Today's Column: the boring months of fall

Opening the month as usual is a column of mine:

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/157377/column_de_cinefiel_in_herfstslaap

Unintendedly my column sparked some controversy on Twitter, I've been told (as I don't use Twitter myself). Apparently someone took umbrage against my statements that there aren't many good films released in arthouse theaters in the months of September and October. I do agree in hindsight that I came off a bit harsh in that regard, since there are a fair number of decent titles available for our viewing pleasure (and I did acknowledge the few gems among them by name, like Winter Sleep, though that is a matter of taste). Nevertheless, I do stand firm in my opinion (which of course is all a column ever really is) that though these titles are certainly good enough, they are far from memorable compared to the films generally released in the months of November up till February, when 'good enough' is replaced by 'great'. If the current titles truly are as strong as the distributors would have us believe, I'd say more people would bother to attend. The really good stuff is being kept until later this year, as it usually is.

Looking at this column now, I really feel I ought to have stuck to my ranting against the cowardly release strategy of the commerical distributors and studios only, since they're the ones that really fall short and cause these months to be so depressingly dull. Most of the titles released in your bigger theaters are simply meant to at least give us new titles, any titles, regularly, but arguably movies of good quality are few and far between. Thus audiences tend to visit a select number of titles en masse, while the rest receives lukewarm attendance at best. Currently, the only movies people bother to visit at my work are The Maze Runner and The Equalizer, while the rest of them is euphemistically lagging behind, drawing only barely adequate numbers of spectators at best, and at worst, none at all. October doesn't seem set to break that pattern from the looks of it; things won't get more exciting until November. So we'll be sitting on our elbows for a whole more month on the job (except for that darn fall school recess, when parents and kids flock to theaters in great numbers hoping to escape the cold and the rain, though decent family movies too are a rarity: however, kids don't care about that, since anything that moves and makes a lot of noise, for which they have to leave the house is exciting and worthwhile to them). Special discount events don't seem to persuade audiences to attend, as there's simply too few movies that spark their interest. That is why the National Film Days didn't do as well as the industry had hoped for: there just weren't enough movies to entice people to visit theaters at all, even at half price. And this is basically how it goes every year, a tedious situation I'm kinda fed up with, which is why I call for distributors to reconsider their shying away from decent releases in the fall, as they seem to have for the spring months which in recent years have become much more eventful since the blockbuster season is seemingly expanded, now starting as early as March rather than May. Seeing as to how well that works financially, I'm hoping studios and distributors will risk the gamble and keep some of their summer hits back for the fall. I'm sure that would sit well with people sitting at home bored wishing for good movies to be released, of which I reckon there are fair numbers available.

That was basically the discussion I had hoped to ignite, on Twitter or elsewhere. But since I made the generalizing mistake to throw arthouse and commercial releases in the mix together, that backfired on me, and I do regret it. I wonder what they're tweeting about my column. But not enough to sign up on Twitter.