What will eventually happen is the older crowd (don’t shoot, I’m one of them) who hates this kind of thing will eventually abandon the theaters, and younger folks who have grown up in a world where information overload is a normal thing, will learn to detune the noise and sit impatiently, like us old codgers did in the quiet dark of years past, and wait for the bloody movie to get underway already.

As much as we might bark, that’s kinda the way of things. Those of us who remember how it used to be are no longer the target audience, so our concerns matter less and less to advertisers and presenters as each year passes. Kids are coming of age in a time when quiet time comes only when something’s gone wrong, like the cable’s screwed up, the projection room has a problem, or the power goes out. Silence and contemplation are almost alien to them, and those businesses that want their money are adapting.

Oh, brave new word, eh?

I quit movies about 18 months ago.

It is just too expensive for casual pleasure. After spending an arm and a leg getting in and getting popcorn and a coke you get to enjoy 5 or 10 minutes of commercials???

No Thanks! I’ll wait for the DVD.

Darin

Ack! I just subscribed to the blog today, and I tried to catch up with Bloglines… which didn’t display pics, so I didn’t catch the bit about Serenity… and then I checked the reviews and it wasn’t there…

So. Now I’m caught up. And I’m very satisfied to see the positive reviews. We just got our copy of the DVD for xmas (but fullscreen! why!? WHY?!?) and I’m all psyched about it again.

uh oh… something must have been inserted in the matrix….

That’s weird. I got this strange feeling I’ve read that before …

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2006/01/01/willy-wonka/

If I was stuck on a deserted island with just a home theatre and a power generator and I was asked to pick just one movie to bring along, I would bring Groundhog Day.
I find it very ironic that it’s one of those movies you can watch again and again and again…….

Btw, Phil, are you a Firefly/Serenity fan? I would think that it would appeal to many astronomy enthusiasts, if only because the action in space is silent. Quite a commitment to reality, and adds an astounding drama and tension to many scenes.

TV advertising has become measurably less effective because even if you don’t have a DVR, you usually have a mute button and a 6-pack in the fridge or some equivalent. Fewer and fewer people watch commercials. On DVDs that have to make them unskippable in the software or people just skip them… the result? DVD players change their software so things can’t be unskippable (seriously!) and DVD makers change theirs to overcome the players. It’s been shown that people will stare at their cursor while a web page loads rather than read banner ads.

The only defence advertising seems to use is to become more intrusive. INUNDATE people with ads and they’ll HAVE to look at them, even if only by accident.

Why? It’s a cesspool of corruption and a place where good ideas go to die. There’s hundreds of behind the scenes accounts of movie developments posted online. Read a dozen and you’ll get to the point where I am: I praise the rise of technology that gives power to the independent filmmaker, and can’t wait for the Hollywood studios to die ignoble deaths. Eff Hollywood. Eff the stuck up celebrities and the drug addled executives and egos and all of it.

Read about how Wild Wild West only had a giant mechanical spider in it because some moron executive wanted a giant spider in a movie, any movie. Read about how great scripts were raped into money-losing grabage by MBAs without an ounce of creativity in their entire family trees. Read about how XMen 3 is being intentionally monkeywrenched because the new studio head doesn’t like superhero movies.

In the last few years, I’ve had several movies ruined by children. Usually 12-14-year-olds in a 15-rated movie. At one time, I got a round of applause for saying to one of them “either shut up or get out of here”. She didn’t, so I had to get the staff to remove her. It still spoiled the film for me, though.

It seems to me that UK cinemas really don’t care about enforcing the 15 rating, as long as the money comes in.

Eugene – yes, the cinemas are only trying to make a profit, but it’s the Hollywood studios that dictate how much a cinema has to pay to rent a print of the film. And often dictates for how long the cinema has to rent it. In the UK, many small cinemas went bust because the big studios did things like slap a 10-week minimum rental period on a new film. If a cinema only has three screens, they can’t afford to tie up their resources that way for such a long time. Consequently, the smaller cinemas couldn’t show films when they first came out.

I’m serious when I say that I have overheard a couple whining to get a refund because the Restricted (presumably what we’d now call 18A here, sort of like R in the USA) film they brought their 6ish-maybe-7 year old to had nudity and strong language.

WTF??

I didn’t hang around to see what happened. If there is cosmic justice, the theatre owner came out and slapped them both upside the head and chased them away. Sadly, they probably got their refund, then used it to pay for another month of Grand THeft Auto for their little precious or something.

Since big screen TVs have become relatively good in quality and reasonable in price, and since most movies don’t really require a theatre experience (a big space flick or a big landscape film? absolutely. 4 weddings and a funeral? Most comedies, kids movies, chick flicks, non-landscape dramas, sports movies, yadda yadda… Certainly not.), it really is more cost effective to rent or buy the disk and stay home and make rare pilgrammages out to the old altar for those special films.

This wasn’t the case 20 years ago at the peak of the VHS era when a big TV was out of reach of most people, VHS quality was crappy (still is I suppose) and you could still get into a theatre for less than the price of a beer. It was worth it just to get out of the house.

What’s been overlooked in this discussion is the interesting rise of what you might call “boutique” theaters, a return to the old “movie palace” concept where people can view a movie in a spacious and very movie-friendly environment, even eat dinner in a full restaurant/bar. These are theaters expressly not catering to the Joe Sixpack crowd. Here in Austin we have the Alamo Drafthouse chain, privately owned by real movie fanatics. They have both first-run and special screenings, a full menu (wait staff brings you your meal right there at your seat), no SUV ads before the movies (instead they show cool, obscure stuff entirely at random), and best of all, little rules like NO CHILDREN! They do a hopping business.

What I think you’ll see is the waning of the teen-centric mall multiplex, while theater concepts similar to this one, for the real movie disciple, grow. It’ll mean actually leaving your house to go OUT to a movie will become more of a special and occasional event, like a rock concert, but it will never die completely. No matter how good your home theater is, you have to go a long way before matching the splendor of seeing a fine 35 MM print on an 80 foot screen.

Anyway, I talk about the on-demand viewing trend on — yes, yes — my blog!

Movie theaters make very little profit off the ticket sale. In some cases the theater takes a loss here. As a business the theaters have overhead to pay for as well (electricity, employee pay, etc.). A business is in the business of making money. The theaters don’t exist to entertain us while they lose money. The majority of theater profit is actually in the sale of concessions, that 4.50 USD bottle of water, the 5.50 USD tub of popcorn…

I think movie theaters are doomed not because of poor movies. I believe poor movies have always been out there. The horribleness may be different in degree but I think the overall rate of poor movies is the same as it was 30 years ago. Movie theaters are in trouble because their business model is under threat from more and more viable competetion. Some of that competition is Hollywood itself (HBO, DVD sales three months later…). The theater must make money. Once it stops making money it ceases to exist. This is why there are commercials, more markup on popcorn, etc…

Going to the theater is no longer just something to do for my wife and I. Now that I’m not dating her anymore we go to only a select few movies at the theater (LOTR, Serenity and a few chick flicks for her). We find renting/buying DVDs to be cheaper and more convenient than going to the movie. On-Demand viewing has recently become available to us and this looks cool.

Eventually, I think the movie theater will go the way as the drive-in movie theater.

Shameless plug time: Interested folks may find articles worth reading about cinema and shifting tastes in viewer habits over at my blog.

The remake of “The Longest Yard” (couldn’t pass it up… it was at a newly renovated drive-in theatre) and “Hitchhiker’s Guide” (how could I NOT see that one on the big screeen?).

In 2004, I think that “Jersey Girl” (big Kevin Smith fan) and “The Manchurian Candidate” were the only ones that I saw.

I pay way too much for cable as it is. I don’t need to put out more money so that I can be annoyed by strange people in the dark. I can stay home for that.

It is not only the ticket prices. It is the price of popcorn and any and all concessions. I’m suprised they haven’t begun charging for restroom use!

It is the fellow moviegoers who can also be annoying. Cell phones! Talking. Kicking seats! Standing up and walking in front of you during the movie. etc.

I have surround sound at home and a relatively large screen. I can get
a SMALL amount of popcorn, and it’ll cost me a couple of cents. (And it’ll
be fresh!) I have a comfy couch. It’ll take an awfully good movie to get me to a theater!