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.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 15:19 (thirteen years ago) link
that graph is dominated by statistical noise
― caek, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 15:22 (thirteen years ago) link
i dont mind long movies - if the movie is too long for itself thats another thing - like transformers 2 prob just shouldve been a commercial or whatever
― ice cr?m, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 15:27 (thirteen years ago) link
xpost -- We could retitle it 'supernovae are brighter these days'
― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 15:28 (thirteen years ago) link
skewing results: 12-minute end credits for horseshit effects-laden stuff
― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 15:29 (thirteen years ago) link
no good comes of any thread where "meme" surfaces
― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, June 16, 2010 6:24 PM (6 months ago) Bookmark
― once more Jagger faps the hivemind (symsymsym), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 15:42 (thirteen years ago) link
The end-credits is a good point--wouldn't be surprised if they account for most of the seven-minute difference between '79 and '09. I'm often hanging around right till the end of the credits to get the name of some song that caught my ear, and they go on forever. It doesn't even have to be a film with lots of special effects, very few of which I see--it applies to all films.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 15:53 (thirteen years ago) link
http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/3725/chart1c.png
I have no idea what if anything I have learnt from this chart, but really I just wanted to see if I could web-scrape the data off IMDB, which I could, with 3 lines of Perl
(data is in a Google Docs spreadsheet here; some years have <50 rows of data because some movies didn't have a length showing up; data scraped from e.g. http://www.imdb.com/search/title?year=2010%2C2010&title_type=feature&sort=moviemeter%2Casc which uses imdb's own questionable "MovieMeter" ranking but the box office data gets pretty shaky the further back you go so eh)
― bauble metropolis (a passing spacecadet), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 16:37 (thirteen years ago) link
looks about right to me. my guess is the average length hasn't changed that much, but there are currently (like in the last 5 years) a lot more 2.5 hour+ trashy movies.
― caek, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 16:41 (thirteen years ago) link
So if that is about right then I dunno if it's more true to say that the 00s and the 60s had a lot of really long films or that the 70s and 80s had a lot of short films.
Anyway, I have a short attention span and grew up with 80s films, so if the plunge downwards right at the end means the trend is turning round again then I'm all for it.
(I don't trust the data here a whole bunch btw)
― bauble metropolis (a passing spacecadet), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 16:49 (thirteen years ago) link
that imdb moviemeter thing is sketchy, but i'd be surprised if the top 50 were a particularly biased sample of successful mainstream movies. i can totally buy that there isn't a gross trend in running length. imo this thread inspired by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias although i agree that there are probably more really dumb long movies than there used to be.
i wouldn't trust any results based on a year that hasn't finished though, especially with award season to come, which will boost (usu. longer) oscar-type movies into the top 50.
― caek, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 16:56 (thirteen years ago) link
the issue here, comparing the 1950s with the present, is b-movies, i.e. second features. they were shorter than the main feature because duh. but now we don't have b-movies so.
― moholy-nagl (history mayne), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 16:57 (thirteen years ago) link
Would all those musical-overture segments (which I assume were included in running times) from the big prestige roadshow films from the '60s make a difference? Not sure if there were enough of them to matter, but they seemed to run two or three minutes.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 17:02 (thirteen years ago) link
Of course, those films were already three or four hours long, so probably not.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 17:04 (thirteen years ago) link
well we're in difficult territory with that. there is a question of whether you would have had to endure them when the film got rolled out into regular cinemas. i genuinely dk. but those films were relatively rare -- this is about whether your average programmer is longer now.
― moholy-nagl (history mayne), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 17:07 (thirteen years ago) link
data doesn't matter. NO comedy/thriller/romance type movie that isn't some kind of visually stunning epic or intensely contemplative and/or suspenseful masterwork should EVER be over 120 minutes, and preferably not over 100 minutes. Whether there are more films like this than there used to be, all of them are too long.
― I can take a youtube that's seldom seen, flip it, now it's a meme (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 17:13 (thirteen years ago) link
otm
― moholy-nagl (history mayne), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 17:16 (thirteen years ago) link
I bet that 90% of the films that check in at 150 minutes+ aspire to one or more of those things; how many actually achieve it, obviously many fewer.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 17:18 (thirteen years ago) link
This is actually a significant factor in my cinema going now. I refused to see Avatar because of the length. I always ask how long something is before agreeing to go unless it's a new Coen Bros or something on that level.
― I can take a youtube that's seldom seen, flip it, now it's a meme (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 17:19 (thirteen years ago) link
A four-hour Pauly Shore film? I'm guessing that's a pass for you.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 17:22 (thirteen years ago) link
# of very long movies (over 130 minutes), by decade:
1950s — 581960s — 1211970s — 721980s — 551990s — 972000s — 112
# of very short movies (under 86 minutes), by decade:
1950s — 841960s — 481970s — 381980s — 261990s — 352000s — 13
(wanted to do a medium-length one for comparison purposes, but couldn't decide what range to use — there actually seem to be two separate frequency peaks within "medium-length", one in the mid-90s, another in the low 110s)
― Egyptian Raps Crew (bernard snowy), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 17:23 (thirteen years ago) link
(all drawn from spacecadet's google spreadsheet data, in case that wasn't clear)
― Egyptian Raps Crew (bernard snowy), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 17:25 (thirteen years ago) link
― I can take a youtube that's seldom seen, flip it, now it's a meme (Hurting 2), Wednesday, December 29, 2010 5:13 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
― clemenza, Wednesday, December 29, 2010 5:18 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
i think the premise of this thread is that that's not true. 2.5 hour action movies and 2+ hour comedies that obviously don't aspire to much are not huge outliers any more.
― caek, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 17:33 (thirteen years ago) link
I upped it to 150 minutes before making that statement--I see few action films, unless it's something like Inception or The Dark Knight, both of which obviously have artistic aspirations, whether you think they get there or not. But you might be right, I honestly don't know.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 17:45 (thirteen years ago) link
More action films without artistic aspirations plz
― Gus Van Sotosyn (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 17:46 (thirteen years ago) link
On the basis of those two, I'd agree. I'd still prefer the aspirations, though, in hopes of lucking onto something like the second Spiderman or Batman films, both of which I liked a lot.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 17:53 (thirteen years ago) link
Hurting rlly consistently a foole this week
― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 19:00 (thirteen years ago) link
don't wanna get dragged into that people-showing-up-at-random-during-the-middle-of-films-at-the-cinema-in-the-olden-days argument again but check this out
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ksk66thANP1qzsbs8.jpg
― piscesx, Saturday, 21 April 2012 13:23 (twelve years ago) link
it was a well known gimmick of Hitch's, don't think i've seen that poster before tho
― aboulia banks (Noodle Vague), Saturday, 21 April 2012 13:27 (twelve years ago) link
IIRC that gimmick was used with Psycho only, because it was advertised as a Janet Leigh movie, and Hitchcock was afraid that people turning in late might miss her part of the movie.
― Tuomas, Monday, 23 April 2012 11:57 (twelve years ago) link
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2012/dec/12/is-the-hobbit-too-long
― piscesx, Thursday, 13 December 2012 11:47 (eleven years ago) link
it's amazing how they made the bold creative decision to make it into three movies. really makes me excited for the results.
― Heterocyclic ring ring (LocalGarda), Thursday, 13 December 2012 11:53 (eleven years ago) link
169 minutes! holy Christ.
― piscesx, Thursday, 13 December 2012 11:54 (eleven years ago) link
All too many other potentially great movies, from Titanic to Out of Africa
stopped reading here
― Ward Fowler, Thursday, 13 December 2012 11:59 (eleven years ago) link
haha
― piscesx, Thursday, 13 December 2012 13:01 (eleven years ago) link
This IS 40; 133 minutes for a comedy.
― piscesx, Saturday, 16 February 2013 16:37 (eleven years ago) link
John Cleese going with the 'people rocked up in the middle of the film then left where they came in' line, which some ilx folk are/were skeptical about
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ch4L2nrWMAE3FJ8.jpg
― piscesx, Tuesday, 10 May 2016 16:33 (eight years ago) link
What's he on about - his "parents' generation"? We used to do this all the time when I was a kid. This is how I watched The Meaning of Life and Life of Brian.
― everything, Tuesday, 10 May 2016 18:53 (eight years ago) link
A 1:45 cut of Civil War would be better.
― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Wednesday, 11 May 2016 00:14 (eight years ago) link
minute 45, right?
― we can be heroes just for about 3.6 seconds (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 11 May 2016 03:46 (eight years ago) link
bingo
― a poptimist consumed with celebrity culture and vacuous pop music (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 11 May 2016 05:53 (eight years ago) link
Too many unneccesary trilogies.
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 11 May 2016 06:25 (eight years ago) link
So the new Avengers will be 3+ hours...
― a large tuna called “Justice” (C. Grisso/McCain), Tuesday, 26 March 2019 16:47 (five years ago) link
yeah
https://media.giphy.com/media/fDO2Nk0ImzvvW/giphy.gif
― affects breves telnet (Gummy Gummy), Tuesday, 26 March 2019 16:47 (five years ago) link
sex and the city 2 - 154 minutestransformers 2 - ~150 minuteskarate kid - 139 minutesfunny people - ~150 minutes
why would you see any of these movies
the new Avengers will be 3+ hours...
― shoulda zagged (esby), Tuesday, 26 March 2019 16:52 (five years ago) link
No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough.
Still no date on the Arbelos 4K restoration of Satantango. Criterion's 2K restoration of War and Peace drops June 25. Mysteries of Lisbon awaits on the stack, but I've discovered an affinity for horror in my greying years, that's been pushing the artsier stuff aside.
― with Chew Guard™ technology (Sanpaku), Tuesday, 26 March 2019 18:37 (five years ago) link
tbf war and peace is too long.
― affects breves telnet (Gummy Gummy), Tuesday, 26 March 2019 18:48 (five years ago) link
or at least not so great.
― affects breves telnet (Gummy Gummy), Tuesday, 26 March 2019 18:49 (five years ago) link
feel like theres a decent thread in here about overly long movies that were good but contained a long and ultimately unnecessary sideplot that could've been excised completely
Interstellar & the Matt Damon thing is a pretty good example
― frogbs, Tuesday, 26 March 2019 18:54 (five years ago) link
I bet that 90% of the films that check in at 150 minutes+ aspire to one or more of those things; how many actually achieve it, obviously many fewer.― clemenza, Wednesday, December 29, 2010 12:18 PM (eight years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― clemenza, Wednesday, December 29, 2010 12:18 PM (eight years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
That's just an application of Sturgeon's Law (85-90% of everything is crap). Presumably 100% of the filmmakers who attempt to make epic films are attempting to do so well, but maybe only 10% of the resulting films are good enough to be worth their running time.
I expect to see the forthcoming Avengers movie, but I wish filmmakers besides Tarantino would bring back intermissions. You'd think theater operators would welcome the second chance to sell overpriced concessions to moviegoers.
― Anne Hedonia (j.lu), Tuesday, 26 March 2019 19:45 (five years ago) link