Is anyone else guilty of watching movies as "serials" these days?

“Serial”, meaning you watch the movie in intervals, not all at once, like many early westerns, Flash Gordon, or Jungle Jim, etc… Movie theater viewing is rare for me and, unless I’m watching a movie with someone else, I rarely watch more than 15 minutes at a time. I’m self-employed so I can take a break whenever I want to and go back and forth from working, studying, exercising, etc… and catch a little “serial”(15 minutes or so) western(60/70s), or whatever, maybe twice a day. It takes me days to watch a full movie. Sometimes I’ll start one movie, switch to another movie, and come back to the original movie a month later, a fragmented movie experience. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
Movies “on demand” and also small devices, like Kindle, have dramatically changed my movie going experience from, say, 10 years ago. With wi-fi on a Kindle I can catch a little clip anywhere and on-demand means I no longer have to watch the whole thing within a certain time-frame like a theater flick, rental, or tv airing.

Nope! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

I’m a bit of a purist when it comes to movies … so the only time I hit the pause button is for a toilet break, which is quite often if there’s beer being consumed, and I only watch dumb movies with beer. Sometimes that’s the only way to make them tolerable ?

If I’ve picked up a batch of unknown DVDs from the charity shops, and I’m watching something that’s not inspiring me after the 30 minute mark it’s eject time - and I almost never go back to them.

I need to see a film on a decent sized screen … tried watching some movies on a long haul flight years ago with a kindle sized image and just gave up after about 10 minutes (I think there were 25 new releases to choose )

From childhood I always liked the cinema presentation of starting the program with a short documentary or some cartoons, then seeing trailers, and when the ‘Big Picture’ was about to begin, there was a real buzz of excitement as the lights dimmed and the curtains pulled back to full scope ratio. Those were the days !

In an ideal TV world, I’d have only programs that justified being in widescreen - for instance, I don’t need to see the news or sitcoms in WS … I suppose I could adjust my settings to achieve this, and watch standard stuff in 4.3 pillar box … but the compromise I make is to watch less important stuff (visually speaking) without my specs, and only wear my glasses when I have a movie ready to play. :nerd_face:

1 Like

I would never have done that until recently but find myself doing it more often now. Not in bursts as short as 15 minutes maybe but certainly in 2 or 3 sittings. It’s still not what I do usually but during Spagvemberfest for example, when I’m trying to squeeze a film in every day, I will break it up and watch when i have the opportunity which may be for only 30 minutes or an hour at a time. I also started watching more on my tablet too which is working out very well for me. I wouldn’t necessarily do that with OUATITW but for a low budget Steffen? It works fine.

1 Like

LOL … Poor old Steff’, you’re on the kindle, mate! :smile:

1 Like

Something me and Tarantino have in common, is that we don’t do Netflix.

1 Like

I break up movies in smaller parts all time. Not because I want to but because that’s what is often possible. Many of the movies I buy or want to watch my wife doesn’t totally love (putting it mildly) so I tend to end up watching those in the middle of the night. The downside to that is that sleep is a neccessity and that I have to go to work in the morning :slight_smile: So several sittings is often what it ends up with.

Regarding movie watching on small screens, nobody has said it better than David Lynch I guess:

3 Likes

Amen, David Lynch ! I like his quiet passion … "Get fucking real!" LOL

Last night I was watching ‘Hell or High Water’ on BD … I’d seen it about 6 months ago on DVD, and thought it’s ok, but what a lot of hype on the jacket … words like, ‘masterpiece’ etc … well it may not be a masterpiece (whatever that is ?) but it was a totally different movie - it went from a C+ to an A - :nerd_face:

Can’t help the pause button :grimacing:! I stop to research on Wikipedia(or wherever) whenever a question arises, which is often, but notable was a viewing of Gone Baby Gone featuring Amy Ryan, whom I’d never heard of or seen at that time and who’s character seemed so real that I thought she was a Boston local that was recruited because of miraculous natural acting abilities. I stopped the film when she broke down into tears at some point in the film because I would have been stunned if this “unknown”(to me) wasn’t nominated for an Academy Award, and sure enough she was.

I grew up with the whole cinema experience and lived in California directly where they were made, saw the giant movie street billboards everywhere(no other state has/had remotely as many, most none at all it seems), lived near tv and movie stars, saw classic blockbusters before a single movie theater started chopping-up/partitioning, drive-ins, etc… but that experience, including the awe and anticipation of Hollywood, is 99% gone. And I’m into movies, in a creative field, I even took 1.5 years of my life to make a short film, created hundreds of internet videos, read about 25 books on screenwriting/storytelling, one of them literally 10 times, many multiple times, etc…but I have been, for years now, fixated on 60s/70s/early-80s Italian films, primarily westerns. That’s escape entertainment to me.

The viewing experience may be better now though,in some regards, with giant-screen tvs, sharp, remastered DVDs, and no distractions from a sneezing, hack-coughing, murmering audience :rofl:.

1 Like

That’s the one thing I don’t miss … ignorant assholes who don’t know how to behave in public !!!
I watch my movies alone, and with headphones on and phone switched off … but now that you mention it, I do pause to google if there’s someone or something of note about the movie.
Don’t think I could sit through a film with others now, not even with family … especially when you’re getting unwanted commentary from your nearest and dearest, or just stupid questions about plot points etc.
It definitely is a different experience these days. What I found normal as a child, in the 1970s, I’d be appalled by now … think of those scenes in ‘Cinema Paradiso’ where there’s every type of human behaviour going on in the dark amongst the crowd. :confused:

I had to pause in the middle of your post to look up Spagvemberfest :nerd_face:!

Me neither. No Netflix.

I agree with Lynch but does what about a director, like Steven Soderbergh, filming an entire movie like Unsane on a iPhone 7 Plus :wink: ?

I actually watched that movie three days ago. Yeah well Lynch has experimented with experimental filming himself so that is probably not something he objects to :slight_smile:

1 Like

That’s a good way of looking at it, experimental filming and experimental viewing.

1 Like