Movies: Fadeout

The era of moviegoing as a mass audience ritual is slowly but inexorably drawing to a close.

This is my feeling, too. It used to be a fine thing to go to the movies, an outing to look forward to, a "date" event. No more. The movies themselves are often formulaic and out of date, plus it costs so much to go and you have to watch commercials. The old days had a cartoon, a newsreel and a double feature and it was fun. Now we can download the video to our iPods.