Paranormal Pop Column: I'm mad as hell about movie tickets

BY AARON SAGERS

I love movies, and I also see movies as part of my job. But I’m mad as hell and I won’t take it anymore.

Let me explain: Each week I’ll attend a few press screenings of big studio movies. I get into these screenings for free because it’s part of the symbiotic relationship between filmmakers and film writers; they want us to talk about the movies so people will see them, and we need to see the movies to have something to talk about.

And yet, because I love movies, I still attend regular showings of other films throughout the week that I haven’t screened in advance. Or I will go back and watch movies I’d already seen with friends excited about the new blockbuster or Oscar bait.

That means paying for a ticket.

That, in turn, means taking out a mortgage on my house, accepting bids on a kidney or selling my firstborn child. If I want a soda and snack, it may be necessary to auction off my mortal soul. And now that we’re knee deep in the summer movie season - a time when the public takes to the theaters the most for a couple hours of air conditioning and escapism into massively marketed 3D super hero/sequel vehicles – it means I may have to pull off a massive art gallery or casino heist just to afford the trips to the multiplex.

According to National Association of Theatre Owners, the average U.S. ticket price in 2010 was $7.89, up 5% from $7.50 in 2009. The Los Angeles Times reported in January 2011 that the fourth quarter ticket costs in 2010 were around $8.01, a 5% increase from the same quarter in the previous year. Meanwhile, the cost of tickets where I live in New York City: $13 for an evening ticket or about $18 for 3D movie, but you’ll need to tack on another $1.50 for a “convenience fee” if you want to buy online through Fandango.

And this is during a time of serious economic hardship. So, can we call it? Can we now pronounce “dinner and movie” as a cheap date idea officially dead? A family trip with the kids to the cinema is DOA, right?

This is madness.

I understand how ticket prices work. A majority of the astronomical ticket cost goes, not to the theater, but the studio. Aside from expensive talent, to create a movie means enlisting a crew of hundreds from high profile gigs on down to the gaffers, caterers and animal wranglers. But when the budgets for the latest adventure of a hero with a power ring ($200-plus million for Warner Bros.’ Green Lantern) or robots in disguise ($400-plus million for Paramount Pictures’ Transformers: Dark of the Moon”) keep rising, ticket costs will also continue to increase so studios can turn a profit – or at least break even – from their bigger productions.

Summer Goes Supernatural

When the temperature inches up, most of us strip down to shorts and flip-flops, and take our two weeks vacationing in the lower latitudes or perhaps hitting a theme park run by a rodent of unusual size for a little bit of relaxation.

But for pop culture, when the summer hits, it's time to get freaky.

Like a drunken coed who finds "Girls Gone Wild" empowering, pop culture flashes the world with its goods during the summer season and spares no expense on blockbuster events chockablock with special effects. Moreover, when the real world is focused on clear and sunny days, pop trends towards dark, stormy and paranormal.

Within the entertainment world, summer blockbusters have been very good to the supernatural and unexplained. Some of the best installments of "paranormal pop culture" debuted during the warmer months.

'The Adjustment Bureau' succeeds but not as action flick

A conspiracy thriller loosely based on a short story from the paranoid imagination of sci-fi writer Philip K.  Dick does not precisely sound like the source material for a successful romantic/ action/comedy movie starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt.

And based on the marketing, that’s not the movie audiences might expect to see when The Adjustment Bureau opens March 4.

The promotional materials for Bureau try to sell the paranoid thriller aspect. One trailer highlights a darker, doomed-lovers message and the TV spot places emphasis on smashed cars, a body crashing into a windshield and the main characters running, running, running.

A poster shows Damon and Blunt running (again) through Manhattan as shadowy figures loom over them. Another features a grey faceless, fedora-wearing agent in an image that recalls Rene Magritte by way of Mad Men. Still another poster has our two pretty movie stars looking hard and uneasy, eyes cast slightly behind them at unseen pursuers.

But these images, while engaging, fail to serve potential audiences not interested in what appears to be a Dark City mindbending reality flick - and also sets up a disappointing scenario for viewers looking for exactly that. The Adjustment Bureau isn’t an action movie, or science fiction conspiracy flick or ill-fated lovers romance.

Actually, it’s a happy mashup of all three.

Paranormal Pop Column: The Super Bowl and the super nerd

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

Super Bowl XLV was a display of academic excellence; an adrenaline-fueled machismo machine  of behemoths crashing into one another, helmets crunching together, trash talk and manly tears of success - and failure - co-mingled with sweat and blood. The showdown between the Pittsburgh Steelers and victors the Green Bay Packers wasn't just a game of football, it was a symbol for football should be. It was a clash of titans (but not the Tennessee kind) on a field of battle populated by warriors.

Frankly, it was the kind of game that makes a man want to drop that hoagie or sub or grinder, or all three, just long enough to take a long draw on a bottle of beer, belch and grunt. And yet, behind the scenes of the most watched telecast in TV history, which net 111 million viewers, was a force underestimated and traditionally unwelcome at the big game: NERDS!

While those 111 million viewers gathered in front of televisions just to watch a hard-fought match, they were being subtly indoctrinated by geek culture to the tune of about $3 million for every 30-second commercial.

It is time to separate the athletes from the mathletes. Comic book heroes? Aliens? Jedi? Robots in Disguise? Seriously, are you ready for some football or are you ready for some World of Warcraft?

Ok, I kid. I joke about the nefarious nerds mainly because I am one.

Courtesy Screen Rant & Yahoo!

I was like a giddy little kid in Underoos watching the previews for comic book movies Thor, Cowboys and Aliens and especially Captain America (the brief shot of Hugo Weaving as Red Skull makes repeat viewings online worthwhile). The Super 8, Battle: Lost Angeles, Pirates of the Caribbean 4 and Transformers 3 spots (was that Lasorbeak? And did Optimus have an energon sword?) similarly triggered a nerdy response. But it was the Volkswagen/Star Wars spot featuring a pint-sized Sith lord trying to rock his Force powers - and god bless the loving father that let him think he did - that simultaneously warmed cockles and inspired chills.

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And between each spot, it was back to the game.

Although it's not necessarily a new development, I am always thrilled to witness the ultimate entertainment convergence that takes place at the Super Bowl. As a football fan, and a fanboy, it's dessert followed by candy to watch the game then see advertisements and first-look movie trailers for geeky movies.

Instead of the stereotype of the jock stuffing the nerd in a locker, the multi-million dollar spots have brought the brains, athletes, basket cases, princesses and, yes, even the criminals together for a breakfast club of awesome.

To put it another, geekier way, thanks to a bountiful viewership, Borg-like PR execs and marketing whizzes have assimilated us all into a giant pop-culture collective.

After all, what's the end result when time away from the game is spent nerding out over battling robots, a Norse god using a hammer against a giant metal Destroyer, pirates swashing and buckling, and an all-American, apple-pie uber-athlete taking down Nazis?

The game amongst warrior-athletes ends up feeling all the more epic and more adrenaline-fueled because the event is a Super Bowl with cameo appearances by super heroes and supernatural creatures.

Responding to media skeptics: Dislike, but don't dismiss, paranormal TV

When it comes to the appeal of paranormal pop culture, some people just don't get it.

As you may have noticed, there are just a few reality-TV paranormal investigative shows out there. They do pretty well on cable, ratings-wise, and the genre remains healthy enough for a new one with a different gimmick to pop up every month or so. We have ghost shows about animals, kids, students and cops - and it's only a matter of time before audiences are treated to a paranormal pre-school show.

The point is, these shows are put together by production companies and picked up by networks because there is enough interest to create a trend, and everyone in the entertainment industry (wisely) wants to ride the wave on a moneymaking trend.

Which leads me to this column by Franklin Harris, the Assistant Metro Editor of the Decatur Daily in Alabama. In it, Mr. Harris skewers the genre of paranormal investigative reality programs. He saves most of his poison ink for Zak Bagans and his Ghost Adventures crew, but also writes the tricks of the ghost hunting trade "are not difficult skills to master" and infers that investigators lack critical thinking abilities and are still clinging to childish fantasies of haunted houses like "half of my elementary-school classmates." Moreover, Mr. Harris is "amazed at what counts for evidence during these so-called investigations" and breaks out the old reliable orb-as-evidence example to illustrate his point.

Mr. Harris is welcome to his opinion, but I can't help but wonder if he approached his viewings of any investigative programming openly, or if he simply tuned in to trash.

As far as Bagans goes, I've never met the dude or investigated with him. I enjoy his show enough, and actually like the theatricality of it. But frankly, I don't have enough information to either endorse his prowess as an investigator or to claim he's full of ectoplasm. Besides, Bagans doesn't need me to stick up for him, nor does anyone on any show, paranormal themed or not.

But who I do think Mr. Harris wrongs in his column are the people who enjoy these shows, and probably not an insignificant number of his own readers. After all, out of the three million weekly viewers who watch Ghost Hunters, the top-rated paranormal investigative series, you can bet a handful of them hail from 'Bama.

To be clear, I view paranormal investigative shows as entertainment. Just as I am naturally skeptical that the ShamWow is as good as Vince Shlomi promises, I don't automatically believe everything a TV paranormal investigator tells me. So I watch the shows for fun. Besides, regardless of my own belief in the existence of ghosts, viewing a TV program alone won't transform a viewer into a solid investigator. Nor do I think most of the celebrity ghost hunters on the shows would claim it will.

Additionally, like all pop culture, paranormal pop culture varies in quality. Some of the investigative shows are admittedly pretty lame. There are those that do actively add to the negative perception of the paranormal community, and others are just painful to watch because of the unlikability of the living personalities on display.

But dismissing the significance of even the worst of these shows, or all of them as in Mr. Harris' case, is as much of a folly as dismissing the Twilight Saga, American Idol, country music or pro football simply because you don't care for it.

The latest online Harris Poll (which, despite the name similarity, has no connection to editor Franklin Harris) reported 42 percent of American adults believe in ghosts. Conducted in November 2009, the same poll also reported most adults believe in god (82 percent), angels (72 percent), heaven (75 percent), hell (61 percent), UFOs (32 percent) and the life of the soul after death (71 percent).

Polls are tricky things and who really knows - out of the 2,303 adults surveyed - what types of people took this questionnaire. To be fair, in October, Rasmussen Reports conducted a similar poll that only showed the number of ghost believers to be around 23 percent. Still, the 40 percent figure is more or less the standard reflected in most polls. This is hard to ignore and foolish to dismiss.

If Mr. Harris is a skeptic, as can be assumed, then he should not kowtow to those who investigate and believe in the paranormal. Skeptics are necessary, and most investigators love having them around. I daresay there are a fair number of investigators who'd benefit from a little more skepticism to aid in their debunking, and to prevent them from quickly labeling all things as paranormal. Even the folks who run Web sites solely dedicated to picking apart evidence from ghost shows are cool by me because they encourage good investigators to be better and sharper, and to avoid sloppy mistakes.

Further, I do not think Mr. Harris is actively intending to insult people who enjoy paranormal reality-TV any more than he'd try to offend those reflected in that poll who have faith in another intangible, unseen force like god.

Maybe he's just looking to ruffle some feathers and drive Web traffic by taking a contrarian tone on a popular trend - sort of like shouting "Pats suck!" in Boston. If that is his intent, I'm certainly assisting in this endeavor by yammering on about it. And more power to him since so many of us writers live and die by page hits. Unfortunately, I think Franklin Mr. Harris' words do come across as condescending to a large group of believers, investigators and probably more than a few people in his own paper's distribution zone.

Fans of the paranormal are everywhere, and their support translates into major revenue for the entertainment industry. Regardless of how much Mr. Harris personally dislikes, or even loathes, the paranormal reality-TV genre, when millions of people are tuning in every week, it is simply unexplainable to dismiss the entertainment of the unexplained.

-Aaron Sagers