As the number of 3D  movies has ramped up over the past few years, have you ever had the feeling that you were getting away with something by only paying three or four dollars more for a 3D movie? Yeah, me either. Adding on about a third of the price of a regular ticket seems more than fair for just adding one more dimension, but the studios’ bottom line doesn’t agree. You see, it costs a movie studio an upwards of $10m to furnish theaters with the 3D glasses they need for a big tentpole 3D release, and with box office sales of 3D movies dropping like stones over the past several months, they’re starting to think that $10m isn’t worth it in the long run. So what are they going to do about it? Stop making 3D movies because the cost of production isn’t meeting the demand for the product? No, stupid! They’re going to raise the price of a 3D ticket even further so that we can pay for our own glasses. Or at least, this is the step that Sony Pictures is taking. In a letter sent out to exhibitors, the studio said they will no longer be covering the cost of the glasses for their upcoming 3D films like Men in Black III and The Amazing Spider-Man, and that theaters would have to take it upon themselves to sell glasses to the consumer. This will probably hash out to about another 50 cents a ticket, unless theater owners [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Before you go getting some silly idea like me believing in some silly idea like love, let me clear this up: this isn’t about the love between a man and a woman, a man and a fine cigar, and a fat kid and his chocolate cake. That’d be too easy. The price of those are heartbreak, oral cancer, and diabetes. No, this is about a love we all share, everyone of us reading this site and writing for it. This is about a love of cinema and, tragically, the extreme cost of it. Going to the theater is a great experience. Unless you’re a millionaire, the theater offers a gigantic screen, booming sound, and stadium seating. Watching Transformers on the big screen knocks the robotic pants off of watching it at home no matter how big your Samsung is. All of that is great – but is it worth the astronomical price?

Over the weekend, discounted tickets through Groupon helped The Lincoln Lawyer‘s box office numbers, which once again draws the question of ticket prices back into the forefront. It’s no secret that ticket prices are a cause for concern for both movie fans (like us) who feel hoodwinked by inflated prices of admission and movie studios who, despite record-breaking years recently, still want to make more money. Since lowering prices wholesale is apparently not an option, another solution has to be found, and Steve Zeitchik over at the LA Times gives about as smart and in-depth an exploration of flexible ticket pricing as you could hope for. Just like hotels and airfare, the movies that aren’t popular become cheaper while the huge hype of blockbusters comes with a bigger price tag. While a movie like Limitless starts to sell out, the prices go up, but as ticket sales for Paul stay low, the price drops. It’s almost as simple as that.

This is just a letter to all of those people out there that think life should be fair and easy. Life is a bit different than that, especially since James Cameron decided to take us to Pandora.