California Today: Is This the End for Movies?

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/09/us/california-today-movies.html

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It’s Friday! Let’s talk movies.

Prognosticators have been putting out death notices all summer for the motion picture, citing dismal box office numbers, the rise of streaming video and superb serials like HBO’s “Night Of” and Netflix’s “Stranger Things.”

As Ty Burr, a Boston Globe critic, wrote last week, “the two-hour movie, especially in its larger and more commercial form, is becoming a relic. Make that has become a relic.”

To help us understand what to make of cinema’s dirge, I turned to two of The Times’s most thoughtful Hollywood watchers: Brooks Barnes, the neighborhood beat reporter based in Los Angeles, and A.O. Scott, one of our chief film critics.

Movies are dead? “Nonsense,” said Mr. Barnes, who wrote recently about the changing behavior of moviegoers and its diminishing effects on box office returns.

He cited evidence that suggests people may be shunning spontaneous treks to the theater in favor of plopping on the couch for a Netflix binge. This trend also coincides with a summer flush with big studio flops: “Sequelitis and an overload of event movies have been blamed for much of the carnage.”

But, he argues, these trends don’t spell doom for the medium.

“It pops up almost every summer — ‘nothing but blockbuster drivel!’ he said in an email. “For more than 40 years, summer has been when studios roll out their lumbering parade floats aimed at the out-of-school set.”

In the fall, the studios shift to more sophisticated fare, Mr. Barnes said. “Coming up are movies that will blow people away.”

Mr. Scott, who just returned from the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado, which ended on Monday, said bogus death pronouncements are nothing new. Long before the fatal blows of the digital age, movies were killed by sound, the breakup of the studio system and the rise of television.

“The death of cinema has been going on for most of a century,” he said, “and I expect it will last for at least another hundred years.”

Mr. Scott recently exulted in the offerings at Telluride, singling out Damien Chazelle’s “La La Land,” Barry Jenkins’s “Moonlight,” Denis Villeneuve’s “Arrival” and others.

He wrote: “Whatever the state of the industry or the prevailing winds in the culture and the digital economy, the integrity and specificity of cinema is a fact.”

• Landon Donovan, the career leading scorer in Major League Soccer, ended his 21-month retirement and re-signed with the Los Angeles Galaxy. [Los Angeles Times]

• A Merced County sheriff’s deputy was shot after responding to a disturbance at a home, officials said. He’s in critical condition. A suspect was shot and killed. [Merced Sun-Star]

• Wells Fargo fired at least 5,300 employees involved in illegal banking practices including opening sham accounts in customers’ names. [The New York Times]

• A study last year found that Airbnb hosts sometimes discriminate against renters based on race. On Thursday, the company took forceful action. [New York Times]

• One of the country’s longest legal battles over religious symbols on public property came to an end, leaving a cross in San Diego in place. [San Diego Union-Tribune]

• Most cleaning companies charge by the hour, but this Silicon Valley start-up created an algorithm. [The New York Times]

• The Palm Springs Aerial Tramway rises 6,000 feet from the desert floor to a mountaintop. A ride feels like a trip through time and into winter. [Curbed]

• Just a fad? People in San Jose are standing in long lines to get rolled ice cream, a dessert popularized by Thai street vendors. [San Jose Mercury]

• Check out this amazing video of dozens of leopard sharks swimming right off the beach in San Diego. (Don’t worry. They don’t bite.) [NBC 7 San Diego]

Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday signed into law the country’s most ambitious climate change legislation, committing California to make drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

“This is big, and I hope it sends a message across the country.” Mr. Brown said at a signing ceremony in a Los Angeles park.

The two measures require the most populous state to cut emissions from vehicles, factories and utilities to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.

Supporters overcame strong opposition from the oil industry and many Republican lawmakers to pass the legislation.

The New York Times Magazine sent Nico Young, a particularly talented student photographer, on an assignment to show what life is like at his high school.

He came back with images that capture timeless rituals — the mad dash between classes, lunchtime cliques, yearbook signings, the prom, dissections in the science lab.

There is still gold to be found in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

More than 160 years after the gold rush, a solo prospector, Oscar Espinoza, stumbled upon a palm-size nugget east of Modesto.

Mr. Espinoza, 40, said he was in Woods Creek, a waterway in Jamestown known for bearing gold, when he pushed aside a big rock and spotted it, pinched in the bedrock.

“It was just amazing,” he said of the 17.9-ounce nugget. “I was waiting to wake up anytime.”

Mr. Espinoza’s eureka moment happened about three weeks ago, but he kept it quiet for a while. Then last week, Gold Prospecting Adventures, a tour company where Mr. Espinoza does occasional work, posted videos and images of the gold on Facebook.

Frank Powell, a guide at the company, said California’s 120-mile Mother Lode continues to provide a livelihood for many lone prospectors.

It’s grueling work, he said, requiring strenuous digging to get down to bedrock where the gold is hiding.

For Mr. Espinoza, who has two daughters, prospecting has provided a precarious livelihood since he took it up almost four years ago.

In a typical week, he makes between $200 and $300, he said. Some days he goes home empty-handed.

“There are times when it drains you, not only economically, but physically and mentally,” he said. “It’s just hard to get back up and try again after you failed so many times.”

As word started to spread about his discovery, he said he has fielded three serious offers.

Mr. Espinoza is not saying how much he wants for it, but the owner of Gold Prospecting Adventures suggested that with its historical significance it ought to fetch up to $70,000.

Mr. Espinoza said he plans to wait for the right offer.

California Today goes live at 6 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes.com.

The California Today columnist, Mike McPhate, is a third-generation Californian — born outside Sacramento and raised in San Juan Capistrano. He lives in Davis. Follow him on Twitter.

California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and attended U.C. Berkeley.