The Friday Phenomena

While Saturday has always been the day to chill out and unwind & with Wednesday being the new Saturday J not many people have realized that there is a completely different tribe that exists. The tribe to which people like me belong. For us Friday Is the most important day of the week. Every week Friday’s are eagerly looked forward to. The countdown starts from Tuesday & the excitement actually pours from Wednesday as Friday is just around the corner. Friends if you are wondering what I’m talking about then let me end the suspense here. I’m talking about Friday because that’s the day of the week when movies release usually.

Never really realized why Friday is usually the day of the release when I was a kid, but later on I realized that Friday made perfect sense as the weekend sets in by Friday evening and that’s the best time to release a movie. So even as a kid while I couldn’t watch too many movies due to restrictions at home, I would be glued to the newspaper on Friday morning to check out the new releases. On the way to school I would also yearn to catch the posters of the movies that have released.

This particular interest of mine has increased with time and it now works as an inbuilt mechanism for me. During the days of the 80’s and 90’s when we did not have the luxury of the internet, the scenario was different. One actually looked forward to the newspaper advertisements and announcers of the new releases. Posters were a major means of announcing the same & if the city you lived in was large enough to have multiple release centers, the more the excitement in knowing the details.

With the passage of time & having lived in most of the major cities in India, the habit remains with me- only the means to the end have changed. Nowadays whether it be Bollywood, Hollywood or regional cinema, thanks to the internet for people like me it’s easy to have tentative release schedules of the forthcoming movies in advance. As the release date draws near, there would always be some alterations in case of multiple releases lined up for a week. So typically I end up starting the tracking from Monday onwards as to what’s the status as seen online.

In case of multiplexes the bookings in the most places is thrown open from Wednesday & so it becomes even easier to know what’s releasing on Friday. So from Wednesday I get into a pre-release analysis mode of what the Friday releases would be like. And in most cases if there are releases I’m looking forward to watching regardless of the reviews, I tend to try & get the tickets arranged before the movie releases- I know once the movie releases getting tickets for them in the first weekend would probably be next to impossible.

Now coming to my next point- the thrill of watching a new release in the first weekend of release is something unique & I can vouch for the same. The Friday phenomena is not just restricted to knowing which movie is releasing on Friday, its also about watching it on Friday itself or at least before the first weekend is over. I find the excitement and the adrenalin running for a movie to be at the highest level in the opening weekend of its release & generally when I fail to catch up on a movie during the first weekend I usually feel quite low.

The thrill of waiting & knowing a Friday release, trying to get the tickets for the same, the joy on managing to get the tickets ( for a much awaited release) and finally culminating in viewing the same in the opening weekend is all part of the Friday phenomena. And yes a very essential part of the phenomena is to track the movie’s progress and read the innumerable material on the movie (review & other stuff) coming up online, on T.V, print etc.

Nowadays the trend of paid previews is catching up big time & so I try to see if can catch the movie for the same itself. So I know when for example CC2C releases on Friday 16th, I would have an exciting weekend in store. If there is a paid preview, I would try to go for it & then I would be eagerly reading reviews, tracking the movie’s progress and probably even writing on the movie.

Whenever I get to miss a movie in the opening weekend like I had to miss OLLO in the first weekend, I feel that I’m lost something. Whenever I watch an RNBDJ, a Dark Knight or a Ghajini on the first day/paid preview there’s a strange sense of excitement.Mind you I’m not talking about the movie being good or bad here, it’s all about just watching the new release as soon as it’s released. People have different options when it comes to spending their weekend while for me catching up on the Friday releases is the best way to unwind. So let the magic of cinema continue and as for the coming Friday-9th Jan- well I must admit I’m not too excited with the movies coming up, but then there’s always the next Friday, right friends?

Originally published on PFC- check it out here- http://passionforcinema.com/the-friday-phenomena/