From the Cheap Seats

Gosh, is it 2008 already? Yup, it’s another new year, smelling factory-fresh, with nary a scratch on it. As with all new years, there are certain proprieties to be observed: chiefly, trying to predict what the year will look like at the other end, when it’s held together by sticking plaster and we’re impatient to trade it in for a newer model.

I’m very wary of predictions. They’re usually based more on wishful thinking rather than considered interpretation of the facts. I’ve been burnt many times by forecasts telling me what I want to hear. Remember the urgent prognostications of THE DEATH OF THE BLOCKBUSTER a few summers ago? Some of us believed it, more fool us.

But it’s getting harder to resist gazing into a crystal ball because things are so obviously changing. Of course, people have been speculating for years how this ’ere internet will affect the distribution and consumption of films and usually, such speculations have been roughly as accurate as the one about THE DEATH OF THE BLOCKBUSTER. I wonder, however, if it’s time to start listening.

Here’s the first prediction I’m going to make: this will be the year when we start noticing how the much-rumoured changes are affecting how we watch movies. This year, in other words, will be the year we start getting an idea of what the long-term changes will look like. I’ve got my suspicions about what’s going to happen, as I’m sure you do: I reckon we’ll know much more by the end of the year.

I’ve already noticed some changes in my film-going behaviour: I scarcely went to the cinema last year – only about twenty times or so – and watched many more DVDs instead. Of course, it wasn’t a vintage year for new releases and I’m hoping 2008 offers more enticing prospects. I’m not, however, expecting more opportunities to see ‘old’ films on the big screen: it used to be that about half my trips to the flicks were to see repertory screenings. Now I fear such screenings will be restricted to dedicated centres like the National Film Theatre.

(Yes, I know the NFT has been re-branded to become ‘the BFI South Bank’ but that’s a rubbish name and it is even more rubbish as an abbreviation: BFISB. ‘NFT’ rolls off both the tongue and the keyboard in a way ‘BFISB’ doesn’t and never will. So change it back now, please.)

Yet as one door closes, another one opens and while our methods of approaching films may change, the medium itself remains as lively and as exciting as ever. This leads me to my second prediction: 2008 will be the best year ever for film.

Oh, I know that there are those who say that it will never eclipse 1939 (Stagecoach, The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, La Regle du Jeu) or 1974 (The Conversation & The Godfather Part Two, Chinatown, Amarcord, The Phantom of Liberty). But in 2008, we have all those films and a great many others besides. We’ll also have all the ones released this year, some of which will – I promise – be magnificent. Even if the year produces only one great film, that’s one more great film in the world than there was a year before and that’s something to cheer.

No doubt labels like Second Run and Masters of Cinema will play their part too, introducing us to masterpieces we’d either forgotten or never knew existed. So, while the old certainties of the movie industry re-shape themselves into something new, the most important thing – this thrilling medium of film – will continue to excite us, inspire us and entertain us.

Predictions are a mugs game and I’ll probably regret playing along. But I’m optimistic that I’m going to see some interesting stuff, whether it’s at the cinema, on DVD or projected onto my frontal lobe by some hitherto unknown technology. And, as long as the films remain great, it doesn’t matter what else changes. Apart, obviously, from ‘the BFI South Bank’, which should revert to its previous name as soon as is humanly possible.