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Why Have Movies Been So Bad Lately?
mikesd81 asks: "Why have movies and shows been so bad lately? I find myself looking on my Video on Demand service from my cable company or flipping channels and just nothing seems to have any depth any more. But on the other hand, I happened to watch Stargate Atlantis and there was an incredible scene that just caught the emotion and emergency. So is it the directing? The writing? The acting? It seems more and more movies just aren't worth anything. Let alone paying $20 to go to a movie." Let's not forget the recent number of Hollywood remakes and the amount of "reality TV" being pumped out by the networks.
where I asked this exact question.
About Slashdot stories.
Sorry. Someone had to say it.
Seriously, though. I think the constant deluge of remake-after-remake of classic TV series and older movies has killed my interest in going to the movie theater. Why go out, when I can pull 1/2 of the "new" movies off my own DVD rack, or watch the original on late-night TV.
But I guess someone is watching these rehashes, because Hollywood keeps making them.
VOTE!
"I happened to watch Stargate Atlantis and there was an incredible scene that just caught the emotion and emergency."
After reading that, I must seriously question your ability to judge any film or video work.
It is simple, the art and passion which existed in making movies and entertaining people has been replaced by hunger for making money by thrusting whatever junk they create, called "art and entertainment", into people's throats. That is why some independent movies do well, not all but some, because only some people decide to make a movie because either they want to entertain people or just tell a story for the sake of telling a story and not "selling" a story. That is why sequels suck and will always suck.
Also, Bryan Singer was a total dick to leave the X-Men series to die a painful death and go direct a sub-par Superman movie. What an asshole.
Jherico
What can the average user can do to ensure his security? "Nothing, you're screwed"
The reason why movies suck is very simple.
In the "golden age" of movies (whenever you consider that to be) movies were made by writers, directors, and actors who considered it an art form. Today, the studios are run by people who consider it a profit-oriented business.
Sure, the studios always wanted to make money. But technology has improved and now it is extremely expensive to produce a movie to modern technological standards, so budgets have skyrocketed. No studio will take risks when they're spending $100 million MINIMUM to make a movie. Unfortunately, art is all about taking risks.
I'm just getting into filmmaking right now. (I've only made one short film, which has been in 11 film festivals so far.) The problem that I see with most films (both Hollywood and indie) is the writing. In general, the technical work in movies is the best it's ever been. Acting is competent, at worst. The problems are in story construction and other aspects of writing. If you have a bad script, it doesn't matter how good your actors or photography or special effects are. Writing has been getting steadily worse for about 40 years. It has to do, IMO, with movie execs who are ignorant and illiterate. They don't know good writing -- as the great producers of the past did.
David
Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap.
I don't think movies are getting worse - they're just as crap as they always have been.
henry -- the human evolution news relay
TV is, by and large, advertiser funded. Advertisers like to aim at youthful people who are thought to be more easily influenced by their messages. Advertisers therefore gravitate towards shows aimed for the 18-34 segment. And mmost movies are aimed at younger audiences who have the spare time and money and freedom to actually go to them.
If you find yourself saying "Gee, TV sure is bad these days" then there's a fair chance you celebrated your 35th birthday recently... TV is the same as it's always been, you've just outgrown a lot of it.
Also see Sturgeon's law.
Perfectly Normal Industries
I don't think I really agree with you about the movies. Yeah, there are a lot of movies with no depth, but there have been several in the past year or so that I've really liked. (The Inside Man, Lord of War, V is for Vendetta, Syriana, and a few others IIRC). I think it might be more of you just not liking the genre's of films that are being put out (not as many sci-fi). That doesn't mean that the quality of movies is necessarily going down.
TV generally sucks, but I don't think that's anything new. I rarely watch TV other than the news (and I get most of that off the Internet anyway), and occasionally a sitcom or two while I'm eating dinner.
Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
Why were things always so much better in my day?
Increasing seasonality.
Summertime 'popcorn' movies are usually the least fulfilling for intellectual people.
The best original stories are increasingly backended towards the time of year when studios and tabloids focus on awards.
Hollywood doesn't squeeze any new decent TV out this time of year when people are taking their kids on vacation and stuff.
In the meantime, start with the IMDB top 250 and see what you haven't.
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
It's the actors. You get the same bunch of losers doing all the films. Colin Farrell, Tom Cruise, Linsey Lohan, etc. It's boring to see them do film after film, especially when they can't act (Tom did, once upon a time).
Oh, and the films. A remake of Dukes of Hazard? Miami Vice? What is next, Married with Children? A Dallas movie? T.J. Hooker? Come on guys, there are great books out there that could be made into films. How about a version of "I, Robot" that actually follows Asimov's book? The last Superman movie. Terrible. They should have waited another year or two and did the film with the cast of Smallville. I mean, seriously, Lex from Smallville vs. the latest Superman's? No comparison.
I can see why great actors like James Spader turn to T.V. now rather than film. Unless you land a Harry Potter film, or are a voice actor in a Pixar film, or are in a Spiderman or Pirates sequel, it probably not going to do well at all.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
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it's that there's been greater public attention to documentaries (and hopefully more docs will be funded in the future). For example, I wonder if An Inconvenient Truth would be receiving so much attention if it wasn't for such a dearth of quality Hollywood movies.
That being said, have you been outside lately?!
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When do you think movies were good? The 90's? The 80's? Look at the top ten list from just about any week from any year. There'll be one classic, maybe two, and one movie that's so bad it's good, and the rest is mediocre and forgettable. Most mainstream movies have always been aimed at the lowest common demoninator and if you think movies from the past were better you're just applying selective memory. Yes, there were times (e.g. in the 70's) when the bar was raised a little higher, but even then most movies were still dreck.
That said, there are great independant movies being made every day and even an occasional a big-budget flick that gets everything right. Some of it's foreign, some of them are documentaries, most will require a little more effort to locate (like browsing new areas of Netflix. It's not like the great movies from the past have disappeared, either-- if you can't find anything new to watch, why not try a classic you've never seen?
By the way, there's one more factor to take into account-- maybe you're just getting old. Look at some movies you used to think were great 10 or 20 years ago (I have no idea how old you are...) and see if they're as good as you remember.
there's always been shitty movies, and moviemaking has ALWAYS been an explicitly for-profit venture. hence the beginnings of hollywood, which was little more than a way to avoid licensing technology developed by Thomas Edision by virtue of being out of his reach.
the reason older movies seem so great, and new movies seem so the suck, is because you're only remembering the Metropolises, the Battleship Potemkins, the Citizen Kanes, the 8 1/2s, the Mon Oncles, the Dr. Strangeloves, the 2001s, the Apocalypse Nows, and so on. you're talking about over a HUNDRED years of filmmaking, and gotta tell you, they certainly wasn't ALL winners. Plenty of chaff in there to pad down the wheat. And seriously, in about 20 years there will definitely be a handful of films that absolutely stand up as classics of the early 21st century.
can't say much about stargate or whatever the fuck, cause that shit's retarded.
Movie productions are actually investor-led enterprises, despite the fact that they are also an art form. While there are a lot of movies whose directors and actors really care about communicating an important vision or message, there are also a lot of movies that are designed solely to appeal to as many people as possible. They fill the movie with cliches and implications designed to please as many people as possible, but in appealing to everybody enough to get them to see the movie, they appeal to very few people enough to get them to actually like it.
Superman Returns is a case in point. Did you notice how that was simultaneously marketed to evangelicals with "Superman as Jesus figure" and gays with that article "Is Superman Gay?" and liberals with Lex Luthor's "bring it on" statement in the trailers? In reality the movie was none of these things, they just wanted to intrigue as many people as possible to bring them to the theaters.
Bottom line: For people trying to make the "summer blockbuster," it doesn't matter if the movie is good, as long as it sells. You make more money increasing expectations than delivering on those expectations.
This is why niche and indie movies are often better, because the primary goal of the writers, directors and actors is to present their vision. Now, I actually like a fair number of mainstream movies, but certainly not most of them.
A: Because it's a tired, cliched question/statement.
This year, like every year, has had some great movies and some bad ones. In the past year, we've had Superman Returns, Pirates of the Carribean 2, United 93, Munich, Millions, Crash, Capote, Match Point, Hustle & Flow, Batman Begins, Sin City, Walk the Line, Murderball, The Constant Gardener, A History of Violence, March of the Penguins, Wallace & Grommit...
And that's just to name a few. Is this any better than other year? No, not really. It's just that every year, there's always a lot more trashy art than good art. Any nostalgia for "back then" being better than now is just smoke and mirrors. For every Schindler's List, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Godfather Part II, you got Police Academy 6, Halloween 3, and Monster a Go-Go in those years (or shortly around it, that was just off the top of my head).
I'm sick of all these "movies/books/music/crime rates/teenagers were all better back then" arguments. Baloney. We only remember the best, and today, when every friday we get 3 new mediocre movies and every few weeks a decent one, we forget that there were also new movies every week in the 90s and 80s, and countless 8-track trash music from the 70s, and romance novels have been around since the 40s.
For as long as people have told stories, storytellers have had the tendency to put their own touch on the stories they received from those before them. I see the rash of remakes as a manifestation of this, as reinterpretations.
Now, the suckage is a completely different matter.
Have you ever heard someone say the following: "Look at this really old [thing]! It's still in great condition, whereas my new [thing] broke already! They sure don't make things like they used to..."
When you look at all the old things you have that have lasted 30 years and work great, compared to the things that break easily, you're comparing the worksmanship of the set {things that were built 30+ years ago and are still working} to {things that were built a few years ago}... of course all the older things you see around you are better-made, even if the worksmanship standards haven't actually changed over the years, because of the natural filter that they're still working, or else they wouldn't be around for you to compare.
Similarly, the set {movies I remember from more than a few years ago} will clearly be better than {movies from this year}, simply by virtue of the fact that you remember the better ones and forget the worse. Comparing today's Hollywood crap to yesterday's cream of the crop is unintentional, but it's exactly what's going on everytime someone rehashes this "story" every few months.
In the movie theather market for major motion picture releases, there is very little competition. Here in the very large central region of california - an area encompassing a few large counties, there are dozens of movie theaters - but they are all owned by one company - Regal Cinemas (Regal bought out many chains, including United Artist and Edwards). When one chain has a monopoly over regional markets like this, they can afford to take a major hit in revenue and still remain very profitable. Also, major theater chains have exclusive deals with the major studios.
Since there are less than ten major studios like Sony, Paramount, etc. (which is VERY FEW when you consider the overall demand for movies) with massive marketing power, there is plenty of consumer money to be divvy'd up between the studios. Indie film producers and studios have a hard time getting their films into these major chains due to the fact that the (few) major studios have good relationships with the few major chains and effectively shut them out.
These factors along with the fact that big companies do not like to take "creative risks", leave the major studios with little incentive to change from "tried & true" formulas in film creation. This leads to less overall creativity in the long run, and although ticket numbers are down, these companies are still VERY profitable.
Of course, the Internet can change this and one can argue that the Internet has in fact contributed to the growing popularity of Indie films, which can be quite a refreshing change from the formulaic, predictable Major Releases.
This can also be tied to Net neutrality... one of the reasons the major Telcos oppose net neutrality is because they see the potential for lucrative relationships with the Few Big Motion Picture Distributors to deliver their movies at high speed to their customers, while the speed of other content is capped (i.e. really good, creative, cutting-edge Indie Films that have the potential to be hits and compete with the major studios, but obviously lack the $$$ to share with the Telcos).
First of all, video on demand is not the place to begin your search, oh I know its convenient, but chances are you'll only find last years crap that couldn't make back production costs. Best of luck finding something good.
Check out some movie review sites before judging whether a movie is worth your time or not http://www.rottentomatoes.com/ has a pretty good track record with me.
Also, you don't necessarily need to watch something thats come out in the past few years, hundreds of good films have come come out over the past 80 years. I'd be willing to bet that you could easily dig up something good with a quick google search. I personally would much rather sit down with a good film noir than the 99% crap track record hollywood has going on. Start on the IMDB 250 http://www.imdb.com/chart/top and I guarantee you'll never be short of something good to watch.
First off, there have ALWAYS been bad movies.
Secondly, I ran a simple python script on the IMDB's top 250 movies database and then sorted the titles by year, and then by decade.
below is a table showing the number of movies from a decade that made the IMDB's top 250 movies list.
1920s 5
1930s 15
1940s 23
1950s 39
1960s 31
1970s 25
1980s 29
1990s 41
2000s 41
As you can see, there are plenty of good movies out there. The submitter just needs to get a life.
I was thinking of converting to paganism, but where the hell can you find sacrificial virgins these days?
Did you just turn 35? It seems like movies are pitched at the demographic from teenagers to mid-thirties. By 35, you've seen every trick in the Hollywood book, so nothing seems fresh. Everything strikes you as a copy of something you've already seen.
I submit it's not that the movies have been so bad lately, but rather that your sensibilities have changed.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Passion does not scale well. The greatest restaurants are all one-offs where the staff is passionate about serving good food and giving the customer a quality experience. Programs that we love to use (Linux, say) are put together by people who are passionate about what they do to the point of evangelism. Art house movies are made by people who are passionate about using cinematic techniques to tell stories that are compelling both visually and in terms of their plotlines. But passion takes time, is monetarilly intensive, and, let's face it, is a crapshoot; there are many folks who are passionate about their beer can collections or what have you (I knew a woman who was fascinated by bricks or all things), but they aren't ever going to make money from it.
Enter the financial folks. They are absolutely necessary any time a business moves beyond being an expensive hobby, but they will strive for efficieny. Efficiency is best gained by homogenizing operations, but that also weeds out the things that tended to make the enterprise truly great in the first place. On top of that, some things (movies in this case) are enormously expensive to make (someone has to pay Industrial Light and Magic for all those special effects), and once the expense goes up, the natural tendency is to minimize risk. But again, minimizing risk keeps you from taking that fresh view and going out on a limb.
Sometimes this isn't really all that bad. If I swing by the supermarket to pick up a gallon of milk I want commodity pricing, and the bean counters excell at building the sort of enterprise that can deliver those commodity prices. You want really good creative stuff? Stay far away from the big guys and shell out extra for the starving artists who live for this sort of thing.
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power. -- Daniel Webster
I was at a friend's house last night, and for whatever reason, that show seemed to be playing for hours. (I'm not sure if that's typical Sci-Fi, of if he had it on his DVR.) I'm going to be honest here... after watching what I did of it, you couldn't pay me to watch that show.
I know it's cool and hip to bash on Hollywood movies and network TV, but there IS quite a bit of worthwhile content out there if you actually take the time to look. I think the problem is some people just expect too much from EVERYTHING, and don't know when to just relax and have fun with something.
Why do you think the crap/good ratio has changed? Do you have any idea of the sheer number of bad B-type movies that were created in the previous decades that noone remembers or cares about?
The reason that it just seems like there is a high ratio of crap is because you only remember the GREAT movies of yesteryear. You don't remember the 1000+ cowboy/indian westerns or melodramatic romances because you most likely have never heard of them. You just remember Casablanca/Citizen Kane/etc.
You're getting older man.
-- Cheers!
Well, I'm not a big fan of the Stargate franchise, but I think you've sort of answered your own question by mentioning them. You like a good story, and Stargate relies mostly on stories to hold its audience. They have to, because, by entertainment industry standards, they're a shoestring operation. Yeah, they do have some fancy special effects. But its cheap stuff. I can't be bothered to look up the figures, but I know that Stargate and Battlestar spend less for a whole season's SFX than a lot of movies (including some non-SF movies!) spend for a couple of hours.
Movies, by contrast, have huge budgets. Even so-called Indies cost tens of millions. And the kind of movie most people go to see costs at least $100 million to make. When you're risking that much money, you don't take chances. You put those millions into name stars, fancy effects, epic scenes — things people can see. You're so busy with that stuff, and with all the politics and ego-soothing, you don't worry about coming up with a good script. And you don't need to — a script doesn't sell a movie. Except, of course, to a tiny few like you and me.
SG-1 is on Season 10 right now (this weekend was the second ep of the season). I agree completely that the sunset of RDA's tenure was painful - he simply didn't take his character seriously enough most of the time, which is unfortunate because even during the start of his decline (season six), he had some stellar performances in episodes like Abyss (where he was captured by Baal) and The Changeling (although Chris Judge was really the star of that episode). RDA achieved balance during the earlier seasons, combining a great sense of humor with a knack for powerful performance, and it was a shame to see him tarnish that legacy with so many mediocre appearances just before he left.
Michael Shanks is their anchor now, and he still has the balance between humor and drama that he honed working with RDA in the earlier seasons. Of course, now he's stuck playing that balance off of Claudia Black, who, while she can give a great performance, often doesn't get the chance because her character is two steps away from comic relief. Amanda Tapping and Chris Judge are also very talented, but for some reason they don't get nearly enough chances these days to go beyond their caricatured roles of nerdy physicist and stoic warrior.
Atlantis, on the other hand, lacks plot direction. It amounts to "flail blindly against the ravages of the Wraith", without any sort of clue as to what the team's plan is or where they're going. I think this is partly due to the Wraith being a faceless horde of nobodies, while the enemies with real personality never seem to pose more than a transient threat. The acting is good (David Hewlett shows the most potential, in my opinion, but any growth his character shows always seems to disappear by the next episode), the directing is good, and the design and effects are top-notch. The writers just need to figure out where this boat is going and clue us in the tiniest bit.
Oops! This weekend was the third episode of the season in the US, not the second. Sorry :/
Having just watched Serenity and all the episodes of Firefly I've come to the conclusion that nobody cares about entertainment that's meaningful, because if the opposite were true then Firefly would still be on TV and nobody would give a shit about American Idol.
Movies used to inspire. They were about characters who you admired or wanted to emulate, and there wasn't any ambiguity about right and wrong.
Bring back the heroic guy - we've had enough wishy-washy characters who always have a major personal flaw. Bring back the fantastic dame who hangs off his arm -- she can be superhuman too, but that doesn't mean she has to take him down a peg at every chance. Bring back the strident and brave adventure, be it action, discovery, business, or voyage -- let the hero make the movie happen instead of being passively bounced about by heavy-handed plot devices. Bring back the unquestionably evil villain and don't fret about whether we understand his horrible childhood. Bring back the black-and-white morality - we like to see bad squashed and good heralded. If the film's going to go deep, don't go deep into the thousandth iteration of Hollywood feel-good stay-between-the-lines PC pop psych preaching... we go to the theater for a momentary escape from that. And for the love of christ, quit talking down to the audience.. It's okay to challenge the viewer once in a while.
The problem with all the answers I see above is that they are all looking too narrowly at the situation. What this slashdotter has witnessed is a part of the recent death in creativity in all arts. Why do you think music sales have sucked it up in the past 8 or 10 years? It's not the mp3's, it's just that all the music is a fake imitation of real creativity. Think about it for a few minutes...what has been the last musical renaissance? Metal. When? Early 80's. It's been 20+ years when (if you do a tiny bit of research) you will find that new genres of music have been appearing every 10-20 years. Literature is the same, as is Hollywood.
I went to see a film a year ago, and I counted 10 previews for movies that were remakes of older movies. Insane. And not only are they remakes, they are remakes who bank on special effects and the "ah" factor to carry the power of the film. This is weak. This is analogous to the Backstreet Boys in music who rely on their looks and harmony rather than the actual musical content.
There you have it: cultural slump. Go see indie films and be a part of a movement. That is the only way to break it.
I used to wonder just what you are asking. Then I saw MST3K. Once you realize the sheer number of abysmally bad movies from the past, you begin to understand that movies haven't gotten worse at all. If anything, they have gotten far better. Name one major movie released this year that has bad audio, bad camerawork, or incompetent editing? You can't do it. No matter how awful today's movies are, they still look and sound amazingly better than movies of the past.
Today's movies fail in terms of writing, acting, directing, or, in some cases, all of the above. Implausible plots, paper acting, horrible cinematography - none of this is new. But we don't remember "Monster a Go Go" or "Manos: The Hands of Fate". We do remember "Back to the Future".
That said, this year has been particularly weak. There's no Matrix, no Star Wars, no Harry Potter, and no Lord of the Rings. This year seems weak because 2001-2004 were so astoundingly strong. Whether or not you liked "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone", seeing the franchise come to the big screen was a huge deal for many, many people. The "Lord of the Rings" series was one of the most anticipated film adaptations ever. And although the "Star Wars" prequels were generally regarded as weak, the special effects were amazing.
I can name tons of movies that I enjoyed over the past 10 years, from Pixar's films (Incredibles / Nemo / Monsters / Toy Story) to the superhero films that worked (X-Men, Spider-Man, Batman Begins) to the unique and bizzare films (GATTACA, Fight Club, Memento) to great action/suspense films (The Matrix, Collateral) and a lot more.
In just the last few months, I've been dazzled by cool stuff by Michael Haneke (*the* coolest end-of-the-world movie ever made, "Hour of the Wolf," the creepy "Hidden," and the revoltingly subversive "Funny Games") and Takashi Miike (the icy "Black Society" trilogy), the awesome 1976 black comedy "Network," and a pair of superb recent documentaries, "New York Doll" (70s glam rock) and "Why We Fight" (Eisenhower's warning against the military industrial complex). I can't also forget "The Servant," a sinister 60s-era British flick (made by Joseph Losey, the immensely talented film industry outcast from Wisconsin) about a manservant slowly taking over his master's life which has the additional gift of having been adapted by our recent Nobel Laureate in literature, Harold Pinter. Oh, yeah, and two really different, fantastic dramas about the boxing life: "Fat City" (1972) and "The Set-Up" (1949). Hell, I'd watch more, but the week's only so long and I have to make room for possibly the best serial drama ever made, Deadwood--a masterpiece in our time!
See, it's too late in the day to complain about Hollywood. Disappointment and boredom will await you if you depend on the idiot factory. Happily, the rest of the planet hasn't lost its touch. The library of international film is so full of good and even astonishing work that you need a lifetime to watch it all.
Like any subject, you won't get very far without some guidance. The little paragraph in the On Demand section? That isn't going to cut it. Get hold of a good film companion like Halliwell's, and read some of the great movie critics like Andrew Sarris or Pauline Kael. Or if you want to start this instant, then peruse the reliable Roger Ebert's short odes to great films. Start at random, you can hardly go wrong with anything here:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/secti on?category=REVIEWS08
I am 19, and I have watched a lots of films in my life. Espesially with friends. And I have to say that most Hollywood films are just boring, stypid, they're not funny when they supposed to be so. And it's overall very bad. Now, when films are this bad, less and less people go to watch them. And then Hollywood can easily talk about how piracy is causing them to loss more and more money when in fact hollywood is making big mistake not trying to fix their own problems with big productions. At least some small productions with a lot of less money are occasionally making o.k films. But usually Asian productions are much better. Japanese action and horror films are great. At the moment I know only one American film director who has made some good movies lately, and he is Quentin Tarantino. Can you agree with me?
-Seeing the problem is ½ of solution-
the history on the pegasus arc of the sg1 panoply indicates atlantis was both the first and last inabited city in that galaxy, but it has no zpm factory?
I don't call that a stupid tactical blunder, I call that a stupid viewer. I'm sorry, but a little bit needs to be left to the imagination so that you can "what if" the story a little bit, opening your mind to a new possibility. Asking for every single thing to be written out for you is the mark of complete mental laziness.
All of the cities similar to Atlantis are actually starships--they have hyperdrives and other systems for interstellar and intergalactic travel--so maybe the "ZPM factory" left Pegasus to some other galaxy which will be brought in on another plot arc? Maybe communications were cut off between Atlantis and the factory and its departure was not recorded in the ancient database? Maybe the factory was obliterated during the many centuries of war with the Wraith, but that section of the ancient database hasn't yet been decoded? Or, maybe you'll just have to keep watching to find out, lazy viewer!
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
You know, other countries make movies too... having just finished watching _The Longest Engagement_ I can't say I really care that hollywood makes shite these days.
Need Mercedes parts ?
I'd argue that the market is proving you right, as we speak. I think the new format of choice is not the two-hour movie, but the 45-minute serial. In the past few years we've seen the demise of the "story arc" sitcom (where each episode was basically self-contained and usually returned the situation to wherever it began, for the next episode), long a staple of American television, and replaced it with plot-driven series TV shows. I think the epitome of the genre is "24," just because it's really the antithesis of the sitcom format, but there are many other shows that have popped up that are basically the same thing.
On one hand, people seem to like the shorter plotlines of series shows: you can get your 'dose' of entertainment in 45 minutes if you skip the commercials, rather than in two hours; but on the other hand the sales of DVD sets and my personal experience watching them indicates that people aren't adverse to watching two or three hours of serial episodes in a sitting.
In some ways the whole thing reminds me of another change, which went in the opposite direction: the transition in the 19th century from serial fiction literature, to bound novels. It seems as though today we're going from movies, to series shows where each season has a basically 'cinematic' plot (pretty much any one season of most new dramas could have been a movie, although whether a good or bad one I won't say), and then where that one plot is broken into hourlong sub-plots that are delivered to the viewer in chunks.
If I was cynical I'd say that this is further evidence of the ADD-ization of this country and of our society in general, but I won't pass judgement. I think I'll go watch another episode of Nip/Tuck, instead.
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I recently went to a film festival of young european directors, and what I saw there blew lots of professional stuff easily away. One of the movies which gave me one of the biggest impressions was Zamedi/13, one of the best movies I have seen in the recent past (partially thriller/horror themed), you really have to look outside of the box, there is lots of talent there probably never to be discovered blowing most of the plastic garbage from hollywood away easily.
It's the wide-releases that have sucked, not all movies. I am lucky to live in an area that has a couple of independent movie-houses-- (you know the ones where people turn their cell-phones off, and sit through the end-credits.) In that venue, I have seen some entertaining movies -- (The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, Capote, Shopgirl.)
So why are the studios failing to produce good movies?
1. Because the average consumer doesn't want a masterpiece. Joe Six-pack wants just enough plausibility in the story to allow him to escape his reality for a couple of hours. I think that the audience is savvy to the tricks of the movie makers. Fantastic visual effects are no longer a substitute for a good plot (War of the Worlds comes to mind. Isn't the whole movie just one long chase?). Cool wardrobe and sharp language are no substitute for good acting.
2. Names sell tickets. Spielberg, Hanks, and Cruise all sell tickets. Some of thier work is fantastic and some of it sucks eggs. Either way, chances are that the film will make $20 million before the word gets out.
3. Risk. The average movie costs four to six million. With that kind of money on the line the pressure is on to recoup your investment. A movie version of a semi-memorable TV show from your target audience's collective childhood will always sell. (Dukes of Hazzard, Miami Vice, Star Wars EP I, II, III)
Television has largely ruined the audience. Eight to ten minutes of commercials for every half-hour of programming. Crawling text, channel promotions w/sound playing over the show are very distracting. I have personally forgotten what I was watching while channel surfing during commercials. My point is that there are good films available, you just have to sift though a lot of schlock to get to them.
... I'd like to add :
If you are the kind of man to think the Matrix is highly philosophical and is the best movie ever or so, it's not surprising at all to see you bored of movies.
Another suggestion I have for you is to take the time to see old repertoire movies, there are plenty of jewels to discover, and cost much less than the new wiz-bang Hollywood movie playing on the wiz-bang screen in the wiz-bang theater.
Movies have been bad longer than "lately".
My karma is not a Chameleon.
It wasn't an insult, it was a commentary on your mental agility; a mere observation.
And in The Siege (Part 3), they do say that the mostly-depleted ZPM which they received from earth would last for days, yes, but that was a depleted ZPM, not a fully charged one. Further, we don't know if ZPMs deplete linearly or not. A conventional chemical battery, for instance, will have a higher voltage when it is fresh than when it is at 10% capacity. It's possible that the first 20% of a ZPM's power would last for decades when powering the shields, and then it would deplete more rapidly over time. Sci-fi requires a little suspension of disbelief, that's what the "fi" part is all about.
Perhaps the city was abandoned was because they were cut off from their ZPM supply lines. Also, perhaps the ZPM factory was destroyed to prevent it from falling into wraith hands. Use your imagination.
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
"Stuck in a traffic jam when you're already late? That's not ironic, that's just unfortunate. Stuck in a traffic jam when you're already late, and you're a town planner, and you're trying to get to a meeting about how to solve the congestion problem, that's ironic."
I was conned by an old man in a cloak. It turns out those *were* the droids I was looking for.
I always imagine a load of stupid fat old men smoking big cigars in a studio office, reading an interesting, intelligent and thought provoking script, shaking their heads and saying "I don't get it."
I was conned by an old man in a cloak. It turns out those *were* the droids I was looking for.
To quote Howard Mann:t m-rules30jul23,1,3814092.story?coll=la-headlines-w est)
(stolen from http://www.latimes.com/features/magazine/west/la-
Years ago, I had an actor friend, John, who happened to be a Native American. We were having lunch one day when he said: "Howie, things are OK with me now. But when I first came out here back in the '40s, I couldn't get a job. I went over to Republic studios. They were doing hundreds of westerns then. I figured I'm a cinch to get an Indian part.
"Sorry," the casting director tells me. "You don't look Indian enough."
"I don't look Indian enough? I happen to be a full-blooded Sioux!"
"So what? You still don't look Indian enough."
"So if I don't look Indian enough, who does?"
"Italians."
"What?"
"You heard me. We only use Italians for Indian parts. They look more Indian than the Indians."
"Well, if Italians are doing Indian parts, maybe I could play an Italian."
"No, we use other people for the Italian parts."
"Who?"
"Jews. They play all Italian gangsters. Paul Muni, Edward G. Robinson, John Garfield. All Jewish."
John told the guy he didn't understand.
"Look," the Republic guy said, "Jews look more Italian than Italians. I was in Rome last summer. I didn't see one Italian who looked how an Italian is supposed to look. They had blond hair, fair skin, high cheekbones."
John said, "Howie, I asked the guy, 'If Italians play Indians and Jews play Italians, then who plays Jews?' He said, 'WASPs. Who played David? Gregory Peck. Who played Charlton Heston's mother in "Ben-Hur"? Martha Scott.'"
John pounded the guy's desk and told him: "OK, Italians play Indians, Jews play Italians, WASPs play Jews. Let me play an Oriental. After all, Indians came over from Asia."
He said the guy apologized. "White guys play Orientals. Who played Charlie Chan? Warner Oland. Who played Mr. Moto? Peter Lorre. Who played Chinese dames for years? Myrna Loy."
Johnny seemed exhausted. The waiter came with the check. I paid. It was the least I could do. I asked him how he managed to stay in the business.
"I got the idea that if Italians are grabbing all the Indian parts, I would become Italian. I changed my name from John to Giovanni. I learned to think like them, dress like them, walk like them. I was ready. I went up for a part in the movie 'Little Big Man,' starring Dustin Hoffman.
"The casting guy asked me my name. I told him I was Giovanni and could play any Indian part he had. The guy gets up from his chair. 'I'm sorry,' he says. 'Things have changed. We only use authentic Native Americans today . . . people like Iron Eyes Cody, Graham Greene, Chief Dan George. Now if you were a genuine Indian, I'd hire you on the spot.'"
John said he couldn't take it. "I screamed at the guy, 'But I'm a full-blooded Sioux. I am an authentic Indian. I am the realest Indian you'll ever find.'"
He said the casting guy laughed in his face. "You actors," he said. "You'll say anything to get a part."
Solomon Chang
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
Perhaps a deeper look into irony than the dictionary can provide may explain some of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony
Anyway - most of the people who believe irony is being misused lately believe that true irony has to do with incongruity and double audience. So when you need a knife when you have a lot of spoons, that's not ironic, because you don't expect for there to be knives instead of spoons. Perhaps not finding a knife in a knife shop, having told your friends you were going to the knife shop, and having them know it's gone out of business would be ironic. Alanis just lists a lot sometimes unfortunate coincidences. An unfortunate coincidence is not ironic unless one expected a different outcome and someone was in on the joke.
But, as with all language issues, the distinction is subtle, and word meaning changes to accomodate current usage.
Languages aren't inherently fast -- implementations are efficient
No, it's not.
;-)
The example that Hyde noticed is ironic because we might reasonably expect Ireland to distance itself from the nation she most hated, whereas, instead, she did pretty much the opposite and emulated it.
The example of 10,000 spoons is not ironic because there's no reason not to have the 10,000 spoons rather than a knife. Maybe she's in spoon factory! There's not enough there to make it ironic. It requires some reason for us to expect a knife rather than spoons (and possibly a reason to not expect the spoons at all). Neo, seeking a knife to cut himself loose from an agent trap and instead finding 10,000 spoons, would be irony...
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat