How long is too long for a movie at the cinema?

ixoy

I'm curious to see how long people could sit for a movie in a cinema. It came about because I see UGC are showing Best of Youth starting tomorrow.There's no indication that they're cutting its running time by dividing it in half because, as it is, it's stated at 403 minutes - 6 hrs 43 mins. Now that's pretty damned long, no matter how good a movie is.

How long do you think you could stick it? Many people seemed to be getting shifty by the end of LotR:RotK and I remember awaiting the end of 'Apocalyse Now: Redux' (roughly 3hr 30) despite enjoying it. Is there a point where, no matter what's on screen, enough is enough? The question's not about DVDs btw, because you can pause them. It's relating to cinema releases...

Jim

Woa!
Nearly 7 hours is certainly pushing it. Thats more than half a day ffs. You'd go in for the matinee and come out at night. Although I suppose its something similar to when they used to show 2 or 3 films in one go.

I'd like to go to it, it would use up a day and I'd like to see if I could stick it. I start to get uncomfortable after 3 hours when watching a film though.

neGev

I'd have to go with roughly 3 hours too, although the quality of the film would certainly be a major factor in that. I have to admit that I was getting a little antsy nearing the end of RotK too, even though I loved the LotR films.

magpie

Anything over 90 minutes is pushing it in my book. Learn to use editing suites people! I think there's a certain art to being able to cut something down to a set length. Anyone can make sprawling 6 hour-long wankfests, but it takes art to make a film 90 minutes long. Same goes for CDs. Just because you can get 73 minutes of music on there doesn't mean we want to hear 'skits' and other crap dredged off the cutting room floor to fill the time. Keep films to 90 minutes and albums to 45 minutes.

Sherifu

Anything over 2 1/2 hours and its starting to feel like youve been in the cinema forever.
Anything over 3 1/2 hours should be split into a few films a la KILL BILL.

LOTR:ROTK just got away with the one film, though there was no need to see the hobbits going back to hobbittown at the end, or where dildo baggins went to.

The didlo is intentional

D!ve^Bomb!

3.5 hours max would do it for me...

although how many of you have been in a cinema for only an hour and your arse just starts achin!!:D its a bastard when that happens, especially when you just wanna enjoy the film.... i'd be in the cinema all day tho if i could.. there's nothin better!!!

mycroft

magpie wrote:

Anything over 90 minutes is pushing it in my book. Learn to use editing suites people! I think there's a certain art to being able to cut something down to a set length. Anyone can make sprawling 6 hour-long wankfests, but it takes art to make a film 90 minutes long. Same goes for CDs. Just because you can get 73 minutes of music on there doesn't mean we want to hear 'skits' and other crap dredged off the cutting room floor to fill the time. Keep films to 90 minutes and albums to 45 minutes.

Thats got to be one of the most profoundly ignorant comments about editing I've ever heard.

Would sprawlling epics like oh say Lawerence of Arabia, Zhivago, Three colours, the godfather movies, a fist full of dollars, 7 samuari, jesus I could go on, be as epic if they are all 90 minutes long? Cookie cutters movies that are just an hour and a half long. Of course not.

Now redux, did anyone else getting that sinking feeling in their stomach and extra twinge from your bladder when the french plantation sequence ended and you remembered he hasn't even met Kurtz yet? Directors cuts are usually over indulgent wankfest and directors have probably just forgotten how long they spent massaging the cut to realise why that scene didn't work in the first place.

As for your question is, how long is too long? I think a movie is too long when you feel you don't want to invest your time watching it. So in my own opinion it's subjective.

Hugh Hefner

I could probably spend an entire day at the cinema as long as I had 15 mins. breaks every 2 1/4 hrs. or so but anything over 3 hrs. is too long for a cinema showing. That said, I could go futher if the film was good enough.
I'd probably go longer again just to see if I could. like chalenging myself to sit and watch all Matrix movies in a row with the Animatrix chronologically interspersed.

herobear

ive been eagerly anticipating this film, since the its premiere at the DFF earlier this year in which it had a 30 minute intermission in the middle.
it was released months ago in the u.k cut into 2 parts, which i heard was going to be the same here, but unfortunately looking at ugc.ie thats not going to be the case
although SCREEN may do just that.
the reason for its length is that it was originally a 6 hour tv mini-series(cut into several parts) in italy, that due to its popularity was adapted for the big screen.
im going to hopefully be checking this out tomorrow, will let you know what i think of it then.
its starts at 4, so wont be over until nearly 11pm...lol

Tusky

magpie wrote:

Anything over 90 minutes is pushing it in my book. Learn to use editing suites people! I think there's a certain art to being able to cut something down to a set length. Anyone can make sprawling 6 hour-long wankfests, but it takes art to make a film 90 minutes long. Same goes for CDs. Just because you can get 73 minutes of music on there doesn't mean we want to hear 'skits' and other crap dredged off the cutting room floor to fill the time. Keep films to 90 minutes and albums to 45 minutes.

One of the most rediculous posts Ive ever read on boards.ie

mayordenis

Tusky wrote:

Would of the most rediculous posts Ive ever read on boards.ie

why yes tusky that quote was entirely random, think then type ok magpie

Retr0gamer

Too long is when the other cheek of my ass goes to sleep and rotating pressure from one cheek to the other is futile.

Really don't mind how long a film is as long as i'm enjoying it. But comfy seats in cinemas would be nicer.

Raoul Duke

herobear wrote:

the reason for its length is that it was originally a 6 hour tv mini-series(cut into several parts) in italy, that due to its popularity was adapted for the big screen.

What adapting? Seems to me like they've thrown it all on the big screen
Das Boot was adapted.

If you're a stickler for value for money then this film sounds the business.

Couldn't tell you how long I could stand. Like someone said above, it's all relative. Maybe it's worth going to see just to test yourself. Hmmmm....sounds like an idea.

Chad ghostal

i sat through the 5hrs+ grainy footage, crappy/no sound, no special effects workprint version of apocalypse now in a single, no breaks sitting..
and i really enjoyed the film

id definetly give 7 a go, but it is pushing it severly to the limit,

especially if your sitting next to someone annoying,
with chewables.. chewing and chewing and chewing, and the spitlits
landing in your ear.. and the noise grating in your head..

your bound to snap and go haywire, sporking every FOo you see. .

they must have some sort of intermission, if not get on to the human rights commision and demand satisfaction. .

Capt'n Midnight

newband wrote:

although how many of you have been in a cinema for only an hour and your arse just starts achin!!:D its a bastard when that happens,

It's a fairly objective measure of how interesting the film is.

Raoul Duke wrote:

Das Boot was adapted

BBC showed the mini series with subtitles, UTV showed the film with terrible dubbing - no contest there.

When I was young there was a thing called an "intermission" in the middle of the film which would sort these problems..

ixoy

Raoul Duke wrote:

Couldn't tell you how long I could stand. Like someone said above, it's all relative. Maybe it's worth going to see just to test yourself. Hmmmm....sounds like an idea.

I'd see it almost as a challenge, an endurance test. Unfortunately, due to its time I can only see it this Saturday 'coz I have to work. I know I'd need to use the bathroom at some point, and have a few drinks but I'd like to think my mind wouldn't wander too much and the film would be engaging enough to hold my attention.

Now let's see if some cinema is up to the marathon challenge of a continuous run of all the extended editions of Lord of the Rings, without playing the credits for the first two. Over eleven hours if memory serves me correctly. Bring it on!!!

Phil_321

Only if there was a special 7-hour extended version of Predator with added gore, would I stay in the cinema for more than 3 and a half hours.
In general I like a film to last about 2 hours.

herobear

Raoul Duke wrote:

What adapting? Seems to me like they've thrown it all on the big screen

wrong choice of word, jut got confirmation that SCREEN will be splitting the film up into 2 parts, with part 1 being released friday, and part 2 on the 19th...seems alot more sensible idea to me

monkey tennis

Hmm. I like long movies (although 6 hours would be pushing it...), but I don't usually like sitting in cinema seats for more than a couple of hours. BUT I very much dislike intermissions. Luckily they're rare, but I was very put off when I went to see LOTR:TTT and there was an intermission - presumably for the stupid kids, it was a matinee (although what kind of moron parent would bring a five-year-old to a three-hour movie??). It completely took me out of the movie. Fair enough, people need to go to the toilet, move around, whatever - but those of us who don't shouldn't have to be put out because a crowd with a short attention span needs its popcorn/toilet/whatever.

TheDuke

7 hour movie ?!?!?!?! imagine the baby sitter costs... not value for money at all :eek:

and what about the idea of taking your lady to dinner and a movie..... no need for her to have a 'headache' then... is there.

On a more serious note, I would never have the time to go an watch something that length which brings the potential audience down to students and unemployed... who probably will be tight for cash and have better things to do with it!

I'd say there a bunch a directors with a bet on who can produce the numbest arce....

magpie

Wow, you cinema anoraks are touchy. Here's another comment for you to lose the rag over entirely: Back to mono!

And Monkey Tennis, are you affiliated with MT in an official capacity or just a simpering fan?

mycroft

magpie wrote:

Wow, you cinema anoraks are touchy. Here's another comment for you to lose the rag over entirely: Back to mono!

And Monkey Tennis, are you affiliated with MT in an official capacity or just a simpering fan?

I get touchy when some suggests what I do for living is "make it shorter and better" and displays such ignorance about film that they deserve to have their eyes removed and replaced with minature TVs facing inwards showing nothing but "who's the boss" on a 24hr loop wired to their optic nerve.

magpie

displays such ignorance about film that they deserve to have their eyes removed and replaced with minature TVs facing inwards showing nothing but "who's the boss" on a 24hr loop wired to their optic nerve.

Sounds good!

mycroft

magpie wrote:

Sounds good!

Fine "Leave it to Mrs O Brien" it so is then.

Now where did I leave that spoon?

magpie

You couldn't hook me up with "Darby O'Gill and the little people" in the left eye and "Look who's talking" in the right eye could you?

monkey tennis

magpie wrote:

And Monkey Tennis, are you affiliated with MT in an official capacity or just a simpering fan?

It's not a reference to the band.

Ahaaaa.

magpie

I get touchy when some suggests what I do for living is "make it shorter and better"

Ah, so I get it now. You make it longer and worse?

Pigman II

This is a bit of a simplification, but in my opinion A film .... is as long as it feels. Hense if a film feels too long as you watch it .... then it IS too long.

For example, when I watched Magnolia for the first time in the cinema I wasn't aware of it's runtime in advance was suprised when I came to find over 3 hours had passed. Same goes for Riget (4+ hrs?) and a few others. On the other hand films like Lost in Translation, Secretary both clock in at only around 1 3/4 but felt like about 5 each to me as I watched them.

As an aside, Almost I find it slighty pathetic that there are people would go to an extremly long move to see if they could 'endure' or meet the 'challenge' of it. Go to a film cos you've heard good things about it, not because you want to see how long you can sit on your arse staring at the screen before you or yours falls asleep.

I would have no problem with watching a seven hour film, as long as I got a break at some stage.

Whenever I go to the cinema I usually go to see three or four films together. The beauty of Galway is that they dont give a damn.

D!ve^Bomb!

where is this galway you speak of? i shall like to visit some time:D

mobile04

i read that the last lord of the rings
had over 2 hours removed from the final release
its due out next month 4 dvd set
really looking forward to seein it
if its an epic like the lord films id for sure watch a 7 hr film

mycroft

magpie wrote:

Ah, so I get it now. You make it longer and worse?

Oh I get it, you're trying to be funny!

Good luck with that, hope it works out.

magpie

So if editors don't make films shorter and better what do they do?

ixoy

mobile04 wrote:

i read that the last lord of the rings
had over 2 hours on the choping room floor removed from the final release
its due out next month 4 dvd set

Yeah but not all of it is restored. The new cut is an admirable 50 minutes longer though. The combined total of all 3 EEs is 11hr 21mins...

Kêrmêttê

ixoy wrote:

Now let's see if some cinema is up to the marathon challenge of a continuous run of all the extended editions of Lord of the Rings, without playing the credits for the first two. Over eleven hours if memory serves me correctly. Bring it on!!!

Yes!!!!! That is something that I'd love to see... Virgin Cinema did a back to back of Star Wars Ep4, 5 & 6 some years ago which unfortunately I missed. Hopefully they'll have a LotR Extended Edition Marathon too! Fingers and eyes crossed!!
I'd have to bring a cushion or something with me though... those cinema seats are designed to paralyse you after 3 and half hours trapped in them

mycroft

magpie wrote:

So if editors don't make films shorter and better what do they do?

Thelma Schoonmaker (Sorcese's editor) was brought onto a film called "grace of my heart". Sorcese was executive producing for the film and the cut was in trouble. the film set in the fifties and sixties had lots of touches in character and setting that evoked the time and place of the film. The director fairly inexperienced was brow beaten by the far more experienced editor, who was originally cutting the film, and had removed all these moments cause he felt they were "kinda lame" and "kitsch". First thing as the Schoomaker did was to "put em all back in" and the film regained the charm the director was striving for.

It depends on the film. On many films the editor is an effective set of eyes, he's not being on set during that torturous shot so isn't emotional invested in that shot that took three hours to get and we're not losing it! he/she (it's a very misogynistic industry but women tend to excel in editing *shrug* one of those things) is divorced from the shoot and can be a surgeon emotional detached and look at the film honestly (unlike say a direct who hates an actress, in it, that he had an affair with but since been dumped) and get the best cut.

Editors can be script writes the last day of script writing is the last day of cutting. they can move scenes around explore alternative structures of the film. I've seen films rejunvenatived just by putting a scene ten or fifteen minutes earlier/later in the running order of a film. I'm not just talking in your magnolia or memento, on any film.

You're the person who has the most control of an actors performance aside from the direct and the actor. You can change the timing of a delivery by cut away from an actor at the right moment, or massage a good performance from bad one.

They're technicians understanding complex post production technology, as well as craftsman and the people who generally know the film backwards (I literally know how to say two lines of dialogue backwards from my first student film) It's one of the most unknown aspects of filmmaking but behind the scenes the most important.

it's not just making it shorter and therefore "better"

sceptre

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

When I was young there was a thing called an "intermission" in the middle of the film which would sort these problems..

And there was me thinking that when you were young they used show Pathé newsreels or Buster Crabbe's Flash Gordon before the movie:D

mycroft

sceptre wrote:

And there was me thinking that when you were young they used show Pathé newsreels or Buster Crabbe's Flash Gordon before the movie:D

A few years back the IFI (when it was the IFC) would show classics, complete with Tom and Jerry cartoon and the newsreel that preceded the film in the year it was released.

jonno

How long is too long for a movie at the cinema?

Well as long as it takes to tell a good story is my answer.

herobear

just to let you BOTH SCREEN and UGC have cut the film into 2 parts, with part 1 opening today and part 2 opening next friday(19th), both approximately 3 1/2 hours long.
the film was given 5/5 stars in today's ticket "The Best of Youth is a rare and truly exhilarating cinema experience, and one of the first great achievements in 21'st century world cinema. It is, i believe, a masterpiece."
im not gonna make it today, but hopefully will tomorrow

Raoul Duke

herobear wrote:

just to let you BOTH SCREEN and UGC have cut the film into 2 parts, with part 1 opening today and part 2 opening next friday(19th), both approximately 3 1/2 hours long.
the film was given 5/5 stars in today's ticket "The Best of Youth is a rare and truly exhilarating cinema experience, and one of the first great achievements in 21'st century world cinema. It is, i believe, a masterpiece."
im not gonna make it today, but hopefully will tomorrow

Damn, there goes my suggestion (which I was just about to write) for all you UGC subscription members. We (for I am one too) could have left at the intermission one day and come back during the intermission another day.

ixoy wrote:

Now let's see if some cinema is up to the marathon challenge of a continuous run of all the extended editions of Lord of the Rings, without playing the credits for the first two. Over eleven hours if memory serves me correctly. Bring it on!!!

Those credits would surely come in handy as an intermission, no?

ixoy

herobear wrote:

just to let you BOTH SCREEN and UGC have cut the film into 2 parts, with part 1 opening today and part 2 opening next friday(19th), both approximately 3 1/2 hours long.

Ah riiight. I still won't get around to seeing it though - I can't make it tomorrow, I'm not around on Sunday, and then back to work....

herobear

Raoul Duke wrote:

Damn, there goes my suggestion (which I was just about to write) for all you UGC subscription members. We (for I am one too) could have left at the intermission one day and come back during the intermission another day.

that may be a valid suggestion as contrary to what i first believed, UGC are running it all the way though(with a 40 minute intermission), although seeing it all the way through is definitely preferable in my eyes.
saw this last night, one of the most beautiful, epic, amazing films ive ever seen! and a film which kept me gripped to my seat in all 6+ hours of it.
the film had a lot to live up to in my eyes, as its one ive been wanting to see since early this year, but it wholly and completely lived up to my expectations and easily surpassed them. a definate 10/10

TheDuke

when I watched Magnolia for the first time

what a movie!!!! It was 3 hourse ... wow!

Now this is a movie every single enthusiast has to see because it breaks most of the 'holiwood' rules of cinematogrify... there is one sence when the cop goes to the junkies house and the all you see is their faces at eitehr end for about 1 1/2 mins - now, in any other film that would be extreemly booring but in this case the scene was so filled with anticipation and emotional currents that just set back in awe ofthe director and actors as they help fully involved ....

see, that's the problem... few movies involve the viewer at a level where they 'hand themselves over' do the story tellers.

So, there's the answer if you're 'in the story' and feel every meotion and twitch then time is no longer a parameter... but that doesn't happen all to often... even with the best of actors (saw Secret Window last night with Jonny Depp.... what a load of blx!!!).

User45701

the main problem is toilet breakes but even without coffie and other drugs i could handle a 48 hour TV marathon so with coffie and other such drugs i could probbley hack 70ish hour movie/TV show but it would have to be very good

without toilet breaks its different empty your bladder before you go in yes dont drink ok but how long can u go then without needing a drink **** or food/water.

emm i did 70 hour no food but i had allot to drink so mabe a 30 hour movie just guessing ive never reley tried to see how long i can go without sleap toilet and food and drink ive only tried how long without sleap and without sleap and food