Courtesy Columbia Pictures‘
With the Oscars over the horizon (Feb. 22) the movie industry has gone into another late winter slumber with regards to its new releases. Each weekend it seems another halfhearted action movie or romantic comedy is sent out to theatres across the country with hopes that crowds will flock there due to weather. It is a sad state when the top box-office films are ‘Paul Blart: Mall Cop’ and others in that vein.
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It happens almost every year- ‘- Oscar contenders flood the cinemas in the fall. So many big-name contenders enter into theatres each week that the laymen or even film fanatic cannot keep up. Each week another critically acclaimed, Oscar-buzzed film screens to welcoming crowds.
Summer is the time for fun, high-budget, full-throttle blockbusters on rainy days and cool nights. It’s a great marketing campaign that attracts the crowd they wish to please. It’s a tried and true way of going about business in the heat of summer fun.
Then there are the late winter and early spring movies. After the Oscar contenders are announced it goes all down hill for the film lover. The studios hope to clump in as many low-shelf, low-priority films as they can into the cinemas at this time to buy them time for the next big rush of films. It is the time of Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson and poor horror flicks.
Why can’t Halloween be the time of the year for these cheesy horror films?
Instead of spreading out the wealth and figuring ad-campaigns for each Oscar contender, the studios have discovered that putting them closer to Awards season reaps results, at least in the trophy case.
But to spread out these movies may prove to garner some greater recognition in the box-offices. In a time when viewers have the choice to see a movie like ‘Bride Wars’ or ‘Rachel Getting Married,’ it is a hope that the public will, after reading reviews, see that the latter is a better film and has holds to higher cinematic standards.
If films are distributed and campaigned equally, it is then left to the public to decide where their money goes. Maybe ‘Rachel Getting Married’ may have brought in more at the box-office had it not been competing with other highly-acclaimed films. We may never know, but isn’t it worth a shot?
The summer blockbuster hasn’t changed since its introduction with ‘Jaws’ because it works so well. People in the summer don’t need a film that brings them down, such as a rated-R thriller or drama, because they want to do things on vacation as a family and with children or friends. Also, the major crowd is teenagers who need something to do on a rainy day or a weekday night. This set works too well for everyone involved. Adults don’t need to go to see movies in the summer and children want to.
But every February looks alike, and it is not pretty. It is a sad season for film fans, known as ‘The February Flop.’ Why can’t the big and small studios see that the current state is not fair for their fans ‘- the avid film lovers?
As the Oscar ratings slump to all-time lows, what should matter to the studios is putting out their best products to the public over the course of an entire year, not a few months of great movies at the backend. It is what they owe us after the film distribution prices have gone up, in turn creating higher ticket prices. In this slouching economy it is time to pinch pennies, and time for the studios to create a fair system for their viewers to see the best movies throughout the year.
Kevin Koczwara can be reached at [email protected].
