Today, we conclude a week of cinema grumbles...


Cinemas nowadays seem to be looking for an experience people couldn't reproduce at home, such as 3D, in the hopes that audiences will reject the DVD alternative. The thing is, though, people don't go to most films because they have major technological advantages. They go to films because they want an evening out, or because they want to see the film now rather than wait for the DVD release. Both of those are things the cinemas are perfectly capable of offering. What they can't do, though, do not outweigh the alternatives of going down the pub instead and renting the DVD later if the cinema is offering an unattractive environment. A pub with sticky floors puts off punters however shiny their pint glasses; most people would stay away from a restaurant where somebody kept coming between them and their food. If the place is nasty and you can't concentrate on what it's offering, there's no reason to go.

To be sure, a cinema does offer a big-screen experience that's somewhat different from a television, but even assuming someone has a small TV, that's not as big an advantage as it might be. The human brain is a concentrating organ - which means it's excellent at ignoring certain things. Things that stay still and don't make any noise. That rules out obstreperous punters, but it doesn't rule out your living room. As long as you've been reading this post, have you really been that aware of the area around the screen? I certainly haven't; there's a picture of a bird on the wall above me, a printer to my right, and a certain amount of jumble, but all my eyes have really registered is a page of text, with the occasional interruption from my cat Mika, who's sitting on the window outside making silent mews in the hopes that I'll decide it's teatime soon (reasoning, I think, that as lunch appeared when she was out in the garden, maybe tea will as well) - which is to say, the only thing that broke my focus was an object that a) I'm very fond of, and b) was in motion. Watching a movie on DVD is similar: if it's good enough to hold your attention, then your brain cancels out your surroundings, providing a fairly close equivalent to the big-screen experience.

So the upshot is that going to the cinema feels more and more like going to the theatre: an experience somewhat different from the one you have at home, but not something you run to on a regular basis. And that's the nice cinemas; with the affordable ones, it's more like going to an underground theatre only without the sense of sticking it to the Man. On the whole, cinemas feel more like the Man is sticking it to you - and if he's going to do that, he can do it on his own dime.