Ads before movies

This'll probably open up a can of worms, but:

Annoying but bearable

Unbearable to me. If I paid to get in, I don't want to see ads. Advertising on TV, OK, fair enough, I'm getting the broadcast for nothing so I gotta suffer through some ads/go into the kitchen and stuff my face with Sultan brand Turkish Delight, available in plain, pistachio and filbert. But ads before movies, except movie trailers which everyone rightly luvs, suck. I remember when they first started doing this in southern California -- people booed. Not activist liberal types but everybody. Do something long enough and people quit complaining though I guess.

They've been showing ads before films here in the UK for ages - since about the early seventies, I think. In those days of old, which lasted up until around about the mid eighties, you'd usually get hilariously crap ads for local businesses - like the Indian restaruant "just a few yards away from this cinema", or carpet stores, or the local chemists. They'd usually use one of many prefilmed pieces of stock footage, with a bland voiceover saying things that could apply to just about any restaruant/carpet store/chemists anywhere in Britain, and then it would abruptly cut, with a jump in vision and a nasty "snap" on the soundtrack, to a bland slide with the address of the local whatever and a completely different and less than professional voiceover (probably the owner of said business) dully intoning the address and adding something like "Biryanis are our speciality!"

Then in the late eighties that suddenly died out and was wholly replaced by the slicker, cinema versions of TV ads, with an address for, say, the local Epsom branch of Boots superimposed over the picture at the end or something. It was a shame, really. I'd much rather watch a brief clip of something filmed in 1972 which illustrates that "our range of carpets won't break the piggy bank!" by someone actually breaking a piggy bank with a hammer than the latest car ad arsefest.

i'd rather just they got on with the film, or at least the trailers!

I hate it when the theater's own adverts look like they cost more to produce than the movie itself.

Those Fandango ads are so goddamn annoying.

(Also, ads are cut for TV so too many giant close-ups and too-fast cutting. Gives me a headache.)

They are essential to me, because I turn up for everything in life fifteen minutes late. If it weren't for ads, I would therefore miss part of the film. (Sometimes small cinemas showing obscure documentaries or whatever just play the film at the advertised time. Then I miss part of it, which is a pain.)

heh. I just went to the national movie theatre for the first time to watch Bergman's 'Wild strawberries' and there was no single ad there (having said, there was some ambient 'whale song' garbage being played as ppl were sitting down, that was terrible).

I don't like ads beforee movies. I make sure I'm 10-15 minutes so I can miss most of them.

I just remembered that one time my now-demolished local cinema showed a David Bowie music video before the film for some reason. That would have been good if it wasn't "Loving The Alien".

And yus, Steve, despite my nostalgia, I have to admit ads before movies are pretty much a dud...

before the Powerpuff Girls movie we got the Sugababes video/song from it...but this was okay.

Weirder was the way they tacked on the strange All Saints present..A Bridge double video feature onto Jackie Brown back in '97 so we'd have to sit thru their covers of 'lady Marmalade' and 'under the bridge' before the film...never understood what the connection there was

all in all tho, i welcome the showing of decent music videos in cinema environments...esp. if they're by French animators and/or directors

The theatre I go to plays a hideously annoying cover of "Baby, It's Cold Outside"--Harry Connick, Jr. and someone else, I think. I guess endless, over-the-top cooing is what passes for a 'sexy' vocal performance nowadays...

People wd always laugh at the athlete mishaps (some funny, none tragic) one even after the 5643rd time.

The old AMC one, "Let's all go to the movies!" made me, mild mannered movie goer, quite obtrusively boo. And we're all introverted and mild mannered in Northern California.

These days in SoCal it's horrifying. Bad enough to sit through all the crap previews before The Two Towers, now imagine about five minutes or more worth of other things before it, including some tool who won a Coke young filmmaker's competition and his stupid theatre idiocy.

the movie chain, refreshment and dumb fandago commericals i consider just part of the movie. they've always advertised their own shit.

But when you see ads for tv shows, shower heads, cars etc. it gets annoying.

HOWEVER before it started running on TV I saw the longer version of the VW Beetle commerical that plays the ELO song, where the guy is going to the office everyday, in the same routine, etc. and thought it was excellent. Definitely fit for the theatre. VW is doing some great ads lately.

Julio, I don't miss the ads before films at the NFT, but I do wish they would show a couple of trailers for other films that might be of interest.

martin- I go to the NFT website where they have the full schedule. but yeah, a couple of trailers would be OK I guess.

I'm a member, so they send me the guide. It's not that I don't know what's coming, it's just that trailers are extra info inputting to my decisions. If I go to see a Korean movie there, I'd have thought a trailer or two for other Korean or oriental movies coming up might lure a few extra punters to those, and hardly anyone objects to trailers.

I hate the way the same ads stay in the cinema for ages.

|t is a good indicator of whether you are in cinema full of munters if they laugh at some unbelievably lame joke in an ad that's been playing in every cinema for the last ten years.

ba-ba ba-ba ba-ba ba-ba bababa
ba-ba ba-ba ba-ba ba-ba bababa
ba-ba ba-ba ba-ba ba-ba bababa
ba-ba ba-ba ba-ba ba-ba baaaaaaaa ba!

whatever happened to pearl and dean anyway?

''I'm a member, so they send me the guide. It's not that I don't know what's coming, it's just that trailers are extra info inputting to my decisions. If I go to see a Korean movie there, I'd have thought a trailer or two for other Korean or oriental movies coming up might lure a few extra punters to those, and hardly anyone objects to trailers.''

fair enuff!