Yes yes, I realise that the title to this blog seems somewhat ominous, but bear with me here. I have a point I promise. And I'm sorry that this isn't a movie review. I don't really know why I'm considering apologising to you (whoever you are) about the time gaps in my entries to this blog. The reasons I don't keep it up to date are numerous, but essentially boil down to laziness. I won't lie, I pick you up and drop you when I'm bored, blog. Also, sometimes I prefer to bathe in the after-glow of a good film rather than dissect it.
Finally, there's Netflix. This, personally speaking, is a perfectly acceptable excuse for not posting as often as I perhaps feel I should be doing.
Hard to believe that Netflix is approaching its 15th birthday, and like most teenagers, it sucks your money sometimes offering lots in return and other times demanding you spend hours looking through its filthy room for dirty washing and finding porn mags with its pages stuck together and the distinct aroma of illegal narcotics.
And this is why Netflix is either the most wonderful invention the world has ever seen, or indeed the very downfall of humanity. Of course, I'm not saying that Netflix will single-handedly bring about the apocalypse. Still, if it does, you can say you heard it here first. Feel free to take it to the bank and cash in that cheque, and all the while you can call me Psychic McJones.
No. Total apocalypse aside, I am merely referring to the film industry and people's perception of what 'good' is with regards to films. As an avid film-watcher, recent graduate in the field and possibly a highly trumped-up ego, I feel I have enough experience of how the industry works to pass judgement on people's viewing habits.
OK, allow me if you will, to take you back about 23 years. It's 1991, and I am a chubby 7 year old who knows all the words to Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid. I'm sure there were other videos (ah yes, videos, who remembers those?!) but back in those days, videos were EXPENSIVE and so you watched them until your favourite scenes sounded like they'd been recorded in the cinema using your uncle Dave's crappy half-ton camcorder and a couple of cups on string for sound. The rewind button on the video player was permanently pressed-in and a remote control was the stuff of dreams, that only really really rich people had.
What is the point of this silly flashback I hear you cry, hopefully on a packed train where those who aren't lost in the world of noise-cancelling Beats (or whatever the crap those oh-so-popular headphones are called) will turn and look at you with an expression that says 'crazy hipster loony'. Yes, yes I take pleasure in making people feel embarrassed, so kill me.
Well, anyway, the point is this. Way back when videos were expensive, they were also precious. You watched and watched them, usually until they were totally destroyed. Even if you rented one for the evening you would watch it from start to finish. If you were anything like me, you even sat through all the trailers at the beginning of the film.
It was the same with trips to the cinema. I can count on one hand the number of new releases I saw in the cinema between the ages of 0 and 15. Mostly, I would visit a local cinema that showed black and white silent moves day and night in the basement and blockbusters several years after their release in the upstairs screen. Even then you'd barely see change out of £5 for a family & snacks. It later transpired that the man who owned the cinema went down for murder and that old cinema since been converted into flats (true story, look it up!).
Now, and this is important, I'm not a technophobe! I've grown up surrounded by computers like the rest of you (well, most of you at least). Granted when I first started using computers, floppy discs were indeed floppy, and my first experience of Apple wasn't anything exciting. Like so many others I'd likely be lost without my all-singing all-dancing smart phone. And YES I do have a Netflix subscription and have/have had subscriptions to Love Film, Blockbusters, Tesco Film and Film4OD. I have a modest collection of about 450 DVDs and Wish Lists for more on Amazon, eBay and IMDb. IMDb is also one of my most used web pages and I happen to think it is absolutely wonderfully marvellous!
No, I'm not discrediting technology. YES we are wholly dependent on something that can (and most likely eventually will) crash and send us spiralling into a global panic, or worse, turn on us and enslave us with the very technology we created. But I'm not saying that it's so terrible that if you're lost (and as long as you're in a free Wi-Fi area) you can find your way. It can save lives, save time and save money if you know what you're doing.
But the huge advances in technology that have brought us streaming content at the click of a button has soured our love for film, and also driven the wedge between humanity that many times deeper. For example, do you know the names of your neighbours? When commuting to work, do you sit with headphones on or do you perhaps converse with your fellow commuters. Have you almost run over someone who's walked into the road, too busy looking at their phone to look where they're going? Perhaps you've narrowly avoided a crash with another driver who's talking on their phone? Do you know people who are thousands of pounds in debt simply because they 'had' to have the most recent iPhone (other smart phones are available). Well, this is because technology means we can talk to friends we haven't seen since high school, we can email every company in the world and go about our day to day business without actually saying a single word, face to face, with another human being.
Unfortunately, to try and bring back the days of face-to-face conversation is to grasp idly at straws. The future leaders of our world are all Bieber-loving Facebook-addicted loons with strange shaped texting-thumbs. By the time these people come into power, I hope to be living entirely off the grid, with 12 boxes of DVDs I can't watch any more. Love it or hate it, just like Bieber, technology is not only here to stay, but will seep deeper and deeper into humanity until we're living in a world that's a cross between Surrogates and 1984.
Well, this blog entry took an unexpected dark turn. Sorry, it's relevant. I'm going to get to my point now, as I have a stack of 5 DVDs to get through before the end of tomorrow that I'd like to blog about. So, technology has given birth to a new way to consume film. And herein lies the problem. Unlike those heady days of 1991, where films were made to be watched from start to finish, and were so, over and over. Today Netflix allows us the luxury of half-watching thousands of films.
Gone are the days of watching something so many times that you can recount word for word the entire script. Your need for the 'perfect' film is an insatiable urge, it forces you to rate films you've seen to give you an idea of ones you may like. I too am guilty of starting a film with no real intention of seeing it until the end. If it isn't satisfying my need for romance, horror, gore, or perfection, I will simply cease watching and move onto the next vaguely interesting sounding film.
Where once up a time was the beginning of 90 minutes of childish wonder and awe, it is now a precursor to a half-eaten pie, a vague attempt at finding that nugget of gold in a sea of half-baked comedies and you drawing the conclusion that if you've seen one cop car chase, you've seen them all.
But, and here's the kicker, why would you actually leave the comfort of your Ikea Skonor (or whatever) sofa (that you bought on line BTW using your FindMyPerfectSofa app) to go to the dying breed that is HMV (other stores are available - oh yeah, sorry, no they're not. Who remembers Our Sound? Exactly!) and spend £2 on a DVD, or goodness forbid £14.99 on a new release when you could watch the ENTIRE box set of Breaking Bad, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Daria, Jonathan Creek (I could go on) by simply opening another tab in your screen, leaving this blog as just another memory of the outside world and pay £5.99 a month for all-you-can-eat entertainment? What was I talking about again? I've just seen that a programme I used to watch as a child is on Netflix...I used to love this show.....
Until next time, film fans.
