"Whatever the boss says, goes" is still a constitution. The Fürerprinzip is a constitution.
Even if what the boss said went in Saudi Arabia, they still needed a way of picking the new boss, and their method has remained codified for over 70 years. If there's a government, there's a constitution.
Academically, governments are categorized by their instiutions, not by whether or not they are living up to some abstract ideal of how they "should" operate.
Maybe Democratic Republics are the exception, not the rule, and maybe the US is a sham republic and Baathist Iraq is the real one. This is the problem with your approach. If you just go by the numbers, almost all presidential republics are undemocratic, and fall to coups.
The United States is definitely a democracy in that we constantly have elections and the franchise is open to most people.
If you wanna get technical and definitional, this thread is about the UK, and the UK is a Westminster-style parliamentary monarchy, which is an explicitly democratic order. But this definition extends to states that I think would be problematic, like Israel, which is a republic with a parliamentary democracy, except they don't let big swathes of the population vote. Also most Communist states are, constitutionally, democratic Council republics but in practice they are so corrupt that the franchise is meaningless.
It's not a "constitutional republic," EVERY government has a "constitution," written or otherwise.
The United States is a "Presidential Republic." I believe the CIA World Factbook's literal description is "Presidential Republic (with democratic tradition)."
Governments are distinguished by wether or not the separate the Head of State from the office of Head of Government- presidencies do not, parliamentary states generally do. And then they are distinguished by wether they vest their sovereignty in a monarch or in a people at large (a "republic").
Or would you prefer Star Wars be a bland story about absolutely good guys versus absolutely evil guys.
I dunno, worked pretty good for the original trilogy. Darth Vader is dressed in black and will blow up your planet if you cross him. And yet nobody condemns the original trilogy as bland.
The Senate is necessary. They were inept due to bureaucracy and corruption, and thus explained why some Jedi and others felt they had to do things outside the system. That was the point.
How do you know the senate was corrupt? When did any Jedi do anything "outside the system"? Seriously, work it through: how is the Republic corrupt, apart from the bare fact that Palpatine wins in the end? How is the corruption substantiated? It's pretty obvious that Lucas wanted the Republic to be corrupt, sclerotic, superannuated, bureaucratic, whatever, because that's the trope. But, he never really showed how it was, or why.
I mean like, when Amidala goes to the senate and demands justice for Naboo, Terence Stamp is going to do it but then someone else demands an investigation. OK. Why isn't the word of a Queen and two Jedi enough for Valorum? Why is an investigation corrupt? It's all "imputed qualities," we're merely told, by Palpatine of all people, that the senate is corrupt and bureaucratic. And despite this, Senator Jar Jar, with no real opposition is able to propose the creation of an army and the senate straight up and does it with no debate whatsoever. They seem to be really efficient when they want to be.
Right from the beginning, we are told that the Empire is evil and therefore the Rebels must be the good guys. We don't see that developed. We are just TOLD that and we must believe it.
Are you kidding? The Empire kills everybody on a little ship they easily overpower; Vader snaps the neck of a rebel subaltern just because he doesn't know what he wants to hear; the Death Star blows up Alderaan and nearly destroys the moon of Yavin. Tarkin flatly states that the fear of his battle station will oppress the entire galaxy, and orders the death of Leia's family, friends and planet right in front of her.
When does, say, the trade federation do anything of the type? They blockade a planet, but nobody on the planet actually seems to suffer. They demand a treaty signed, but we never actually find out what the treaty is for, or what it entails. And they're in cahoots with Sidious, but we have no idea what they actually have to gain from the dispute. I guess it stands to reason they have to gain something, but there are no stakes, there is no drama.
Except, for me, watching the prequels makes all that unimportant stuff in the original series important. After watching how the Republic fell apart, you understand why there was an emperor and why Senate approval was still a thing.
Really? You know why the Republic fell apart? You know why the assent of the Senate was required? When did they explain any of that? The Republic didn't fall apart, Palpatine just lied to everyone and the entire senate just rolled over and accepted it, even people who knew he was lying did nothing to actually stop him, to tell others bout his misdeeds, or rally members of the senate against him. The Senate makes no sense. From the beginning of the trilogy to the end it serves no purpose and it could be completely excised without changing the actual stories a whit.
The Jedi oppose the Sith; the senate represents people we never meet, don't fight in the war, have nothing to lose from the war, and no matter what the senate does or does not do, the characters just do what they were always going to do anyway.
Given all the extra stuff that doesn't happen in the movies, you would think dedicated "fans" would put two and two together and think "hey, it may be answered outside of the movies, just like every other thing".
So what you're telling me is, yes, the movies make no sense, but I should give them a mulligan because maybe they'd be better if I knew stuff from the Expanded Universe? Doesn't the movie have to stand on its own? Understand, I'm talking about books, or Expanded media, or things that happen "outside the movies." All that matters is the movie; if A New Hope had the sort of plot mess that Phantom Menace did, there would be no books or expanded universe, there would be no Empire Strikes Back. Star Wars would have just been another bad sci-fi movie and Damnation Alley would have been Fox's big movie of 1977.
Did you ever think that it was the POINT that the Jedi's roles were confusing? That not even the Jedi knew what they were supposed to be as the Republic started failing?
This is an interesting theory. It's not given any treatment in the prequels. At no point does any Jedi say anything like "What's going on, why are we doing this?" They act like everything is business as usual.
I really question people who call themselves fans of Star Wars (me, not really being one myself), and fans of "intelligent culture" when they insist everything must be answered for them.
We can argue about the depth and consistency of the Star Wars universe until the cows come home, because for an inconsistency I find, you can just invent a plausible explanation and demand I accept it, because to do anything less would be "asking to be given all the answers." When, in fact, I'm not asking for "all the answers," I'm asking for a story that's dramatic and comprehensible, and characters that have actual motivations.
Are the prequel trilogy actual movies? Or are they just visual aides for a bunch of expanded universe novels? Cause that's how they play -- read the book to find out what's happening, then go to chapter 2 of the DVD to see what it looked like.
But then, I grew up on a steady diet of anime like Evangelion or Lain where nothing really makes much sense because they don't tell you everything and expect you to give your own interpretations.
Evengelion is endlessly compelling because it's clear that he's trying to say something. And Eva is deeply wrapped up in the inner lives and psychology of the characters, the giant robots are just props. When in the prequels do we ever get an inner monologue? Or any character express an internal state of mind? Anakin comes close, but we never really understand why he does what he does.
Right but none of that stuff in the original series is important. What "the Imperial Senate" is or Owen Lars's attitude to Kenobi aren't dispositve on the plot, if you simply removed those elements, the movie would still make sense.
But you can't simply excise the trade federation blockade, it's the entire conflict of the first movie, and it happens for effectively no reason.
The Jedi are more frustrating because we get alternate theories depending on George's convenience. At one point they're "keepers of the peace, not soldiers" and Quai-Gon "can't fight a war" for Padme, and through the rest of the movies they're effectively the generals of the Clone Army. Was there a conflict or some kind of contradiction there? Surely Yoda would have seen this as contrary to the Jedi code, but he was just as enthusiastic a soldier as anyone. It's werid. These questions go to the very core of the prequel trilogy, without resolution these movies make no sense, and thus they don't.
However, The Bonding turned into a very interesting story because of that
It's a good episode, but when Moore finally got to do his holodeck-as-coping-mechanism episode in It's Only a Paper Moon, it was one of the best episodes in the entire ST universe...
I liked Enterprise, particularly the Manny Coto episodes.
TNG got better in the second second, years before Roddenberry died.
Yeah, that's when he got sick though and handed production over to Pillar and Berman. Note that the movies only got good after Roddenberry was kicked up to "Executive Consultant" and was frozen out of the process.
Even when he was out of the loop on TNG, Roddenberry still managed to screw with early Ron Moore screenplays like The Bonding, loudly insisting that "children in the 24th century wouldn't morn their parent's death."
Just as a counterexample, note the furferraw when Majel said that Gene would have disapproved of the Dominion War.
(Yeah I'm a Ron Moore fanboy, as the sig would attest.)
Ah, I'd direct you to the writings of Harry Plinkett on that question. It's not just the plot holes, but really fundamental aspects of the prequel films: what is the Trade Federation, why are the blockading, what is the Republic exactly (The queen of Naboo is elected, but the senator of Naboo is appointed?), what is the fundamental cause of the rebellion, what exactly are the Jedi... These reflect on Lucas's really fundamental cynicism, and his inability to write characters as if they're intelligent agents that know what's going on, and his lack of faith in the audience to think about any of this stuff critically.
The first trilogy managed to keep all these balls in the air, but he didn't write those. George's writing work isn't really represented in any of the original Star Wars films. Larry Kasdan wrote V and VI, and though George's name is on the first one, he had a ton of help from Hal Barwood, Matthew Robbins, Will Huyck, Gloria Katz, Alec Guinness, de Palma, Spielberg and many, many others, who he failed to credit.
I dunno, he had a great original concept -- Flash Gordon meets World War II genre films -- and he saw it through to the conclusion, and he was the central person in those early films, but all the good stuff happened when he got out of the way and let the actors, Gary Kurtz, John Dykstra, John Williams and his wife Marcia do their magic. At some point in the 80s, after he banished Marcia and Gary and surrounded himself with sycophants, George must have thoroughly convinced himself that he did everything himself.
He doesn't give the actors feedback or direction - he expects them to bring the characters to life and flush out the nuances on his own.
Note that Michael Bay is known for this as well, and the results are very different. Not good, but different.
I strongly believe that Jake Lloyd was awful in Phantom Menace because of Lucas' directing style.
Jake Lloyd was terrible because George Lucas, himself, didn't know what Anakin was supposed to be or represent, what it was like to be him, what it meant to be a slave on Tatooine, or any of that. The character has no purpose in the movie but to establish that Anakin exists. Even if George were a "hands on" director, he wouldn't have had the slightest idea what to tell him. "Just sit in the cockpit while the battle happens."
He'll always be involved. Even if he doesn't participate in the making, he'll be the first person everyone asks when the new one comes out and his opinion is going to carry a lot of weight.
Notice that Next Gen only really started getting good after Roddenberry died, and DS9, being the best Trek series ever*, was flatly impossible as long as he was alive. Even when these people are out of the loop, they are the "author" in the public mind and have a lot of clout.
Exactly. And you're living in a Just World Fallacy where if streaming and piracy hand the film industry to Netflix and Amazon on a silver platter, we'll all be better off because everyone will get what they deserved. Hollywood sucks a priori, no knowledge or thought required.
That you believe this isn't too remarkable, a lot of people have unwarranted faith in systems, particularly when that system is the Internet. That you manage to believe this without actually knowing anything about the entertainment industry is the abomination. You're worse than a hipster, you're a philistine. You don't actually know anything about movies, do you even like any "independent" films? If you think most Hollywood movies are crap, you haven't even begun to get into independent film...
Or are you just pretending to care in order to score points?
It seems like you've got this term, "Hollywood System." Like "True Scotsman," it can mean whatever you want it to mean.
Well, let's see. Birdman was directing by a famously weird Mexican filmmaker, but it was produced by New Regency pictures, which is Arnon Milchan's company. They also produced Noah and In Time, that's relatively Hollywood enough.
Grand Budapest was produced by Scott Rudin, of Captain Phillips, Moneyball, and most of Wes Anderson's other films. Rubin produced movies like Ransom and Sister Act 2 back in the day. He's about as Hollywood as you can get.
Wild stars and is produced by Reese Fucking Witherspoon. A friend of mine was the sound designer on Wild, her previous film was the Fantastic Four reboot. The whole movie was shot on location and finished at Fox. Reese's co-producer was Bruna Papandrea, of Gone Girl (which he worked on with Scott Rudin). Also you have to understand that a project like this is masterminded by the actor's agent, he makes the calls, finds the willing directors and producers, and sets the deal up with a production company. Reese's agent is Bryan Lourd at CAA. And at this point we have reached Peak Hollywood.
Selma is actually a bit MORE Hollywood than the others, it's produced by Oprah Winfrey and it's director, Ava DuVernay, was actually a well-known Hollywood studio publicist before she got into directing (her credits include Stealth and Shrek the Third). Selma was also produced by Jeremy Kleiner's company, Plan B, and they produced World War Z and Eat Pray Love.
Whiplash is produced by my present employer, Blumhouse, makers of the Paranormal Activity movies, Sinister, and The Conjuring. All of his horror films are produced under a sale/distribution deal with Universal.
You do realize that opening at film festivals are programmed, right? That the programmers specifically hold open the choice premiere slots for large, star-laden, American films, mainly to help promote the festival. What exactly makes a film festival "not" Hollywood? Have you ever been to the Toronto Film Market? Or AFM? Or Cannes? Or Sundance? They're more Hollywood than Hollywood.
How indie these films really were I'm not hipster enough to have any opinion on.
Gotta be one of the most willful ignorant things I've read on the Slashdot. You just have this totally closed idea about what movies are made by "Hollywood."
As to audio, Headphones do it better, if you really care,
They really don't. I mean, you might prefer them but they're a substandard experience, even if you're using "surround" headphones that apply HRTFs and phase de-correlation, they just don't render space very well and even really nice ones are fatiguing. They also remove the sound's spatial relationship with the center channel and the screen which is usually important. Most people also have their headphones set too damn loud and are giving themselves cumulative hearing damage.
The total lack of control of other people makes that a pretty moot point.
I think if you set up an SPL meter and checked the ambient distractions in your home you'd find them much worse than a theater.
I agree theaters pretty much have to do reserved seating and need to have proper enforcement against distractions to remain competitive. Some do.
Slashdot Mirror
It didn't say that in the 90s. They keep tweaking it for political reasons.
"Whatever the boss says, goes" is still a constitution. The Fürerprinzip is a constitution.
Even if what the boss said went in Saudi Arabia, they still needed a way of picking the new boss, and their method has remained codified for over 70 years. If there's a government, there's a constitution.
Just going empirically, the U.S. would seem to be democratic DESPITE its republican government, not because of it.
Academically, governments are categorized by their instiutions, not by whether or not they are living up to some abstract ideal of how they "should" operate.
Maybe Democratic Republics are the exception, not the rule, and maybe the US is a sham republic and Baathist Iraq is the real one. This is the problem with your approach. If you just go by the numbers, almost all presidential republics are undemocratic, and fall to coups.
"In the UK however, rights DESCEND from government. This is philosophically far different from the situation in the USA."
Google "Magna Carta."
The United States is definitely a democracy in that we constantly have elections and the franchise is open to most people.
If you wanna get technical and definitional, this thread is about the UK, and the UK is a Westminster-style parliamentary monarchy, which is an explicitly democratic order. But this definition extends to states that I think would be problematic, like Israel, which is a republic with a parliamentary democracy, except they don't let big swathes of the population vote. Also most Communist states are, constitutionally, democratic Council republics but in practice they are so corrupt that the franchise is meaningless.
What criteria are you using to distinguish a nonconstitutional state from a constitutional one?
The Soviet Union and Baathist Iraq were "constitutional Republics."
I think, if they can indict you and bring you to trial, it's still a "problem" even if the jury sees it your way.
It's not a "constitutional republic," EVERY government has a "constitution," written or otherwise.
The United States is a "Presidential Republic." I believe the CIA World Factbook's literal description is "Presidential Republic (with democratic tradition)."
Governments are distinguished by wether or not the separate the Head of State from the office of Head of Government- presidencies do not, parliamentary states generally do. And then they are distinguished by wether they vest their sovereignty in a monarch or in a people at large (a "republic").
I dunno, worked pretty good for the original trilogy. Darth Vader is dressed in black and will blow up your planet if you cross him. And yet nobody condemns the original trilogy as bland.
How do you know the senate was corrupt? When did any Jedi do anything "outside the system"? Seriously, work it through: how is the Republic corrupt, apart from the bare fact that Palpatine wins in the end? How is the corruption substantiated? It's pretty obvious that Lucas wanted the Republic to be corrupt, sclerotic, superannuated, bureaucratic, whatever, because that's the trope. But, he never really showed how it was, or why.
I mean like, when Amidala goes to the senate and demands justice for Naboo, Terence Stamp is going to do it but then someone else demands an investigation. OK. Why isn't the word of a Queen and two Jedi enough for Valorum? Why is an investigation corrupt? It's all "imputed qualities," we're merely told, by Palpatine of all people, that the senate is corrupt and bureaucratic. And despite this, Senator Jar Jar, with no real opposition is able to propose the creation of an army and the senate straight up and does it with no debate whatsoever. They seem to be really efficient when they want to be.
Are you kidding? The Empire kills everybody on a little ship they easily overpower; Vader snaps the neck of a rebel subaltern just because he doesn't know what he wants to hear; the Death Star blows up Alderaan and nearly destroys the moon of Yavin. Tarkin flatly states that the fear of his battle station will oppress the entire galaxy, and orders the death of Leia's family, friends and planet right in front of her.
When does, say, the trade federation do anything of the type? They blockade a planet, but nobody on the planet actually seems to suffer. They demand a treaty signed, but we never actually find out what the treaty is for, or what it entails. And they're in cahoots with Sidious, but we have no idea what they actually have to gain from the dispute. I guess it stands to reason they have to gain something, but there are no stakes, there is no drama.
Really? You know why the Republic fell apart? You know why the assent of the Senate was required? When did they explain any of that? The Republic didn't fall apart, Palpatine just lied to everyone and the entire senate just rolled over and accepted it, even people who knew he was lying did nothing to actually stop him, to tell others bout his misdeeds, or rally members of the senate against him. The Senate makes no sense. From the beginning of the trilogy to the end it serves no purpose and it could be completely excised without changing the actual stories a whit.
The Jedi oppose the Sith; the senate represents people we never meet, don't fight in the war, have nothing to lose from the war, and no matter what the senate does or does not do, the characters just do what they were always going to do anyway.
So what you're telling me is, yes, the movies make no sense, but I should give them a mulligan because maybe they'd be better if I knew stuff from the Expanded Universe? Doesn't the movie have to stand on its own? Understand, I'm talking about books, or Expanded media, or things that happen "outside the movies." All that matters is the movie; if A New Hope had the sort of plot mess that Phantom Menace did, there would be no books or expanded universe, there would be no Empire Strikes Back. Star Wars would have just been another bad sci-fi movie and Damnation Alley would have been Fox's big movie of 1977.
This is an interesting theory. It's not given any treatment in the prequels. At no point does any Jedi say anything like "What's going on, why are we doing this?" They act like everything is business as usual.
We can argue about the depth and consistency of the Star Wars universe until the cows come home, because for an inconsistency I find, you can just invent a plausible explanation and demand I accept it, because to do anything less would be "asking to be given all the answers." When, in fact, I'm not asking for "all the answers," I'm asking for a story that's dramatic and comprehensible, and characters that have actual motivations.
Are the prequel trilogy actual movies? Or are they just visual aides for a bunch of expanded universe novels? Cause that's how they play -- read the book to find out what's happening, then go to chapter 2 of the DVD to see what it looked like.
Evengelion is endlessly compelling because it's clear that he's trying to say something. And Eva is deeply wrapped up in the inner lives and psychology of the characters, the giant robots are just props. When in the prequels do we ever get an inner monologue? Or any character express an internal state of mind? Anakin comes close, but we never really understand why he does what he does.
Right but none of that stuff in the original series is important. What "the Imperial Senate" is or Owen Lars's attitude to Kenobi aren't dispositve on the plot, if you simply removed those elements, the movie would still make sense.
But you can't simply excise the trade federation blockade, it's the entire conflict of the first movie, and it happens for effectively no reason.
The Jedi are more frustrating because we get alternate theories depending on George's convenience. At one point they're "keepers of the peace, not soldiers" and Quai-Gon "can't fight a war" for Padme, and through the rest of the movies they're effectively the generals of the Clone Army. Was there a conflict or some kind of contradiction there? Surely Yoda would have seen this as contrary to the Jedi code, but he was just as enthusiastic a soldier as anyone. It's werid. These questions go to the very core of the prequel trilogy, without resolution these movies make no sense, and thus they don't.
It's a good episode, but when Moore finally got to do his holodeck-as-coping-mechanism episode in It's Only a Paper Moon, it was one of the best episodes in the entire ST universe...
I liked Enterprise, particularly the Manny Coto episodes.
In that case they were under the influence of a malevolent entity... :)
Yeah, that's when he got sick though and handed production over to Pillar and Berman. Note that the movies only got good after Roddenberry was kicked up to "Executive Consultant" and was frozen out of the process.
Even when he was out of the loop on TNG, Roddenberry still managed to screw with early Ron Moore screenplays like The Bonding, loudly insisting that "children in the 24th century wouldn't morn their parent's death."
Just as a counterexample, note the furferraw when Majel said that Gene would have disapproved of the Dominion War.
(Yeah I'm a Ron Moore fanboy, as the sig would attest.)
Yeah maybe I meant that. Animated series might actually go higher than the first two seasons on TNG, though.
Ah, I'd direct you to the writings of Harry Plinkett on that question. It's not just the plot holes, but really fundamental aspects of the prequel films: what is the Trade Federation, why are the blockading, what is the Republic exactly (The queen of Naboo is elected, but the senator of Naboo is appointed?), what is the fundamental cause of the rebellion, what exactly are the Jedi... These reflect on Lucas's really fundamental cynicism, and his inability to write characters as if they're intelligent agents that know what's going on, and his lack of faith in the audience to think about any of this stuff critically.
The first trilogy managed to keep all these balls in the air, but he didn't write those. George's writing work isn't really represented in any of the original Star Wars films. Larry Kasdan wrote V and VI, and though George's name is on the first one, he had a ton of help from Hal Barwood, Matthew Robbins, Will Huyck, Gloria Katz, Alec Guinness, de Palma, Spielberg and many, many others, who he failed to credit.
I dunno, he had a great original concept -- Flash Gordon meets World War II genre films -- and he saw it through to the conclusion, and he was the central person in those early films, but all the good stuff happened when he got out of the way and let the actors, Gary Kurtz, John Dykstra, John Williams and his wife Marcia do their magic. At some point in the 80s, after he banished Marcia and Gary and surrounded himself with sycophants, George must have thoroughly convinced himself that he did everything himself.
Note that Michael Bay is known for this as well, and the results are very different. Not good, but different.
Jake Lloyd was terrible because George Lucas, himself, didn't know what Anakin was supposed to be or represent, what it was like to be him, what it meant to be a slave on Tatooine, or any of that. The character has no purpose in the movie but to establish that Anakin exists. Even if George were a "hands on" director, he wouldn't have had the slightest idea what to tell him. "Just sit in the cockpit while the battle happens."
Low bar.
He'll always be involved. Even if he doesn't participate in the making, he'll be the first person everyone asks when the new one comes out and his opinion is going to carry a lot of weight.
Notice that Next Gen only really started getting good after Roddenberry died, and DS9, being the best Trek series ever*, was flatly impossible as long as he was alive. Even when these people are out of the loop, they are the "author" in the public mind and have a lot of clout.
* I dare you, come at me!
Even professional physicists like some good numerology sometimes.
Also, just so we're clear, you took a number e-26, multiplied it by a number e+23, and you ended up with a number e+0?
Exactly. And you're living in a Just World Fallacy where if streaming and piracy hand the film industry to Netflix and Amazon on a silver platter, we'll all be better off because everyone will get what they deserved. Hollywood sucks a priori, no knowledge or thought required.
That you believe this isn't too remarkable, a lot of people have unwarranted faith in systems, particularly when that system is the Internet. That you manage to believe this without actually knowing anything about the entertainment industry is the abomination. You're worse than a hipster, you're a philistine. You don't actually know anything about movies, do you even like any "independent" films? If you think most Hollywood movies are crap, you haven't even begun to get into independent film...
Or are you just pretending to care in order to score points?
Mistake on my part: Plan B isn't Jeremy Keliner's company, he's just an executive there. Plan B is Brad Pitt's company
It seems like you've got this term, "Hollywood System." Like "True Scotsman," it can mean whatever you want it to mean.
Well, let's see. Birdman was directing by a famously weird Mexican filmmaker, but it was produced by New Regency pictures, which is Arnon Milchan's company. They also produced Noah and In Time, that's relatively Hollywood enough.
Grand Budapest was produced by Scott Rudin, of Captain Phillips, Moneyball, and most of Wes Anderson's other films. Rubin produced movies like Ransom and Sister Act 2 back in the day. He's about as Hollywood as you can get.
Wild stars and is produced by Reese Fucking Witherspoon. A friend of mine was the sound designer on Wild, her previous film was the Fantastic Four reboot. The whole movie was shot on location and finished at Fox. Reese's co-producer was Bruna Papandrea, of Gone Girl (which he worked on with Scott Rudin). Also you have to understand that a project like this is masterminded by the actor's agent, he makes the calls, finds the willing directors and producers, and sets the deal up with a production company. Reese's agent is Bryan Lourd at CAA. And at this point we have reached Peak Hollywood.
Selma is actually a bit MORE Hollywood than the others, it's produced by Oprah Winfrey and it's director, Ava DuVernay, was actually a well-known Hollywood studio publicist before she got into directing (her credits include Stealth and Shrek the Third). Selma was also produced by Jeremy Kleiner's company, Plan B, and they produced World War Z and Eat Pray Love.
Whiplash is produced by my present employer, Blumhouse, makers of the Paranormal Activity movies, Sinister, and The Conjuring. All of his horror films are produced under a sale/distribution deal with Universal.
You do realize that opening at film festivals are programmed, right? That the programmers specifically hold open the choice premiere slots for large, star-laden, American films, mainly to help promote the festival. What exactly makes a film festival "not" Hollywood? Have you ever been to the Toronto Film Market? Or AFM? Or Cannes? Or Sundance? They're more Hollywood than Hollywood.
Gotta be one of the most willful ignorant things I've read on the Slashdot. You just have this totally closed idea about what movies are made by "Hollywood."
They really don't. I mean, you might prefer them but they're a substandard experience, even if you're using "surround" headphones that apply HRTFs and phase de-correlation, they just don't render space very well and even really nice ones are fatiguing. They also remove the sound's spatial relationship with the center channel and the screen which is usually important. Most people also have their headphones set too damn loud and are giving themselves cumulative hearing damage.
I think if you set up an SPL meter and checked the ambient distractions in your home you'd find them much worse than a theater.
I agree theaters pretty much have to do reserved seating and need to have proper enforcement against distractions to remain competitive. Some do.