Scripting News: Theater movies suck

Scripting News, the weblog started in 1997 that bootstrapped the blogging revolution.

Theater movies suck

I played hookie to see The Simpsons movie, and boy did it suck. It's probably not the fault of the people who made the movie, because I'm so spoiled with my high-def home theater, and powerful sound system. When I go watch a movie in a theater, the screen seems so far away, so small, and their technology is so poor.

For example, the movie was too big to fit on the screen, about 20 percent of the picture, 10 percent on either side, was actually projected on the drapes.

And the sound was muddy and tinny and soft.

A movie would have to be pretty incredible to hold my attention in that environment.

The movie industry needs to take a look at this. I suppose I'm in the minority, but I won't be for long. The prices on home entertainment equipment are dropping all the time, and word of mouth must be spreading. For $2K you can create an environment at home that's hugely better than the one in the theaters. Next year it'll probably be $1K.

Last update: Thursday, June 3, 2010; 4:01:23 PM

~About the Author~

Dave Winer, 55, is a visiting scholar at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in New York City.

"The protoblogger." - NY Times.

"The father of modern-day content distribution." - PC World.

One of BusinessWeek's 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

"Helped popularize blogging, podcasting and RSS." - Time.

"The father of blogging and RSS." - BBC.

"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.

Mail: scriptingnews1mail at gmail dot com.

Jul Sep