Watching films at the cinema - also, RIP David Lynch.

[BookTenTiger]

With a 3 year old at home, going to the movies has become a real treat for my wife and I. We probably go every 3 months or so when we can get a babysitter or when we are visiting our parents.

It does feel different, especially if you can catch the movie in a big crowd that's buying into it. When I think back on watching No Country For Old Men on its opening weekend, or Whiplash, or Cloverfield... The audiences were so into the movie that it made the experience even better.

That said, the convenience of watching a movie at home can't be beat! We don't have a TV, but we have a projector and screen we bring out every other week or so to watch something after the little one goes to bed. We plug in our headphones and can watch stuff on a pretty big screen. But... it's definitely not the same as being part of a crowd that's all enjoying the same cinema experience!

 

[Ath'kethin]

I still love the theater experience, but it's rare that I actually go. I belong to a movie club that charges me like $11 a month and for that I get a movie ticket, so my wife and I go to these movies about once every 2 to 3 months. The club gives me like 20% r something off concessions, too, so we tend to make a night of it and do the full theater experience.

The only real downside to this whole thing is that the club/tickets are only good at one theater in town, and of course it's a big multiplex thing. I wish they could be used at the tiny arthouse theater downtown, as the movies shown there tend to be much more interesting.

 

[CellarHeroes]

The loss of David Lynch was definitely a punch to the gut. I was optimistic to believe that he would release something else like Duran Duran: Unstaged.

I live in a rural community...the bowling alley closed, 3 bars (4 if you count Applebee's), 29 churches (no, really), and a 3-screen movie theater. Seeing a movie isn't so much an event around here, it's just something you do when you're bored.

My wife and I do make plans, reservations, and a 45-minute drive whenever Rifftrax has a live event. We may find a movie every year or two that is a "must see", but we usually don't even pay attention to what's coming soon.

 

[payn]

We used to have an affordable and strong secondary film scene here in the Twin Cities. Thats completely changed. There are a few places in the city that run old films at a reasonable price, but then the only alternative outside the city is Alamo draft House. While I like Alamo a lot, specifically becasue of events and second runs, its not very affordable for most people at least to do regularly.

...and really thats what is all about, people. Getting them to the cinema to experience a movie together. It's just not something we do anymore. I just got back from a family vacation with at least a dozen people. When I was a kid, something like this would be filled with shared meals, movies, experiences, etc.. Most kids just vanished to their room to their phones. Everybody was disconnected into their own world and had no desire to share one. In fact, it was irritating to them to do so for any amount of time.

Expand that to American society, at least, and folks just dont collectively share in person anymore. I mean, they do, but its social media commenting that often lacks a discourse and is just drive by sniping. Its in, and then its out, just as fast. Those kids on my vacation were devastated by tiktok ban, and its hard to relate. I suppose, it would be like TV going off the air for me as a kid. I dont know...

I dont think anything is particularly magical about the theater, its always been about the experience. People helped make that happen, and they just dont anymore. YMMV.

 

[jian]

We used to have an affordable and strong secondary film scene here in the Twin Cities. Thats completely changed. There are a few places in the city that run old films at a reasonable price, but then the only alternative outside the city is Alamo draft House. While I like Alamo a lot, specifically becasue of events and second runs, its not very affordable for most people at least to do regularly.

...and really thats what is all about, people. Getting them to the cinema to experience a movie together. It's just not something we do anymore. I just got back from a family vacation with at least a dozen people. When I was a kid, something like this would be filled with shared meals, movies, experiences, etc.. Most kids just vanished to their room to their phones. Everybody was disconnected into their own world and had no desire to share one. In fact, it was irritating to them to do so for any amount of time.

Expand that to American society, at least, and folks just dont collectively share in person anymore. I mean, they do, but its social media commenting that often lacks a discourse and is just drive by sniping. Its in, and then its out, just as fast. Those kids on my vacation were devastated by tiktok ban, and its hard to relate. I suppose, it would be like TV going off the air for me as a kid. I dont know...

I dont think anything is particularly magical about the theater, its always been about the experience. People helped make that happen, and they just dont anymore. YMMV.

It is one of those “life is changing” issues, isn’t it? I grew up with everyone talking about what had been on the telly last night but now you can’t do that, nobody watches the same things (and many people don’t watch television of any kind, including streaming) and presumably in generations past people talked more about what they all saw at the local cinema because there was no other mass entertainment. But now more than ever, we all consume media extremely individually but at the same time on a much bigger scale collectively, so one TikTok video will have had more viewers than any one movie in the history of mankind but at the same time nobody you know will have watched it.

 

[payn]

But now more than ever, we all consume media extremely individually but at the same time on a much bigger scale collectively, so one TikTok video will have had more viewers than any one movie in the history of mankind but at the same time nobody you know will have watched it.

Boom. Yeap, Im not sure how to navigate that change, but I dont think its entirely bad. I also know that you cant take an internet social media addict and put them in a theater and make cinema magic happen. I think that is lost on a lot of commentators on the subject.

 

[KYRON45]

I can watch movies on my phone in the closet at work.
Were all doomed!!!

 

[Ryujin]

I used to love going to the cinema. I'd go out for a morning motorcycle ride and then catch a cut-rate matinee of some current release. Later on, when my work schedule resulted in me being done by 1:00pm-2:00pm every day, I'd head out to watch something in a virtually empty theatre during the week. The way that theatres are currently doing business, in my area, has pretty much killed that for me. Everything seems to be reserved seating. The theatre could have all of 3 people in it and if I haven't bought the more expensive middle seats, I'm likely to get kicked out of them. It doesn't matter if they're completely empty. Stupid. They'd rather make more of nothing, than a little of something.

 

[jian]

Boom. Yeap, Im not sure how to navigate that change, but I dont think its entirely bad. I also know that you cant take an internet social media addict and put them in a theater and make cinema magic happen. I think that is lost on a lot of commentators on the subject.

Oh yes, there’s definitely overlap. There are silos (statistically speaking) but at the same time people cross silos all the time. It’s not predictable individually, but it is predictable on a population level. Everyone has so many choices now.

(I was recently reading about Charles Dickens and how gobsmacked he was that so many people came to his talks on his tours of America in 1842 and 1867, and that he might have been the single most influential and most consumed creator in the English-speaking world at that point, and that was kind of amazing to a guy who wrote serials in a newspaper in London. But that was the birth of mass media - in a significant minority of homes across the U.K., the US, Canada, Australia etc, a major form of entertainment was someone reading the latest episode of Oliver Twist from the paper to their family every week. So when Charles Dickens himself turned up to your town for one night only to read excerpts from Bleak House, you all went and fainted in the aisles to hear the actual guy read his own words.)

 

[ART!]

For me, any movie worth seeing is worth seeing on the big screen.