In Reply to: You raise some... points. posted by clarkjohnsen on April 28, 2001 at 10:54:58:
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.
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Follow Ups
- Re: You raise some... points. - Bruce from DC 11:56:20 04/28/01 (6)
- You had me up until The Maltese Falcon bit. - john dem 01:53:47 04/30/01 (5)
- Re: You had me up until The Maltese Falcon bit. - Bruce from DC 11:46:51 04/30/01 (0)
- My Views Exactly! - clarkjohnsen 10:49:09 04/30/01 (3)
- Yeah, but... - Victor Khomenko 11:09:06 04/30/01 (2)
- Victor, stop pulling our legs! <nt> - Bruce from DC 11:39:37 04/30/01 (1)
- OK, OK, so it was IN phase... (nt) - Victor Khomenko 14:33:52 04/30/01 (0)