This Would Spell the End, IMVPO'dO
Because of the fact we have a toddler, we currently see no movies in the theatre, with the exception of one of us 'rents taking the 10-year-old to the latest kiddie epic.
When we can return to the hallowed auditoriums, if they start doing this where I live, I'll never darken the door of a theatre again:
How the MPAA killed the movie theater experience: a first-hand report. (Via Digg.)
Even though the efficaciousness of the tactics have been questioned, I at least understand the justification for standing shoeless, holding my beltless pants up as I hobble through the metal detector at airports. But endure that kind of cavity-search security screening to watch the latest Hollywood opus? Hell fucking no, dammit anyway.
Half the kids who work at our local theatre are so stoned I barely trust them to transport my popcorn the 3 feet they have to traverse to do so. (Back when I worked a candy counter, we were shown that we always pull the popcorn from the top so as not to fill the bag with old maids. Half these kids scrape along the bottom of the bin as if they were panning for gold, and sure enough, by mid-bag you've got to eat the mashed-up popcorn crumbs as gingerly you would a pheasant that had been brought down by three separate blasts of buckshot.) If I have to trust these yahoos with my cell phone, or allow them to paw through my wife's purse, fuhgeddaboudit.
3 comments:
There is a very pointed and bullshit reason why this occurred in Toronto: Paramount announced last month that it might delay Canadian releases of Big Bucks Low Expectations Hollywood Movies by a margin of two months or so because, second only to China, Canada is *the* movie pirate's haven of choice. Lax copyright laws, ineffective enforcement of same - the same old song of woe we've heard from the poor folks in Southern Cal since the cam-corder was invented. This is just another pathetic attempt to avoid the difficult choices that are facing the entertainment conglomerates, only this time the conglomerates are physically assaulting compliant customers. Now, I ask you: what business person in their right mind honestly thinks their "valued" customer is going to put up with this shit, and thank them with their hard-earned buck?
Permit me to point out that this particular show was a PRE-RELEASE PRESS SCREENING, not open to the public, and that the studio is concerned about copyright.
James Reid (who wrote about this), and Declan (who blogged it), are apparently too stupid to figure out that the guards at this theater were not worried about terrorism, they were worried about recording devices, and for damned good reason. whisky is correct to point out that Canada is ludicrously irresponsible in the area of digital piracy.
James, and Declan, and even you, yahm, need to take a deep breath, count to ten, and take a moment to think about what would happen if the theater did not take these steps. (I, myself, was in Mexico City less than a week after The Two Towers was released. Street vendors were already selling bootleg DVD's of the film. And Mexico, remember, is *better* at policing digital piracy than Canada.)
Joel
You kinda enforce my point, Joel. Piracy is going to exist, and those who support it will, too. That's no reason to put the rest of us through a cavity search over a movie.
The only thing they needed to do was place ushers at the top of the aisles (like we used to do when I worked a theater), and have them take a walk up and down the aisle every 15 min or so. If they see a lens or anything odd in behavior, pull them out of the theatre. I've done that very thing myself, and I know it works.
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