Things I don't understand about movies

Steven Spielberg and George Lucas Have a Strange Vision of the Future - DailyFinance

As this article notes, it was very odd hearing the creators of the Hollywood blockbuster mentality complaining about how it has sucked dry financing for other films.   (Spielberg had to look hard for financing for Lincoln, apparently, even though I would have thought it was one he could have paid for himself.  Lucas self financed his last film, which was a critical and commercial flop that seems to have not even been released internationally.  [Or if it has, I hadn't noticed.])

Anyhow, Hollywood financing and accounting has always been an enigma and famously shonky, and although I mentioned this before fairly recently, I still need someone to explain the following about the present situation:

1.  we used to hear that a huge cost of putting out a film was the print costs and distribution.   The US now has a large number of digital cinemas, so what has happened to all those costs savings?

2.  similarly, digital video cameras should surely represent a huge saving in film stock and processing.   Where did the savings go?

3.  digital video and cheap computer graphics processing should presumably also have dramatically cut the cost of special effects, and there was even that video going around the internet a couple of years ago showing how TV shows can basically use digital sets which presumably is much cheaper than going to a location. Where did the savings go?

On a separate note, on Friday night I watched the SBS sex movie that traditionally follows their Nazi documentary.   (Who started this long standing tradition at the station, I wonder.) 

This movie ("Lower City") was from Brazil, and the synopsis is here:

When prostitute Karinna accepts a ride to Bahia on Deco and Naldinho's cargo boat, sexual services are part of the arrangement.

Both men quickly become enamoured with her and seek the means to take her away from her life as a prostitute and pole dancer.

Set in the beautiful Bahia de San Salvador in Northern Brazil. 

It fitted the European (and Australian) School of Pointless Realism perfectly:   follow the events in the life of a few characters who are small time criminals and on a "life's losers" trajectory.   End the film by having them get into a fight, but with no resolution of the situation that has developed in the film whatsoever.  (The two guys both fell in love with her; the prostitute is pregnant with someone's baby, but it could be anyone's.  The guys beat each other up, she washes their blood in her room, and has a cry.  End credits.)  

I thought to myself:  I have been complaining about this style of narrative in art house film (let's set up a situation for the characters:  let's not attempt any resolution of any kind at all!) for decades.   I actually find it so cliche now that it is funny.