This is the year that print film criticism went on life support, online film critics drafted sober eulogies and the rest of the world yawned distractedly while poised over the plug. Into the ill-attended open grave my colleague Lauren Wissot just tossed a meditation on film culture titled, “The Movie-Going Public.”

I dig it because it dares to take filmgoers as seriously as it does cinema itself. Further, it manages, mostly by way of example, to pee all over the very notion of a professional film critic. I use don’t use the term “pee” lightly but with great care, thinking of readers like Anonymous, who responded to Lauren’s post with, “You’re not an elitist. But you are crass, vulgar and unprofessional… Manny Farber is rolling in his grave.” I want Anonymous, if he or she is reading this, to imagine Mr. Farber howling in pain from the beyond at my using such a crude bathroom word as “pee” in reference to the profession he devoted his life to. But another dead 20th Century critic is probably grinning in his grave. James Agee: “I suspect I am, far more than not, in your own situation: deeply interested in moving pictures, considerably experienced from childhood on in watching them and thinking and talking about them, and totally, or almost totally without experience or even much second-hand knowledge of how they are made. It is my business to conduct one end of a conversation, as an amateur critic among amateur critics. And I will be of use and of interest only in so far as my amateur judgment is sound, stimulating,
or illuminating.” (Props to Ryland Walker Knight.)
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• The MPAA has rejected a proposed one-sheet poster for Alex Gibney’s documentary Taxi to the Dark Side. The original design incorporated an image from a news photo, of a hooded detainee flanked by two soldiers. The MPAA says since they won’t allow hoods on posters for torture porn, they can’t allow similar imagery to promote a torture doc. Distributor ThinkFilm plans to appeal.
• Brad Pitt is in talks to replace Heath Ledger, who was previously cast opposite Sean Penn, in Terrence Malick’s upcoming drama, Tree of Life. There are still few details to report about the project itself, although I guess we can reasonably deduce that whatever character Ledger was going to play has suddenly become about 14 years older.
• Midwestern exhibition chain Marcus Theaters has declined to book Sweeney Todd on any of its 49 screens, on the grounds that Paramount is asking for too much money for the prints. This seems like a late-game decision, considering the film is scheduled to open semi-wide on Friday, but Paramount says the release will be unaffected.
• Nancy Buirski is stepping down from her role as head of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, in order to create and manage “a fund to incubate and produce independent docus and fiction films.”

Talk is brewing on Nikki Finke and Jeff Wells‘ sites of promoting a movie theater boycott over Thanksgiving weekend as a show of solidarity with the striking writers. The concept, says a commenter calling him/herself “writer/producer”, is simple: “All you have to do is stay home and spend more time with your families…Thanksgiving is one of the biggest weekends of the yeah and lowering the box office take that weekend will really hit the studios hard. Hard core fans could even picket their local movie theaters if they wanted to…”

For his part, Wells says he’ll support a boycott if it happens–”Hitting the producers and studio chiefs where it hurts is pure Frank Capra, but I love it”–but maybe he should take minute to think it over. Another Finke commenter says advocating such an organized show of solidarity would be illegal: “Secondary Boycotts are illegal Big-Time! While it might help a lot to boycott the theaters over the thanksgiving weekend it is very illegal to advocate that, especially on Nikki’s board which would surely be closed down when the first Studio Mogul secretly objected.”

A couple of hundred potential ticket buyers picketing on CityWalk would certainly cause a media-friendly ruckus, but I seriously doubt such a boycott could happen on large enough a scale to make any real difference. The fact is, there are five major studio films opening that weekend, many of them family-friendly films with aggressive ad campaigns. It seems hugely unlikely that anyone outside of New York or LA with plans to take the whole family to see Enchanted or This Christmas is going to care enough about a labor issue (especially one that they perceive impacts rich people) to stay home.

Austin film lovers (and SXSW loyalists, like yours truly) have been eagerly awaiting the opening of the new Alamo Ritz, which replaces the old Alamo Drafthouse on Colorado Street as downtown Austin’s Mecca for people who like to simultaneously watch movies and drink beer. The Ritz had its grand opening last night; bloggy reactions after the jump.

photo via Austinist.

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Meetings and podcast experimentation have kept me away from the computer screen for much of the day, so I’m just now getting around to watching a clip that Scott Kirsner posted early this morning at CinemaTech. It’s an interview with Mark Stern, who owns and operates a budding chain called the Big Picture Theaters. Located in a Seattle mini-mall but inspired by the “hip boutique hotels” of Studio 54 impressario Ian Schrager, the Big Picture reflects an attempt to revitalize the exhibition business by offering a luxury option. Stern’s screening rooms are equipped with Tempurpedic seats and digital projectors; you can order a martini from your seat, and hang out in a lounge and play pool after the show.

Stern’s got a lot of interesting things to say, but my takeaway was this quote about how he’s able to compete with the Cineplex Odeon across the street: “It’s like having two girls. One is pretty fair-looking, and one is beautiful. Cineplex Odeon, you look at it, and it’s a fair-looking girl. And if you go to the prom, and you have your choice between the two girls, would you rather have the beautiful girl, or the fair-looking girl? They’re both sitting right next to each other, and you can actually have your choice.”

Consider the following. First, Andrew O’Hehir, from the most recent installment of his Beyond the Multiplex column published yesterday on Salon (you’ll have to watch an ad to get past the firewall):

If there’s a specter that’s haunting Indiewood and Hollywood alike, it’s the shambling figure of some semi-shaved, post-collegiate 22-year-old watching movies on his cellphone. Now, I don’t know anybody who has actually watched a feature film on a telephone, and I’m not even sure it’s feasible. (The iPhone’s ads show people watching film trailers and YouTube videos, not entire movies.) But three different people in the film industry have mentioned the idea to me within the last week, and the question of its present-tense plausibility is clearly not relevant. What people are really saying is that a big, weird change is coming. They don’t quite understand it and they can’t do anything to stop it, but they’re worried that the whole business of selling $10 tickets to go sit in a dark room with some strangers and a movie projector is suddenly going to seem like Thomas Edison’s windup gramophone and its wax cylinders.

And then, a segment from this editorial by Cinematical EIC Ryan Stewart, sparked by that Transformers on Comcast rumor that didn’t come true:

I don’t think there’s anything in the world that beats a really good experience at the movies, but I’ve also noticed that over the past few years, the onus has been more and more on me to make that experience happen…Theaters have mentally checked out of the business of making sure you have a comfortable viewing experience, and in doing so, they’re contributing to their own demise…At the same time, I also have no interest in watching a movie on a Dick Tracy watch or any other device that can fit in my pocket — that’s the other extreme, that’s also unwelcome. But a quality home entertainment center with a great screen and great sound? That’s where it’s increasingly at, I think.

I don’t know O’Hehir very well (we had a very nice chat at Sundance this year, but I had not previously met him before nor have I seen or spoke with him since), but I would guess that he, like the indie moguls he references, is in his 40s. On the other hand, I do know Stewart very well: in the interest of full disclosure, he was the second person I hired when I was editing Cinematical. At the very least, I know him well enough to know that although he may be in his 20s, and he may have soured on going to the movies, he’s not going to watch a movie on his phone anytime soon. In fact, about five minutes before I came across O’Hehir’s Salon piece, Ryan sent me an instant message complaining about how he can barely use his cellphone to make and receive phone calls.

To be fair, O’Hehir isn’t trying pump tired box office slump dialectics–he freely notes that, multiplex ennui be damned, a lot of indie movies are doing very well this summer–and he doesn’t seem to be entirely disdainful of emerging technology. His column is ostensibly meant to draw attention to small and smallish films, so it makes sense that once in a while he’d feel the need to offer a “State of the Indiestry” before getting on with the business of reviewing. But I do think it’s pretty glib (and my use of that word is not meant to evoke thoughts of Tom Cruise AT ALL) to raise the spectre of theatrical doom, only to brush it away with a “But hey! These five Sundance flicks are making money, so everything’s alright!”

The truth is, it’s quite probable that “the whole business of selling $10 tickets to go sit in a dark room with some strangers and a movie projector” is on its way out, but Stewart’s post (and the many supportive comments it garnered) is some kind of evidence that it’s not happening entirely because us kids are enamoured with new-fangled gadgetry. Take it from a 20-something who has great affection for her cellphone, but who has no intention of ever using it to watch a feature film: if the traditional exhibition experience had not so drastically declined, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. It might seem like a step backwards for someone like Eamonn Bowles, who is actively in the business of closing the distribution window, but if the titans of Indiewood really *want* to do something to keep the theatrical experience alive, putting pressure on exhibitors would be a place to start. But the idea that we’re all going to abandon the multiplex for the super-mobile is nothing more than one generation’s fantasy of another. It’s sexy on a “let’s wallow in our phobias” level, but it’s also pretty reductive.