http://news.scotsman.com/entertainment.cfm?id=1399142007
Internet 'killing cinema', says director Scott
RAYMOND HAINEY
THE Hollywood director, Ridley Scott, warned yesterday that new technology is killing off the big-screen experience. The Oscar-winning County Durham-born movie mogul said mobile phones and computers threatened movie-making on an epic scale.
He insisted that the best way to experience great film was still in a cinema with a big screen and state-of-the art acoustics.
Scott launched the attack at the prestigious Venice Film Festival, where he unveiled a newly remastered version of his 1980s sci-fi classic Blade Runner.
He said: "People sit there watching a movie on a tiny screen. You can't beat it, you've got to join it and deal with it and also get competitive with it. But we try to do films which are in support of cinema, in a large room with good sound and a big picture."
However, Scott admitted: "I'm sure we're on a losing wicket, but we're fighting technology. While it has been wonderful in many aspects, it also has some big negative downsides."
Former Edinburgh Film Festival director Mark Cousins said Scott's prognosis was too gloomy. He pointed out that the death of the big screen had been predicted in the 1920s with the start of "talkies" and in the 1950s with the rise of TV. And he said that cinema attendances had begun to rise in the past five or six years after a long decline.
Mr Cousins said: "We still go to big cinemas at weekends collectively, but we also watch movies individually at home with our big TVs and sound systems."
He added that the message was more important than the medium. Mr Cousins said: "I take the view that content is king - it's the story and it's not what format it presented on. That has always been the case."
And he added: "There has been an increase in more specialist movie houses and the types of films which are doing well are documentaries, which never used to be the case, while animation is making a comeback."
But Mr Cousins said: "There is a sense of something big about to happen when people go to a cinema. At home, it's not as exciting as submitting yourself to something else and taking a risk, which is why going to the movies is still so exciting."
Scott is also the producer of the new Brad Pitt western, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, which was shown in Venice.
Scott said the Pitt film was "a wonderful, dramatic and historic piece", but added that films of that calibre were becoming rare in "dumbed-down" Hollywood. And he urged the industry to invest more in original work and stop relying on remakes of previous films to boost profits.
He said: "I'm not criticising Hollywood because I work there; I partly live there. But I'm saying this is the way it is, commerce is taking over art. Commerce has become the most important thing in the film industry."
you can't do that at marcus cinemas 
GIMME A BREAK!
