It was the first year I have ever stood in front of a display board at an 11 screen multiplex and failed to find a single movie that appealed to me. Great films are still getting made but for the first time in 30 years they are rarely making it out of London or the big cities.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not a film snob. I love big screen spectacles like Avatar but I also want something more thoughtful \u2013 something like Me and Orson Welles, which also came and went in a blink of an eye. Cinemas may say that attendances for these films are not great. I would argue that scheduling these movies with an 11.30 pm or midnight finish is not great programming \u2013 particularly if you have a 30 minute drive home in front of you.<\/p>\n
Choice lay at the heart of the multiplex rebirth of cinema. Cinema admissions in 1984 were down to a paltry 54 million. By 2002 that figure had grown to a 30 year high of 175.5 million. Last year it still managed a respectable 164 million. The driving force behind the rebirth of cinema is not just comfortable surroundings it is a choice of films on offer.<\/p>\n
By only offering big budget, teen friendly blockbusters multiplexes are behaving as if a well regarded restaurant suddenly started offering nothing but chicken and chips.<\/p>\n
If cinema is not to suffer an admissions collapse on a scale of the 1980s then to needs to start nourishing its audience \u2013 all its audience not just the popcorn buying, coke swilling teenage crowd.<\/p>\n
The advent of 3-D cinema will not be enough to save the 20th century\u2019s greatest art form from the harsh realities of life in a time-starved 21st century.<\/p>\n
An indication of the screen crisis that was to define the film world in 2009 came within the first weeks of the year when leading Oscar contenders found it hard to find space to attract an audience. In January alone we had Che \u2013 Part One, The Reader, Slumdog Millionaire, The Wrestler, Frost\/Nixon, Milk, Rachel Getting Married, Valkyrie and Revolutionary Road all vying for a similar audience.<\/p>\n
Of those films only Slumdog Millionaire had any real legs. Valkrie lasted longer than the others simply because it had the name of Tom Cruise above the title to bolster ticket sales but even so in barely lasted two weeks on most sites. Turning their back on critically acclaimed Oscar winners, cinemas instead opted for horror and formulaic, teen-friendly romantic comedy. In most mainstream cinemas January welcomed My Bloody Valentine 3-D with open arms and swiftly followed that with Underworld 3: Rise Of The Lycans. The rom-com crowd were palmed off with Bride Wars and Beverley Hills Chihuahua. Both films singly failed to provide audiences with anything different or even slightly original but it didn\u2019t stop cinema chains from playing these for weeks on end while the films being feted at the Academy Awards were being largely ignored.<\/p>\n
The situation didn\u2019t improve in February with Doubt, the Oscar-winning Vicky Cristina Barcelona with Penelope Cruz, Brad Pitt\u2019s The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button and Che \u2013 Part Two all being given short shrift in favour of such lamentable offerings as Hotel For Dogs, The Pink Panther 2 and the curiously titled He’s Just Not That Into You \u2013 which turned out to be yet another teenage rom-com fantasy.<\/p>\n