Cathangel

Interesting thread: this is exactly what I've been telling myself for the last few months. I just had to put my two cents in it. I work at a video store and I usually catch the movies when they come out on DVD, but when a movie interests me enough, I go to the theater. The thing is, though, that it's been a while since I've actually been genuinely interested enough in a movie to go to the theater to see it. My major beef with Hollywood right now is that there are no orignal ideas for movies coming from this industry at this point. You just have to look at what this summer offered us: Superman Returns (sequel and based on a comic book), Pirates of the Caribbean 2 (sequel), The Lake House (remake of Il Mare), X-Men 3 (sequel and based on a comic book), the Da Vinci Code (based on a book), just to name a few. The last movies I thought were worth buying were some old movies I recently discovered and foreign films. I also hate the Hollywood tendency to dumb everything down (and sacrifice quality of dialogue and story for it) to please as large an audience as possible.

Someone else was also making an interesting comparison with the TV industry. The TV industry has so much interesting and original ideas for shows that like a lot of people here, my TV watching has increased in the last few years. Serialised TV shows like 24, Lost, Prison Break, etc., make the production value look like we're watching a mini-movie every week and develop character stories that are compelling. There is also a lot of diversity in this industry, almost something for everyone. I, for one, watch diverse TV shows in terms of style from serialsed drama/action shows like Lost, Prison Break, 24 to a forensic, funny and dramatic show like House MD to a comedy like The Office, etc. I buy a lot more TV show DVD boxsets then I do movies these days. For the last few years, my video store has also started to rent TV shows by discs and I can tell you that the returns for TV shows are starting to outweigh by a fair margin any other movie category.