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Thursday, March 20, 2008

More Movies, Fewer Column Inches

posted by on March 20 at 10:27 AM

Via Reuters and the Hollywood Reporter:

Alex Gibney’s “Taxi to The Dark Side” won the best documentary Oscar in February. But when it opened in New York on January 18, it didn’t get even a one-paragraph review in the New York Post or New York Daily News.

It wasn’t alone. An increasing number of films aren’t getting reviewed in key U.S. outlets, damaging their slim chances at the box office. If the trend continues, it could make it even more difficult for smaller independent films to secure a release.

Reviews from established media outlets are the only reason many low-budget films make it to theaters today, because they trigger word-of-mouth, feature articles and DVD-ready quotes vital to the indies’ true profit source: home video.

But as more and more indie films have flooded the market (up from 501 in 2006 to 530 last year), they are overwhelming critics.

I can’t say I’m surprised, but if anyone needed to see Taxi to the Dark Side, it’s readers of the New York Post.

Though Seattle gets fewer movies overall than New York, I’m sure our numbers have gone up too: The new SIFF Cinema is showing almost as many films as, say, the Grand Illusion; calendar programming at Landmark and the GI has held steady; and the number of films shown by Northwest Film Forum over the period it transitioned to its new space must have jumped significantly. Meanwhile, the number of wide releases—not to mention films shown at SIFF and Seattle’s many specialty festivals—has been climbing.

As it happens, The Stranger reviewed (actually, I reviewed) all the films mentioned in the article—4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and The Ghosts of Cité Soleil got 300-word reviews; Taxi to the Dark Side and Lake of Fire were reviewed only in Film Shorts and, in our web site’s current configuration, can’t be surfaced anymore. Still, we’re in the same boat as everyone else. It’s hard to find the space—and time—to write about all the movies that deserve to be written about.

No solution seems forthcoming. I certainly don’t want fewer movies to be seen in Seattle—and if we were somehow forced to sacrifice a few, it isn’t the 4 Weeks and Taxis that I’d choose to lose.

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We hear enough about the blockbusters/popcorn movies from every other outlet in town. Give those up, if anything. Unless you're going to give the really bad ones to Lindy West.

Posted by tsm | March 20, 2008 11:07 AM

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