The Fallen (Culture) Warriors
There’s a report that the recently-closed Valhalla cinema may yet be revived, and if there’s ever a sign that the movie business isn’t as imperilled as it likes to say it is, this is it. An art cinema, devoted to the kinds of movies that don’t make it to the multiplex, and offering a rare, true big-screen experience, the Valhalla had revenue problems to be sure, not to mention something of a mildew problem (but that seems fairly common in Glebe), so the proposal to turn it into a mixed-use business – office space, a café, and especially a DVD shop, shows how this kind of operation can survive in an era where the very nature of the industry is on the cusp of major change. Piracy is often touted as the primary cause of the fall in revenues for films, but other, more objective analyses suggest that more fundamental, audience-based changes are taking place – home entertainment technology, for the most part, making the cinema experience less relevant to a growing segment of the population. This shouldn’t, however, undercut the cinema experience. Advances in home audio and the trend for technology prices to fall almost in direct proportion to innovations still don’t duplicate the big-screen projection. While digital video approaches ever-closer to film’s richness, there are still things you can do with the latter that can’t be done with the former – ask any cinematographer.

And speaking of movies, I’m starting to be more interested than I was in The Constant Gardner, an adaptation of the LeCarre thriller, a book I’d picked up when I was working late one evening and needed something to occupy myself with other than the internet while some processes took up the majority of my workstation’s capacity. Like most of his books, that I’ve read, it was quickly engaging, but has to be, as well, easily the most bleak. Nevertheless, with Ralph Fiennes and Bill Nighy in leading roles, I’d probably go see any movie, but these two seem superbly adapted to filling their respective positions in this one. It won’t play at the yet-to-be-revived Valhalla, but I’ll suffer a trip to Hoyt’s for it anyway.