Cineworld

The heading above should have been Lee as I intended to see that film on its release date at the 5-00pm performance. However, on arrival at my local Cineworld, I was informed the projector had broken down and I had to go to another performance. It reminded me of the story about a reviewer who patently had not read the book but who commented:

“You asked me to review it not read it …”

I once provided a review of a video on the Nuremberg trials only later to receive not an acknowledgment from the editor but an apology for failing to provide the video.

I can comment on the demise of Cineworld, whose financial travails appear regularly in the Business sections and how the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime have now eclipsed the cinema.

Time was in the 1960s when a Bond film was released you would queue round the block in Leicester Square for a ticket.

Now many wait for the film to appear on Netflix or Amazon.

A cinema ticket yesterday was under £10 but – if you take two kids and have a fast food diner meal – you could be looking at £200, so it’s obviously cheaper to sit in front of your own telly with a takeaway.

The product has also declined. I was recently asked to compose a list of Great British Films post-1945 and did this by decade as there were too many to list.

Although I have yet to see Lee (the story of one of the great achievers of the Twentieth Century, model photographer and gourmet Lee Moller) I have a horrible feeling that it will be more about Kate Winslet it’s director and therefore attract only a limited audience.

Films are now so expensive to make – with lead actors demands unsustainable – that the tendency is towards a brand like Shrek or Harry Potter as the marketing is done for the brand.

Titanic was one of the few big budget films to be a commercial success.

An indie that is well acclaimed at Robert Redford’s Sundance Festival is just as likely to succeed.

I did think Zone of Interest very good but confess that I watched it on Amazon Prime and not on general release.