Movies Seen per Year

I haven't been seeing a lot of films lately, at least not in the theater, and now, I notice, not even on video. Reasons? There are probably many--lack of time being one. But another is how much films in the theater cost (too much, in my view). And still another is probably my switch, this year, to DSL, which now allows me to stream stuff--I end up watching stupid random stuff online (TV shows, home cat videos, skits, speeches, vlogs) and sometimes the occasional movie (without even venturing to the video store). Here's how the number of films each year stacks up:

The 2011 total for theater movies went up as high as it did mostly because of the return of the French film festival to campus--probably the last one we'll have, since the professor sponsoring it was tired of doing it. Cheap foreign movies--it was great. The theater movies total this year was zero until the fall, when my friend Al started asking me to accompany him to a few films.

Movies by Theater

I wanted to see how the places I go to see movies has changed since I moved here and how much influence having a DVD player has had on where I go to see movies, so the chart below I think shows that to some extent. Cheap older films can now be rented, so I have fewer reasons to go see such films at the Tate Student Center. Art films, which were hard to find in town but usually showed at Beechwood, are now shown regularly at Cine. (I was surprised to see how many films I likely used to go to see at Beechwood.)

However several other factors influence where I see movies as well. Some entities have stopped showing films, such as the Georgia Theater, which does only music now. Other cheap venues have also opened up, such as the second-run theater at the mall. Finally, the price of films went up to a level that I no longer felt like I could justify attending them at full price unless I was really intent on the movie.

Looking at my list, I realized that some films I just don't remember at all--and often I wasn't quite certain where I saw the film, so I had to make an educated guess. Hence, these charts are to an extent based on estimate from memory rather than cold hard stats. They are broken down between 2001-4 and 2005-11 because 2005 is when DVD became available to me.

2001-4

2005-11

Movie Watching by Genre: Video and Theater

On a Saturday night at the end of August, I rented the movie Catfish. It was a film I had wanted to see for a long while that I was waiting to hit the cheaper backlist video section. It threw me into a bit of a funk, so I'm glad I didn't get something more cheery or sexy. I haven't been watching many films lately mostly for that reason, that they remind me how lonely I am. At least I have a number of friends.

Catfish still managed to remind me of such, only it did so not by presenting a world where people find perfect love but where the Internet proves to be a place for deceit and self-deceit. It seems the only type of dating I'm capable of and one that is always fraught with the same lack of success that dogs me in real life, so much so that when something actually seems to be working, I can't help but think there's a catch, because romance simply doesn't happen to me. Does it happen to anyone? It seems to. Friends of mine have girlfriends--and they are gals they actually like.

Anyway, Catfish was the second film I saw in a week, the other being Septian, a film in which a couple of my friends appear (it showed on the big screen one night, so that's when I went). These were the first films I'd seen since February.

I had thought I hadn't seen many movies at all this year, but looking back at my list, I've actually seen quite a few--it's just that most of them have been on video. I've only had access to a DVD/video player since 2005 or so, which means that before then, if I wanted to see a film, I had to go to a theater. I thought it would be interesting to see how home video access has impacted movie watching.

The big movie watching took place in the early 2000s. After I got access to video, it appears that the number of films watched stayed constant for a while but that the video and move theater split the total. In recent years, however, the numbers have gone down for all.

Also of interest is what genres of films I watch. *Catfish* was a documentary. Am I more prone to watch foreign films or documentaries on video than in the theater? Let's see.

Theater

Video

So it appears that the numbers correspond on video and theater somewhat closely, though I am slightly more prone to rent a documentary than see it in the theater. Such makes sense, given the price differential. Even I figure the documentary is going to be visually less impressive and thus something better slated for small-screen pricing.

As for why the numbers drop off. My theory is that I was more motivated to see a film when I had access to movies only in the theater--that is, I had to catch the film before it disappeared forever. Now, I can reason that I'll catch it later on video, but by then, often, my interest has wained.