Breakfast All Day Podcast 12/4/20
The holidays are approaching and we’ve got plenty of cheer for you — and news, and reviews — on this week’s Breakfast All Day. Alonso, Matt and I discuss several new releases: the excellent “Nomadland”; “Love, Weddings & Other Disasters” (which convinced us we definitely need to do a worst-of 2020 list); “Ammonite”; the latest in Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe” series, “Red, White and Blue”; and “I’m Your Woman.” In news, we discuss the announcement that shook up the film industry this week: Warner Bros.’ decision to release its entire 2021 slate both in theaters and on HBO Max. We also talk about Elliot Page coming out as transgender, the latest covid restrictions, Letitia Wright’s controversial vaccine tweets and the deaths of two formidable figures: David Prowse, the 6-foot-6 actor who physically played Darth Vader, and “Mad Max” franchise villain Hugh Keays-Byrne. And over at our Patreon, we recap this week’s episode of “The Mandalorian” — Boba Fett is back, baby! — and episode three of “The Queen’s Gambit.” Hope you’re hanging in there, and thanks for hanging out with us.
About the Warner – HBO deal, the distance between the in-theater experience and the home experience has narrowed considerably in the past few years.
I have a comfortable chair, a 65″ 4K TV, and a mid-grade sound system. Is it IMAX? No! But, it is pretty comparable to the in-theater experience of 20-30 years ago. So, it’s behind the current in-theater experience at its best, but not by all that much. And what that means is that there are fewer movies where the in-theater experience is noticeably superior. So, I have been expecting a shift like the one this deal represents for a while now.
BTW, if you have mild hearing problems, the in-theater subtitles experience is terrible, whereas at home it is pretty good.
COVID has accelerated many trends that were already in place. This is one of them. It has accelerated the move from in-theater movie consumption to viewing them at home.