[HN Gopher] No More Movies
___________________________________________________________________
No More Movies
Author : jeffreyrogers
Score : 513 points
Date : 2021-07-06 02:36 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jayriverlong.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (jayriverlong.github.io)
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| _Many years ago, a friend tried to convince me that the passive
| consumption of any media - film or television, maybe even music -
| was bad for the soul. To unthinkingly let a wave of content break
| over you is to inundate yourself with noise, to be filled with
| other people's mediocre thoughts and games._
|
| I think the act of media consumption has an element of surrender
| to it - you let other people's willpower and their creative
| output consume some of your inner world. It makes your ego a bit
| smaller. To suspend disbelief means to raise the white flag.
| estevaovix wrote:
| Feeling the same lately, so I've been using JustWatch to curate
| as much as I can and avoid waisting time with bad content.
| lordgrenville wrote:
| Strongly disagree with #2. There are more good films than ever
| being made now - including comedies - and changing social trends
| making some types of humour more or less viable hardly affects
| this. (Some of the best films ever were made under much stricter
| and more explicit rules about content!) But sure, all passive
| consumption of entertainment stales over time as you get used to
| the various tricks. A better response to this can be switching to
| _active_ consumption.
|
| We see this already in the fine arts. No-one today comes into a
| museum just to be wowed by pretty images, since we're already
| saturated with prettier images all the time. Instead people come
| in from the outset to learn about the work as a representative of
| the social and technical conditions of its production, and as a
| statement in a centuries-long conversation among different
| artists. The pleasure of the experience comes from learning about
| and interpreting it, not passively admiring it.
| o_m wrote:
| Another type of "self censorship" is trying to make China happy
| by not talking about anything they think is controversial,
| because it such a huge market.
| blfr wrote:
| _There are more good films than ever being made now - including
| comedies_
|
| Could you give a few examples?
| Damogran6 wrote:
| Movies are a short profit item, Studios need to keep making them
| to stay relevant, Movies are 'profitable' that aren't good.
|
| How many zombie movies can you possibly make and still keep the
| quality up? (Have you looked at what's on page 5 of the Netflix
| Sci-Fi category? The Effects are convincing, the movies aren't
| good.)
| probably_wrong wrote:
| > _Another argument you could advance is that TV and Film have
| generally been moving away from comedy as a genre_
|
| I noticed this for movies and it makes me sad. I asked people
| around me what's the latest _funny_ , full-on comedy they've
| seen, and I think the newest one would be "Tropic Thunder" which
| is 13 years old.
|
| There are still a couple around, but I can't think of an
| equivalent of "Airplane!" or "Blazing Saddles" for the current
| generation. The closest one is probably half of "Zoolander", and
| even that one is almost old enough to drink.
| clydethefrog wrote:
| 21 Jump Street, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, Game Night,
| This Is the End are big mainstream comedies that pop up in my
| mind. If you go a bit broader, What We Do in the Shadows and
| The Death of Stalin [mockumentary] and The Nice Guys [buddy cop
| comedy].
| kenjackson wrote:
| I really liked The Good Boys. It is probably considered low
| brow and sophomoric, but I laughed a lot.
| [deleted]
| thehappypm wrote:
| Forgetting Sarah Marshall
| Otek wrote:
| "Passive Media Consumption is Fundamentally Bad"
|
| This sounds like the worst empty slogan. Similar to those thrown
| around by all sorts of life coaches.
|
| The author gives no definition of 'passive' entertainment.
| Therefore, a few supporting questions: Is playing games passive
| or not? If I stomp my foot to music is it no longer passive? Is
| reading a book passive?
|
| Huge arrogance, by the way: "consumption of any media - film or
| television [...](means) to be filled with other people's mediocre
| thoughts and games".
|
| For me, movies, games, books or music are an extension of my
| mediocre thoughts. They give a glimpse of how other people feel
| or see similar situations. They show them from a different
| perspective.
|
| If the author thinks he has already seen all the perspectives of
| the world then I am purely sorry.
| ardit33 wrote:
| Movies in the 90s and early 2000's were much better than the
| garbage we get today.
|
| From T2, to Jurassic Park, to the Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Pulp
| Fiction, Eyes Wide Shut, Fight Club, Cruel Intentions, Mean
| Girls, 5th Element, Independence Day, etc.. etc..
|
| Something happened after 2007-2008, perhaps it was the shift to
| digital, where filmmakers started relying more and more on
| special effects, and less on good acting and storytelling.
|
| The first Iron Man and Avengers were great, but then the formula
| got very repetitive. None of the DC movies were good, Fast and
| the Furious are the same story on repeat, both comedies and
| romantic movies became dumber/more simplistic etc.. etc..
|
| Movies became more like a circus show of forgettable digital
| effects and less about a good story that teaches something or
| leaves an impression.
|
| I think streaming might be part of the problem (just lots of
| churn of a large quantity of low quality movies), but also the
| box industry started revolving too much around few large
| franchises, and everything else became a low budget niche.
|
| I think there were still few good movies (Interstellar, Gone
| Girl, Midsommar, and Parasite), but still much fewer than the
| previous generation (91-2007), which I think it was a golden time
| for the movies.
| jl6 wrote:
| In the 2000s-ish I started to think music was in decline and
| could never again rival the music of the late 20th century.
|
| But then I thought maybe I was just getting older, and maybe
| the kids all loved new 2000s music.
|
| But then after 2010-ish, it was like music came back, and is
| now great again, and it turns out I wasn't just getting older -
| music really did go through a creative wasteland in the 2000s.
|
| Naturally, these are very broad strokes, and there are
| exceptions.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Hmmm.... I guess it is when you grew up? I thought the 70's
| were king for U.S. filmmakers. And 70's sci-fi was some of the
| best. Until "Star Wars" came along and killed it.
|
| I loved "Star Wars" when it came out, was blown away. But in
| hindsight I am sad to see it was marked the end of 70's sci-fi.
|
| And then "Raiders of the Lost Ark", which I loved, was more or
| less the modern blueprint for all the crap that has come out
| since. It represents a storyboard approach to the
| screenplay/film: basically action sequences tied together with
| a thin thread of plot.
|
| The various "Pirates of the Caribbean" are classic examples of
| the rot that followed as are every superhero film, every "Fast
| and Furious" film, "Transformers", etc.
|
| I don't have the cycles to spend on all the "streamed content"
| that HBO, Netflix, etc. are cranking out now so I can't comment
| on whether "TV" is better these days.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| The original Pirates of the Caribbean was a superb work of
| its genre with classic acting, humor, and subtle
| characterization that you do not give it credit for.
|
| https://youtu.be/zhdBNVY55oM
|
| As far as claiming "every superhero film" - that's a tall
| order. While one can say most MCU (and perhaps DCEU films)
| share a certain level of formulaic quality that make them
| easy to reduce and denounce, there are always outliers.
| Consider the neo-Western greatness of _Logan_. The
| contemplative complexity of _Unbreakable_. I didn't even
| mention the late Heath Ledger's performance in _The Dark
| Knight_.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I've tried to watch all the "no this isn't like other
| superhero movies" super hero movies and have been
| disappointed in all of them.
|
| I was never into superhero comic books though so perhaps
| it's just my lack of taste.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| You're focusing on a very specific niche. Sci-fi and
| adventure were rarely the interest of good film makers, so
| few sci-fi or adventure films were made.
|
| But that does not reflect on the larger film industry of the
| 80s and 90s, which was producing many more incredible movies
| which stood the test of time. 1999 alone gave us Fight Club,
| The Talented Mr Ripley, Being John Malkovich, American
| Beauty, The Iron Giant, Eyes Wide Shut, The Matrix, The Sixth
| Sense, The Green Mile.
|
| There has always been a lot of schlock cinema being produced,
| but right now it is dominating much more than in the last few
| decades.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I was focusing on sci-fi as more of an example. In all
| other areas of cinema though you had a kind of second "New
| Wave" in the 70's with films like "Chinatown", "The
| Godfather" -- throw in Wood Allen's films.... My only gripe
| is how out of control the violence could be in that decade
| of filmmaking.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I don't think digital itself is the problem. Rather, much like
| the music industry, the knowledge of how to monetize most
| efficiently has killed creativity to a great extent in
| mainstream culture. You can make a hundred Eyes Wide Shuts and
| you wouldn't get the profit of The Avengers.
|
| I'd also note that a passion for film has been culled out of
| the Hollywood management class almost entirely. They are
| running corporations, not film studios, unlike some older
| generations. Not to say that profit wasn't an important
| motivator ever since film began, but it was never the sole
| reason for funding movies across the industry like it is today.
|
| It's also very sad that taste in movies will be fundamentally
| altered by this period. Taste for complex movies needs to be
| formed - in a world of Marvel movies, it's very hard to even
| understand what is good about a film like A Clockwork Orange or
| Birdman.
| ironman1478 wrote:
| I think if you only look at the biggest budget or most
| advertised movies you are right. But there are lots of great
| indie or lower budget, but not 'low budget's movies coming out.
| It's just hard to find these movies because they are drowned
| out by the noise of all the other ones. People said the same
| about music, but really I think things like discover weekly
| from Spotify and just general YouTube recommendations have
| proven that statement totally false and it's just people didn't
| have a way of finding anything.
|
| Also, if you go back and watch some (not all) of those 90s
| movies some are pretty meh. Independence Day really stands out
| as being really boring and if anything the template for all the
| action movies you dislike. It has a very similar, shallow feel
| to it.
| onelastjob wrote:
| What happened around 2006 is streaming. This caused DVD sales
| to tank, which had a massive effect on the film industry's
| bottom line. DVD sales were a money printer and that cash
| allowed studios to take more risk. Once DVD sales started
| tanking the indie film divisions of major studios (like Fox
| Searchlight) started to die, which is a big reason that films
| became less interesting. Also, the shift to making money mostly
| off the box office rather than DVDs meant that a movie needed
| to make more money in its opening weekend, which meant needing
| to make tent pole movies that appealed to all ages and
| international markets. Imagine how hard it is to write a movie
| for all ages in all countries.
| silvestrov wrote:
| DVD sales fell off a clif in 2006-2010.
|
| But _streaming did not get any significant market share
| before ~2014._
|
| DVD was replaced by "non-consumption". My guess is that blue-
| ray should have been the replacement, but they were priced
| too high, so consumers dropped buying movies for a while.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/08/the-death-of-the-dvd-why-
| sal...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Social media networks and smart phones came around at that
| time, and in conjunction with increasing popularity of
| video games probably destroyed a lot of demand for video
| content.
|
| There was simply a lot more choice for how one can spend
| time, and a ton of it at a higher cost to enjoyment ratio
| than movie tickets or DVD or Blu Ray.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Oops, I meant to write "a ton of it at a lower cost to
| enjoyment ratio".
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > What happened around 2006 is streaming.
|
| I think you mean large-scale, mass acceptance of piracy.
| Streaming took a while longer to take off in big numbers.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > From T2, to Jurassic Park, to the Matrix, Lord of the Rings,
| Pulp Fiction, Eyes Wide Shut, Fight Club, Cruel Intentions,
| Mean Girls, 5th Element, Independence Day, etc.. etc..
|
| Really? ID4 is fun in the manner of that a formulaic, paint-by-
| numbers, checklist action-adventure can be, but there's non
| shortage of equally well-done iterations of that model today.
| (And ID4 wasn't a groundbreaking example others since arw
| copying, it was rote, predictable, and formulaic for its time.)
|
| I think a lot of this is just the same kind of nostalgia you
| see in every generation.
| handrous wrote:
| I do think something changed with cheap, ubiquitous CG,
| including how capable modern action heroes are, which is
| _perfectly_ capable, because nothing 's actually happening
| and there are no limits. Film used to be larger than life,
| obviously, but now even movies with a "realistic" setting are
| full-on fantasy.
|
| Compare the action in Bullitt to something like a later entry
| in the Fast and the Furious franchise, for example. Imagine
| an already fairly intense and over-the-top scene like Ripley
| fighting the alien queen in the loader-mech--there'd just be
| _so much more_ in a modern movie. They 'd smash between
| rooms, swing from the ceiling, shit would be exploding
| everywhere but Our Hero would always not quite get hurt by
| it. Indiana Jones 1-3? Way too tame, needs more stuff flying
| all over the screen and expert-level acrobatic stunts by the
| hero.
|
| I haven't watched the Independence Day sequel, but I bet a
| higher percentage of its runtime was special-effects-heavy
| action, because that's so cheap now. You can even fill in
| more of that to cut down on your shooting schedule (less time
| that the actors are on screen).
|
| Action in high-budget modern films is more perfect and
| precise--the hero must _always_ be narrowly avoiding
| something--and the heroes tend to be even less relatable than
| before, and the balance of talking to action has shifted
| toward action. That may not be worse, but it is _different_ ,
| and noticing that difference or preferring one over the other
| need not be pure nostalgia.
| dsego wrote:
| I've seen some really fun or thought provoking movies recently:
| Parasite, El Hoyo (The Platform), Quo Vadis, Aida?, 200 Meters,
| Luzzu, El robo del siglo (The Heist of the Century). Just don't
| watch the mind-numbing crap that hollywood churns out every year.
| Truth be told, I've enjoyed some excellent american movies as
| well, like "Knives Out", "Us" or "Get Out".
| grae_QED wrote:
| What a well written blog post. I couldn't agree more. I've almost
| entirely given up on movies as form of entertainment. Just like
| the author of the post notes, just about every new movie that
| comes out is predictable and boring.
|
| I've been trying to transition to reading more literature for
| entertainment just because the variety of stories are a lot more
| diverse and interesting.
| jk7tarYZAQNpTQa wrote:
| > just about every new movie that comes out is predictable and
| boring.
|
| Complaining about the lack of good new "x" (be it movies,
| music, books, etc.) is more a reflection of the complainer than
| of reality. Assuming you live in the US, around 800 new movies
| are released every year in theaters alone. If we include movies
| that go directly to streaming, and international movies that
| don't release in the US due to distribution rights issues (or
| just lack of interest), we are well in the thousands.
|
| So, unless you did watch those 800 movies, you lack the
| authority and grasp on reality to claim "just about every new
| movie that comes out is predictable and boring". Again, the
| sentence is a reflection of your tastes and habits of media
| consumption (and of course of those of the general society in
| which you live), not of reality. No offense intended.
|
| The miniaturization and democratization of technology has made
| extremely affordable and easy the creation of new movies and
| music. There are lots of new garbage, of course, but just about
| anyone in a Western country can create a masterpiece. The prime
| example is Kevin Smith financing Clerks with his credit card.
| MikeLumos wrote:
| > Passive Media Consumption is Fundamentally Bad.
|
| Sounds like the guy just overdid it. Like anything else,
| movies/books/games can be enjoyed in a healthy way, or can turn
| into an addiction. When I consume too much, it makes me feel
| pointless and hate myself. When I consume from time to time, in a
| limited and healthy amount (like a weekly episode of Rick and
| Morty or Dimension 20) - it makes me happy and adds to my life.
|
| When the consumption tunrs into an addiction, you keep seeking
| the joy you felt when you watched your first few great
| movies/episodes, and then you run out and start scraping the
| bottom of the barrel, naturally the quality of the available
| entertainment declines, so you end up feeling like the author
| does.
|
| Just take a break, watch fewer movies, new amazing ones come out
| all the time, now more than ever, just not as often as once per
| day. Find a healthy balance between consuming and creating, and
| you'll enjoy both again.
| r_c_a_d wrote:
| I agree. Also, I used to write movie reviews and found myself
| thinking about what I was going to write during each movie.
| Stop writing reviews of all the movies you watch. Just watch.
| Then, if you feel you really want to write a review, watch the
| movie again and compose your review. You will probably enjoy
| those first viewings a lot more; I did.
| npteljes wrote:
| >So what is one to do?
|
| Find another hobby! The world is so vast it makes ones head hurt.
| clydethefrog wrote:
| Reading between the lines it seems the writer has mainly watched
| American movies that are easily accessible. I recommend instead
| of scrolling through the Amazon catalogue like he described, he
| might want to see if there is a local film festival that screens
| world cinema. Cinema from other parts of the world for me often
| leads to great new perspectives and insights. Outside of
| Hollywood there is plenty of auteurs and refreshing cinema
| happening. Or take a deep dive into the best of the best without
| the American lens with lists like the TSPDT.
|
| https://www.theyshootpictures.com/
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| > the writer has mainly watched American movies that are easily
| accessible.
|
| I highly recommend Scandinavian crime drama's they are under
| rated https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-OOpZitfd0
|
| the work of Jurgen Haabermaster is also outstanding for all
| those who want to break out of the bland diet Hollywood serves:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAlxNNvfvJs
|
| on a serious note I found some fantastic serials that are not
| so well known and which I will remember for a long time (e.g.
| Indian "Sacred Games", Italian "Gomorrha" or "Suburra", British
| "Small Axe", USA "Snowfall", German "Dogs of Berlin" or "Dark",
| French "The Bureau"). In fact there wasn't a single show in the
| last 2 years where I felt I ended up wasting my time or were
| forced to bail out after S01E02 because it didn't resonate. The
| alternative to great serials is only a good book and from my
| pov a movie can never give the same depth as a good serial.
| kawsper wrote:
| I'm so happy to see a Mighty Boosh reference here, one of the
| best shows ever created!
| [deleted]
| samastur wrote:
| That was exactly my reading. I watched 75 films so far this
| year, most of them obscure at least in a sense that I had to
| make an effort to get them and while not all of them were
| great, a lot of them were interesting and that's after four
| decades of watching movies and seeing surely more thousands of
| them. I am sure I would feel similar to the article's author if
| I limited my choice only to what streaming services offer.
| ehnto wrote:
| I think interesting and competent is what you might strive
| for after you've consumed enough of a type of media. You see
| it in music and video games too. Eventually the big hits and
| blockbuster games are all pretty boring, if you're an engaged
| consumer of the medium, you'll start looking for more novel
| ways to be interested, and start appreciating competency more
| than you used to.
| drenvuk wrote:
| Maybe? I'm willing to bet that after 810+ movies he'll have
| seen all of the tropes and techniques trotted out by those
| outside of Hollywood. How many ways can you really tell a
| compelling story or possibly show an artistic experience?
| robtherobber wrote:
| 1770 films so far and as a European I'm more in awe with
| early Iranian cinema than ever. Definitely a world away from
| Hollywood, in the best possible sense.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Any film recommendations for someone new to the genre?
| jjgreen wrote:
| Abbas Kiarostami - Where Is the Friend's Home?
| TchoBeer wrote:
| >How many ways can you really tell a compelling story or
| possibly show an artistic experience?
|
| Is this a joke? Do you actually think american film captures
| every single possible artistic experience?
| drenvuk wrote:
| If I'm wrong list some movies, please. I will watch them.
| I've seen enough foreign films to see many of the
| techniques used between films and between directors.
| miltondts wrote:
| Recently I watched One cut of the dead. One of the few
| comedies that surprised me in the last ~10 years.
| kijin wrote:
| As long as you're not overly obsessed with identifying every
| variation of a cliche, there's plenty to enjoy.
|
| The stories will have different backdrops, and they can
| proceed in ways that foreigners might find quite unexpected.
| Different cultures have different assumptions about how to
| make a love story truly romantic, what's funny or weird, or
| what counts as a faux pas that eventually dooms the
| protagonist. Even the same trope can be executed very
| differently because of these factors.
|
| The cinematography will be different. The music will be
| different -- Bollywood BGM feels very different from K-Pop.
| The fact that you'll be reading subtitles all the time will
| certainly make for a fresh experience, especially when you're
| listening to something like Japanese where the sentence
| structure makes it difficult to translate the timing of the
| punchline into English. Action sequences will emphasize
| different things, often because of budget or location
| constraints, but sometimes simply because there was a local
| fad for something. There will be references to local
| traditions, literature, and historic events that make really
| interesting rabbit holes to follow.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| I think so, too. Although I'm almost lost for cinema nowadays
| because of a lack of time (I write novels in most of my spare
| time), my girlfriend still goes to the cinemas very often and I
| know from her that I'm missing several outstanding movies every
| month. There are also good US productions every year.
|
| What the author perhaps means is the decline of US _action
| movies_. They have become faster and dumber over the years and
| arguably are mostly unwatchable by now, at least in comparison
| to action movies from the 1970s. Why have they become so bad? I
| used to think it 's just because they are cut too fast and 30
| minutes of unnecessary action is added at the end, but now I
| believe the scripts have also become worse. It would be
| interesting to hear from an insider like a script writer what
| has changed.
| riverlong wrote:
| Author here -- No, I have never been a particular fan of
| action movies. I find them pretty boring; they're perhaps the
| worst offenders in the "all movies are the same" category.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| My family saw the Star Wars that came out in 2016 for
| Christmas. I was shocked to find myself bored out of my
| skull. I thought, "How can Star Wars be so popular among my
| friends if I hate it?" A year later I told the story to
| someone and they helped me realize that it's not Star Wars in
| particular, it's action movies in general that I hate.
|
| They can be fun in 10-minute snippets, though. And pretty.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| To be fair, the latest Star Wars trilogy shat out by Disney
| is crap compared to the masterpiece that was the original.
|
| The original trilogy had a great cast of charismatic actors
| with chemistry and a great story that kept you invested in
| the characters, while the latest one hasn't got any of
| those and is just cashing in on the nostalgia of the
| original.
| CharlesW wrote:
| Also, you're not 12. My kids were enthralled by the
| recent movies (yes, even _Solo_ ) in a way that you and I
| can no longer be.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| That is true. Also? The Star Wars universe at the time
| felt open & surprising, like anything could happen. By
| the end of the newest prequels, it felt like the movies
| were highly constrained by everyone's expectations. They
| were Marvel-ified by Abrams, and then they handed over
| the franchise to a more controversial film maker who
| couldn't quite pull it off either, and then you had an
| impossible situation that Abrams made the best he could
| of, but was ultimately a mess.
|
| Whatever. Nowadays, I will watch scifi movies simply for
| the visual aspect, and there were some nice scenes in the
| new trilogy. But the surprise and novelty of the original
| trilogy could never really be satisfied, in part because
| I'm not 12. :)
| gurkendoktor wrote:
| I can only offer counter-anecdata, but whenever I see a
| kid wearing Star Wars merchandise, it is from the
| original trilogy. I think the last trilogy will have even
| less cultural impact than episodes 1-3.
| kawsper wrote:
| I found Rogue One to be very interesting, but the newer
| episodes or Solo couldn't keep me interested.
| ghaff wrote:
| I could live very well with a Star Wars universe
| consisting of the original trilogy plus Rogue One. The
| sequels had their moments but not enough of them.
| cout wrote:
| The original trilogy had mediocre acting but had one-liners
| that were on par with Evil Dead. I think that's what made
| it a cult classic.
|
| None of the other movies will be remembered for their one-
| liners, but from what I can tell that's not what Disney is
| trying to do anyway. They're selling characters, not
| movies.
| philwelch wrote:
| A lot of it comes down to legible editing and camerawork. If
| you have a big name actor who can't do the action that well,
| you can use shakycam and fast cuts to obscure that. That
| specific trend is probably on its way out thanks to John
| Wick, though.
| antihipocrat wrote:
| When I first witnessed Fury Road I thought George Miller had
| single handedly ushered in a new renaissance for action
| movies.
|
| Unfortunately no other directors have carried baton forward,
| and now I'm just waiting for the sequel..
| bsenftner wrote:
| Interesting. I feel Fury Road is a shining example of zero
| storyline shite, and George Miller to be an over rated
| hack.
| antihipocrat wrote:
| Are there any recent action movies that you thought were
| shining examples of the genre? If so, what about them did
| you like?
| Supermancho wrote:
| My best friend and I watch hundreds of movies per year
| (about 1 every day) and we thought Fury Road was horrid
| as well. By contrast, Thunderdome, was a very smart film,
| as far as hollywood movies go.
| mysticllama wrote:
| fury road is a masterpiece. 0 exposition or intro, just
| drops you right in to non-stop madness. might be my
| favorite movie now
| dekervin wrote:
| Watching fury road is like listening to a classical
| symphony. A masterpiece in composiing and weaving together
| sequences.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Maybe I'm just not enough of a film connoisseur but I just
| watched Fury Road last night and thought it was mediocre.
| Sure the action was okay and it was cool how you just
| started with the action but the storyline seemed
| superficial at best and I felt like the climax came way too
| late in the film.
| handrous wrote:
| A lot of what's good about the film's wrapped up in
| technical film-making appreciation. The remarkable
| quality of the action-storytelling, how "legible" the
| action is, the quality of both those things despite the
| by-modern-standards limited use of CG, how good the
| practical effects themselves are, the costuming and set-
| building and world-realization stuff, simple efficiency
| and competence at "set-up, pay-off" screenwriting (less
| common than it should be, especially in flashy action
| movies), that kind of thing.
|
| [EDIT] Basically, I think there are three general viewer-
| categories for the film, here presented as their
| reactions:
|
| 1) "It had lots of action. Seemed like normal action in
| an action movie, I guess. Hated the story and characters.
| Movie sucked overall, don't get why people like it."
|
| 2) "The action was notably good. I can't explain why, but
| it was definitely good. Film overall was just OK. Liked
| it fine, some stuff about it was neat, but don't get why
| some people are raving about it."
|
| 3) "Oh my god I'm going to need several days and pages of
| notes to unpack everything that was great about the
| action and storytelling, and especially the two of those
| together, in that movie. There's so much to cover. I
| can't wait to be able to watch it at home so I can
| analyze the editing more closely, that's going to be
| great. A+."
| stnmtn wrote:
| Agreed 100%, perhaps the most impressive thing about the
| movie is how economical it is with storytelling and
| worldbuilding. Think about the fact that it _is_ largely
| just fantastic action set pieces and incredible visuals.
| The consider how much you understand the world and
| characters within it. A lesser movie would have a
| 10-minute exposition dialog scene early on, telling you
| in excrutiating detail exactly what Immortan Joe is doing
| and why he is bad. Fury Road is the absolute pinnacle of
| "Show, don't tell" for me.
| seb1204 wrote:
| I agree. Even with Netflix I find myself looking for British,
| Australian or French productions I. Film and series as they
| seem fresh, less repetitive and deeper in character than recent
| American productions.
| res0nat0r wrote:
| Even easier: Criterion Channel. $10/month with the best movies
| from all over the world all the time.
|
| The current Neo-Noir and Wong Kar-Wai collections are worth at
| least quadruple that price out of the gate.
|
| https://www.criterionchannel.com/videos/neonoir-intro
|
| https://www.criterionchannel.com/world-of-wong-kar-wai
| bsenftner wrote:
| Back in '90 I acquired a laser disc player. The conventional
| wisdom of the moment was laser discs were on their way out,
| and people were selling and giving away laser disc
| collections for cheap. I bought the entire Criterion
| Collection, what it was at the time. Something like 5 crates
| of discs, all classic black and white films. I watched most
| of them, but many do not hold up and feel like experiments
| today. I don't know where they are now - in a box somewhere
| in long term storage.
| res0nat0r wrote:
| Wow, I bet you could get some seriously good money for
| those if they are in decent shape. There is a massive retro
| video resurgence going on now, so folks paying big money
| for rare VHS tapes, I'm sure the Laserdisc market is just
| the same too.
| ghaff wrote:
| I have a big pile of Laserdiscs too. I couldn't imagine
| going to the trouble of selling them individually though.
| tunap wrote:
| For your consideration, the LaserDisk DataBase:
|
| https://www.lddb.com/
| clydethefrog wrote:
| Unfortunately still not legally accessible outside the US.
| [Although I managed to get trial access with a VPN, but then
| I did not work anyway with a laptop running linux connected
| to TV with HDMI due to a certain DRM protection]
|
| I have been enjoying MUBI a lot, the European alternative to
| Criterion Channel. Especially since they added a fixed
| catalogue aside from their new movie a day model. They also
| usually highlight three great reviews as a companion reading
| to the movie plus the user base is delightfully snobby, with
| no low effort jokes like you will see on Letterboxd.
|
| They also do great retrospectives, currently Kelly Reichardt
| and Christian Petzold.
| Popegaf wrote:
| I don't understand why sites like Netflix or MUBI do not
| allow an easy search or easy browsing of their ENTIRE
| catalog by certain criteria (country, length, rating,
| budget, etc.) Pirates do an incredibly better job at it and
| it amazes me every time.
| reciprocity wrote:
| Netflix makes their user interface terrible to search.
| This is by design: when things get pulled due to
| licensing or whatever other arrangements are made with
| studios or their parent companies, users are all none the
| wiser.
|
| The reason why P2P will reign supreme is because it cuts
| through the bullshit of backwards business restrictions
| and empowers people to watch content on whatever device
| they want, when they want, and how they want. Netflix
| has, what, 30,000 titles available? Compared to the
| 400,000 titles at your nearest P2P based source.
| mitjak wrote:
| Criterion is available in Canada...
| joshschreuder wrote:
| I found Criterion to be quite easy to VPN actually compared
| to some other services. You have to use a VPN to signup,
| but watching the movies doesn't require it which is nice.
| And they don't have any issues accepting international
| payments either.
|
| (For reference, this was about 6 months ago, and I live in
| Australia)
| odiroot wrote:
| I can really recommend Wong Kar-Wai. I may have rewatched
| some of his movies four or five times.
|
| Chungking Express is such a beautiful movie. You can also
| take a look there at a bit less developed and less modern
| Hong Kong.
| mabub24 wrote:
| Wong Kar-Wai's _In the Mood for Love_ is one of the most
| beautiful movies ever made and, rightly, considered one of
| the greatest movies made in the modern era.
| psychomugs wrote:
| I drunkenly and blindly bought the Criterion Blu-ray for
| just a little south of a Benjamin and it was totally worth
| it, and the price for the originals began climbing after
| the release of the revised version included in the box set.
| It's my favorite from WKW's oeuvre; it has the same feeling
| as Lost in Translation which is another one of my favorite
| films.
|
| As I grow older, I realize that my interests have shifted
| from big explosion-a-minute blockbusters towards simple
| movies of people doing, essentially, nothing.
| rednerrus wrote:
| Kanopy gives you five movies a month for free with a library
| card and has a similar catalog.
| kdazzle wrote:
| Mubi is also excellent
| ajmurmann wrote:
| +1 Almost every memorable movie I've watched in the last
| 2-3 years was on Mubi
| handrous wrote:
| Kanopy. Free with many library cards. Views are rate-limited
| per month, which limit I think may vary by library system,
| but still, you can watch at least a movie or two a week for
| free if you're part of a participating system. Some major,
| recent films, lots of mid-tier non-blockbusters and the kind
| of thing that plays the film festival circuit. _Tons_ of
| (often political) documentaries, if you 're into that. Damn
| good, for free, and you can ignore the documentaries and just
| focus on the movies and still have loads of content. Only
| weakness is that, oddly, it's awful for kids' content.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| I agree.
|
| I sometimes wonder if we will ever have the quality of films
| Hollywood made in the 60's, and 70's.
|
| (On technical note, I'm waiting for the day dubbing is
| perfected. I will watch a good subtitled movie, but prefer not
| to.)
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| This might just be my problem, but I really hate subtitles. It
| takes me out of the movie and in dialog heavy movies completely
| pushes out the visuals.
| vincentmarle wrote:
| I'm the opposite, I can't stand watching TV or movies without
| subtitles because I want to know exactly what is being said
| at all times, and don't want to miss part of the story
| because I couldn't hear a couple of words. But, I'm also
| originally from Europe, so am quite used to it.
| shrikant wrote:
| I agree, I _love_ subtitles, and prefer watching everything
| with (English) subtitles, even films /TV shows in English.
| Mainly because of the same reason as you, and just to add,
| I also watch a lot of stuff that has strong regional UK
| accents. Sometimes, it's not just the accent, but the
| regional usage of very specific slang that is simply just
| incomprehensible because I'm not familiar with the word's
| usage in that manner and can't infer from context, even if
| the words themselves are in my vocabulary. (A recent
| example that comes to mind is Derry Girls...)
|
| But I also wonder if there's something related to how
| people read that factors into this aversion to subtitles?
|
| For me, subtitles are almost invisible and I spend zero-to-
| negligible effort "actively reading" them -- they just sort
| of get absorbed by my brain while I'm watching what's on
| screen. So it doesn't really negatively affect my enjoyment
| or engagement with the show/film at all.
|
| I think maybe the folks that struggle with or dislike
| subtitles view the act of "reading" subtitles as a mental
| context switch that interferes with the parallel act of
| watching and listening.
| mercora wrote:
| its often not at all exactly as said... also you might miss
| a lot of the performance if you are not able to see how
| things are expressed...
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| Watching English show with English subtitles is different,
| because I can just ignore the text (this is actually how I
| learned to watch movies since all movies in movie theaters
| here are subtitled so I just listened for the English words
| and watched the movie).
|
| Sometimes I do watch some TV shows with subtitles on
| (English dub & sub) if they have very inconsistent audio
| equalization i.e. during some scenes music is super loud
| and then they dip into really quiet dialog so I don't miss
| the beginning part.
| jasonladuke0311 wrote:
| I have a lot of trouble with it too, though Parasite was very
| watchable (thankfully, as it is a fantastic movie).
| the_af wrote:
| I really hate dubbing and love hearing the actors talk in
| their native language even when I don't understand it. I'm
| _extremely fast_ at reading subtitles too, so that 's never a
| problem for me.
|
| I never understood those countries, like Spain, which make
| dubbing some sort of national pride. No, Spaniards: dubbing
| sucks, you just don't know any better ;)
| 988747 wrote:
| There are worse things than dubbing... In Polish TV all
| movie dialogs are read by a single person, typically male.
| I guess they came up with this horrible idea during
| communism, because dubbing was too expensive, and now we're
| stuck with it.
|
| In cinemas however, movies typically have subtitles.
| the_af wrote:
| Terrible! I heard this single male voice also "explains"
| the jokes of comedies like the Simpsons, is it true?
| 988747 wrote:
| No, I've never seen this. Except maybe in rare cases when
| the joke is really idiomatic and the translator screwed
| up the job by explaining joke rather than translating it.
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| I don't like dubs either. Which is why I mostly watch
| American movies. I can just listen to the dialog. I have
| watched some Japanese and Korean content on Netflix. I
| tried to watch it with subs at first, but I gave up pretty
| fast since when I want to watch a movie/show I want to
| watch it not read it. I have backlog of books for reading,
| but even then I am mostly reading books in English.
| the_af wrote:
| Agreed, of course with English (which is a learned
| language for me) it's way easier since I don't need to
| read the subtitles.
|
| But even with other foreign languages I enjoy watching
| with subtitles. For starters, you learn what other
| languages sound like. Plus, let's face it, most dubs are
| terrible quality. And finally, it's surprising but you
| start picking up the language! I've never studied
| Japanese but I started picking up words and inflections
| just from watching Japanese movies (and the same happens
| with Korean, Chinese, etc).
| dougmwne wrote:
| Yeah, that is my impression as well. Mass market film is
| extremely narrow by definition, and as Hollywood gets more
| globalized, the themes need to be even more narrow to be widely
| relatable. But video production costs have plummeted. You could
| make an incredible and quite experimental film with an iPhone
| and and a few freelance actors. I think the real problem is our
| discovery "algorithms" are winner takes all.
| [deleted]
| grfn wrote:
| I feel like just his way of finding and watching movies is not
| optimal? If I would limit myself to Amazon Prime/Netflix offering
| and recommendation I would probably not enjoy them as well.
|
| The way to go is just to explore different artistic directions
| and rabbit holes that are interesting to you, regardless of
| country and time. You can dive into filipino arthouse movies,
| some cozy european cinema, korean thrillers, etc. They would all
| require different level of "engagement" in a sense of paying
| attention and thinking, and the story or plot of the movie is
| often hard to define or not it is not that important at all.
| vmception wrote:
| Streaming services _are_ the bottom of the barrel, they
| greenlight everything and every metric they use to suggest or
| reveal "whats good" is a lie that diverges from a century of what
| people expect. Well funded studios diverging from what
| established Hollywood was greenlighting is interesting but the
| potential has so far been squandered.
|
| Discovery is bad. This is a different topic than this blog.
|
| Almost everything the author wrote was not a strong truth or
| reason.
|
| "Shock Comedy" not being created has nothing to do with people's
| sensitivities. It is just the same symptom you already noticed,
| movie theaters are for Marvel right now. So to make a separate
| standard for the lack of shock comedies is just latching on to
| unquantified assumptions that paranoid people are saying about
| cancel culture.
|
| I hope they find a way to branch out, I have been pleasantly
| surprised at film festivals.
| watwut wrote:
| > is a lie that diverges from a century of what people expect.
| Well funded studios diverging from what established Hollywood
| was greenlighting is interesting
|
| It was not so much as century of what people expect as
| increasing predictability ans repetitiveness of Hollywood
| movies.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| The post resonated a lot with me. You might be right that we're
| looking in the wrong place -- but confoundingly, at this point
| I don't even want to.
|
| It's hard to know what I'm giving up by not looking for good
| movies. My imagination tends to light on the many bad movies
| I've seen, not the few moments of awe or other positive
| emotions. But it's easy to know what I gain -- something like
| four hours a week! That's so much time!
| vmception wrote:
| I experience the same and my solutions are to follow the
| works of specific directors and actors, as well as look
| forward to attending film festivals again.
| Sebguer wrote:
| The self-censorship point is completely ridiculous, and borders
| on complaining about "cancel culture'. It literally mentions
| Superbad as an example of a film that can't be made today,
| entirely ignoring that it got a spiritual successor two years ago
| in Booksmart, which was amazingly funny without punching down.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Agree. Something like "Borat" could totally be made today. I'm
| not sure what they are on about.
| TylerGlaiel wrote:
| yeah, they literally made a borat sequel last year. Eric
| Andre also released a very borat-inspired movie recently that
| was also great. its a dumb point
| OhSoHumble wrote:
| I'm neither for or against the author's argument. However,
| he addresses the fact that a Borat sequel was made by
| saying that it succeeded because the director is already
| successful and it's a sequel to an already successful
| comedy.
|
| I don't think the author's argument is that comedies _can
| 't_ be made but more that we're seeing less of them because
| there is more cultural friction today and that prevents
| aspiring directors from branching out.
| sellyme wrote:
| > I don't think the author's argument is that comedies
| _can 't_ be made
|
| They literally say "Borat could not be made today".
| Trying to justify that in a footnote has the same energy
| as advertising "Our product cures cancer*" and then
| having "*no it doesn't" on the back of the box. It's just
| an egregiously false statement.
|
| Maybe that wasn't their argument - they do emphasise the
| importance of being an established director, and that's a
| fair thing to assess. But when someone finds themselves
| having to add a footnote saying "When I said this
| couldn't be made today, I was ignoring that it was", that
| should probably be a hint that the argument actually
| being presented is pretty poor.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| My take is that comedies don't play in China. They're
| making movies that they can package up for a world
| market. Comedies are local.
| TylerGlaiel wrote:
| ya and I addressed that by also mentioning the eric andre
| movie, which has a lot of the same energy as Borat did
| Arainach wrote:
| Agreed. One of the canonical versions of this meme is "you
| couldn't make Blazing Saddles today", which is utter nonsense:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzMFoNZeZm0
| smsm42 wrote:
| Looks like the author of the video misses the point by about
| a mile, taking it in the most literal sense possible. His
| argument is basically "yes, you couldn't make Blazing Saddles
| today because it was playing off the contemporary popularity
| of Western and its tropes, and since that is long gone,
| repeating it in a literal sense, as a Western parody, would
| be a no go now, because nobody cares anymore about Westerns".
| Which as I said, misses the point about a mile - the point is
| not about recreating the same movie, it's about making _the
| same kind_ of movie - the movie pushing the boundaries and
| being as offensive as possible on purpose, the movie
| highlighting the hot topics not by solemnly lecturing the
| viewer, but by lampooning the hell out of it. The refutation
| of this point would be to provide an example of current
| irreverent offense-to-11 lampooning of current tropes-de-
| jour. I don 't know - Marvel movies? Woke diversity-inclusion
| drama? Something else?
|
| So the author is right - nobody wants to literally make the
| same movie today, because the same movie is already have been
| made! It's however a prime example of being right on
| technicality and completely wrong on substance - the point is
| not to make a copy of Blazing Saddles, the point is making
| that kind of irreverent and boundless satire, which _is_
| appropriate in all times and all societies - but I can 't see
| how Woke Hollywood could ever make something like that.
|
| Another argument is "but we don't submit to _every_ woke
| demand and not _everybody_ is getting cancelled " - of course
| not! If Hollywood tried to submit to _every_ woke demand and
| avoid _every_ complaint from twitter mob, no movie would be
| ever made at all. Of course, there 's a lot of complaints
| that are ignored. That doesn't exclude the fact that there
| are clear boundaries where Woke Hollywood would never dare to
| tread. And irreverent no-holds-barred satire of the Blazing
| Saddles mold is out of these boundaries.
|
| Next argument is "well, there are stand-up comics and they
| aren't thrown in jail". Yeah, sure, we're not there yet. But
| we also not where we were when Blazing Saddles was made.
| We're somewhere in between the one and the other. And we're
| moving away from the Blazing Saddles.
| handrous wrote:
| What, and whom, do you think BS was lampooning? I'd expect
| a true modern successor to lean pretty far toward the "woke
| diversity-inclusion drama" side of things.
| smsm42 wrote:
| BS is lampooning a lot of things - corrupt politicians,
| demagogues, racists, ignorance, religious intolerance,
| Western movie tropes, cinema tropes in general, and by
| the end it turns into a total glorious mayhem where
| everybody gets a pie in the face (in both metaphorical
| and the most literal sense).
|
| So you'd be tempted to ask - why would Woke Hollywood or
| their woke twitter mob watchdogs object to lampooning
| corrupt politicians or racists? And the answer to that is
| exactly the reason why woke cancel culture is so awful -
| because the intent does not matter. If something can be
| taken as offensive by any construction of the most
| hostile reading of it - and a hostile reading (watching)
| of Blazing Saddles surely could find a lot of
| "problematic" things within it - completely ignoring the
| intent, the context and concentrating only on the form
| and the worst possible interpretation of it that could be
| invented - then it's unacceptable and must be destroyed.
|
| That's _exactly_ the crux of the problem and the point of
| the argument about Blazing Saddles - the problem is that
| even when you agree on the premises, like racism is bad,
| corrupt politicians are bad, etc. - if you express it in
| a manner that _may_ seem to somebody, even in theory,
| "problematic", you're still the enemy.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| That's a reasonable video but I feel like it could have been
| half as long
| [deleted]
| jcims wrote:
| I'm trying to watch movies with my kids (18 and 22) just to have
| something to connect in and they have zero interest in sitting
| down to watch something that long. I don't know what to pick from
| modern ones and the classics that i can hype are old and weird to
| them.
|
| I think I/we suffer a bit from analysis paralysis with the huge
| catalogs available, are there any good communities that pick a
| movie each week or whatever that we can use to break the logjam?
| runawaybottle wrote:
| Watch only 30 minutes of the movie (possibly even only 20
| minutes). If it didn't grip all of you, pick another one.
| Discuss why the first 30 minutes sucked and why it didn't
| (concept good, pacing bad, concept terrible, acting good, etc).
|
| Don't waste time. A lot of movies suck.
| [deleted]
| jcims wrote:
| I like it! Thanks!
| Gatsky wrote:
| Sometimes I wonder if maybe there are enough movies. As in, we
| don't need to make anymore. This applies to music as well in some
| ways. Music in particular is relatively timeless, transmits well
| across history, and doesn't suffer technological obsolescence,
| which means that great music accretes over time. You can't listen
| to Beethoven and think "Not bad but it's woefully out of date."
| Old music is also remarkably accessible when you think about it,
| and one can ejoyably listen to the same music over and over
| again. Eventually there will be too much to listen to, if that is
| not the case already. At any rate, the proportion of music to
| which nobody listens is growing rapidly.
|
| Movies are a bit different, so reaching saturation point will
| take longer. They depict the world and the world changes. It
| certainly is possible to watch an old movie and find the not so
| contemporary context quite jarring. I doubt the next generation
| will enjoy 1990s American sex comedies very much. Improving
| movie-making technologies also means that new movies can have
| something unique, but this seems to have had relatively little
| impact in the last 50 years and tends to be anti-correlated with
| quality. Another point arguing against reaching the saturation
| point is that old movies do become inaccessible. I wanted to
| watch Au Hasard Balthazar [1] recently and could not find it
| anywhere.
|
| But the number of movies being made goes up all the time and the
| world isn't changing so fast anymore. Taxi Driver is nearly 50
| years old now but the setting is almost completely familiar. It
| is in no way diminished by the fact that Travis Bickle doesn't
| have an iphone. Technology is also going to improve to the point
| of democratising movie making, where a small team or an
| individual can make (and even remake!) a feature length movie
| with relative ease, without leaving their bedroom. So perhaps we
| will reach the point where there is just too much to watch for
| people with average consumption rates.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Au_Hasard_Balthazar
| blauditore wrote:
| Regarding 4., I can recommend "The Other Guys"... :)
| regus wrote:
| I used to think that movie reviewers were out of touch with the
| common man. The fact that they would give movies like
| Transformers a low score but rave about obscure boring movies
| would always annoy me.
|
| But several years ago I worked on a side project where I reviewed
| a movie every week for two years, and when it was over I became
| much more sympathetic towards movie critics.
|
| I agree with this blog post when he says that movies are
| repetitive. The same gimmicks and tropes are used over and over.
| It really does become boring and annoying to see different shades
| of the same thing again and again.
|
| This is why critics rave about the obscure weird movies that you
| never heard of. They have to sit through thousands of hours of
| generic crap and anything that is different is like a breath of
| fresh air to them.
|
| Something really exasperates this problem of generic movie making
| that wasn't touched on in the article is the soulless Hollywood
| factory system that is currently cranking out worthless junk that
| was designed by committee.
|
| Look no further than the recent Star Wars trilogy for evidence of
| this.
|
| Very rarely to we see movies that a result of a singular vision,
| directors are now just replaceable cogs that have to bend
| completely to the will of the studio or they will be replaced
| during production (like the Han Solo movie) Ok
| nixass wrote:
| Disney and Superhero movies definitely lead the spiral to the
| bottom
| geon wrote:
| > Adult comedy thrives on irreverence. Over the past decade,
| we've become touchy about what's okay to say or laugh at. Borat
| could not be made today.
|
| What a load of bs. What isn't ok anymore is making fun at the
| expense of handicapped people, minorities and the like. But that
| was never funny. Not really.
| [deleted]
| tehnub wrote:
| Roger Ebert wrote an essay [0] in 1992 reflecting on his career
| as a critic. He writes
|
| >In the past 25 years I have probably seen 10,000 movies and
| reviewed 6,000 of them. I have forgotten most of those films, I
| hope, but I remember those worth remembering, and they are all on
| the same shelf in my mind.
|
| Overall, he seems never to have lost the joy of watching movies.
| A relevant quote:
|
| >When you go to the movies every day, it sometimes seems as if
| the movies are more mediocre than ever, more craven and cowardly,
| more skillfully manufactured to pander to the lowest tastes,
| instead of educating them. Then you see something absolutely
| miraculous. Something like "Wings of Desire," or "Do the Right
| Thing," or "Drugstore Cowboy," or "Gates of Heaven," or "Beauty
| and the Beast," or "Life Is Sweet," and on your way home through
| the White Hen Pantry you look distracted, as if you had just
| experienced some kind of a vision.
|
| [0]: https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/reflections-
| after-25-...
| slewis wrote:
| Love this quote from Roger Ebert. Thanks for posting it. He was
| a great reviewer because he loved what he did. His passion came
| through in everything he wrote.
| shannifin wrote:
| I'm a movie lover, though I do find that the majority of films I
| see are forgettable and I never want to see them again. Still, I
| enjoy watching them anyway, and every now and then a movie will
| blow you away. But I think the human mind can only handle so much
| information, so it's almost impossible to avoid at least some
| level of generalizing large loads of films into mind's deserts of
| blandness. (And this goes for just about everything that humans
| can consume in large number; memories of days at the office,
| people's faces, etc.) We might blame a particular movie for not
| being special enough to stand out, but that also depends on our
| ability to compare it with large swaths of experience.
|
| > TV and Film have switched spots
|
| I don't think they've really switched. The advent of streaming
| has let many TV programs tell longer narratives across multiple
| episodes, which some filmmakers may prefer to the time limits of
| a film, but that extra expanse of time can be both a strength and
| a weakness.
|
| > You Learn the Tricks
|
| While this does make some films more predictable, learning the
| tricks has actually made me enjoy watching them _more_. I 'm
| interested to see _how_ they use common patterns and tricks, and
| I like finding patterns and tropes myself that change how I think
| of story structures. For example, midpoints tend to include a
| shift in location, or the "unnatural" character tends to
| sacrafice himself at movie's end (Groot, Baymax, ET). It's like
| learning a language. Yes, perhaps 95% of what people say with it
| will be boring and predictable, but there are seemingly infinite
| little variations, and the language becomes interesting in
| itself.
|
| You'll also notice how different directors, actors, composers,
| cinematographers, screenwriters, etc. have their own sorts of
| style, and how those styles develop over the years. Obvious
| examples would be Terrence Malick's wide-angle wandering,
| Christopher Nolan's cross-cutting tension crescendoes, Carol
| Reed's wet cobblestones and dutch angles, Sergio Leone's eye
| closeups, Scorsese's overhead "God's POV" shots, etc.
|
| > Passive Media Consumption is Fundamentally Bad ... Film is
| passive by definition, because it's best when you're fully
| immersed.
|
| So... film is best when it's fundamentally bad? Maybe _don 't_
| consume it passively? I enjoy looking for patterns, I enjoy
| thinking of story possibilities, I enjoy laughing at how stupid a
| movie or its characters might be, I enjoy trying to understand
| _why_ a film doesn 't work for me and how I might fix it if I
| could, etc. Sometimes a movie sucks me in and I just enjoy the
| ride the whole way through, I guess that's being "fully
| immersed", but that's rare, and when it doesn't happen I don't
| try to force it. Of course you'll grow bored of movies if you try
| to force that all the time.
|
| > Thus comes the slow disappointment of watching movies. First
| you don't understand them. Then you understand them, and they're
| captivating. Then you understand them too well, and they're
| boring. ... Perhaps worst of all is the realization that the
| movies you like are very rare, and as you dive deep into film,
| you're on a quest for the one-in-a-hundred experience.
|
| I agree with this, and yet I want to watch more movies. Yes, most
| of them are boring _by themselves_ (like all experiences), but
| there 's still plenty to explore in their relations to other
| works, all the creative decisions that went into them, etc. And,
| yes, the movies that blow you away are exceedingly rare, but, for
| me at least, completely worth the treasure hunt.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > I don't think they've really switched. The advent of
| streaming has let many TV programs tell longer narratives
| across multiple episodes, which some filmmakers may prefer to
| the time limits of a film, but that extra expanse of time can
| be both a strength and a weakness.
|
| As a viewer, the drawn out nature of TV shows is an
| insufferable time waste these days. I can only stand short
| productions which have a definite end, like Chernobyl.
|
| Otherwise, I have to assume random time wasting tangents or
| filler scenes and cliff hangers due to trying to sell as much
| play time as possible.
| shannifin wrote:
| > I can only stand short productions which have a definite
| end, like Chernobyl.
|
| Same. TV writing seems to forgive (perhaps even encourage) a
| lot of writing laziness. I can't stand shows that end up
| rushing plot points to end a series, like GOT Season 8, or
| even worse, ones that never deliver an ending at all. (Worst
| are series that end on cliffhangers as a gimmick to get
| renewed, but get cancelled.)
|
| I've read that a lot of Korean dramas are like what we might
| call a "miniseries" and actually have a beginning, middle,
| and end so that viewers know the story will wrap up.
| dharmab wrote:
| There is an alternate theory for why movies were more varied,
| creative and experimental from the late 80s until the 00s: The
| rise of Megaplexes, particularly AMC, which greatly increased the
| number of screens and showings available and made smaller, non-
| mainstream films economically viable. However, by the early 00s a
| sort of "movie screen bubble" had formed and weird movies
| declined again in favor of blockbusters.
|
| https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-megaplex/
| shubhamjain wrote:
| I echo the sentiment. It has become harder and harder to find
| movies you truly like. When I was in late teens, I had made the
| goal to watch every good movie out there. So I quickly ran
| through hundreds of 8+ rated movies on IMDb and I liked most of
| them.
|
| Now, there are pretty good movies in 7+ rated class too, but they
| are often hit or miss. But it's not impossible to find them.
| There are hundreds of classic I still have to go through, but
| having watched the 8+ my expectations are high, and it's pretty
| difficult to match them. But still, I find myself appreciating
| little things in movies. For eg, Fantastic Planet (1973) doesn't
| have a smart plot per se, but I like how it reflects surrealism
| of the 70s and it's not the kind of movie that will ever be made
| again.
|
| The hardest thing is it's impossible to find recommendations that
| truly match my taste. Memories of Murder (2003) is rated 8+ on
| IMDb but I absolutely hated it. It's slow and pathetic. Misery
| (1990) on the other hand was A+ movie for me, but I almost found
| it accidentally.
| [deleted]
| sadness3 wrote:
| I have been noticing in myself a sense of eroding novelty in all
| fiction, where every device of comedy and tragedy is becoming a
| familiarity. I think this is a kind of maturity, where continued
| fulfillment necessitates meaningful participation in the eternal
| drama of real Life.
| yesenadam wrote:
| I started watching movies and series..deliberately about 10 years
| ago. I've kept a record of almost all of them[0]. (Before that
| I'd mostly just watch whatever good stuff happened to be shown on
| TV. Getting rid of the TV was one of the best things ever.) I've
| done a lot of research into what to watch, firstly best-of lists,
| then exploring various genres, directors, periods, countries. I
| don't watch anything without first reading a page or two of IMDb
| user reviews, which I've found the best way of almost never
| watching something bad/that I didn't like, and finding out what
| we're likely to really love. (Also a very few almost-always-
| reliable critics, like Roger Ebert and Louise Keller.) Watched
| them all with the SO, and although we have totally different
| interests and tastes, we seem to mostly love the same
| movies/series. No end in sight yet! It's been amazing. "Still" a
| lot of great movies and series being made, and documentaries,
| animations, etc. Still a lot more to explore. Whole countries yet
| to explore (e.g. China).
|
| [0] http://www.adamponting.com/movies/
| woile wrote:
| Thanks, this is great, I've started watching some international
| movies recently, so this comes really in handy. Have you
| checked "La vita e bella" if it's worth watching? or do you
| have scheduled?
| yesenadam wrote:
| :-) I saw it when it came out, so long ago I hardly remember,
| but I vaguely recall loving it. Just look at the user reviews
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118799/reviews/ -- rave
| reviews.
| Igelau wrote:
| This is what the first half of 2021 feels like. The spread of
| I-can't-even into things that were once enjoyable. We are
| fatigued and disenchanted.
| protontorpedo wrote:
| > Passive Media Consumption is Fundamentally Bad
|
| Reading books is passive media consumption too. You could reframe
| this article (with substantial changes) to talk about books,
| wine, food, board games, music, or anything else you can
| appreciate as a hobby.
| lmm wrote:
| Books are fundamentally more active - reading inherently
| involves at least a certain amount of abstract reasoning to
| turn a meaningless pattern of symbols into something that you
| can enjoy.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| How is that different from television? Especially if you
| watch with subtitle?
| TchoBeer wrote:
| Written word is far, far more abstract than video.
| Talanes wrote:
| Yeah, there's a fine argument to be had about passive media
| consumption, but it does not hinge on any specific medium. An
| engaged mind can actively consume any piece of media.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I wish someone would. I've had a feeling that the way I consume
| music is probably a net negative for me, and I'd love to hear
| someone smarter than me explore that idea.
|
| If passive media consumption is bad for the soul, my soul is
| probably in pretty rough shape, so I'd love to hear this
| complete argument so I can figure out whether or not this idea
| has merit.
| blindmute wrote:
| You'd like to passively consume someone's ideas about passive
| consumption? It's a matter of the soul, not that it makes you
| dumber or any objective worsening. No one is qualified to
| talk about it; everyone is just opining. Only you can decide
| for yourself whether a life of passive consumption is
| meaningful to you.
|
| Perhaps your instinctive desire to consume someone's ideas
| betrays the truth of the matter already? I think a healthy
| soul would look to itself and its own intrinsic virtue for
| guidance first, before anyone external.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I don't trust my own mind on its own, nor do I trust people
| who trust their own minds, on their own.
|
| It strikes me as the absolute height of arrogance, for
| anyone to believe they can bring a concept through to full
| maturity entirely alone.
| blindmute wrote:
| Anyone who you'd be reading has engendered their own
| ideas. Of course all great minds are inspired by other
| great minds, but this kind of inspiration is not really
| what you said to begin with.
|
| There is a stark difference between creating an idea
| indirectly inspired by great works, and just wanting to
| read someone's idea. Aristotle was inspired by Plato, but
| he did not defer thought to him, or wait to write
| Metaphysics until he had read someone "smarter" write
| about it.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| What exactly are you trying to say?
| blindmute wrote:
| Reading pulp genre fiction, sure. There are many genres of
| books that go beyond passive consumption, and even require
| active engagement to understand. In the span of all history,
| the vast majority of them fit into that category.
| pyrrhotech wrote:
| I came to the same conclusion about passive media in general.
| Spending time, yet gaining nothing but being filled with others'
| mediocre thoughts describes it well. I'd rather spend that time
| building things, advancing our society's technology and
| productivity and at the same time being rewarded for my efforts.
| dools wrote:
| I stopped reading at the "self censorship" complaint. The idea
| that Borat couldn't be made today because everyone is too woke is
| ridiculous.
| fundad wrote:
| Yeah me too. If made today, Superbad! would be smeared on cable
| news as anti-cop propaganda.
|
| It's like "Calling someone gay isn't fashionable anymore so
| what's the use!?"
|
| _boop_
| evilotto wrote:
| I mostly agree, but I don't think Blazing Saddles could get
| made today; whether that would be because people are offended
| at the language or offended at how it mocks racist attitudes is
| up for debate.
| dools wrote:
| Yeah maybe so. I'm willing to let Blazing Saddles go
| though...
| poisonborz wrote:
| Author mentions backdraws of passive watching. I always watch
| movies with a remote to skip ahead/back/pause 3 seconds, which I
| do on long boring shots, expected plot, thin conversation etc. It
| allows for a more concentrated, reading-like experience.
| Dhyazz wrote:
| American writers have been mind fucked by the over abundance of
| content.
|
| And since the rest of the worlds writers use the American content
| factories as their lodestone, everything is converging to pure
| garbage. Add a mindlessly over optimizing corporate robot class
| supervising societies creativity and we get a firehose of sewage
| jacked into every brain.
|
| Whats the route out for creative people - disconnect. If you have
| some confidence in your own creativity and imagination nuture it.
| Overloading it with info is like over watering a plant. It will
| die.
| seph-reed wrote:
| What amazing movies have come out in the passed 5 years? I'm
| looking for counter-examples.
| illwrks wrote:
| There are only so many ways to skin a cat and have something that
| a consumer wants to buy...
|
| On the netflix thing. I feel like the digital platforms are
| watering down choice and contributing to that feeling. Rental
| stores always had a broad selection of films across genres /
| distributors / producers that grew over time, digital platforms
| only have some content available for a certain time period and
| then it's gone.
| abetusk wrote:
| I think I've probably watched 1000+ movies. I've tapered off as I
| got older (I'm in my 40s now) but at least one movie every 5 days
| seems like a low bar I would regularly hit.
|
| What the author says is true, I tend to see common patterns and
| can often predict who's a secret villain by the first act or have
| a general idea of how the movie will end. At the same time, these
| clues are what make a movie compelling and provide subtle clues
| where the movie is going, so shouldn't be discounted as "tropes"
| or cheap. George RR Martin talks about ignoring fans who have
| correctly predicted what will later be revealed at the end,
| saying that instead of retconning or changing course, it's best
| to keep on and not be influenced by the (correct) predictions.
| The groundwork is laid and the foreshadowing gives active readers
| an excuse to engage with the material.
|
| I can also say that many movies overuse tropes (time travel in
| sci-fi for example) but often, even with movies that are mediocre
| or bad, there's a gem of an idea. Sometimes it's a premise,
| sometimes is a character interaction, what have you, but that's
| what, in my opinion, people who get into this state should be
| looking for. It's a version of "strongmaning" an argument, but
| instead applying it to the movie you're watching.
|
| Also, sometimes the pleasure is in seeing how the movie plays
| out, even if you know the ending beforehand. I've seen quite a
| few movies multiple times and often enjoy them more on subsequent
| viewings.
|
| I'm pretty skeptical of the author touching on "Godfather", "Eyes
| Wide Shut" and "The Hangover" as it sounds like their taste is
| pretty immature. They touch on this with the mention of "Lost in
| Translation" being unrelatable but delving deeper, it might be
| that they like those movies for other more superficial reasons
| that might not be so predominant later on in their life. I'm also
| pretty critical of "not being surprised anymore". This means that
| they're either so cynical and jaded or they're not looking hard
| enough for movies. It's rare but surprises do happen and the lack
| of surprise on the author's part points, in my opinion, to an
| unjustified superiority complex.
|
| A final point: The author touches on it but then abandons it. TV
| is the new media. TV has the ability to delve much deeper into
| plot arcs and character development. We're living in a golden age
| of television where there are some shows that rival and surpass
| the best movies out there in terms breadth, scope and depth.
| There will always be a place for movies but I think at this point
| it's the difference between a short story and a novel. There's
| only so much you can pack in a two hour limit (or 6 hours if
| you're part of a trilogy) whereas the 12-24+ hour limit for TV
| allows you the space to explore in more depth.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKnXmNHubfs
| strulovich wrote:
| About the comment about "only 6 plots". Indeed almost all plots
| can be bucketed in a few categories, but that's not necessarily a
| bad thing.
|
| When a scene looks like it has been done before, it's the small
| differences from the previous time that make it stand out. Much
| like Jazz can sound the same for many people, but for people who
| listened to a lot of it different sounds make it interesting.
|
| I'll take a very obvious example: Frozen's true love kiss. It
| works just because it is the same old shtick used in every
| princess story, without it, it's uniqueness would not exist.
|
| It might be the same 6 plots, but it's like complaining you're
| eating beef again. The question is what is different about this
| red meat dish vs the others.
| ruipgil wrote:
| > in film, you start with the best and make your way down to the
| worst
|
| only if you take imdb top films ranking...
|
| take a tour through Kurosawa or other Japanese masters, get deep
| into korean cinema, lose yourself in the Italian masterpieces,
| and jump into French movies as soon as you can. You'll get
| challenged, immersed, and amazed again!
|
| You'll see that you really start at the bottom and move upwards
|
| Criterion and similar alternative streaming platforms sound like
| where you should be spending your time, instead of amazon prime
| ;)
| antognini wrote:
| For anyone looking for recommendations for slightly more obscure,
| but high quality movies, I've found Jesse Walker's lists to be a
| fantastic source. At the end of every year he has a tradition of
| listing his top 10 movies, but not for the year that just ended.
| Instead he lists his top 10 movies from 10 years ago.
|
| His philosophy is that he hasn't seen most of the movies that
| just came out, let alone figured out if they've stood the test of
| time. So instead he reviews his top 10 movies from a decade
| earlier. And then another 10 years before that. And then 10 years
| before that and so on until he gets to the early 1920s or 1910s
| and there aren't any movies in existence.
|
| https://jessewalker.blogspot.com/
| yarky wrote:
| Sounds like some old pal who misses old "good" American movies
| with "good" old American jokes. If you're serious about movies,
| try learning other languages and do not expect to find a good
| movie to watch every 5 days ...
|
| I agree that American humor isn't the same as 10 years ago, but I
| am not sure that's a bad thing.
| xxs wrote:
| > try learning other languages
|
| Subtitles are fine. Learning a language well enough to watch
| and enjoy a movie and get subtle jokes/plots is no easy feat.
| gwilikers wrote:
| There is so much more to film than story, but story seems to be
| the author's focus (especially with point #3 and the Lynch
| footnote.) At a movie every 5 days for 11 years, though, I can't
| blame the author for burning out.
| robinjhuang wrote:
| Could not agree more
| masswerk wrote:
| I guess, it's also a generational thing. I wrote a thesis in film
| theory and appeared regularly in a show as a critic and had about
| the same feelings in the 2000s.
|
| That said, Hollywood's safe bets, like superhero movies or
| bigger-than-life stories are exceptionally uninteresting to at
| least some non-Americans. (What get's a story going are not the
| wow-character traits, but the deficits of the heroins and heroes.
| Compare Jane Austen! :-) )
| gravypod wrote:
| If you feel like this you may be interested in anime. If you're
| ok with reading subtitles, or watching a smaller subset of the
| entire corpus with good English voice overs, you'll find some
| pretty amazing stories and a very different story telling method
| from what is available in Hollywood.
|
| Great places to start:
|
| - Mob Psycho (good English voice overs): A show about a high
| schooler who has magical powers (telekinesis, etc). He works for
| a "Psychic" (con artist) to help people who encountered ghosts or
| spirits. This is a coming of age story about emotions and
| friendship.
|
| - One Punch Man: Super heros are common place and there's one guy
| who is determined to become the best. He starts a work out
| routine where he does 100 sit ups, 100 push ups, and 100 squats
| every day and, somehow, he becomes the strongest thing in the
| universe able to destroy anything with a single punch.
|
| - Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: A Japanese manga author's attempt at
| taking inspiration from 1800s western story telling and American
| culture. It's a story about how something happened which changed
| the destiny of the Joestar family.
|
| Something to expect is the motifs, character archetypes, and
| method of showing something are very different from the movies
| and TV I grew up on. Jojo has done some things that aren't a good
| look in western media.
|
| Also, a lot of really good anime is only really good because it
| is a masterful subversion of tropes which makes it hard to give
| people recommendations to some of the best shows out there. The
| recommendation would go "please watch these 15 garbage shows
| (~40hr of content) so you can watch this one 14 episode (~5 hr of
| content) show that's been cancelled. It's worth it, I swear."
| mabub24 wrote:
| Another great recommendation would be _Tatami Galaxy_ , though
| you really need to be good at reading subtitles. It features
| some truly mind bending animation.
| mrdrozdov wrote:
| I don't know. I watch a similar amount of movies each year, and I
| still enjoy it. If anyone is looking for some more obscure
| recommendations, can check out The Dreamers, and Stilyagi.
|
| EDIT: I have to add that I reference movies a lot in
| conversation. Often, I'll watch a movie then immediately call a
| family or friend to discuss some finer point. This happens
| frequently, sometimes for a fairly mundane movie detail.
|
| EDIT2: Now I really want to make a list of movies just from this
| year, since my number has definitely gone up since COVID. I think
| I'd easily break 100 in 2021 alone.
|
| EDIT3: Here's a list from my Netflix history since June 1. Mix of
| TV and movies. I added Justice League Extended Edition and
| Replica even though they're HBO because I watched them recently
| (within the last week). This isn't really a representative list
| of my watching, plus I tend to watch a bunch of similar
| movies/shows, then switch to a new cluster. This group is
| particularly action heavy because I was playing a lot in the
| background recently while doing other work. All of these were
| fun! Even if I don't think they are the best ever :))
| Movies 2021 June-July Zack Snyder's Justice League
| Replica The Take Darc American Assassin
| S.W.A.T. Sniper Legacy The Interpreter
| Redemption Extraction Spenser Confidential
| TV Biohackers Shooter Quantico Sweet
| Tooth Record of Ragnorak Bodyguard Hollywood
| mrdrozdov wrote:
| Adding a few more from HBO and Amazon...
| Greenland The Little Things The Conjuring
| Killerman Ghost in the Shell (live action) Redline
| Sputnik
| jasonladuke0311 wrote:
| I absolutely love SWAT. It feels like a movie they had fun
| making, and doesn't take itself very seriously.
| cestith wrote:
| It's right that mainstream Hollywood movies chase an ever more
| mainstream blockbuster audience and narrow the types of movies
| made as a result. Much of the article seems emotionally
| challenged. If a friend came to me with this much talk of losing
| joy in a hobby, I'd recommend they see a doctor or therapist. I
| hear the words, but mixed with echoes of depression.
|
| The thought that there's nothing good from a century of cinema in
| the entire world left to see is a little hard to imagine,
| especially after only six movies a month for some years. If
| that's really true and not just the author being cynical, then
| there are lots of other hobbies. I think either the article
| reflects more on the author than on cinema or perhaps the
| author's selection process needs improvement.
| whobar wrote:
| Having seen amazing movies on Prime, when I struggle to find
| anything decent to watch, I blame it on the fact that Prime is
| only listing a small fraction of movies that exist, not that
| movies are dead.
| arpa wrote:
| I have been a cinephile for at least ten years, watching several
| movies per week. I agree with some of the sentiments expressed
| here, and I can say I have been in a similar place in my film-
| watching hobby. It used to feel that "I've seen all the good
| ones", but no, not really. You certainly go into more obscure
| teritorry, but reasons for obscurity differ: it can be a bad
| movie, or it could be produced in Mexico, or it could have been
| produced sometime in 1934, or only available on torrents in 240p,
| or all of the above. Another thing that helps is knowing how you
| watch the movie: you're not watching Tarantino and Tarkovsky the
| same way. That would explain the disappointment with Lost Highway
| which has been rather coherent (compared to post Mulholland dr.
| Lynch). With this attitude, the author is locking himself out of
| a class of directors that are not catering to you (like Marvel
| does, lol), but require active participation and adapting from
| the film watcher. You can not enjoy El Topo or The Mountain by
| passively consuming.
| zupatol wrote:
| The idea that you can start with the good ones doesn't make
| sense to me. It's the same with literature. There's no
| guarantee you'll enjoy the "classics". How many books you had
| to read at school did you really like ?
|
| Finding good works of art is a really hard problem, because
| what you'll like depends a lot on your personal taste and
| experience, and it evolves with time. Once you've seen a lot of
| films you can orient yourself by following directors you like,
| and if you're lucky you find a film critic you can trust.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > the disappointment with Lost Highway
|
| It's OK to not like David Lynch's work, it isn't for everyone,
| what with the "doing surrealism in a highly literal medium" and
| the logic of nightmares used.
|
| To state that Lynch is "obviously awful movies ... had no clue
| .. disaster ... incapable" as an objective truth is just a
| category error.
|
| it's like saying that a Mondrian is an obviously awful painting
| because it's not a good landscape composition, or that Jackson
| Pollock has no clue, because he paints trees in an unrealistic
| colour.
| psychomugs wrote:
| Like the author, I thought Lost in Translation was okay when I
| first watched it in my late teens. I watched it again when I was
| living in Japan and it brought me to tears, particularly that
| scene where she's calls up her relative from her hotel room. I
| think the original Neon Genesis Evangelion is a masterpiece and
| hits differently as an adult compared to when I first watched it
| when I was the same age as the teenage protagonists.
|
| Anything worth watching is worth watching again, and again, and
| again. I may be behind the times and have to silently take the
| back seat whenever discussions move towards the latest episode of
| Breaking Thrones 99, but I'd rather consume media when it's been
| divorced from the hype.
|
| "The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything
| always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. . . . Nobody'd
| be different. The only thing that would be different would be
| you." - The Catcher in the Rye.
| aj_nikhil wrote:
| OP hasn't watched any real cinema (European/South East Asian),
| just few commercial movies which are mostly based on a set
| formula. OP needs to improve his taste.
| jasonkester wrote:
| One of the cool things about having kids is that you get to go
| through all the movies again from the start.
|
| I got to get all excited about Star Wars again. And Indiana
| Jones. And Back to the Future. One day soon they'll be old enough
| for The Matrix. How cool will that be? I'm gonna get to watch
| Terminator with these guys for the first time one day.
|
| You also get all the old TV. We're 4 seasons into The A-Team, and
| have watched every episode of The original Battlestar Galactica
| and a bunch of other series from the time when television was
| suitable for children.
|
| There's tons of stuff out there. It's cool too get a fresh start
| on it all.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| I love it when a plan comes together. ;-)
| bongoman37 wrote:
| Agree, I even started putting off movies at some point because
| I thought they would be cool to see with the kid so why waste
| the time now.
| pjerem wrote:
| Same for video games !
|
| And that's the reason I'm all in for remakes : if we fail to
| create new interesting games (although we are not yet where the
| movie industry is), at least we can make the old marvels of
| some decades ago bearable again for the new kids.
|
| Well crafted remakes like the Spyro's one are a breeze to share
| with nowadays kids and I truly hope we get more of them
| alongside new games.
| [deleted]
| kennywinker wrote:
| Hi, @author. I just wanted to say that if something brought you
| joy and now no longer does, you might be depressed. I've been
| there. Therapy helps. Try a few if the first one doesn't click.
| pier25 wrote:
| That was me a couple of years ago. As someone who has been into
| writing, music, and photography professionally, it became very
| hard to watch a movie without analyzing all those aspects.
|
| I've then learned that to enjoy movies again, one has to try to
| quiet the analytical mind. That doesn't mean you will enjoy all
| movies, but at least your brain will be more focused on the
| experience itself.
|
| I don't accomplish this every time I watch a movie or tv show,
| but at least I try when I catch myself analyzing the lens used or
| lighting of a shot. I simply "tell" my brain to shut off and
| force myself to focus, for example, on the actors expressions.
|
| As my father used to put it "You're only riding a train when you
| can't see it".
| allemagne wrote:
| "In film, you start with the best and make your way down to the
| worst" is just a restatement of the fact that everything
| enjoyable tends to give diminishing returns, heightened by
| survivorship bias. I don't actually think literature, or music,
| or video games, or porn, or walking through nature is any
| different.
|
| There are definitely things that are fundamentally wrong with
| movies today, but there have always been things that are
| fundamentally wrong with movies. I don't think things like self-
| censorship in film are new at all, it just used to be topics like
| the existence of homosexuality.
|
| Finally, if you distinctly smell shit everywhere you go, then
| maybe you should explore other possibilities than that your sense
| of smell has become too sophisticated, or the entire world just
| started smelling more like shit. I think the conclusion the
| author is searching for is that his own expectations and approach
| to "understanding" movies is what ruined his passion.
| umvi wrote:
| > is just a restatement of the fact that everything enjoyable
| tends to give diminishing returns. I don't actually think
| literature, or music, or video games, or porn, or walking
| through nature is any different.
|
| I disagree - maybe passive-type entertainment like movies have
| diminishing returns. But lots of genres of books certainly
| don't. Maybe reading fantasy has diminishing returns, but some
| genres of books aren't written purely to entertain, but to
| inform and educate. Reading biographies won't burn you out on
| biographies due to overused biographical tropes or other
| mechanisms that cause "diminishing returns" - because
| biographies aren't made to entertain, though entertainment is
| often a side effect. They are made to educate you on a person's
| life and accomplishments.
| edanm wrote:
| First, what makes a book any less of a "passive-type"
| entertainment option? It is basically the same as a movie or
| tv show in that regard - you're not creating anything, you're
| consuming content.
|
| Second, I'm not sure why you think that you get diminishing
| returns from fantasy, but not from reading biographies. The
| biggest problem with both is that you start by reading the
| best books, but eventually you can run out of those. After
| you've read the 10 best biographies or 10 best fantasy
| novels, if you continue, you're necessarily going to read 10
| lesser books. [1]
|
| Third, it's absolutely true that after reading a bunch of
| biographies, you start getting used to certain standard
| tropes and ways of writing.
|
| Notes: [1] There is of course no real definitive list of best
| books, as it's highly individual, and it's hard to know ahead
| of time which books are the best for you so as you keep
| reading you can always find more gems. Still, as you read
| more of a genre, you'll tend to gradually work your way to
| works that have less chance of being good (though reading a
| new genre allows you to "restart" this process somewhat, and
| the more you read, the better you might get about finding
| good books... so there are ways to mitigate this effect.)
| dharmab wrote:
| > I don't think things like self-censorship in film are new at
| all, it just used to be topics like the existence of
| homosexuality.
|
| If anything, it's gotten better. The Catholic Church used to
| have a direct hand in industry censorship of movies:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXZGKhpv8eg
| hiisukun wrote:
| I actually still have this tab open, for the rich HN discussion
| surrounding ways to find quality films to watch.
|
| The article listed is Akira Kurosawa's top 100 films:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26551604
| celeritascelery wrote:
| > in film, you start with the best and make your way down to the
| worst. With literature, you grow as a reader and work your way up
| to the greatest works
|
| To me this is an endorsement of literature over film. There is so
| much more that can be done in a book that takes dozen of hours
| compared to film which is only a few. By comparison all film is
| essentially short stories.
| [deleted]
| TonyBagODonuts wrote:
| We've stopped as a family watching any movie out of Hollywood. I
| don't think we're alone.
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| mberning wrote:
| I can't remember the last time I went to a theater. For me I got
| tired of rolling the dice and walking out feeling like I got
| ripped off.
| eplanit wrote:
| It has been over 10 years for me, with no regrets.
|
| I'm fine with Hollywood being a 20th century relic -- way past
| time to move on.
| FerretFred wrote:
| My personal opinion... We've basically stopped watching
| Hollywood-fodder: it's largely formulaic, largely caters to the
| Politically Correct/Woke and seems intent on destroying the Good
| Stuff that came before. I'll give Mad Max, Alien and Jurassic
| Park as examples. Prequels? Sequels? How many sequels do you
| need? There's plenty of Good Stuff left though, and it needs a
| little research: look at what used to be called World Cinema and
| there are some real gems. You may need to get used to subtitles,
| but the works are inspiring and unlike the Hollywood Fast Food
| Burger movies will actually give you something to discuss
| afterwards.
| angarg12 wrote:
| I got into movies way back and I'm clocking over 1600 watched
| according to IMDB.
|
| I agree that movies get trite the more you watch. The secret is
| to watch less mainstream movies.
|
| I disagree with the article. Lately I've been watching less
| movies, but only because lack of time. In fact I've been wishing
| I spent a bit more watching movies and catching up with my
| endless TODO list.
|
| So yes, movies (or any for of media) can become less surprising
| the more you consume it, but I believe there is always venue for
| novelty.
|
| By the way if you feel like the author I recommend this list of
| weird movies [1]. I don't promise they will be good, but at least
| they will be different.
|
| [1] https://366weirdmovies.com/the-weird-movie-list/
| noema wrote:
| The author clearly has not tapped the goldmine of world cinema
| (or American film history for that matter) if Superbad is their
| paradigmatic case of a challenging film.
| xxs wrote:
| The essay is focused on the "American film".
| sarabad2021 wrote:
| Familiarity breeds contempt
| Yaina wrote:
| I feel like the TL;DR here is "I'm too smart for films now and
| also PC culture ruined comedy"
|
| The first part is clearly not true. There are film critics that
| have worked for decades and don't start to hate films suddenly.
| There is more than one critic because films are not something you
| consume objectively but that can move you personally.
|
| Also comedy films are not self-censored! Sensibilities have
| changed and the target audience has become larger, wich results
| in films that are gradually less sexist, racist, homophobe or
| have flat gross-out humor. Turns out you can be funny without
| using these as a comedic device!
| notjes wrote:
| There are like 100.000 topics that the overlords are not allowing
| to be touched. Yet a big portion of them would be very popular to
| the audience.
|
| After all, cinema is just media and media is part of warfare.
| bluSCALE4 wrote:
| I'm jealous of sooo many of you. I didn't like so many mainstream
| hits. Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, the Bourne
| and Bond series, all the Marvel / DC movies probably a lot more
| I've forgotten to mention.
| stnmtn wrote:
| I don't think most self-described film buffs who are keeping
| track and logging 50+ movies they watch a year would disagree
| with you. There's a lot more to film than just the canonical
| big-budget American hollywood productions
| Finnucane wrote:
| There's no question that Hollywood has increased their reliance
| on tie-in franchises and sequels and remakes for money-making--
| any chart of top-grossing films over the past few decades will
| make the trend clear. Good non-franchise movies are still getting
| made, you might just have to look a little harder to find them.
| Some of it is not coming from Hollywood, but elsewhere.
|
| The trend of higher-quality tv really began with HBO and shows
| like the Sopranos, when they realized they could get away with
| stuff you couldn't do on broadcast tv, and have bigger budgets
| for production and talent. I remember not even having a TV for
| much of the 1980s--network tv was so bad it was entirely
| missable. Streaming and cable channels have given a lot of
| opportunities for niche productions that wouldn't have survived
| in the old days, or made it past the censors.
|
| Sure, there's tropes and common story elements, that's not new,
| and it's a feature of every media. Film comedies are still
| cribbing from stuff invented by Chaplin and Keaton.
| alichapman wrote:
| For anyone who finds themselves getting bored scrolling through
| the film options on Netflix, or utterly disinterested in watching
| Marvel film #593 then I'd recommend Mubi [0]. It mainly shows
| independent films from around the world and it cycles through
| them relatively quickly - they add a new movie every day so
| there's always something you haven't considered watching yet.
|
| 0: https://mubi.com/showing
| mattowen_uk wrote:
| Netflix does an impressive job of hiding from you 90%+ of what
| it has available if it's algorithm decides you are not
| interested in those genres.
|
| However, there are plenty of sites out there that have compiled
| links to the thousands of genres that Netflix have categorised
| everything into. For example:
|
| https://www.finder.com/uk/netflix-around-the-world/genre-lis...
|
| I just wish Netflix would open up these lists to be browsable
| in their own UI.
| brabel wrote:
| I just search for random words sometimes and find really
| interesting movies that way :D sounds crazy but really works
| as you're really right: the algorithm, like YouTube, tends to
| show you all the same things you've already watched and
| probably got tired of already.
| ant6n wrote:
| I wonder what percentage of ,,movies and tv suck nowadays" is
| just the poor discoverability on Netflix, Amazon, etc.
|
| Does Netflix license content with a pay per view model, so
| that they will get the content for those who are seeking it,
| but wont offer unless requested?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I wonder what percentage of ,,movies and tv suck
| nowadays" is just the poor discoverability on Netflix,
| Amazon, etc.
|
| I wonder what percentage of it is people having both higher
| expectations of them (in part becaise of competing
| entertainment) _and_ exhausting the supply of what they do
| like faster (binging, etc.)
| sefrost wrote:
| Mubi is great!
|
| I don't know if it's in other countries, but in the UK you get
| a free cinema ticket with your subscription every week (Mubi
| GO) and I've seen so many great films I would never have even
| heard of because of that service.
| ericjang wrote:
| This was an interesting, well-written post. I myself was an avid
| movie buff up until graduating college, after which point I
| became interested in other hobbies. My two cents:
|
| 1) I wonder to what extent the anhedonia is due to not the movie
| industry changing, but the author themselves changing, maturing,
| becoming more interested in other things in life. I used to
| consume copious amounts of anime / manga, now that stuff doesn't
| nearly interest me as much anymore, even though there is lots of
| fresh new content out there.
|
| 2) To the author: perhaps a new level of appreciation in films
| can be attained by trying to shoot a film, do a cel animation,
| write a storyboard of your own? The act of trying to create that
| which is so familiar can help you see things in an entirely new
| perspective.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Interesting piece that made me reflect on experiencing some
| similar feelings in my own life.
|
| The thing about _Passive Media Consumption is Fundamentally Bad_
| stuck out too. Reminded me (and I know this will go against many
| HNers and tech ppl) of anyone who watches YouTube. (Subscribes to
| channels /watches video games being played/watches personalities
| talk about stuff or them experiencing something etc). YouTube is
| horribly passive and alot seems like a cesspool of low bar
| content if you can even call it that with negative societal and
| cultural ramifications. I mostly steer clear of any long
| format/regularly posting YouTube content for that very reason. It
| irks me that guys who review gear or whatever have a million
| subscribers and while they might be ok ppl it's the subscribers
| that really are somewhat concerning spending that much time
| consuming consuming consuming drawn out passive content. Ugggh.
| Suppose this applies to 'Twitch streamers' very much so also.
|
| Anyways could go on but that element of the post garnered a
| thought anyways.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| I'd like to offer a different angle on this.
|
| You describe subscribers as "consuming consuming consuming
| drawn out passive content". But I think your analysis leaves
| aside those who go on to participate in related forums, create
| new content ranging from memes and comics to their own
| channels, discuss the ideas on Twitter, and so on. If anything,
| I believe the current generation is creating more than the
| previous one - not everyone has the energy to publish a book,
| but everyone can make a reaction comic.
|
| I'm personally not a fan of Twitch streams, but I do watch once
| in a while when I'm eating alone and want something to fill the
| silence. And I don't think it is any worse than what we had
| before - my nieces are learning that buying toys is fun, while
| at their age I was learning that war is a good solution to
| social problems and that it also leads to fun toys.
| swiley wrote:
| I only watch movies when My girlfriend or someone else says they
| want to. When I'm by myself it's all NileRed, Adam Neely, and
| Applied Science.
| nmstoker wrote:
| Interesting to read someone else's insights and to find so many
| of them resonate.
|
| One point that I don't think has been touched on is manipulating
| the plot for non-storytelling grounds, which usually happens as
| they are nearing the end of a season and/or they're leaving it
| open for a sequel (season or film).
|
| This creates a real lack of resolution now. In the era of serious
| films, they could occasionally leave unresolved turns at the end
| of a film on purpose ("life isn't neat") but it was usually done
| with the eloquence of an accomplished director.
|
| Now it's so mercenary that it is really starting to detract. Add
| to this that many series use guest directors who seem to wander
| off on a personal mission, and it's a recipe for the sort of mess
| we've seen in so many big budgets series.
|
| Whilst I liked aspects of the final season, Game of Thrones
| didn't tie up even a fraction of the main plots let alone the sub
| plots. In the UK there were similar split opinions on Line of
| Duty. You can only take so much of your audiences time and
| squander it before people lose trust. A clear ending shouldn't be
| that hard to write.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| I'm going to tell you all the secret to enjoying any movie:
|
| Drink.
|
| I've had a blast watching anything drunk. Life is truly not that
| serious.
| [deleted]
| comeonseriously wrote:
| #4 for sure.
|
| Generally, I agree with the author.
|
| And, honestly, I think it is the fact that we have access to
| media everywhere we go. Seeing a movie decades ago was an event.
| You anticipated going because you didn't have access [0] to so
| much media. Now, we just pull out our tablet or phone. Our lives
| are filled with instant gratification. So much so that very
| little every has any meaning anymore. Our mental reward system is
| broken.
|
| [0] Yes, HBO existed, but that was NOTHING compared to today.
| imcotton wrote:
| I call them "scripting porn".
| bscphil wrote:
| I could not disagree more with the author. I think their argument
| should be debated on the merits, but it bears mentioning that the
| author is still in their twenties, and has only seen ~74 movies a
| year since 2010. That's ... not a lot of movies, by cinema snob
| standards (or even by prolific Netflix viewer standards).
|
| 1. One simply does not run out of great movies to watch after 700
| movies, even if all 700 have been great. You have to be way,
| _way_ more in to movies than that for that to happen. When your
| go-to examples of great movies are _Eyes Wide Shut_ and _Pulp
| Fiction_ (two great movies to be sure, but they have over 300k
| ratings each on IMDb), the problem is obvious: your selections
| are too mainstream. You can definitely run out of blockbusters
| that are also great movies very quickly. This author didn 't name
| a single movie I haven't seen, and I'm nowhere close to having
| seen enough to join the cinema snob club.
|
| 2. "Every couple of days I curl up on the couch at 10pm, scroll
| through Amazon Prime video..." Yes. This is the problem. Their
| source for movies is an aggregator that makes money primarily
| through getting you to stay subscribed while reducing the cost of
| content acquisition as much as possible. Most of what's on Amazon
| prime is trash, low budget attempts at blockbusters, with a
| handful of rotating blockbuster films to grab your attention on
| the front page. Meanwhile, The Criterion Collection has released
| over a _thousand_ films on DVD and Blu-ray. Get your media from
| better sources!
|
| Note that I'm not blaming the author for this specifically. The
| media landscape sucks right now. Everything is fragmented and if
| you only have access to one or two sources it's easy to see how
| you could get the idea that prestige TV is where all the serious
| work goes nowadays.
|
| 3. "Most Stories are the Same. Kurt Vonnegut once said that there
| are only six types of story." Doesn't this claim go precisely
| against the claim made earlier in the article that the books you
| read just get better and better as you read more?
|
| 4. I can't agree that David Lynch is a hack. I'd say this goes
| beyond a question of taste into a factually incorrect account of
| a director who is obviously very capable and knows what he's
| trying to do. Some movies are going to require more work to
| appreciate than others. Ironically, the essay itself complains
| about movies being _too_ accessible! Likewise, _Lost in
| Translation_ is not unrelatable simply because the main character
| is older than you are.
|
| 5. The idea that we can't make good comedies any more is
| laughable culture-war nonsense. The idea that adult comedy _must_
| utilize irreverence is silly, to begin with. _The Favourite_
| (2018), _Druk_ (2020), _Amelie_ , _The Lobster_ , _Turist_
| (2014), etc etc are all good comedies that aren 't unduly
| irreverent. It's also strange to see _Superbad_ and _The
| Hangover_ given as examples of comedy done right in an article
| about a supposed dearth of good movies.
|
| Even if you want out-and-out comedies (instead of my suggested
| serious movies with comedic tones), there were plenty of those
| last decade too. I liked _The Nice Guys_ , _I Don 't Feel at Home
| in This World Anymore_, _Scott Pilgrim vs. the World_ , _Knives
| Out_ , _Don 't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot_, and so on.
| Several of these are rather irreverent, I'd say. I guess if
| you're looking for more Hangover, they made _Part III_ in 2013,
| less than a decade ago, and _Jackass 4_ is coming out later this
| year! I don 't see what there is to complain about. (In the vein
| of low-brow comedy, there are some movies like Psycho Goreman and
| Mandy that are much more interesting than a lot of mainstream
| fare.)
|
| 6. Burnout is a thing. Maybe trying to write a review for every
| single movie you see can lead to enjoying them _less_ , if you're
| not the kind of person who's wired to do that.
| eddof13 wrote:
| Agreed, I was over 2000 movies seen and the list of ones to
| watch was ever getting larger the more I knew (5000+). With
| only 800 seen I guarantee they didn't know what they didn't
| know. I stopped focusing on movies for the opposite reason of
| him, I knew I would never get to see all of the good ones I
| wanted to.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| If you curl up on your own couch and pull something off a
| streaming service, IMO you are watching TV. Even if it's a 120
| minute movie.
|
| Seeing a movie in a full theater is just a different experience.
| And whether the author realizes it or not, that may be coloring
| his recollection of movies in the 90s. People saw big movies in
| the theater in the 90s. T2 in a packed theater full of people who
| don't know what is going to happen next, is a different movie
| from T2 on TV in your living room.
|
| One way to rekindle a love of movies is to go see a bunch in the
| theater, with a lot of other people, spoiler free. Ideally, on
| opening night.
|
| Someone else in the thread mentioned Roger Ebert. Most of the
| movies he saw during his life, he saw in a theater.
| ulisesrmzroche wrote:
| " Many years ago, a friend tried to convince me that the passive
| consumption of any media - film or television, maybe even music -
| was bad for the soul."
|
| This is so melodramatic. But no, it's not going to poison your
| soul to Netflix binge. In fact, I guess no one ever wrote
| anything called uncle toms cabin and that novel certainly did
| nothing toward the abolishment of slavery in North America
|
| A modern parallel is Dharma and Greg and LGBTQ liberation in the
| 2000s
|
| There's no such a thing as passive consumption of art. Its in its
| entirety a subsconscious thing.
| Tycho wrote:
| If you are content with the genre of normal drama, without
| special effects or stunts or expensive sets or glamorous stars,
| then there's a wealth of good stuff out there, often made for TV
| rather than cinema. For instance, all the _Inspector Morse_
| episodes are essentially standalone films, and all of them have
| exceptional acting and writing and stories (usually adapted from
| the novels). Many great 'mini-series' also (like 4-6 hours
| total). Look up an actor like Brian Dennehy and notice all the
| films he made for television. No matter how jaded you get with
| cinema, I don't think you tire of a good story. (Often in cinema
| they seem to want to make films that are brilliant _despite_ an
| uninteresting story.)
|
| I wish there were better options for watching televised plays.
| Outside of Shakespeare, the options seem sadly limited.
| petercooper wrote:
| I'm not going to dispute the author's lived experience and their
| personal attitude to movie watching, but the arguments seem so
| alien to me.
|
| Being tired of an entire medium because there are patterns and
| tropes would, to me, be like being entirely bored of music
| because most of it uses similar scales and chord sequences, tired
| of nature because, well, you've seen a lot of trees before, or,
| heck, being bored of being alive due to all that boring
| breathing, eating (how many food groups _are_ there, really?),
| and copulation (only so many positions..) you have to partake in.
|
| I watch a few hundred movies a year and continue to be blown away
| by the diversity of the experience, much as I do when reading,
| watching YouTube videos, meeting random strangers, or even
| reading Hacker News comment threads.
| kajaktum wrote:
| According to your logic, boredom is an impossible concept.
| Movies aren't consumed the same way trees are.
| petercooper wrote:
| As I said before, I can't dismiss the OP's personal opinion,
| but at the objective level I think boredom is an undefinable
| concept, proven by how what's boring to one person can be
| hugely invigorating to another (or even to the same person at
| a different time of their life).
|
| Boredom with an entire medium is what really caught me here.
| I can appreciate being bored by, say, "1950s Westerns", once
| you have exhausted the majority of the genre, but being bored
| of the entire premise of movies in general suggests a very
| restricted diet or a lack of imagination.
|
| But that's just my take. My favorite author absolutely
| detested music and almost listened to none in his entire
| lifetime. Different strokes and all that. But the idea of
| being wholly bored of one of the deepest, plentiful, and most
| creative media invented by man remains alien to me.
| SergeAx wrote:
| > With literature, you grow as a reader and work your way up to
| the greatest works, many of which are quite difficult.
|
| Same principle is applicable to movies.
|
| > I'm nearly done with David Lynch's oeuvre of work, and my
| disappointment is immeasurable.
|
| This is because author didn't worked up their way to the greatest
| work.
| SeanFerree wrote:
| Awesome article!
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| I couldn't disagree with a post more. Where to start?
|
| For one, there's so many amazing films. Instead of listing
| directors or films, I'll list movements: French New Wave, Italian
| Neorealism, Parallel Cinema, Iranian New Wave, German New Wave,
| Taiwanese New Wave, New Queer Cinema, New Hollywood, Cinema Du
| Look. All of these have 10-20 films worth watching if not more.
| Then expand your search to masters like Kurosawa or Bergman who
| churned out films, yes some worse than others, but a lot of
| really amazing ones! Then look at all of the talented people
| making film today, both the established (Bong Joon Ho, Olivier
| Assayas, Lucrecia Martel) and the new. There's an incredible
| wealth of great film out there.
|
| Honestly the author sounds like they're in the false confidence
| part of the Dunning Kruger effect. Just because you know a few
| tropes and the standard plot archetypes doesn't mean you're above
| film. Lemme just point out that nowhere in this post did the
| author discuss the _visual_ aspect of film. Or the editing,
| sound, really anything about film other than plot. If movies were
| Wikipedia plot summaries I'd agree that film is tired and
| repetitive. But what distinguishes a director is not the story
| beats but how they use camera, light, sound, editing and actors
| to make the narrative.
| matthewh806 wrote:
| Why would you choose Borat as the kind of comedy which "isn't
| allowed to be made today" when you know you're going to have to
| contrive a reason for the existence of a sequel which was near
| enough made today in a footnote...?
|
| Most of the points express a disappointment with mainstream
| Hollywood movies, which if you don't broaden your horizons is
| eventually going to lead to disappointment for any cinephile.
|
| "The sitcom-and-laugh-track era appears to be over, thank
| heavens" I would agree about the laugh-track era being over - but
| thats hardly a new development. I've been watching the Larry
| Sanders show from the early 90s which was a landmark show without
| a laughter track. But to say the era of the sitcom is over is
| nonsense? There are so many great recent ones.
|
| The one thing I agree with is that scrolling through Amazon Prime
| / Netflix is a draining & dissatisfying experience
|
| Otherwise, I don't know... I've been watching movies at varying
| frequencies for decades and I certainly don't feel I've come
| close to even really tapping the surface, don't feel like I can
| guess immediately where the director will take me & don't feel
| really constrained by Vonnegut's theory about there only being
| six types of story.
| austincheney wrote:
| Yeah, _Tropic Thunder_ , is a much better example of a recent
| movie that could never be made just a few later because
| somebody might be offended.
| mitjak wrote:
| agreed. shortage of comedies like Hangover and Borat is to me
| progress on a societal level.
| torcete wrote:
| Airplane! is another movie that "wouldn't be allowed to be made
| today"
|
| The line "Have you ever seen a grown man naked?" would be a
| scandal today.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfgO90yGusI
| chki wrote:
| Maybe they would need to cut that specific line but apart
| from that? As far as I recall, everything else should be
| fine.
| 55555 wrote:
| lol they subtitled the black people speaking English
| yissp wrote:
| Maybe also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1c1F0PpbHdg
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| He wouldn't be allowed to visit the cockpit either, which is
| an enduring joy from my childhood.
| matthewh806 wrote:
| Shock horror, society has moved on in the 40 years since
| Airplane was made...
|
| How do you even know it wouldn't be allowed? People love to
| spout this kind of stuff, but... have you even tried?
|
| Edit: A very nice example I've come across is Ricky Gervais
| stating that the British Office couldn't be made today. I
| think he's being very disingenuous saying that because while
| out of context it could appear to have a lot of controversial
| jokes touching on taboo subjects, within the show it was
| always clear who the real target of the jokes was (same with
| Borat). Masterfully done and I believe (from what I've seen
| in terms of comedy recently) that kind of stuff would still
| fly at the BBC. There's even a documentary from a couple of
| decades back about the success of the office and a BBC
| producer admits even back then they had to reign in a few of
| the areas Gervais wanted to go in terms of race & disability
| (it was also mentioned that he is quite obsessed with these
| topics), so its all bullshit that people like him are
| shouting about "THESE DAYS...!".
|
| In fact maybe he's right and the Office couldn't be made
| today. But that's primarily because Gervais isn't funny these
| days
| teddyh wrote:
| > _Ricky Gervais stating that the British Office couldn 't
| be made today. I think he's being very disingenuous saying
| that because while out of context it could appear to have a
| lot of controversial jokes touching on taboo subjects,
| within the show it was always clear who the real target of
| the jokes was_
|
| But that's _exactly_ why it could not be made today. Today,
| you can't say _anything_ which can be taken out of context.
| Quote mining has become a national pastime.
| matthewh806 wrote:
| So, how do you explain Ricky Gervais' ongoing presence in
| TV, standup & social media where he routinely says
| objectively worse stuff than ever appeared in the Office
| with no real damage done to his career?
|
| His recent standup work has far more objectionable
| content in it than the Office ever did
| teddyh wrote:
| I would guess that a TV series must be approved by more
| people than an individual's standup routine.
| dylan604 wrote:
| A standup is the producer/director/writer/actor for the
| program. An sitcom/romcom has multiple
| producers/directors/writers/actors involved, so there is
| a much broader level of editorial. The producers deciding
| what directors/writers to hire is in and of itself
| editorial control. The writers agreeing what jokes to use
| is editorial control. Even the actors will get their say
| while on set with lines like "i just don't feel this is
| what my character would say", then you get rewrites
| onset.
|
| TL;DR: of course a standup's routine is much less
| scrutanized than any other type of content by the nature
| of it.
| daleharvey wrote:
| Whats the matter, is Ricky Gervais too challenging for you?
|
| (ref: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adh0KGmgmQw)
| Vinnl wrote:
| That's interesting; he also said:
|
| > Please stop saying "You can't joke about anything
| anymore". You can. You can joke about whatever the fuck you
| like. And some people won't like it and they will tell you
| they don't like it. And then it's up to you whether you
| give a fuck or not. And so on. It's a good system.
|
| https://twitter.com/rickygervais/status/1172874651019763712
| matthewh806 wrote:
| He's such an idiot
|
| https://screenrant.com/original-office-show-ricky-
| gervais-ca...
|
| > "Now [The Office] would suffer because people would
| take things literally...This was a show about everything
| -- it was about difference, it was about sex, race, all
| the things that people fear to even be discussed or
| talked about now, in case they say the wrong thing and
| they are cancelled...I think if this was put out now,
| some people have lost their sense of irony and context."
|
| > "...They're even more scared now because people don't
| take an explanation for an answer, they just say, 'Well,
| I don't want to see it, so let's ban it.'"
|
| Obviously the Office isn't in the limelight anywhere near
| as much as it used to be, but I never hear people having
| a problem with its tone or style of comedy. A few other
| sitcoms have had scenes removed from streaming platforms
| / boxsets (Peep Show, Fawlty Towers etc). But the Office
| I've never really seen mentioned in a similar way. In
| fact it's still pretty much beloved by everyone and
| regularly polls amongst the best British sitcoms of all
| time.
| effingwewt wrote:
| I didn't downvote you, but the office was _very much_
| censored and there were articles about it[1]. The same
| article discusses Community having one of its best
| episodes ever yanked over black face that was explicitly
| explained in the episode. People have lost their
| collective minds.
|
| [1] https://tvline.com/2020/06/26/the-office-community-
| blackface...
| zxzax wrote:
| People have lost their minds, because they don't want to
| see blackface, even in an ironic context? I wish you
| wouldn't say those things, because I feel the same way, I
| really don't want to see it, and I don't find it funny or
| worth seeing in any context. Please don't assume that
| everyone likes the same jokes that you do.
| ojbyrne wrote:
| That article references the American Office. The above
| comment references the British Office.
| trts wrote:
| People have lost their individual minds. The collective
| mind prevails.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| The best example of the "wouldn't be allowed to be made
| today" is Tropic Thunder.
| matthewh806 wrote:
| Yawn, everyone always uses this film as a "prime" example.
| I don't even think it's true. This film (like Borat) was
| clearly satirical and the real targets of the jokes quite
| obvious...
|
| I think a better example of movies which "wouldn't be
| allowed today" is probably something like the Hangover,
| which just mines outdated stereotypes & slurs for laughs.
| Just a sign of society moving on really (as much as Todd
| Phillips likes to cry about it, I feel his inability to
| adapt to the comedy landscape is really just a failure of
| the imagination). I thought the 21 / 22 Jump Street movie
| addressed this issue quite well it seems the shift took
| place sometime between the two releases
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm pretty skeptical of the "couldn't be made today"
| tropes. Some types of films have gone out of style. And
| there probably are cultural/ethnic stereotypes that would
| have been mostly considered funny by many audiences that
| would be more broadly seen as just offensive today.
|
| But I'm not sure how many things are really outright
| taboo. For example, I've also heard people say that
| Heathers couldn't be made today--can't be threatening to
| blow up a school--but it was actually staged as an off-
| Broadway musical not all that long ago.
| SteveNuts wrote:
| I mean, a main character is in blackface for the entire
| film. I'm fairly skeptical that will ever happen again.
| psychomugs wrote:
| I feel like RDJ would've been cancelled into oblivion if
| it came out in 2021 and he weren't the posterboy for the
| entire comic book movie genre.
| dbt00 wrote:
| I mean, this already happened. Ted Danson was semi-
| cancelled in the early 90s for wearing blackface to a
| Friar's Club roast of his then-girlfriend Whoopi
| Goldberg.
|
| Blackface being problematic isn't something we just
| figured out in the last 12 years, and people trying to do
| something funny with it anyway isn't new either.
| psychomugs wrote:
| I don't disagree with the fact that blackface is an old
| phenomenon, I think RDJ's prodigal-son-returns factor and
| headlining a tentpole summer blockbuster helped brace the
| impact a bit.
| aaron695 wrote:
| The 22 Jump Street movie kiss/fight scene could never be
| done today, nor could the other kissing scenes, but the
| kiss/fight scene was a pivotal part of the movie.
|
| Borat is racist, it's not 'satirical' and that's ok, the
| world's complicated. It's also ok to hide behind
| 'satirical' as everyone does, except when you get picky
| on movies you personally don't think are 'satirical'
|
| Hollywood's inability to deal with kissing is
| academically interesting. Currently combining sarcasm
| with the 'correct' actions they are told to follow. It's
| a dangerous path towards the religious moralism we left
| behind in the 60's, but perhaps I fear change.
|
| The idea nothing is happening is incorrect.
| jimbokun wrote:
| I don't think Tropic Thunder "would be allowed to be made"
| when it was made.
|
| I still don't quite get how they managed to get a movie
| centered around a character in black face made, even though
| it was obviously a parody.
| porb121 wrote:
| have you ever seen an episode of it's always sunny in
| philadelphia? the show is regularly far more offensive than
| any line in airplane, and nobody cares.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Yup.
|
| I think the problem is that a lot of the humor in Airplane
| has aged like sour milk - it's not a comedy made to stand
| the test of time. Consider "Blazing Saddles", which does
| not suffer from this problem nearly as much and is 6 years
| older. I could see it getting made today just fine with a
| few tweaks.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Airplane will always be hilarious, fight me.
|
| And Blazing Saddles is the poster child for "could not
| get made today" arguments.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > And Blazing Saddles is the poster child for "could not
| get made today" arguments.
|
| _Blazing Saddles_ was the poster child for that when
| many of the movies that argument is now made about were
| made, too.
|
| Because its the kind of movie that could never be made,
| except that it was. And if there was a Mel Brooks-in-his-
| prime now, the modern equivalent (which, presumably,
| _Blazing Samurai_ this year will not be) could get made
| today.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Going from a cowpoke to a bushido setting? How very
| _Westworld_.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Going from a cowpoke to a bushido setting?
|
| That's not the biggest change:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blazing_Samurai
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Including blackface, which other threads are suggesting is
| just totally impossible to pull off. The reality is it's
| perfectly fine to do anything offensive so long as the the
| joke isn't just reinforcing those beliefs.
|
| Not any different than the very common older, white racist
| character in sitcoms today. They're funny! Not because
| racism is funny, but because the unacceptability of their
| racism is funny.
| novinicus wrote:
| those episodes aren't on any streaming service nowadays
| though
| Aditya_Garg wrote:
| Its also tv's longest running sitcom.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Really? I would have guessed Seinfeld or something in
| that vein.
| afavour wrote:
| I think it's actually pretty debatable, depending on what
| you count "longest running" to mean. Curb Your Enthusiasm
| has been on since 2000 but has taken years-long breaks.
| Is that longest running?
|
| FWIW It's Always Sunny is, I believe, considered the
| longest running _live action_ sitcom. Longest running
| sitcom overall is The Simpsons.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Simpsons is not considered a sitcom, but it is the
| longest running show, period.
| slantyyz wrote:
| > but it is the longest running show, period.
|
| I guess soap operas don't count?
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Longest running prime time show?
| slantyyz wrote:
| > Longest running prime time show?
|
| I'm not sure it's our job to keep adding qualifiers to
| the OP's bold statement that "Simpsons is not considered
| a sitcom, but it is the longest running show, period."
| until it's finally accurate.
|
| In any case... PBS' Nova is 47 years old. Frontline is
| 37. I believe those are aired in prime time. And they are
| "not considered a sitcom" either.
| blihp wrote:
| Not the longest running show... soap operas, and possibly
| some news programs, hold that title. For example, the
| soap 'Days of Our Lives' has been running since 1965.
| psychomugs wrote:
| Sitcom: a television series that involves a continuing
| cast of characters in a succession of comedic
| circumstances [Merriam-Webster].
|
| The Simpsons is most definitely a sitcom, just one that
| happens to be animated.
| anotherman554 wrote:
| I can't see a critic taking that dictionary definition
| very seriously. If you had looked at Wikipedia instead,
| you'd see no animated show is discussed in the article on
| sitcom, suggesting animated shows are considered a
| separate genre.
|
| If you opened a textbook on mass media, it might have a
| definition of sitcom that is more culturally relevant.
| psychomugs wrote:
| From The Simpson Wikipedia page: "The Simpsons is an
| American adult animated sitcom created by Matt Groening
| for the Fox Broadcasting Company." The sentence links to
| the "Animated sitcom" page, which states, "An animated
| sitcom is a subgenre of the sitcom that is animated
| instead of live action that is geared toward adult
| audiences in most cases. South Park and The Simpsons are
| two of the longest running animated sitcoms."
|
| A square is also a rectangle.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Airplane! is another movie that "wouldn't be allowed to be
| made today"
|
| Yes, the kind of comedy it has is _very_ tied to the
| immediate social context for commercial viability, both as to
| the what it is lampooning (late-70s disaster films) and how.
|
| The broader template of Airplane! (broad take-it-to-11 parody
| of recently popular film patterns) because it was itself the
| pattern for its own flood of films in the 2000s ( _Scary
| Movie_ , _Date Movie_ , _Superhero Movie_ , and several
| sequels to _Scary Movie_ ).
| bsanr2 wrote:
| The, "Could not be made today," line of thinking is
| overblown. I predicted around 2015 that a movie in the style
| of "Falling Down" could never be made with a black lead. Less
| than 2 years later, Get Out was released. And as far as
| scandal-worthiness goes, I think if Sorry To Bother You got
| past the salacity filter, we're doing pretty good.
| afavour wrote:
| I think you're confusing "would not be allowed to be made
| today" with "would face a ~48 hour Twitter outrage cycle then
| the world would move on".
|
| I feel like we're stuck in this absurd cycle where the
| outrage _to the outrage_ becomes a force multiplier. A small
| number of very vocal people on the left express outrage about
| X. Not a view shared by the vast majority of the population,
| left and right included. Right wing media picks up on said
| outrage and makes vast, sweeping statements about what it
| means about "the left" and "America today". The whole thing
| snowballs, some folks on the left end up defending people
| they don't agree with just because of the outrage on the
| right... blah blah blah it all eventually dies down until we
| do the same dance a couple of months later.
|
| It's all an absurd waste of everyone's time, except for the
| folks like Tucker Carlson that get record viewing figures and
| a huge pay day from it.
| overgard wrote:
| I agree about the description of the outrage cycle, but I
| think what you're leaving out is people frequently get
| fired/ostracized for these things. That really does have a
| cooling effect.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| Who got fired for making a movie?
| jollybean wrote:
| Your conclusion misses the fact that those outraged people
| move the needle.
|
| Studio Execs are very sensitive to outrage. It's part of
| the calculus.
|
| Often, the outrage is perpetuated within the industry as
| well.
|
| That said - Airplane would get made - they'd just adjust
| the jokes accordingly.
|
| When they made Airplane, there were a lot of gags they
| didn't use because they just were 'too much' - or not
| funny.
|
| So adjusting the content a bit is always something going
| on.
|
| That said, the 'fear bar' is much, much lower for certain
| formats.
|
| My canary for that is Tina Fey. And Judd Apatow. These are
| staunchly progressive people, but with serious comedy
| chops. They have been making some passive aggressive public
| statements lately with respect to this stuff, you can hear
| what they think on podcasts.
|
| What we need is for Mel Brooks is to come back and save us.
| He's too old, but if he backed a Ben Stiller remake of
| 'Blazing Saddles' - I think it would be the funniest thing
| of the century.
| [deleted]
| toomanyducks wrote:
| I also think that as more high profile people leave
| Twitter, the extremes of canceling are going to die down.
| It's pretty well accepted in the leftist communities that
| canceling has become more than a bit too impulsive and
| reductionist (this latter factor, I would suggest, due in
| part to Twitter's tiny character limits), and I think at
| this point everyone _wants_ to leave Twitter and be done
| with it, but it 's a technical issue now. Twitter is
| addicting, and honestly so is the adrenaline rush from
| knowing some rich guy's day/week was ruined. imo, it's
| easier to just not think about Twitter when people you
| know/admire aren't on there, and if you're not thinking,
| you're not tweeting, and if you're not tweeting, you're not
| recklessly canceling.
|
| Something should replace it, though. Transparent
| accountability is good, and I think we'll really need to
| figure this one out before a tech monolopy takes advantage
| of it again.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| > except for the folks like Tucker Carlson that get record
| viewing figures
|
| True, but don't pretend that folks like Samantha Bee or Joy
| Reid aren't exactly the same thing for the other side.
| afavour wrote:
| I'd maybe agree that they occupy similar spaces in their
| respective media landscapes, though Bee being a comedian
| already makes her a different proposition. But either way
| I wouldn't say they are the exact same thing. An example:
| recently Tucker Carlson recently took time in an episode
| to detail an entirely unfounded conspiracy theory that
| the FBI was behind the January 6th Capitol attacks. It
| was completely and utterly false, and easily proven as
| such. But he has not (to date) admitted that.
|
| If there are examples of this level of disinformation
| coming from Samantha Bee and/or Joy Reid I'd be
| interested to see them.
| adamiscool8 wrote:
| Joy Reid regularly does the same. [0][1][2]
|
| [0] https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/06/24/jo
| y_reid_...
|
| [1] https://www.newsweek.com/joy-reid-fact-check-
| tapper-1546432
|
| [2] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
| politics/2018/4/27/17286392/j...
| [deleted]
| philwelch wrote:
| > Bee being a comedian already makes her a different
| proposition
|
| That's a bit of a cop-out in some ways, especially
| depending on how it's meant.
|
| If it's meant to indicate that Samantha Bee uses humor,
| that's fine. But by the same token, Rush Limbaugh used
| humor. Ben Shapiro and Stephen Crowder use humor. None of
| those people do a show with their primary intention being
| to get a laugh, though. They do a show with their primary
| intention being to express a point of view, and if they
| can use humor to do that, all the better.
|
| If it's meant to indicate that we shouldn't take Samantha
| Bee too seriously, don't worry; I don't. I also don't
| take Rachel Maddow or Tucker Carlson too seriously,
| either.
|
| But usually, it's meant to deflect criticism. Jon Stewart
| did the same thing. He would make serious criticisms of
| commentators (including a much younger Tucker Carlson) as
| if he was trying to be taken seriously, but as soon as
| anyone criticized him he would immediately fall back to,
| "I'm a comedian!"
|
| To his credit though, John Oliver (who was on the Daily
| Show along with Samantha Bee and Stephen Colbert back in
| the day) doesn't seem to hide behind the "I'm a comedian"
| shield anymore.
| NoSorryCannot wrote:
| Samantha Bee is not a talking head being laundered by
| news outlets into something like reporting.
|
| Who is pretending they can't tell the difference?
| junon wrote:
| Oh how I wish it was contained to Twitter.
| Delk wrote:
| I mostly agree, and you're spot on about the outrage cycle.
| Well put.
|
| However, I don't think the outrage cycle is really
| contained within Twitter, or within social media in
| general. It also spills over to traditional media, at least
| to some extent. Since it gets a lot of attention, including
| sometimes from influential people, it _can_ actually affect
| the kinds of content that people dare make, especially if
| financial risks are involved.
|
| What you're "allowed" to do is a bit of an imprecise
| expression unless you go right down to law, but it would be
| a little disingenuous to pretend that social pressure
| doesn't affect what people expect others to find
| permissible. Getting outrage thrown at you can certainly
| make people feel something is socially forbidden. (That of
| course serves a pro-social role as well. But I don't think
| we're used to the idea that it's normal to have outrage or
| other strong emotional condemnation towards something we do
| from random people we don't know unless we've done
| something totally unacceptable. We're wired to think of
| social acceptance as important and outrage as something
| that requires our attention. The way social media works
| throws us off because of that. But I digress.)
| bmitc wrote:
| > don't feel really constrained by Vonnegut's theory about
| there only being six types of story
|
| I mentioned this elsewhere, but I am not aware of any such
| theory by Vonnegut.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27748327
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Personally I like (mainland) Chinese movies and TV. It boggles
| my mind that I had to get a bootleg copy of the 2010 Three
| Kingdoms TV series.
| symlinkk wrote:
| The two Borat movies were completely different. The first movie
| made fun of everyone, the second movie made fun of the
| political right.
| bingidingi wrote:
| to be fair a lot of the "making fun" was self-inflicted
| jk7tarYZAQNpTQa wrote:
| > The one thing I agree with is that scrolling through Amazon
| Prime / Netflix is a draining & dissatisfying experience
|
| But not (only) because they lack a good catalog. It's mainly
| because they don't (want you to) have the tools to find content
| you'd truly like. They're focused on promoting new and trending
| content. The proper approach is to have a list outside content
| providers and not use providers as discovery tools. (Edited a
| typo.)
| xemdetia wrote:
| You need an external list anyway just to keep track of where
| things moved around to across subscription services. I
| wouldn't mind the current segmented streaming market as much
| if the people that are selling their media rights around
| provider to provider would do any effort to guide your
| eyeballs to their work, but they don't seem to be
| incentivized to do that and would rather direct you to a
| buy/rent situation instead which makes the whole streaming
| subscription piece redundant. Right now nobody's running the
| job as the promoter where they do an end to end hype train,
| it feels like everyone's just leaning on passive advertising
| and waiting to sell media rights to the next group. With the
| direct to consumer digital media purchase option only
| becoming more prevalent it seems like the subscription movies
| are going to be in purgatory for a very long time.
| kej wrote:
| >The proper approach is to have a list outside content
| providers and use not use providers as discovery tools.
|
| As an aside, justwatch.com (and their mobile app) do a good
| job of filling this role. They have the same "promote the
| stuff that's already trending" problem, but will recommend
| things across services or that aren't available for streaming
| but you might want to track down anyway. (No affiliation
| beyond being a happy user)
| teawrecks wrote:
| This is why I believe it should be a legal requirement for
| digital storefronts to have an API that allows 3rd parties to
| create custom UI for them. I understand that they want to
| have marketing control over their content, but as a result
| we're creating an objectively worse experience for customers
| with no way for competition to step in a solve it.
| mypalmike wrote:
| When Amazon Prime video first came out, the catalog was
| extremely poor - I suspect they cheaply licensed a large
| library of old, obscure releases in order to have something
| to launch. But they also had simple, effective algorithms for
| content discovery as opposed to the herding algorithms of
| today. I seem to recall they even had a "random"
| categorization which seemed to be truly randomized and which
| was wonderfully hit or miss.
| postsantum wrote:
| It's not hard to notice that the two Borat movies are very
| different in style
|
| Who is ridiculed in the subsequent moviefilm? Orange man, anti-
| abortion activists, libertarians, holocaust deniers - they are
| all safe to laught at. Just compare with who was the laughing
| stock at the original one - feminists, blacks, gays, jews. That
| wouldn't fly today
| taneq wrote:
| > Just compare with who was the laughing stock at the
| original one - feminists, blacks, gays, jews.
|
| If you think the first Borat movie was laughing at any of
| those groups then you have _seriously_ misunderstood the
| movie.
| rchaud wrote:
| It's been shown time and time again that a lot of cult
| movies are popular less for their satirical bent and more
| for the shock value and edgy premises in which the satire
| plays out.
|
| That's why there are innumerable comments of the "They
| wouldn't be allowed to make this today" variety. Shock
| first, nuance second (if at all).
| postsantum wrote:
| No, I understand that the movie was about common americans
| as the name suggests. But now, even using these groups as
| props for jokes will get you bombarded with thousands of
| angry tweets starting with the word "Normalizing"
| Tenoke wrote:
| So the acceptable targets have just changed. I don't think
| the complaint was that you can't make fun of jews (or
| whoever) specifically but about whether comedies of that
| general type are being made.
|
| Sacha Baron Cohen has changed targets 6+ times in his carrer
| so there's nothing new there.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| Given the sort of movies Amazon Prime shows at the top of its
| interface, I understand how you feel about movies now.
| bborud wrote:
| Streaming services have kind of ruined movies for me a bit.
|
| When using Netflix you get the impression that what they really
| want customers to do is to kind of "hang around in the lobby",
| scroll and experience the frustration of re-rejecting all the
| content you have already rejected a hundred times by scrolling
| past them.
|
| And Amazon...I can never quite figure out why they show me so
| much content that I can't access as part of my subscription or
| that requires some form of extra payment to watch. I guess it
| fits in with the overall Amazon theme of showing me merchandize
| that doesn't actually ship to where I live on their main site. Or
| that awful iPhone app that keeps asking me which amazon store I
| want to use, because after many years, Amazon still haven't
| figured out how to fix this.
|
| It is becoming ever more rare that me and the wife find something
| to watch. We scroll around for 10 minutes without finding
| anything, get bored, watch the news, turn off the TV and go do
| something else.
|
| The thing is: there is no UX innovation on streaming sites. They
| don't actually do anything intelligent about the knowledge they
| have about you. They keep showing you stuff you are not
| interested in and you have no way of telling them "look, I'm not
| into superhero movies" or "please don't show me anything Nick
| Cage is in".
|
| It would help if you could rapidly mark content as "I'm not
| interested", and remove it from sight so you don't have to scroll
| through screens of stuff you aren't going to watch again and
| again.
|
| Apple's movie thing is slightly better. You can actually navigate
| through a slightly better catalogue of movies, but the UX isn't
| great. And it makes no use of any knowledge about you to find
| content.
|
| Why has innovation on streaming service user experience stopped?
| Why are they so terrible?
| MarkLowenstein wrote:
| Designers and programmers seem to have a blind spot for the
| "I'm not interested" idea. I've pushed this for 15 years
| whenever I can in products we make, and literally no one gets
| it (I call it the "Sucks" button). What would make Netflix
| browsing, or _any_ search result list, way better? Getting to
| go down the list and quickly say "Sucks. Sucks. Sucks."
|
| The usual counter-point is "What will people do if they change
| their minds later?", which makes me tear my hair out.
| duncanawoods wrote:
| > And Amazon...I can never quite figure out why they show me so
| much content that I can't access
|
| If you click the "Free to me" link at the top then it works
| pretty well for just what you can access. The filter carries
| forward if you then filter for genres.
| bborud wrote:
| Yeah, but why show me content I can't even buy? And showing
| it prominently? That's just terrible design and makes Amazon
| the last streaming service I browse. If at all.
|
| The only time I actually end up watching stuff on Amazon is
| those 1-2 times per year they have something bingeworthy that
| I've learned about somewhere else. And then it's always "aw
| crud, Amazon - wonder if I even have access to it at all".
| psyc wrote:
| Before culling a few, I was subscribed to 5 streaming services.
| Typically, it would take me about 3 weeks to find something
| worth watching, and then a week or two to binge it. That's TV.
| I can barely ever find a movie I can sit through. Netflix was
| always like that as long as I can remember, and the others work
| the same way. A few gems sitting on a haystack of blah.
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| 74 films a year is too many. _No_ year had half that many films
| worth remembering. (Sturgeon 's law.)
|
| IMO, most of these laments apply equally to pop music. (Or maybe
| I'm just getting old.)
| Tenoke wrote:
| What a bad post.
|
| >1. TV and Film have switched spots.
|
| There's a lot more than Marvel going on today no matter what the
| author implies here.
|
| >2. Self-Censorship. Comedy was big in the early 2000s.
|
| Claiming that there have been no comedies since 2012 is just
| ridicilous and pointing at Deadpool as the only potential
| counter-example just shows how little the author has explored
| beyond blockbusters.
|
| > 3. Most Stories are the Same. > 4. You Learn the Tricks.
|
| This is mostly the same point and if the author didn't just watch
| the biggest blockbusters he'd have found how much pleasure you
| can get at that point by going for deconstructions, Meta, movies
| who play with, ignore or go against the tropes etc.
|
| >Passive Media Consumption is Fundamentally Bad.
|
| Fundamentally? He spent 2-3 hours on movies every 5 days, I doubt
| he doesnt spend as much time on something that he'd deem empty
| calories now, too.
|
| At any rate, you've hardly exhausted that much after 819 movies
| even after including those he'd seen before when he was watching
| less.
| tootie wrote:
| I would consider this to be a lame post on Reddit. I'm confused
| how it got voted up on HN.
| duderific wrote:
| Certainly there are flaws in his reasoning, but it's still
| interesting enough to spark discussion, as evidenced by the
| number of comments.
| chaostheory wrote:
| > "1. TV and Film have switched spots."
|
| > There's a lot more than Marvel going on today no matter what
| the author implies here.
|
| I agree. It now costs a lot less to propel TV to have "good
| enough" special effects that nearly rival movies. Pair that
| with better plots and more time for telling stories, it's not
| hard to see why TV is more enjoyable these days.
| ghaff wrote:
| It's not just that TV has more time but, with streaming, TV
| has a lot more flexibility to choose the right amount of time
| and the right format. Aside from the odd miniseries,
| traditional broadcast TV was pretty much limited to 30 minute
| and 60 minute slots with ads, typically in episodic form
| although that started to change with VCRs and then,
| especially, DVRs. Oh, and there was a significant incentive
| to hit enough episodes for syndication deals.
| tarsinge wrote:
| Yeah the the author circles around the root issue but
| ultimately misses it: it's not a quality problem, but a
| consumption behavior problem. Thinking that it's possible to be
| amazed by a new movie everyday is a consumerist myth, that's
| not how the brain works. When they say :
|
| > Those films of childhood were special - they'd fill me with
| wonder and ideas, inspiration for scenes to then recreate in
| The Sims or Lego
|
| It's not the film that were special, it was the fact that they
| watched few movies and had time to tinker about them. The
| wonder was not only in the passive watching experience, so the
| author will always be disappointed if their quest is to find
| the movie that could do that. Of course that's also applicable
| to video games or any other media when you feel the magic is
| lost.
| YinglingLight wrote:
| Content consumption "binges" are just that, they leave a
| feeling of regret if remembered at all.
| mark-r wrote:
| I wonder if he realizes how ironic it is to have "Passive Media
| Consumption is Fundamentally Bad" on a blog?
| nmz wrote:
| I will agree with the point about comedies is somewhat true,
| comedic releases have diminished greatly. We used to get a
| great new comedy every year. I can name 20 great comedies in
| the 80s, 90s and 2000s respectively, but in the 2010s there's
| only a handful.
| jhanschoo wrote:
| Can you give some example titles to illustrate your points?
| Tenoke wrote:
| Comedies - Spontaneous, Popstar, Everybody Wants Some
|
| Deconstruction/Meta/Anti-trope -Jump Street movies (count for
| both this and comedy as do some of the others), The Lego
| Movie, Cabin in the Woods, Better Watch Out, I'm Thinking of
| Ending Things
|
| 'Film' instead of movie - Another Round, Thorougbreads, The
| Lighthouse, Ex Machina
| stnmtn wrote:
| Fantastic list
| anticodon wrote:
| I have come to the same conclusion as an author. My two thoughts
| why this happened:
|
| 1. Writers and directors use all the accumulated information
| about what viewers like and not like, extract patterns, and churn
| out new movies according to the same small set of rules. E.g.
| first time the main hero is approached to save the world,
| he/she/it should refuse. Then something bad happens and the main
| hero agrees to save the world.
|
| This makes all movies and TV series pretty boring and
| predictable. Everything is written according to some meta-script.
| And I've read blogs of some writers so I know that such meta-
| scripts exist.
|
| 2. Storm of political correctness and other movements that took
| over USA, that look totally irrelevant and crazy outside of the
| USA. E.g. I won't be able to ever understand why historical
| persons in the movies should be black even if they couldn't be
| black in that position at that point of history. There're even
| more crazier examples.
|
| Same reason why I stopped reading american Sci Fi written in the
| last 15 years. There're passages that are weird and loathsome.
|
| Frankly, I'm happy that it happens. Movies, books, music is a
| powerful way to influence the people. USA used it successfully to
| spread its influence over the world. But if they continue pushing
| all their crazy beliefs down our throats, people start to avoid
| that.
|
| I have a feeling that it's already happening although I don't
| know how to prove it. Probably Netflix has the numbers but it
| would be grossly politically incorrect to publish them. I know
| that Disney already experience losses from pushing current US
| ideology in their movies.
|
| It's also interesting to watch what will win: ideology or greed.
| pfisherman wrote:
| Re point number 2: The example you give is not really
| supporting your point, and is pretty much an on the nose
| example of (cognitive) bias that comes off looking quite
| hypocritical, and slightly racist (for lack of a less loaded
| term).
|
| Please do not get your emotions up, I will try to explain. Your
| comment strongly implies a preference for movies from the past.
| Hollywood movies were/are notorious for "whitewashing"
| characters - i.e. using white characters / actors in roles
| where this would be very implausible according to the internal
| logic of the story (or history in cases where it applies).
| Objecting to one but not the other seems extremely hypocritical
| - there is a lack of consistency / fairness there. And then the
| question is why the preference for one vs the other?
|
| The more interesting question IMO is whether that preference is
| something inherent, or the result of years of exposure /
| programming that has normalized the practice one way - such
| that you are still able to suspend disbelief - but not the
| other?
| anticodon wrote:
| This is what I'm really talking about: this kind of craziness
| requires a lot of scaffolding and mental gymnastics to
| explain.
|
| While you live in the states, you're surrounded by it. It's
| aggressively pushed from everywhere. You can't resist,
| because disobedience will likely cause harm to you (e.g.
| losing a job and failure to pay the mortgage).
|
| So you naturally start to believe that it's all true and
| justified and the only way. I get it.
|
| But if you're outside of your society, outside of the
| pressure of making everyone accept this, it looks weird, even
| deranged in many cases. I'm pretty sure it causes and will
| cause loss of sales outside of the US. It would be carefully
| hidden and hard to prove, but I don't have to prove it. E.g.
| I just know that nobody from my friends and family would like
| to watch such a movie. Yeah, we discuss it and the opinion is
| pretty much universal among my family, my friends, my
| coworkers.
|
| It's even hard to understand it because we were not involved
| in the slave trade. And we really can't understand what
| problems experienced and continue to experience black people
| in the USA. This is true, but while it is hard to understand,
| it's much more easier to understand that making them play
| main roles in historical movies doesn't repair any injustices
| made to them.
| dmytrish wrote:
| > you live in the states, you're surrounded by it.
|
| When you live in a different country, you are surrounded by
| cultural norms of your country and disobedience is punished
| too (usually much more harshly than in the US). Your
| assumptions about actors' skin colors are as much
| influenced by the culture of your country as they are
| influenced by the US culture in the US, as evidenced by the
| phrase "the opinion is pretty much universal among my
| family, my friends, my coworkers." Please don't conflate a
| view from your culture with nebulous "obvious objectivity".
|
| > making them play main roles in historical movies doesn't
| repair any injustices made to them.
|
| It does not repair injustices of the past, but it helps fix
| the injustices of today: non-white actors of today should
| not be kept out of movies just because of a specific
| historical setting.
|
| Any historical movie is just a modern interpretation of
| true events. There is no actor that can be a completely
| authentic reflection of a historical character. A
| respectful, non-mocking actor play by a person of different
| race can be a good reminder of that.
| anticodon wrote:
| > When you live in a different country, you are
| surrounded by cultural norms of your country and
| disobedience is punished too
|
| Yes, it is true. But my country doesn't try to impose its
| cultural norms all over the world like they are universal
| truth that should be applied everywhere.
|
| Also, I don't really want to argue whether the society
| and processes in the US are just or not. It's that
| they're not interesting to dive into for somebody living
| in another country.
|
| E.g. I've started reading a sci fi book recently (won't
| name an author), and stopped after reading like 60 pages
| most of them describing all kinds of deviate sexual
| relationships. It's that I want to read the sci fi book,
| not an encyclopedia about 50 genders and how they mate
| with each other in all the intricate details.
|
| But I have a feeling that writers and directors in the US
| are forced to put that in their work. It's like communist
| system is commonly described: not only you are forbidden
| to object, you must also constantly demonstrate that you
| support it.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It's even hard to understand it because we were not
| involved in the slave trade. And we really can't understand
| what problems experienced and continue to experience black
| people in the USA. This is true, but while it is hard to
| understand, it's much more easier to understand that making
| them play main roles in historical movies doesn't repair
| any injustices made to them.
|
| It (and this is usually _fiction_ in historical settings,
| not historical movies, which are _different genres_ ,
| unless you are talking about black people playing black
| historical figures, which is a weird thing to object to)
| repairs (or, more accurately, mitigates) the injustice of
| current, active discrimination and underrepresentation of
| blacks in the film industry, not some distant historical
| injustice more closely tied to the slave trade.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > So you naturally start to believe that it's all true and
| justified
|
| Or you continue to believe what makes sense, but you keep
| your beliefs private out of fear.
| colordrops wrote:
| The article mentions a new Borat couldn't be made now, and the
| footnote, probably added after the new one came out, excuses
| the author being wrong by saying Sasha Baron Cohen already has
| popularity and support so could get away with it.
|
| It's simpler than that though and fits other points made - the
| new Borat was actually a lot more politically correct and
| followed the American ideology that has emerged recently,
| adding a woman character and going after Trump republicans.
| sysadm1n wrote:
| > the new Borat was actually a lot more politically correct
|
| No it wasn't PC (IMHO). It went out of its way to offend and
| pushed the envelope. I couldn't watch it to the end because
| of this. It brought up tired old stereotypes which I thought
| were long gone.
| jwalgenbach wrote:
| Or because sequels often add new characters. And the Trump
| Republicans made themselves ridiculously easy targets...see
| the Four Seasons Landscaping fiasco, paying off Playboy
| models and pornstars, suggesting publicly that people inject
| themselves with bleach or somehow use sunlight internally...
|
| People mock them because they do stupid things. Those are
| called consequences.
| tootie wrote:
| Point 2 is completely backwards in my opinion. The "political
| correctness" not at all emanating from America. It's emanating
| from China. Sensitivity to Chinese censors has colored a lot of
| major blockbusters. There remains little to no filter on what
| gets produced for US audiences and the latest from Eric Andre
| on Netflix is proof positive of that. Eric Andre pushes some of
| the same buttons as Borat with more emphasize on physical
| danger than parody, but he still got his movie made and
| released and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| The difference is you expect that from China, but not from US
| that has something called a First Amendment that used to mean
| something in the past. If you justify censure in USA with
| examples from China, that's saying USA is going down.
| GaryTang wrote:
| But USA is 'going down' isn't it? Media is created more and
| more for Chinese audiences. The market there is simply more
| appealing for producers. What gets produced has always been
| economically motivated, why would that change now?
| tootie wrote:
| The first amendment is very much in tact and is not
| applicable here at all. Artistic freedom in the US and
| Europe is arguably at all-time high from a public
| acceptance point of view.
| sam_0123 wrote:
| Yes, Hero's Journey plot
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey) is very well
| understood and yet continues to sell well and generally the
| idea of certain shapes to stories is beautifully explored here
| among other places: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOGru_4z1Vc
| soneca wrote:
| > _" pushing all their crazy beliefs down our throats,"_
|
| It always sound both funny and silly to me when people use
| these terms to describe the presence of equality ideas in
| movies/shows. I read a review of Brooklyn 99 where the reviewer
| complained that the episode was _"force-feeding"_ political
| discussions to them.
|
| Really? That's the analogy for it? What is remotely mandatory
| about including a political topic in a movie? I couldn't think
| of anything less mandatory than an arbitrary American movie or
| show. There are literally thousands and thousands of them. And
| movie watching is not "required" in any sense or circumstances.
|
| And when you compare one black actor performing a role that you
| have an opinion that should not be black inside a movie with
| how much white washing and under representation of black people
| happen in Hollywood movies, it becomes even sillier to say that
| you are entitled to have your allegedly white roles being
| performed by white actors.
|
| How can someone seriously use analogies such as "down the
| throat" for this kind of message?
| anticodon wrote:
| Meh. Let me guess: you live in USA. You're obliged to justify
| all this out of the fear of being "canceled": fired from your
| job, removed from social networks for saying politically
| incorrect stuff or supporting wrong political party or saying
| that there're less or more genders that is proclaimed by some
| powerful minority organization with the right to cancel.
|
| From other places this is experienced as craziness. What is
| "equal and ethical" about black women playing King of Sweden
| from IX century (this is a contrived example as I haven't
| even attempted to watch any of the contemporary historical
| movies from USA)? He wasn't black, he wasn't woman, why
| violate the history?
|
| Especially, considering that most of the world has nothing to
| do with the slave trade in the US, or with genocide of
| Indians in the US, or any consequences of it. So why we
| should suffer raping of the history just so that Americans
| could "restore the balance"?.. Besides, I don't even think
| that it restores the balance. It's a superficial measure that
| is very cheap compared to restoring the equality indeed.
| soneca wrote:
| I live in Brazil, I am Brazilian. Why did you feel such
| strong rejection of a black woman playing a white king? I
| have no idea which movie are you talking about, but I am
| pretty sure their intention was not to trick, mislead, or
| miseducated viewers that the Swedish king was not a white
| male. You continue to sound silly to me.
| anticodon wrote:
| It's not a strong rejection. It's two things:
|
| 1) I'm annoyed that US tries to impose its cultural norms
| on all other countries in the world, like they have
| monopoly on some absolute truth. Some of their cultural
| norms are weird and repulsive.
|
| 2) They include huge fragments dedicated to the ideology
| in all the movies and all the books, like it is
| obligatory by law. E.g. when I open almost any recent Sci
| Fi book of US author, it would be filled with graphic
| descriptions of various sexual deviations. Or something
| even less relevant, e.g. that "half of the country is
| filled with dumb bigots supporting Republican party". I
| didn't buy the book to read about US politics, I don't
| care. I want my Sci Fi, not read about gender 33 and
| gender 45 group sex orgy every second page.
|
| I just made a conclusion that it's simply not worth the
| time to watch recent US movies and read US books.
|
| It has almost nothing to do with equal rights, etc, etc.
| Besides, like I said in the other comment, including this
| in the movies doesn't make people equal. People at Amazon
| will work for measly pay, while Bezos will continue to
| get richer. Black people will be put in jails instead of
| giving them education and jobs - including them in the
| movies doesn't change that a single bit.
| mahogany wrote:
| > He wasn't black, he wasn't woman, why violate the
| history?
|
| Because it's acting. Maybe women are just trying to have
| some fun playing men, given that historically in the West,
| women were always played by men (or boys). Cross-gender and
| cross-race acting is nothing new. Have you ever seen a
| play? Are you upset whenever Othello is played by a white
| person?
| jeegsy wrote:
| > What is remotely mandatory about including a political
| topic in a movie?
|
| We are talking about fairly subjective preferences or
| perceptions. You don't have to be a film student to know that
| films/movies/tv are frequently used as tools for social
| engineering. When you notice, you can either feel positively
| or negatively about it and most importantly, you dont need to
| have a "good reason" for feeling either way.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Some things are germaine to a plot, some are not. This is a
| frequent issue in hero movies where a producer wants some
| particular detail added for nostalgia, or wants an extra
| villian added because they scored well in audience opinion
| testing.
|
| The standard example of this is romantic subplots. Frequently
| stories with no romantic subplot are modified to have one to
| align with a studios research - and these romantic subplots
| always feel fake, pushed down your throat and overall
| contrived, especially for characters never written to have
| chemistry.
|
| Social justice bingo is the romantic subplot of our time. I
| have no doubt there are general mandates around including
| certain ideas or themes, or removing others. See eg, the huge
| plot change in "WandaVision" where they even left in the
| Doctor Strange commercials (plot point from original story)
| but totally removed him from the ending.
| Zababa wrote:
| I don't share the opinion that it's "foced down the throat",
| but at least for young adults, many conversations are about
| the currently popular TV show or movie. So while it's not
| "forced down your throat", I think many people watch them to
| fit in. From what I saw it started with Breaking Bad, then
| Game of Thrones, and then it started getting faster and
| faster.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I won't be able to ever understand why historical persons in
| the movies should be black even if they couldn't be black in
| that position at that point of history.
|
| If they are historical persons, they either were or weren't
| black. You are probably talking about fictional persons in
| more-or-less historical fiction. And both inclusion that
| minimizes the racism of the historical period _and_ exclusion
| are potentially seen as problematic (from the Left; obviously,
| you've kind-of articulated the Right objection to inclusion.)
|
| Of course, whitewashing by placing White characters where they
| make no historical sense, often simply inserting white
| characters into adaptations of existing stories from other
| cultures (especially in lead roles) is _still_ (not only
| historically) more common than implausible inclusion of non-
| Whites, and remains a big complaint by (AFAICT) lots more
| foreigners to US media than occasionally including black people
| in improbable historical positions.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Curious what examples you see of Disney or other producers
| losing money pushing ideology.
| anticodon wrote:
| I've tried to find the proof but failed. Maybe I misremember
| something. Maybe it's my wishful thinking.
|
| Although I'm pretty sure I've read something that impertinent
| pushing of current US values causes aversion and losses in
| the viewers. Such things are really hard to find, you won't
| ever find this on a first page of CNN or BBC because it is an
| inconvenient truth.
|
| But I've found the confirmation that the first point (using
| big numbers and meta-script) is successful and increases
| revenue of Disney.
| pnutjam wrote:
| It's all over the conservative media platforms. They keep
| repeating it so people will think it's true. It's not.
| thrwaway9871 wrote:
| Of course its false, these are successful franchises now!
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2283336/
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1289401/
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5033998/
| Yaina wrote:
| Sensibilities have changed and the target audience has become
| larger. Since the 2000s films have sloooowly become less
| sexist, racist, homophobe and used less flat gross-out humor.
| Because you can make jokes that are not made at the expense of
| minorities.
|
| And this is not something purely happening in the US. It might
| just be perceived that way because they have such a large
| cultural influence around the world. There is racism, sexism
| and all the other stuff everywhere in the world, and the
| cultural reckoning is happening there too, just in very
| different ways.
| pnutjam wrote:
| I think you need to open your mind more. 90% of entertainment
| has always been garbage, often with an agenda. Just look at
| "The Turner Diaries", or "Rise of the Nation". There is plenty
| of good stuff on the screen. Movies, games, and television are
| all competing for the same audiences and I do think Movies are
| losing out. They are essentially Novellas, which are not as
| popular as Novels.
| asciimov wrote:
| Two thoughts:
|
| 1. There is a phenomena that happens to people that get immersed
| in an art form, they stop seeing the art as a whole, and only see
| the parts. For a musician listening to music, they will start
| picking out their instrument and maybe the percussion,
| effectively ignoring the rest of the song. After doing this for a
| while, it becomes automatic, and then becomes real work to be
| able to hear the work as a whole. I suspect this has happened to
| this writer with movies.
|
| 2. I want to see his list of movies. I want to know how far back
| his movie watching has gone. According to google there have been
| 579 Best Picture nominees over the 92 years the Academy Awards
| have been running. Has he seen all of those? I admit, Best
| Picture isn't a standard to rank good movies, but there are some
| real gems that didn't win. (Also, how many of the Hammer Films
| has he seen? There is 158, many are delightfully bad.)
|
| I grew up watching old movies (30's - 50's) One of my favorite
| movies is "It Happened One Night" from 1934. I think these old
| sliver screen movies are better due to writing. To be successful
| back then, you couldn't hide a bad script behind explosions and
| cgi, you had to tell a compelling story. Nowadays mass appeal
| relies not on telling a good story, but on how many big name
| actors can you get into cosplay suits, fly around the screen, and
| blow up buildings.
| mattowen_uk wrote:
| If I were to analyse what I watched over the past 12 months, it
| would probably breakdown into 80% TV and 20% movies. If the
| breakdown was 'hours-watched' the movies percentage would be WAY
| lower.
|
| For me, the reason for this is simple: You can't tell a good
| story in 90-ish minutes.
|
| The best time frame for a screen story, is as the author of the
| piece said, the 8-10 hour/part mini-series. It's the TV
| equivalent of a mid sized book, and has enough room to breathe
| without the pace being too slow, or the content too shallow.
|
| Movies on the other hand, rush through their 'stories' via 3 main
| set pieces, and offer little new that viewer hasn't already seen
| many times before, all lit against an amber and teal backdrop.
|
| World cinema is better than the typical Hollywood junk, and there
| really are some good gems out there (which is why I've not
| abandoned movies all together), but are still restricted in their
| story telling due to running time.
| Fern_Blossom wrote:
| My 2 cents on the same topic, except to literature and a
| potential "cure" to the issue. I'm trying to break into being a
| fiction writer. Once you learn the tools of the trade of
| storytelling, it doesn't really matter the medium, you know where
| the story is going. There's an editor that mentioned this in
| passing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP_SmnCQA_Y It's in the
| first 5 minutes of the video. But he explains about some little
| challenge of being able to predict the end of a novel based on a
| page or two. The editor slam dunked the literary scholars. When
| you see a story as a bunch of gears, chains and a motor or two
| (writers and editors) instead of some ethereal wisp of magic
| beyond mortal understanding (literary twats and "scholars"),
| there isn't much that surprises you. Sorry, storytelling isn't
| magic. It's more formula and structure, no matter how much chest
| beating "analysts" drum up. Like, when everyone was "surprised"
| by Knives Out's ending, I was more confused since I figured it
| out after about 15 minutes into the movie. I enjoyed the little
| thriller part that was thrown in. That was unexpected. Beyond
| that, it was a paint by numbers story. With a SJW writer/director
| and the basic setup of the family, you immediately know what's
| going to happen and how. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Christie,
| another one of those where every writer figures out who killed
| the guy once the body was found because it's stupid easy when you
| know the mechanics. Analysts, "What a surprising twist!" Also,
| like no "movie reviewing/analysis expert" has picked up that The
| Tomorrow War is an allegory to climate change (more important the
| sacrifice theme of a generation for a future generation) in the
| disguise of an alien/monster flick. Either none of them actually
| watched the movie, just watched the trailer or I'm some sort of
| genius. I'm the first to say I'm an idiot by the way.
|
| Anyways! I had a slog of a time with this when I started to
| realize this with every movie, show and book. "Alright, they got
| their milestone and in 3, 2, 1, kick in the balls to the
| protagonist (things get worser-er). And then in 3, 2, 1,
| Chekhov's [object/wisdom] helps them out of the problem..." Then
| I went to a friend's grill party during this woe-is-me phase.
| Basic American outdoor party. Hamburgers, hot dogs, chips, soda,
| beer, etc. Nothing surprising, yet, still enjoyable. Maybe this
| is more of a philosophical, Buddhist, enlightenment change in
| perception or just me over analyzing, but... who the fuck cares?
| No, seriously, who the fuck cares about things being completely
| different every single damn time? Sure, I like variety in food.
| Fish, salads, chilis, soups, pierogi, curries, sushi etc. But
| when you really think about it, there's a level of expectations
| even when you eat "variety". A level of, "not surprises" I and
| like 90+% of people out there demand in food. 10-20% surprise is
| okay, but I have to be in the mood for something completely
| different. Yes, that looks different to everyone. Everyone has
| different expectations. But you still expect certain things
| because you like it. This weird demand that everything is
| different, every time, is really weird.
|
| Beating to the punch: No, you are not Andrew Zimmern. There's a
| 99.9% chance you're in denial that you like eating a small subset
| of food on a regular basis. Nothing wrong with trying and
| appreciating _new_ , I do it too. But _new_ happens extremely
| rarely with 99.9% of the population. You don 't eat _new_
| anywhere as often as you may imagine. My point is, don 't pretend
| you don't enjoy eating the same foods you've enjoyed hundreds of
| times before.
|
| The same thing goes in stories. There are elements and methods
| those elements are brought together that I enjoy, just like food.
| Once I learned to enjoy the things that I _actually_ enjoy in
| stories, I think my love of books and movies skyrocketed. Doesn
| 't mean I think other genres/subgenres are bad. I just learned,
| "That's good, but it's not for me and that's okay". I like scifi
| settings more than fantasy. I used to think I _had_ to like
| fantasy. Thus, I always chased the "new" to fantasy or I thought
| it was "derivative". Honestly, if someone ever says a story is
| derivative, it's code for, "I don't like this genre, setting or
| general intent of this story. Thus, I'm going to get on my high
| horse and speak down to this." There's a reason some people can
| watch all 20+ seasons of Law and Order, but others can't watch
| more than 1 episode. Or read all cozy mysteries and love them all
| while others read one and go, "Yea, you read one, you read them
| all". Which is true. You read 1, maybe 2 different cozy
| mysteries... they're all the same. But you can also say the same
| about scifi, fantasy, political thrillers, horror, etc. If you
| didn't like what it's generally about to begin with, you're
| probably not going to like it anyways. Other than breakout
| pieces, this is the truth to story telling. You gravitate to
| aspects of a story. Settings, character types, plot types,
| certain themes, etc. Learn what those are and enjoy those.
| Nothing wrong with hating "popular" or "classics" because they
| don't speak to you. If it doesn't, it doesn't. Oh well. Find your
| own pond and build your own cabin. Then enjoy it.
| SuperNinKenDo wrote:
| While I understand some of what the author is expressing, they
| give a strong impression of American cultural homogeny and would
| do well to give themselves a dose of "World Cinema", that is,
| cinema outside their own narrow cultural sphere.
| jdhzzz wrote:
| Why doesn't music fall victim to this? Is it that visual demands
| more complete attention? One can "half-listen" to music, but not
| "half-watch" a movie so repetition isn't as annoying as quickly,
| so it happens, but more slowly?
| ElViajero wrote:
| I have stopped watching movies because I am getting old. I think
| that many movies nowadays are way better that what I used to
| like. It is just that I have seen it already, it is not new but
| re-shuffles of the same ideas that I have already been exposed
| to.
|
| Each generation has to criticize the previous one for not
| measuring to the experiences that they had as children.
|
| Why a movie in 2021 cannot move me like a movie when I was a kid?
| Surprise me? Scare me? Maybe movies are getting worse, that is
| possible, but probably the biggest change is inside yourself.
| trynumber9 wrote:
| Really? I've given up on TV since too many shows keep getting
| renewed when they should have been concluded soundly.
|
| There are plenty of old movies I have not seen, so if I'm going
| to vegetate for two hours, then I'd prefer to take something off
| the backlog than start some show which will continue nebulously
| for far too long.
| arh68 wrote:
| 819!? 819 is not a lot of movies. Some folks over on Criticker
| [1] have _thousands_ of reviews. Think 15,000. I myself have
| reviewed 440, and I 've never seen a lot of well-known movies. To
| say "no more" after 819 just seems odd. Perhaps one needs a
| break.
|
| I do agree that miniseries have grown as a genre, but I wouldn't
| be confident in saying it caused movies to decline.
|
| [1] https://www.criticker.com/
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Hollywood and some streaming companies lately started creating a
| lot of politically correct or politically activist movies that
| have no other value than having the "right theme" with the right
| actor race, gender or sexual orientation. This decreases the
| quality of the movies a lot, republicans kind of boycott these
| movies, the pandemic makes the earnings a lot lower than usual so
| there are less money on the table for more movies. As an European
| I switched to watching more European movies in the past decade.
| It is harder to access (there is no European movie market), but I
| saw nice Norwegian movies, Italian or Russian on top of my
| favorite - French. Unfortunately UK got into the same direction
| as USA, so it is out of the list. Strange, I saw no German movies
| for a long time, I have no explanation for that.
|
| And there is also some international selection of Brazilian or
| (south) Korean, even Chinese. I would like to have access to good
| Japanese movies, but I don't. Unfortunately Bollywood movies are
| a dime a dozen, good Aussie movies are rare and the movies from
| the rest of the world are inaccessible to me.
|
| In regards to the big screen versus TV, I found TV was less
| affected by the woke movement and SciFi, while rare these days,
| is still available (The Expanse). There are movies hit really bad
| (The Witcher), but still there are a few options left.
| gcanyon wrote:
| Of course as you watch more and more movies (regardless of the
| time frame) there are going to be fewer and fewer that surprise
| you. That's just the birthday problem
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem translated into
| film concepts. It's on you, the viewer, to remain comfortable
| with familiarity, or to seek out the novel, like a person who is
| bored with fast food taking up Thai food -- maybe when they
| started out flavors that unusual would have seemed awful, but
| after your fortieth Big Mac, pad Thai seems interesting. Likewise
| after seeing many films, maybe The Lobster seems interesting.
| venamresm__ wrote:
| I'm also going down that rabbit hole and I think the experience
| is mostly about getting out of a single mainstream cultural
| narrative and to increase cognitive diversity. This can be
| achieved by either watching movies from multiple different
| cultures or from completely different era. I've opted for both,
| and I've started writing reviews on my gopher[1] about the
| (mostly B&W and silent) movies I've been watching. I can clearly
| say, some of these are so impressive that they make contemporary
| movies (particularly Hollywood) look like slapstick jokes with a
| single plot.
|
| [1] gopher://g.nixers.net/0/~vnm/classic_movies Also available on
| proxies such as:
| https://proxy.vulpes.one/gopher/g.nixers.net/0/~vnm/classic_...
| arpa wrote:
| Wow, thanks for the list!
| fredsted wrote:
| Having turned 30 and watched a lot of movies, I have a similar
| feeling. I still pay for Netflix (even if I only use it a couple
| times a month) and look forward to movies, like the upcoming
| Dune, and occasionally rewatch some of my favorites, like Blade
| Runner, but these days I'm much more into YouTube. There's so
| much good content out there, and a lot of time it's interesting,
| and I'll learn something useful.
|
| As the author says, TV shows have really gained foothold, but I
| don't have time to watch several hours of content only to find
| out whether I _might_ enjoy it. It 's too big a time commitment
| for me.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Thanks, I read this expecting not to like it, but it resonated
| with me a _lot_. This past Oscars show, I 'd seen only two of the
| Best Films nominees, and they were both streamed. I also tried
| Nomadland and I turned it off.
|
| TV has indeed taken over. The creativity of Breaking Bad or
| Succession or Yellowstone is what we used to watch movies for.
| Real creativity is always there and it'll go where it's
| appreciated.
|
| I don't want to make this tl;dr so just one more thing: I hosted
| A.O. Scott at Google [1] and I mentioned that I never look at
| Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic. I read him, and whoever's on the
| Roger Ebert site. An 80% "score" from a bunch of stupid people is
| still stupid.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Kh3-DGU3l4
| rednerrus wrote:
| I'm going to echo the sentiment that world cinema is better than
| American cinema at the current moment.
| nmz wrote:
| The critics curse, the reason you enjoy movies when you are young
| is because you don't have critical thinking. the more of it you
| have, the less you enjoy. until you enjoy nothing.
|
| The solution is simple, turn it off and let yourself breathe.
| fullshark wrote:
| The root cause of this is basically Hollywood (i.e. who makes
| what gets shown in your local multiplex) has given up on making
| movies exclusively for American audiences. You need a global
| audience, and you need the potential to get a billion dollars +
| in revenue. E.G. as he points out comedies have died, that's
| because comedy is highly localized versus the kids movies +
| adventure plots which are more universal. End result is
| everything gets boiled down to its rawest, most accessible
| elements and everything feels samey.
| ladyattis wrote:
| It's why we don't see many satirical films in the same vein as
| Robocop and Starship Troopers anymore. It would be something
| that the Chinese censors would never allow. Whether it's the
| over the top violence or the skewering of the state and
| corporate power structure. Stuff like that annoys the Chinese
| govt more than most, so Hollywood would just bow out on such a
| film
|
| It's funny how many strange one off films and games are being
| made online through crowd funding now (not all are good but a
| few are decent) due to this global pleaser approach to film
| making.
| refenestrator wrote:
| Why would Chinese censors have a problem with films making
| fun of American capitalism and imperialism?
| ladyattis wrote:
| I don't think the modern Paul Verhoeven would be poking fun
| at just America. I think that hypothetical director would
| be poking fun at China and its attempts to bully other
| nation states in Africa and the world as well. That enough
| would throw it in the "not in China" camp of films.
| refenestrator wrote:
| Robocop and Starship Troopers were criticizing ideology
| and norms that are widely yet unconsciously accepted in
| America. That's why they're good.
|
| Anti-rival sniping is comparatively boring and we're all
| steeped in it all the time, anyways. It's the furthest
| thing from counterculture.
| wpietri wrote:
| Hollywood certainly involved, but I think something closer to
| the root cause is that the number of tickets sold for films in
| the US peaked in 2007: https://www.the-numbers.com/market/
|
| I think the root cause of the ticket shift is technological:
| cheaper screens, higher resolutions, better bandwidth. People
| have lots of entertainment at home.
|
| So what does that shift mean? Execs get risk-averse in
| flat/contracting markets, which alone would account for some of
| the perceived decline. Artists and execs who are excited for
| innovation/risk are going to move toward expanding market
| segments, meaning toward streaming.
|
| Also important here is who is buying tickets. 20 years ago I
| would happily haul my ass out to an art-house theater to see
| something novel and interesting. Now it's almost all available
| from my couch; the hard problem is picking something. More
| educated audiences are more likely to have the money and
| technology to watch from home, making niche theater-distributed
| films even riskier.
|
| What's still going to work in theaters? Things with mass appeal
| and audiences, especially ones that take advantage of the kind
| of sound/video that most people don't have at home. Things
| where audiences know what they're getting. Of the top 20 films
| from 2019, 18 were related to existing IP, and the other two
| were from famous directors:
| https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/2019/
| addflip wrote:
| > End result is everything gets boiled down to its rawest, most
| accessible elements and everything feels samey.
|
| This is basically what is referred to in the industry as "high
| concept." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_concept
|
| Bob Iger, Ex-CEO of Disney, was a big proponent of high concept
| movies. You can read more about it in the screenwriting book,
| Save the Cat. https://www.amazon.com/Save-Last-Book-
| Screenwriting-Youll/dp...
| kryogen1c wrote:
| > The root cause of this is basically Hollywood
|
| this is what i've started calling the "it takes one to tango"
| fallacy, where an issue has two responsible parties but only
| one gets blame. hollywood's not forcing people to spend their
| money on mass-produced uninspired movies - worse! thats what
| people pay to go see!
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I do blame consumers as well. Lowest common denominator
| consumers are absolutely to blame for their exceptionally
| poor taste. Unfortunately, they happen to be the majority of
| consumers.
|
| This opinion simply doesn't get expressed very often. People
| think it's elitism or something and react negatively to it.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| To assign blame to diffuse 'consumers' as well as the
| Hollywood/politicians/FAANG/manufacturers/international
| megacorporations that are the other side of whatever 'it
| takes two to tango' issue, the consumers need to have the
| capability to effectively communicate their demands back to
| their partner in the trap. Not only do they need the
| capability, they also need the expectation that the
| communication will be heard, else there is no reason to do
| it. But that line of communication is lost at large scales.
| Maybe a few purists will make a principled stand for nuanced,
| poignant, artistic, deep films, against the degeneration of
| the film industry towards bland, repetitive, shallow
| superhero rehashes, and will refuse to buy a ticket. But
| capturing those ticket sales would likely mean that more
| casual viewers didn't bother with the more difficult films.
| The only number that matters to Hollywood in the end is the
| box office gross sales; artistic purity is either
| counterproductive or immeasurable in that context and
| therefore irrelevant.
|
| I want to make responsible choices, and want to reject bland
| movies, or disposable packaging, or privacy-invading ad
| trackers, or greenhouse gassy lifestyle choices, or any
| number of similar issues. And I do make personal sacrifices
| that reflect these preferences. But I fully expect that
| Hollywood will continue to churn out uninspired movies, that
| the 'local' Walmart and, shortly thereafter, the landfill
| will contain almost as much plastic as product, that websites
| will increasingly pack their pages with ever-more-invasive
| trackers, that people will still live in single-family
| housing with multiple internal-combustion vehicles and long
| commutes.
|
| To be clear, I believe the blame actually lies with neither
| of the dancers, but with the system in which they operate.
| You can't expect the biggest studios like
| Universal/Paramount/Warner Bros/Disney/Columbia to make any
| decisions other than those which they're incentivized to
| make. They have no reason to do so, and if they did, they'd
| soon be replaced by a competitor who didn't. A corporation is
| not a moral entity, it's essentially an AI that attempts to
| maximize quarterly financial numbers, you can only expect it
| to act in the narrow context of incentives and consequences
| on which it operates. That cultural/social/political/economic
| context is the enemy, not any individual consumer and not any
| individual corporation.
| wpietri wrote:
| You're simultaneously claiming that movie viewers have no
| way to communicate and that Hollywood listens very hard to
| ticket sales. I think you'll have to pick one.
|
| I agree these are systemic problems, but I think it's a
| giant mistake to absolve a corporation's execs and
| employees for moral responsibility for their actions. The
| social context is _also_ part of the system, and it 's one
| of the easiest parts to change.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| It's simultaneously true that a single individual cannot
| communicate and that the actions of a diffuse,
| uncoordinated population are heard. That population can
| always be expected to contain a lot of uninformed,
| irrational consumers. "But what if everyone
| simultaneously thought very carefully about they want to
| consume" is not a thing that will ever happen and
| therefore not a valid solution.
|
| I don't absolve executives of moral guilt, they're
| clearly doing something wrong. I distinguish between this
| condition of being in the wrong with the condition of
| being to blame or responsible for the result. They are
| guilty, but if they didn't make the call, there will
| always be another greedy, narcisistic, power-hungry
| sociopath ready to take their place in the boardroom.
| "But what if all executives in the entire competitive
| industry rejected the cash grab and instead made the
| moral choice" is also not a thing that will ever happen
| and therefore not a valid solution.
|
| Without a mechanism for coordination, neither consumers
| nor producers can effect change; the system is all that's
| left to blame. Therefore, instead of moralizing or
| advocating individual action, we should build mechanisms
| to help people coordinate, work to shift the Overton
| window, and change the system to incentivize the
| behaviors you want, building very carefully to make sure
| that your changes are self-reinforcing.
| wpietri wrote:
| Movies aren't made for single individuals, so I'm not
| sure why you think explicit communication from a single
| individual is the important kind of communication here.
|
| Who gets to decide that the consumers are uninformed and
| irrational? I presume that's you judging people for their
| tastes? In my view people are in fact pretty good at
| picking the kind of entertainment they want.
|
| A lot of critics complaining about mass tastes seem to
| have not thought through what is economically viable in
| mass media. The complaint is effectively, "I, a
| discerning person who had studied this medium, want
| different things out of it than casual consumers." Which
| is almost tautological. What restaurant critic goes to
| McDonald's and complains that the food's not amazing? Its
| job isn't to amaze the kind of person who becomes a
| restaurant critic.
|
| But there is a mechanism for coordination. You're using
| it. Fans use it all the time to push entertainment
| industries in directions the like. In my view, that this
| isn't happening with film is not because of lack of
| communication. It's that the number of movie tickets sold
| peaked in 2007: https://www.the-numbers.com/market/
|
| Innovation has moved away from the dying medium because
| the economic incentives for film have shifted.
| kryogen1c wrote:
| > That cultural/social/political/economic context is the
| enemy
|
| quite right! what to do?
|
| i usually dead-end with some question like "how to reverse
| incentives" or "forcibly generated counter-incentives" or
| "inherently diversified incentive portfolios". i wonder if
| we need some kind of knights-errant (justicars from mass
| effect), agents small in number but large in power to
| correct wrongs.
|
| in daniel suarez's freedom, there is a meter/gauge that
| measures the concentration of power. the desired state is
| not diffuse OR centralized, but in the middle. you need
| both. the public needs power to be involved and feel
| involved, but there is not always time for a decision by
| committee and there is a time for prompt, decisive action.
| fullshark wrote:
| Yeah i guess the root root cause is TV + streaming
| competition has squeezed them so much that's the only way to
| get people to come out to the multiplex.
|
| Edit: Well since I introduced the idea of a "root cause" I
| concede the truth is the root cause of all business decisions
| is, has been, and always will be market forces.
| bruiseralmighty wrote:
| I think this is ignoring the problem of the global market.
| Studios found that it was more profitable to cater to
| multiple countries and cultures simultaneously.
|
| For example, even if 100% of America went to see a film, that
| only represents approximately 1/3 of China's population. As a
| studio, ignoring that market would be seen as throwing away
| money. So you will see immense pressure to make your movie
| marketable in China as well as America.
|
| Even if many American consumers choose to watch a film
| catering to them that studio would still be pressured to view
| that film as a commercial failure.
|
| It doesn't seem to matter so much what the local consumers
| want since their demand is dwarfed by global demand.
| ewmiller wrote:
| One party in the equation is a very powerful, profitable
| industry, the other is a huge but atomized group of people.
|
| To assume that the only power dynamic at play is consumers
| making individual choices as fully rational, considerate
| actors is a vast oversimplification. Your equation isn't more
| even, you've just flipped the one side, assuming that
| consumers have all the power and Hollywood is just haplessly
| following demand.
|
| Yes, lowest common denominator viewers are the biggest
| purchasing group, and that's the money that Hollywood is
| chasing. But that was true before. What changed isn't the
| same consumers demanding more Avengers and less art films,
| but Hollywood setting their sights on the global audience,
| thus increasing the market for generic movies a hundred fold.
| Now the incentives are so skewed towards that group that the
| individual American consumer has next to zero power in
| influencing Hollywood's direction with their dollars.
|
| You also ignore the power of advertising and limited choice.
| Marketing can and does create an audience of consumers that
| didn't exist before. It's not about "here are my products,
| now you choose the best" it's "here are my products and I
| will subtly convince you that you need them." Consumers are
| not rational actors in a classical sense of going to a market
| for a specific need and picking the best product from a wide
| selection. Marketing is sufficiently advanced that the owner
| of a supply can also create demand for it.
|
| Finally, Hollywood also controls the selection of choices. So
| as others have pointed out, people who would prefer smarter
| films have to forego movies altogether if they really want to
| "vote with their dollars." So they might still choose a sub
| par movie if they like the theater and their friends want to
| go.
|
| PS: I'm not advocating for a solution, so much as I am
| pointing out that there's more to market forces than a
| simplistic libertarian view of the market can offer. I think
| in this case it's inevitable and Hollywood movies are just
| gonna be like that now. But there's more at play than "oh
| well, consumers chose it!"
| sethhochberg wrote:
| Sure, the consumer does have some degree of influence here,
| but they're still picking from the menu of options the studio
| makes available.
|
| If someone likes movies as recreation, even if they would
| prefer something different than the action blockbusters,
| their choices are "don't enjoy yourself to send a message to
| the studios" or "watch a movie you might enjoy less than
| something from another genre"... most people who enjoy
| watching movies are probably gonna chose the route that still
| lets them enjoy watching a movie.
|
| The incentives don't line up. Its like buying McDonalds at an
| isolated highway rest stop - I don't particularly love
| McDonalds, but if my choices are a hot meal or whatever I can
| get from a vending machine or pack with me, I'll take the hot
| meal every time. Its not an enthusiastic endorsement of
| globalized fast food chains despite my paying for it.
| jk7tarYZAQNpTQa wrote:
| >but they're still picking from the menu of options the
| studio makes available.
|
| They're often not, just choosing whatever gets more
| promoted.
| kryogen1c wrote:
| > The incentives don't line up.
|
| this is again "it takes one to tango" - the people create
| the incentives the studios follow. movies largely make
| money with sales volume. this is important; tickets arent
| more expensive for different movies, its strictly a numbers
| game (ignoring uncommon deals like toys and video games,
| etc). according to the first link i clicked, marvel's last
| movie infinity war grossed two BILLION dollars. you are
| simply wrong if you think some novel, avant-garde sundance
| indie is going to interest that many people.
|
| the world is the way people want it to be. this is the
| tyranny of the majority. if we want non-incentivized things
| to exist, we're gonna have to invent new socioeconomic
| theories in this movie thread : )
| philwelch wrote:
| In general I agree with you. But I think you're
| committing the fallacy illustrated by the following joke:
|
| Two economists go walking down the street. One of them
| looks down and says, "is that a $100 bill on the
| sidewalk?". The other economist says, "it can't be,
| someone would have picked it up already", so they ignore
| it and walk on by.
|
| Hollywood is controlled by a small number of corporate
| conglomerates, many of which have their hands in too many
| pies to keep track of. Their movies are largely
| stagnating, which is probably creating an opportunity for
| better movies to capture an outsized share of the market.
| Some day, some of those movies are going to come out and
| make a lot of money. Studios will scramble to react and
| get stuck in a newer and more different rut.
|
| This is the same kind of cycle that Hollywood has gone
| through over and over again since the beginning. We're
| just in the trough of the cycle.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| You are assuming a fair and competitive market where the
| consumer is actually in charge. False assumption.
|
| The world is the way the people with money want it to be,
| because it's the lowest effort, most extractive model
| they can legally get away with. That's not to say people
| didn't like Endgame, but we all could have done without
| the last 3 or 4 Transformer movies. There are plenty of
| examples of trash movies that only get made because the
| story is watered down enough to pass globally.
| Brain_Thief wrote:
| The entire premise here is a bit odd to me; are people
| forced to spend their time and money watching a sub-par
| movie? Couldn't they watch one of the innumerable
| television shows that are available, watch YouTube, older
| movies, etc., etc.? The comparison made above to having
| to eat McDonald's in a desert doesn't make any sense in
| this context since that is talking about needing life-
| supporting nutrients in a literal desert.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Invert it. I want to watch a movie in theaters because
| that's a treasured pasttime. What's available to see is
| what's most profitable to the producer (which is measured
| globally), rather than what's pleasing to the customer
| (which is measured locally). It doesn't matter that there
| are alternative avenues - we're talking about a specific,
| consolidated economic sector that is behaving
| irrationally at the local level.
|
| I didn't write the McDonald's thing, so I'm not gonna try
| to contextualize it.
| Brain_Thief wrote:
| I understand your frustration but I still cannot get past
| the point that, generally speaking, an individual must
| make a specific, conscious, and unforced series of
| decisions in order to repeatedly end up in front of
| movies that they dislike. Their decisions must also by
| necessity happen in a context where there are many other
| media options available.
|
| I also enjoy the cinema but I only go when there are
| films that I find interesting and worthwhile. In my
| specific case this means that over the past few years
| I've seen Parasite, a showing of the original Alien, a
| few midnight B-tier horror movies, etc. I don't get to go
| to the movies as often as I would prefer but the
| alternative of wasting my time on films that I don't find
| attractive while simultaneously financially supporting an
| industry I disagree with seems obviously non-viable to
| me.
| spfzero wrote:
| Lots of people go to movies to go out with a group of
| friends. They have to agree on the movie, and don't each
| pick their own one. They enjoy spending time together
| maybe more than they enjoy the actual movie.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| > I understand your frustration but I still cannot get
| past the point that, generally speaking, an individual
| must make a specific, conscious, and unforced series of
| decisions in order to repeatedly end up in front of
| movies that they dislike.
|
| That seems like another odd assumption to make. It
| doesn't need to be based on individual choices, social
| dynamics drive plenty of decision making [1]. FWIW, I've
| only seen 1 new movie this year, and I only plan to see 1
| other, so it's not like I disagree with you at an
| individual level. That's not how it works out in the
| larger population though - for many people it's their
| leisure activity of choice.
|
| [1] e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox
| smsm42 wrote:
| If there's nothing in movie theaters but trash, but your
| culture values movie-going experience, then you have no
| choice but either watch trash or forgo this part of your
| cultural experience altogether. I've been choosing the
| latter for years now, but I can understand people that
| choose the former - because I still miss the experience.
| I'd love to go back to it - but not with trash.
|
| The McDonalds analogy is actually better than you think -
| imagine by some market quirk most of the restaurants in
| your city hired chefs that suck at their job. Because,
| say, The American Culinary Institute declared food is not
| supposed to taste good, it is supposed to send the right
| message, and the taste is secondary. It's not like the
| food isn't edible or harmful anymore - it still delivers
| the nutrition, and still kinda edible, but sucks.
| Ignoring the fact you could cook for yourself - let's
| imagine for a minute you have to dine out - what would
| you do? You'd go and eat sucky food. And since you do,
| the business model is provably working. Maybe if the
| whole town agreed to not eat out for a couple of months
| as a protest against sucky food, it could be changed -
| but what are the chances of that actually happening?
| refulgentis wrote:
| Another way of wording this is there's plenty of sequels
| that play to the long tail of fans of the original who
| will see anything relating to it
|
| The consumer is in charge of what movies they see. To
| suppose otherwise assigns people no agency: it's easy to
| do when it's others, but, it's not a valid way of
| analyzing it.
|
| I see this as a slippery slope argument that supposes any
| people who choose to see movies are drowned out by
| zombies who see only what ads tell them to see and think
| they're happy, but they're actually not
| arrosenberg wrote:
| > The consumer is in charge of what movies they see
|
| No they are not. The consumer is in charge of what they
| see _given the options available_. If what the consumer
| wants is not being produced, then the consumer is
| choosing the least-bad option (which is sometimes to
| choose a different activity).
| refulgentis wrote:
| I agree, and the next step would be to argue if there's
| _any_ options that pass arrosenberg's 'bad' filter, and I
| feel it gets awkward from there: I can't tell you what
| passes your filter. I respect your opinion and often say
| as much myself, but the argumentation is weak in several
| areas
| rhino369 wrote:
| I know more than a handful of people who complain about
| Hollywood originality, but only go to the theater for Marvel
| or Star Wars movies.
|
| Or who only go to see a movie that has 80% on Rotten Tomatoes
| (unless its a franchise movie).
|
| The real problem is that TV killed the middle-rung movie. All
| that is left is blockbuster spectacle (which costs too much
| to take risks with) or art house stuff.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >The real problem is that TV killed the middle-rung movie.
|
| You're 70 years too late. _Life_ magazine in 1957 talked
| about how one of the consequences of the Hollywood studio
| system (from both TV, and the 1948 Paramount antitrust
| case) was the death of the "million-dollar mediocrity" (<h
| ttps://books.google.com/books?id=Nz8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA146>):
|
| "It wasn't good entertainment and it wasn't art, and most
| of the movies produced had a uniform mediocrity, but they
| were also uniformly profitable ... The million-dollar
| mediocrity was the very backbone of Hollywood".
|
| The "million-dollar mediocrity" died because the Paramount
| case forbade block booking, in which studios required that
| theaters purchase said mediocrities to also buy big films.
| Original TV movies appeared in the 1960s but their budgets
| and production values were too low to really fill the hole
| in Hollywood, but today's streaming companies' insatiable
| appetite for content has opened a new outlet for middle-
| tier films (and, more importantly, series).
| cout wrote:
| > today's streaming companies' insatiable appetite for
| content has opened a new outlet for middle-tier films
| (and, more importantly, series)
|
| Also consider that a home entertainment room has a
| comfort and quality level that surpasses that of a
| typical budget [movie] theater (though I've been to a
| more luxurious theater that I would gladly pay money for
| even if I had a proper home theater -- it was that good).
|
| What I miss by staying at home and watching a Netflix
| film is the social aspect, and after the past 14 months,
| I think people are hungry for that. It's fun to cheer
| when your favorite star makes a cameo, or sing along to a
| Disney musical. If someone could figure out how to market
| it, I think there's money to be made there.
| OJFord wrote:
| > The real problem is that TV killed the middle-rung movie
|
| I nodded away to your last paragraph, but then I thought
| about my old Saturday job at an independent cinema. We
| charged PS2.50 for a ticket (now PS3.50, just checked;
| about US$3.50 & $5 in today's), the money was in the
| snacks, and of course it is in major chains too.
|
| I think the _real_ problem is consumer perception
| /treatment of cinemas as expensive rare treats comparable
| (in price) to going to a theatre. Which they are, at major
| chains fully laden with snacks, but don't have to be.
| Television is no doubt a contributor to that _image_ of
| cinema, but not I think in itself the cause of this.
| jk7tarYZAQNpTQa wrote:
| > I think the real problem is consumer
| perception/treatment of cinemas as expensive rare treats
| comparable (in price) to going to a theatre.
|
| My happiest relationship with film was when I was able to
| go to the movies every week (some weeks even twice!). I
| was going alone, during the week, to independent movie
| theaters that charge 4-5EUR. It's a great experience,
| even if you don't love the movie. It never feels like a
| ripoff.
|
| The main problem IMO is that people don't want to get out
| of their comfort zone (and lack time/interest to find new
| stuff they might like). But of course when tickets are
| 15EUR instead of 4EUR people are much less willing to
| take the risk.
| lodi wrote:
| > "it takes one to tango"
|
| Love it.
| addicted wrote:
| Every US movie watcher could stop watching certain movies and
| the studios would still make a lot more money globally than a
| US centric comedy, for example.
|
| The consumer does not have that much power. The individual
| consumer almost certainly doesn't.
| cout wrote:
| Don't forget product placement and merchandise sales; those
| can pretty significantly offset the cost of making a movie.
| Ticket sales are becoming a smaller and smaller piece of
| the pie over time.
| mc32 wrote:
| Hmmm. So who gets the blame for sugary drinks, snacks and
| other unhealthy junk food? The peddler or the consumer?
| pdpi wrote:
| Comedies have most certainly not died. They've just changed in
| tone.
|
| A few highlights from the last decade -- Booksmart is a very
| different take on the teenage buddy comedy. Jojo Rabbit and The
| Death of Stalin are some of the darkest black comedies I've
| ever watched, which would never have gotten made in the 90s.
| Birdman is completely surreal. The Grand Budapest Hotel is one
| of most joyous films to watch I know of, and The Artist is a
| comedic love letter to the silent era.
| drivers99 wrote:
| Booksmart was the first thing I thought of too when he said,
| "since 2012, the only successful comedies have been
| animations aimed at young children." (edit: I mean to say,
| you can still see movies with originality even if they're not
| "successful" i.e. blockbusters)
|
| In 2018 when I originally got AMC A-list subscription, I
| tried going to 3 movie a week at first, so I went to a lot
| more movies I was unsure about but they were very original
| and memorable, but they weren't super popular (at least I was
| the only person I personally knew who had seen it).
|
| Sorry to Bother You ($18 million)
|
| Blackkklansman ($93 million)
|
| Eighth Grade ($14 million)
|
| Crazy Rich Asians ($238 million)
| securingsincity wrote:
| Sorry to Bother You was so interesting, especially how they
| approached the first 2 acts. It was like a surrealist
| version of Do the right Thing. the 3rd act is well, it's
| different and while it doesn't live up to the build up...
| it's unforgettable .
| [deleted]
| runarberg wrote:
| I concur. _Sorry to Bother You_ was a really good movie.
| It is often missed how good this movie actually is. I
| feel like there needs to be a louder conversation on how
| brilliant this movie is in so many ways.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| Blackkklansman was brilliant
| WickyNilliams wrote:
| The Death of Stalin is one of the funniest things I have seen
| in a long time. Cannot recommend enough. Sorry I don't have
| much more to add, but it's so good I wanted to add my
| recommendation to the pile
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I don't think even that is true. There's plenty of fairly
| mainstream successful comedies. Jumanji comes to mind.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| That was... 26 years ago?
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumanji:_Welcome_to_the_Jun
| gle
|
| Fifth highest grossing film of 2017
|
| Sequel did very well as well
| wpietri wrote:
| For sure. Or look at things like Knives Out or Thor:
| Ragnarok. Solid comedies both and mass-market successes.
|
| The notion that people can't be funny anymore just because
| they can no longer use particular groups as punchlines is
| just lazy. A great example is Get Out. It's a lot of things,
| but it can reasonably be called a comedy:
| https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/11/jordan-peele-
| ge...
|
| Or look at Sorry to Bother You:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorry_to_Bother_You
|
| I thought both of these movies were hilarious, and they
| worked with extremely "challenging" social topics.
|
| As an old, when people start talking about movies were only
| funny back in the day, I suspect they just imprinted on
| whatever was funny in their youth. Time moves on, and humor
| has to move with it.
| jollybean wrote:
| You're not helping your argument though.
|
| Those were great films, however, they were niche.
|
| 'Superbad' was a big, hollywood thing. A cultural touchstone
| that we remember, make jokes about, memes.
|
| Very few people ever saw Booskmart or The Death of Stalin.
|
| The Globalization of Hollywood - and increased cultural
| sensitivities have changed this.
|
| Comedy doesn't cross borders as well as Thor.
|
| Without going into details, cultural sensitivities and fear
| of Twitter mobs is a 'fundamental' issue. It's not a side
| issue it's a primary driver. Have a listen to the podcasts
| and talks by various comedy writers, you can see the
| evolution.
|
| People with power have their knives out to destroy others -
| some of them obviously need to be cancelled, and some others
| raise some questions, but there are very, very few left with
| the power to make the jokes they want. Everyone else has to
| kowtow in fear. Comedy requires 'absolute safe spaces' in
| order to work, particularly writers rooms, which, if we could
| record what they say ... my god we'd all be offended.
|
| I'm hoping that this will just be a 'phase' but I'm afraid it
| may not be as the issues overlay with ostensibly historical
| issues of social justice, and as soon as we broach that
| domain, everything becomes deadly serious and we all act like
| good corporate citizens.
|
| It may very well take an established 'provider' like a
| different kind of Netflix with a different set of
| sensibilities.
|
| Edit: listen to Tina Fey and Judd Apatow podcasts and less
| public interviews, they hint at the shift while being very
| polite about it.
| pdpi wrote:
| Death of Stalin, Booksmart, Jojo Rabbit are definitely
| smaller independent comedies, but compare:
| The Artist: $130M gross, $15M budget Knives
| Out: $311M gross, $40M budget Birdman:
| $100M gross, $18M budget Grand Budapest: $173M
| gross, $25M budget Midnight in Paris: $154M gross,
| $17M budget Superbad: $170M gross, $20M
| budget
|
| All of those are in the same rough ballpark, but Superbad
| had 70% of its box office revenue in the US+Canada.
|
| Compare Grand Budapest and Birdman, which only saw 40% of
| their takings in NA. Midnight in Paris comes in at 37%,
| and, as a European production, The Artist saw only 35%-ish
| of its revenue in NA. Even Knives Out, the most hollywood-y
| of the lot, came in at 53% revenue from NA.
|
| Superbad is a Hollywood movie with Hollywood sensibilities,
| so it obviously performed best in the US, and it's
| obviously become a cultual touchstone there -- but I
| personally only even heard about it relatively recently.
| All the other films performed much better elsewhere so
| obviously don't seem to have had as much of a cultural
| impact from a US-centric perspective.
| jollybean wrote:
| I don't understand what point you are making?
|
| 1) Superbad was sleeper hit - it did well in the theatres
| but far better in the long run. It launched a bunch of
| careers into the mainstream. It's also a broad comedy.
|
| It was no more or less 'Hollywood' than the films you
| listed.
|
| 2) The films you listed are mostly _Oscar Winners_ -
| which get a massive, global boost from that kind of
| exposure. They 're also 100% 'artsy' kind of comedies
| made by highly respected auteurs - they're not broad
| comedies like Airplane or Animal House (or Superbad).
|
| 3) They're also mostly from the 2000's era, in which the
| general point is being made about 'challenging to make
| comedies' these days.
|
| 4) I don't think the box office differential rally helps
| that much as conceivably Superbad is going to naturally
| appeal a little bit more to North American audiences for
| the reasons you stated.
|
| Here is a Hollywood reporter take on it [1] the decline
| of comedy is not a controversial idea.
|
| "It's been a decade since any comedy launched a
| blockbuster franchise. "
|
| "The studios have backed away from comedies, just as they
| have mid-budget dramas, perceiving both as far harder to
| sell than tentpoles. "
|
| "Even a comedy superstar like Will Ferrell has had
| trouble getting movies made. "It's becoming a little
| finicky," he told the podcast Armchair Expert in early
| June. "I've recently come across things where I thought,
| 'Boy, what a great idea,' and went around town and
| everyone just went, 'Nope.' ""
|
| ...
|
| [1] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-
| news/comedy-b...
| ryandrake wrote:
| Comedy is way too broadly defined. Maybe my definition of
| comedy is too narrow, but I at least expect to laugh out
| loud during a comedy once in a while. Too many comedies
| lately just reach for the "cynicism" and "dark comedy"
| tools rather than genuinely make you laugh. Another
| thread put it better: We need more slapstick. We need
| more irreverence. We need a modern Mel Brooks or David
| Zucker / Leslie Nielsen combo to come back and show
| moviegoers how to totally run out of breath laughing
| again. Be able to poke fun at people, or companies, or
| institutions, or at least something outside of politics,
| and not worry so much about the Twitter mob sharpening
| their knives.
| jollybean wrote:
| What you're referring to is 'broad comedy' - and that's
| my point. They don't make them in a big way.
|
| The films listed above are not 'broad comedies' they're
| comedy/dramas.
|
| I'm not sure of the 'Mel Brooks is not an argument' (link
| in one of the responses) is a defence at all, because the
| fact is, he took excessive risks while trying to make a
| point, risks which would not be made today.
|
| He was Jewish and took on very serious issues with Nazis
| ... but he definitely was not Black, and Blazing Saddles
| ... wold be too much for today.
|
| By all accounts, Tropic Thunder would not get made today
| because of the ostensibly 'blackface' character - I think
| that's a really good 'threshold' to analyze because while
| I don't think the character is generally offensive and
| most wouldn't see it as that - but it's definitely going
| to be for some, to the point where Execs just couldn't
| back making the movie. There's going to be guaranteed
| outrage, and that outrage, if the press decides to
| amplify it, will kill a film and have all the parties
| involved running scared with apologies.
|
| The Kids in the Hall (Kevin McDonald) indicated they
| couldn't make what they made today. They did indicate
| they got pushback back in the day from some of their bits
| that mocked religion - particularly from the US - but
| they still got to make it, which is the point.
|
| Casting for any role which involves 'mixed' anything is a
| minefield which risks overthrowing a project. The casting
| of Cleopatra (who was Macedonian), caused controversy by
| people speaking on behalf of ... Ancient Egyptians? Whom
| even modern Egyptians could hardly make a claim to?
|
| There's a lot of good talk about having more people from
| different backgrounds in roles, and especially have them
| among rank and file production, which is obviously good,
| but this should be a different theme from say, what jokes
| are acceptable and not.
|
| Those are different kinds of issues that are getting
| crossed up in a cacophony of Twitter noise.
|
| HBO, Disney and Netflix are not interested in creative
| expression, they're inserted in products, broader
| audiences, and films that speak to their choice
| narratives. If you listen to some podcasts you can hear
| the opinions of these executives themselves speak about
| it. These are not your 'creativity first' type of people.
|
| Cable TV has always allowed for a narrow set of channels
| that challenged conventions, kind of a 'Late Night
| Loophole' in which naughty stuff was tolerated. We need
| this equivalent for streaming sources. We need an 'Adult
| Swim' version of Netflix that invests heavily in
| outrageous things.
| runarberg wrote:
| Blackkklansman was a relatively big budged film starring
| popular actors and made by an established director back
| in 2018, Spike Lee, and oh boy did he take risks. Despite
| being a historic drama/comedy the movie ends with the
| horrors of the Trump presidency. Just like Mel Brooks,
| the message is pretty obvious. Despite these risks this
| movie was aired in most big cinemas throughout the USA
| for several weeks (just like any other big budged
| drama/comedy would).
|
| Casting: I don't remember a time when casting didn't
| cause the hate mobs to go haywire. When Noma Dumezweni
| was cast as Hermione Granger people went nuts. Some
| historians raised issue with the fact that Xerxes II was
| acted by a black man in the movie 300 despite being
| Persian. And I'm sure casting a black man as Judas in
| Jesus Christ Superstar was equally controversial. Now in
| the era of people realizing how much representation
| matters, of course it is going to cause controversy if
| you hire an actor to play a role of a underrepresented
| group while the actor does not belong to said group. This
| didn't used to be the case, but it is today. However this
| has such an obvious solution that I doubt it has hindered
| the production of a single movie.
|
| > _" It's been a decade since any comedy launched a
| blockbuster franchise."_
|
| The times change. At one point hiring a white actor to
| play a black role did not stir a huge controversy, now it
| does. Franchises come into fashion, people get tired of
| them, creators move on. Just because comedy franchises
| aren't big today, it doesn't mean they are not possible.
| More likely is that people have seen enough sequels in
| other genres that they don't want to see _Baby Driver 2_
| no more then they like to see _Dump and Dumber 5_. And I
| think for a reason, comedy sequels tend to be pretty
| shitty (and I guess it makes sense, how often can you
| tell the same joke before it stops being funny).
|
| I think you are over-reading into the twitter mobs. I
| don't think they have as much power as you give them
| credit for. I think the biggest achievement of the
| twitter mob in the film industry was to give Sonic the
| Hedgehog a makeover. I don't know of a single example
| where a comedy was cancelled because twitter didn't like
| it. And I think comedies get made today just like they
| did yesteryear. And I think producers of comedies had to
| be careful about the subject matter before just like
| today. And I think they stirred controversies before, and
| they will continue to do so, irregardless of the
| political climate.
| runarberg wrote:
| Apparently you couldn't make a Mel Brooks film back when
| Mel Brooks was active either because hate mobs[1].
|
| 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62cPPSyoQkE
| runarberg wrote:
| > there are very, very few left with the power to make the
| jokes they want.
|
| I guess Spike Lee ( _Blackkklansman_ , 2018), Boots Riley (
| _Sorry to Bother You_ , 2018), Taika Waititi ( _Jojo
| Rabbit_ , 2019), etc. are one of the few people left with
| the power to make the jokes they want. Or are those not the
| kinds of jokes you were thinking about?
|
| (TW: next paragraph) I get the sense that you are simply
| wrong about this. I don't know of any examples where a good
| comedy was 'cancelled' because of a twitter mob. If you are
| afraid that the era of the prison rape joke is over, then I
| hate to brake it to you, that joke was never funny, and
| even if it was, it certainly isn't any more[1].
|
| 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc6QxD2_yQw
| Keyframe wrote:
| Industry knows that. Netflix did damage to the industry (and
| ultimately to themselves) according to the actual Hollywood.
| Lynda Obst talks about it here (how Netflix did damage):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_oHW31jQfg I recommend
| watching the full interview, it gets to the bottom of it.
| psychomugs wrote:
| "Good films get smaller audiences, but more of the viewer." -
| Jean-Luc Godard
| Sr_developer wrote:
| What?
|
| The great American comedies are loved worldwide from the
| classics like the Three Stooges and Abbot and Costello to the
| "modern" dumb movies like the Hangover or Superbad. The pull to
| milquetoast, harmless comedies come from INSIDE the US by the
| usual suspects.
|
| A comedy like Borat can be made because it makes fun of the
| "right" people, a FSU country, Islam, Roma people, American
| conservatives, rednecks, etc, so it is New-York-Times
| readership approved. Keep the same script but change the
| demographics and you will get pages upon pages of harsh
| criticism all over the media.
|
| Young people need to understand that there is always an
| ideologically war going and the powerful people push their
| worldview unto us.
| fullshark wrote:
| FYI The Hangover came out 12 years ago, Superbad came out 14
| years ago. The rest of your post I'm not so interested in
| discussing, but comedy to me appears to be a genre that has
| moved to TV, like most genre fare for adults these days.
| Sr_developer wrote:
| FYI Bradley Cooper stars in the Hangover, now that we are
| sharing useless and obvious facts. The point is that those
| kind of irreverent movies were loved abroad so the current
| situation is not because the globalization of the audience,
| a thing which btw is 40 years old at the very least.
| fullshark wrote:
| I just found it interesting how you called them modern,
| they were probably some of the comedies I would call
| modern, and then I looked and realized they basically
| predate the founding of Uber.
|
| Those movies you mention weren't necessarily made to
| cater to foreign audiences, Hollywood may have always
| enjoyed making money from foreign audiences but the
| balance has largely shifted over the last several years
| to the point where foreign box offices and audiences come
| first and determine what films get made and their
| content, that's a big shift in my opinion.
| slantyyz wrote:
| > they basically predate the founding of Uber.
|
| So anything before the smartphone era is what... not-
| modern, sorta-modern?
|
| If the founding of Uber (2009?) is a milestone of some
| sort, man I feel ancient.
| Sr_developer wrote:
| OP must be 21 or younger
| fullshark wrote:
| I should have used the creation of Bitcoin, the true
| cultural milestone on this board (January 2009).
| slantyyz wrote:
| That's an interesting choice.
|
| Personally, I think I'd go with the release of the iPhone
| (June 2007).
| einpoklum wrote:
| ... and the root cause of that is the commercial nature of most
| popular film production.
|
| This might sound like a trivial statement, but as we are
| finding out - the profit motive can take us down a highly
| problematic and noticeable path.
|
| A challenge, though, is figuring out what paths, content-wise,
| this has already taken us down with us simply having
| internalized the choices as axiomatic.
| kryogen1c wrote:
| > the profit motive can take us down a highly problematic and
| noticeable path
|
| when i was writing a sibling comment i had this same
| realization. the fault of capitalism is that its an
| expression of populism, of the tyranny of the majority.
|
| i think the american founders had this correct, at least in
| principle: there needs to be a system of checks and balances
| with populism meeting elitism.
|
| i wonder how one would go about architecting such an economic
| system. free market capitalism only for small businesses, no
| larger than one state? stronger government intervention
| interstate?
| SllX wrote:
| That's a misapplication of the principles they sought to
| apply and why they sought to apply them.
|
| To put "checks and balances" in context, the United States
| was not at the time a "state" in the post-Napoleon sense,
| it was a Union of States that better fit that model, and
| what they were trying to create was something in between
| the completely impotent Congress of the Articles of
| Confederation and a centralized Congress with carte Blanche
| authority. We got a Congress that could do more stuff, with
| theoretically carte Blanche authority, but unable to act
| with that because Congress cannot speak with one voice, and
| we gave it a whitelist of powers that it could exercise,
| later supplemented with a blacklist of powers it was
| forbidden from exercising. The United States also for the
| first time had its own Executive authority separate from
| the militias and armies it paid for and its own courts and
| revenue separate from the States.
|
| The impetus for this by the way was not successfully
| prosecuting a war of Independence, that made the
| Constitutional Convention more possible and peaceful than
| it otherwise might have been, but because Congress, as it
| existed at the time under the Articles of Confederation
| where each State had effectively one vote, could not
| effectively resolve State and marketplace disputes. If
| Rhode Island's government was knocked out and taken over by
| a militia of debtors devoted to the cause of cancelling
| their own debts, especially their out of State debts, there
| was not a damn thing Congress could do on its own. No
| bankruptcy courts, no protections, no courts of any kind
| flying the American flag and a Massachusetts Court couldn't
| effect action beyond the borders of Massachusetts;
| Massachusetts would have to go to war to effect any action
| in Rhode Island.
|
| Political systems are considered dangerous and hard to
| manage, in need of those checks and balances, because their
| powers as seats of authority are a target for ambitious
| people who seek to control or abuse their fellow men, and
| those powers range all the way up to cancelling debts,
| seizing private property and putting people to death.
| Economies don't have offices of power because they are not
| organizations to be managed and controlled: only the
| results of human activity.
| theunixbeard wrote:
| China does this to some degree. Small businesses are free
| to transact without much intervention but very large
| companies get influenced/controlled by the small government
| elite in the Chinese Communist Party.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| In which corruption is among the most pronounced
| problems.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > when i was writing a sibling comment i had this same
| realization. the fault of capitalism is that its an
| expression of populism, of the tyranny of the majority.
|
| Then, you had the opposite realization to mine, since I
| described a "tyranny" of the capital-owning minority, who,
| in particular, control the large film production studios.
| And if you believe they simply must give the people "what
| they want", then I'll quite some Bakunin at you:
|
| > ...That abstraction called the common interest, the
| public good, the public safety, ... where all real wills
| cancel each other in that other abstraction which bears the
| name of the will of the people. ... this so-called will of
| the people is never anything else than the sacrifice and
| the negation of all the real wills of the population; just
| as this so-called public good is nothing else than the
| sacrifice of their interests."
|
| obviously these harsh words are not directed at the
| outpouring of Kung-Fu Panda and Marvel superhero films, but
| if you tone it down a few notches it sort of applies.
| zxzax wrote:
| I view that as a positive. Like a lot of other things in the
| US, the film industry has a long and racist past starting
| with the infamous "Birth of a Nation," which was highly
| profitable at the time of its production, but you couldn't
| make a blatant racist propaganda film like that now, which
| I'd say is for the better. The article mentions "Borat" which
| is an interesting example because I'd imagine a lot of people
| just don't get the joke and would also view it as a racist
| and anti-semitic film.
| mc32 wrote:
| That's an interesting. It seems then that French cinema, or
| European cinema in general is more localized and thus rarely
| becomes an international blockbuster (with rare exceptions).
|
| Mexico tends to export to Latin America (southern cone) altho
| one could argue that while there are regional differences, in
| broad strokes mainstream latam culture jives with each other.
| justshowpost wrote:
| Let me narrow things up... Hollywood's global market is located
| in Red China. Tailoring for them is the reason why HW's
| products are so dull so they hardly can compete with high-class
| TV series.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| > TV and Film have switched spots
|
| I think this is true. But like... ok? Longer form series are
| better for a lot of content. Characters and relationships are
| better developed. TV has taken on film-like quality in many cases
| I don't know that I really see the difference.
|
| > Most Stories are the Same & You Learn the Tricks
|
| Than the formulaic comedies and romantic films and action films
| churned out in the 90s and 2000s? Yeah right. This has always
| been true. I find inventive plots are much easier to find these
| days. Especially with more foreign film getting up to speed.
|
| It's difficult to break the mold in a single film, not to imply
| plenty of films don't do this frequently. But this is another
| advantages of TV series. There's a lot more room to explore
| different directions. Creative freedom has never been more alive.
|
| Even the superhero film franchise that must not be named does
| some creative stuff these days besides two beefy boys punching
| through explosions.
|
| > Passive Media Consumption is Fundamentally Bad
|
| This is my favorite kind of review on Steam.
|
| "I played this game for 200 hours. I would not recommend it. "
|
| by XXX. 400 hours played.
| imbnwa wrote:
| I feel like this will happen if you watch 74 movies a year that
| you've never seen before. Even when I had time to engross myself
| in international cinema in the mid 00s with none of today's level
| of distraction I wasn't hitting 74 a year and that was with
| Netflix DVDs and a membership with a few private BT trackers and
| DC++ on top (of course one had to wait hours to days to pull
| things down).
|
| I think that the real ceiling for quality content, film or no, is
| the writing and there's no way to generate more high-quality
| writers on demand. Editing? You can walk down a street in
| Brooklyn and find an editor no problem. Cinematography? Art
| schools produce tons of people who are good at taking pretty
| pictures.
|
| But there's only one Charlie Kaufman. There's only one Aaron
| Sorkin. There's only one Quintin Tarantino. There's just the Coen
| Brothers. No amount of art school or trial and error can make you
| a compelling writer.
|
| So we're at a point where there's an abundance of people who can
| help you make a movie technically, an abundance of people who
| will finance a movie, an abundance of people who will act in your
| movie (everyone I remember from the 90s is still available as an
| actor on top of everyone else trying to be one) but just not an
| abundance of good writers and that'll probably always be true.
| hashhar wrote:
| What makes the writers more special than cinematographers,
| audio engineers, set designers, editors.
|
| Each of these skills can be learned and each of these also have
| some level of personal creativity and discovery that can't be
| learned and is intrinsic to a person.
| socialist_coder wrote:
| If you have a bad writer, no amount of good other stuff can
| salvage your movie.
|
| Not true for the other roles.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >If you have a bad writer, no amount of good other stuff
| can salvage your movie.
|
| no, if you have good actors they can make your bad writing
| in some ways standable.
|
| There is the whole "so bad it's good movie" which is
| generally because the actors manage to make the badness
| bearable.
|
| Con Air and The Rock were not written by a writer as good
| as the ones you mentioned but they did have the right
| actors to make those movies really enjoyable for a lot of
| people. I would submit the actors salvaged those movies.
| petesivak wrote:
| Hilariously, both Aaron Sorkin and Tarantino worked on
| The Rock, although they are not credited.
| socialist_coder wrote:
| Yeah, good point. I don't disagree with that. On the
| flipside, bad acting will ruin any movie too, no matter
| how good everything else is.
| hashhar wrote:
| That goes for every role. Bad lighting will kill thr
| movie, bad audio mixes will kill it and on and on.
| imbnwa wrote:
| > Con Air and The Rock were not written by a writer as
| good as the ones you mentioned but they did have the
| right actors to make those movies really enjoyable for a
| lot of people. I would submit the actors salvaged those
| movies.
|
| I mean we can expand the scope of the conversation and
| lower the bar, but the article writer's scope seemed to
| be one of being "on a quest for the one-in-a-hundred
| experience" to which I was responding to the dearth of
| such.
|
| Are Jerry Bruckehimer movies really one-in-a-hundred
| experiences?
|
| I mean I get where you're coming from: I loved and still
| love Starship Troopers but I'm not gonna assert its high-
| value cinema or on the level the article writer is
| seeking.
|
| Friends is some of the most mindless television I've ever
| seen but its basically the most popular and successful TV
| show ever, so what do we want to measure?
| rolleiflex wrote:
| I'm still not sure what Starship Troopers even _was_. Was
| it a comedy, satire or just a flat, wide-eyed warning
| about war and nationalism in the vein of WW1? It's a
| movie that starts in a regular high school, dating, and
| (spoilers ahead, NFSW ahead) continue with most of the
| crew being eaten alive, slowly, in full view of the
| camera, while begging to be killed. The seriousness of
| the nationalism in the movie and the following /
| preceding carnage, the apparent lack of irony and the
| characters basically having the acting skills of
| cardboard cutouts sort of make it into ... something I'm
| not even sure what.
|
| It's like an army recruitment movie for a losing war
| except this one continues to film after the cadet signs
| the papers, and then and follows him on camera to his
| horrible, painful, slow death. Then unironically waves
| the flag at the end and with a number to call for more
| info.
|
| It's either so good that the entire movie is a hilarious
| deadpan parody about horrors of war, or it's so bad it's
| inadvertently become that. In either case, it's
| definitely something. It reminds me of the Wilfred Owen
| poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46560/dulce-
| et-decoru...
| base698 wrote:
| The director said they used cardboard actors so you
| wouldn't feel bad when they died.
|
| The same director made Robocop which had similar satire
| and themes.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >and the characters basically having the acting skills of
| cardboard cutouts
|
| Neil Patrick Harris!
| evilotto wrote:
| I think all of your criticisms of the movie were aimed at
| the book too. The movie followed the book pretty closely
| except for the mecha-suits.
| pnutjam wrote:
| I heard the movie was basically ready to go when someone
| noticed how similar the story was to Starship Troopers.
| They had to get the rights just to avoid a lawsuit. I'm
| not really sure I agree on how similar they are.
| ghaff wrote:
| >The movie followed the book pretty closely except for
| the mecha-suits.
|
| There's a surface similarity but the tone is completely
| different. To me, the film is pretty obviously a largely
| satirical retelling of the book's story.
| royjacobs wrote:
| The director, Paul Verhoeven, has been very interested in
| World War 2 and has in fact made multiple movies set in
| WW2. The satiric elements in Starship Troopers and its
| parallels to Nazi Germany (and especially the propaganda
| elements) were definitely intentional.
| ollifi wrote:
| There was an interview with the scriptwriter (can't find
| it though) who said they wanted to make a film about nazi
| germany and the young people who bought into the cause.
| If you look at the costumes I think it is not so far
| fetched that was one aspect of it.
| licebmi__at__ wrote:
| >It's like an army recruitment movie for a losing war
| except this one continues to film after the cadet signs
| the papers, and then and follows him on camera to his
| horrible, painful, slow death. Then unironically waves
| the flag at the end and with a number to call for more
| info.
|
| This is quite likely the intent. The same style that
| makes Robocop to be understood as a classic action movie
| even if the intention was to subvert.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| yeah, 1 in a 100 movies I don't know - not sure I put
| Sorkin at 1 in a 100 as a writer. Also one person's 1 in
| a 100 is another person's pretentious piece of whatever.
|
| I think for a lot of people Star Wars is a 1 in a 100 -
| if so, to quote Harrison Ford: "George, you can type this
| shit, but you can't say it!"
|
| on edit: I had missed that he was looking for a 1 in a
| 100 movie originally so I went back and reread, he says
| "Perhaps worst of all is the realization that the movies
| you like are very rare, and as you dive deep into film,
| you're on a quest for the one-in-a-hundred experience."
| so it is not that he is looking for an objective 1 in 100
| movie, but rather the 1 in a 100 he likes, thus Con Air
| and The Rock could stand for someone as those 1 in a 100
| - for example I like both those movies but I hate
| everything else Michael Bay has ever done (don't know who
| directed Con Air - hmm Simon West quick google, yeah
| looks like I hate all those too)
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| There is an old US crime show, which nobody in the US
| liked, but was a hit in Germany - the people tasked with
| translating and dubbing realized how bad the original was
| and decided to rewrite it into a comedy.
|
| I can't remember the name of the show, but I read about
| it in a reputable newspaper, so I hope I'm not spreading
| an urban legend.
| DrSiemer wrote:
| Nope, confirmed. Dubs were done by ZDF and they did that
| with Bud Spencer and Terrence Hill movies. Also the
| Persuaders (die Zwei).
|
| Now I finally understand why they are always raving about
| those crappy old westerns on a German image board I often
| visit.
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| Where the Spencer and Hill movies originally in English
| or Italian?
| justshowpost wrote:
| > old US crime show, which nobody in the US liked, but
| was a hit in Germany
|
| LOL, by some reason this phrase causes search engines to
| reduce ad hitlerum
| majewsky wrote:
| I have stopped watching German dubs long ago, but I
| watched a lot of the German dub of Scrubs during its
| original run, and much later came across the original
| English version. It's incredibly striking how the dubbing
| changed the character of Dr Cox: In the German dub, he's
| portrayed in a high-pitched voice, rendering him a
| maniacal goofball, whereas McGinley's original
| performance uses a deeper flatter voice that made him
| appear much more psychopathic (though admittedly I only
| saw one episode in English, so that may be cherry-
| picking).
| pnutjam wrote:
| You're 100% correct.
| philwelch wrote:
| A movie doesn't have to be cerebral to be good. The Rock
| is a good movie for the type of movie it is. There are
| bad movies in the same basic genre as The Rock or Con
| Air, many of which also starred Nicolas Cage.
| hashhar wrote:
| You can come up with the best story you have but if I as an
| audio engineer create a mix where you can't legibly hear
| dialogue you'd walk out of the theater in anger.
|
| If the cinematographer has constant camera shakes in every
| shot - even a dialogue scene - then also you can salvage
| the movie.
|
| For some not so extreme examples think about what happens
| if the actors are shit - The Room is a good example. The
| story is good but the acting is what made it into a "so bad
| - let's troll this" movie.
| Talanes wrote:
| >For some not so extreme examples think about what
| happens if the actors are shit - The Room is a good
| example. The story is good but the acting is what made it
| into a "so bad - let's troll this" movie.
|
| I never thought I'd see someone praise the writing of The
| Room. The acting is bad, but the dialogue is so
| completely inhuman that I can't imagine anyone doing it
| well.
| setr wrote:
| > if I as an audio engineer create a mix where you can't
| legibly hear dialogue you'd walk out of the theater in
| anger.
|
| Tenet? No one I know in the US could watch that film, but
| my international friends liked it, presumably because
| they had subtitles.. the theater had to blast the sound
| to make the audio vaguely discernible
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That is a Christopher Nolan signature trait.
| cbsmith wrote:
| Honestly, Nolan's audio cacophony generally works for me
| (though it is distressing, which is the point). Tenet in
| particular worked great.
| imbnwa wrote:
| >You can come up with the best story you have but if I as
| an audio engineer create a mix where you can't legibly
| hear dialogue you'd walk out of the theater in anger.
|
| But we're talking about basic competency now, not what
| makes a movie the very best it can be.
|
| > If the cinematographer has constant camera shakes in
| every shot - even a dialogue scene - then also you can
| salvage the movie.
|
| I wonder if you had Paul Greengrass movies in mind
| tkgally wrote:
| I basically stopped watching movies a long time ago--I was
| never much of a cinephile to begin with--but last week, out
| of either boredom or curiosity, I streamed a Hollywood
| blockbuster from the 2000s that I had read about somewhere.
|
| What struck me most was how the action scenes, editing,
| costuming, sets, casting, and acting all seemed--to my
| nonexpert eye--to have been carefully and professionally
| done, while the storytelling was horrible: implausible,
| unnatural, and full of obvious holes. The story didn't need
| to be great literature, but it should not have been hard to
| make the pieces fit together in a way that made sense.
|
| I don't know whether to blame the writers, the director, or
| the commercial motivation for making the film. This
| particular movie was obviously intended to lead to spinoffs
| in video games and other forms of merchandising, and that
| may have influenced the editing in a way that garbled the
| story.
| logicchains wrote:
| It's possible to get everything wrong and still keep making
| movies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Asylum
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I don't think writing is special compared to other arts. Sure,
| there are many editors and cinematographers, but there are very
| few who can actually make an interesting edit, or interesting
| cinematography. Similarly, there are many writers in the world,
| but only a handful of really great ones, even fewer great
| writers who know how to write for film (being a great novelist
| doesn't mean you'll automatically be great, or even good, at
| writing a great screenplay).
| imbnwa wrote:
| > Similarly, there are many writers in the world, but only a
| handful of really great ones, even fewer great writers who
| know how to write for film
|
| There's cool editing and shooting on reddit filmmaking subs
| not to mention the super competitive music video market for
| cinematographers and editors
|
| > Similarly, there are many writers in the world, but only a
| handful of really great ones, even fewer great writers who
| know how to write for film
|
| I feel like this is what I indicated as well.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > There's cool editing and shooting on reddit filmmaking
| subs not to mention the super competitive music video
| market for cinematographers and editors
|
| There's cool writing on reddit writing subs as well. Nice
| snippets do not a great whole movie make, in any part of
| the art form.
| 1980phipsi wrote:
| Agree 100%. There are only so many good writers out there.
| Notice who the writers are on your favorite TV shows and then
| what happens to the quality of said TV show when the writers
| switch to other projects.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| I think the bottleneck you're describing isn't "writing" but
| creators who will be trusted with a $X0 million budget without
| excessive oversight.
|
| Sorkin or Tarantino get the leeway to create something without
| executives second-guessing every little decision, most people,
| even very talented people won't.
|
| There are tons of talented writers producing things, but in a
| less expensive medium. The cost to produce a novel is literally
| 0.1% of a Hollywood movie. There is a lot more freedom to work
| there than when you're spending tens of millions of dollars.
| FourthProtocol wrote:
| Almost anything can be learnt, including writing well.
| Unfortunately, today's incentive for anything is money, and
| Hollywood is no exception. And so we've fed a diet of trite,
| banal, and contrived writing because it fits the now-
| established recipe for box office returns.
| jldugger wrote:
| > I think that the real ceiling for quality content, film or
| no, is the writing and there's no way to generate more high-
| quality writers on demand.
|
| Pretty sure there's a decent number of writers out there in the
| world beyond the handful you mentioned, and plenty more trying
| to break in. For example, somehow you failed to mention any
| women writers.
| iNic wrote:
| If you want good content go watch the following TV shows (if you
| haven't already):
|
| - Euphoria
|
| - Bojack Horseman
|
| - Atlanta
|
| - Fleabag
| MikeLumos wrote:
| > Most Stories are the Same. Kurt Vonnegut once said that there
| are only six types of story.
|
| There are countless writers who have said that there are only X
| types of stories. Sometimes there are 3, 6, 12, or 50. They all
| claim that their categorization is the one that captures every
| story ever told, and they all manage to fit any story into one of
| their categories (it really helps that they're vague and people
| are willing to stretch and shoehorn things).
|
| All stories are the same in the way all songs or poetry are the
| same. They have a structure (well, a bunch of different
| structures) that audiences tend to enjoy, and that artists follow
| because it helps them to have a more structured process (or
| sometimes they break/ignore the rules, or just don't know them,
| and create awesome works of art anyway). But that doesn't make
| every story "the same" just like using the rules of perspective,
| construction, and anatomy doesn't make every painting the same.
| watertom wrote:
| I've found that almost all new content, TV (includes streaming),
| Movies and Music just aren't worth the time.
|
| My two cents is that we've both removed the childish, subtle and
| controversial content and dumbed down the intellectual content.
|
| What we have is a PC correct watered down cliff notes version of
| everything.
|
| The good news for young people is that it's not permanent, it
| takes time to find voices in a new paradigm, better content will
| resurface.
| grasshopperpurp wrote:
| I guess it depends. Older stuff that makes it through the years
| tends to be better quality than the stuff that doesn't make it,
| so you have less stuff to sort through. If time and effort are
| big concerns, then that approach makes some sense.
|
| But, people are always making great stuff if you care to look
| for it. Some of it is even popular and doesn't take much
| searching.
|
| From "My two cents" on, I disagree with everything you've said.
| I think it's all in your head.
| lioeters wrote:
| Some of the films recommended in this thread..
|
| - The Nice Guys
|
| - I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
|
| - Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
|
| - Don't Worry
|
| - He Won't Get Far on Foot
|
| - The Favourite (2018)
|
| - Druk (2020)
|
| - Amelie
|
| - The Lobster
|
| - Turist (2014)
|
| - Parasite
|
| - El Hoyo (The Platform)
|
| - Quo Vadis
|
| - Aida?
|
| - 200 Meters
|
| - Luzzu
|
| - El robo del siglo (The Heist of the Century)
|
| - Knives Out
|
| - Us
|
| - Get Out
|
| - "Tokyo Story" (1953, Yasujiro Ozu)
|
| - Aleksei German's Hard to be A God
|
| - Edward Yang's A Better Summer's Day
|
| - Maren Ade's Toni Erdman
|
| - Luca Guadagnino's I Am Love
|
| - Wings of Desire
|
| - Do the Right Thing
|
| - Drugstore Cowboy
|
| - Gates of Heaven
|
| - Beauty and the Beast
|
| - Life Is Sweet
| doublejay1999 wrote:
| a lightbulb moment for the author, in which he happens upon the
| idea that films made for mass appeal are somehow limited in
| artistic scope & ambition.
| tobyhinloopen wrote:
| This post reads like the author has a midlife crisis. If you want
| something new and unique, I dare you to try Grave of the
| Fireflies.
| keiferski wrote:
| His criticisms of contemporary American cinema are apt. But on an
| individual level, he just needs to watch more old movies and more
| foreign cinema. In my experience, many people can't name more
| than one or two movies from Eastern Europe, USSR/Russia, Japan,
| Yugoslavia, Mexico, etc. Especially older movies from these
| places, which developed almost independently from Hollywood.
| Something like _Solaris_ (Tarkovsky version) doesn't quite have
| an equivalent Western sci-fi analogue.
|
| A couple sites I recommend are EasternEuropeanMovies.com and
| CriterionChannel.com. Tons of excellent old films.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| One of my favorite movies[1] is Chinese and I loved some of
| Tarkovsky's movies so I wholeheartedly agree. We are fortunate
| to have so much media available today. It's hard to believe
| someone can't find anymore good content.
|
| [1]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Day%27s_Journey_into_Ni...
|
| Has a 59 minute long cut at the end if anyone's into that kind
| of thing.
| shannifin wrote:
| And in 3D! A dying fad, but I enjoyed seeing how filmmakers
| utilized it. I thought it worked great for the long take.
| mabub24 wrote:
| I agree, it sounds like this person either 1) hasn't looked
| very hard and is relying on streaming services to feed him a
| selection of movies, or 2) has no interest or experience with
| "world" cinema.
|
| Stuff like Aleksei German's _Hard to be A God_ , Edward Yang's
| _A Better Summer 's Day_, Maren Ade's _Toni Erdman_ , or Luca
| Guadagnino's _I Am Love_ , are recent movies that are
| incredible and very different from Hollywood style movies.
| They're long, not in English, and situate the viewer in a
| different cultural context that requires some effort for
| understanding, but the payoff is immense. They are movies you
| can get lost in.
|
| Also _Toni Erdman_ is the last comedy movie I watched where I
| truly came close to pissing myself from laughing so hard.
| jjgreen wrote:
| _Toni Erdman_ is fabulous and hilarious
| mrob wrote:
| Agreed. One of the best movies I've seen is "Tokyo Story"
| (1953, Yasujiro Ozu). I'd never seen anything else with
| cinematography like it (almost entirely static cameras, with
| actors looking directly at them), and the storytelling fits the
| Kishotenketsu structure rather than the standard Western three-
| act structure.
|
| It's slow paced, with no action, but the novelty was enough to
| hold my attention until I engaged with the story, and then I
| wasn't bored at all. Film critics rate it very highly, and I
| can see why.
| bmitc wrote:
| > Kurt Vonnegut once said that there are only six types of story.
|
| I see others quoting this here, but I'm not aware of Vonnegut
| actually saying this anywhere. This is the type of thing that
| needs a reference.
|
| If I infer using what I know of Vonnegut and his presentations on
| the shapes of stories, I'd wager that he simply thought many
| stories fit into certain shapes but that not all stories fit into
| these. That is, there are stories that don't have well defined or
| common shapes. Plus, as we all know, Vonnegut liked to have fun.
| I highly doubt Vonnegut ever thought there were only <x> amount
| of story shapes.
| jb1991 wrote:
| I've seen a video of him giving a talk or a lecture where he
| discussed this, but the ideas were at an extraordinarily high-
| level and in part he was going for comedic affect with the
| audience.
| bmitc wrote:
| That's what I meant by presentations of his shapes of
| stories. There are a couple of lectures posted on YouTube.
|
| https://youtu.be/oP3c1h8v2ZQ
|
| https://youtu.be/GOGru_4z1Vc
|
| The thinking originated in his (rejected) master's thesis at
| the University of Chicago. Here are some photos of some of
| the graphs:
|
| https://capnmariam.tumblr.com/post/76564658108/kurt-
| vonnegut...
|
| Even there, in an incomplete copy, there are seven unique
| story shapes. And there's a major difference between saying
| here are some shapes of some stories and here are the only
| story shapes.
| sudeepj wrote:
| The rate of consumption is way greater than rate at which
| new/creative/interesting content can be created.
|
| With improvement in tech (e.g internet speeds) and new
| accessibility nodes (like streaming services) the rate of
| consumption has increased even more.
|
| After few years the same thing will happen to TV-series as well
| (e.g. [1])
|
| [1] Game Of Thrones explored and doubled down on grey characters.
| Now, a lot of others will do it and it will become a trope.
| ArmandGrillet wrote:
| > Every couple of days I curl up on the couch at 10pm, scroll
| through Amazon Prime video, and pick something to see.
|
| Here is the main problem. After having seen most of the classics,
| the best you can do is just take a break and wait for the next
| big release that will make your eyes sparkle. Drowning your soul
| into the endless pit that is Amazon Prime Video or Netflix is a
| fantastic way to waste time and lose faith in the industry.
|
| The article also doesn't speak much about direction and acting. I
| appreciate some actors and directors and would see movies for
| them, and even if it doesn't blow my mind it will often be like
| seeing an old friend telling me a new story in a way that I
| enjoy.
|
| Of course, being amazed watching movies like Werk ohne Autor or
| Ex Machina happens once a year at best now, but people (not
| algorithms) on the Internet can help anyone spotting such gems
| easily without wasting too much time on average content.
| darkteflon wrote:
| > Werk ohne Autor
|
| [Never Look Away (2018)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5311542/)
|
| Looks good, thanks for the rec.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| I'm a huge movie buff, and have watched thousands of movies over
| the past 25 years - what I like about movies:
|
| 1. Many movies are acquired taste - so even though you don't like
| them the first views, they can turn out to be fantastic movies
| down the road. Some movies, I've had to watch as much as 4 times,
| over the span of many years, before I finally fell in love with
| them.
|
| 2. There's so much information. You have the music, visuals,
| storyline, the actors themselves, etc. I've watched some pretty
| terrible movies, which still had some redeeming values, deep down
| if I you just looked hard enough.
|
| 3. The market is HUGE! Like with music - if you can't find any
| good new music, you're likely not looking hard enough. Indie
| movies, foreign movies, art movies, they're all out there.
| jmilloy wrote:
| > Every couple of days I curl up on the couch at 10pm, scroll
| through Amazon Prime video, and pick something to see
|
| I think this is big part of the problem. If you rely exclusively
| on a mainstream subscription service, you're not really going to
| be satisfied, and it's been that way for a long time now. You
| will be more successful selecting movies another way and paying
| for them individually if you need to. Think about the incentives
| or the selective pressure. Paying for movies individually selects
| directly for great movies, whereas the movies available on a
| subscription service just need to be plentiful enough and
| bearable enough to keep enough people paying for the service.
|
| > To unthinkingly let a wave of content break over you
|
| This is amplified by letting a subscription service choose your
| content. You can be an active consumer, for example by thinking
| critically of the movie after you've watched it, and I think that
| starts with actively choosing your films (or festivals, etc).
|
| > In film, you start with the best and make your way down to the
| worst.
|
| I think this is an interesting point. But there are so many great
| films. 819 is not that many, right? And as you watch more, I
| think you can appreciate more, too. A deep dive into Ozu is
| likely to be a lot more rewarding for an experienced film
| enthusiast than for someone who watches a few blockbusters a
| year. "Learning the tricks" means you can see how the director is
| playing with them.
|
| I strongly recommend criticker for automatic recommendations. It
| is independent of a distributor. I've found it really quite
| accurate, and definitely good enough to skip the movies that will
| leave you feeling like you wasted your time and suggest movies
| you might not find otherwise.
| stnmtn wrote:
| This is a very frustrating article because, and I'm making
| assumptions here, it seems like the author hasn't tried that much
| to go beyond canonical american cinema. If I'm wrong, then my
| mistake, but the only films mentioned here are hollywood
| productions and it seems like the movies they're dissapointed by
| browsing Amazon Prime are the latest big-budget Hollywood
| production that doesn't have much special going on
|
| Also, the #5 footnote says a lot. I'm a huge David Lynch fan, so
| understand I'm speaking with bias here, but to fully dismiss
| movies that are loved by many as "objectively bad" speaks to a
| small imagination of what films can be. Just because you don't
| understand something doesn't mean the director is "shooting from
| the hip and doesn't know anything"... and so what if Lynch is? He
| finds beauty in the subconscious and dreams and connects things
| together that don't have an immediately obvious connection. To
| dismiss Twin Peaks (something which is awe-inspiring in the way
| it displays the raw power of human imagination) as "a disaster"
| to me means that the author has not really pushed themselves to
| expand their horizons.
|
| International cinema constantly amazes and inspires me. I've been
| logging 50+ movies a year for 7-8 years now and all the time am
| enjoying and finding more enrichment in it. That's not to say
| it's not valid for someone to not experience things the way I
| experience them, but this author speaks with an objectivity that
| really frustrates me.
| psychomugs wrote:
| I also concur on the bad take re: Lynch. He's definitely an
| acquired taste, but reading beyond the "text" (screen?) a bit
| into his creative process has helped me appreciate his works
| and inspires my own creativity.
| lynchisok wrote:
| >He finds beauty in the subconscious and dreams and connects
| things together that don't have an immediately obvious
| connection.
|
| Lynch has obsessions with domestic relationships that get
| predictable, and are immediately obvious. I still like twin
| peaks but its dumb to assume he "doesn't get it" just because
| he doesn't care for it. If he's watched 600+ movies he probably
| gets it. And the show WAS a disaster if only for the 100 loose
| ends it never tied up before being canceled.
| riverlong wrote:
| Author here. I've dug reasonably far into international cinema
| -- at a glance, about 250 - 300 outside US Cinema, across
| various time periods: French New Wave, Korean, Iranian, etc.
|
| On David Lynch -- I like stuff that is weird and unusual. I
| LOVED the first three or four episodes of Twin Peaks. But after
| that, it was an unbelievable disappointment. You cannot
| seriously tell me that the latter half of Season Two was
| _good_. It was clear that Lynch had drafted the body of a Blue
| Velvet-style movie that lent itself well to a few hours of
| material, but once you got past the first three or four
| episodes, there was no material left. From there on, the
| attempts to keep the plot together became more and more
| abstruse.
|
| With a guy like Lynch, these movies do not showcase the "raw
| power of the human imagination" -- what they showcase is a man
| who is deeply disorganized.
|
| To the extent that his films are flawed, they are _always_
| flawed in the same way: execution of the latter half. Premise
| and first half is always fine. That pattern speaks volumes.
| stnmtn wrote:
| Thanks for responding! I really hope I didn't come across as
| too harsh, I definitely made some assumptions and probably
| straw-manned you.
|
| For Twin peaks, of course the latter half of season two isn't
| great, but that's because David lynch left after the network
| made him reveal the killer, which was never a part of the
| plan.
|
| So then after the incredible 3-4 lynch directed episode of
| early season 2 and he leaves, it falls down a cliff before
| what is perhaps my favorite 42 minutes of media ever in the
| Season 2 finale, where Lynch comes back and delivers such a
| dizzying and intoxicating episode with so many questions left
| lingering that I find it genuinely inspiring.
|
| Then I'm guessing you haven't seen Twin Peaks The Return, but
| that is the thing that cements twin peaks as a masterpiece
| imo.
|
| And a lot of lynch movies have an amazing second half,
| Mulholland Drive being the prime example where it's revealed
| what the film is actually about and it explores the psyche
| and dreams of a woman unable to live up to what she thought
| she could.
|
| Of course, there is no objectivity in film and opinions;
| especially with Lynch. if you don't like his stuff more power
| to you! But my only issue is feels like you levy that people
| who like his stuff are pretentious, only liking it because
| it's 'cool' to pretend to understand his stuff.
|
| And to be honest, I believe that his stuff has a dense
| internal logic that is fascinating to try to unpack and it
| does always have a deeper meaning.. but to take what you say
| I don't see the big deal if he genuinely is fumbling about
| because the things I draw from his best creations are so deep
| and inspiring to me. It's like a dream you have, where if you
| break it down it makes no sense yet still you ascribe meaning
| to these things. And to be clear, I really believe most great
| lynch projects are internally cohesive and do have something
| they are meant to say/explain; understanding what the second
| half of Mulholland drive actually _was_ and connecting it all
| together is probably my favorite experience that I 've ever
| had with film, I really felt like a detective finally
| cracking a hard case!
|
| But again, this is not to say Lynch is objectively good, just
| that I'm _insanely_ biased and really really like his
| specific brand of shit. My main point is just to say that I
| don 't think the way you phrased your criticisms of him are
| valid because you took a very objective tone
| gkop wrote:
| We can all agree the _second season_ of Twin Peaks was
| terrible, though, right?
| stnmtn wrote:
| Everything in between the killer-reveal episode and the
| finale is god-awful, yes.
| runarberg wrote:
| > _Over the past decade, we've become touchy about what's okay to
| say or laugh at. Borat could not be made today_
|
| Lindsay Ellis had a pretty good refute to when people say this
| about Mel Brooks.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62cPPSyoQkE
| jhgb wrote:
| No TL;DW for a 40 minute video?
| runarberg wrote:
| If you are unfamiliar with Lindsey Ellis, she is a popular
| media/cultural critic. Probably most famous for her breakdown
| of the Hobbit movies as well as Disney animations. Her
| reviews are often more positive then what you would expect
| from a more traditional film critic, but do point out
| troublesome aspects of media as well as the culture around
| it.
|
| I'm not a media critic my self and will do a terrible job
| summarizing her point in a paragraph, a point which took her
| weeks to formulate, film and edit to a 40 minute video essay.
|
| My gist is that people reacted just as badly to Mel Brooks
| back in his days to his movies as the supposed 'twitter mob'
| does today. Mel Brooks even set him self some boundaries
| about which lines he shouldn't cross, what not to make fun of
| etc. Mel Brooks even criticized other film makers for
| stepping over their boundaries in a subject matter that was
| too sensitive. That is, if you couldn't make a Mel Brooks
| movie today, then you couldn't make a Mel Brooks movie back
| then either.
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| I remember reading once about Bunuel having a small room with
| couch and a giant Miro painting in his apartment. Bunuel would
| take a drink and sit on that couch and look at that Miro for a
| couple hours, his mind doing the work. It is common to read in
| XIXth century literature (Dostoevsky comes to mind) how even
| characters portrayed as somewhat shallow would spend an hour or
| two in front of some famous (as in 'in vogue') Old Master's
| painting, constructing the internal dialogue with the creator.
|
| The piece in this text about passive consumption of media being
| bad for the... soul(?) reads like something from a person who
| failed to perform the mental work necessary to perceive "passive
| consumption" as something active, inspiring and enriching.
|
| After seeing Superbad or Deadpool (that in the context of cinema
| possess the cultural significance of screensavers) used as a
| reference with a mention of Eyes Wide Shut as a peak viewership
| effort, it is really upsetting to see piece this get traction on
| Hackernews.
|
| Coming across this text after a randomly encountered masterpiece
| that is "Riders of Justice" is hilarious and a bit sad.
| ggggtez wrote:
| For someone who claims to know movies, these opinions are pretty
| bad.
|
| Borat couldn't be made today... Except a sequel was made... but
| only because he's already famous? Certainly he had to know that
| Says Baron Cohen already had a TV show before making borat?
|
| And scrolling through Amazon Prime to watch movies? Who in their
| right mind does this when they want to watch _good_ movies?
| Streaming services rarely have good movies on them because their
| catalog is intended for the kind of people who want to binge
| watch The Office. These are not curated lists of the best films
| ever. In fact, even just scrolling through the IMDB top 250, I
| doubt you can even watch half of them on Prime /Netflix combined.
| InternetPerson wrote:
| OK, we can figure this out. Are movies still good? Let's take a
| poll! If you like or don't like movies, leave a comment, and tell
| us why. This is gonna be so interesting to hear what everyone
| thinks about movies!!
| cirgue wrote:
| " Every couple of days I curl up on the couch at 10pm, scroll
| through Amazon Prime video, and pick something to see. It's
| almost always a disappointment."
|
| Had you done this two decades ago using the equivalent
| (blockbuster), you probably would have felt the same. What I do
| think is manifestly different now is that we don't have nearly as
| accessible good film criticism. It still exists, but it's mixed
| in with a bunch of internet dross. Filtering mechanisms have
| always been essential to life online and our current ones
| massively favor eyeballs over quality.
| bingidingi wrote:
| sometimes i'd just go to blockbuster and laugh at the garbage
| premises that made it to the shelves and the terrible box art
| jk7tarYZAQNpTQa wrote:
| > What I do think is manifestly different now is that we don't
| have nearly as accessible good film criticism.
|
| But we do have instantaneous access to good films from
| everywhere in the world, and good tools to discover them.
| Darvokis wrote:
| > " Every couple of days I curl up on the couch at 10pm, scroll
| through Amazon Prime video, and pick something to see. It's
| almost always a disappointment."
|
| ... how can he use this the basis for his argument? Every day,
| I curl up in front of my PC, look through some Reddit threads
| about movies and find a handful of incredible movies that I'm
| thankful for that people pointed out. What should the title of
| my article be?
| jk7tarYZAQNpTQa wrote:
| > Every day, I curl up in front of my PC, look through some
| Reddit threads about movies and find a handful of incredible
| movies that I'm thankful for that people pointed out. What
| should the title of my article be?
|
| Probably "hundreds of good movies are made every year, but if
| you don't move your ass and try to find them they won't
| magically land on your lap".
|
| The author has identified these problems himself (point 5)
| but looks like he just doesn't want to put in the effort.
| justshowpost wrote:
| Borat 2.0 is basically an anti-Trump agitation based on rerun of
| Borat 1.0 (at a bit of The Dictator), that's all, they didn't
| even bother to elaborate <<wear mask>> from the cover.
|
| Lynch is severely overrated, watching his works is much more
| about flatulence than enjoying the fine art.
| oramit wrote:
| I didn't really agree with the author's points but it did get me
| thinking about my own video consumption habits and I realized
| that this year I have only watched two movies in full. I've
| watched a lot of shows, but movies - no. As for why that is, my
| current theory is that streaming at home has largely eviscerated
| my ability to sit down and dedicate a block of time to watching
| one thing. There is a strange form of FOMO that I get when I sit
| down and scroll through netflix. I get stuck in the browsing mode
| and can't ever make a decision because of too many options.
|
| I find the entire streaming experience pushes me towards finding
| good series just to avoid having to make a decision. Finding a
| good film will alleviate me of the cognitive load of choosing for
| one night but finding a good series I'll be off the hook for
| months.
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