The Death of Cinema pt. 94

Why is it dead?

No. Can't imagine why anybody would think it was.

it's dead because

1) no-one goes to the cinema
2) physical medium film is dead
3) lack of auteurs
4) us cinema increasingly targetted on (global) youth market
5) lack of enthusiasm 'out there'
6) kidnapping of avant-garde film by the art world

i've mixed up qualitative with quantitative things.

1 people not going to the cinema is happening and it is affecting the way films look, but exhibition conditions have always done that. the notion of the 'cinematic' (ie bigness) mostly comes from the 1950s-60s when film was trying to compete with television.

2 film the physical thing being on the way out is hard to argue with.

3 is slightly qualitative, slightly quantitative, in a number of senses. exhibition/distribution is more of an issue for me than individual eurauteurs.

4 doesn't make too much difference. i would feel worse about the decline of indie cinema if it was something i'd cared about

5 i think older critics just don't approve the kind of enthusiasm there is for, say, 'anchorman'.

6 thrown in for provocation

LOL box office figures are considerably up this year in the UK.

Yes I'm not sure about 1. Was 6 thrown in by you or "them"?

yeah cinema attendances should be down but they are not.

likewise the BPI reported record-breaking album sales for British music earlier this year.

i looked at Facebook London network's favourite films - Anchorman is extraordinarily high up (like 4th behind Shawshank etc.)

As long as we've got Danny Dyer, the UK film industry will be fine.

He's the new Stanley Holloway

6 is mine.

1 is more a matter of long-term decline, and is linked to 2: shoddiness of the physical space 'cinema'. i don't so much agree with that -- or at least just think you could say cinemas became boring when they had to sack live musicians, or when they abandoned having short programmes, or the b-feature, or continuous play...

xpost

The death of the physical medium is probably true but I doubt that it matters that much to anyone other than a handful of cineastes. The way cgi, digital colour correction etc is being used by most filmakers now , mourning the loss of celluloid will seem as quaint as mourning the loss of wax cylinders. To paraphrase Hitchock, it's not how it's filmed, it's what's on the screen that counts.

1) no-one goes to the cinema
- people go the cinema but it may be that tastes have narrowed so there's less range of films on offer?

2) physical medium film is dead
- is this relevant? doesn't stop more and moer films being made - the opposite in fact

3) lack of auteurs
- and in such politically fraught times too - what gives?

4) us cinema increasingly targetted on (global) youth market
- ban apatow

5) lack of enthusiasm 'out there'
- by studios? like record companies they lose controld daily. among the public? not sure why this would be (see pop again).

6) kidnapping of avant-garde film by the art world
- BY the art world? wha?

truth is the golden age of european art cinema (ie: wide distribution of european cinema) coincided with/was maybe part product of the collapse of cinema as a mass medium in the '50s. that pattern went forever before most of the nostalgists were even born. and things were worse in the '80s than now, numbers-wise.

i don't remember there being multiplexes in the 80s. came over here at the very end maybe.

2 is very weak -- the argument runs that the celluloid strip is sort of like an actual physical impression of the world, that it takes a bit of the world into it. it's pretty mad but i think that's what they think. they need to see 'miami vice' for real.

xpost

yeah i was wondering if multiplexes were brought in to solve the problem of declining audiences. they are part of the 'white flight' phenomenon in america, perhaps -- obviously cinemas were first built in city centres; the multiplexes on ringroads.

Given yr poopooing of masterpiece-hunters, how the fuck do you measure aesthetic advances then, quitit? Most avant-garde films I've seen recently are, as usual, fucking empty.

I'm trying to make a list of the best films of the decade thus far, and I'm hard-pressed to find more than 6 or 7 I consider 'excellent,' let alone great. I think the even SOMEWHAT trad narrative feature... well, almost everything's been done. Even more than ever.

And speaking of the D.O.C., see M Dargis column in TIFF thread.

Run Fatboy Run is the no 1 film in the UK this week.

srsly, it beat 'atonement'?! lol.

Run Fatboy Run vs. Act Thingirl Act

Pegg's Fatboy tops UK box office

Pegg (r) won rave reviews for zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead
British comedy Run, Fatboy, Run has sprinted to the top of the UK box office in its opening week.
The film, directed by former Friends star David Schwimmer, took more than £2m at the box office beating Oscar hopeful Atonement into second place.

Starring Simon Pegg and Thandie Newton, the low-budget film outshone Hollywood heavyweights including The Bourne Ultimatum and US comedy Knocked Up.

Stephen King thriller 1408, starring John Cusack, rounded out the top five.

Pegg co-wrote Run, Fatboy, Run, which sees him playing an overweight security guard trying to win back the girlfriend he abandoned at the altar five years before.

UK BOX OFFICE
1. Run, Fatboy, Run - £2.01m
2. Atonement - £1.63m
3. The Bourne Ultimatum - £1.09m
4. Knocked Up - £756,339
5. 1408 - £550,538
Source: Screen International

The comedy, which marks Schwimmer's directorial debut on the big screen, also features Simpsons star Hank Azaria and comedian Dylan Moran.

Atonement, based on the best-selling book by Booker nominee Ian McEwan, entered the charts at number two, with box office takings of £1.6m.

Both films open in the US later in the year.

Meanwhile Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, remains in the top 10 - at number eight - nearly two months after it first opened.

The success of the fifth instalment has seen the Potter film series become the most successful in box office history, beating James Bond and Star Wars.

This thread died quickly

faster than cinema is, anyway

What makes a film empty?

Given yr poopooing of masterpiece-hunters, how the fuck do you measure aesthetic advances then, quitit? Most avant-garde films I've seen recently are, as usual, fucking empty.

you kind of answer yourself there. what aesthetic advances do you see in art-house cinema? i sort of think it's hard to separate technological from aesthetic questions, personally, though that can lead to hyping sheer novelty.

the avant-garde i'm thinking of is bunuel, franju, marker, that kind of tradition. not empty at all. but not really thriving now either.

I'm trying to make a list of the best films of the decade thus far, and I'm hard-pressed to find more than 6 or 7 I consider 'excellent,' let alone great. I think the even SOMEWHAT trad narrative feature... well, almost everything's been done. Even more than ever.

i don't understand this impulse, to treat cinema like this. why can't it be as ephemeral as music or theatre or literature?

because ephemeral = worthless.

no it isn't.

to shakespeare's audiences, his plays were ephemeral. they changed through the run and were then forgotten, except by the performers.

why is that a bad model for other media?

Film has always had a difficulty straddling the importance it desires academically, and the cold hard fact that it is run as a business AND HAS TO RUN AS A BUSINESS cos it costs a lot of money to make.

Why cinema isn't dead. Because it no longer costs quite as much money to make. This is still in its infancy though of being exploited because the word cinema also means exhibition IN THE CINEMA. But as the study of cinema likes to think of its subject preserved in aspic (Celluloid, or if a bit modern DVD), they miss out on the importance of the ephemeral. Same as it ever was.

Same Sight & Sound has a terrific suggestion on how the multiplex could be used to the casual viewers advantage as exhibition costs go massively down. Get fifty friends, or (fifty facebook people - social networking possibly being the cornerstone of this idea) who want to see a film, any film avilible for digital projection, go see the film in a cinema. Hopefully a clever inner city cinema (with a good bar) will toy with this suggestion, as it strikes me that there is plenty of money in them thar hills (particularly money over the bar which is pretty much pure profit in a good cinema).

the avant-garde i'm thinking of is bunuel, franju, marker, that kind of tradition. not empty at all. but not really thriving now either.

I think I've said it before and I'll say it again: Inland Empire saved my cinephilia for the time being. I'm not even positive it was a great movie, but it did that much.

I don't think of Bunuel as being avant-garde

(x-post) That's ed, I'm still trying to work myself away from the sort of cinephilia that ebbs and flows with the whole "summer movies/Oscar season" calendar.

re the Shakespearean model, because cinema is an inherently repeatable experience now. And we have indoor plumbing.

IE did something similar on a smaller scale for me, even moreso (maybe) The Joy of Life.

'chien andalou' and 'l'age d'or' are sorta avant-garde, tom.

i can take or leave his other stuff.

xpost

The E in the R is HBO as the new studio system, 8 pages on the Sopranos in the NYRB, hi-def tvs larger than many minor multiplex screens etc etc etc.

Apatow is just fine, but he's never going to be involved in anything as good as 'Freaks & Geeks' unless he goes back to telly...

'chien andalou' and 'l'age d'or' are sorta avant-garde, tom.

But those are more about the art world than cinema! To use your phrases.

the golden age of TV is over.

otm

R.I.P. Maude

tom -- no way, not when they came out. they played in cinemas, not art galleries.

The E in the R is HBO as the new studio system, 8 pages on the Sopranos in the NYRB, hi-def tvs larger than many minor multiplex screens etc etc etc.

Apatow is just fine, but he's never going to be involved in anything as good as 'Freaks & Geeks' unless he goes back to telly...

-- Stevie T, Thursday, September 13, 2007 2:50 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

for the true believers multiplex screens and tv screens just don't compare with the big screen. they also have a thing for the communal experience, etc.

it isn't just about quality of transferable "content."

but the ending of 'the sopranos' and 'the wire' within 12 months of each other is a bit of a marker too.

Oh, Enrique, btw, you still haven't explained to me why Repulsion isn't shit.

try explaining to us why it IS, goofus.

I don't believe "the big screen communal experience" is coming back as anything other than charming nostalgia outdoor summer screenings etc.

except more people are going to the cinema than ever before. so what exactly do you base that on

no, i agree. but that's one reason why people think the thing is dying.

xpost

s1ocki that's not true. or, not within the west. people went to the cinema habitually once or twice a week up to the '40s.

more people are going to the cinema and acting like they're in their living room than ever before.

re the Dargis article in the TIFF thread, the problem of cinephilia gaining sustenance from the likes of Inland Empire is that it's marginalized. Culturally discerning [sic?] 25-year-olds who would've seen and discussed every Godard film in the mid '60s now reserve their passion for Knocked Up.

ya but that's because they all worked there. xp

re the Dargis article in the TIFF thread, the problem of cinephilia gaining sustenance from the likes of Inland Empire is that it's marginalized. Culturally discerning [sic?] 25-year-olds who would've seen and discussed every Godard film in the mid '60s now reserve their passion for Knocked Up.

-- Dr Morbius, Thursday, September 13, 2007 2:14 PM (21 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

what is the evidence for this exactly

try explaining to us why it IS, goofus.

I did, on that London movies thread.

Get fifty friends, or (fifty facebook people - social networking possibly being the cornerstone of this idea) who want to see a film, any film avilible for digital projection, go see the film in a cinema. Hopefully a clever inner city cinema (with a good bar) will toy with this suggestion, as it strikes me that there is plenty of money in them thar hills (particularly money over the bar which is pretty much pure profit in a good cinema).

had a similar idea a while back but more based around small indie cinemas AND a range of viewable material not constrained to films (think TV, live sport/events).

Why not just invited your mates round to your house and bring yr own booze?!

okay it's Yelp time people. i went to the Vue at the Westfield a few days ago with my boys, to see One Piece: Red. (they are One Piece megafans.) i've found Vue to have excellent picture and sound, and they are absolutely atrocious at everything else. just buying popcorn takes 20 minutes minimum, every time. so this time I popped my own microwave popcorn, bought three Fantas for £3.30 at the corner shop, and went in. the lights go down and the previews start. the sound is truly bone-rattling, but i love that. the subwoofers are SERIOUS in this place. by the time the second or third preview has come on, though, i'm noticing that it's just.... too fucking loud. like, REALLY loud. distractingly loud. hard to even focus on the screen visually for the noise. i'm lie "i'm going to go say something" and the kids convince me not to, that i'll get used to it. they could be right, who knows. the picture starts. it is EAR-SPLITTING. it doesn't help that the whole movie is insane, no intro, no lead-in, doesn't take place on the high seas, it all seems to be about a singing contest? anyway none of us can even think it's so loud, and the kids start complaining too, so i go off to find someone. i do, and she asks to come with me to see for herself. the second we open the door to the screening room she's like "whoah, yeah. that's crazy." she says she'll go find a manager. do i need to come with you? no no, we'll take care of it. 5, 10 minutes go by, it's still the same, i walk back down to the front of the cinema. she's not there. i ask where a manager is, he's pointed out to me, and i tell him the story. we can't change it, he says. what?? i convince him to come with me. he does, and of course it's a quieter section of the movie, and he says listen, we can't just change things because one person doesn't like it. nobody else has complained. this motherfucker. the kids are asking to leave now. we do, i ask for my money back, to his credit he does it. he tells me they have no control over anything locally. they have to call a phone number just to change the air conditioning.

anyway, first time i've ever had an issue with this (my hearing sucks - usually i think things are too quiet!) - however, the Picturehouse, the other local alternative to Vue, consistently screens their movies too dimly. (this is apparently very common - cinemas save ££ on electricity over the longrun, even though they're contractually obligated to screen at a certain luminance(

I mean, i really try to support my local cinemas. Even though I now have a shit-hot TV that makes everything look great. but if they're going to deliver such a subpar, fucked up experience (not to mention the wait times and prices for concessions) it really does deserve to die.

In other news, Rian Johnson had to fight with Netflix to get Glass Onion released in theatres, and they only agreed 1 week on 650 screens.

It's currently outselling Wakanda Forever on a per-screen basis.. If it had opened as widely as WF it would be grossing close to the mythical £100M mark for the first week

Did someone say something about the death of cinema?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UeGXB2NjR8

wtf is that sad ass nonsense

Next year:

Ant-Man 3, Creed 3, Shazam! 2, John Wick 4, Dungeons & Dragons, Super Mario Bros., Guardians of the Galaxy 3, Fast 10, Spider-verse 2, Transformers 7, The Flash, Indiana Jones 5, Mission: Impossible 7, Barbie, The Marvels, Dune 2, Hunger Games 5, Ghostbusters 5, Aquaman 2

i'm considering re-upping my membership at IFC for the upcoming year and camping out there

hey, don't lump Barbie in with that junk

Bring back the “Blondie” and “Andy Hardy” series you cowards.

spiderverse 2 will be good

but i mean, y’know

I will see 8 of those in the theater.

doing your part to keep the cinema alive!

John Wick will be good and Barbie might be but other than that... yikes

i will of course see MI

Raise your standards everyone.

...

...

... I will see Indiana Jones 5.

doing your part to keep the cinema alive!

I will see at least five of them but at least one of those I will swipe for another movie and go into the “wrong” theatre

also but: I will have seen 120 films in a cinema during 2022 (counting repeat viewings)

Don't know where else to put this: I recently read there was a 90s Disney film with Gérard Depardieu and Katherine Heigl. He plays her dad but he pretends to be her pimp boyfriend. I checked and this really does exist.

https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/amc-theaters-to-change-ticket-prices-based-on-seat-location/

I've taken to chiding that movies/cinema are entering their "opera phase," in that it's moved from being a mass culture art form to a specialized taste.

Oof, let them at least be poetry or the novel before going straight to opera.

As I posted on a different thread, Searching for Mr. Rugoff (on the Criterion Channel, or $4 from YouTube) is a very good Death of Cinema film.

Bring back the “Blondie” and “Andy Hardy” series you cowards.

― Lord Pickles (Boring, Maryland), Friday, December 16, 2022 6:38 PM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

Gritty reboots in 3...2...1...

https://postlmg.cc/zyC68HLk

Yeah Vue cinemas have been doing this in the UK for awhile. "Premium" seats in the middle that are wider, covered in leather, I think they cost £2 more per seat. Of course the cinema's hardly ever more than like a quarter full so you can just go sit up there on a normal ticket if you want. There's no premium seat police who come around checking tickets.

this is going to change the old canard to "aw, u can't pay your rent? maybe skip going to the movies"

The movie theater is and always has been a sacred democratic space for all and this new initiative by @AMCTheatres would essentially penalize people for lower income and reward for higher income.

— Elijah Wood (@elijahwood) February 6, 2023

last night i saw a movie at IFC and they have seat arms that lift and the house was mostly empty so i was able to make my own couch. i recommend it!

IFC is such a weird space, I don’t really like it

I have made it my main weird space for many years.

There is a theatre by us with wide reclining comfy chairs that also have heaters. Like they want me to fall asleep and miss the movie.

I think picking seats is such a PIA, period. Throw in price ranges and ... fuck that. How are they even going to enforce it?

The IPIC theater in Maryland has had some form of seat surcharges as long since it opened. I've never been there (for that and other reasons), so I can't say to what degree it works.

they enforce it for real at Nitehawk and Alamo but that's because they are selling you food

Saw this trailer yesterday:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tDrxxjumYA

The similarity to both The Fabelmans and Empire of Light in the "light becomes stories/stories become films" bit--a variation on scenes in the other two--jumped out. I'm sure there'll be more of these elegies-for-a-vanishing-art in the near future.

In an Oppenheimer pre-show that must have lasted 30 minutes, we had to put up with a bunch of those non-trailers where they interview cast members on the movie instead of an actual trailer. In two of them, people (David Harbour one of them) made the same point: how amazing and courageous it was because you think this thing that you're watching--car crash, explosion, whatever--is CGI, but it was real people doing real stunts.

Not actually depressing, but somewhere on that continuum. This is what amounts to the new Italian neo-realism: hey, it's real people, not CGI.

Yeah I'm sure that's not the first time I've seen that kind of thing used as a selling point.

Hence why I show up 15-20 minutes before start time. I don't wanna watch pre-shows or trailers -- gimme the movie.

lol AFTER start time

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/martin-scorsese-urges-filmmakers-fight-010914512.html

get 'em!

related, my 12 year old has tapped out on Marvel and Star Wars now (though we'll likely watch Andor S2 whenever that premieres, which is fine by me.) he was really into watching Hangover Square and M Hulot's Holiday recently, i think they really just worked for him as immersive and surprising viewing experiences. having been immersed in watching a lot of green screen films with dumb quips and slumming actors over the last few years, i hope this trend continues. we're gonna try to dig into some classic spookfests this month, maybe some Karloff/Lugosi classics, Hammer horror, etc.

I think the enemy is franchises in general and if people are genuinely sick of Marvel and DC superhero films I fear huge IP owners will just use whatever they own that is in different genres and maybe be very discreet about being Marvel, Disney films.
Huge IP owners and studios might give more creative freedom, maybe make some genuinely great films and then take away creative control when they think they can milk a formula or milk nostalgia for that time they made good films of Jonah Hex and Willie Lumpkin. Apparently big studios only let people try new things when the formulas stop working.

i'm trying to think of a franchise i'm not sick of, maybe Mission Impossible but I haven't seen #7 yet.

also probably the minority opinion here, by some distance, but after the last John Wick film i just wondered what the point of the whole thing was. the "world-building" didn't really add up to much in the end, just a lot of flourishes that were interesting but not a lot more, the style of the thing and the aesthetic was so impressive but i didn't feel anything except impressed. zero emotional attachment to any character, really. they just milked that first film for everything it was worth, created a new type of action genre in a way, all this creative talent largely for naught. i can't say i wasn't mostly entertained but the last one was as long as The Godfather and started to feel like it. i think this last one for whatever reason made me question the whole series and why i should bother watching movies along those lines with the limited time i've got.

(speaking of non-Marvel/SW stuff above)

I enjoyed the action scenes and that was mostly enough for me. Just like any other martial arts series I'm interested in. Of course filmmakers should aspire to more than that but 3 and 4 were still impressive feats to me in a genre I like that typically doesn't have amazing stories.

Universal Monsters and Hammer Horror are much the same: I come for certain things but I know I'm unlikely to get a full package.

it just seemed like diminishing returns after awhile to me, the first film is a masterpiece and the second is close, but it felt like they were padding them out in the last two and they felt emptier even as they drew to some kind of attempted emotional close. i think the best part of the last pair was the opening of #4, up to the point where the story arc of Rina Sawayama's arc finished (not counting the vv end.) i almost found the repetitiveness impressive after awhile but not enough.

i think though the Disney industrial complex stuff is worse in terms of dominating the industry and the conversations and the talent, though JW has a couple spinoffs and maybe yet another sequel. JW at least did not set out to please the crowds, it's a much more difficult and relentlessly creative and original thing, even if it started to feel empty.

I'm sure there will be a Funkopop movie. And then a coca cola movie about sentient coke bottles and cans. And a Ronald McDonald movie. Then a Kellogs movie about the evils of masturbation, wholesome cereals combating the urge, then a porn parody with people jizzing in their cornflakes.

Still amazes me that Fist Of The North Star has made more money than James Bond, but I'm told that's mostly due to pachinko machines.

It's not on the list anymore so maybe that wasn't so reliable, but there are still surprises on here if this thing is to be trusted
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_media_franchises

I'm quite perturbed by the amount of YouTube videos of film commentary titled things like "audiences hate it when movies do these things", as if they can speak for everyone.

hmmm is this conversation not more "death of hollywood" really

not that other national cinemas are exempt from the lure of franchises but

there was already a Kellogg's movie, Matthew Broderick i wanna say... yeah Road to Wellness https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0111001/

I've seen a bit of it.

I did wonder if there's even the possibility that a different film industry could attract all the big American stars by saying "come over here, we'll treat you better"

It was a different situation, but obviously Europe did that for a number of folks from Hollywood during the era of blacklisting. Not that escaping franchise work is akin to that.

I have several friends who are either writers or directors or both, and one by one they've been sucked up into franchise work and for me it is a little bit depressing to see considering where they started. Much similar to how virtually everyone I know from the cinema program at my school wound up working in reality television. The latter is much more depressing I think though.