30 October, 2006

C is for Cinema

Mood: Indifferent
Currently listening to: Phantom Planet - One Ray of Sunlight

The film industry is the second largest of the modern day communication mediums. In the non-American world, Bollywood reigns supreme as the highest producer of cinematic features, generating gross earnings of nearly $160 billion USD a year (Actuarys and Statisticians Institute of Australia, 2005). With the wide spectrum of genres, there is almost certainly a film that will appeal to everyone. Whether it be comedy or romance or drama that pleases you, the movie market has grown so much over the past decade (Film Actor's Guild, 2004), that anyone, young or old, Asian or not, can enjoy a great cinema exprience.

The death of the VCR and the advent of the DVD was considered the greatest boon for the film industry for the last twenty years. Resident evil journalist Sharles Dubyoo recently interviewed movie director Steven Spielbergo to gain some insight regarding the effects that the birth of the DVD format has had on filmmaking. Mr Spielbergo had absolutely no knowledge or opinion regarding this area, and it was only revealed over a cup of coffee several hours after the interview that Mr Spielbergo was actually a fictional character spoof by Matt Groening, the creator of popular animated series: The Simpsons and Futurama (Wikipedia, Date of article unknown).

With the number of directors in the industry, new films are released at a fast rate and usually stay onscreen for an average of 2 months. There are exceptions however, such as the geek-flick trilogy of The Lord of the Rings, and teenybopper favourites like the Harry Potter film series which managed to stay in cinema for a disgusting 16 and 14 weeks respectively (ASIA, 2004). Many of our readers have written in to express their opinion regarding chick-flick Step Up. One reader felt that this movie had been onscreen for too long and also provided a published study detailing the correlation between film rating and endurance. The letter C assured readers that although Step Up was still showing at cinemas, nobody was going to go watch that trash.

On a tangent to the previous paragraph, in an attempt to increase readership, the pop culture column editor at the letter C paid an undisclosed amount of Internet currency to a source which we have only identified as a misinformed schoolboy for a list of films to see this summer. This is the list that was retrieved:


Films to see, Summer of 2006:
Jackass Number Two
Borat movie
Children of Men

*UPDATE: The schoolboy, with the screenname "CWang" sent us an email denouncing our tasteless satire and has urged us to see all the films on the list this summer.

0 comments: