It’s over two weeks old (heavens!), but this Mick LaSalle piece in the San Francisco Chronicle is one of the most perceptive and well-grounded explanations why theatrical revenues dropped in ’05…and why they’ll continue to drop (putting aside the claims of those who insist that the slump is a statistical myth or wieves’ tale) until something drastic happens. Which of course won’t happen until mainstream films start costing less to make (which won’t happen until things get so bad that superstars and their agents stop holding up the studios for exorbitant upfront pay-or-play fees) or theatres drop their prices or…you tell me. “Was [the slump] just an anomaly [or] a blip?,” LaSalle writes. “Probably not. Was this simply not a very good movie year? To an extent, yes. But something else seemed to be at play in 2005 — the inevitable drift of movie consumers from theaters to home video. The drift has been ongoing, but this year the box office started feeling the pinch.”