The empty theater

One last quick end-of-last-year-start-of-this thing, and then I promise I’ll let it go and write about something more interesting.

At the end of every year I do some introspective calculating. For example, I figure out how many reviews I’ve written, how many pages I’ve read, and so on. Real anal-retentive stuff. One of the things I look at is where and when I saw the movies I reviewed. I keep track of whether I saw the movie on TV, rented/borrowed video, Netflix or the theater. And when I ran the 2007 totals, I noticed something interesting.

In the whole year, I only saw three movies in a theater. That’s only slightly over 1% of the total. And that’s quite a deviation for me, because back in my “glory days” as an undergrad I practically lived in movie theaters. But that was many, many years ago.

It got me to thinking: why don’t I go to movies in theaters anymore? Part of it is the wide variety of stuff that’s available on DVD (especially via the aforementioned subscription service). Combine that with the pain in the ass involved in driving all the way to the mall, paying the huge price to get in, and sitting with one’s cretinous, cell-phone-yakking fellow patrons of the arts, and it’s just not all that attractive an option.

But the real heart of the matter is that the movies in 2007 were a big load of crap. To be sure, there were exceptions (Pan’s Labyrinth comes to mind). Nonetheless, I recall several occasions during the course of the year when I had the time, the energy and the inclination to go see a movie but couldn’t find a single thing I was willing to sit through.

Perhaps 2008 will be better (though it certainly isn’t starting out that way, and if the writers’ strike continues things aren’t likely to improve anytime soon).

And a quick aside to my good friends at Esquire: thank you ever so much for deciding to kill the Dubious Achievement Awards. Now that the Dubies are no more, I haven’t the slightest incentive to ever pick up another issue of your magazine. As one of your contributors already observed, now you can devote even more pages to topless supermodels covering their boobs with their hands. I’ll bet that buys you a much bigger audience than good writing ever could.