Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Various Things That Occured to Me at the Cinema

I went to see The Fountain this afternoon (I'll write about it tomorrow) and in regards to the experience, there are 3 or 4 points I'd like to make if I may:

1) There are a lot of people out and about in the middle of day during the week. I never really thought about it before, but there is a large portion of our population (at least here in Fresno) that does not work the regular M-F 8/9-5/6.

2) Movie theaters would probably sell more "combo packs" if they were discounted. Selling me a "Medium Combo" that is a regular priced popcorn and a regular priced medium drink does not constitute a "combo". And while I'm at it, there is no reason anyone should pay $5 for a soda, $4 for a bag of skittles, or $8 for popcorn, regardless of size or how hungry/thirsty you may be.

3) There are too many movies being released these days. It seems every weekend there are 4,5,6 new movies, it's impossible for anyone to keep up. Just this week we saw the wide release of Bobby, Deja Vu, Deck the Halls, The Fountain, Tenacious D, and For Your Consideration, not to mention various other indies/docs that come out every week in LA/NY.
I saw a stat last week that said the average American goes to the movies 4.77 times per year (2nd only to Iceland), but at the rate we release movies, that's not even enough times in one year to see all the movies released this past week. This, I think more than anything else has contributed to mass amounts of DVD sales/rentals; it's not that people don't want to go to theater, it's that the movies are in and out so quick there's no chance if you don't go in the first 2 or 3 weekends.

4) Jennifer Connelly.....wow

now, 5) There needs to be a way to soundproof theaters so that if I am watching a relatively quiet movie I'm being bothered by the incessant blasts coming from the action movie in the theater adjacent. And there is readily available technology to block cell phone signals from coming into the theater, and it is ridiculous that theaters don't take advantage.

6) Generally speaking, the better the movie, the better the audience.

(for those who didn't catch the obvious Dr. Strangelove reference in this post...shame on you for your cinematic illiteracy)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

arent their so many more movies becaue there are so many more niches. like borat is for one crowd, bobby is for another. No longer are film studios trying to make movies for everyone its niche marketing. In order to maximize profits they realease movies for short time in theater to get the die hards and the recoup the rest in DVD sales.
-chester