Theater vs. Home Theater?

[3-LockBox]

Yep, all great movies. I also saw "Best Years" for the first time a couple of years ago . . . I expect it to be remade before too long. Hopefully with it's poignancy intact.

Its one of those, "if it ain't broke...don't fix it" things. It should just be left alone.

As to ground breaking movies and CGI, ect. ect. I saw "The Best Years of Our Lives" for the first time a couple of weeks ago on PBS

Where the hell have you two been? I saw Best Years Of Our Lives when I was a kid. Great movie though.

But if you guys have a real zen for classic movies, there's an old movie with Orson Wells in it, Citizen Kane I think is the name, that you might want to see.

[Woochifer]

JSE -

Sorry to drop by after the keg's been tapped out, but I got a little bit lost on the way! Besides, I'm sure you got a few cold ones hiding out in the back of the fridge that I can raid!

Anyway, on topic, I also don't go to theaters nearly as much as I used to. I think the theater going experience with all the new megaplexes is much more generic yet so much more of a hassle with the traffic and crowds. Even in a dense city like San Francisco, the neighborhood movie theater is rapidly becoming a thing of the past, and I think that rootedness in the moviegoing experience is now totally missing since theaters are no longer a part of the neighborhood.

And I totally agree with you on the crowds. Audiences treat the theater like it's their birthright to prop their feet up on the seat in front of them and talk away like they're at home. If it's not the chattering, it's the cell phones, and even the text messaging can be distracting. Moviegoing in itself is not really an event or a special outing anymore, and the megaplex experience seems to embody that. The theaters don't even tell you which auditorium is showing which movie unless you ask at the box office, making it more difficult to plan the moviegoing around seeing a movie on the larger screen.

I think there are some remedies though to making moviegoing more of a special event. First off, there are the IMAX releases. My wife and I recently saw Spider-Man 3 in IMAX, and that was a definite cut above the usual cookie cutter megaplex screen. First off, the image and audio quality were stellar. Very reminiscent of when I used to seek out theaters showing certain movies in 70mm.

Also, in IMAX you will get a somewhat different crowd. Less of the talking teens, and a generally more considerate audience. Aside from the appreciation for better picture and sound quality, I think a big part of this is the higher ticket price. The regular admission at that theater is $11, but $14 for the IMAX screening. To me, an extra $3 to see a movie in IMAX is no big deal, but to someone who has more of a casual interest in the movie or sees moviegoing as just another way to pass a few hours, that $3 might be a bigger deal or having to schedule around the IMAX screening times rather than taking the next available show at some generic auditorium.

In L.A., the Arclight Cinema totally gets it right. They provide reserved seating, larger seats, wider aisles, top notch presentation quality, and they station ushers near the doors to make sure that cell phones are turned off and people aren't talking. In return for all of these extra services, they charge $14 for weekend admission ($12 on weeknights), but to me it's totally worthwhile, because the audience that theater attracts loves movies and loves the big screen experience. Not sure if that kind of theater would work in other cities (since L.A. is a company town), but it provides a model for how a modern multiscreen theater can make for more enjoyable moviegoing.

[Woochifer]

Will these movies ever have the social currency that Star Wars did? Probably not. But Starwars isn't all that great of a product to begin with. The acting is bad. The plots are lifted. The writing is so-so. The product today is still good. It's just that popculture is evermore compartmentalized and individualized. I'm not going to listen to Top 40 when I have 200 XM stations to choose from. Same with movies. But to blame the product is to miss the mark. Sure your going to get crap like Epic Movie. But, that low brow crap has always exisisted. To pine for the lost golden age of Hollywood is to rewrite history that ignores the 1000s of B movies that kids loved and directly inspired Star Wars, Raiders, and The Godfather.

I think another aspect that has diminished the "event" nature of moviegoing is simply how the release schedules have evolved.

Back in the era of Star Wars you did not have mass releases with 4,000+ screens on opening weekend. Nor did you have home video releases coming out within a few months. The DVD has changed moviegoing into a virtual infomercial for the home video release, and movie releases are now all about the opening weekend box office numbers.

In order to see Star Wars, you had to either seek out the theater showing it (which might not have been close by), or wait until the print arrived at your neighborhood movie theater. And then, you had people lining up for hours on end so that they could get tickets to that day's screenings, and then wait hours more to get in. With mass releases and 20+ screen megaplexes, the crowds just get funneled into whatever auditorium is screening the movie next.

Before Star Wars even came out on home video in 1981, it got at least two theatrical re-releases. In order to see Star Wars again, you had to go to the theater again, since there was no place to simply buy or rent a copy for home viewing. While home video made it possible to watch movies at one's convenience, it also wiped out the market for second run and repertory theaters.

The last movie I can recall that became a phenomenon where audiences would line up to see the movie repeatedly over the course of several months was Titanic. Even if a movie comes out and resonates with audiences to that degree, I'm not sure how long a studio would let a movie linger in theaters since now they can make so much more from a major DVD hit than a long-term theatrical release (contractually, movie theaters will typically take a progressively greater percentage of the box office receipts as a release goes further into its theatrical run).

[JSE]

JSE -

Sorry to drop by after the keg's been tapped out, but I got a little bit lost on the way! Besides, I'm sure you got a few cold ones hiding out in the back of the fridge that I can raid!

Anyway, on topic, I also don't go to theaters nearly as much as I used to. I think the theater going experience with all the new megaplexes is much more generic yet so much more of a hassle with the traffic and crowds. Even in a dense city like San Francisco, the neighborhood movie theater is rapidly becoming a thing of the past, and I think that rootedness in the moviegoing experience is now totally missing since theaters are no longer a part of the neighborhood.

And I totally agree with you on the crowds. Audiences treat the theater like it's their birthright to prop their feet up on the seat in front of them and talk away like they're at home. If it's not the chattering, it's the cell phones, and even the text messaging can be distracting. Moviegoing in itself is not really an event or a special outing anymore, and the megaplex experience seems to embody that. The theaters don't even tell you which auditorium is showing which movie unless you ask at the box office, making it more difficult to plan the moviegoing around seeing a movie on the larger screen.

I think there are some remedies though to making moviegoing more of a special event. First off, there are the IMAX releases. My wife and I recently saw Spider-Man 3 in IMAX, and that was a definite cut above the usual cookie cutter megaplex screen. First off, the image and audio quality were stellar. Very reminiscent of when I used to seek out theaters showing certain movies in 70mm.

Also, in IMAX you will get a somewhat different crowd. Less of the talking teens, and a generally more considerate audience. Aside from the appreciation for better picture and sound quality, I think a big part of this is the higher ticket price. The regular admission at that theater is $11, but $14 for the IMAX screening. To me, an extra $3 to see a movie in IMAX is no big deal, but to someone who has more of a casual interest in the movie or sees moviegoing as just another way to pass a few hours, that $3 might be a bigger deal or having to schedule around the IMAX screening times rather than taking the next available show at some generic auditorium.

In L.A., the Arclight Cinema totally gets it right. They provide reserved seating, larger seats, wider aisles, top notch presentation quality, and they station ushers near the doors to make sure that cell phones are turned off and people aren't talking. In return for all of these extra services, they charge $14 for weekend admission ($12 on weeknights), but to me it's totally worthwhile, because the audience that theater attracts loves movies and loves the big screen experience. Not sure if that kind of theater would work in other cities (since L.A. is a company town), but it provides a model for how a modern multiscreen theater can make for more enjoyable moviegoing.

I could not have said it better myself.

Every summer the wife and I go up to Michigan to visit her family. We go to a small town named Bad Axe, Yes, Bad Axe! The original theater still has it's doors open. It's was a small one theater joint but they have since enclosed the balcony to make a small theater upstairs. The downstairs main theater still has vintage seats, wood floors, curtains, etc. Not the best screen and sound in the world but it's just fun. We see one or two movies there every year. I love gping to that place because it's treats every show like an event. I wish there were more places like this still around. While I completely agree about the "awesomeness" of IMAX and prefer them over standard theaters, IMAX, 70mm, Love seats, drink holders, huge screens can't beat the Bad Axe Theater.

Bad picture but,

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jse-ima...7594320877909/

JSE