Earlier this year, Alliance Films released “Polytechnique “, a French-Canadian movie based on the 1989 Montreal Massacre at the École Polytechnique. Here’s the trailer:
It’s been a busy year, and I’ve been living in indie-film-starved Victoria, but I totally missed this movie. Based on a few reviews and the trailer, I’m sorry to have not seen it in the cinema. Wikipedia indicates that, outside of Quebec, it was released in Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary. Did anybody see it?
Also, is this the first movie about the Montreal Massacre? It’s interesting that it took 20 years to produce–the incident seems like natural fodder for the docudrama treatment. Consider, by contrast, that we’ve already seen a few (several, even?) 9/11 movies.
One other note: Wikipedia says that “there were two versions of the film produced, one in English and one in French.” I wonder what that means. Did they shoot every scene twice?
Looking at the film’s financials, we see the classic problem of telling Canadian stories to Canadians. “Polytechnique” had a $6 million budget, and box office revenue of only $1.6 million. There’s more money to be made in DVD sales and broadcast rights (or whatever they’re called), but the producers are never going to recoup their costs.
I thought I’d observed this trend in recent movies. The best way I could figure to illustrate it was with a little video. I think it’s self-explanatory:
What do you think?
As an interesting side note, I first attempted to upload this video to YouTube. I didn’t use any movie or actor-specific terms in the title, description or tags, though I did identify the video category as ‘Movies’. The video was immediately blocked because my video “may include content that is owned or licensed by these content owners: Content owner: FOX Type: Audiovisual content.” Presumably they have some fancy image recognition software running to identify the video’s content.
I’m pretty sure my usage here falls under fair use in the US, but I’m not going to bother disputing YouTube’s automated system.
I was talking last night about how much of our home media consumption is time-shifted. We pretty much only watch shows that I’ve downloaded or recorded on the PVR. I only listen to radio via a few podcasts. I discover music on my own schedule, as opposed to MTV or the radio.
I started thinking, then, about how we could time-shift media we enjoy outside the home. I wondered if the digital distribution of movies to movie theatres meant that they could display the movies when I wanted, instead of according to their schedule?
Couldn’t they open up their schedule to voting? For example, what if I had twenty people from my office who wanted to attend a summer blockbuster at 4:00pm, but the movie is scheduled to run at 3:00pm and 5:30pm. Couldn’t we, hypothetically, visit the cinema’s website and vote to change the movie schedule for that day?
Once digital distribution is commonplace, a cinema should run entirely like any other shop at the mall. It has no requirement for a skilled and scheduled projectionist, so the movie schedule could change daily based on the whims of its patrons.
And seeing as we’re changing movie start times, why can’t we vote on which movies the cinema runs? The real answer is that the producers, distributors and cinemas have this farcically baroque system for scheduling movies and dividing up box office revenue. That could change, though. Just as MP3s, Napster and iTunes has tranformed the music distribution channel, technology shifts could change the way movie sales work.
A vote-for-upcoming-movies model would reduce the amount of guesswork that cinemas have to undertake when scheduling movies. Combined with the crowd’s ability to adjust the schedule, these changes might, in theory, increase the average attendance per showing.
Surely some independent cinemas have tried this model. Have you heard of any?
I have a small bladder, and often get a drink at the movies. So I’m often presented with the thorny problem of when to go to the bathroom during a film. I think I’m pretty good at picking the best moment, when I’m unlikely to miss any major plot points. Of course, the better the movie, the more difficult it is to choose the right time.
Yesterday James sent me a link to RunPee.com (via Gizmodo). The site is down at the moment–too much attention?–but it apparently promises a very special kind of movie review. RunPee will tell you, as you might have guessed, when you should run to the bathroom and pee. Yet another problem solved by the internet.
I was recently reading New Yorker magazine, and encountered a reference to a sub-genre of movies called “mumblecore”. From Wikipedia:
Mumblecore is an American independent film movement that arose in the early 2000s.It is primarily characterized by ultra-low budget production (often employing digital video cameras), focus on personal relationships between twenty-somethings, improvised scripts, and non-professional actors. Filmmakers in this genre include Lynn Shelton, Andrew Bujalski, Mark Duplass, Jay Duplass, Aaron Katz, Joe Swanberg, Todd Rohal and Ry Russo-Young.
Based on box office revenue and some crowd-sourced review sites I checked, mumblecore has yet to find its 2001: A Space Odyssey. Of the list in Wikipedia, I’d only heard of one of the films, Baghead, and I hadn’t even seen that one.
Truth be told, these films sound like dreadful, film school wankery. But, then, I’d better watch one or two before I actually pass judgment. Have you seen Baghead? Or maybe Dance Party USA?
On May 24, 1989 (I know the exact date thanks to this page), Rob Stover, Steve Lee and I cut out of Grade 10 afternoon classes. We drove (Steve had his license very early) all the way from our safe West Vancouver enclave over to the Stanley Theatre. We sat in the front row of the balcony and watched the first matinee show on the opening day of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
My friend Rob was a huge Indiana Jones fan, but it was a bit of a thrill for all of us. That was in the midst of my Premiere-reading period–I was a cinephile from early on.
The Stanley was a gorgeous cinema, and I miss seeing movies in that grand old space. It’s a lovely theatre, too, of course. It’s a pity the Arts Club doesn’t make consistently engaging shows to play inside it.
I quite like Q host Jian Ghomeshi, but he was definitely fighting above his weight. Greenaway lectured him on a number of topics, including the ‘death of cinema’. I agreed with much of what Greenaway said, so I transcribed a few bits (only transcribe opinions you concur with, I always say):
Cinema now, with the laptop generation, Generation X, is really to do with an interactive, multimedia world and cinema can’t be that. Cinema cannot be democratic–it cannot create multiple endings. You can’t interface with it in any satisfactory way.
So, I think if we’re going to excite imaginations with the potentiality of this grand audio-visual experience, we’re going to find new ways of doing it. I would argue that the ‘Casablanca’ syndrome–that cut-and-dry bedtime story for adults–is really finished. It doesn’t really have a place anymore.
That’s not to say the screen is going to disappear. I have a mobile phone in my pocket, and I suspect you have too. And it has a screen.
And here’s another good bit:
We’re now all lateral thinkers, and certainly we are encyclopedists. We are browsers, we are laptop users. So we have to refashion this media to be relevant to contemporary imaginations.
I’m fond of saying that, before too long, going to the cinema will join the ballet and the opera as dated, niche entertainments that appeal to a few. Mr. Greenaway just said it better.
“A trained fireman licensed by the Commissioner of Police, or in his absence a member of the Police Force detailed to act as such by the Commissioner of Police, shall be in attendance at all the performances.” Man, that’s a lot of free movies for firemen and police officers.
“The exit and emergency exit lanterns shall be illuminated by means of candles or paraffin lamps, the lanterns to be made entirely of non-combustible material.”
“Cinematographs shall close not later than twelve midnight.” That’s impractical timing, but I mostly include it for the awesome term ‘cinematographs’.
“It is prohibited to introduce dogs into the auditorium or to keep or allow to be kept any dog therein.” That one’s still applicable, but I gather parrots, hamsters and ocelots are okay?
Here’s the most important one: “an interval shall in no case be held during the showing of the main feature film without the written permission of the Commissioner of Police.” This implies that intervals ought to be the exception, not the rule. And I doubt that theatres really have written permission for intervals in every movie. I’ve complained about the absurd intermissions in Maltese cinemas before. As it turns out, the law’s on my side.
I missed this a couple of months back, but Scotiabank recently bought the naming rights to three Canadian movie theatres, including the Paramount on Burrard Street. I believe that’s a photo of them disassembling the old Famous Players sign. The move is associated with a new loyalty card program:
“Cineplex approached Scotiabank about naming rights of some theatres and our response to it really was ‘interesting, but we need to have a reason to be there’.…We determined that we had some good common interests. Cineplex had a need to build a database and change the business model they had…and we had a need at Scotiabank to find a way to reach younger people–and by young people I mean 14-to-30-year-olds–in a much more relevant way.”
As I’ve said before, I’m not a believer in naming rights. It’s a particularly bad move when the building has already existed under another name. Nobody’s calling the golf ball in False Creek “The Telus World of Science”, and everyone will still refer to the cinema on Burrard Street as “The Paramount”.
It’s interesting that naming rights are being applied to smaller and smaller structures. How long before the local corner store gets renamed to “The Budweiser Cash and Carry”?
Coincidentally, a Coca Cola rep recently swept through our little village and dispensed free Coca-Cola-themed signs to the local bar and one of the grocery stores. Just a variation on the naming rights theme, I guess.
I read about this renaming project via this very angry rant. That dude needs to move.
But hyperlinks are the Esperanto of the Internet. Courtesy of e-commerce-blog.de, go visit www.bodyscare.com and click around a bit. Nice bit o’ surprise marketing there, if they’re promoting it correctly on the streets of Rome.
