I think you are seeing a slice of the full picture. This app is not accurately showing all empty screens. While all of those are ideas that are increasing viewership there is still so much dead weight. Whether these things offset the dead weight I dont know. All I know is AMC is trading at $1.45 today so it does not look great.
On the one hand Its fun to watch movies alone on a big screen. My area of NJ apparently could care less about movies like Knock Down The House(Biography of AOC and other house candidates), Navalny (Movie about the murdered politician opposing Putin), The Imitation Machine: Movie about Alan Turing or Last Night in Soho (A wonderful Edgar Wright thriller)
On the other hand, I feel sad that no one in my region seems to care enough about these topics. Instead the latest superhero movie is next door packed to the brim and is so loud it rattles the walls to the room playing my quiet documentary with only me sitting inside watching it. :/
This is a bit off topic, but I occasionally used to sleep on the sofa in our first floor office in an old Georgian building in Fitzrovia. One occasion when I did that, I woke up at about 3.30 am with intense red light flooding through all the rear windows and the sound of loads of people chattering in the street out front, which seemed as busy as it normally would be in the daytime. I rushed to the front windows and looked down onto a street full of people, but all in 60s get up. I was still half asleep and panicked by the red light and it was totally disorientating to see a busy street of retro Londoners. I actually felt briefly nauseous but I went to the back windows and shaded my eyes, from the crazy glare from two arrays of red spotlights, which it turned out Edgar Wright was using to bounce light off our building, onto the cobbles below ...and began to understand what was going on. Was a relief to get a full explanation, for what had briefly felt like a weird time leap, when I went downstairs and chatted to the extras hanging around out front. The few seconds of woozy, confusion I spent in 1960s london seemed particularly appropriate when I saw Last Night in Soho a year or so later.
That is such a wonderful story! Thank you for sharing!
I was able to experience the movie in a very special way. In New York BAM Rose Cinemas was running a special 35mm press of the film one week before its official debut. Edgar Wright did a red eye run debuting the film in London and then getting on a plane to rush to New York where he arrived just in time for the credits. Having him walk down the steps and sitting right in front of me for Q&A was a amazing experience. Its really a shame the movie flopped even with the extra slack it was given due to debuting during COVID. His most recent film did pretty bad as well. I'm bummed as he is my favorite director. :/
I have seen too many video projects that were supposed to be non fictional either have fictional material or a misleading slant such that I would not consider it a good use of my time.
Yeah, kind of defeats the purpose when you have to spend hours double-checking if every "fact" you just got "taught" was actually true or not afterwards...
There has to be some latitude given here. They can’t possibly, for instance, know exactly what was said or who interacted with who and when with any reasonable certainty. It’s usually “John met with Ted and I think Sally too, he told them to fuck off because it was a bad idea.” Now make that a scene and stay accurate.
Rarely are these things documented in the moment and human memory is fickle even when we think we recall something accurately. It may seem like I’m taking y’all too literally or being nitpicky but I’m just illustrating one component. These kinds of situations happen across every “fact” of the story, which is almost always a movie based on a written account that came after, often written by someone who wasn’t even involved in the subject matter. Degrees of separation, lack of information, some or all people involved may be dead, etc.
Which is why it should be assumed to all be fiction. Video presents the problem that you are receiving lots of extra data which are fictional, and pretending that you are getting a sufficiently accurate representation when you have no idea how much of the representation is accurate is a detriment.
Take it as entertainment, and nothing more. For example, Remember the Titans, we were shown it in school over and over. There was no racial component in real life. The Blind Side is egregious in its portrayals. Pursuit of Happyness also.
It's inherent to video that you "have to make up data" - if I tell you the barebones of something that happened in real life (we went to a doctor's appointment but discovered it had been scheduled earlier than we thought) - you may supply details that aren't "true" because you have to supply something to flesh it out - but you know you're supplying them!
If instead we make a video that conveys the same information; it has to "make up" details (we have to cast the actors, which will be of a certain age, sex, race, etc; we have to give them lines, etc; and so on) that may colour the implications - and you, as a viewer, have no easy way to determine what is essential and what is accidental.
I’m a little confused, I think pretty much all audiences know there is a degree of fiction to any of these works and that you have to take various work with different sized grains of salt.
Are you saying that no movies should be allowed to claim they are trying to tell a true story, and that documentaries aren’t neutral/accurate enough and are therefore invalid? I’m just trying to figure out the scope of your claim and implications here so I get that could be off base.
Might be simpler to ask: What would you consider a good documentary? What would you consider a movie that is based on a true story and does an accurate-enough job? What do consider or use as a metric when deciding these works are good or accurate?
>Are you saying that no movies should be allowed to claim they are trying to tell a true story,
No. Freedom of speech and all that, unless it was a libel/slander thing.
>and that documentaries aren’t neutral/accurate enough and are therefore invalid?
Sufficient documentaries have been sufficiently inaccurate such that it behooves me to consider them all fictional.
>What would you consider a good documentary? What would you consider a movie that is based on a true story and does an accurate-enough job? What do consider or use as a metric when deciding these works are good or accurate?
I don't know off the top of my head, I would have to do research. But that's the point, if I am doing research, I might as well read books/journals/websites/articles with source information.
>I think pretty much all audiences know there is a degree of fiction to any of these works and that you have to take various work with different sized grains of salt.
I don't know about that. For example, Carol Haskins received a large amount of hate and death threats from the way Tiger King was edited. And people like to "know" things, anything that confirms their biases or makes them feel like they are smarter, they are going to latch onto.
I think the rule of thumb should be videos should be assumed to be fictional unless rigorously vetted, or at least that is what serves my purpose for having the most accurate model of the events. The objective is not to educate the viewer, it is to entertain the viewer.
You can’t name a single movie that meets your requirements? Not even one documentary that felt more or less “accurate”?
I guess I’ll ask this then: what would a documentary have to do to be considered accurate enough for you that it can be used to educate? I just don’t really know where the lines are for you it all feels rather vague. If we’re demanding objectivity and accuracy, then there needs to be some clear metric(s) otherwise no one can say they are or aren’t.
I guess what I mean is if education is the goal, then a written medium is far better than a video. Real life has too much nuance to be able to accurately re-create, plus the more expensive the production, the more it needs to earn a return incentivizing the entertainment aspect over the education aspect.
Obviously written works do not present more information, but they can provide only the known information (which I guess a documentary composed of the actual recordings and interviews of the events can provide). And obviously written stuff can also be fabricated and blah blah, but assuming all of that, I just presume the fidelity of a video re-creation of an event is less than that of a written one.
One example I just thought of that led me to this assumption of discounting all videos is the way Captain Phillips is portrayed. The recent movie Blackberry is also highly fictional.
I know these aren't documentaries per se, but they all require digging to get to the truth v fiction parts, so why bother digging? If I want to be entertained, I watch the video. If I want to be educated, I look up written sources I think might be credible.
I don’t know how one can assume that the written word is somehow more reliable or accurate than a video. What difference does it make if you interview me and show me talking on camera vs. using the stuff you wrote down as text? One could even argue that it’s inferior in that regard, because you remove all tone and body language as well as put someone between me and the person presenting the information. And as you said you are just capable of editing and text as you are with video, so it doesn’t protect you from that sort of manipulation either.
I still don’t understand what the bar is or what you consider necessary for something to be deemed “accurate.” Writing as a medium has all of the same pitfalls that video does and then some. This feels very vibes-based.
What’s an example of a written text that you would say is accurate in a way that a documentary can’t be? Do you consider any media of any kind to be factual or accurate in any way? I’m just not sure how one can go about life considering all forms of media inherently deceptive to the point where nothing can be treated as anything more than mere entertainment.
>What difference does it make if you interview me and show me talking on camera vs. using the stuff you wrote down as text? One could even argue that it’s inferior in that regard, because you remove all tone and body language as well as put someone between me and the person presenting the information.
It isn't, which is why I specified:
>(which I guess a documentary composed of the actual recordings and interviews of the events can provide)
>I still don’t understand what the bar is or what you consider necessary for something to be deemed “accurate.”
The bar is lack of dramatization. I gave multitudes of examples of videos based on various real life happenings, but they don't do a good job representing actual happenings. The "based on" is strictly a marketing term, but no one should be under the impression they are getting any actual data from watching it, hence it is entertainment.
A documentary with various interviews, actual footage, blah blah is of course better, but many documentaries include dramatizations, and are edited to have "twists and turns" in the story to captivate the viewer. A documentary that sticks only to the known facts is probably pretty dry and boring (although I am sure they exist). There are myriad "true" crime documentaries (including podcasts) that leave out key details about the case because including them would make the story boring.
However, I am sure there are far more accurate documentaries, and I have heard this is one of them:
But back to the point, broadly speaking, probability wise, if I sit down and some video media says it is "based on" or it is a "documentary", I would be wise to be skeptical, and I guess that goes for the written word these days too.
> A documentary that sticks only to the known facts is probably pretty dry and boring (although I am sure they exist)
My point is that they don’t and can’t, objectivity is a myth. You and I (and everyone) are literally incapable of being truly objective. So the only conclusion i see is you don’t think any media is able to inform or educate. If you do, then you need an actual bar beyond “must be objective.”
“Dramatization” is just one tool some documentaries, not all, lean on and isn’t well defined. Are you talking about dramatic reenactments? Or introducing any drama of any kind? Isn’t drama sometimes just inherent to the subject?
I can understand this for Nvalny given I think CNN help with the production...but Knock Down the House was an indie producer and just happened to choose AOC as one of four candidates she was covering. When it was filmed I don't think the producer would anticipate her explosive popularity after the election so its hard to concede that it was a puff piece. The premise of the film was the massive wave of females deciding to run for office in 2018 after Trump's win in 2016. There was the collective awakening that despite females making up 50% of the population they in no way had anywhere near the representation that they should have. Due to AOC's popularity the film took on a new meaning as a historical record of her campaign.
If you apply your logic to all political documentaries then you're just going to end up not watching anything.
That I've seen, the problem is worse than that. A movie merely says it's "based on a true story". If you're a lawyer or literature professor, that "based on" might be correct usage - since 40-ish percent of what the movie told was true. The other 60-ish percent was utter fiction.
Meanwhile, people who saw the movie and found it decently engaging are busy convincing themselves that it was 99% true. And 99% of 'em will never bother to check.
I coulda added another "That I've seen" disclaimer to my second para. My dataset is just friends & family who I've seen "based on a true story" movies with, where I happened to know the history.
The term to describe my "99%" isn't "dumb". It's "don't care".
It's all variations of Gell-Mann Amnesia. Any portrayal is a betrayal.
Of course, if I'm going to talk about something I know deeply, I'm almost certainly going to begin with "this is all incorrect in the details, but correct in general" or similar.
For those sufficiently pedantic, true. OTOH, there's a rather wide spectrum in how well (say) Mitchell's Gone With the Wind, Ken Burns's The Civil War, and McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom portray the U.S. Civil War.
Studio contracts: The movies are delivered digitally on encrypted hard disks and when playing there is a ton of telemetry sent back to the studios. They are watching the theaters like its 1984. Studios have contracts indicating the play will play X times no more and probably no less(else studios might hold back the good movies). AMC keeps it simple. Play the movie even if no one shows up. AMC in particular uses laser projectors now so who cares. They ain't burning out any projector bulb.
I have been quite a heavy patron of AMC theaters these past few years since COVID ended. I have seen A LOT of movies play to empty theaters. I used to actually peek at many of the rooms when I left my movie and so many were downright empty.
Its the norm and its probably why their stock is trading at $1.45 as of this writing.
Its a dead (not dying, dead) entertainment option. When you are competing for the same 24 hrs in a day with TV, Youtube, Gaming, Streaming, TikTok, Instagram and many others the theater is bottom of the barrel for young people today.
And don't tell me its because people are disrespectful or the commercials are too long. These are a problem but Alamo Drafthouse tried to tackle this and they ended up in bankruptcy. AMC would also be bankrupt today but it's saving grace was the meme stock frenzy they had a few years back. Probably bought them a few more years but that ride might be coming to an end.
Currently they fill the rooms for the pop movies like old established franchises but that only comes along every couple weeks at the most and the rest of the time the place is not really busy. This is a bit different in the big cities but AMC has overextended themselves with too many locations in the rural and suburban US.
...Also this app is not displaying accurate data (I assume they are pulling from AMC's API). My local theater is listing no results and I cross checked and there are movies currently listed that have 0 seats booked so the app is counting incorrectly for at least one theater.
EDIT: After I wrote this, the site auto updated with new data. Now I see some screenings but it is still inaccurate because it is still missing movies from that theater...maybe they are scraping instead of using the API? This is a simple problem if using the API (I wrote my own home cooked app): just iterate through all theater ids, find the ones with 0 bookings and display that list.
It's not the ads, but they're not helping. I still like to go to theaters, but am thinking if not going anymore because I can't really take it. I don't go to AMC since not in the US, but where I go you can't even skip them because you never know how long it will be. I sat once for literally 40 minutes. It's also crazy expensive. So they need to do these things to stay afloat, but they're driving away the last people that still want to go.
It's just dead in its current form, you're right about that. To make it work they need to reinvent themselves. But it's hard.
I don't disagree with you at all. Ads suck. But that ship sailed a long time ago. Just to provide some more context to AMC.
They are a US national chain and they don't run "commercials" just lots of trailers. They have recently announced that they have extended the trailer runtime from 20-25 mins to 35-40 mins. While this is frustrating they always indicate in the app which movies have the trailers (most do) and the approx length. As a result, patron who want to skip the trailers use the app for guidance and just arrive +35 mins after the showtime. Example: https://i.imgur.com/bsVf6AE.png
Given this system, I dont think AMC has really lost patrons because of the ads since everyone who hates them know exactly how long to delay their entrance to the movie room. It really is the other factor I mentioned (they are not compelling enough most of the time vs other entertainment).
One more aspect I forgot to mention is concession prices. Small popcorn is ~10$, small drink is ~7$ so ~17$ for basic concessions and that does not include ticket price ranging between 5$ on Tuesday special deals for standard definition all the way to $27.99+ for premium screen. If you are going to the movies you might as well watch it on their best screen. It gets expensive if you are bringing family. The reason for this pricing is the studio. They actually take a majority of the ticket revenue and they refuse to lower their percentage of ticket prices on the marquee titles (and also require 2 week minimum contracts in the premium screens even if the movie is a stinker)
The theaters are essentially just popcorn/soda vendors who just happen to show movies on the side.
They do also run actual commercials if you're crazy enough to show up before the showtime.
AMC is also interesting because even in the "real" trailer period they have a long ad for AMC itself but also for Coke, then another for themselves telling you to sign up for the loyalty programs, then another for themselves with Nicole Kidman in the theater with her suit with the silver pinstripes. A little thing for the theater is normal but they're going way overboard with it and it's hard to believe it's really effective.
It really seems like a great use case for dynamic pricing.
For $27.99 I can usually get MLB tickets people are dumping last minute (face value starts a few dollars higher) and can always get AAA baseball tickets for less than that.
That dynamism to the pricing helps a lot of people get into the door to those events and I'm sure it helps them milk additional profit out of very interesting games.
I know you say it's the studios setting the price. Why do they seem indifferent to the impending bankruptcy of theaters?
Well $27.99 is for IMAX/Dolby/other premium format. Thats the hook I guess. People do shell out but only for the big blockbuster. The other movies are like the stuff you can watch using your Netflix account so a lot of non franchise movies have shifted direct to Netflix.
>I know you say it's the studios setting the price. Why do they seem indifferent to the impending bankruptcy of theaters?
They are pushing their streaming platforms and using the content as just a hook for other more lucrative sources of revenue(ie. Disney and theme parks). Do they really need the theaters now that people are hooked on streaming?
Yes, that's what I meant with crazy expensive, mostly the concessions. The tickets I am ok with, I am in th end going there for the big screen and experience, not to eat crappy food. I go with my kids, and it's just painful. We watched Mario 2 recently, and because my youngest didn't watch the first one, we watched that one at home first. 3.99 to rent 4k and 2.50 for popcorn and drinks for three kids. Puts things in perspective.
In the UK in the 1980s (and with more difficulty in the 90s) I would phone the theater and ask when the film actually starts, even though it was almost always 20 minutes after the advertised programme time. Now there are no humans to ask, and my wife wants to see the entire programme anyway.
AMC have taken to just saying outright that everything will start 25-30 minutes after the posted time. Which is interesting, I guess they're trying to blunt the negative effect of the long trailers but I'm sure the advertisers don't like it.
I want to enjoy the movie theater experience. It should be a better screen than the one in my home. It should be a better audio setup, with full surround sound. It should be great, a premium experience.
The last few movies I’ve seen in theaters have not been that. Two of the last 3 movies I’ve seen had audio mixing problems, and dialogue was inaudible in some scenes. (I heard this got fixed later for one of the movies) In all of them, I could hear bass from the adjacent theaters in some scenes. In the last two movies I went to see, both had someone in the audience bring an intermittently crying baby to the movie.
Im done with watching movies in theaters. It’s a better experience to watch at home, with headphones, a blanket, and the ability to pause for bathroom breaks.
Sounds like you should be visiting Alamo Drafthouse. They take these things extremely seriously and are for the real fans. Here is their ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1L3eeC2lJZs
Unfortunately since they already filed for bankruptcy a few years back they have had to cut costs and so their system for ordering food replaced (from pen and paper collected and an usher quietly brings you your food to QR code with...a cellphone) people are recently concerned that this has reduced their legendary quality. They still take audio and picture quality very seriously in my experience.
Also where are you located? LA and NYC have legendary theaters that are truly a special treat. Its harder to replicate that in various states but there are still some states trying (ex. NJ being the actual birthplace of the American film industry has a few excellent theaters scattered throughout that dont tolerate poor quality/talkers)
If your story is from AMC theaters just know that you are visiting the Mcdonalds of movie theaters.
Besides the ordering experience, I also feel like the food at the Alamo has gone downhill. It's not bad or anything, but it used to be legit good. Now it's just alright.
They have done this before, release something large early in anticipation of a major shift and iron out issues before the shift happens. Liquid Glass started off a little janky but they appear to have been ironing out initial issues with each update.
From what I understand (which might be wrong), Liquid Glass was at least partially inspired by visionOS and "spatial computing". And I guess on that platform it might make sense for some use cases.
That doesn't change the fact that I can hardly read some of the user interface in Apple Music for example.
It's not that the idea is bad, but it's badly executed.
Toyota's philosophy is polishing mature technology and small gradual iteration that supports that goal. That is not "skating to where the puck is going to be". With that philosophy Apple would never have developed the iPhone. Instead just iterating the iPod until someone else put them out of business.
It was famously explained in the original iPhone unveiling. They talked about developing new paradigms in computing and jumping towards those new paradigms with both feet.
Also, Steve Jobs once argued with Woz early on that users don't have a say in the product. The author creates a piece of work and does not stop to ask the audience what the next paragraph should be. At the end either the audience likes it or they don't and they go somewhere else. All the "toyotas" of the tech world are competing to 0 margins and will eventually die off. When Apple tried this in the 90s they ended up nearly bankrupt.
Really? None of my issues are fixed. The settings panel still has a massive gray empty chunk hanging off the bottom which makes it look like a 13 year old coded it...
In one of Dwarkesh's interviews, he mentioned that China is trying to replicate the entire stack. Ironically now that they have mastered all pieces of the stack for older nodes, they actually have an advantage in a collapse scenario. The US does not appear to have the ability to do all steps in the stack for any node. They still rely on other western countries that could go offline. China despite being behind does at least have top to bottom capability for older nodes. Combine that with their rock bottom electricity prices and they have a unique card that they can play.
Just imagine if electricity costs were trending towards 0. Instead of e-waste run all those machines till the chips burn out.
Well we have cool projects like CollapseOS the problem is that there is so much undocumented silicon out there that cant be used without massive efforts. I know several "gold scrappers" and its such a shame that they trash great classic chips just go get back a bit of metal. So much effort went into making those chips and its just a shame that many can't be reused. While lack of cheap electricity prevents open design from being reused, there is an even bigger world of undocumented chips that are trashed as well.
If I could do it all over again I would jump at the chance to live in that $5000 roach pit instead of wasting my life in the middle of bumfuckstan. It is one of my biggest regrets in life. Its insane how such a tiny fraction of land produces so much of the culture the world consumes.
How do you center the wax consistently? How about regulating the amount? I used to send wax stamped envelopes as new years letters to friends but have stopped because both the pour method and the glue gun method don't ever seem to produce consistent amounts or proper placement of stamps. Maybe I just haven't made enough to get good at it...but there must be a better way.
This is the problem. It's as if everything has to crash and burn for people like the person you responded to finally get some sense. By that point, it will be too late to catch up to our competitors overseas. The race will be over. I honestly don't know how to reconcile this seemingly unsolvable problem. They have no perspective whatsoever of the kinds of people that are real innovators in engineering & tech. This field is super open to alternative lifestyles because that's where a lot of out of the box thinking happens. They just don't get it. In the past, it seemed easy to just ignore them. They could live their lives. But now they're running the ship and its sinking.
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