Sunday, March 26, 2006

a movie world before dvd and multiplexes

Peter Bogdanovich risks sounding like the grumpy old man who always complains how great things used to be back in his day, but his defense of the communal movie experience is hard to resist -- especially this paragraph...
Movies, when you used to see them on the big screen, had a mystery that they no longer have. For one thing, they were irretrievable: Once the first and second runs were past, most films were not easy to see again. They were much, much larger than life and therefore instantly mythic (screens and theaters were a lot bigger before the multiplex arrived). And they were inexorable; once a film had started, there was no pausing it or in any way stopping its relentless forward motion.