The Death of Cinema pt. 94

Mark Harris on the new heights/depths of risk aversion in Hollywood; cites Top Gun as the start of the death spiral.

http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201102/the-day-the-movies-died-mark-harris

ie, the article J0rdan talked about above is now online

I agree for the most part, but then there's the success of The King's Speech (still in the top five, and closing in on $100 million), The Fighter, Black Swan, True Grit, The Social Network. It's been an unusual season, which Harris himself acknowledges:

During one remarkable stretch last fall, the box office was dominated, on successive weekends, by The Town, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, and The Social Network

Hollywood has always churned out garbage based on existing properties afaict

aflack?

The quality of the garbage has deteriorated. Why else are The Fighter, The Town, and True Grit overpraised?

As Far As I Can Affleck

The quality of the garbage has deteriorated. Why else are The Fighter, The Town, and True Grit overpraised?

I am skeptical of such claims. it's amazing how many shitty films just disappear, never to be rereleased or remembered by anybody

That's an irrelevant point. Even Jack Warner and Harry Cohn had enough middlebrow ambition to approve a few Movies of Quality a year. The point of the article is that the bar is set so very low now (and I write as a critic of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls).

dude, it's all in b&w in the Harris piece. The studios are now reluctant to film ANYTHING that doesn't have comic heroes/CGI/under-30s as leads. (and he even considers goddamn Inception an expressive personal film)

xp

I don't get how this statement: I agree for the most part, but then there's the success of The King's Speech (still in the top five, and closing in on $100 million), The Fighter, Black Swan, True Grit, The Social Network.

fits with this one:

The quality of the garbage has deteriorated. Why else are The Fighter, The Town, and True Grit overpraised?

It seems in the first post that you think those films contradict Harris' point, but then in the second point you say those movies aren't really good so... I don't get what your point is exactly.

The studios are now reluctant to film ANYTHING that doesn't have comic heroes/CGI/under-30s as leads.

I get this and yet they are still making those movies like the ones Alfred listed, so...? If he's complaining about the phenomenon of summer blockbusters, okay, that's one thing, but those aren't the only kinds of movies being made.

summer blockbusters are shitty popcorn wallpaper no surprise there. they have been since they were invented - let's not pretend that Flash Gordon serials from the 30s are somehow superior to Kung Fu Panda II cuz they aren't.

It seems in the first post that you think those films contradict Harris' point, but then in the second point you say those movies aren't really good so..

All I said was that they were overrated: Henry Hathaway and Cukor cranked out movies like those routinely.

At this point I have seen a large number of "A" pictures from all Hollywood eras -- top budget, stars, publicity -- and imho the ratio of shit among THOSE is higher than ever.

Flash Gordon serials were cheapo filler by Universal (a "minor" major) for a theater's 4-hour program of features, shorts and newsreels. KFP2 is a big-studio feature.

eh fair enough

The reason The Social Network, The Fighter, The Town, and True Grit are singled out are they are nearly the ONLY big-studio 'prestige' pics that got made last year, all the projects of heavy hitters (Fincher, Wahlberg, Affleck, Coens). I didn't hate The Town, derivative as it was, but it got talked about like it was some exceptional 'adult drama' instead of a formula crime pic. That just illustrates the dearth of non-presold material aimed at adults.

'the town' is dope but dope like 'the seven-ups' was dope, which is to say i wish there were more like it movies cranked out regularly and were not considered risky and exceptional, you know?

"there were more movies like it cranked out regularly"

I agree for the most part, but then there's the success of The King's Speech (still in the top five, and closing in on $100 million), The Fighter, Black Swan, True Grit, The Social Network. It's been an unusual season, which Harris himself acknowledges:

During one remarkable stretch last fall, the box office was dominated, on successive weekends, by The Town, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, and The Social Network

― Rich Lolwry (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, February 18, 2011 2:06 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

well that's kind of the point isnt it - audiences are hungry for adult dramas, hwood just isnt particularly interested in supplying them

tbh i think many people working in hollywood are too growth-stunted to even deal w/attempting adult dramas, and one piece of advice i received ten years ago when i moved out here ultimately rang true: don't be surprised at how dumb a lot of the decision-makers are, not to mention the weird combination of being ambitious with their own career and therefore terrified of taking a single risk with the creative product. folks are crippled by fear of taking chances or using the extra $1 or $2 million they have lying around for anything edgier than, i dunno, s. darko. the successful people i know here are not successful on a large scale but in niche stuff like indie horror and aren't exactly living large. a friend of mine has had four horror screenplays made into films in 10 years with a fifth on the way and he's scuffling despite being totally frugal.

based on personal experience and from what others have shared, i can say that writers are at almost every single turn discouraged from attempting anything original and the process itself is done so much by committee and in an almost focus group style that lots of stuff just ends up utterly predictable and following a well-trod formula.

Irving Thalberg is not my idea of a hero, but from reading The Genius of the System I'd say when he was running production at MGM around '23-36 he was way more 'creative' than any exec in the biz today. And that was filmmaking by committee! But then moviegoing is not central to people's lives anymore.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The L:ast Tycoon to thread!

The lead character in it is an aging whiz-kid studio head (in his late 30s or early 40s) who, rather incidentally to the main plot, green lights a few "prestige" films, mainly because he thinks the general public pours enough money into the company that they deserve a bit of thanks by trying to make something with a bit more depth, nuance and substance.

well Fitzgerald wrote (rather unsuccessfully) for MGM and that was clearly Thalberg -- who greenlighted Freaks, btw

Orson Welles to Peter Bogdanovich: "In the hated studio system there was always room for a tiny Orson Welles picture."

Is that why he spent years scrounging up foreign investors for many of his pictures? Not to mention using money from his own acting gigs to help get shit done.

Welles' fate was sort of his own choosing. if he'd wanted to make films in Hollywood he could've.

I'm not apologizing for him -- just pointing out that room existed for even a Touch of Evil or butchered Ambersons in the old system.

Cinema is dead. Matt Seitz on the ceasing of the production of motion-picture film cameras:

http://www.salon.com/2011/10/13/r_i_p_the_movie_camera_1888_2011/singleton/

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3S0adMfn1iM/S7-xk6s2o9I/AAAAAAAAAG8/3FJXjqlR5nQ/s400/laszlo_panaflex.gif

Good thing digital looks good on Blu-ray.

I've been comforted by seeing stuff like Le Havre projected via celluloid at the NYFF. Oh look, a MOVIE!

ending that article w/ a brakhage piece was inspired

David Bordwell on how preference for digital (along w/ hardware issues) is hastening the end of 35mm projection at festivals, etc.

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2012/01/05/pandoras-digital-box-at-the-festival/

I was at the Tate Modern (to see the Richter) and while waiting for my friend had a look at Tacita Dean's thing and it had the whole 'cinema is dying bcz digital is killing it theme'. Problem is the film ws a real drag..

i'm bummed to have missed the dean (& richter actually) but might buy the catalogue, the essays sound p good

The Dean is around till March, don't know where you're at but there's a longer windown than the Richter, which shuts this w/end.

oh cool, actually thought the dean ended at new year, will possibly make it still

Bordwell's latest, on what the art theaters will have to do to survive:

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2012/01/30/pandoras-digital-box-art-house-smart-house/

Bordwell: "It seems likely that digital projection has, in unintended and unexpected ways, put the history of film in jeopardy."

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2012/02/13/pandoras-digital-box-pix-and-pixels/

good riddance

may your glottis be stopped with reels of decaying celluloid.

defenders of the analog shall have no mercy from us.

maybe you should read the fucking thing, eh

the advantage of digital is its impermanence. mistakes can be corrected and revised with little effort. we wish to apply these principles to human society.

film is finite, "organic" and beautiful. it must be destroyed.

yeah the only thing standing between us and utopia is your vinyl record collection.

I am starting to wonder if Tacita Dean's preciousness is not really helping the celluloid cause. Still like her films but interviews with her are a little insufferable at times. She used to be kind of my hero =(

Wow at that article.

yeah... I'm hearing unpleasant rumors about the future of 35mm projection at an NYC repertory mainstay, too.

the advantage of digital is its impermanence.

nope.