By Daniel Levine, Staff Writer
I hate today's film industry. It's not so much because of all the crap they put out, but because of distribution.
In every form of art (except paintings and sculpture, probably), the good stuff has a hard time getting out there. People make great art still. Believe me, I'm not one of those pretentious idiots that believe that absolutely nothing good has been produced in thirty years or so.
There are still fantastic filmmakers, musicians and artists out there who got their start recently and are still constantly producing consistently good work. However, the problem is that even though many people have great track records, getting their work seems impossible. Or, if a newcomer comes on the scene with a highly lauded film, it is way too hard to see. The greatest example I can think of (simply because it is fresh in my mind) is 2009's "A Single Man," by first-timer Tom Ford.
When I moved to Jacksonville from the Boston area, where we had numerous fantastic theaters, I knew that seeing little films like "A Single Man," would be impossible. So even when the wide release date came around for the film in January, I knew I had no shot. (It also didn't help that the film is about a gay guy…I don't think that would play too well in the most Republican city in Florida.) Then, when my spring semester at Hofstra started, I was ecstatic because it meant that I could go back to culture. There's a great theater that does get to play little films every now and then and, thankfully, I was able to see "A Single Man." (As an aside that film is brilliant and I will pick that up on Blu-Ray the day it comes out. Colin Firth was amazing and the overall look of the film was gorgeous.)
Still, it's amazing how I tell my parents about all these great films I get to see up here and they can't. In the Jacksonville metro area (which is actually the largest, physically, on the East Coast, but home to only 800-900,000), there are just two theaters. One is a 24-auditorium theater…and yet they didn't play "Crazy Heart," until after the Oscars.
Don't even get me started on the impossible task of trying to see a foreign film. Since I got interested in directors like Fellini, Goddard and Melville and seen their films, I started looking into today's foreign films. When I saw "A Single Man," the theater played the trailer for "Un prophète," a French film about French Arabs in prison that was France's entry for the best foreign film Oscar. Yet, when the film was finally getting wider release in the US, they never played it there! That trailer got my mouth literally watering, and yet I couldn't see it. I still haven't seen it and probably won't, unless the great Criterion Collection releases it on DVD and Blu-Ray.
How do you solve the problem? I don't know. These kind of artsy films that get you thinking never make enough money to stay in theaters long, no matter how many awards they win and how many critics fall at their feet. Plus, with the economy in the toilet, distributors aren't likely to pick up these films for wider release in the United States. I'm just tired of hearing about the next Palme D'Or winner and not being able to see it.