In December, Regal Entertainment Group said it would install digital-projection systems in 375 theaters during 2003. Regal has cut a deal with Turner Broadcasting System and NBC to show programming from those networks before feature films. That means, according to various news reports, that moviegoers in key markets will soon be enjoying a 20-minute programming "pre-show" block, comprising four three-minute shorts plus advertisements, that will screen before features.

Moviegoers in Colorado and California got to watch a Rose Bowl game in HD at Regal theaters last year, and these folks have already broadcast stuff like Korn and Tom Petty concerts into movie theaters. This is no doubt good news for the beleaguered multiplex industry, which must be salivating at the prospect of getting out from under the thumb of Hollywood, and I don’t think it’s a blow to cinema history if Just Married gets squeezed off of a few screens once a week in favor of Monday Night Football. But can it be more than a matter of time before shot-on-video pro-wrestling epics start charting on the weekend box office reports? And should that matter to me, as long as I still have an arthouse to go running to? More to the point, is Adam freaking Sandler's Eight Crazy Nights necessarily a higher form of entertainment than the Super Bowl? If not, why do I feel so defensive about all this?

You know that part of the Madonna song from that James Bond movie where she sings, "I will avoid the cliché?" Well, the Online Film Critics Society didn’t. The group, of which I'm a member, just voted The Two Towers best movie of 2002. Far From Heaven apparently came in a close second.

On the heels of the news that Abel Ferrara's early porn film, 9 Lives of a Wet Pussy, is now available on DVD comes the wild rumor (via Mobius, natch) that Wes Craven directed his own hardcore feature, titled Fireworks Woman. Oh, I want to believe, I really do. Since these things come in threes, there's also a query at Mobius about porn films on which Barry Sonnenfeld may have been cinematographer. If you've got the goods, please let these folks know. Thanks buds.

Battle Royale dominates Mike D'Angelo's poll of undistributed films from 2000. Fortunately, a lot of this stuff is available cheap on Asian DVDs, and Wild Zero is actually coming from Synapse Films (along with Singapore Sling!).
http://www.synapse-films.com/

As part of my quest to promote the forthcoming By Brakhage DVD from Criterion, I've been posting some stories about Stan Brakhage to the Criterion Collection Forum. Nothing earth-shaking, but maybe of some interest.

Oolong is dead. Long live Oolong.

Comments

Uh oh, now with glorified digital TV being shown in theaters, will people feel even more like they're in their own living rooms, with the talking, and the cell-phoning, and the snacking, and the running-around-ing, hey?

I've seen one digitally-projected film, ATTACK OF THE CLONES, and thought it looked pretty awful during still scenes - the "pixels" were really obvious and although there were no scratches and no dirt, round objects and text were heavily aliased. If the movies aren't going to look any better than my home theater then there's not much point in going out to the multi-plexes.

Posted by: Scott Faulkner at January 10, 2024 02:53 PM

I'm not bothered by the idea of showing TV in movie theaters - after all, that's what JACKASS: THE MOVIE was. I don't particularly want to sit through 3 shorts and - more to the point - a whole bunch of commercials before getting to the feature. Considering how much theater tickets and concessions cost in New York, do theaters really need to offer us any more commercials to pay their bills? Those monitors every 5 feet in the Regal theaters showing music videos and trailers are annoying enough.

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