Has the coronavirus pandemic changed the way you consume movies? Most people don’t see more than one or two movies on a big screen in any given year, but perhaps the fact that you’re reading a film critic’s web site means your multiplex and/or arthouse habits are a bit more regular.
Still, you probably were already watching lots of films at home, too, even before lockdown. Have you discovered new streaming outlets? Are you diving deeper into your old go-to online movie sources (you know, like Netflix or Amazon Prime)? Have you found yourself buying lots more DVDs or blu-rays? Are you mostly interested in revisiting your favorite films, or discovering new ones, either classics or more recent movies you’d missed before? Is any of this something you’ve consciously thought about, or are you just taking each new movie-watching experience as it comes?
Maybe you’re watching more TV, playing more video games, or reading more books?
I’d love to hear how, as a movie fan, you’re coping with this new entertainment environment. Drop a comment below!
I’ve been doing a mix of rewatching old favorites (fiancée and I did the Lord of the Rings extended editions over the last week) and catching up on my intimidating To Watch list.
Definitely upped my reading the last few months as well, and my fiancée has been picking up video games, which she hasn’t played regularly since high school. I just sat on the couch and read/watched her play through The Last of Us Part 2, which was absolutely incredible.
For a while, most of the movies and TV shows I was watching were about social distancing: Pushing Daisies, Evening Primrose, and a less obvious choice, Amelie.
I also watched a significant number of the movies MaryAnn recommended this year and was not disappointed.
The past week or so, I’ve been watching many, many old episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show. Remarkably, kind, intelligent people can sometimes be interesting to watch. I’ve also been rewatching The West Wing for similar reasons.
I find it funny how Pushing Daisies seems more timely today than it was when it was first released. Kinda makes you wonder what the producers knew that we don’t know…
Had to use my TV as a monitor once my work-from-home setup took over the home office. Watching some Netflix, but less movies.
I bought a used projector from an online pawn shop and painted a screen on my living room wall with Screen Goo (looks fantastic, but more tricky to apply than regular paint). It’s not the same as being at the theater, and all the libraries are all closed so I can’t check out any new films, but I’ve been slowly going through my old favorites. I rarely watch any movies more than once a decade, so it’s been fun to experience them again. Also, just for a lark I projected Xenoblade Chronicles, and it was so beautiful, it made me tear up a little.
With extra days off, I thought I’d be more productive (reminds me of this Onion ariticle: https://local.theonion.com/man-not-sure-why-he-thought-most-psychologically-taxing-1843004933 ), but most of my new free time was being frittered away on news sites and online art shopping, so I bought one of those little spinning prize wheels and wrote one productive activity in each space. It’s only been a couple of months, but it’s working well. It feels good to complete at least one worthwhile, constructive and/or creative activity a day, and the prize wheel keeps me from getting bored of a set routine.
The only major issue is that I already didn’t interact with people much before this. Now I’m being extra careful to avoid humans because I visit my father once a week and don’t want to infect any co-workers, so I literally go weeks without saying a single word. I feel fine, but am gradually losing the ability to socially interact. The rare times I do speak with someone, it’s more and more of a struggle not to ramble on about my own train of thought when the other person is simply making small talk, or has no interest in following my random (to them) associative mental hopscotch.
Speaking of which, I’ve hopscotched my way right out of the topic. Short answer, I miss relaxing at the theater and marathoning through three or four films with nothing but nachos and smuggled granola bars to sustain me, but projecting the classics on my living room wall is a lot of fun. I’ve been rewatching MST3K with my dad once a week too which helps relieve a lot of stress. Not perfect, but I’m super lucky to still have a job and my health, so I’m happy to be here.
Your home cinema setup sounds great! I have nothing but my laptop and a small, crappy flatscreen barely bigger than the laptop to watch on.
That Onion article… oy.
I’ve been avoiding the epic, blockbuster-scale movies that seem to require a giant screen and focusing on more intimate films like Extra Ordinary and Blow the Man Down.
The big studios keep delaying the wide canvas movies like Tenet and Wonder Woman, and one of the reasons may be that they’ll lose dramatic impact on a home screen unless, like amanohyo, you have wall space, creativity, and the resources to take advantage of them.
I’m seeing fewer movies, I think.
My job hasn’t stopped since mid-March. I simply had to transfer my office work to my home — which is not set up for it. (My job has a large field component, I had to continue with that, using precautions.) I live in a small home in a big, formerly vibrant city with lots of cultural amenities. Emotionally, I have always felt most comfortable with a bright line separation between work and not-work, even to the point of changing my clothes as soon as possible after work. (This was also true when I was studying. Studies counted as work.)
I have a relatively small screen, as I could only bring home my laptop. At work I use 2 screens. I have had to spend about 50% more time to get the same amount done. I used a lot of printed resources for reference at my desk as I already had bookmarks and marginal notes which don’t exist on the common references saved in PDF on our servers. I have had to download things onto my hard drive and start to recreate the bookmarks and comments electronically. I can do this, but, it is time consuming and I was constantly reminded how annoying it was as I already had all this IRL, but, hadn’t brought it home. (It would have meant I had to take home two or three file boxes of codes/reference books/etc in addition to the job-specific personal files I took home.) I find the lag in online video conferences to affect how long it takes to have a conversation.
I used to walk to and from the office, getting my daily exercise, as well as lots of my errands as I would adjust my route to let me stop off and pick things up on the way. The shopping bags would become my free weights, complete with bicep curls as I walked.
Until the office started reopening, my workday started with me rolling over in bed, sitting up, moving about 2 feet in the horizontal direction, and turning on my computer. I was always around it, and would put in more hours less efficiently.
I therefore was spending longer in front of a screen and was simultaneously itching for exercise. The last thing I want right now is to stay sitting in front of a screen for anything. My speakers aren’t great, either. I tried to listen to a piano performance by someone who I KNOW is fabulous. He did it from his apartment. The sound was miserable for me. It didn’t make me feel better. I felt like I was doing him a favor by allowing him to do what he knows how to do and that he was doing to cheer people up. (Not that I told him that.)
I have watched a few things. They are things I would have watched anyhow on Netflix or HBO. (The Old Guard was one, every Last Week Tonight is another.)
Otherwise, I have been suiting up as if for a Hazwopr site (except no chemtek suit) and going out. I have done grocery shopping for neighbors and I have done a lot of maintenance in my community garden. It was spring, there is ALWAYS a lot of maintenance in spring.
I will feel like normal has returned once I can go to a sweaty dance club and be lost in the music.
Due to various health and economic issues, I had pretty much resigned myself to not seeing any movies in the conventional fashion weeks before the current Corona crisis. What happened since then has only confirmed the idea that I was right to do so.
In a way, it’s a shame. After all, some of the best memories of my life involve movie theatres.
On the other hand, I really don’t see anyone with as many breathing issues as I have being all that comfortable wearing a mask for two hours just to watch a movie that I could see far more safely at home. Add to that the fact that movie theatres seem to be charging me more and more while providing me with less and less and suddenly cable TV and DVDs don’t seem like bad alternatives.
Besides, the only real change I see on the horizon is an end to library rentals. My local library is finally allowing patrons to check out and check in books but the check out process is by appointment only and while I don’t mind going through all that to read a book, going through all that to rent a movie is another story.
I’ve been watching more movies, since I’ve been less busy, but I haven’t been keeping up with my 2020 watchlist as much as I did in previous years. I’ve used Tutturu to livestream with friends- if one person rents the movie, everyone can see it on each other’s screens (you can also use Netflix Party if everybody has a Netflix account). We recently watched Money Plane (where my current username comes from) and it’s a lot of dumb fun with friends to watch with.
I also started the Blank Check podcast, which goes through directors’ filmographies one movie per episode; it’s extremely insightful and also very funny. It began with a deep dive into the Star Wars prequels before Griffin Newman (actor) and David Sims (film critic), with Producer Ben (and later Angela), realized what they loved talking about most was Lucas’ career. Since then, each “mini-series” has focused on directors who get “blank checks” from Hollywood, and I’ve watched through the filmographies of the first two mini-series, M. Night Shyamalan and the Wachowskis.
I’m not going to see the occasional new release at the theater is the only change. But pre-pandemic, I would only do that about 3 times a year when I was really looking forward to a new release. (And no, they were never anything derived from a comic book.)
I’ve been continuing to get my fix through a few of the premium channels on cable (HBO, Showtime), the free On Demand movies that I can just dial up or, on occasion, the $3.99 or a little more $$$ On Demand movies that I’m wanting to see badly for one reason or another. (It’s free on On Demand if it is not a new release and was recently shown on a premium channel that I subscribe to.)
Most that I check out are movies I’ve never seen but are somewhat recent, within the last 10 years or so. A fair amount of the time I’m looking forward to maybe accessing On Demand for a new release then I go to Rotten Tomatoes and read the snippets and then suddenly I no longer have the urge to dial up that movie. Those films (the ones either deemed duds or just negatively reviewed in general) end up disappearing from the public consciousness rather quickly so I figure I didn’t miss much by passing on them. I’m a tough cookie when it comes to my viewing pleasure and I’m thankful that a fair amount of critics out there are as well.
I’ve been wondering whether, in a few years, seeing a movie in a theatre will become an event, like going to a Broadway show or a rock concert or an amusement park. I can imagine the theatres that are still in business being redesigned like stadiums, with enormous IMAX screens and booming sound and, possibly, the cheesy “4D” effects (vibrating seats, piped-in smoke) that have been added to some screenings. Most of the theatrical releases would be epic films with spectacular imagery that fills the screen, like Avatar and Tenet (whatever you think of those films), along with classics and Fathom-style live events. Other movies, like romantic comedies and horror movies, would be more likely to show up on streaming services.
I’m very bad at making economic predictions, so I’m not saying this will or should happen, but I can see it as one possible model, if movie theatres survive at all.
I can see multiplex cinemas going the way of a fair share of brick and mortar retail outlets – too much overhead when the general public has so many other easily accessible options to view a recently released movie on their huge flat screen with surround sound in the comfort of their own home. But I haven’t been paying attention to box office receipts. I have no idea if pre-pandemic people were going to a new release on a Friday in droves if it looked like a really good film to see at the theater. And then of course were people going to see the other movies in the other theaters at that same multiplex? Movies that had been out for weeks. Those facilities just seem like such a bad investment with what people have access to with cable and streaming.
I really do miss seeing movies in the theater.
I’ve been watching movies released by streaming services such as Vast of Night, 7500, The Old Guard, etc.
Also catching up on well-reviewed movies of the past few years. I watched Portrait of a Lady on Fire Friday night. That was great.
Also watching some of the great tv shows out now. Just finished Duty/Shame on Netflix, which was great.
At home I have a nice 4K 55″ I use for movie watching. Plus nice headphones.
I never re-watch anything so no old shows or movies that I’ve seen already for me. Life is too short to re-watch things, IMHO.