The earlier problem with watching old movies was the editing to fit the format. That has been overcome.
I got to see what going to the movies was like in earlier times in 2005, on the Mississippi coast after Katrina. A multiplex, maybe a year old, was just north of I-10, everything south to the casinos in Biloxi was wiped out, and no electricity even if your house was intact. But the theater had power and was unscathed. They did a land office business in the Fall of 2005. Parking lot stuffed to the gills almost full time. Why, because almost all other forms of entertainment were off line. And people really needed a hour or so of escape from reality.
It's all so damned ephemeral. I don't think movie theaters will go the way of vaudeville and Blockbuster. They'll be around like Broadway shows and the Sunday Times, but their audience and influence will be far less.....I guess the bright side is that you can probably make a Bergman type movie on a cell phone, and genius will find a way to an audience.....Anyway, it's a different world than the one in which In have lived most of my life and to hell with it.
I don't think kids are going to movies anymore. Certainly my grand kids aren't.
Next film I see will be Dune, Part 2. And that will be it for some time.
There are many movies that deserve to be watched on the big screen in a theatre with great sound and seating layout. I don't want to watch Lawrence of Arabia or 2001 or a Disney animated spectacular on my TV (unless the screen takes up half the wall in my house). The difference in watching a cinematic treasure in a movie theatre vs on TV is enormous.
Like gilbar, I know of a theater in a town of fewer than 2,000 people that charges around $6.00-7.00 a ticket, and doesn't attempt to skin customers at the concession stand. Along with sensibly priced popcorn, drinks and candy, it offers chili dogs for about $3.00. There's also an outside door for those who want to purchase concessions without buying a movie ticket, accessible for about an hour before the box office opens.
After being shuttered for about 18 months for covid, the theater reopened on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Lines extended down the sidewalk for those eager to purchase their first "show dog" since 2020. They sold just under 5,000 dogs that day.
The new Macbeth was good. Our family saw it in the theater in NYC. It did not cost $150.
People aren't going to the movies as often because the movies aren't as good. Make better movies, and people will go. The theater experience is not the same as the home experience. We pay a premium to see classic movies in the theater whenever they're shown. The tickets cost more than regular tickets.
On the other hand, if telecommuting leads to decentralization -- people moving out of the cities to smaller communities of like-minded people -- it might be possible for movie theaters to make a modest comeback. Going to the movies could become part of people's social activity again. And you might not have to worry about sticky floors or getting shot by other patrons. There's room for local entrepreneurs to explore new ways of integrating movie-going with other activities and experiences.
But that wouldn't make up for the more general collapse of movie-going and the closure of movie theaters. So many cinemas are located in or near shopping malls, and both malls and multiplexes are losing customers. The big urban cinemas are likewise in trouble.
But yes, everyone should show their kids the classics!
I bought a big screen TV, and then discovered that there's nothing to watch except comic books. (Did I mention that the Seahawks traded Russ Wilson to Denver?)
Since then, I've bought a couple of REALLY nice guitars, and now I'm attempting to master all the music I loved in my youth.
Even the piano is calling me with her Siren.
P.S. The guitars cost more than the damn TV, and they are worth every penny.
blade runner became a cult hit, released the same year as gandhi and et, the visuals were overwhelming, some complain about the narration, but it's in keeping with the chandler motif, (the book was unfilmable
It's a visual medium. It generally takes the least effort to understand visual storytelling on a basic level.
We get old, older and then we die. Our formative years of experience involve the most openness to new experience, and imprint more strongly upon us. The longer we live, the more we live within past experience and its echoes rather than the present or future.
The less we're able to pay attention to what might happen, and what is happening. Those among us fortunate enough to have a position to share our nostalgia can do so.
And sharing is ideally a two-way street, where we find joy in each other, and simply being together.
I stopped paying attention to the Oscars and the movies but I don't know how timely this essay is. Based on the number of movie sets there were in Boston last year I'd say the industry had lots of stuff backed up from covid and are making up for lost time.
When you see all the trucks and those little yellow signs with the arrows and the code name of the movie you get a sense of the kind of movie it is. Those red lighting trucks with the lamp and the fish usually are the big budget ones, but not the comic book movies. There were lots of those. The comic book movies have the big black trucks full of scaffolding and green screen. I'm not sure how much they need to bother with green screen anymore. They were filming Free Guy in the street when we were sitting on the sidewalk patio at Tico a few feet away. It felt like we were going to be in movie, but we ended up in the middle of an explosion...
My film class as an undergrad got sent in to The Brattle Theatre to watch a few classics, then we'd go to the Harvard Square Regina's afterwards. Douthat was still in grammar school.
“Moviegoing is dead or dying. The movies replaced live entertainment with more central production, and now they are being replaced by a much more decentralized distribution. Reel-to-reel film as a physical medium is also largely dead, replaced by digital streams.”
Another factor is that the market driving film making is no longer American theaters, but world wide. 1.4 billion Chinese, and 1.2 billion Indians have a lot of votes these days.
“Beyond that, though, people seem to prefer long-arc, multi-episode series to stand-alone 90-120 minute films. Maybe it's similar to how short stories lost out to novels among those who still read fiction. Attention spans in general are getting shorter, but people tend to bother less and less with the shorter forms that one might think would be better suited to today's attention economy. If you take the trouble to invest your time, attention and emotions in entertainment, you want it to pay off over a longer period, rather than have to look for something else to occupy you so soon afterwards.”
I find that I do like the longer arcs a lot more. The only time I really like short stories is when they are based on a series of books. But stand alone? I avoid them now, even with authors I like. Right now, I am binge reading a series of 15 or so fantasy books so far, led in with a 2 book quasi prequel based around the heroine’s constant companion. I jumped back in, read the last 3 books in an omnibus edition, realized I didn’t know how the two had reconciled, so started at the beginning. I limit myself to at most one book a day.
Harry Potter worked because it was a long arc, and easily maintained that when it went to movies. LOR worked at the movies because it was a couple of very dense books that translated into a good arc in movies. The Marvel stuff works in movies because again there is a long story arc, that can be kept going, forward and backward in time, indefinitely. Star Wars, and even Indiana Jones, fit in there too. Interestingly , Star Wars, which is still chugging on, decades later, was originally was conceived as a story arc, with an initial 9 episodes, the middle 3 produced first, then the first 3, then the last 3, and -lefty of offshoots along the way. All started 45 years ago. How prescient. And it isn’t just big movies. My partner can’t wait to see Julia Roberts’ better looking brother, Eric, in his cra-cra Doctor role on Lifetime. Every couple years, a new one comes out, and I have to find and record it - or else.
A lot of it is world building. I occasionally stumble into involved discussions on Quora about this aspect or that (usually military, given the forum) of something out of Star Wars, Star Trek, LOR, or Game of Thrones. The participants are vehemently arguing specifics, and their ramifications, in completely made up worlds, often where these details or aspects were never envisioned by their authors or creators. Sometimes, I am reminded of Red Pill/Blue Pill in Matrix, and how many seem to want to at least spend a good part of their lives in an alternate reality.
Cost of admission aside, I am unwilling to finance Democrat politics by going to the movies. Moreover, the sound is deafening, the language and morality horrific.
We don't get cable either for many reasons. Streaming allows us to avoid Hollywood trash and fake news.
How does it cost 150-200 to take a family to the movies?
Yes, it should be cheaper by the dozen.
Show your kids the classics!
Except if they're like my step-kids they can't deal with black & white movies. (Which I can understand when I look at Civil War era photographs; everyone is so stiff and solemn that it has an air of unreality. Old movies tend to be a bit stilted, especially when the actors have those damn Mid-Atlantic accents.)
The last movie I saw in the theater was Dune Part 1. I followed all the reviewers advice and saw it at an Imax theater which; a) wasn't IMO any better visually that seeing it in a theater with a regular sized screen and b) was completely uncomfortable because the sound system was too loud and made my ears hurt after an hour or so.
I will likely see Dune Part 2 as I thought the first film did a good job of paring the plot down to a workable move without losing the story, but this time I think I will opt to wait until it becomes available for streaming.
Blogger madAsHell said...
“I bought a big screen TV, and then discovered that there's nothing to watch except comic books. (Did I mention that the Seahawks traded Russ Wilson to Denver?)”
They are getting so cheap. An 85” LG for under $1k in the 2021 Super Bowl sale at Costco. Added the matching sound bar a couple months ago. Replaced the sectional we had at the old house 2 years ago when we moved with our formal living room furniture, and that with a 3 piece reclining set this year. We have been talking turning that room into a theater room, since that is what we mostly use it for. Her ex did that at the ranch years ago, before it was popular. I keep pushing for the pods I see occasionally at Costco, that seem right out of one of those animated movies (The Incredibles?) She hates the, of course. But I think that we are stuck here because she can have one pet on one side of her, and the other on the other.
I don’t think that bigger and bigger flat screens is really the wave of the future. Maybe whole wall screens. We aren’t that far off with technology. But I think that the Holy Grail is fully immersive VR. That may be coming finally, though it’s been predicted for a long time. I remember played a two player VR game some 20 or so years ago at an IEEE section meeting. We put on headsets and had guns that we could draw, and faced off against each other in a quick draw contest, set in the old west. Now we have a room set up for our grandsons to hook up their play stations or game boys, and play against each other on the screen. Didn’t cost that much, and they aren’t monopolizing the 85” flat screen like they do at their mother’s house. (My partner was adamantly opposed to a big screen, until her daughter got one, and now she won’t consider giving it up).
the problem with modern iterations of said intellectual properties is they've lost the plot, see star drek, the adventures of ray et al,
It's the annoyance of other movie goers that deters me the most from seeing something in the theater. (Not that there's often much I want to see.) I'm easily distracted by cellphone lights and people talking or kicking the seats. For $99 and up, you can have a private screening. (Which I have not done.)
"Private Theatre Rentals at AMC provides an additional layer of safety and security to those moviegoers who are looking to see movies with just their family members and friends," said Elizabeth Frank, AMC's executive vice president of worldwide programming, in a statement.
It sounds like they're trying to sell it to people who are afraid of getting shot in the theater. It would read completely differently if they changed "with just their family members and friends" to "with just people like you".
These days, many of us don't need to watch "Bladerunner" at a theater or on TV": all we have to do is step outside.
In my lifetime:
From Moguls (Owner operators) to corporate bean counters green lighting
From Movies pitched to elevated themes to how can we shock you
From Actors to pretty faces regurgitating lines
From Big productions for little cash to big cash for computer images
From escaping from daily life to dwelling on all of society’s worst problems
From killing with little blood to lots of blood and people still live
From well written dialogue to a few lines between the action
From great stories to same old story
From new ideas to repeat and remake
From actors/actresses as glamor to scolding progressives
It’s not hard to see why the new Hollywood isn’t selling like it used to.
Lurker21 said...
Douthat got his start with his semi-autobiographic Harvard book, Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class. It might be worth a look.
*************
The title alone reminds me of Charlie, a Harvard Placement officer who helped graduating seniors find jobs.
He said one privileged guy announced he didn't care where he worked, "along as I get to make policy".
Charlie took down the kid's request and told him he'd get back to him.
Then, once the guy had gone, he opened his desk drawer---the one where he kept an old fashioned tape recorder with a tape already inserted.
He pressed the PLAY button.
"FLUSSSSSHHHHH!"
Regarding the academy awards? I never idolized celebrities so the Oscars never meant anything to me. I have rarely watched any part of them. I just don't care about it at all.
Maybe there are so many other entertainment options out there (I know, not an original thought) that traditional movies are getting squeezed out.
I was talking to friends a few years ago and we were trying to figure out how long it had been since we had watched a movie where the majority of the cast wasn't dead.
My wife and I used to go to movies a lot, but I can't recall the last time . . . My son (36 soon) goes with friends to the new blockbusters, but nothing on offer tempts me. As for recommending classics, his eyes are no more ready for them than his ears are for Baroque opera, and never will be.
There's nothing to add to the critique already expressed on current product, except that I don't invest much time in either the older or newer forms.
I never appreciated being shown films in class. They always seemed like a lazy way of teaching.
Lazy way of pretending to teach.
Last movie I saw in theater was Free Solo the climbing documentary about Alex Honnold so that would have been 2018. That was in our local art house theater that the owners are now trying to sell. It may turn into a restaurant and retail space.
The last new Hollywood movie (as opposed to documentary) was probably Rush, the 2013 racing film.
I find most movies can be far more enjoyable at home with higher quality sound and picture with modern equipment.
However on my calendar is the 45th Anniversary re-release of Smokey and Bandit done in conjunction with TCM. That is coming at the end of May. Neither my wife or daughter have seen it so I'm dragging them along. Figured it was a movie with the right spirit for 2022 given the truckers revolt.
Last time I went to a theater was 4-5 years ago.
They had reserved seating. I had to pick out seats from a chart. Theatre was pretty empty but they still made me choose seats.
So go and sit down perhaps 20 others in the Theatre. We spread out a bit to leave empty seats for purses jackets and bags.
During the previews some women came in and said we we were sitting in their seats. I pointed out that there were hundreds of other seats to choose from. Nope. These seats were assigned to them this is where they were going to sit.
So we all moved so they could have "their" seats.
I get enough crap about where to sit in my own living room for free.
I don't need to pay for it.
John LGBTQBNY Henry
As my now 93 yr old aunt has told me several times, when they got their first television, she and her husband, she looked at him, "I'm never going to get to go to another movie, am I?" She's described her movie going, which would have been in the early '40s. But at 15 she chose her husband on the sidewalk after the movie on night, married him in secret, packed him off to war, trailed him to California before he went of to the Pacific War. No prolonged adolescence for her, first born in '47 at 18.
Haven't set foot inside of a theater since Saving Private Ryan in 1998. Never will again.
The entire industry can die and it won't impact me one bit. In fact, I welcome it.
@rehajm: loved the Bond film marathons and the Warner Brothers cartoon weekends at the Brattle. A great way to break up the monotony of dreary midwinter.
Used to go to movies a couple of times a month. Since covid have been once. Minari, some months after it opened. Only still playing in Koreatown but expected decent audience, considering. Nope, only one there.
He gets top marks for not casually throwing in 'Harvard' when referencing his dorm...
What is a classic? A colleague in her early thirties a few years ago told me she and her hubby would never watch a black and white film. I guess that rules out Belfast.
I'm more amazed that they still even think they can make this a thing. The fact that they had to get washed up hacks like Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes tells you everything. It's over. Shut up the shop and board the windows.
Every once in a while, I still like to watch Ricky Gervais destroying the whole concept of the movie award show forever on YouTube. It was a genius performance, with the result that nobody can ever take these things seriously again. He put the nail in the coffin.
My own cultural deficiency is silent films. Can't get into them except comic shorts. But did enjoy The Artist.
Maybe it's similar to how short stories lost out to novels among those who still read fiction.
I noticed that in the early 90's. The novels got longer, going from maybe 200 pages to 400+, and they could be found in bookstores. I'm not sure what drove that, but I suspect word processors had something to do with the increased length. Digital typesetting and offset printing may have accounted for the proliferation of available books. Magazines, with their size limits, began to lose their position as the most convenient means of distribution. These days days it is as easy to download a novel as a novella, and novels pay better. Writing a good short story is, I suspect, in many ways harder than writing a novel
"Show your kids the classics! It costs next to nothing."
My kids are going to inherit about 500 classic scifi novels and biographies and histories, made of actual physical ink on paper that can't be wiped from your account or removed from playlists.
I have seen two sci fi movies in theaters: "Dune" and "Arrival". Both movies featured large, interstellar travel ships. Large. Imposing. Profound. Outside of that - don't care. Seeing a massive spaceship on the large screen - being dwarfed by it and consumed by any noise it makes is the only thing that will get me into a theater.
I do believe there are really great stories waiting to be movies but capitalistic bean-counting cross-sterilizing with lefty censorship means they don't get made. Going to the movies? - I could sneak off to the movies when I was twelve and pay for it, including popcorn to throw. These days I can't justify the ticket prices when I might not like the movie (might not? certainly won't) and popcorn is almost too valuable to eat, and it hurts to remember throwing it. Meanwhile, I like trying out different "long arc" strategies, like major movies of the Fifties in yearly order, then Sixties. Or Westerns of Thirties, Forties, Fifties, etc.
"$150-$200 to take a family to the movies in NYC to see one movie one time or ten months of Netflix to watch unlimited movies with on my big giant affordable TV? It’s a no brainer for the majority of families."
Yes, that's part of it
The rest of it is that teh movies are made by people who hate me, so I wouldn't go even if they were cheap
wildswan said...
I do believe there are really great stories waiting to be movies but capitalistic bean-counting cross-sterilizing with lefty censorship means they don't get made.
It's not capitalism that keeps Hollywood from making movies that teh customers would actually like, it's Leftism
Two years ago, a federal court terminated the Paramount Consent Decrees of 1948 -- studios can now own movie theaters. I think studios (and their streaming services) will buy theater chains and offer perks and discounted tickets to their subscribers. So Disney subscribers will get a chance to view Marvel movies early at Disney theaters.
Writing a good short story is, I suspect, in many ways harder than writing a novel
Heinlein said that the shorter.. The Harder
Readering said...
What is a classic?
well, a movie made in 1992 would be 30 years old today
so, imagine back in 1992 watching a movie made in 1962
I remember when we got a flat screen TV, maybe 12 years ago. 1080P. I decided to watch Chinatown, which I had seen many times on TV but never in the theater. Bought it on VHS, then DVD. When I watched the DVD on our new TV, I was amazed at how much it was like being at a movie theater. You could see clothing textures, skin tones, all manner of background detail. It really did make it even more compelling. It also made it hard to argue that you need to see a movie in a theater. Even modest home theaters have better sound than a lot of theaters.
Now, I remember seeing the Godfather films and Star Wars and many others on BIG screens. That was something. As soon as theaters went multi-plex, they began to condition us for smaller screens.
I devised a little glossary for 'classic' films in college. I can only recall a few--
Classic screwball comedy = not very funny
Classic Bergman = slow and talky, talky and slow
I don’t need to pay to be lectured on how the woke are the natural and rightful ruling class.
The biggest problem with seeing films in theaters isn't the cost -- a good movie on the big screen with great sound (like Dune) is worth $30 or $40. The problem is having to share the theater with bogans who are barely house trained. Went to see The Batman a couple weeks ago, and had to request that the teenagers sitting in the row behind us please stop propping their feet on top of my seat six inches from my head. They acted like I was the one infringing on their space and their enjoyment. And don't get me started on the &%$# who surf the internet on their phones while the film is playing. I've had to bark at so many cell phone users over the years that I feel a violent confrontation is only a matter of time. I shouldn't have to worry about whether I've forgotten the pepper spray as I'm leaving for a movie night, but unfortunately that's the world we live in.
A century ago, "Look Homeward Angel" was a huge best seller. I wonder if there is any economically viable target audience who could even finish such a novel today. The current audience is more attuned to comic books, err, excuse me, graphic novels. What is there to talk about after a movie full of CGI combat other than "did you get a good nap?"
The first movie on a wide format TV screen that really struck me was Grease. Beauty School Dropout was sung in a single frame, instead of the pan and scan required to show the movie on the old TV format, which never showed the two characters on the screen at the same time, half of the interplay had been missing in pan and scan; it struck me that this was something quite different, at the time. Now I have a large 4K TV with deep blacks, and if you watch a movie like Buster Scruggs, for example, filmed for it, it's like a watching an old fashioned glossy magazine come to life, so yeah, there is more to the death of theaters than that they focus on woke morality plays disguised as 'entertainment.' Still, I think that the death of the Wokies.. I mean The Oscars, has little to do with the death of theaters, it's just happening at the same time.
Jackie Chan combat, human performed stunts, on the other hand, is really worth watching.
Silent films almost have to be seen in theaters. At home, the sound track and dialogue keep me watching the movie. If the movie is silent, I stop paying attention. Too many distractions.
When home video first came in, our viewing habits may have been very different. They were conditioned by years of going to the movies, and we wanted to repeat the experience at home. There may also have been more of a desire to see the classic films. At this point, though, we've gotten accustomed to watching at home. Our attention spans are shorter and we demand more from a movie to keep us watching. I suspect that people are also less keen on seeing film movies.
There's a very nice multiple-screen theater about two blocks from where I live. I've been there maybe once in the last five years or so. Setting aside the madness of the last two years, mostly because I had little to no interest in seeing the movies they were sowing, though I may watch some of them when they come out on cable (and I'd like to work up the energy to go see the new version of Death on the Nile).
The Coolidge Corner is a beautiful old theater about a mile and a half away in, well, Coolidge Corner that is now owned by a nonprofit, has been beautifully restored, and shows an eclectic selection of movies. It even has a wine bar, though it can be tough trying to open the doors into the theater that weigh about 500 points when you're juggling a couple of (tiny) glasses of wine. Still have only been there a few times recently.
>>I'm introducing our 31 year old to "Adam's Rib", the "African Queen" and the Thin Man series.
Sad that they're 31 and need to be introduced to such things. When I was in school in the 70s, there were movie houses all over Boston and Cambridge, many showing old movies; most of the Harvard houses were also having $1 movie nights on weekends. That's when I saw a lot of that stuff, in my late teens and early 20s. Plus there were two TV stations in Boston that showed that type of thing in the 70s and 80s: the Great Entertainment on Saturday nights (hosted by the fabulous, tuxedoed Frank Avruch) and the Movie Loft (hosted by Dana Hersey, who had a wonderful, deep voice). And, of course, we've had TCM for the last 25 years or so.
>>My film class as an undergrad got sent in to The Brattle Theatre to watch a few classics,
Brattle is still there, in a building still owned, I think, by a sorta former client of mine since I semi-retired a little over a year ago. Also now operated as a non-profit. One of the few that are left, along with the Coolidge Corner (see above) and the Somerville Theater in Davis Square.
As I think I've mentioned before, the Brattle was the shrine that single-handedly kept alive the Bogart cult. I saw all of the Bogart classics there (Maltese Falcon, African Queen, To Have and Have Not, Big Sleep, etc.). Saw all of the Marx Brothers movie at the long-gone Central Square cinema on Mass. Ave and, I think, Main Street. Saw Gone with the Wind (on TCM earlier today) for the first time at the Fresh Pond cinema.
--gpm
Without reading any other comments yet - once I went to a film festival of cartoons, mostly Bugs Bunny et al. (Note the proper punctuation!) The notable thing was how differently the cartoons came across when viewed as intended on the big screen - they had been "opening acts" to old movies originally. It was remarkable what a difference big screen vs home television made!
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