"The old formats are dead! Long live the old formats!"

We have been awaiting the death of movies, film, flickers, the studios, for decades now, but looking at the boxoffice figures for 2009 we can see that it was yet another stellar year for the industry. The thing that continues to change is not the appetite of the movie going audience but how they "see" film, how they view movies not only in the theaters but at home as well. The 2009 holiday shopping season saw the rise, not only in the number of advertisments but in sheer tonnage moved out the door, of Blu-ray high definition movie players and large flatscreen tvs, showing once again that if you make quality goods affordable to the middle class, technology, and peoples tastes, will change.

I am happy, once again, for the change. I like to stay a trend or two behind the bulk of humanity. I like to catch up after the parade has passed and reap the benefits of the discard pile. Right now is a grand time to be a film collector. VHS tapes for fifty cents a throw, pawn shop DVD's going for little more than a buck, second hand hi-fi players for under ten dollars and used dvd players for less than the price of a movie ticket.

For the time being I am not too worried about the imminent demise of Hollywood Video or Blockbuster rental stores. I am not struggling with the high cost of retail films or outrageous ticket prices at the door. I have my own "movies on demand" system going on at home 24/7 and have hundreds of movie titles to choose from. Let it rain, let it pour. The Futon Cinema is always ready to screen something new or old, and baby, if I haven't watched it before, it's all new to me.

Action!

Monday, January 4, 2010

Fall from grace


Cheater.

"Okay class, put away your books and get out your pencils!" Pop quizzes. Yikes. It's not much of a stretch to recall the horror of those days, days when I would walk into class, only to discover that I was fully and totally unprepared for that day's exam. What else was there to do but panic? I would do my best during those last moments before the test to cram, blowing over notes hoping something would stick. It was a powerful bit of juju to have a brainy friend who sat close by, someone I could trust to let me peek over their shoulder to crib an answer or two.

I suppose, then, I could imagine the pressure placed on those old quiz show contestants to toss out their scruples and integrity, especially when you are looking at thousands of potential dollars in prize earnings. Who wouldn't give up a bit of their soul for a shot at fame and fortune, especially if that fame and fortune was going to come easy in the form of prepackaged answers? Robert Redford's Quiz Show handily captures that era of brainy entertainment, the unscrupulousness of the networks and the lure of big money and makes you squirm right along with the contestants in their stiffling hot sealed booths. You won't need to turn off your air conditioning to appreciate their sweating brows or check the status of your bank account to feel their righteous anger when the money and fame disappears because they wouldn't, or couldn't, play the game anymore. All it takes is to think back to those school days when you knew the answers to those exams, when you thought the world revolved around those letter A grades and you had a friend who didn't have to worry much about testing because they had some different kind of edge that you weren't privy to. Really, why bother to study, why worry about being smart when you're pretty, favored and coached?

In our heart of hearts we all want to be pretty, rich and famous, but really, would you want those riches that badly if it meant having to stand up in front of the entire world and tell everybody that knows and loves that you were a cheat?

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