Movies are too fucking long these days imho

no they didn't, that's just a meme

most ppl from the 30s-50s seem to recall it fondly when they recall it, but i guess that's more printable nostalgic than bitching abt it. i'm not sure abt individual start times in the bill being advertised routinely btw: i know Rank had to specifically try to get exhibitors in Britain to advertise start times for Henry V in 1944.

among the uninformed shit i've heard people say in my long career as a film academic is that until the 60s ppl didn't know when films started, and just showed up and took their chances, staying round till when they came in (if they wanted to, man, if they cared about plots and all that mess). it's true that in most cinemas they'd let you stay in once you were there, but it just isn't true that people didn't know start-times.

xpost

you'd get programme start times back in the '20s, routinely. as with today, you could make a calculaish based on how long the main film was likely to be, etc., if you just wanted the main film. of course, there were many more suburban cinemas etc etc, and there's no really good sampling.

among the uninformed shit i've heard people say in my long career as a film academic is that until the 60s ppl didn't know when films started

what the hell. why would anyone believe this.

it's fun

i don't think it's uninformed shit, it's abt moviegoing in the days of continuous programs, where a bill of newsreels, shorts, b feature and main feature would show on loop!

so ppl get programme start times & then in mayne's take they turn up at the start of the loop or calculate as opposed to "turning up in the middle"...they were turning up in the midde of something even if they were calculating abt likelihoods... so it's a reach calling the "took their chances" take on this moviegoing uninformed shit in contrast. u must really hate the postmodernists to be so dogmatic abt this minor grist to their mill.

it was a loop of a basically fixed length, with given start times, and a work-out-able time at which the main feature would begin. even modern cinemas (where i live) don't give the actual movie start-time. im saying that ppl who turned up 45 minutes into 'casablanca' and got their arses in everyone's face finding a seat would not have been super-popular.

there were (iirc) theatres that only really showed news, cartoons, shorts, etc: obviously they were different.

xpost

the literature is full of accounts of ppl & by ppl who just showed up in the middle, postmodernists weren't guessing based on the fact continuous programs existed.

think your olds were just the morbz of their day tbh, as was morbz obv

the literature isn't that full, and lol at the postmodernists using evidence n e way. i hear enough completely made-up garbage from non-philosophers. think of it practically: people back then weren't stupid, they enjoyed stories, etc. people did go late, sure, but in the main? it would have been a p lame experience once the feature film became a thing.

anyway:

brooklyn's finest: 132 fucking minutes

this is where i get all reactionary and say that a default position of opposition to business has rendered these "po mo academics" (if they exist in the way HM is describing them) unable to think straight.

why would film distributors and exhibitors be content with their public being totally ignorant of when shit was going to be on? it doesn't make any sense at all, from a business perspective.

i mean, fine, ppl went to a shitload more movies in the first half of the century and so showing up late or whatever was prob more common. but this implication that teh cinema used to be some kind of free zone of time-un-delimited viewer experience, and now is a rigid oppressive airport of kapitalist kontrol, eh, i'd need some more data to believe that.

lol xp

bored now

I remember thinking Bad Boys II should have tacked on 30 minutes of Will Smith rapping and gone full Bollywood. That's true of just about every blockbuster now.

uh i kinda went off there didn't i :/

Stephen Fry says in the '...Washpot' book that he and a mate bunked off school, went to London, stayed in a cheap hotel and spent 4 days watching the same few films over and over and over. Basically he bought the 1 ticket at the start of the day and sat there watching again and again. Cabaret, Godfather and A Clockwork Orange in fact. That's something i've read/ heard many an indolent adolescent say they did back in the day.

I'm just curious which PoMo academics are writing/believing/arguing this. I've been out of school for a while, and my major allowed me to be a bit of a dilettante, but I still hadn't heard about this at all, even in the requisite critiques/responses to Adorno's condemnation of popular film as the new opiate of the masses.

Coming in in the middle seems like it would be a product of the cable era - flipping channels, might as well watch the last half of Jurassic Park. Or Rounders is on again, maybe I'll catch the weird-ass Malkovich scene and then go on my way.

I fell asleep during several crucial parts of 4 Months 3 weeks... and for awhile I thought it was a comedy about awkward family dinners.

yeah having a lot of movie channels on cable has made me pretty careless about how i watch a lot of movies, sometimes i'll turn it on in the middle and get hooked and watch til the end, then watch the first half a couple days later and piece together anything that didn't make sense about the end the first time.

Basically he bought the 1 ticket at the start of the day and sat there watching again and again

At least they actually watched the movies--back in the days of cheap urban fleapit theaters, many homeless people bought tickets just so that could have a warm/cool and rainless place to sleep.

xp I've heard about (and seen old advertising for) theaters devoted to newsreels, but I've never heard of theaters just for short subjects*.

*Insert your own Terror of Tiny Town joke here.

That *they* could, I mean.

I'm just curious which PoMo academics are writing/believing/arguing this. I've been out of school for a while, and my major allowed me to be a bit of a dilettante, but I still hadn't heard about this at all, even in the requisite critiques/responses to Adorno's condemnation of popular film as the new opiate of the masses.

― sarahel, Wednesday, June 16, 2010 9:39 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

s1ocki is right, it's too boring to get into, but anyway it's a thing, not really put about by big-name postmodernists that i can recall, but it is a thing. i dunno if it would come up w/r/t adorno, let alone the "requisite" (lol) critiques/responses thereto.

s1ocki is right, it's too boring to get into, but anyway it's a thing, not really put about by big-name postmodernists that i can recall, but it is a thing. i dunno if it would come up w/r/t adorno, let alone the "requisite" (lol) critiques/responses thereto.

I don't think it's boring, but it just seems kinda a hard-to-stomach stretch of logic that esp. based on the most prevalent behavior and perception of people doesn't really seem relevant or accurate. Again, I'm a total dilettante, but from what I remember, "back in the day" people would go to see a particular movie, take note of the time it started which would be advertised on the marquee and in the newspaper, and show up on time.

current course offerings in my major where i went to college

you ee-diots.

Nobody said that MOST people did this ROUTINELY! It was just KNOWN to happen! One example wd be teenage couples turning up and going in whenever bcz, oh, maybe they weren't gonna watch a whole lot of the movie?

Unless it's one of those apocryphal Psycho stories, Hitchcock was worried about spectators entering after Janet Leigh's exit and wondering where she was.

guys

what's going on here

people who weren't ALIVE when movie theaters would admit you in the middle of the feature are claiming IT DIDN'T HAPPEN.

good thing you're here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

hey guys just turned up in the middle of the thread, what's happening

an argument so boring my conscious mind can barely contain it has somehow broken out in the middle of my beautiful thread

guess I'll keep reading until it's over then catch up on the beginning tomorrow

anyway movies are too fucking long these days imo. sometimes this even applies to short movies, I see a lotta 90 minute documentaries that I wish were one-hour cable TV shows (being serious here)

no good comes of any thread where "meme" surfaces

^t bomb

You fucking amateurs

http://www.filmkultura.hu/regi/2000/articles/essays/images/bathory/bathor11.jpg

guess I'll keep reading until it's over then catch up on the beginning tomorrow

― dmr, Wednesday, June 16, 2010 9:12 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

dying

!!!! lmao @ dave tbh

When In Rome is only 91 minutes long but feels much, much longer.

Dinkytown flocked to the Varsity in the prewar years, when Fisher held "bank day" drawings for prizes such as new dishes, and sometimes even let patrons stay overnight in the cool air conditioning, which was provided by air pumped through water drawn from an underground well.

"Very few places had air conditioning in those days," says Beatrice Perper, one of Fisher's daughters, who worked the box office. "Many times in the summer, he left the theater open, so people could sleep there. He hired two people to stay and watch the theater. People used to bring whole families."

http://www.citypages.com/2005-03-09/arts/varsity-cheer/all

among the uninformed shit i've heard people say in my long career as a film academic is that until the 60s ppl didn't know when films started

is it time for the film equivalent of this thread?

this thread was a right laugh, but i've never seen a thread so become so totally de-railed.

but yeah movies.. they're *mental* long these days agreed. especially comedies.

movies I've seen recently that were the perfect length: Taken (think this was like 80-90 minutes?), Toy Story 3 (~100 minutes), and nothing else

Watched Wendy and Lucy for the second time a couple of nights ago. 75 minutes--perfect. (Generally I like long films, though.)

http://www.onlinecharttool.com/test/img_files/20101229154240.png

Okay, so I plotted the average length of the top ten box office films for each year. I know more data points would have been nicer, but I've only got so much free time.

I like examining unexamined assumptions ("films are longer these days") - turns out this one might be true!

even more amazing is just *how* short they were 10 years ago. 107 minutes!

Excellent work. "I like examining unexamined assumptions"--for the folks on ILB, let me say that Bill James couldn't have said it better himself.

We need a data-analysis expert here. Your graph is persuasive, but a couple of red flags I'd raise: 1) is 10 films a year enough to start drawing conclusions (especially 10 that aren't random--maybe hits are longer by nature), and 2) maybe 2004-2009 is a blip; if you eliminate the last five years, you could say the length didn't increase at all from 1979-2004.

I don't know. I play a grade 6 math teacher in real life, but this one's above my pay grade.