Selling Out

By Tom Macy

December 10, 2009

Not so modern warfare.

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Now that Thanksgiving is behind us - putting an end to complaints that it's too early for Christmas decorations - Oscar season is in full swagger. It's the time of year when studios - hoping they have the hand that's going to take home the big prize - flood theatres with the blue chips they've been hording all year leaving up movie goers flailing trying to keep up. I often feel like that doomed unnamed X-Wing pilot in Return of the Jedi. "There's....too many of them!"

That the glut of "good movies" (notice the air quotes) are released now needs no explanation. The blitzkrieg of biopics and George Clooney is all-familiar territory. But that doesn't make it any less frustrating. The pressure to get to everything feels like sinking in quicksand. The more you see, more the more you realize you need to see. And no matter how hard you try, eventually you just have to accept that you won't be able to get to all the films featuring the best supporting actress nominees, throw up your hands in exasperation and ask, "Would you mind spreading things out a little more!? Seriously, trying to find a decent movie to go to in April is like scraping the bowl for the last morsel of cookie dough, and in December it's like, I can't eat all this!" Or something like that.

To make matters worse, the former half of the year, Oscar season's polar opposite – in essence and in season - the summer movie season only amplifies the disparity. All of sudden we go from a constant state of leave-your-brain-at-the-door movies to Syriana. You may as well call them the bad and good movie seasons. It always takes me a few films to get the rust off the ol' pedantic analysis gears. Last October, I was definitely not in shape for Synecdoche, NY.




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It isn't fair. Why should the time of year dictate what types of movies are being shown? Going back to the food metaphor - because food and metaphors are two of my favorite things in life – its as if Hollywood is asking us live on a diet of Ring Dings and Mountain Dew all summer long and then in the winter switch to red kale and wheat grass (I couldn't think of any healthy foods). What does Average Movie Goer #31 do in July if he wants to sit in a dark air-conditioned room for two hours and not see pointless explosions, anthropomorphized CGI creatures or Adam Sandler? It's not an absurd request. What happens after Christmas dinner when Audience Member #23 doesn't want to go spend her money to be depressed, bored and confused just so she doesn't have to remain silent during the 700 Oscar movie conversations the media will force her to be subjected to over the next three months?

This system is just a product of greed manifesting itself to our detriment. I'm not about to go into a tirade about the negative effect Capitalism has on cinema - though just typing that did make me feel really smart. It's no big revelation that money is the driving force behind everything in our society. However, the driving force behind the money is the consumer, who has the right to choose what they spend it on. It is on this front that the public is being cheated.


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