Saturday, December 31, 2011

First, quality of product - Or lack thereof.  Roger Ebert: "I'll tell you why movie revenue is dropping."  I think I saw one movie in 2011: "Moneyball" (which was great.)  But for me a big reason why I don't want to sit in a movie audience anymore is the cell phone users.  It's a near-constant distraction to see the glowing screens used by people who are unable to go two hours without texting.

2 comments:

another Eric Lindholm said...

Those are all important reasons, but another big one is that the sound is just way too damn loud. There's simply no reason for the sound effects to be an at ear-splitting volume, other than to enhance the sense of "excitement" that the picture itself can't provide. I have to bring earplugs to any big-studio release, and even then I can expect to be painfully uncomfortable at least a few times during the show. Maybe there was a time in which an assault of sound was an impressive phenomenon in its own right, but we are assuredly not in such a time now. It's inconceivable that anyone would complain if the sound were to be turned down 25%, so why do theaters persistently err on the side of severe unpleasantness?

Eric said...

Heh, there's a Simpsons episode where they're in the movies and it starts with that THX symbol, followed by a sound crescendo.

Hans Moleman's glasses shatter.