The Art House isn't dead, it just smells funny.

Stumbled upon this interesting article from Salon a few days ago on the advent of DVD home video.

"Movies as they were meant to be seen." To film purists that has long meant one thing only: on the big screen. It's also a phrase used by the premium cable channels that run movies without the cuts imposed by the major networks, and by DVD manufacturers who have raised the bar on the quality of movies available for home viewing.

There's a little Art House theater in Albuquerque called "The Lobo" that has unfortunately been closed for the past few years. I do sigh deeply every time I drive by it. Lately, even the "For Sale" sign is no longer displayed. (If someone has bought it, they're taking their sweet time doing anything with it.) However, given the choice between seeing "The Philadelphia Story" at home on DVD, and seeing a scratchy, skipping, faded print that catches on fire (I never saw a film catch on fire until I regularly attended screenings at The Lobo), or now not at all, I choose DVD. I always loved the scratchy, faded look of old movies as a kid, but it was quite a revelation to find, first through laserdisc projections in film studies class and later in DVD at home, that they weren't really meant to look that way. They have as beautiful an asthetic as anything more modern.

It sounds stupid, and it's really of those things you know intellectually but don't really realize. I think that rather breathtaking realization was when I went from curious movie buff to proud cineaste.