I even, at times, pay the excessive fees and actually buy food in a cinema and for all the moaning about irritating chavs with phones, half hour adverts and the unreasonable starting times, there is still something fun and endearingly entertaining about sitting and watching a film with an audience. So then to the above company and the focus of my rant, the lovely Odeon and its supposed passion for film which I personally feel is really nothing more than a hollow lie.
If they were passionate about films and really not just interested in getting you to part with cash they would actually put films on that you wanted to see. This Easter weekend we have two releases at different ends of the cinematic spectrum – first up is Meet the Spartans which has been universally chastised, maligned and billed by critics as probably one of the worst films ever to grace the local multiplex. A rancid turd of a parody, I have yet to see or hear an opinion that the film is anything less than a pathetic comedy which has little-to-no jokes in it. However on a quick flick through the times and listings of my local Odeon, it is shown no more than four times. It really just makes me mad that cinema companies ignore good films and cannot understand why they feel that the cinema going public are by and large brain-dead morons, who are a Michael Bay-chasing set of exploding car addicted teenagers. And while I understand that they have to cater to this demographic, as well as the other demographics they seem to cater for ( kids, mums and babies, golden oldies), they seem to think that if a film has subtitles, is a bit different or from a country other than the US that it is in some way non-profitable, arty or that people don’t want to see it. And we do! Us the thirty odd year old, fully employed passionate film going public who have a disposable income and a desire to see films.
The insistence that film companies and cinemas are losing ‘millions’ via bit-torrent and file sharing is to me a bit of a fib. I feel that this is really down to them as a company not really handling what their customers want to see. Fanaticism describes the essential need for something, to be totally committed to an idea, and I feel that by not catering for me, along with the many thousands of film fans like me by not putting films like The Orphanage on (not to mention the lack of screens showing Blade Runner before Christmas), they should not parade the slogan ‘Fanatical About Film’ Because they’re not. All they are interested in is selling you bad summer tat with the added bonus of popcorn, syrupy cola and stinky Doritos… All for way over the odds.