Olga and I were vaguely thinking of going to the cinema in the next few days, and I thought I'd have a look see what was on at the multiplex. Even by the normal piss-poor standards of summer fare served up on the big screen, this takes some beating. To drive my point home, I have quoted the first few words of each movie's description (thanks to viewlondon for highlighting others' unoriginality with your own). [my comments are in square brackets]:
Flushed Away
Animated comedy [i.e. unoriginal addition to the Toy Story genre]
Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix
[no description as yet, but I imagine it starts with 'fifth instalment' or 'fivequel']
[which was a remake anyway]
Charting this up in a little table, we get:
(debatably) 'original' 1
Sequel 2
Threequel 3
Fourquel 1
Fivequel 1
The thing that makes me saddest of all is that we all lap it up, even though we know that it's cynical and lazy and that Shrek the Third is going to be watchable but a bit of a waste of 8 quid - let alone the others...
5 comments:
Ah, you SEE! This is why Newcastle couldn't be for me, if you were down in the Big Smoke then you'd be able to see, perhaps, something that wasn't a sequel.
And if there wasn't anything new out, at ALL, that wasn't a sequel or remake etc., you could always go down to the NFT to catch some old classic you've never seen.
London for teh win!
I'd almost agree with you...except for the fact that the 'local' cinema in question was actually the one near my mum's house in Harrow (the viewlondon thing was a bit of a giveaway).
Newcastle does have one very good repertory cinema, the Tyneside. The main cinema is currently being refurbished, so it's temporarily living in Gateshead Town Hall and as such not playing as many films as usual, but nonetheless, there's 2-3 good non-blockbuster films on a day, which is enough for me.
Admittedly, there's much more choice in London. But consider this. In the end, we chose almost the only film on at the moment that sounded worth watching - Tell No One. It was great. However, at 10 quid a ticket at the Curzon Soho, it was a little steep - had we been in Newcastle that night we could have seen the same film for about 6 quid...
If it was on.
At your age you should know that Harrow isn't London.
There be dragons.
The price is a real issue though, cinema prices have pretty much doubled in central London in less than ten years.
It's a ruddy outrage I tell you! I shall write to the Mayor, mumble grumble...
I did thoroughly enjoy Tell No One. It was almost great, just a little heavy on exposition at the end - too much telling and not enough showing.
Which is pretty bad for a film called 'Tell No One'.
Do you see? Arf!
I'm dreadfully sorry.
And coming soon... Indiana Jones at 60!
A bit hard on flushed away, no? A bit like
"Mulholland Drive - another bloody weirdo movie"
Alex
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