I’m coming right out and saying it at the very start of this story. I’m going to stand up and hold my hand up high and say that…
I love DVD and Home Cinema…almost more than the Cinema experience
There. Done it. I’ll explain all the reasons why in a later story, suffice to say for now that when I watch a movie I get sucked in, just like a kid does when they sit and stare amazed at the moving pictures in front of them, that’s me, and that goes for my whole being. I get totally transfixed and outside distractions break that link and pull me right out of the movie. Distractions in the movie do that too, like bad plot lines and characterisations, anyway.
That’s how I get, totally absorbed, 100%, and if anything happens (even the Girlfriend asking a question) it knocks me out of the movie and spoils the experience. So imagine me in a crowded cinema with packet rustlers, seat kickers, popcorn riflers, plot recappers and what-happens-next-ers! Sometimes I don’t understand how people can get a full experience from the cinema unless it’s easy going entertainment. Anyway, I really have to stop this rant, this is for another story! Back to Mr Stone…
So I was surprised to read in Film Rotation (that other excellent movie related Blog) that Sam Riami prefers the Cinema experience to the DVD, and does kind of go on to suggest that he doesn’t like the DVD so much. Now that does surprise me, especially when his DVD’s tend to provide so much more material and insight.
Then today I see a little story on IMDB about a certain quietly spoken Oliver Stone who says:
…he is not at all enthusiastic about the coming of age of DVDs. Video Store magazine quotes him as saying during a recent press event, “It’s the end of movie-movies the way we know them. … If you walk into a room with 5,000 DVDs, how are you going to respect movies? How do you know the good ones?,” Stone asked. “It’s going to the LCD — the lowest common denominator. It’s making movies into supermarket-shelf items, which is probably the best you can get at Wal-Mart. … It’s hopeless.”
I think Mr Stone has just come out of a rather long coma or something, as am I the only one who remembers an item called Videotape, and those places called Video Rental Stores?
Did they signify the death of Cinemas and the Movie experience? No. What they did do is increase accessibility to the Movies and probably had a knock on effect of bringing audiences to the Cinema. Having catalogues of back movies stored in a central location is called a Library my dear Mr Stone, this is a good thing, it means the over rated, over produced pieces of pulp that you so often produce can be kept for posterity and seen by a much wider and unsuspecting audience. Doesn’t that tickle your fancy?
What it does probably mean is that the more discerning Cinema fan, who has gone to the trouble of investigating and building a home system and spending a lot of money in the process, actually enjoys the experience more and appreciates what the Director has created for them. In fact, I would go so far as to say this audience is probably one of the most vocal for pushing to see such things as the Director’s Cut or versions of movies released that were previously banned. The home consumer market did that, not the Studio led, over priced Cinemas!
(Saying that, I do wholly love, and openly plug, three Edinburgh cinema’s Dominion, Cameo and Filmhouse. The latter two showing foreign and independent movies and the former being a wonderful family run cinema)
So, Mr Stone. Next time you think about such comments think about the revenue you receive from this market, the repeated sales from people who have probably already paid an over inflated price to see your film in the Cinema, and are now buying it to watch it again at home, at their leisure, in an environment they can control and possibly with friends who haven’t seen the movie before.
I tell you what is LCD, and that’s Directors stuck in an land before time (and videotape) like you. Now get off your press release high horse and go and make a bloody decent film.
I’m lucky in that I live near a great cinema with audiences to match. But they can’t show everything, which is really where DVD comes in. Not just for the foreign stuff, which is great, but also for single-handedly restoring the great classics of the cinema to their original form.
Amen Richard!! (Much of What I’m going to say re-iterate your points in both the original post and the above comment)
As someone who goes to the cinema over 75 times a year for the past 5 years (Although that has dropped since the two kids have came along!!) I don’t think distributors can argue that I don’t love the cinema experince…Nonetheless over those past 5 years, most of the visits have been at film festivals (where the audience is usually pretty respectful of the film being shown) or Wednesday or Sunday at 10pm or midnight during the summer. It is sad that I have to actively avoid the ‘prime’ cinema-going times of Friday and Saturday night because of the above mentioned distractions (talkers, bag-rattlers, cell/moblile users and the occasional seat-kicker).
While I applaude the suburban megaplexes to finally adding coffee to their concessions (and at a reasonable price to boot), the addition of video arcades, fast food booths and party rooms all make the experience closer to a theme park than ‘going to the movies’. It can be pretty tedious.
Also around 5 years ago when DVD was warming up, I always wanted to build a home theatre, and this year I got the 5.1 channel sound system, a 16:9 Front Projector and a PC engine to drive the hometheatre system. With an 8 foot diagonal screen in a small dedicated room I would find Ned Hinkles arguments moot, I’m sitting 1.5 times the width of the screen away from the screen (which is about where I sit in the movies, so the ‘effect’ is about the same.
The big argument for DVD is that there are few ‘revival’ houses…What if I want to watch Fellini’s “8 1/2” or Visconti’s “The Leopard” and don’t live ‘downtown’ or near a Cinematheque? What If I wanted to watch Nicol’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” before “Closer”. What if I wanted to watch Miike’s “Audition” which never played in my area, etc. etc. The DVD library and access makes the dedicated cinemaphile born after 1970 able to ‘catch up’ with the movies and have a more knowledgable way to appreciate what they are seeing a lot more than seeing “Alexander” or “The Polar Express” on a 50 foot high screen with (usually, but not always) a low projector bulb, sound adjusted waaaay to high and the occasional bad framing. When things are at home, I have control of the quality and setup and can watch without distractions…
Long Live DVD, and the next format (BluRay or HD DVD)…the ‘great’ movies will never die, things will just change…..I for one embrace the change if I have some control over the experience…
A dedicated Cinemaphile,
Kurt Halfyard
Ned, appreciate your comments as someone who owns and operates a cinema catering to the public, but I have no idea what post you are replying to.
You say that anyone who doesn’t want to see a film on the big screen doesn’t love Film, yet reading the post shows that the reasons for not going to the Cinema are because we do love Film, in fact it’s clearly obvious that I do, and it’s clearly obvious that I do love certain cinema’s. It’s the very experience of people kicking seats, playing with wrappered sweets, talking through movies, discussing the plot, dealing with mobiles, getting up to go to the toilet, etc that seriously affect the film experience to that which the Director intended.
If the Director wanted such interruptions surely he would have placed them directly in the movie and had a shadow walk across the screen, or the base repeatedly bounce against the seat as though someone was kicking it, reveal the plot before they intended or even have a voiceover to announce the plot as it happened.
Yes, there is an added experience of seeing the movie on a huge screen and huge speakers bleeding sound across each other in a darkened Cinema, but to truly appreciate the Directors intention for what it is I believe you need to view it without interruptions from the outside world and on a system that can reproduce it as intended.
My home cinema is calibrated against THX and separated speaker audio tests, with the TV calibrated against red, blue and green channels, brightness and contrast against the levels of the room and even speaker distance and angles measured and defined in the amp, now that’s way better than many Cinemas I know, even the three local ones I mentioned that I love and support.
You then go on to say that anyone who doesn’t like going to the Cinema pirates movies? I wonder how you made that leap. I can say that I have a collection of over 150 DVD’s and not copied any of them, I have not downloaded a movie, and none of the ones I own are pirates. The furthest you could say is that I have purchased a Region 0, 1 or 3 DVD when I live in Region 2, and that has only been because I couldn’t get hold of a Region 2 copy. If I could I would have since the Region 2 carries more lines per picture and therefore has a slightly better quality.
I think you have just alienated an entire audience with your comment that those who prefer Home Cinema are Pirating movies. I would say that is quite the opposite, in that they are indeed people who really appreciate the medium of Film. Why spend all the money and time investing and calibrating a system to download an inferior quality copy without a decent audio track and watch it at home, of course the Cinema experience is better than that.
I also can’t see how the blame of the behaviour of current audiences can be placed at the feet of these people who invest in a Home Cinema to truly experience the Film at it’s best. Would we let people kick our chairs, throw food, answer phones, etc in our house? I certainly don’t. There are strict rules about entering my Cinema room! As I said in my post, even the girlfriend has to realise that I don’t like being “pulled out” of the movie.
I don’t believe that the Home Cinema fans are the ones signing the death knoll on big budget movies, as can be seen by many posts and comments on the site, it’s inferior movies, rising movie prices and the creation of “cash cow” movies from guaranteed audiences. See videogame, book and comic adaptations as examples.
The true Home Cinema market will usually end up being conned into buying multiple versions of the same movie! I’ve done that myself quite a few times and purchased a DVD only to have a Special Edition released, and then a Directors Cut, etc. They can spend a lot more than the price of a ticket, hotdog and some juice on a single movie and almost be forced by a Studio to purchase the movie a second time.
What I think you are confusing the true Home Cinema fans with are movie Pirates and people who would rather watch a video at home or something of equally poor quality. That is not who is mentioned in the post, and by reading it it’s quite obvious that it’s written by someone who loves films and the Directors and Writers creations and not the audience participation version of them.
I’d also say that out of the comments left the majority are with the intentions of the post, the general Cinema experience can ruin the experience of the Film and how it was intended, DVD can enhance it by allowing the experience of the Film and the Film alone, not people and events outside it.
That’s not to say any of us are against Cinemas. I do love going (again, check the post, it’s quite clearly said), and I will prefer and watch a movie in the Cinema, but 9 out of 10 times I’ll be pulled out of the movie.
Investing in Home Cinema and purchasing DVD’s is not damaging the Movie Industry, they seem quite capable of that themselves and the Video format has been around for a long time to allow Pirates to operate and those who do not care about the quality to watch from home. The true Home Cinema fans are those who wish to create an ideal setting for a movie to be shown and to enjoy it there.
Cinema’s could be just as good if they invested in better equipment, calibrated their screens and speakers correctly with the correct settings for colouring, contrast and audio separation, blocked mobile phones from broadcasting, removed all crinkly packets and reduced prices a little. In my experience in Scotland, they definitely don’t, and that is a shame, if they did I think audiences would grow even more.
So although I agree with some things you’ve said, I think you’ve totally misdirected them when you are talking about Home Cinema in relation to this post. What I think you were discussing were Pirates and those who view pirate copies, not the true Home Cinema fans.
As a theater owner, this is some of the most disheartening nonsense I have ever heard. There is a reason why Raimi and Stone prefer the cinema experience to DVD (and it has nothing to do with their income): they love film. As far as I’m concerned, anyone who doesn’t want to first see film on the big screen is not really a film lover or, worse yet, they become a movie collector – someone who only cares about bragging to their friends about having downloaded a pirated copy of Spider Man 2 rather than getting their idiot asses out of the house to truly enjoy the movie the way it was meant to be seen: on the big screen.
Don’t get me wrong, I love DVD’s and I loathe the audiences in most mainstream movie theaters, but I do blame a lot of the current rudeness of audiences on the home theater revolution. People have become so used to watching TV and movies at home that they have no understanding that they aren’t in their living room when they are out at the movies.
Anyways, sorry for the diatribe and I’m sure that most of all of you are true film lovers, it just gets my blood boiling when people talk about DVD being superior to film. The experience is totally different and if you (the people who really care about movies) stop going to see them in theaters… well… you’re basically signing the death warrant for quality movies getting made. It will especially affect the quality of big budget films like Spider Man, The Matrix, XMen, etc. In Stone’s parlance, they’ll all be made for the LCD.
I’m sure many people will take issue with this and it’s really way too complicated an issue for me to even begin to talk about here but there you go: my unrequested 2¬¢.
Love Sam Raimi’s DVD material (just bought Spider-Man 2), but I think he just needs to get himself a better home theater system to really appreciate DVDs. :D
I agree that DVDs are getting better than the movie theater experience. I have a HD projection TV and instead of going to the theater where people won’t shut up or turn off their cellphones, we watch DVDs at my house. And it’s so much cheaper (food included ’cause you gotta have some popcorn) and comfortable.
Oliver Stone should be bloody glad that DVD’s are around. Its the only way Alexander will come anywhere close to making its money back. Also previous Stone films like Any Given Sunday, Natural Born Killers and The Doors who did badily at the cinema have more than recouped their money thru DVD. So Stone in one word (although really two words hyphonated) Shut-up. Sod it more words needed Shut-up you egotistical, drug ridden, big headed, up-your-own-arse tit!!! You’ve made some great films, so stick to that and let “YOUR” fans watch “YOUR” films anyway they damn please!!! If it wasn’t for us where would you be?!!!
Nice article!
Listen to the next Audio Edition where I’ll be talking about why the Cinema business is in so much trouble.
“I love DVD and Home Cinema…almost more than the Cinema experience”
this is funny me and a couple of friends have started thinking the same way. I live in Amsterdam and most cinema’s here are terrible. People here seem to think that when they pay for a movieticket they get to do whatever they please in the theater. From calling people during movies to explaining the entire plot to their girlfriends. At one time cinemas even tried putting security guards in the theaters, with freaking flashlights no less :(. anyway i get distracted easily too and therefor fully appreciate dvd’s, the only thing is that i do still like the shared experience and hearing people discuss the movie with their friends.
And i wouldn’t miss things like The International Film Festival Rotterdam for the world. Because of the interaction with other moviefans.
That’s why when i want to watch a movie in the cinema i usually go on monday morning or some other early time so it’s not crowded.
the point of this rant… well just aknowledging the need and point of dvd’s….i guess ;)