Edward Jay Epstein has written a couple of interesting articles over at Slate Magazine. The first concerns the clever way Indie filmmakers exploit star power to make their movies and the other is about the recent announcement by Robert Iger, the soon to be new head of Disney, talking about narrowing the timeframe between cinema and DVD releases.
Epstein goes so far as to say that Disney is in talks with Comcast (a major US cable provider) about showing their shows, and possibly their movies, very shortly after their initial airing. There’s an undercurrent in the article that suggests cinema chains might as well give up now as their on a downward slope.
The article also quote stats to show that cinema attendance hasn’t just suddenly dipped this year, but has been on a downward trend since the forties and the introduction of TV. Although the UK seems to be suffering much less. As someone who is in an area where they’re building a new cinema, I’d like to think attendance has shown that there is a demand for it.
I have to say I can see his point, but that’s not to say I agree with it. I’ve stated before the I don’t ever see cinema-going completely vanishing, even if only for novelty value. There is something different about a experiencing a film in the cinema, whether it be the group atomosphere or the grand surroundings (every now and again an experience at the cinema leaves a huge mark, I remember seeing Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring with my little sister and during the last battle sequence where Aragorn chops the head off an Uruk-hai there was silence as we stared in awe, relived that he defeated such a fearsome opponent, until a kid shouted ‘Cool!’ This was followed by the emotional scene where Aragorn comforts the dying Boromir and as the music dies the audience was sat in silence, stunned, and my little sister leans over and whispers: ‘Two down, seven to go.’ You don’t get experiences like that at home). I’m not sure what cinemas will have to do to survive, whether it’ll be the business-savvy ones that make it, or whether we will increase our cinema attendance. I am partly hare the view that some cinema owners are experessing: the audience will come back when the quality of the films encourages us to make the pilgrimage.
As I mentioned in a previous article, this isn’t so much that there aren’t good films being made at the moment, more that the current wave of navel-gazing flicks aren’t the sort of thing that get people lining up around the block. In recent years though, we have had the new Star Wars trilogy, the Matrix trilogy, the Lord of the Rings, er, trilogy and the Harry Potter films that have driven people to the cinemas in droves, not to mention films like Spiderman, X-men and Finding Nemo that have made tons of money and broken records. So it’s not like we’ve been lacking, it’s just that this year seems to gave been a bit below par. My cinema-going has dropped right off I’m ashamed to say, but I heard bad news about practically all of the summer movies, so I didn’t bother. You need something grandiose, something with vision and scope, but also with depth. I think the audience is getting tired of no-brain action films, they want something with a quality plot and action, and stars, and romance, not just some cardboard cut-out.
So come on Hollywood, stop this pale adaptations, the endless sequels, the remakes and the copycat films and show us something exciting and, above all, original.
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