Opinion | Can Movies Survive Changing Times?

To the Editor:

Re “Is This the Stop of the Videos?,” by Ross Douthat (column, Sunday Critique, March 27):

Why are pundits so eager to generate the obituaries of elements of our lifestyle that include so several enriching proportions to our life? The radio was intended to eliminate guides the net was meant to kill the newspaper television was meant to eliminate theater YouTube was supposed to destroy tv.

All of these joyful, irreplaceable factors of our lifestyle have survived even with pundits’ greatest initiatives to bury them, and so much too will the movies. Like the novel, the newspaper, the play and television, the movies will endure. What will modify is how we practical experience them.

Daniel Ross Goodman
Longmeadow, Mass.
The author is a movie critic for The Washington Examiner and the author of “Somewhere In excess of the Rainbow: Wonder and Faith in American Cinema.”

To the Editor:

I have not been to a motion picture in a theater for far more than 20 years, way before Covid. Why? The interminable ads, the stink of faux butter on popcorn, the seats, the peering between men and women taller than me. Most of all, the ridiculously loud audio degrees.

About 10 years back, I bought a very high-priced projector, a 7-foot-vast pull-down monitor, an audio-movie receiver and 6 good loudspeakers. Considering the fact that then, we can happily stream films from the typical sites or community library, and we can rent or acquire DVDs.

So why go to a motion picture theater at all? Case shut.

Jolyon Jesty
Mount Sinai, N.Y.

To the Editor:

When intelligent journalists forecast the stop of motion pictures, they actually imply that videos are shifting in dimensions, structure, content, income and platform.

My only quibble with Ross Douthat’s marvelous piece is his use of the alarmist “End of the Motion pictures.” Motion pictures have survived each and every new technological innovation from sound to the website over much more than a century.

If anything at all has finished, it’s the primacy of motion pictures as customers’ very first choice. The Apple iphone introduced an intimate way to view motion pictures, but also introduced a numbing assortment of competing articles, stealing several hours absent from movie theater attendance.

The motion picture company will evolve and prosper as executives, associates and expertise survive this disruptive period of time, the just one-two punch of streaming and Covid. For consumers indifferent to monitor dimensions, there have hardly ever been more options. For talent, there has by no means been additional work, around the world. This is an unbeatable blend.

Jason E. Squire
Los Angeles
The writer is professor emeritus at the U.S.C. School of Cinematic Arts and editor of “The Motion picture Enterprise Ebook.”

To the Editor:

I was ready for an individual somewhere to audio the dying knell. And Ross Douthat did it masterfully. I was not ready joyfully, of study course.

I grew up with Roy Rogers and Gene Autry Saturday matinees. The practically all-day occasion (which could not have established my folks back again a lot more than a buck) gave me entree to the grownup earth, fantasy, audio, news, comedy. Television did not truly contend for a although. And then it did. And then the movies didn’t look like the “must see” they experienced been.

It’s been a extended time coming, but did not the sector dig its possess grave with overblown, extremely lengthy, pretentious films that started to really feel missable?

This is coming from a motion picture lover who lookups for one more black and white film noir that she could have skipped from the 1930s, ’40s or ’50s most nights. And when she finds 1, it’s viewed in considerably less than two hours. That’s a advertising place!

Frances Sheridan Goulart
Ridgefield, Conn.

To the Editor:

Re “Election Texts Shine New Light on Clout Held by Justice’s Wife” (entrance website page, March 27):

Chief Justice John Roberts can no longer cover. The Supreme Court’s rotting track record has accelerated in latest days, with the unsigned, commentless selections supplying way to news about an associate justice, Clarence Thomas, whose moral carry out is deservedly below intensive scrutiny.

We expect supreme integrity from the court. We have to have it, but we’re not getting it.

Main Justice Roberts requires to impose controls, and he desires to make them loud and very clear so the country understands that it can as soon as once again trust the courtroom. For individuals justices who simply cannot are living below a rigorous code of ethics, exit stage right.

Honesty. Honestly, which is not a whole lot to check with.

Jay Margolis
Delray Seaside, Fla.

To the Editor:

Re “Florida Governor Signs Monthly bill Fought by L.G.B.T.Q. Teams, White House and Hollywood” (information write-up, March 29):

When I (now 73) was in elementary university, my college assigned censored editions of Shakespeare with the “dirty” bits omitted. The initial detail we did was to get unedited editions from libraries and older siblings so we could compare the editions and locate the censored bits. I truthfully really do not don’t forget how substantially time I put in on the “clean” sections.

At good hurt to the ability of academics and educators to assistance small children navigate the significantly sophisticated and frightening territory of modern-day id, social life, medicine and, sure, sexuality, legislatures like Florida’s are sending young children straight to considerably less trustworthy but at any time-existing resources of info about these matters, censoring academics and purging school libraries and curriculums.

Youthful individuals with out all set obtain to substitute facts resources are being despatched straight into the waiting around rooms of faculty counselors, who are legislatively muzzled and therefore largely unable to help them.

How dare legislators (with the phony assert that they are aiding kids and parents) deliver us all again to the Center Ages?

Carlin Meyer
Palenville, N.Y.
The writer is professor emerita at New York Regulation College.