The mobile phone – possibly, in terms of inventions, the broadest double-edged sword in history.
Sure, there are all sorts of good things about them: they enable you to communicate wherever you are, they've revolutionised industries the world over, and they enable you to play crudely-animated tennis games in the middle of boring wedding ceremonies and the like.
Yet there's also a less-than-savoury side to the little fellas. God knows which bright spark thought it would be a good idea to put a tinny mini-stereo-speaker on each and every handset, but if hecklerspray has to listen to one more Burberry-clad scumfuck blasting out Akon on the bus in the morning, we're not going to be responsible for our actions. We haven't been polishing that shotgun for the good of our health, you know.
Another place that mobile phones are a nuisance? The cinema, that's where. And no-one could agree more with that than beardy director-type Ridley Scott.
He's not, however, talking about the usual trouble that mobile phones can cause in the movie house – i.e gangs of 20 rat-faced GCSE failures frantically sniggering as they text and call each other despite the fact that they're only sitting three feet apart. Oh, no – he's more annoyed with the new generation of mobiles being able to play movies and TV shows on their itty bitty screens.
Ridley Scott explained:
"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. We try to do films which are in support of cinema, in a large room with good sound and a big picture. I'm sure we're on a losing wicket but we're fighting technology. Whilst it is wonderful in many aspects, it also has some big negative downsides."
All very odd, really – does anyone actually perceive a tiny mobile phone viewscreen as a threat to Hollywood? Besides, wouldn't it be a wonderful world if the kind of festering plebs who sit twiddling on their phones – and would thus presumably rather watch a movie on it than on the big screen – actually stayed at home and did precisely that, thereby meaning the rest of us could enjoy an idiot-free cinema experience?
Oh – and if you really want people to embrace the big screen? Probably best not to make cack like Kingdom Of Heaven, then. Or Hannibal. Or G.I Jane. Or White Squall.
Just a thought.
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