Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by Doug Flynn (A) on June 19, 2005 at 01:04:36

In Reply to: The beautiful, , beautiful, beautiful... ugly... Toni Collette in Japanese Story posted by Victor Khomenko on June 18, 2005 at 07:14:16:

Here in Oz the local movie industry is just about dead. We have some great actors and great directors, plus the production skills (can you say "The Matrix"?). What's killing our movies is Multiplex Syndrome. The Hoyts company is building these huge multiplex cinemas EVERYWHERE. These things are the Clear Channel of movies - they only play mega blockbusters, which are invariably US-made and predictably dumbed down (that's not to say all US movies are dumbed down; far from it). What's worse is they only play literally 6 to 8 different movies. Then after a couple of weeks of "high rotation" they move on to another set of blockbusters.

You never see local movies, nor do you see "foreign" (ie. non English speaking) movies. That means the movie-going public is rarely exposed to good cinema (imagine a world in which you could only eat out at a junk food "restaurant") as all the local and independent cinemas are disappearing.

Sadly Hoyts seem to have a contractual obligation to ignore local movies. This means there is no exposure for local movies. If no-one can see them in the cinema, then they don't make money. If they don't make money, then no-one will make them. And the government doesn't seem to want to know about it.

To rub salt into the wounds, the sound systems in Hoyts cinemas are uniformly crap. I can no longer bear to go into them. I'm thinking of getting a front projector and building my own mini-cimema ;-)

End of rant. Cheers. Doug