(no subject)

[holzman_tweed]

Busy first week, buying presents, finally wrapped and under the tree. I don't know how I managed to misjudge how time was flowing, but next year I'm setting up an honest to god project for pre-holiday stuff, and aiming to be finished (except for impromptu gifts) by the start of vacation. It'll be damn cheaper that way on shipping, too.

Best of all, tons easier on jadegirl to boot.

Memo to the Weather Gods: Massive quantities of snow should be on Yule & Christmas, not here and gone the week before. Last year's blizzard was right in theory, wrong in execution only.

Two full weeks of relaxing and enjoying the season. Not nearly enough, but it never is.

---

Saw RotK last night. I won't discuss it at this point except to say: wow. Anything that I might have a complaint about I'm sure is addressed in the director's release.

I sure hope Lucas doesn't think this is the bar he has to come up to for Star Wars III, because -- let's face it -- he can't anymore, and there's been enough travesty.

Movies as we know them are on their way out. Something like LotR deserves the time it takes to tell it. Trying to make a single feature-length movie of it would have been a disaster -- much as was the case with Dune. Lots of the bes SF & F out there is on that scale. That's what "epic" means. Hollywood's afraid of making longer movies because they don't think people will sit through them. The LotR marathon put the lie to that -- put in intermissions, people will drop the bucks and spend the time if the quality is there. Perhaps a return of the old movie palaces?

Or... if I can have a big-assed screen that hang on my wall (or better still, one that rolls up and can be put away), and I can have the movies on DVD or download tem over the net on demand, why would I ever go to a movie theatre again?

Comments

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Personally, I don't think it's that Hollywood thinks people won't sit through things that long.

I think it's that you can get twice as many tickets sold in a given period of time for a 90-minute movie than a 3-hour movie.

[eberg.livejournal.com]

Agreed. I've been under the impression that a lot of it is the theatres. They aren't interested in tying up a screen with four showings of a three hour movie when they could do eight of a 90-minute one when they cost the same. Myself, I think that theatres should grade ticket prices by length. I have no problem paying more to see a 3 1/2 hour epic than I would to see a 80-minute children's feature.

Eric Christian Berg

[backdoor-uk.livejournal.com]

But then again the bulk of theatre's profit margin come from concessions, not from tickets. Restoring the old intermissions would give them opportunity to sell more food and drink.
I don’t really think it’s the theatres that keep movie lengths down, I think it’s a combination of budget pressures in the studios and the unwillingness of actors to commit to lengthy projects. Maybe LotR’s will change this somewhat.

[eberg.livejournal.com]

I will concede on the concession argument. Doing a little digging, it appears the distributors get up to 90% of the proceeds from the ticket sales.

I'm not sure about the latter part of the argument, though. Given how much is generally cut in order to get down to the requisite length, I don't see increasing movie lengths as necessarily requiring a lot of extra money or time.

Eric