Overlooking (just for the moment) the disappointing buidling in which this cinema is encased....
OH, and too few art films; for @#$@ sake there are 24 screens and they've got Fool's Gold on.... Go grab some good content from the Carlton, whose long-suffering users were hoping to see great film in better surroundings.
Unfortunately you can forget about ever seeing any Carlton/Cumberland/ or the odd Varsity type films here. Common sense would indicate that adding 24 screens to the downtown core would open up at least some avenues of choice, at least 1 or 2 screens’ but in fact the worst possible outcome has occurred, a dictatorship of homogeneity.
New AMC Schedule
http://www.movietickets.com/house_detail.asp?house_id=10818&rdate=4/4/2008
The problem is this, Scotia and AMC Younge/Dundas cannot show the same films, they're in a competition zone. Both theatres bid for whatever run of the mill shit Hollywood spits out each week. Whichever one offers the most screens and/or longest guarantee of a theatrical run wins out. So for example Amc puts Run Fat Boy Run and Leatherheads both on 6 screens and wins the auction. Not only do they over saturate the market, but they also guarantees to show the film for a certain period of time regardless of whether the film bombs or succeeds. Run Fat Boy tanked but thanks to the wonders of this practice you can look forward to seeing it at AMC for the next 6 weeks. If you think the situation is bad now wait until summer arrives. If token mid budget product like this can flood at least 3 screens each, you can look forward to seeing Batman on 6 maybe 8 screens at either theatre. The insanity of this practice is outside the boundaries of the most basic market laws of supply and demand.
What these 2 multiplexes do will also have a negative effect on content at the 2 or 3 lowly art house theatres we have left. You can already see the effect at the Varsity, which would always squeeze in at least a couple of left field films. They're not in the AMC zone, so any content Scotia Bank loses will start appearing there to compensate for Cineplex's loss at Scotia. Even the Carlton, a facility I can't stand, will become a dumping ground for the Hollywood stuff which gets squeezed out of this new multi screen multiplex bidding war. That leaves the Cumberland and all of it's 4 screens, incidentally a theatre which has been for sale for 4 years and found no bidders, and whose owners (Alliance) was just sold to the Quebec government, who is moving most of it's staff to Montreal. How long before they pull the plug on it is anyone's guess. It is quite possible there could be a complete void of any art/independent film content in only a couple of years.
For those who think theatres are only in the business of making money and not curating art films think again. Most of this mainstream garbage fizzles out now in 2 or 3 weeks. 21 may make 20 million dollars in its first week but in its third week, its business drops 60 to 70 %. A successful specialty film may make only 5 to 10 million dollars but in it's 2nd or 3rd month it still has a high per screen average, double or triple that of a studio film. These films have a much longer shelf life. Granted they only perform well in bigger urban markets, New York, San Francisco, LA, Chicago etc…. There is definitely a market for them here too, but it will continue to be ignored, even if 2 weeks from now only 10 people a night are watching Fat Boy Run at AMC.
There's also the issue of digital projection. I won't touch upon the quality debate, something I've already beat to death, but its effect on content. People think it's only a matter of time before all films will be available in digital projection, especially if a theatre like AMC would show it. It's not as simple as that. Most American cities have specific art house chains/theatres that handle these types of film, they are an anomaly though in Canada, where Cineplex owns everything. These films do not show up in multiplexes in the US, unless it's Juno. The art house chains in the US have no incentive to go digital and their profit margins are already hanging by a thread. Remember a digital projector costs $150 000, becomes obsolete in 3 to 5 years and would not increase their business in any way. If anything many of their customers would resist the change. The billion dollar digital conversion is being paid for through a loan by investors/banks to a few multinational corporations which control the multiplexes and studios. They're betting people will pay $25 to $35 to see Alivin and the Chipmunks in 3D or Hannah Montana live in Winnipeg. In this future it won't even be an issue of film content but a convergence of content which is closer in resemblance to video games than cinema. To make a long story short, you can see the theatres which show art films are not jumping on the digital bandwagon. Therefore if you're a distributor of these films and most of your content is shown at theatres in 35mm, it makes no economic sense to encode your film digitally so a couple of Multiplexes can maybe show them,
Even if AMC wanted to allot a token 2 screens to the hot foreign film of the week it can't/won't because 9/10 times it'll only be available in 35mm. What they're doing is irrational of course, most films at the Carlton can make more money than Fat Boy on it's 3rd screen, but the money they're losing in the short term is inconsequential. It's about a long term business ideology where any convention of Cinema is not even in the vernacular. It will be imposed on you whether you like it or not, if only in the world of multiplexes, as this is the future as they see fit.
Finally there's the distribution issue. Independent distributors are an endangered species in Canada. Why bother if they're aren't any theatres that will even show your content. If you can't open a film in Toronto, what chance do you have across the Country. As I described above the situation is going to get even worse. Maximum Films, a new company Robert Lantos started, acquired the entire catalogue of IFC Films, the biggest distributor of art films in the US now. Two of its films, (Paranoid Park, Duchess of Langelais) opened at the Royal here a few weeks ago but were pushed out by the Cine Franco Festival after only a week. I went to a screening of PP and there were probably 100 people there at least, yet neither film could get picked up locally by any theatre. In Montreal Paranoid played at the AMC for weeks, but if you can't even get screens booked here, even if your film makes money, then the situation is indeed dire.
This whole issue is probably irrelevant to many here, they seem to be more interested in the aesthetic merits of Yoplait billboards and signage developments at TLS, but the Film issue is not superfluous. It represents a cultural void locally, which transcends debating the relative hideousness of TLS. They bury their heads in the sand, thinking that TLS will amount to something, anything or that AMC will make the slightest contribution here, just give it time. Keep Dreaming.
