FWIW I just checked and AMC Theaters are not connected to the streaming network AMC+.
Empty Screenings – Finds AMC movie screenings with few or no tickets sold
231–240 of 280 posts
Re: Empty Screenings – Finds AMC movie screenings with few or no tickets sold
#232This is cool. Something about dropping everything to go see a movie in an empty theater is sort of tempting.
I thought this was the case, but then I went to a full movie theater and really enjoyed being a part of an audience that was all experiencing the same thing. You could feel the emotion and that is a different sense than having the theater all to you to, but potentially just as rewarding.
Hah, yeah, my local AMC is a ghost town as people moved to newer and/or better maintained theaters. (Not entirely AMC's fault, they bought a decades old theater that was sort of on its last legs after four other companies controlled it in as many decades.) Most of the screenings I attend are empty or nearly so. I almost need an app to find the full AMC screenings. (I know it is at least as much a factor of which nights of the week I attend. I could attend busier nights. But even then this theater's busiest nights now are not what they were way back when I was in school.) I do sometimes miss seeing something with a large audience.
Re: Empty Screenings – Finds AMC movie screenings with few or no tickets sold
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. T…
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 a…
>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.
Re: Empty Screenings – Finds AMC movie screenings with few or no tickets sold
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
MoviePass was one of the most absurd ideas for a company ever. I don't know what they were thinking. Unlimited movies and they ate the entire cost? They didn't arrange any special deals or anything - they just paid the full price of the movie. It was insane.
The idea was they'd bootstrap it by giving you a credit card that could buy one ticket (which is all it was, a weird debit/credit card with a $15-20 authorization limit and a limited number of merchants accepted) - and then get the theaters onboard so that the theaters would be paying for it. So (in theory) it's a "win win" if they get everyone onboard - the theater gets to sell popcorn, the movie studio gets a buck…
AMC was one of the theater chains that did figure it out, but was also smart enough to realize that they didn't need the middle man and had a large enough chain to leverage. AMC A-List still exists. (Up to 4 movies per week at $23-35/month.)
Re: Empty Screenings – Finds AMC movie screenings with few or no tickets sold
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 a…
>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 wou…
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.
Re: Empty Screenings – Finds AMC movie screenings with few or no tickets sold
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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 wou…
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 metr…
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.
https://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/blackberry/
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.
Re: Empty Screenings – Finds AMC movie screenings with few or no tickets sold
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the joys of having Moviepass in that brief period where it was very cheap but still worked was going to random late-night showings of stuff I'd have never otherwise seen, sometimes being the only person there. Of course you can still do that with the surviving "all you can eat" plans, but they're way more expensive and aren't quite as generous.
MoviePass was one of the most absurd ideas for a company ever. I don't know what they were thinking. Unlimited movies and they ate the entire cost? They didn't arrange any special deals or anything - they just paid the full price of the movie. It was insane.
Actually, there was the kernel of a sound business idea.
The plan was that as you went to movies, you probably also went out to eat at a nearby restaurant, maybe stopped and had a drink, took transit to get there, etc. If they could hoover up all of that location- and merchant-tagged data, they could build a valuable profile for marketing.
Also, they believed that after you subscribed and gorged yourself on tons of movies for a couple months, the novelty would wear off and you'd revert to a more typical couple movies a month.
So if they could break even or make a small profit on the subscription, the data is where all the gold would be.
The problem was that they did not have the technology to gather all this info, not to mention the privacy/regulatory restrictions around essentially tracking your every movement and spend through a phone app.
There were a lot of other sketchy things about the company as well. Wall Street Millennial (a wonderfully entertaining channel) did a video on them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4vmCKIXOyw
Re: Empty Screenings – Finds AMC movie screenings with few or no tickets sold
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the joys of having Moviepass in that brief period where it was very cheap but still worked was going to random late-night showings of stuff I'd have never otherwise seen, sometimes being the only person there. Of course you can still do that with the surviving "all you can eat" plans, but they're way more expensive and aren't quite as generous.
MoviePass was one of the most absurd ideas for a company ever. I don't know what they were thinking. Unlimited movies and they ate the entire cost? They didn't arrange any special deals or anything - they just paid the full price of the movie. It was insane.
See the site for TFA... most screenings are at least half empty at most theaters and have been for decades. You have 18 screens showing 7-10 movies throughout the day, but most days people are working, or at school... most evenings are mostly empty too.
Not only that, but the bulk of the ticket charge goes to the distributer. Why NOT offer MoviePass screenings with the option to see a couple movies a week... it's the concessions that make you the money.. more butts in seats, more concessions.
Of course, many now have pretty acceptable home theater experiences... though I'd say more have large screens and sub-par audio. That changes the dynamics a lot with streaming options what they are. I don't know what the future of movie theaters is... luxury/dinner theaters are a pretty nice option, but when food costs in general are going through the roof it becomes something you just don't do as much. I mean, how much is a large popcorn and two drinks at this point? Let alone a mid-level pub meal at theater upcharge.
Re: Empty Screenings – Finds AMC movie screenings with few or no tickets sold
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
The idea was they'd bootstrap it by giving you a credit card that could buy one ticket (which is all it was, a weird debit/credit card with a $15-20 authorization limit and a limited number of merchants accepted) - and then get the theaters onboard so that the theaters would be paying for it. So (in theory) it's a "win win" if they get everyone onboard - the theater gets to sell popcorn, the movie studio gets a buck…
AMC was one of the theater chains that did figure it out, but was also smart enough to realize that they didn't need the middle man and had a large enough chain to leverage. AMC A-List still exists. (Up to 4 movies per week at $23-35/month.)
This is the one I was thinking of... I didn't know of a separate "MoviePass" than what AMC and a few other theaters did that was similar.
Re: Empty Screenings – Finds AMC movie screenings with few or no tickets sold
#240I remember I went to a small showing once as a kid. It was just our group and 1 lady in the theater. We got to small talk and the lady mentioned she had once been the only customer for a showing and told the projectionist that she didn’t want to be a bother and could come back and another day. The projectionist had apparently replied that it was no bother - they would roll the movie even if no one showed up!
When I was a kid I wanted to go see The Avengers (the o.g. one, from 1998). I had to go to the cinema 3 times, because they would not do a projection for less than 5 people.
I unfortunately saw it in the theater too. It doesn't surprise me that so few showed up to see it.