The latest victim of the ‘IMAX’ racket — me!
If you Google “IMAX” and “fraud” you get 3,500,000 hits, among them some very interesting and very angry postings. I just found this out today, 48 hours after a visit to the “IMAX Experience” screen at...
View Article‘Apes’ eureka! moment: make a good movie and they will come
It was wonderful to observe the convergence of good reviews, strong grosses and positive audience response to the opening of “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” over the weekend. It’s nice to see a...
View ArticleSummer blockbusters heat up the ‘fake IMAX’ complaints
A few weeks ago, I returned to the IMAX theater at the top of the AMC Lincoln Square complex in Manhattan for the first time in several years. I had mixed feelings about the movie I saw there —...
View ArticleTom & Reese: the impact of off-screen movie star antics
Within the space of a few minutes Monday morning, I heard a New York radio station teaser for an upcoming show biz-related story — “Oscar winner arrested” — and a business report on the weekend movie...
View Article‘The Conjuring’: low-budget summer hit might be game changer
Disruptive times in Hollywood are almost always good for moviegoers. When fads and trends weaken, the studios are left scrambling, and they will often takes chances on material they wouldn’t finance in...
View ArticleWhatever happened to romantic comedies?
It’s pretty amazing how quickly the rom-com genre dried up after being so successful around the turn of the century. The careers of a whole slew of young actresses were built on the genre — Kate...
View ArticleFinding good New York theater on the cheap
Whenever I hear people complaining about the high cost of theater in New York City I know that they aren’t very adventurous folk. Yes, a good seat this weekend for “The Book of Mormon” or “It’s Only a...
View ArticleGood for Hollywood, bad for us
The year-end statistics coming out of the Hollywood movie studios this week were bad news for adults who aren’t interested in going out to see 3D/IMAX comic book extravaganzas or dramatized young adult...
View ArticleHow demographics have changed major studio films
A depressing study of big studio filmmaking last year was recently released by the Media, Diversity & Social Change Initiative at the University of Southern California. Looking at 2014’s 100...
View ArticleMovie screens large, small & tiny
Does size matter when it comes to movie screens? The question was prompted by an unusually wide range of screening experiences I’ve had over the past few weeks – running the gamut from seeing “Blade...
View Article‘The Big Picture’: the future of movies & TV
Wall Street Journal writer Ben Fritz lays out the reasons serious adult movies have vanished from the multiplexes in his lucid, compulsively readable new book “The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future...
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