Movies- art or only a habit?

Many smart people have discussed a thousand times how social media and the new technologies reshape our world. While there are some definite advantages, some are indeed negative and I wish they'd  never existed.

Watching a movie today is nothing special. We know we gotta do it cause if we miss it we won't be able to talk with our friends and we'd feel embarrassed if we won't have an opinion. I clearly remember my teen years: we didn't have internet at home so watching a movie was a rare thing. We only did it on weekends if none of us was tired. It happened maybe twice in a month. As my uni started, things just turned upside down. I suddenly had the chance to watch basically anything ever made in the past 100 years without an effort. That was the moment when I lost the respect towards movies.

Whose idea was the Ben Hur remake? I'm gonna
beat the crap out of the guy (C. Heston)

Now it takes us maybe 10 clicks at most to download a movie. With a mediocre internet connection we can start watching a movie in 60 minutes. What's worse, we watch them in the same disrespectful way. My colleague Salih watches movies (LotR atm) with his finger sticked to the 'fast forward' button: if a scene is not interesting, he just skips. Or more like, he watches a long trailer of the movie. Before I judge I gotta tell I'm nothing better. Watching a movie alone at home, I catch myself over and over alt-tabbing to gmail, twitter and facebook. I even check all the bios of the actors meanwhile, the plot, and every little detail about the movie. I feel so ashamed while I'm typing these sentences, but it has been some time since I've last watched a movie without pausing it.

Who is to blame then?

I'd say it's both us and modern technology that turns watching a movie into a pathetic attempt on having fun. The days when I watched movies in the cinema or home, from video recorder- yes, those were the days. If I wanted to skip a part or go for a drink, I knew I was destroying the atmosphere not just for myself but for the others. I had the patience to sit and wait until the end. That's how Tarkovsky sucked me in during my uni years: watching S.T.A.L.K.E.R. made me realize how far the audience drifted from the art of cinema.
It's a long way back to the point where movies were still considered to be a piece of art and not another must-to-do on our Daily Schedule of Doing Nothing.

Rihanna in Battleship. The future?

Meanwhile, movie industry is choking in it's own feces. Over the decades, pop movies got lighter and lighter. Rihanna and Hasbro forge an unholy alliance (Battleship), Adam Sandler and other funny guys infest the screen with jokes comprehensible for a poodle, the original crew of Ben Hur will definetely turn away watching the coming remake, and the list goes on. 'Hollywood can't make anything but remakes' cries out the 'movie junkie' of our generation (which is another joke, as if watching tons of movies was such a great effort...). But they forget it's the audience whose needs are considered before making a new movie. Before making another crap we can skip on our laptops.

Now others may say there is a thick line between artistic and popular movies, which is fine by me. It's like Coldplay vs. Pat Metheny. Both play music but only the latter is seriously considered as a form of art. So why the fuss? Art movies should target smaller and more sophisticated audiences while pop movies should keep on producing the shit we all enjoy. Here I have just one small footnote.

Machete. One of the few entertaining action
movies of our decade

Take action movies. They have never been among the most meaningful of movies. But watch Rambo from 1982 and then watch any other action movie from this decade (The Expendables 2 for eg). You'll feel the difference. What's more is that the only fun popular movies (let's stick with action as a genre) are the ones that make a fun of themselves (Machete for instance). Movie production for the masses has never been about the artistic effort, but today's level has reached an all-time low.

Meanwhile the Oscar ceremony also tries to transform with the changing needs of the audience. While until the 80's the best picture award went to the truly meaningful and artistic movies, nowadays it's enough to take the Recipe That Pleases The Academy and your job is done. 2013's probable winner Lincoln just tells everything about this. An ever-green topic (American history), an experienced and well-known actor (Daniel Day-Lewis), a director whose name is known by anyone who sat at least once in front of the TV (Spielberg) and the genre... well, it's just always the same (drama).

Lincoln. The prototype of the 'Oscar-movie'

I'll be old fashioned now. I think the only solution is to spend less time in front of the laptop watching movies and more with sitting in the cinema. We do owe the filmmakers with the minimal respect, eventually they worked with it for months to entertain us. And once its provided, maybe we can start enjoying movies again.