Coming to a website near you
Husband and I saw the new Indiana Jones movie today. (It was OK.) But before the movie we had to sit through the obligatory 25 minutes of movie trailers. Which leads me to ask: when did it become necessary for all movies to have their own website?

I've noticed it for years, of course. Every movie ad on TV has a web address listed, but it just seems so silly. I've never gone to a movie website. Have you? Why? Going to a website is just doing their advertising for them. They can market to people with very little effort. In my case (and I admit I'm probably not their target audience) if there's a movie I want to see, I will -- without the website convincing me to do so. If there's a film I'm iffy about, I'm just not going to put in the effort - or waste my time - by voluntarily going to a page that's basically a big commercial.

The other thing that cracks me up are the addresses. When every film needs a website sooner or later they're gonna have to do some scrambling to come up with a URL that makes sense. If they'd had an Internet back in 1939, would we have all spent the months leading up to the premiere of Gone With the Wind visiting dontknownothinboutbirthinnobabies.com?

It's really amazing how movie marketing has changed over the years. Oh yeah, and credits. Movie credit are now about 7 minutes long to ensure the set nurse and the caterer gets a mention. I watched some old movie the other night and it had one screen of cast, one screen for producer, director, screenplay and then one screen for the basic crew. That was about it. You could sit through all of the credits in about 1 minute flat. Now it seems that everyone even remotely connected with a film gets their name mentioned. I suppose it's nice for them. And I guess the union insists. But why does the audience have to sit through a credit for the star's personal assistant or all 47 people who worked on animation? I used to sit through credits all the way through at the end of a movie. No more. My the time the credits are done I'm out in my car and pulling out of the parking space.