All right, to be honest, it’s the 36” TV, surround-sound stereo and THEN Netflix that’s ruined me. But Netflix is the enabler that feeds the addiction.
I’ve always been the “I want to see movies in the theatre” guy. Watching them on TV just dilutes the experience too much… screen’s too small, sound’s no good, picture’s muddy, I hate the way they crop the screen, etc. etc. etc. And I worked for years to get Dani to understand, agree and finally embrace this idea. (Resistance is futile, baby!)
So along come DVDs with their widescreen presentation, Dolby 5.1 surround, a great picture… suddenly, watching movies at home doesn’t seem like such a bad thing after all. And what’s worse is that this means that the films we DO see in the theatre are all the bad ones!
Let’s face it, the smaller art-house type films may look great in a theatre, but with all the aforementioned goodies on the DVD, they’re not looking (or sounding) bad at home either. On the other hand, the big bad action film, filled with massive special effects and more explosions than you can count tends to look… diminished on a TV—even in letterbox on a 36” TV. These films just cry out for the full theatre experience.
Unfortunately, as this summer’s crop of crap films has borne out, most of these big, bad explosion-filled effects-fests turn out to not be worth the film they’re printed on and we end up walking out of the theatre realizing that there’s another couple of hours of our lives we’ll never get back. Meanwhile, the little art-house film with great acting, a terrific story and dazzling direction goes unseen because “we can always catch it on DVD.” (Not that Netflix spares me from the bad movies. Dani’s got a penchant for them lately, as I’ve been subjected to Shanghai Knights, Bringing Down the House and several other unwatchable films lately, thanks to said penchant.)
So, while I may not be seeing any MORE bad movies in the theatre than I would otherwise, I’m pretty sure I’m seeing FEWER good movies in the theatres than I used to. Simply because “we can always rent it from Netflix.”
I’ve always been the “I want to see movies in the theatre” guy. Watching them on TV just dilutes the experience too much… screen’s too small, sound’s no good, picture’s muddy, I hate the way they crop the screen, etc. etc. etc. And I worked for years to get Dani to understand, agree and finally embrace this idea. (Resistance is futile, baby!)
So along come DVDs with their widescreen presentation, Dolby 5.1 surround, a great picture… suddenly, watching movies at home doesn’t seem like such a bad thing after all. And what’s worse is that this means that the films we DO see in the theatre are all the bad ones!
Let’s face it, the smaller art-house type films may look great in a theatre, but with all the aforementioned goodies on the DVD, they’re not looking (or sounding) bad at home either. On the other hand, the big bad action film, filled with massive special effects and more explosions than you can count tends to look… diminished on a TV—even in letterbox on a 36” TV. These films just cry out for the full theatre experience.
Unfortunately, as this summer’s crop of crap films has borne out, most of these big, bad explosion-filled effects-fests turn out to not be worth the film they’re printed on and we end up walking out of the theatre realizing that there’s another couple of hours of our lives we’ll never get back. Meanwhile, the little art-house film with great acting, a terrific story and dazzling direction goes unseen because “we can always catch it on DVD.” (Not that Netflix spares me from the bad movies. Dani’s got a penchant for them lately, as I’ve been subjected to Shanghai Knights, Bringing Down the House and several other unwatchable films lately, thanks to said penchant.)
So, while I may not be seeing any MORE bad movies in the theatre than I would otherwise, I’m pretty sure I’m seeing FEWER good movies in the theatres than I used to. Simply because “we can always rent it from Netflix.”
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