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Posted
On 3/5/2025 at 12:21 PM, Reynolds Woodcock said:

There is a revenue factor, sure, but making movies is an art form. Like any other art form, the artist wants their product to be consumed in an ideal viewing experience to the greatest extent possible. Watching Oppenheimer on your run of the mill TV with factory speakers (and , god forbid, motion smoothing) is like looking at a screensaver of Guernica.

I think this is a big part of it. I haven't gone to a non-Alamo theater in at least a decade because they do a great job of getting rid of many of the things that suck about other theaters - hordes of unaccompanied high-schoolers, people on their phones, people talking, etc. The pre-shows aren't commercials but montages of interesting footage that somehow relates to the film. And put me in the pro-trailer club - I love seeing glimpses of what's coming up and getting excited about what to see next.

That said, it's still expensive, especially if you're eating and drinking. These days, I tend to ration my movie-going to stuff that seems made to watch on a big screen or with a big group, or things that my kids want to see. Anything else I stream. As they've gotten older, movies have stayed the thing that we all still love, so when one of them asks if we can go see something in the the theater, it's usually an easy yes. And I still love going to the movies by myself. If I find myself with a day off from work and nothing else to do, that's usually where I end up.

The last component, and what I think Sean Baker was really getting at, is that we miss the community aspect of movie-going when we watch at home, and that community aspect is worth more than we think. I think about this often as I sit at my house with everyone in the same room, but on their individual laptops watching stuff by themselves with their Airpods in. The movies are one of the few experiences left where you really have to all focus on the same thing at the same time. I'm extremely introverted, and if left to my own devices, I could easily get lost in my own head, my own books, my own computer, forever, with nary a word spoken to someone else. And while that's honestly the dream, I don't think it's the best thing for me, or society in general. 

Anyway, that ended up being a lot longer than I planned. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

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Posted
On 3/6/2025 at 12:38 AM, High Plains Drifter said:

 

I also miss dollar theaters. No fucks given at those things. 

But I really miss drive ins. Parents took me to see Smokey and the Bandit and Jaws as a double feature back in the day.

 

Speaking of drive ins, any of you old pervs ever go to the drive in porn theater that used to be off of Smith School Road in far south Austin? They closed down sometime in the early 80s. 

We got to the drive in in new braunfels all the time. Even saw Jaws there last summer.

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Posted (edited)
4 minutes ago, High Plains Drifter said:

 

There is a drive in in New Braunfels? I did not know that. 

 

 

https://driveinusa.com
 

It’s FM audio so that part just is what it is. But it’s nice to sit out in the lawn chair with some popcorn. Plus they do some good double features.
On weekend nights they do police the lot pretty well. Occasionally there is some idiot that doesn’t turn their car off and some high school kid on a golf cart goes and yells at them.

Edited by hobbes2702
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Posted

i absolutely love going to the movies. our first date we saw Rising Sun at The Arbor. some of it is definitely nostalgia.

but honestly it's mostly bc i just could not imagine seeing a new Tarantino or PTA or Nolan or Coen bros. picture on anything other than the big screen. or Spielberg or Cruise or Scorcese or whoever...

like, i saw Dune 2 twice in theater and once in our decked out basement theater room and the latter did not compare.

we just went to an Interstellar re-release at our fantastic Harkins CineXL theater a couple weeks ago and it was an incredible experience, reminiscent of seeing Aliens or Empire Strikes back when i was young. 

going to the movies has been an integral part of my life experience that i hope i can enjoy until i physically can't anymore.

 

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Posted
6 hours ago, seven said:

The theater doesn't let me smoke a bowl during the movie. Hard pass. 

Bowl in the car before, pen in my pocket for “restroom break”. Or pop a gummy.

Buddy and I got extremely lit before we saw dark knight rises in theater. Too bad that movie sucked asses 

Posted
On 3/4/2025 at 1:30 PM, Aqua Buddha said:

#3.  100%.  We legitimately like going to the movies but most of the movies we want to see either aren't anywhere near us or in some obscure theater at an odd time.  I want to see Anora, Babygirl, and The Substance but I can't find any other them so I'm just waiting until they come out on streaming.

Instead, all of the theaters are stacked with cartoons and comic book movies.

i feel like the message from the academy is "fuck your experience or economics and go back to supporting our mass-market bullshit so we can stay special and rich and feel good about ourselves voting for not-mass-market bullshit"

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Posted
On 3/5/2025 at 12:05 PM, utee94 said:

But my question to the folks at the Oscars insisting that we should go to movies in public theaters is... Why?

Is it because THEY make more money that way?  If so, why should I care about that?

Is it because THEY believe it's a better viewing experience?  Plenty of people on this thread are stating that for them personally, it is not.

Is it for the sake of nostalgia?  If so, why should that be a compelling point for people who don't feel nostalgic about it?

WHY should we lament the loss of 1,000 screens over the past couple of years any more than we lament the loss of 9,000 Blockbuster Video stores since 2004?  

they will tell us it's about better experience, community and nostalgia

reality is they have a network of distributors and theater owners they want to keep fat and happy and the yzoomers can't detach their fones from their faces

in the end the studios will get their hundreds of millions from the next cgi 120' 4D ejaculation but there are too many screens sitting empty and if they lose big screens it will cut in to their ejaculation profit and shrink the top-end of the industry

tl/dr: it not about us it's about them

Posted
10 minutes ago, Hagbard Celine said:

they will tell us it's about better experience, community and nostalgia

or movie-goers will tell you it's about all that. which i literally just did three posts up lol

i mean my perspective is all about me 😁

 

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Posted
On 3/5/2025 at 12:21 PM, Reynolds Woodcock said:

There is a revenue factor, sure, but making movies is an art form. Like any other art form, the artist wants their product to be consumed in an ideal viewing experience to the greatest extent possible. Watching Oppenheimer on your run of the mill TV with factory speakers (and , god forbid, motion smoothing) is like looking at a screensaver of Guernica.

If streaming only replaced blockbuster on a 1:1 basis, there would be no issue. It's the fact that it's aggressively eating away at the theatrical viewing opportunities. The better comparison is really the replacement of vinyl records and CDs with compressed audio files as the primary form of music consumption. Sure, you have any song any time you want, but the tradeoff is losing much of the quality of the product as originally created.    

my question to the academy is how many voters paid their own money to watch oppenheimer on a large public screen and spent their own money on rotgut and endured 25 minutes of retinastorm eardrumcannon before the film?

Posted
2 minutes ago, mchookem said:

or movie-goers will tell you it's about all that. which i literally just did three posts up lol

i mean my perspective is all about me 😁

 

i'm reading all the posts from the beginning and haven't gotten to yours yet - my apologies

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Posted
On 3/5/2025 at 1:09 PM, Captain Ron said:

BTW team theater. Yeah, I have a home setup that is pretty good. I like the experience with others. Seeing moments like

 

 

or

 

 

This just hit differently when you hear the audience gasp or the the cheers of the crowd. I wouldn't trade that for anything.

you are absolutely right but both of those were made before the current paradigm took hold - lotr was filming right now 25 years ago

if "hollywood" is serious about this appeal, then they need to organize a national program to use big screens for school kids during the day and disney (starwars) and newline/warner (tolkien) can forego their rights fees for screenings of lucas 4/5/6 and jackson 1/2/3 to program the alphas en masse

and han shot first, get off my lawn

Posted
On 3/6/2025 at 2:24 AM, notre dame joe said:

tarantino: it's a collective shared experience that you remember

i don't remember lucas5 or jackson2 because i was with other people - the majesty of those moments on a big screen are the same with or without "community"

the shared/collective argument is bullshit

again does qt venture out in public and watch anora in a megaplex?

when the academy proves it eats it's own dog food i might sympathize with their predicament

 

Posted
On 3/6/2025 at 9:50 AM, BurdineBandit said:

I'm sure there's some nostalgia at play, but I still love the big-screen, dark theater experience. 

everyone posting here loves the dark theater experience

it's the enshitification that's the problem

Posted
On 3/7/2025 at 8:07 AM, austingirl said:

The last component, and what I think Sean Baker was really getting at, is that we miss the community aspect of movie-going when we watch at home, and that community aspect is worth more than we think

put aside communing with your family before or after the film

do you commune with strangers before or after?

please do not take this as being antagonistic

i just do not get this community reason for going

Posted
4 hours ago, Hagbard Celine said:

put aside communing with your family before or after the film

do you commune with strangers before or after?

please do not take this as being antagonistic

i just do not get this community reason for going

I mean, I guess it's like going to a football game vs watching it at home. 

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Posted

It’s not just the one thing. It’s the dismal tide. 
 

Too expensive. Big screens are cheap. Not as many good movies. Here’s a take on why that last one is:

 

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Posted
6 hours ago, Hagbard Celine said:

i don't remember lucas5 or jackson2 because i was with other people - the majesty of those moments on a big screen are the same with or without "community"

the shared/collective argument is bullshit

again does qt venture out in public and watch anora in a megaplex?

when the academy proves it eats it's own dog food i might sympathize with their predicament

 

You think watching Empire for the first time at home while partially doom scrolling/texting is equivalent to seeing it in a big screen with a group of people collectively having their mind blown? 

Posted

I saw Pulp Fiction in the theater, late in its run. I was the only one in the theater. It was the best movie experience ever. Fuck the "community" bullshit.

Posted

I would hate for theaters to close. They’re an experience that I look forward to and plan for. The big screen and comfortable seats are a plus today that I didn’t have growing up. I would hate for that to be gone because of low attendance.so I feel it so important to support them. The biggest problem I’m having is the lack of good films to watch. I really wanted to go Friday and there was zero movies that interested me. 

Posted
5 hours ago, austingirl said:

I mean, I guess it's like going to a football game vs watching it at home. 

But at a football game, we're all rooting for a common cause. I want the people around me to make noise. I like high-fiving strangers. 

I have never done any of those things at a move theater.

Posted
22 minutes ago, HornOnTheBayou said:

But at a football game, we're all rooting for a common cause. I want the people around me to make noise. I like high-fiving strangers. 

I have never done any of those things at a move theater.

Well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

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Posted
51 minutes ago, Brandywine said:

The biggest problem I’m having is the lack of good films to watch.

ain't that the truth.  it doesn't take much to get me to a theater but there just isn't much coming out these days that's much of a draw.

Posted
2 minutes ago, futureman said:

ain't that the truth.  it doesn't take much to get me to a theater but there just isn't much coming out these days that's much of a draw.

The death of the comedy movie is the main reason for this imo. We still get the big blockbuster movies from franchises, Ip, and big time directors, but we no longer get the stuff in between. 
Basically the only theater caliber stuff we get is that which I mentioned and horror (which is confined to a couple months a year).

Posted
12 hours ago, Reynolds Woodcock said:

You think watching Empire for the first time at home while partially doom scrolling/texting is equivalent to seeing it in a big screen with a group of people collectively having their mind blown? 

No but he has his hand at all times clutching the remote.

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