Troy

[armb]

We went to the new Cineworld cinema in Cambridge to see Scooby Doo 2. After a short while we realized that The Cat In The Hat we were watching wasn't just a trailer, it was the start of the film. A very apologetic manager explained that they hadn't been able to get the Scooby Doo print, and the tickets and signs should have been changed, and of course we could have a refund and would we like to watch either The Cat In The Hat or any other film they were showing free? So we saw Troy. I thought it was a lot better than some of the reviews have suggested.
Some of the changes from the standard story seemed a bit arbitrary and unnecessary. Not having the gods directly involved I think is a reasonable decision, if want this to be the "real" story to which the gods were added as the story turned into legend. But there is no sense whatsoever that this is a ten year long seige - it appears to all be over in three days of fighting (and a 12 day break, not shown, for funeral games).

Comments

[armb.livejournal.com]

Things might change when we have more digital showings, but at the moment it apparently actually costs too much to make enough prints to open around the world at the same time. The US is the biggest market, at least for US made films, so they open there (and it was supposed to be the last showing of Scooby Doo2, but Troy is fairly new), and then the prints get shipped to Europe later.
The excuse for region coding DVDs is that the studios need DVDs to come out at roughly the same interval behind the movie around the world to make the most money and that money helps fund more films, so film viewers should want to see DVDs make lots of money. But classic films like Casablanca, and films that aren't released worldwide, also get region coded, so the fact that they can get away with charging more in some regions than others has something to do with it too.