I wouldn’t be sur­prised if they are also includ­ing world­wide pre­miers rather than just American.

I’ve never found the reviews on Net­flix very help­ful, except on rare occa­sion when some­one takes time to point out that a movie is filled with pro­fan­ity (so I can avoid it). I’ve also given up writ­ing my own reviews, for the most part, because people’s “Helpful/Not Help­ful” votes seem to be based solely on whether they agreed with the reviewer about lik­ing or dis­lik­ing the movie, and not on the reviewer’s _reasons_ for it.

It is rare that I watch movies because I tend to wan­der away from them and read.

Not that there aren’t great ones, but like you, it irks me to pay money for an expe­ri­ence I don’t enjoy.

Glad the dog got walked though

Kyra­lessa,
I go to those mem­ber reviews some­times before I see a movie. When I do, I’m usu­ally look­ing to see what emerges as a pat­tern. Of course, you risk spoil­ers when you do that, but it’s also been help­ful at low­er­ing my expec­ta­tions if there’s a movie out that has a lot of hype con­nected to it — I usu­ally just want to see what ordi­nary peo­ple thought of it.

With a movie I’ve already seen and like a lot or dis­like a lot it’s just a bit of fun going to see if other peo­ple can express it.

I’ve also had the rare times when some­one changes my opin­ion of a movie by offer­ing an inter­pre­ta­tion I hadn’t considered.

So all in all, I guess it’s the same thing that hap­pens when you talk to peo­ple about a movie

the rat­ings: I know what you mean. It doesn’t seem to me that the best ones have the high­est rat­ings. Must just be a mat­ter of tim­ing or luck, right?

Mimi,
I think this is start­ing to be more com­mon. Movies can be such a won­der­ful expe­ri­ence when they’re good, but the entire sit­u­a­tion — dark place, enor­mous screen, boom­ing speak­ers — is set up to make it impos­si­ble to ignore. It was all good fun until I started feel­ing like film­mak­ers were tak­ing advan­tage of the sit­u­a­tion to force me to take in a world­view that I utterly reject. Hav­ing a movie here or there that was offen­sive, twisted, dis­gust­ing or what­ever wouldn’t have been such a prob­lem. But now that they rarely make any other kind, I find that I’m less and less likely to shell out the money and let them have two unin­ter­rupted hours of my time.

Grace:

As an old film course groupie, the stats on “top gross­ing pic­ture of all time” were always in dol­lars… and always always always led by “Gone With the Wind”. We always won­dered why num­ber of tick­ets sold was never the met­ric. But then as you point out, the ris­ing price thing which lifts all boats (even the duds), means that mar­ket­ing is just a whole lot eas­ier if you count dol­lars. I guess they really do think we’re all stu­pid or some­thing, huh?

I’ve begun to equate the level of adver­tis­ing push with the level of des­per­a­tion in select­ing films to see in the the­ater. The higher the push, the more likely it’s a real dud. Seems to be a pretty good indi­ca­tor. You just gotta remem­ber this whole indus­try runs on fear. Then it’s crazi­ness makes sense.

I guess I’m weird. I LOVE trail­ers for movies, I swear I’m going to see one, I’d actu­ally like to see one… but I never do. My kids even buy me DVD’s of movies I’ve men­tioned I’d like to see and they sit in the TV cab­i­net for 2–5 years before I watch them if ever. I dunno… it just seems like I never have time to actu­ally sit down and watch one. Unfor­tu­nately my wife DEMANDS that I go see a movie prob­a­bly once or twice a year with her and it is usu­ally Keanu Reeve’s lat­est romance flick. sigh. She agrees he can’t deliver a line with a FedEx truck, but he’s eye candy and the sto­ries are mushy…and I’m OK with that even though my tastes in movies runs that gamut from “Die Hard” flicks to eso­teric sub­ti­tled artsy exis­ten­tial stuff. Maybe some day I’ll be bed rid­den and have a DVD player and a remote and catch up on all the movies I’ve missed.

James,
That’s inter­est­ing that there’s a tra­di­tion of look­ing at the box office gross rather than tick­ets sold. Well, to give moviemak­ers these days the ben­e­fit of the doubt, if they were to sud­denly fix that, there would be a major period of adjust­ment dur­ing which the moviego­ing pub­lic would get the impres­sion that nobody was watch­ing these things any­more. I can’t blame them for not com­mit­ting sui­cide that way.

Hype = des­per­a­tion. Well then, as near as I can fig­ure out, stand back for Evan the Almighty. It sounded like it might almost be cute when I saw the trailer, and who doesn’t like Steve Car­rell these days? But you can’t go near a pop­u­lar Web­site with­out see­ing the ads, and I’m get­ting sick of it.

s-p:
I like the idea of just watch­ing trail­ers and never see­ing the movies. Great time-saver, really, since you know all the best stuff is in that five-minutes’ worth. Kind of like eat­ing appe­tiz­ers at a fancy restau­rant and then skip­ping the meal. Greg and I talk about doing this as a way to par­take of good fare with­out going broke. And since I have a finite amount of time and patience, I could under­take these bud­getary cuts in movie-watching for the same reason.

So what was the last Keanu Reeves romance? Was it that one where he and San­dra Bul­lock both own the same sum­mer cot­tage two years apart and yet they carry out a cor­re­spon­dence some­how. That sounded like it just HAD to be inter­est­ing and yet, mag­i­cally, … it wasn’t. I don’t even think Keanu is that pretty, so I don’t know what my excuse is.

The only movies I have seen in the 21st Cen­tury is the Lord of the Rings Tril­ogy. Being an old lover of Dou­glas Adams, I tried to see “Hitch­hik­ers Guide to the Galaxy” and walked out of it. Ok, so I have a rather, spe­cial­ized, taste in movies I used to go to them more fre­quently, before the prices just got so high and it seems like there used to be a bet­ter choice of movies.

Per­haps it is only that my tastes have changed…

I did intend on see­ing “Into the Quiet”, but put it off until the day after it stopped showing…

As far as watch­ing trail­ers, S-P has a good point — they do put the best part of the movie in those things and you don’t have to pay for it

Hitch­hik­ers’: UGH. Wasn’t that a dis­ap­point­ment? I don’t know if you’ve seen the British mini-series (which you can get on DVD), but it was much bet­ter in spite of the usual prob­lems with British pro­duc­tions: cheap sets, cheap props, cheap pro­duc­tion, no spe­cial effects to speak of.

Look­ing at the trailer of that recent movie in the the­aters, I could tell it wouldn’t be sat­is­fac­tory. But it wasn’t till I went ahead and watched it on DVD that I saw just how bad it was. Who­ever made it had no inter­est at all in cap­tur­ing every­thing that was inspired, funny and unique about the orig­i­nal (which I think, BTW, started life as a radio series THEN went to the books THEN went to tele­vi­sion). They obvi­ously just wanted to re-do Men in Black with a British accent. I get embar­rassed for us when we do things like that — I think if I were Eng­lish I’d think we were all nitwits.

I loved the BBC mini-series of Hitch­hik­ers — it was worth watch­ing and I would love to do so again.

Hi Grace,
Yep, the lake house thing. Inter­est­ing con­cept, but enough already with the scenes of him run­ning to the mail­box and the setup for the end­ing was waaayy too long. But oh well. I’m not a TV watcher either so when I see “crit­i­cally acclaimed movies”, even the three thumbs up ones, to me often the act­ing really stinks or the story is weak or some­thing. I guess hav­ing not been bom­barded by crappy media for 47 years now (yes, the last time I watched TV “seri­ously” was 1959, since then less than an hour a week if that aver­age…) I see act­ing etc. more com­pared to real­ity than other media. Any­way, yeah, trail­ers always have the best stuff, the rest of the movie is just the vehi­cle to get those moments to the audience.

Hitchhiker’s was a dis­ap­point­ment. Evan’s get­ting the real pan here in DC — from the crit­ics. But the avoid the hype for­mula seems to pay off for “Spi­der­man”, “Titanic”, etc. Also pays off for a low bud­get won­der like “Mil­li­ions” — best British movie since “The Gods Must be Crazy” IMHO. But I’m prob­a­bly for­get­ting a lot of good ones.

Trail­ers… again… film class teacher used to say that the time and atten­tion devoted here vastly exceeded any­thing in the film busi­ness. Most cases, all the good scenes of a 90 minute movie (the stan­dard length in the good old days) were jammed into 30 to 90 sec­onds. And the level of artistry was far, far bet­ter focused as a result. There is a dis­ci­pline here that is miss­ing in so much of Hol­ly­wood today where some­how the “director’s cut” seems to equate artistry with a lack of edit­ting. THis turns the old prac­tice on its head for Hol­ly­wood and vir­tu­ally every cre­ative art. Most folks have a lot of tal­ent, but many don’t have the abil­ity to dis­cern their really good from their mediocre either.

The Last time I saw a full house at the cin­ema was for the three install­ments of the “Lord of the Rings”. Friends in France and Rus­sia report the same phe­nom­e­non in their coun­tries. There is an audi­encce out there, but appar­ently it does not desire the sort of films that Hol­ly­wood is pro­duc­ing today.

I don’t think the lack of audi­ences is due to home view­ing of DVDs. Going to the cin­ema is a social event, and the the­atre ver­sion usu­ally has nicer sound, and there is a rather marked dif­fer­ence in see­ing a film on a larger screen. So, the only rea­son for the decline in audi­ence has to be viewer dis­gust with the visual pap were are offered.

The best film I saw in a the­atre in the past year was Pavel Lungin’s “Island”. That was in an art house in New York, as it is in Russ­ian, with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles. It is eas­ily the best reli­gious (not merely Ortho­dox) film I have ever seen. Pyotr Mamomov’s por­trayal of the starets Ana­toly was mov­ing and spot-on. BTW, the film broke all records for atten­dance in Rus­sia, and swept the Golden Eagles (the Russ­ian Oscars).

I must men­tion that this was pro­duced by a com­mer­cial stu­dio, released in ordi­nary cin­e­mas, and it was not an “offi­cial” church pro­duc­tion. Do see if you can rent or buy it on DVD. the cin­e­matog­ra­phy is stunning.

Peo­ple shall come if the mate­r­ial offered is com­pelling. If they are offered shlock, they shall stay home and barbeque.

Vara

Bar­bara:
The first and sec­ond para­graphs of your com­ment had so much to gen­er­ate new thought that I posted a new entry with it.

“The Island” — thank you for the rec­om­men­da­tion! I went and looked it up on Net­flix and it looks like it’s not avail­able yet, but I’ve got it reserved when it comes in.

I tried look­ing up Russ­ian movies at one point to see if I could find any­thing with a good Ortho­dox mes­sage, but I didn’t have any luck. I tried a 60’s film about Andrei Rublev, but it was AWFUL — dark, point­less and irreligious.

Then I rented “Russ­ian Ark” — a 2002 film shot at the Her­mitage Museum that dances in and out between con­ver­sa­tions with a jaded museum viewer and sce­nar­ios of his­tor­i­cal fig­ures from the exhibits inter­act­ing. The entire movie is one long uncut shot, if you can believe that, and for cin­e­matog­ra­phy alone is stun­ning. But again, the movie gives no credance to reli­gion as a source of truth (or even as a cul­tural force), and the dia­logue just seems like the kind of sense­less, fatu­ous artsy dri­vel that we’ve all got­ten used to. So I was dis­ap­pointed again and gave up on Russ­ian film.

Dear­est Grace!

Blagoslovi vo imya Gospodne!

There are quite a few good movies com­ing out of Rus­sia these days. New films of “The Broth­ers Kara­ma­zov” and “Doc­tor Zhivago” are in pro­duc­tion, and Pavel Lungin’s next effort shall be a film biog­ra­phy of Ivan Grozny (known in the West as Ivan the Terrible).

This is all a part of the reli­gious revival sweep­ing Rus­sia today. The promi­nent (and famous in Rus­sia) actor Niko­lai Berli­aev is doing much to pro­mote good and solid Ortho­dox mate­r­ial in the film world. He has even set up his own spe­cial awards for Ortho­dox films.

The fine arts are full of Ortho­dox mate­r­ial, but it is unknown in the West because of insuf­fi­cient pub­lic­ity and the fact that many of the mate­ri­als are avail­able only in the Russ­ian lan­guage. I fin­ished read­ing a won­der­ful novel by Alek­sandr Poli­akov called “Ognyenii Avva” (“The Firey Abba”) based on the life of the mod­ern Elder Samp­son (Seavers). Unfor­tu­nately, it is not avail­able in Eng­lish trans­la­tion, but I have excerpts I can pass on. My e-mail address is attached to the reply form, drop me a line, and I can pass on some great Russ­ian mate­r­ial that I have in cor­rected translations.

Pray for me, the sinner.

Vara

Barbara-Marie (or Vara?)
Reli­gious revival in Rus­sia: That’s the best news I’ve heard in a long time! It’s really hard to get an accu­rate pic­ture of how Ortho­doxy is far­ing over there, because our religion-challenged media are even more religion-challenged about Ortho­doxy. They haven’t the faintest idea what it is or why any­one would care. But *I* care — any chance you can give more info about what’s going on there? (Don’t know if you have a blog, but if so, I’d love to see a post about that. If not, do you have any links you could send me that would give the pic­ture?) Hooray for the good guys!

I’ll e-mail you about the other stuff — I’m def­i­nitely interested.

Oh, and by the way … “Blagoslovi vo imya Gospodne!” Translation?

(I think “Gospodne” is “Lord,” yes?)

Dear­est Grace!

It means “Bless in the Name of the Lord”! Another related tag is “Blagosloven grady vo imya Gospodne”! (Blessed is he that cometh in the Name of the Lord!) Another nice Ortho­dox thing to say is “Sotvori Gospodi na mno­gaya lyeta”! (May the Lord grant thee many years!) Now, you have enough Staroslav (Old Church Slavonic) to enchant your friends and stu­pefy your foes.

Unfor­tu­nately, our media is not as Church-conscious as the Russ­ian media. NTV car­ried the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion cer­e­mony on 17 May live from the Khram Spa­sitelya, and the Rossiya net­work car­ried an abridged broad­cast of Bishop Hilar­ion Alfeyev’s “Pas­sion Accord­ing to St Luke”.

Check out the fol­low­ing You-Tube link. It is not church-related, but the lit­tle girl who is the soloist in the first num­ber is so adorable, yet, she is a spot-on pro! In the sec­ond num­ber on the video, do look for the two lit­tle ones hold­ing the icons on either side of the boys singing. They can­not be more than five, and they are so cute!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ABBhRp6bn0

“Vara” is sim­ply the Russ­ian diminu­tive for “Var­vara” (Bar­bara). There you have it, “Vara” is “Barb” or “Barbie”!

your puck­ish correspondent,

Vara

PS watch out for “moose and squir­rel” (you do recog­nise the pop cul­ture allu­sion? Yes?)