There and Back Again: 2013 in Film Part 1

It's that time again my friends, the time when we write our lists and check them twice regarding our favorites, our worst and our disappointments of the year at cinemas.

And for me this year in film could be summed up in the title above "There and Back Again" as for me personally it was very much a year where my only real option to see new release movies in a cinema was to travel and this can be a fairly lengthy exercise with each Bus trip being about 3 hours in length when you factor in the getting there and going back each of those being about 90 minutes and even then your restricted in terms of session times as you can only go to certain sessions so that you can actually make your Bus ride home.

And in some specific situations eg: I want to go to more than one film and can't fit it in on a day trip then a hotel room has to be booked for 1 or 2 nights, I tell you the things one does for their main passion in life but alas you do what you have to do in these situations and sometimes it not's that bad.

But enough of the personal story I want to now dive into what I thought were the overall trends of the year and two stuck out in my mind:

The first of those is the near complete death of 3D in cinemas across the globe (and there was much rejoicing yay) in that just 2 years ago to paint the contrast 3D sessions took up the majority of session times for that particular movie say Cars 2 or Transformers 3 to name as examples, now the 3D sessions are limited mainly to just 1 or 2 a day or in some cases that I saw like the Wolverine, the 3D sessions just weren't booked at all and quite frankly I hope that in 2014 we finally see the back of this cursed format once and for all and cinemas can book smaller pictures in their place.

The second relates to that last point which is regarding the smaller pictures aimed a lot more at adults than at families, teenagers and children that seem to in my mind take up so much of the space in cinemas nowadays especially when it's school holidays, a time of year that I REALLY REALLY hate.

The reason I bring this up is that so many of the films that I and others enjoyed were out of that traditional box of the American Studio System, two that I really liked Rush and the World's End came from the UK which increasingly seems to be the place to go to in order to try and make it in the industry nowadays.

Plus you have the popularity of film festivals that trade almost exclusively in the adult oriented fare and it is something that I expect in the new year to increase in popularity because a lot of theatres sadly are reluctant to book those sort of films but when they do get a decent release like the Place Beyond the Pines, Blue Jasmine or the Great Gatsby they actually do pretty well at the box office.

I really hope that in 2014 we see more movies aimed at adults getting a wider release because adult movie goers for too long now have been given the short straw in cinemas and I would really like to see them get something in return because if it's out there, they will go and see it but sadly I don't expect a lot of change at all on this front.

And so that's part 1 of There and Back Again: 2013 in Film, keep watching after the post for more thoughts on 2013 in Film from me.