Beyond the Multiplex

Natalie Portman is horribly misused in "Goya's Ghosts." Plus: "Summercamp!" -- the season's saddest, sweetest, most magical and deeply affecting movie.

By Andrew O'Hehir

Read more: Andrew O'Hehir, Movies, Movie Reviews, Arts & Entertainment, Independent Film, Reviews, Beyond the Multiplex

Natalie Portman in "Goya's Ghosts"

July 19, 2007 | Last week I wrote about all the indie-film distributors (and big-time Hollywood execs) who are terrified, as usual, that viewers are abandoning movie theaters and even DVDs. Now the technological villain is the iPhone, because it's been in the news, and all the ever-teenier hand-held electronic devices no doubt clattering down the pipeline in the months and years ahead. I said I didn't know anybody who had actually watched a movie on a telephone and that I wasn't even sure it was feasible.

Well, my plea for enlightenment was answered, gentle readers. I called out to you from the darkness of ignorance, and you did not let me languish there. None of you could quite explain why the film, music and television industries, which arguably should be at the forefront of technological innovation, have always fought tooth-and-nail against it. But I suspect that is a much larger philosophical problem, requiring recourse to Plato's "Allegory of the Cave," Thomas Aquinas, and Horkheimer and Adorno's "Enlightenment as Mass Deception." So we'll leave that for another time.

Meanwhile, it turns out I do know somebody who watches movies on his phone. Doug Moran, a film buff and frequent correspondent from Austin, Texas, gently informed me that he's been ripping and converting DVDs for viewing on hand-held devices for several years, going back to something called the Tapwave Zodiac, which he reports had almost exactly the same specs as the spanking new iPhone. (Not that Moran is anti-iPhone; he says he watched "Cowboy Bebop: The Movie" on his iPhone just the other day.) Moran reviews personal media players (PMPs) for Gear Diary, and he thinks the iPhone and similar devices are "going to have an impact on 'place shifting' entertainment watching, for TV shows, at least," the way TiVo has on "time shifting."

Still, even he doesn't see these technologies having a major impact on the movie business. He agrees that it'd be utterly pointless to watch "Lawrence of Arabia" or "Yojimbo" (or, for that matter, "Transformers") on a hand-held device. Furthermore, Moran writes, "You can't share iPhone-watched movies. Despite the fabulous quality of the iPhone screen, even two inches from your face it doesn't match the 'sit in the comfy chair and watch the giant screen with 500 people' experience. So I think you and other 'cranky cinephiles' shouldn't worry overmuch."

I also heard from Marshall Eubanks, CEO of a Web site called AmericaFree.tv, which airs a surprising array of feature-length films, via QuickTime, absolutely free. (This week, they've got the 1961 Marlon Brando classic "One-Eyed Jacks," Howard Hughes' 1943 western "The Outlaw," Jimmy Stewart and Carole Lombard in "Made for Each Other," a new indie crime film called "Time of My Life" and lots of other stuff.) Eubanks reports that the site simulcasts everything in cellphone format (3GPP and 3GPP2, if you must know), but that less than 1 percent of AmericaFree's audience watches movies that way. He puts it simply: "People do do it, but not too many."

So there we have it. People can watch movies on their phones and various other tiny gizmos, and some small, slowly increasing subset of them will do it. But to construe that as a threat to the movie-theater business is ludicrous. I suspect that the rising quality and falling prices of home-theater systems, the broadening reach of video-on-demand, and the growth of Netflix, GreenCine and so on have a lot more to do with the sluggish box-office numbers of the last few years than do a handful of pioneers on the outer fringes of techno-geekdom.

Actually, as I also wrote last week, this summer's indie box office is looking pretty doggone strong. With exceptionally strong openings for Patrice Leconte's "My Best Friend" (on just three New York screens) and "Talk to Me" (in 33 big-city theaters) last weekend, the good news continues. In terms of the larger picture, though, I get a lot of letters from readers who say they just don't go to the movies. Whether it's the online service fee, the long lines, the sticky floors, the crowds of teenagers or the $4.95 sodas (plus the cost of baby sitting, gas, parking, etc.), lots of adult movie fans just don't find theatergoing to be congenial or pleasant or worthwhile.

So let's reopen a topic from last year: Why don't you go to the movies, and what might make you go more often? Mark Cuban's Landmark chain is specifically intended to address these problems and provide a grown-up-centric night out. Is it working? Do booze, food and other amenities (à la Texas' fabulous Alamo Drafthouse mini-chain) make a difference? Or if that's all just old-regime thinking, let's hear about it. Have you embraced the cocoon experience of home-movie watching as a liberation from group think and mass conformity?

More to come. Meanwhile, weren't we supposed to talk about actual movies? I guess I've been delaying talking about Milos Forman's "Goya's Ghosts," which is a textbook case of what's wrong with the mid-budget international art-film business. But we've also got two utterly charming surprises. "Summercamp!" is a documentary about, well, about summer camp. But it turns out to be the saddest, sweetest, most magical and most deeply affecting movie of the season. And American audiences finally get a look at "Live-in Maid," another exquisitely made character study from Argentina, which despite its economic troubles continues to support the world's most eclectic film industry.

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