RIP mainstream cinema.

Technocentral

Mainstream cinema is pretty much dead, now to cap it all we have a ****ing film based on a board game you play with pegs (Battleship), how sad, its all Transformers 3, Spiderman 5, MI 4 and other endless unoriginal sequels or films based on toys with almost 100% CGI and 0% story and character development. I think TV is where all the writers and directors/producers of original, edgy and exciting human based dramas aimed at intelligent people over 10 yrs of age and with at least a bit of an attention span have migrated to and are making shows such as Mad Men, The Wire, Breaking Bad, Shameless and Battlestar Galactica etc, such a pity, at least we have one or two things like The Artist to look forward to.

Edit: Not to mention remakes of foreign language films a few months later (sometimes by the same directors!) for the cretins who won't read subtitles or look at actors who aren't American or British (Funny Games, Let The Right One In, Dragon Tattoo etc). Thats just as dispiriting.

Victor

While there had long been concerns about studios stealing concepts / screenplays from each other, e.g. Deep Impact v Armageddon, they have now started stealing scenes.

MI4 v Tower Heist - how to climb out a window of a skyscraper - "we're going to need a bigger building".

MI4 v Unknown - how to crash a car through a bridge parapet, even thing such a scene would never happen in real life.

Planet of the Apes v Limitless - mind improving drug.

Johnny English v Sherlock Holmes - finale at conference in Swiss mountaintop fortress.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows Poster - loads of stuff taken, the camouflage is modern and while interesting, isn't very practical.

nyarlothothep

100% agree, when I found out Mr Popper's Penguins and Jack and Jill were real films and not South Park p1sstakes I realized it was the end. Nearly everything is sh1t though I do enjoy the odd gross out/fratboy comedy. Everything else is an insult to me.

Links234

and this is why I only watch korean serial killer movies!

Victor

Actually, I wonder if they've done a Moneyball on it. The studios make their money with the high profile movies that get lots of people in for the first 3 weeks (Transformers), where cinemas make their money on the well thought-out, slow burning ones (The Kings Speech).

johnny_ultimate

Meh, I've gotten over Hollywood cinema. A competent blockbuster or two a year is just swell, and as long as the odd auteur like Malick, Nolan or Fincher gets some of the profits, it's all good.

There's enough brilliant cinema - and there are vast amounts of great movies every single year - being made to more than make up for it. The only solution is to raise one's standards: the realisation that there's more films being released than the multiplex shows is always a satisfying one. Bollocks like Your Highness gets multiple screens, whereas the likes of Cold Weather, I Saw the Devil and Summer Wars get buried with low profile DVD releases. The harder you look, the more rewarding the treasure.

sillo

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Meh, I've gotten over Hollywood cinema. A competent blockbuster or two a year is just swell, and as long as the odd auteur like Malick, Nolan or Fincher gets some of the profits, it's all good.

What he said. There's never been a better time to be a lover of cinema - the amount of choice if overwhelming. If you're not into mainstream cinema, stop going to maintream cinemas.

Technocentral

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Meh, I've gotten over Hollywood cinema. A competent blockbuster or two a year is just swell, and as long as the odd auteur like Malick, Nolan or Fincher gets some of the profits, it's all good.

There's enough brilliant cinema - and there are vast amounts of great movies every single year - being made to more than make up for it. The only solution is to raise one's standards: the realisation that there's more films being released than the multiplex shows is always a satisfying one. Bollocks like Your Highness gets multiple screens, whereas the likes of Cold Weather, I Saw the Devil and Summer Wars get buried with low profile DVD releases. The harder you look, the more rewarding the treasure.

I agree with everything you said, there are loads of great films which as you say end up on dvd, not because they are like the inferior STV fare of years ago but because the muck is filling most of the available cinema screens. Still, its a pity that the major studies which used to produce great mainstream stuff are just concentrating purely on the lowest common denominator and remaking good foreign language films for imbeciles instead of fostering new talents and stories.

Sad Professor

Links234 wrote: »

and this is why I only watch korean serial killer movies!

Yeah, as I've said before, South Korea is wiping the floor with Hollywood at the moment. It's all very American-inspired and mainstream-friendly stuff too. There's no reason not to watch it unless you've got some inexplicable opposition to subtitles, and even then the films are usually made with foreign audiences in mind, so they tell their stories visually.

As johnny_ultimate said, it's silly to limit yourself to Hollywood blockbusters. Although I sympathise with people who don't have much selection at their local multiplex.

Technocentral

sillo wrote: »

What he said. There's never been a better time to be a lover of cinema - the amount of choice if overwhelming. If you're not into mainstream cinema, stop going to maintream cinemas.

All I'm saying is that its a pity that unlike the past, mainstream cinema is no longer popular and good, I rarely do go to mainstream films anymore, in fact Inception and Avatar were the final nails for me.

Links234

Sad Professor wrote: »

Yeah, as I've said before, South Korea is wiping the floor with Hollywood at the moment. It's all very American-inspired and mainstream-friendly stuff too. There's no reason not to watch it unless you've got some inexplicable opposition to subtitles, and even then the films are usually made with foreign audiences in mind, so they tell their stories visually.

definitely, some of the best movies I've ever seen have been south korean, it's amazing!

I was horrified to see that Jee-Woon Kim will be directing an Arnold Schwarzenegger film next tho! :eek: really hope he doesn't pull a John Woo on us

johnny_ultimate

I'll admit to a 'Dublin-centric' point of view. We are quite spoiled with the IFI and even The Screen. Heck, I was in the IFI today and the choices were Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Tabloid and Mysteries of Lisbon. Not a bad choice at all. Of course, wandered over to Cineworld after my choice was sold out and there was sweet F-A playing. I fully appreciate that sub-Cineworld quality is the norm pretty much everywhere else, and one must rely on home entertainment options.

It's the age old conundrum, really - is it that the audience don't know better, or that the audience doesn't want to know better? You can't blame Hollywood for making the films that make money (masses of people went to see Transformers 3, after all, despite every sign pointing to the fact that it would be a piece of crap). But I also think people have been trained into being 'risk adverse' where film is entertainment as opposed to art. But that's an argument without an end or any clear answers.

All you can do is just go against the grain. There's a big enough audience out there for non-mainstream cinema - a 270 minute long film comfortably selling out was a new, enlightening experience for me today - that there'll always be alternatives.

And there's always Chris Nolan.

Sad Professor

Cineworld isn’t even that bad. I mean, they had quite a number of screenings of Another Earth, Take Shelter, The Tree of Life and even Melancholia. Vue in Liffey Valley is far, far worse when it comes to selection. I’m amazed they are even showing The Artist. Or at least I think they are.

johnny_ultimate

I'm conflicted on Cineworld. Sometimes they'll be the only place to get a gem of a film in - The Chaser and Snowtown are the two that spring to mind. And it's a great venue for festivals and the like as all the screens are of pretty good quality.

But the cost of the place is frankly absurd (and don't go enough to justify the Unlimited), and it is basically franchising cinema. Given the amount of space they have, they should offer more variety more frequently.

Technocentral

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

I'll admit to a 'Dublin-centric' point of view. We are quite spoiled with the IFI and even The Screen. Heck, I was in the IFI today and the choices were Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Tabloid and Mysteries of Lisbon. Not a bad choice at all. Of course, wandered over to Cineworld after my choice was sold out and there was sweet F-A playing. I fully appreciate that sub-Cineworld quality is the norm pretty much everywhere else, and one must rely on home entertainment options.

It's the age old conundrum, really - is it that the audience don't know better, or that the audience doesn't want to know better? You can't blame Hollywood for making the films that make money (masses of people went to see Transformers 3, after all, despite every sign pointing to the fact that it would be a piece of crap). But I also think people have been trained into being 'risk adverse' where film is entertainment as opposed to art. But that's an argument without an end or any clear answers.

All you can do is just go against the grain. There's a big enough audience out there for non-mainstream cinema - a 270 minute long film comfortably selling out was a new, enlightening experience for me today - that there'll always be alternatives.

And there's always Chris Nolan.

Don't get me going on him!

Technocentral

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

I'm conflicted on Cineworld. Sometimes they'll be the only place to get a gem of a film in - The Chaser and Snowtown are the two that spring to mind. And it's a great venue for festivals and the like as all the screens are of pretty good quality.

But the cost of the place is frankly absurd (and don't go enough to justify the Unlimited), and it is basically franchising cinema. Given the amount of space they have, they should offer more variety more frequently.

To be fair to them they do show a fairly broad range of stuff, its more a problem for discerning cinema fans in other parts of the country such as Cork who have little of interest to see.

johnny_ultimate

I forgot Pixar too - the shining light of mainstream American cinema!

We forget that what we consider arthouse here is actually mainstream elsewhere. I recall having a broken conversation with a Japanese fellow about how I couldn't wait to watch Ponyo on the Cliff as I was a big Ghibli fan. Him and his friends gave me the weirdest look and replied 'But that's for children'.

Sad Professor

With regard to American cinema, what is mainstream anymore? Blockbusters, crappy comedies and slasher films? What would have been considered mainstream in America 30-40 years ago would probably be considered arthouse by today's standards.

sillo

Sad Professor wrote: »

With regard to American cinema, what is mainstream anymore? Blockbusters, crappy comedies and slasher films? What would have been considered mainstream in America 30-40 years ago would probably be considered arthouse by today's standards.

Top 10 grossing movies of the 1970's (Source)

Crikey, hell of a hurdle to clear if you ask me -

TOP TEN FILMS OF THE 1970s
(unadjusted domestic gross totals)
Star Wars (1977)
Jaws (1975)
The Exorcist (1973)
Grease (1978)
The Sting (1973)
National Lampoon's Animal House (1978)
The Godfather (1972)
Superman (1978)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977/80)
Smokey and the Bandit (1977)
Blazing Saddles (1974)
Rocky (1976)
The Towering Inferno (1974)
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)

Galvasean

It looks to me like many of the better writers have moved on to TV. Big shows like Walking Dead, Game of Thrones etc. have budgets and production values comparable to middle-large Hollywood movies. There's probably good money in them too, not to mention multiple episodes give good writers the opportunity to flex their writing muscles in terms of character development and multi-layered storylines.

Victor

Sad Professor wrote: »

With regard to American cinema, what is mainstream anymore? Blockbusters, crappy comedies and slasher films? What would have been considered mainstream in America 30-40 years ago would probably be considered arthouse by today's standards.

It that because all the dodgy stuff has been forgotten about and only the "good" ones are remembered? I've seen at least half of the films listed below, but I haven't seen half the films made in the 1970s.

sillo wrote: »

Top 10 grossing movies of the 1970's (Source)

Crikey, hell of a hurdle to clear if you ask me -

TOP TEN FILMS OF THE 1970s
(unadjusted domestic gross totals)
Star Wars (1977)
Jaws (1975)
The Exorcist (1973)
Grease (1978)
The Sting (1973)
National Lampoon's Animal House (1978)
The Godf-+ather (1972)
Superman (1978)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977/80)
Smokey and the Bandit (1977)
Blazing Saddles (1974)
Rocky (1976)
The Towering Inferno (1974)
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)

Strange, they list 15 films in the top 10.

Sad Professor

There's a great deal of variety in that list, which reflects the broad taste of mainstream audiences in the '70s. Look at the top grossing films of the 2000s and it's all big spectacle films that had huge marketing campaigns behind them. It's hard to imagine The Godfather or The Exorcist enjoying that kind of box office success today. Word of mouth would still travel and people would still see the films, but probably on DVD or Blu-ray rather than in the cinema. Even something like Rocky would have difficulty building up enough steam. The modern blockbuster is designed to make its entire budget back in the first couple of weeks.

Galvasean

Paramount was 2011's top earning studio (main output: Transformers 3), with Warner bros. in 2nd place (main output: Harry Potter).

http://www.tfw2005.com/transformers-news/transformers-movie-just-movie-31/paramount-dominates-the-world-with-transformers-dark-of-the-moon-174072/

"This achievement reflects the combined efforts of our entire team across the globe and the careful process by which we select the projects and partners we believe in," said Paramount Pictures chairman and CEO Brad Grey. "We produce pictures that aspire to entertain audiences around the world, while at the same time we have sought to find innovative ways to reach moviegoers in this changing entertainment environment."

That quote pretty much sums it up IMO - use marketing to put bums on seats in the name of (fickle?) entertainment.

sillo

Top 10 of the 2000's (the most recent eligible decade) - same source as before:

TOP TEN FILMS OF THE 2000s
(unadjusted domestic gross totals)
Avatar (2009)
The Dark Knight (2008)
Shrek 2 (2004)
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)
Spider-Man (2002)
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
The Passion of the Christ (2004)

In my opinion that list makes for some pretty grim reading. While some of them are passable entertainment, I wouldn't consider many of them worth a place on the equivalent 70's list.

Galvasean

I certainly think the Dark Knight would not look out of place in terms of quality. The Return of the King would probably be next in terms of quality. After that though, its a long way down...

sillo

Galvasean wrote: »

I certainly think the Dark Knight would not look out of place in terms of quality. The Return of the King would probably be next in terms of quality. After that though, its a long way down...

Basically this, yeah

If nothing else the comparison illustrates quite nicely the death and repeated violation of the musical.

johnny_ultimate

I wouldn't fully agree with this line of thinking, but there's also potentially the argument that film viewing habits have shifted significantly enough to make like-and-like impossible to compare. The advent of DVD and satellite TV means that the cinema box-office is merely one meter of commercial success, and that 'the cinema' has, to mainstream viewers, become a place of spectacle and escapism. More offbeat and obscure stuff has been known to attract a more significant cult down the line. Donnie Darko, for example, would have been unable to enjoy its wide success anytime other than the 2000s. Or: people have just grown stupider I think both are valid lines of thinking.

But generally speaking, we just have to look at a list like this to show how box-office is far from the most adequate barometer of quality.

1. In the Mood for Love
2. Mullholland Drive
3. Yi Yi (which I'm still dying to see, but is a pain in the arse to get legally)
4. Eternal Sunshine
5. Spirited Away
6. There Will be Blood
7. Lost in Translation
8. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
9. A History of Violence
10. Talk to Her
11. Y Tu Mama Tambien
12. Far from Heaven
13. Sideways
14. The Hurt Locker
15. The Social Network

Quality wise, that list is in every way comparable to the 70s one. And the likes of Pixar's output, Zodiac, LotR etc... are still mainstream diamonds in the rough. Ultimately it is certainly depressing that mass popularity appears to be undergoing a stupefying of sorts (not that the 70s weren't chock full of idiocy ) but I don't think it's worth getting down about.

Syferus

To put it simply: I just watch what I want to see, and there's plenty I want to see.

You're the grandpa in the corner bemoaning how 'ahh, 'twas such better back in the day, laddie'. People tend to blame their own bad choices on the 'industry', but we live in the time of easiest access to films in history so that argument fades away rather quickly by any objective measure.

Mainstream cinema is a long way from dead. While big budget blockbusters may get the bulk of a studios marketing/energy that does not mean that they ignore smaller, more intimate films. People complain about how much of a disgrace it is that Avatar or Transformers made a billion dollars, forgetting that it is from these profits that studios are able to finance/distribute smaller, riskier ventures.

Most multiplexes are going to show whatever fills the theatre and more often than not that is the latest blockbuster but there is nearly always at least one smaller film in the mix. Drive for all intents and purposes is far from a major film in the studio system yet it recieved a pretty substantial release and did very well. Unfortuantly the same can't be said for Warrior, which received a wide release yet did terribly at the box office. How many people chose to simply download the film when it leaked rather than wait the few days and see it the way it was intended to.

Anyone who says that mainstream cinema is dead would do well to take a look through the shelves of DVDs and Blu-Rays in HMV. There is a wealth of great cinema being released to the home market every week, much of it in part is thanks to the smaller off shoots of the major studios aswell as a number of fantastic little companies who routinely release hidden gems from all around the world. In the past week alone Kill List and Elite Squad 2 were released on DVD/Blu. In the next few weeks we have Troll Hunter, Arrietty, Adam Resurrected, Hara Kiri: Death of a Samurai, The Debt, Cell 211, The Big Picture, Project Nim, Tyrannosaur, Tabloid, Whistleblower, Hesher, Warrior, Vanishing on 7th Street and many, many more.

Mickeroo

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

I wouldn't fully agree with this line of thinking, but there's also potentially the argument that film viewing habits have shifted significantly enough to make like-and-like impossible to compare. The advent of DVD and satellite TV means that the cinema box-office is merely one meter of commercial success, and that 'the cinema' has, to mainstream viewers, become a place of spectacle and escapism. More offbeat and obscure stuff has been known to attract a more significant cult down the line. Donnie Darko, for example, would have been unable to enjoy its wide success anytime other than the 2000s. Or: people have just grown stupider I think both are valid lines of thinking.

But generally speaking, we just have to look at a list like this to show how box-office is far from the most adequate barometer of quality.

1. In the Mood for Love
2. Mullholland Drive
3. Yi Yi (which I'm still dying to see, but is a pain in the arse to get legally)
4. Eternal Sunshine
5. Spirited Away
6. There Will be Blood
7. Lost in Translation
8. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
9. A History of Violence
10. Talk to Her
11. Y Tu Mama Tambien
12. Far from Heaven
13. Sideways
14. The Hurt Locker
15. The Social Network

Quality wise, that list is in every way comparable to the 70s one. And the likes of Pixar's output, Zodiac, LotR etc... are still mainstream diamonds in the rough. Ultimately it is certainly depressing that mass popularity appears to be undergoing a stupefying of sorts (not that the 70s weren't chock full of idiocy ) but I don't think it's worth getting down about.

You've pretty much summed up my thinking here johnny.

I see where you're coming from OP, but I don't think films are any better now than they were back then in general. There's just more of the big budget spectacle than there was back then, plus more films are made and there's a much wider variety of films on offer now.

Regarding the list from the 70's put up, the likes of Jaws, Star Wars, Animal House, these wouldn't be out of place nowadays either tbh. To say mainstream cinema flat out sucks now is to ignore all the actual good movies that come out, you could have made the same argument 5,10,20,25 or 30 years ago as long as you ignored all the good movies that were popular too.

It works with music too, I could easily make an argument that music sucks and the art is gone out of it by taking a look at the charts now with the likes of people from the x-factor knocking around. Thats because the charts is not an accurate representation of the quality of music on offer. There's loads of good stuff out there.

the main reason it always seems like film or music was better before is because nobody remembers the crap, once its had its 15 minutes it dissappears. Its only stuff with quality that actually captures peoples minds that has any longevity. Thats why people still listen to Led Zeppelin but not Bucks Fizz, The Pixies and not New Kids on the Block and thats why people still watch the likes of The Godfather and not some crap film I've never heard of that came out back then.

Mick990

Hey , I don't think my knowledge of cinema is any where near as any of yours but I think the big problem with mainstream cinema now is that they try and dumb everything down or sugar coat it to try get the 12s cert thus making sure everyone can pay into see it.

For example I read the book Bringing down the house which i taught was very good but when the film came out (21) it was terrible totally sugar coated the book for that very reason

Mickeroo

Mick990 wrote: »

Hey , I don't think my knowledge of cinema is any where near as any of yours but I think the big problem with mainstream cinema now is that they try and dumb everything down or sugar coat it to try get the 12s cert thus making sure everyone can pay into see it.

For example I read the book Bringing down the house which i taught was very good but when the film came out (21) it was terrible totally sugar coated the book for that very reason

Very true indeed. Look at what happened to Die Hard 4

Cardinal Richelieu

Links234 wrote: »

and this is why I only watch korean serial killer movies!

A fair bit of the Korean movie industry output is rip offs of Japanese or USA movies.

desertcircus

I suspect it is in part a response to the rise of top-quality television over the last ten to fifteen years. Where films could tell stories in a more complex way than TV shows (they had two hours instead of 25 minutes to do it), the rise of DVD boxsets in particular has allowed TV producers to operate on season-long arcs and tell massively complex storylines. The last fifteen years have produced serious candidates for best drama series of all time (The West Wing), best crime drama of all time (The Wire AND The Sopranos), best sci-fi of all time (Battlestar Galactica) and best comedy of all time (Seinfeld). That's before you even consider 24, which invented the completely new category of Best Insane Real-Time Conspiracy Thriller Of All Time, or Frasier and the Simpsons, which are older but have had massively long runs in that time.

Cinema can't compete with that depth of storytelling; it's simply not possible. Makers of two-hour mainstream films can't go for quality story, because they'll have to do superhumanly well to get even close to the depth of a modern TV series. So the focus shifts to the advantage that they do have - huge set pieces, outrageous effects, and seven-channel ear-shattering sound. It's a tradeoff.

Sad Professor

Yeah, but cinema since its earliest days has always been about spectacle to a large extent. It's just that since Star Wars the type of spectacle that Hollywood specialises in has become gradually more and more dumbed down. I mean, I'd consider The Tree of Life to be fantastic spectacle, something that could never be produced for television.

However, cinema and television are very different mediums. I don't think you can say that one tells stories better than the other. Television is and always has been a form of filmed theatre, where as cinema is primarily a form of visual storytelling. They've both influenced each other, with films increasingly being made with the small screen in mind (faster editing, tighter camera angles, etc) and tv shows having stronger cinematic influences, but they remain fundamentally different.

ricero

i found quite bizzare was the same year the film paul blart : mall cop came out a few months later observe and report another movie about a mall cop comes out :pac: hollywood truly has run out of ideas

norrie rugger

I think that you are forgetting that people also have home cinema now and are more comfortable watching the "Slow burners" and indy films at home.

I personally use the cinema for the spectacular events, that require a cinema experience, whereas I watched "Let the Right One In" at home.

Mickeroo

ricero wrote: »

i found quite bizzare was the same year the film paul blart : mall cop came out a few months later observe and report another movie about a mall cop comes out :pac: hollywood truly has run out of ideas

The presence of a Mall Cop aside, those two films could not be more different.

sillo

Mickeroo wrote: »

The presence of a Mall Cop aside, those two films could not be more different.

It's true y'know - but what a bizarre coincidence, that those two movies were out almost at exactly the same time. Imagine you went to the wrong one by mistake!

Galvasean

sillo wrote: »

It's true y'know - but what a bizarre coincidence, that those two movies were out almost at exactly the same time. Imagine you went to the wrong one by mistake!

Would serve you right TBH :pac:

deem79

High-quality TV drama is killing mainstream cinema. It was such an under-developed area for so long. You can do long-form plots with just as good production values & writing. Throw in the Home-Cinema era and you've got issues if you're making mainstream cinema

OldeCinemaSoz

for the most part hollywood maybe dead but there's tons to still enjoy from other parts of the world. ireland, the uk, spain, asia, italy, s america...

all dishing up wonderful films. not forgetting france with their new wave of horror.

independant films are the way to go. boards and word of mouth is the way to go for catching up on those little gems.

i've tons on me list for seeking and searching...

Spacedog

BBC's series Timeshift recently did an episode about 'The Epic', in it they describe the movie industries response to the advent of the competition of television. The movie studios developed new technologies to wow and dazzle audiences, nameingly Widescreen/Cinemascope and Technicolor. They shot huge budget films with stunning sets and casts of thousands of extras to make productions that showcase these technologies and wow the audience in a way that the little grey box in the corner could not compete with.

That said, there have been many greats in the past decade, as many have mentioned, but many not touched upon. I think x-men and the matrix started Hollywood down the path of mining comics and graphic novels for movie ideas. and while there have been a lot of bad comic franchises made, there have been some great adaptations of some of my favourite graphic novels, namingly Nolens Batman series, V for Vendetta... I'm tempted to say Watchmen, while the book is way better as a whole, For the animated Tales of the Black Freighter alone makes it good in my book.

That said, There is plenty of new stuff coming out all the time. and while you're waiting for it, go to IMDB and watch every movie on the Top 250 list of all time. chances are you've never seen half of them and it's no always my go to list when I feel there's nothing good to see.

One last thing, it's also worth mentioning that video games are now beginning to mature as a story telling artform catering to people other than 15 year old boys. Half Life 2, Portal 1/2 and Deus Ex - Human Revolution stand out to me as games with stories with professional voice acting and heart pounding drama that will stand the test of time.

Goldstein

Spacedog wrote: »

One last thing, it's also worth mentioning that video games are now beginning to mature as a story telling artform catering to people other than 15 year old boys. Half Life 2, Portal 1/2 and Deus Ex - Human Revolution stand out to me as games with stories with professional voice acting and heart pounding drama that will stand the test of time.

Ya, games are growing into mammoth productions. Bound to happen if they can make a $1,000,000,000 quid in 16 days from just one game. Modern Warfare 3 is now the fastest entertainment product of all time to reach that mark, knocking Avatar off its perch. With drip income from online subscription services, they don't even need to produce new games for a lot of their income. I've always been a bit cynical about that model - I'd feel pretty stupid buying a film on Blu-Ray, then paying again every time I watch it.

People are becoming ever lazier with their screen time. TV shows are easy to watch - Everything is familiar, you're not taking any chances, you know what you're getting and they require little or no mental effort. In fact it's moving alarmingly close to the "feelies" in Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 in terms of how dumbed down the majority of televised entertainment is becoming to cater for increasingly eroding attention spans - soaps / reality tv / celebrity (insert activity).

Film, and especially non-English film or more unconventional stuff requires a lot more engagement and mental effort on the part of the viewer but you get a much more fulfilling experience in return. With risk there comes reward.

It's a question of balance I suppose and everyone will have their preferred mixture. As I'm growing older I find myself playing no games at all, being relatively selective about the tv I watch and increasing the portion of screen time I spend watching films although it's very easy to slip into watching mainly US films which tend to be mainly crap films.

Mickeroo

Goldstein wrote: »

People are becoming ever lazier with their screen time. TV shows are easy to watch - Everything is familiar, you're not taking any chances, you know what you're getting and they require little or no mental effort. In fact it's moving alarmingly close to the "feelies" in Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 in terms of how dumbed down the majority of televised entertainment is becoming to cater for increasingly eroding attention spans - soaps / reality tv / celebrity (insert activity).

I don't know, i think TV is going through a bit of a golden age the last ten years imho, some astoundingly good stuff being produced and a lot of it not dumb either.

guitarzero

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

I forgot Pixar too - the shining light of mainstream American cinema!

We forget that what we consider arthouse here is actually mainstream elsewhere. I recall having a broken conversation with a Japanese fellow about how I couldn't wait to watch Ponyo on the Cliff as I was a big Ghibli fan. Him and his friends gave me the weirdest look and replied 'But that's for children'.

Hahaha, the countless times I've thought that but never said it. Cinema today is really targeted at children although somehow adults watch it with the same enthusiasm. It means someone has to go with them, perhaps 2 parents and friends, it probably guarantees a bigger take in.

johnny_ultimate

guitarzero wrote: »

Hahaha, the countless times I've thought that but never said it. Cinema today is really targeted at children although somehow adults watch it with the same enthusiasm. It means someone has to go with them, perhaps 2 parents and friends, it probably guarantees a bigger take in.

I'm not sure what you mean by that post TBH. What cinema is made for children? Girl with the Dragon Tattoo sure ain't.

And some of the best films ever made were aimed at a family market. Doesn't mean filmmakers haven't done remarkable things in what is often misperceived as 'childish' material. Pretty sure I've seen nowt but a handful of ahem grown up cinema that has the same emotional force maturity as Toy Story 3 or My Neighbour Totoro. The best cinema will transcend simplistic concepts like demographics or target markets.

Overheal

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Meh, I've gotten over Hollywood cinema. A competent blockbuster or two a year is just swell, and as long as the odd auteur like Malick, Nolan or Fincher gets some of the profits, it's all good.

There's enough brilliant cinema - and there are vast amounts of great movies every single year - being made to more than make up for it. The only solution is to raise one's standards: the realisation that there's more films being released than the multiplex shows is always a satisfying one. Bollocks like Your Highness gets multiple screens, whereas the likes of Cold Weather, I Saw the Devil and Summer Wars get buried with low profile DVD releases. The harder you look, the more rewarding the treasure.

Y'all would do well do peer into the history of Video Games and look at what happened in the 80's: companies were shoveling out complete craaaaap. It was god awful. And actually triggered a massive industry recession - a 99.966% drop in revenues (from $3bn all the way to $100m). But then Nintendo came along and basically invented their own standard, called the Seal of Quality. This boiled down to a few basic things, but Primary among them was in order to license a product for the NES, games companies were limited to 5 title releases per year. NES enforced it with DRM hardwired into each NES cartridge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_crash_of_1983

Hollywood is reaching a point where it needs to seriously reconsider changing how it does business.

Goldstein

Mickeroo wrote: »

I don't know, i think TV is going through a bit of a golden age the last ten years imho, some astoundingly good stuff being produced and a lot of it not dumb either.

In the 2000s absolutely - You had The Wire, The Sopranoes, Oz, BSG, Firefly, Generation Kill, Deadwood, The West Wing, Band of Brothers, etc. but the overall level of quality has been in a slow but steady decline now for about I'd say 3 years.

Now we have Breaking Bad (For 16 more eps), Treme (2x seasons), Boardwalk Empire, Game of Thrones and a couple of others and that's about it. The rest are flattered by an absense of any truly great shows to compare to. Even your small screen blockbuster-eske types like Lost and 24 are gone.

I think this is definitely the worst it's been since the turn of the millennium although we were spoiled by quality in the 2000s. Cinema has a lot less to fear from tv now than it did a few years ago - a big opportunity perhaps.

Syferus

Spacedog wrote: »

One last thing, it's also worth mentioning that video games are now beginning to mature as a story telling artform catering to people other than 15 year old boys. Half Life 2, Portal 1/2 and Deus Ex - Human Revolution stand out to me as games with stories with professional voice acting and heart pounding drama that will stand the test of time.

Valve's approach in those games has been impressive overall but the one note, silent, 'psst, he's a proxy for you' protagonist only gets you so far in games that are as scripted and linear as Valve's. Human Revolution gets its immersion by sheer volume of things, rather than having exception quality -the protagonist's voice actor's vocal tone is almost self-parody - and I outside of the wonderfully consistent world of Half-Life 2 I don't think any of those will weather the ravages of time all that well, we're just not yet at a point where technology has leveled off enough to allow many older games to attain Citizen Kane and Casablanca-levels of eternal acclaim and enjoyment.

And the most impressive stories I've experienced in games have tended to be games like The Elder Scrolls (Oblivion or Skyrim) where you find your own line and pace through the world and its narratives (Human Revolution obviously shares that to some extent) or games that don't even attempt to mimic films like Sword and Sworcery EP and Limbo.

It's somewhat off topic, but games really need to have less of a fixation on chasing film tropes if they are to produce stylistically mature productions, film itself only ended the idea that it might be a passing fad after it started to move away from mimicking theater.

Galvasean

Goldstein wrote: »

I
I think this is definitely the worst it's been since the turn of the millennium although we were spoiled by quality in the 2000s. Cinema has a lot less to fear from tv now than it did a few years ago - a big opportunity perhaps.

I don't think that's entirely fair. There was lots and of bad television in every decade. Much like movies we generally only remember the really good stuff. 20 years from now current TV may be remembered as a 'Golden Age' when people think of Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire, Supernatural, Walking Dead etc. While "Katie Price's Workout Wedding Woes On Mars" will be forgotten.
Much like this guy.