Films/DVD Asylum

You raise some... points.

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clarkjohnsen

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In Reply to: Rubbish and nonsense posted by Bruce from DC on April 28, 2001 at 02:09:38:

But I defer to c1ferrari"s opinion below.
Oh BTW would you further state that attending a *music concert* with "a theater full of strangers" is also not a social experience? Would you even further argue that listening to records at home, at our "convenience", "puts [us] in reach" of the concert experience?
clark
PS I very often engage strangers in conversation after movies, and while I haven't formed any friendships, that was not the purpose. Out in public I'm a very social animal and people seem to enjoy that sociability. I know I do!

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Re: You raise some... points. Bruce from DC 11:56:20 04/28/01 (6)
Umm, Clark. If I have a preformed group to attend either a concert, a play or a movie, I can just as easily have that same group watch a video (with a suitably good HT setup) or listen to some recorded music and we can all talk about it, drink wine and pretend like it was when we were in college 30 years ago. I doubt seriously that attending any of these live events is going to result in spontaneous social interaction with otherwise unknown to me attendees. (I admit the case was different with rock concerts and the like 30 years ago.)
The reason to attend a live concert -- excluding rock -- is that the sound is way better, and there is the possiblity of something special happening when a good performer and an appreciative audience feed off each other. If one is lucky, the best one can do with a recording is if the recording happened to have captured one of those "magic" performances e.g. Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall; BB King in Cook County Jail.
The reason to attend a stage play is similar; plus the fact that a stage play is a different experience than a film.
The only reason to attend a movie, rather than watch a video, as far as I'm concerned is if the movie requires a theatrically-sized screen to achieve its effect (e.g. the "Star Wars" flics). On the other hand, I believe that "The Maltese Falcon" would gain absolutely nothing by being enlarged to fill all 170 degrees of a person's field of vision. Other than that, with a good DVD source, a good HD progressive scan 16x9 monitor of 40 inches or larger with a good line doubler, I see absolutely no reason to go to a movie theater and many reasons not to -- you can start the thing at your convenience, the seats at home are more comfortable, the sound is apt to be better at home, and you can stop the movie to refill your popcorn bag.
Now all I need is a room to hold all that stuff and about ten or 15 kilobucks to buy it.
- You had me up until The Maltese Falcon bit. john dem 01:53:47 04/30/01 (5)
  Why pick that B&W film, of all there are to choose from ?
  The Maltese Falcon is glorious on the big screen, Huston held nothing back in this wonderful noir masterpiece. It glows on the silvered screen with all the magic it did the first time I saw it. If there is one thing HT cannot do, it is to capture the depth on screen that a well shot B&W film has.
  People treat the cinema like their own lounge rooms these days. They talk, munch, giggle, belch, make sucking noises from 4 gallon Coke buckets- one day there will be a tragic case of "Cinema Rage" during a screening of The Maltese Falcon.
  - Re: You had me up until The Maltese Falcon bit. Bruce from DC 11:46:51 04/30/01 (0)
    Umm, well, I guess you and I are looking at different things. To be honest, I'm not much of a connoiseur of B&W image quality in movies; although as a still photographer for 35 years, I much prefer to work in B&W. Certainly, I agree with you that film will render a much better gray scale than a transfer to video. It's just that I never paid much attention to that.
    The reason I selected "Falcon" as an example, is that the movie has an intimate, close -- almost claustrophobic -- quality. A reduction in screen and image size does not violence to that, IMHO. By contrast, any number of B&W westerns, for example, would suffer from image size reduction. Part of the motif that needs to be allowed to work is the "big sky" feeling. You need a big picture to convey that.
    Much more recently, I saw "Crouching Tiger" in the theater and was completely entranced. I'm pretty sure it would suffer when it's reduced to video-sized screen.
  - My Views Exactly! clarkjohnsen 10:49:09 04/30/01 (3)
    The home environment is as easily disturbed as the theatre, often moreso. And its defenders utterly ignore the indisputable fact that film's creators *intended* and *imagined* it to be seen on a large screen.
    clark
    - Yeah, but... Victor Khomenko 11:09:06 04/30/01 (2)
      ...last time I went to see the Falcon, the audio was out of phase. So I left.
      At least at home I can change the phase.
      - Victor, stop pulling our legs! <nt> Bruce from DC 11:39:37 04/30/01 (1)
        
        In Reply to: Yeah, but... posted by Victor Khomenko on April 30, 2001 at 11:09:06:
        
        OK, OK, so it was IN phase... (nt) Victor Khomenko 14:33:52 04/30/01 (0)
        
        In Reply to: Victor, stop pulling our legs! posted by Bruce from DC on April 30, 2001 at 11:39:37:
        
        .

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