The Death of Cinema pt. 94

In a scenario where there are no theaters or theaters owned by monopolies, I'm still naive enough to think the former is the worse outcome.

of course no theaters would be worse than pre-48 monopoly theaters, come on

bcz many pre-48 theaters showed some studio films not aimed at children

For those wondering what's next, I wrote a story for @Polygon in November looking at four possible futures of moviegoing. Today's ruling was essentially a last technical step. The biggest worry is what happens when block booking returns in 2022: https://t.co/pFmZYUE0Hm

— Peter Labuza (@labuzamovies) August 7, 2020

bcz many pre-48 theaters showed some studio films not aimed at children

― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius), Friday, August 7, 2020 2:42 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I know, and Netflix or Amazon would fill that gap in this mitigated nightmare scenario. I don't like it but it's better than no theaters at all.

my local theater is back open and what a lineup

A Quiet Place 2
F9
Peter Rabbit 2
The Boss Baby 2
The Conjuring 3
Black Widow
The Hitman's Bodyguard 2

Haha yeah the mainstream releases have been pretty dire. But I'll admit Summer of Soul is the first thing that isn't streaming (in the UK) that's got me tempted to go back to the cinema.

It's streaming from a couple of weeks, but go see it in the cinema, it is a fantastic, fantastic movie.

Cosign. People waited through the end credits and applauded at my screening! (And were rewarded with an extra Stevie bit.)

I'll admit I wept a couple of times during it (also it was my first trip into central London since lockdown began, and also my first time in a cinema since Covid)

Summer of Soul is fucking incredible.

the banana’s point was not so much that cinema is being killed bcz the films are dire, as that literally every film is a sequel, involving characters who are not under the control of their creators

okay it's Yelp time people. i went to the Vue at the Westfield a few days ago with my boys, to see One Piece: Red. (they are One Piece megafans.) i've found Vue to have excellent picture and sound, and they are absolutely atrocious at everything else. just buying popcorn takes 20 minutes minimum, every time. so this time I popped my own microwave popcorn, bought three Fantas for £3.30 at the corner shop, and went in. the lights go down and the previews start. the sound is truly bone-rattling, but i love that. the subwoofers are SERIOUS in this place. by the time the second or third preview has come on, though, i'm noticing that it's just.... too fucking loud. like, REALLY loud. distractingly loud. hard to even focus on the screen visually for the noise. i'm lie "i'm going to go say something" and the kids convince me not to, that i'll get used to it. they could be right, who knows. the picture starts. it is EAR-SPLITTING. it doesn't help that the whole movie is insane, no intro, no lead-in, doesn't take place on the high seas, it all seems to be about a singing contest? anyway none of us can even think it's so loud, and the kids start complaining too, so i go off to find someone. i do, and she asks to come with me to see for herself. the second we open the door to the screening room she's like "whoah, yeah. that's crazy." she says she'll go find a manager. do i need to come with you? no no, we'll take care of it. 5, 10 minutes go by, it's still the same, i walk back down to the front of the cinema. she's not there. i ask where a manager is, he's pointed out to me, and i tell him the story. we can't change it, he says. what?? i convince him to come with me. he does, and of course it's a quieter section of the movie, and he says listen, we can't just change things because one person doesn't like it. nobody else has complained. this motherfucker. the kids are asking to leave now. we do, i ask for my money back, to his credit he does it. he tells me they have no control over anything locally. they have to call a phone number just to change the air conditioning.

anyway, first time i've ever had an issue with this (my hearing sucks - usually i think things are too quiet!) - however, the Picturehouse, the other local alternative to Vue, consistently screens their movies too dimly. (this is apparently very common - cinemas save ££ on electricity over the longrun, even though they're contractually obligated to screen at a certain luminance(

I mean, i really try to support my local cinemas. Even though I now have a shit-hot TV that makes everything look great. but if they're going to deliver such a subpar, fucked up experience (not to mention the wait times and prices for concessions) it really does deserve to die.

In other news, Rian Johnson had to fight with Netflix to get Glass Onion released in theatres, and they only agreed 1 week on 650 screens.

It's currently outselling Wakanda Forever on a per-screen basis.. If it had opened as widely as WF it would be grossing close to the mythical £100M mark for the first week

Did someone say something about the death of cinema?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UeGXB2NjR8

wtf is that sad ass nonsense

Next year:

Ant-Man 3, Creed 3, Shazam! 2, John Wick 4, Dungeons & Dragons, Super Mario Bros., Guardians of the Galaxy 3, Fast 10, Spider-verse 2, Transformers 7, The Flash, Indiana Jones 5, Mission: Impossible 7, Barbie, The Marvels, Dune 2, Hunger Games 5, Ghostbusters 5, Aquaman 2

i'm considering re-upping my membership at IFC for the upcoming year and camping out there

hey, don't lump Barbie in with that junk

Bring back the “Blondie” and “Andy Hardy” series you cowards.

spiderverse 2 will be good

but i mean, y’know

I will see 8 of those in the theater.

doing your part to keep the cinema alive!

John Wick will be good and Barbie might be but other than that... yikes

i will of course see MI

Raise your standards everyone.

...

...

... I will see Indiana Jones 5.

doing your part to keep the cinema alive!

I will see at least five of them but at least one of those I will swipe for another movie and go into the “wrong” theatre

also but: I will have seen 120 films in a cinema during 2022 (counting repeat viewings)

Don't know where else to put this: I recently read there was a 90s Disney film with Gérard Depardieu and Katherine Heigl. He plays her dad but he pretends to be her pimp boyfriend. I checked and this really does exist.

https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/amc-theaters-to-change-ticket-prices-based-on-seat-location/

I've taken to chiding that movies/cinema are entering their "opera phase," in that it's moved from being a mass culture art form to a specialized taste.

Oof, let them at least be poetry or the novel before going straight to opera.

As I posted on a different thread, Searching for Mr. Rugoff (on the Criterion Channel, or $4 from YouTube) is a very good Death of Cinema film.

Bring back the “Blondie” and “Andy Hardy” series you cowards.

― Lord Pickles (Boring, Maryland), Friday, December 16, 2022 6:38 PM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

Gritty reboots in 3...2...1...

https://postlmg.cc/zyC68HLk

Yeah Vue cinemas have been doing this in the UK for awhile. "Premium" seats in the middle that are wider, covered in leather, I think they cost £2 more per seat. Of course the cinema's hardly ever more than like a quarter full so you can just go sit up there on a normal ticket if you want. There's no premium seat police who come around checking tickets.

this is going to change the old canard to "aw, u can't pay your rent? maybe skip going to the movies"

The movie theater is and always has been a sacred democratic space for all and this new initiative by @AMCTheatres would essentially penalize people for lower income and reward for higher income.

— Elijah Wood (@elijahwood) February 6, 2023

last night i saw a movie at IFC and they have seat arms that lift and the house was mostly empty so i was able to make my own couch. i recommend it!

IFC is such a weird space, I don’t really like it

I have made it my main weird space for many years.

There is a theatre by us with wide reclining comfy chairs that also have heaters. Like they want me to fall asleep and miss the movie.

I think picking seats is such a PIA, period. Throw in price ranges and ... fuck that. How are they even going to enforce it?

The IPIC theater in Maryland has had some form of seat surcharges as long since it opened. I've never been there (for that and other reasons), so I can't say to what degree it works.

they enforce it for real at Nitehawk and Alamo but that's because they are selling you food

Saw this trailer yesterday:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tDrxxjumYA

The similarity to both The Fabelmans and Empire of Light in the "light becomes stories/stories become films" bit--a variation on scenes in the other two--jumped out. I'm sure there'll be more of these elegies-for-a-vanishing-art in the near future.

In an Oppenheimer pre-show that must have lasted 30 minutes, we had to put up with a bunch of those non-trailers where they interview cast members on the movie instead of an actual trailer. In two of them, people (David Harbour one of them) made the same point: how amazing and courageous it was because you think this thing that you're watching--car crash, explosion, whatever--is CGI, but it was real people doing real stunts.

Not actually depressing, but somewhere on that continuum. This is what amounts to the new Italian neo-realism: hey, it's real people, not CGI.

Yeah I'm sure that's not the first time I've seen that kind of thing used as a selling point.

Hence why I show up 15-20 minutes before start time. I don't wanna watch pre-shows or trailers -- gimme the movie.

lol AFTER start time

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/martin-scorsese-urges-filmmakers-fight-010914512.html

get 'em!

related, my 12 year old has tapped out on Marvel and Star Wars now (though we'll likely watch Andor S2 whenever that premieres, which is fine by me.) he was really into watching Hangover Square and M Hulot's Holiday recently, i think they really just worked for him as immersive and surprising viewing experiences. having been immersed in watching a lot of green screen films with dumb quips and slumming actors over the last few years, i hope this trend continues. we're gonna try to dig into some classic spookfests this month, maybe some Karloff/Lugosi classics, Hammer horror, etc.

I think the enemy is franchises in general and if people are genuinely sick of Marvel and DC superhero films I fear huge IP owners will just use whatever they own that is in different genres and maybe be very discreet about being Marvel, Disney films.
Huge IP owners and studios might give more creative freedom, maybe make some genuinely great films and then take away creative control when they think they can milk a formula or milk nostalgia for that time they made good films of Jonah Hex and Willie Lumpkin. Apparently big studios only let people try new things when the formulas stop working.

i'm trying to think of a franchise i'm not sick of, maybe Mission Impossible but I haven't seen #7 yet.

also probably the minority opinion here, by some distance, but after the last John Wick film i just wondered what the point of the whole thing was. the "world-building" didn't really add up to much in the end, just a lot of flourishes that were interesting but not a lot more, the style of the thing and the aesthetic was so impressive but i didn't feel anything except impressed. zero emotional attachment to any character, really. they just milked that first film for everything it was worth, created a new type of action genre in a way, all this creative talent largely for naught. i can't say i wasn't mostly entertained but the last one was as long as The Godfather and started to feel like it. i think this last one for whatever reason made me question the whole series and why i should bother watching movies along those lines with the limited time i've got.