IMO, because he didn't really advertise well enough. I didn't catch the TV ad he ran until 1 in the a.m. on a Saturday. I didn't know it was there until I actually walked into the shopping center where it is, to take my niece to da Vido's for pizza and wings.
As for a Kmart... do you happen to know where a closer one to us in DeKalb than Stewart Avenue is? I did find one way the heck up 20 East, well into Newton County. ---------[ Received Mail Content ]---------- Subject : Re: [RE][scifinoir2] FW: Scalzi: Do Science Fiction Movies Still Need Theaters? Date : Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:26:40 +0000 >From : [EMAIL PROTECTED] To : scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com Why did he miss the target demographic? Do you think enough people got the word about the theatre? I talk to a lot of people now who don't know about the existence of the two five-dollar dine-and-watch theatres I mentioned. Yet one is in NE Atlanta (near Northlake Mall), and convenient to a whole lot of people, and the other's centrally located down in Buckhead. Friends who've gone to the theatre near me were pleasantly surprised at its existence, commenting that even if they have to drive 10 -15 miles, the money saved makes it worth the trip. I have to believe that if more theatres start doing something like this, they'll see the returns. As the economy gets worse, more people will settle for the five bucks to order a movie on demand with their cable company, or rent a DVD, or go through NetFlix. Dropping the prices only makes sense. I mean, hell, even stores like K-Mart are bringing back layaway! ( A move I *highly* applaud, by the way!) -------------- Original message -------------- From: "Martin Baxter" Keith, an entrepreneur in my end of the county tried to open a third dine-and-watch last year. Well, he did, but he sorely missed his tsrget demographic, and had to close after less than eight months open. I never did get to take it in. A couple of neighbors of mine raved about it. ---------[ Received Mail Content ]---------- Subject : Re: [RE][scifinoir2] FW: Scalzi: Do Science Fiction Movies Still Need Theaters? Date : Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:04:38 +0000 >From : [EMAIL PROTECTED] To : scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com Mr. Old School here. I still like the movie going experience because it's where I can share it with a whole bunch of people, which is half the fun. And I still think that even when I can afford to get that 50-inch plasma screen, I'll still find the overall physical appeal of a big screen superiour. When I write movie reviews, I sometimes have to be sure to take into account whether or not i'm letting my shared experience with the crowd give the film a better (or worse) rating than I'd have done without the masses around me. Of course, being an extreme extrovert, i just find the thought of watching most of my films at home, "alone" with just me and my wife, to be depressing, as if I'm missing out on something. Heck: it was seeing "Sex and the City" with a large, enthusiastic crowd that made me like that flick as much as I did! But I sure as heck get the issue with cost, especially now that I'm not employed. I despise theatres' penchant for charging as much for a overly iced Coke as I'd pay for a whole twelve pack at the grocery store. Or for how they offer a very limited amount of stale popcorn, mummified hot dogs, covered-in-who-knows-what nachos, and larva-infested chocolate for as much as a whole bag of candy at Target or Wal-Mart. It's why I've been sneaking food into the movies for years. But there's some hope on the horizon: more theatre chains are starting to expand the dine-and-watch style of theatre, where you can order an assortment of food and eat it there. There are two here in Atlanta (Movie Tavern, AMC Fork and Dine) that offer everything from hamburgers and fried shrimp to mojitos and milkshakes, and both are good. At least then you feel the money you spent is well spent on good food. But most importantly, these new theatres drop the price of movies drastically most of the time.! Bo! th of t h e theatres I mentioned here only charge five bucks for films every single day before 5 pm--including weekends. And one of them only goes up to seven bucks even after 5 pm, which is great. I'm hoping the recent problems with high prices of gas and food, massive job loss--not to mention the trend y'all are discussing of home viewing--will make more theatres go back to offering a pleasant, tasty, and affordable experience. I'd hate to see us turn into a country of people who only watch films at home and start losing that shared experience of coming together in crowds. But like I said, according to Meyers-Briggs, i'm an extrovert in the extreme! -------------- Original message -------------- From: "Martin Baxter" Brent, this speaks directly to something that either rave or Daryle said here sometime back, that the model for movie viewing has changed drastically during our lives. It's easier to market a movie to someone with a Mac or a PC than it is to toss it into a theater, looking to clear money after ad revenues et cetera ad nauseum. And, for folks like me who've really become disenfranchised with the entire movie-going experience, to say nothing of the Concessions Issue, it's nirvana. ---------[ Received Mail Content ]---------- Subject : [scifinoir2] FW: Scalzi: Do Science Fiction Movies Still Need Theaters? Date : Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:02:13 -0500 >From : "brent wodehouse" To : scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com ------------------------------------------------------ From: "Dennis Fischer" Subject: Scalzi: Do Science Fiction Movies Still Need Theaters? Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:27:30 -0800 John Scalzi - Do Science Fiction Movies Still Need Theaters? The folks at Pixar sent me the DVD package for WALL-E last week, a three-disc set which includes the movie, an extra disc of goodies, and a version of the film compatible with portable viewers like the iPhone (so, presumably, you'll resist the temptation to find a pirate version online). In addition to giving my daughter something to brag about to her friends because we got the package early (it comes out Tuesday), the two separate versions of the movie -- one for the home and one to take with us wherever we go -- reminded me of how film viewing really has changed, particularly since the advent of portable media players. Go to an airport these days and watch people as they wait for their flights, and you'll see a good percentage of them staring down into a tiny screen, watching a movie or a TV show. People love their movies; we've known for years (much to the economic joy of the studios) that they love to bring them home, and we know now that we love to take them with us when we go places. But this also makes me wonder if we still need the theaters that are films' first homes. What do the movie theaters still offer us that we can't get at home? What Movie Theaters Offer For the studios, of course, the answer is obvious: The theater represents their first revenue stream, the place where they can make back some of the outrageous cost of making and marketing a movie. People like to speculate about the death of the movie theater, but they've been speculating it since the birth of the television era, and very likely they will continue speculating about it for decades to come. Studios keep finding new ways to draw people into the theaters -- or at the very least, new spins on old ways: The current rage for IMAX and/or 3D versions of movies recalls CinemaScope and, yes, 3D films in the 1950s. Given what the studios do to keep bringing us to the show, you would think that the main advantage that movie theaters have over home viewing is technological, but this is not entirely true. Chances are you don't have an IMAX theater in your house (and if you do, I'm offended you haven't invited me over yet), but on the other hand it's not at all unlikely that you might have a large screen HDTV-capable television with a Blu-ray disc play and a 7.1 digital theater sound setup -- or will have such a setup within a couple of years, as prices for all of these things drop. WALL-E or 2001 or Star Wars or Iron Man any other science fiction movie you might think of looks great up there on a theater wall, and sounds great too, but for all practical purposes you can create a nearly equally stunning cinematic experience at home... and many people have. So what does the movie theater still offer viewers that you can't get at home? I'm going to suggest something that I think is counterintuitive: It offers lack of control. What It's Like to Watch at Home Take WALL-E (again). My family sat down to watch it the other night, but we came nowhere near close to watching it interrupted all the way through. The phone rang and it was my wife's mother on the phone; we paused it so she wouldn't miss something. Then at some point we all decided a bathroom break was in order. Another pause. Later, snacktime. Pause. At various points we skipped back a bit because we missed something someone was saying or because we wanted to look at something in the background (for example, the "Pizza Planet" truck that's in every Pixar film). Contrast this with how I saw WALL-E in the movie theater. Once the film started, it was out of my control: The story unfolded at the pace the filmmaker chose, and the story's emotional beats came in a rhythm uninterrupted by my personal life and preferences. Short of walking out of the film entirely, I had to take it on its own terms -- surrender my will to the story, as it were. As a result, the emotional highs of the story were higher, the funny parts funnier, and the wrenching parts (yes, there are wrenching parts in WALL-E) that much more affecting. In the theater, you are able to approach the movie as a complete work, and as complete experience in itself. How we know WALL-E or any other film is a really good film is by how it makes us feel -- which is to say, how much the film sweeps us along and makes us a participant in its story. Being able to pause and rewind and such is all very cool -- they're part of the reason people like to watch movies at home, and it's especially fun with science fiction films, because thanks to special effects there's usually something cool to stare at in the background. Frankly, looking at the cool stuff in the background was just about the only way to enjoy the Star Wars prequel trilogy at all, and I know I had fun recently pausing the heck out ofIron Man to get a gander at what was popping up on Tony Stark's helmet display. But these features come at a cost: Each pause and skip degrades the actual viewing experience. Each pause and rewind draws you out of the story and makes you aware of the separation between you and what's going on in the movie, and that keeps you from getting everything you can -- or everything the filmmakers hope you can -- get out of it. You're never more aware that you watching a movie than when you're watching it at home, because you have control over how it plays. The extra bits and the commentary tracks and everything else that comes with DVDs these days are all super cool, but they're not really "extras": They're compensation for what you lose. And this is why science fiction movies -- and all movies -- still need to be seen in theaters: Because they're the places where the movie is still the most important thing, not just something else we do. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to have the WALL-E DVD package, as well as the other DVDs in my collection. But I'm even more glad I got to experience it in the theater first. Winner of the Hugo Award and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, John Scalzi is the author of The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Moviesand the novels Old Man's Warand Zoe's Tale. He's also the editor of METAtropolis, an audiobook anthology on Audible.com. His column appears every Thursday.
