Where's the cinema gone?
I was very disheartened to read recently from friends
that they had stopped going to the cinema, due to anti-social behaviour by fellow patrons as well as the general high prices.
Economics and antisocial behaviour aside, it is a general reflection on a medium that still has the ability to thrill and entertain (and inform). but in a progressively smaller environment. What seems especially depressing is that these same people are the audience to whom modern cinema had recently targeted. This blogpage has charted in previous years how the fantasy blockbuster has gradually taken over movie production, and cerebral or "quality" films at the top production level are now extremely selective. Films like Gone with the Wind or Gandhi are practically impossible to mount - except perhaps, on television, now that that medium had upped its game, and has in effect colonized many of the quality subjects that would otherwise have been perfect for film.
The so-called "franchise" films meanwhile have their brief run in all the multiplexes, squashing out variety for those 2-3 weeks. then transfer to DVD (or downloads) within a couple of months, before the next blockbuster comes along like the next scheduled service in the timetable. The fact that many of these films don't seem to be stand-alone stories with a traditional beginning, a middle and an end seems lost on most followers - whom, as already mentioned, have stopped going to the cinema in the first place anyway.
So as movies gradually dissolve to the level of a TV video game, the theatrical experience of sitting in a major venue in front of a big screen now becomes a more select activity (significantly, many cinemas now show live theatre or concerts in cinemas as much as movies), with many former mass seater venues now turned into glorified living rooms. The regular cinemagoers, if there are any left, are usually either in the teens or the seniors; the latter offers some hope, as in time those same teenagers will become seniors themselves to appreciate the sort of movies they liked to see when they were younger. If, God willing, there is still a cinema to go to. We watch, and wait.
Economics and antisocial behaviour aside, it is a general reflection on a medium that still has the ability to thrill and entertain (and inform). but in a progressively smaller environment. What seems especially depressing is that these same people are the audience to whom modern cinema had recently targeted. This blogpage has charted in previous years how the fantasy blockbuster has gradually taken over movie production, and cerebral or "quality" films at the top production level are now extremely selective. Films like Gone with the Wind or Gandhi are practically impossible to mount - except perhaps, on television, now that that medium had upped its game, and has in effect colonized many of the quality subjects that would otherwise have been perfect for film.
The so-called "franchise" films meanwhile have their brief run in all the multiplexes, squashing out variety for those 2-3 weeks. then transfer to DVD (or downloads) within a couple of months, before the next blockbuster comes along like the next scheduled service in the timetable. The fact that many of these films don't seem to be stand-alone stories with a traditional beginning, a middle and an end seems lost on most followers - whom, as already mentioned, have stopped going to the cinema in the first place anyway.
So as movies gradually dissolve to the level of a TV video game, the theatrical experience of sitting in a major venue in front of a big screen now becomes a more select activity (significantly, many cinemas now show live theatre or concerts in cinemas as much as movies), with many former mass seater venues now turned into glorified living rooms. The regular cinemagoers, if there are any left, are usually either in the teens or the seniors; the latter offers some hope, as in time those same teenagers will become seniors themselves to appreciate the sort of movies they liked to see when they were younger. If, God willing, there is still a cinema to go to. We watch, and wait.
posted by Joe at 11:44 PM
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