Duncan Shepherd on seeing films on the Big Screen

Films/DVD Asylum

Movies from comedy to drama to your favorite Hollyweird Star.

"Screeners," those DVDs and videos that studios send out to critics for perusal and that somehow land in the hands of pirates, have become a hot issue -- so hot that the Los Angeles Film Critics Association threatened this year not to give out their annual awards (how could the world keep on turning?) if the new self-imposed ban on screeners were not lifted. Some members of the association, I would presume, have been doing their jobs long enough to remember when there were no such thing as screeners, only screenings. And inasmuch as screeners to this day play no part whatsoever in my own life, I find it hard to sympathize. A testy press release from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who got caught in the crossfire between the critics and distributors, says what needed to be said: "We have always urged our members to see the films on the big screen the way they were intended to be seen and to base their judgments of the achievements contained in the films on those viewings, and not to vote based upon an image seen on the television screen." That should go for critics as well. Screeners are no more essential a part of this job than the moose slippers I received for Brother Bear or the tins of cooking spices for Under the Tuscan Sun.

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Kimber Kable

Topic - Duncan Shepherd on seeing films on the Big Screen - clarkjohnsen 08:22:09 11/05/03 (0)

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