Ted Hope tipped me to this article in the Philadelphia Inquirer on this summer’s empty arthouses. Several of the usual suspects are interviewed in a piece that talks about the high cost of marketing, the internet, downloads, the production glut and marketplace churn — the practice of shuffling new titles out of theaters when they don’t immediately click. Again, no magic solutions here, just lots of opinions, like these:

Despite the current doldrums, the market for arthouse cinema seen in the art house remains vibrant. “It’s a cyclical business,” Mundorff says.

Observes Bernard, who has been in specialized distribution since 1981, “The obituary for art films appears every 17 years, like the locust.”