All this seperation stuff reminds me of early Hollywood, where studios owned actors and movie theaters. If you wanted to see Judy Garland in a movie it had to be an MGM film at an MGM-owned theater. I'm surprised we seem to be regressing to similar specificity.

As someone who ran a projection room for 18 years, I would welcome this with open arms. I would love to see the major stuidos "owning" the theatres they show thier films in. I think this would fix alot of the problems out there in "theatre-land." Knowing that digital is on the way and film will be gone in the next 10 years, I think having the studio involved in the presentation would make perfect sense.

Why would this help "theatre-land"? What kind of problems are there?

The popcorn stinks.

And it tastes terrible.

Well, you have the typical problems, pay, moral, and how theatres are run company wise. Theatres get buy with pretty much a small percentage of ticket sales and concession. So they are less than willing to invest money into its employees and in fixing the mechanics of the theatre. These last few years it's been unbeliveable how the "upstairs" were unwilling to fix broken elements of the projection, sound, seating and that sort of thing. Edwards Theatres before they were bought a few years ago, were infamous for opening these expensive looking theatres, done on the cheep and then when they would start to fall apart, they wouldn't put up the money to fix them. In some cases they just shut them down or would build another one nearby.

So, I'm sure its no different than most companies. We can and have talked about Disney in the past this way too. I think with Digital projection and all the elements that will go into this - from developement to installation in thousands of theatres, to upkeep and running the machines, I don't see major theatres being very happy that they have to fork over the money to do this.

I would love to see a return of the studio run theatres. I think the quality of the experinace would be greater. If they put 1/2 the money the put into advertising of the movie into the presentation of the movie, I think its a win win for everyone.

Movie theaters are getting smaller and smaller while home theater systems are getting larger and larger - not to mention better. While there's no recreating the large, grand theater experience at home, that experience is harder and harder to come by. TONS of money is spend on making and advertising a film and contemporary presentation is usually sub-par. Why is that?

It's the same situation as with Disneyland back in the 90's. Cheep, don't spend, don't pay.

I went to see Man of the Year at my "old" theatre. The one where they demoted me to floorstaff because I could only work 1 day, nevermind that I worked projection for 18 years. ;) But, they have some kid running the shows and the 2 of the 5 films are scratched. If I spent 100 milion on a film and I went to a theatre where the movie was out of focus, out of frame, the sound sucked, the seats were broken, and there were black scratches down the middle of the image? I would be more than pissed. I would be very suprised to see that happen if it was a studio run theatre. I've been in the projection room with the studio folks for those special research screenings and they are very anal about everything. They actually stopped doing the screenings at the theatre I worked at because of its condition.

It is against the law for the studios to own theater chains (at least in the manner that the studios would want them) so that won't be happening again soon.

Then how has Disney gotten around owning the El Capitan for the past two decades .... and pretty much showing exclusively Disney product?

I've wondered how they got around that law ... must be some clever loophole. But why are they the only ones to have pursued it? If anyone can shed some light, it's a subject I've been mildly curious about for some time.

True. But I had just such an experience last night. Midnight show, several hundred people - pretty die-hard fans to stay up till 3 on a Thursday night - opening show of Casino Royale at Grauman's Chinese Theater, one of the greatest movie palaces ever created ... and one of the few remaining.



But, yeah, I'll admit that most other moviegoing is ho-hum. It's one of the reasons I Netflix more and Theater less. The AMC near my office let their old facility rot to the core, and then simply tore it down and built a shiney new, faster, better one just down the street.

Even catching 'em when they're new, however, generally doesn't do it for me. The black box multiplex experience is just bleh.


.