I find the cinema experience can add something to some films, nothing to others (or even make them much, much worse). The difference was more noticeable when our home tv was a 19" CRT, less so since we upgraded to the slightly less obsolete 1080p we have now. I'm not fond of watching anything more engaging than a few minutes of video on a computer display, and never intentionally watched video on my phone or tablet. I've never been to an imax despite ample opportunities, I guess it's on my fukkit list somewhere well below the top.

Our cinemas here are mostly shitty multiplexes parked out by big box stores, with poor climate control, beatdown seating, wildly overpriced shit food (we bring our own), and preteen staff. The films they run lately range from dumb to dumber garbage. I have to say that any film (and this includes the recent Dunes) with carpet-bombed promotion and run on multiple screens with "AVX" (vibrating seats, deafening volume), 3D, etc. put me right off (safe to assume it's probably for idiots). So yeah, I haven't seen the newest Dunes even though I once held Villeneuve in higher estimation than too clever hollywood sellout. Also I already saw the Lynch version, which I considered pretty near perfect at the time, and another TV series version that wasn't entirely awful and provided some plot exposition MIA in the Lynch. When I have 6-8 hours to kill and there's literally nothing else I might give it a go. Maybe I'll love it!

Yeah, I did always enjoy the cinema. The bombast of seeing stuff on a really big telly with really big speakers is fun. Loved it when I was a kid and it was a twice-yearly treat. And loved it as a young adult either with friends or, as I liked to do, sneaking off and going on my own when I was supposed to be at school or uni.

But I've never enjoyed a film less or more in the cinema than the same film on shitty VHS, a shitty 14" portable with a shit signal or a laptop screen. I've never personally experienced that sense of a film being one you *have* to see in the cinema to have the full experience or whatever. When I'm engrossed in a film the physical medium just dissolves and I'm in it.

And yeah I'm glad my cinema-going ended before all the mega-cinemas with vibro-chairs and stuff that does sound awful.

BUT. And I know this is controversial. I like people talking during films. Even answering their phones or whatever. It's a social experience and people who whinge about that kinda stuff annoy me a bit. It feels misanthropic. If you want to watch a film in silence you can do that at home. Cinema's social by design, it's the point.

There's a well known view that the intention of the artist is unimportant. All that matters is your experience of the work. Not going to get into that too much, but it does seem to me that if Villeneuve spent an awful lot of time with his sound team, designing and tuning a soundscape to accompany his images and dialogue, then it was at least a bit important to him that the film should be experienced with that soundscape. At the very least, if you go along with him and try to experience the film that way, then you're not being wrong or idiotic.

Neither is it somehow wrong not to have that experience - especially if it doesn't bother, interest, attract, or otherwise entice you - and if it doesn't detract from your enjoyment. I watched the vast majority of films that I've seen on TV screens a minute fraction of the size of a cinema screen, frequently, until well into the 1970s in black and white and on shitty CRTs. I recall a particularly hot summer in 1978 with 6 people crammed around a university hall of residence kitchen table watching the Godfather on a massive 17 inch B&W CRT. We thought it was great. Would we rather have had a 65" colour TV with a couple of big stereo speakers? Probably.

 

I take your first point (and I'm definitely not a death of the author person). But I'm not convinced that cinema speakers are *necessarily* hugely better at that than good headphones or whatever. I may be kidding myself with that, it's been a long time since I went to the cinema.

(I think there was more of an argument for cinemas being a unique experience before they went digital. But even then it smelled fetishy to me)

The soundscape was amazing though.

Something that's bothering me with TV shows is when they have a soundscapey intro and a musical soundtrack. I generally want the opposite. If you're going to bother me with a fucking intro, at least have a tune I can hum that gets me in the mood rather than a vague melange of nothing. And *during* the show, don't distract me with music, give me a nice moody soundscape.

 

I watched the American House of Cards (Kevin Spacey) as much for the opening theme music and visual montage as much as for the actual episodes, and sometimes play the audio for background noise. The show unfortunately turned out to be prescient.

sex offender in the White House?

Dunno if it was *prescient*. Other than saying presidents are cunts. That's more postscient.

Underwood was a political-insider dem who instituted a federal jobs programme on taking office. Which is kinda the polar opposite of Trump.

Good show though. Until it went to shit. I remember the 90s British one being better but it's been a *very* long time since I've seen it.

Prescient in showing "a ruthless politician seeking revenge." Not prescient in failing to predict what has occurred, but IMO a fairly accurate reflection of the kinds and level of corruption that facilitated it, all tied up in a bow.

Yeah, hardly the first.

I dunno, I think he better fits Clinton.