Movies are too fucking long these days imho

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still don't really get it since the objection doesn't seem to be that these long popcorn movies drag but that they...take up too much of your life or something?

― dat nigga del griffith (zvookster), Tuesday, June 15, 2010 3:16 PM (51 seconds ago) Bookmark

it is kind of a professional concern for reviewers. tummies begin to rumble c. 110 minutes yo.

sites.younglife.org:8080 (history mayne), Tuesday, 15 June 2010 14:18 (thirteen years ago) link

haha well i get it if they drag, idk it just seemed more philosophical than that

dat nigga del griffith (zvookster), Tuesday, 15 June 2010 14:19 (thirteen years ago) link

philosophical angle - "why are so many shitty movies dragging these days"

May be half naked, but knows a good headline when he sees it (darraghmac), Tuesday, 15 June 2010 14:20 (thirteen years ago) link

"No good movie is too long, and no bad movie is short enough." – Roger Ebert

breaking that little dog's heart chakra (Abbott), Tuesday, 15 June 2010 14:23 (thirteen years ago) link

marley and me: 115min
the bounty hunter: 110min

sites.younglife.org:8080 (history mayne), Tuesday, 15 June 2010 14:23 (thirteen years ago) link

movies - 5-6 £/h
books - £2/h?
videogames - £1/h?
albums - 50p/h?

movies never gonna cut it at that rate

I can see the others, but how do you get albums at 50p per hour? Most albums aren't even an hour long, and depending on format they can cost well over £15. Unless you're offsetting free download/spotify albums against bought albums, but that's a whole different thing. Or replay value, but then you can rewatch films if you buy instead of go to the cinema...

Also, it doesn't seem like anyone has linked to this other relevant thread: Your ideal length of a film

emil.y, Tuesday, 15 June 2010 14:30 (thirteen years ago) link

TV shows get to have it both ways - they're an hour at most, yet the "experience" lasts months and even years. And you can charge out the wazoo for the DVDs.

progressive cuts (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, 15 June 2010 14:31 (thirteen years ago) link

Why dont movies just have a 10-min intermission?

Adam Bruneau, Tuesday, 15 June 2010 14:32 (thirteen years ago) link

Gandhi did. The movie theater even had some old reel they put on, with candy-stripes and big white capital letters that said "INTERMISSION".

progressive cuts (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, 15 June 2010 14:34 (thirteen years ago) link

historias extraordinarias had TWO intermissions!

delanie griffith (s1ocki), Tuesday, 15 June 2010 14:35 (thirteen years ago) link

Or replay value, but then you can rewatch films if you buy instead of go to the cinema...

was thinking of replay value, and that is true but that would count for videos, as a separate category from movies.

pretty stupid metric anyway tbh.

sent from my neural lace (ledge), Tuesday, 15 June 2010 14:35 (thirteen years ago) link

Lots of movies have an intermission, but it always seems to be taken out of the DVD?

May be half naked, but knows a good headline when he sees it (darraghmac), Tuesday, 15 June 2010 14:35 (thirteen years ago) link

i'm sure i remember intermissions in movies all the time when i was a kid.

i think heat had one when i saw it (not a kid by then).

sent from my neural lace (ledge), Tuesday, 15 June 2010 14:36 (thirteen years ago) link

people like to think theyre getting their moneys worth. its like 78 minute cds.

truffle-flavoured french fry (titchyschneiderMk2), Tuesday, 15 June 2010 14:37 (thirteen years ago) link

I am usually waiting for film to end when I do go to the cinema. Weird example of one time I kinda wanted it to carry on: Cloverfield.

mdskltr (blueski), Tuesday, 15 June 2010 14:37 (thirteen years ago) link

Fantastic Mr Fox was a wonderful movie for many reasons, not least of which is thanks to its 87 minute running time.

Filmmaker, Author, Radio Host Stephen Baldwin (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 15 June 2010 14:38 (thirteen years ago) link

I've seen 80-minute movies that dragged. Length seems secondary: It's about storytelling. Think about how even your longest favorite movies begin immediately (the great opening in The Godfather), or how length suits either the sweep of years of the pressure of close quarters in Reds, Prince of the City, Das Boot, etc.

Movies take forever to get started these days. One thing I love about the original Bad News Bears is how it introduces credits, setting, plot, and all but one of its main characters under the 8-minute mark, all at a leisurely pace, and gets right onto the field:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgk_8Ydy0_M

Pete Scholtes, Tuesday, 15 June 2010 19:03 (thirteen years ago) link

or the pressure

Pete Scholtes, Tuesday, 15 June 2010 19:04 (thirteen years ago) link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadshow_theatrical_release

jaymc, Tuesday, 15 June 2010 19:05 (thirteen years ago) link

(^movies with intermissions)

jaymc, Tuesday, 15 June 2010 19:06 (thirteen years ago) link

I've seen 80-minute movies that dragged. Length seems secondary: It's about storytelling.

This is the truth. A great rule of thumb I heard long ago is that it doesn't matter how long it actually is so much as how long it seemed to be (this was either Pauline Kael or Dr. Ruth that said that)

There are two hour movies that fly by and there are 90 minute movies that make you check your watch every three minutes.

Cunga, Tuesday, 15 June 2010 19:14 (thirteen years ago) link

One thing I love about the original Bad News Bears is how it introduces credits, setting, plot, and all but one of its main characters under the 8-minute mark, all at a leisurely pace, and gets right onto the field:

die hard is the best example of this i've ever seen... EVERYTHING is set up so fast

delanie griffith (s1ocki), Tuesday, 15 June 2010 19:32 (thirteen years ago) link

and YA GUYS of course bad movies seem longer and good movies fly by but that's not really what i'm talking about here. i'm talking about sex and the city being 2.5 hours long. regardless of the good/bad rule, some movies should not be that long. objectively.

delanie griffith (s1ocki), Tuesday, 15 June 2010 19:33 (thirteen years ago) link

is there anything that we can do about this?

goole, Tuesday, 15 June 2010 19:35 (thirteen years ago) link

i mean, can we start some kind of facebook viral campaign that gets a hit on the NYT arts blog and prompts a quote from someone at a studio who says "hmm maybe we'll think about delivering more focused product"

or something?

cos otherwise it seems like the institutional forces are moving towards bloat. i hadn't even thought of the "competing with a ballgame" angle

goole, Tuesday, 15 June 2010 19:50 (thirteen years ago) link

let's all vow to walk out of movies at the 90 minute mark

delanie griffith (s1ocki), Tuesday, 15 June 2010 19:51 (thirteen years ago) link

we can do a hashtag too

delanie griffith (s1ocki), Tuesday, 15 June 2010 19:51 (thirteen years ago) link

the only thing hollywood understands is money, so let's...raise a bunch of money and pay them to make shorter movies.

Save Ferris' It Means Everything knocked my socks off (latebloomer), Tuesday, 15 June 2010 19:53 (thirteen years ago) link

i'll set up a paypal

Save Ferris' It Means Everything knocked my socks off (latebloomer), Tuesday, 15 June 2010 19:53 (thirteen years ago) link

#peacingat90

delanie griffith (s1ocki), Tuesday, 15 June 2010 19:54 (thirteen years ago) link

mail white powder to everyone in the editor's guild

xp lol

goole, Tuesday, 15 June 2010 19:55 (thirteen years ago) link

If people were really clamoring for shorter movies, they would have made fan edits with brevity as a primary goal, and more people would watch those than the original.
I'll admit the five minute "fan" edit of Fast & Furious sounds worth paying for.

Philip Nunez, Tuesday, 15 June 2010 20:19 (thirteen years ago) link

funny people is one thing but what really blows my mind is that someone thought a movie with a jonah hill anal rape gag in it needed to be 110 minutes

A B C, Tuesday, 15 June 2010 21:42 (thirteen years ago) link

how long was Furry Vengeance?

sarahel, Tuesday, 15 June 2010 21:49 (thirteen years ago) link

Movies take forever to get started these days.

feeling this. hate how really slow music-driven opening credits sequences and long misleading or ambiguous first scenes have become the standard for like every genre practically.

Mr. Srehtims (some dude), Tuesday, 15 June 2010 22:12 (thirteen years ago) link

ya... the iron man 2 "welding & newspaper clips montage" bothered me in partics

delanie griffith (s1ocki), Tuesday, 15 June 2010 22:17 (thirteen years ago) link

how long was Furry Vengeance?

92 minutes, according to wiki. About right for what looks like a steaming pile of shit. Then again, I just now see that Ken Jeong, Rob Riggle and Wallace Shawn were in it!

he's always been a bit of an anti-climb Max (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Tuesday, 15 June 2010 22:20 (thirteen years ago) link

Haven't seen Sex and the City 2, but can't it be worse than Woody's September or Shadows and Fog?

Filmmaker, Author, Radio Host Stephen Baldwin (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 15 June 2010 22:25 (thirteen years ago) link

lololol at the 2 minutes 2fast2furious. I was checking my watch at the 1:30 mark, thinking "jeez hasn't it already been 2 min"?

an indie-rock microgenre (dyao), Wednesday, 16 June 2010 00:14 (thirteen years ago) link

let's all vow to walk out of movies at the 90 minute mark

― delanie griffith (s1ocki), Tuesday, 15 June 2010 19:51 (Yesterday)

this would only be noticed if you paid 90/(total running time) of the ticket price though.

May be half naked, but knows a good headline when he sees it (darraghmac), Wednesday, 16 June 2010 00:26 (thirteen years ago) link

s1ocki, you complained about Un Prophet being too long iirc but that movie wasn't actually too long imo, it moved really fast and was well made. the film was okay, not great, and certainly not the masterpiece it was hailed as (or anywhere close to it) but it justified its length.

jed_, Wednesday, 16 June 2010 00:31 (thirteen years ago) link

i dunno i felt it could have lost 20-30 mins no problem

delanie griffith (s1ocki), Wednesday, 16 June 2010 02:11 (thirteen years ago) link

he problem is more to do with regular films pushing past 120 minutes

Ordinary fuckin' "regular" films -- I hate em. Stop going.

kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 16 June 2010 02:23 (thirteen years ago) link

looking up run times of movies I like, noticed that Wonder Boys clocks in at 1:47 (which is sort of surprising for '00s adult comedy/drama) - maybe it's not a great movie, but it does a lot with a sub-2 hour run time.

a cross between lily allen and fetal alcohol syndrome (milo z), Wednesday, 16 June 2010 02:31 (thirteen years ago) link

And the novel on which it's based is much too long.

Filmmaker, Author, Radio Host Stephen Baldwin (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 16 June 2010 02:32 (thirteen years ago) link

I don't remember much being cut out from the novel.

a cross between lily allen and fetal alcohol syndrome (milo z), Wednesday, 16 June 2010 02:35 (thirteen years ago) link

Lots of bits of business didn't make it.

Filmmaker, Author, Radio Host Stephen Baldwin (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 16 June 2010 02:36 (thirteen years ago) link


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