The Power of Choice: or the Pleasure of the Least Resistance

No one wants to hear someone talk about “the good old days” because there never was any such thing: all our memories are pure personal nostalgia, so I won’t bore you with recollections. I do, however, want you to consider a profound change in movie viewing over the last thirty years. Because this change has happened over time, its impact is particularly perceptible by someone who has seen it “over time.” For those of you born after 1990, the way movie viewing is now is relatively close to the way it has been since you were aware of movies, but trust me when I say there has been a profound change in “movie delivery systems.” (I just made that up.)

So this will not be a retrospective of movies in general or their content specifically, but rather a contemplation of viewer access to movies and movie making itself. The choice that viewers now have in movie viewing has had an impact on our sense of self, on the market, and our movie-viewing habits.

The Impact of Potter

If you have any sense of pop culture awareness, it should come as no surprise that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 is finally upon us. It's been ten years of ups and downs as we not only watched our childhood favorites translated from page to screen, but also shared in the memories and experiences as Harry, Ron, and Hermione grew through the years. Different hairstyles, fashion styles. We notice. To celebrate the epic conclusion to the motion picture event of the decade, we're featuring a new Potter-themed blog from now through Friday, ending with our review of the IMAX 3D presentation.