I've mentioned this before: since I live neither in NYC nor LA I rely on Netflix and one local art theatre for foreign films. It was the same situation ten years ago. Nothing's changed here.
― Rich Lolwry (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 31 January 2011 18:51 (thirteen years ago) link
i reckon that with dvd it's technically easier to see foreign films now than 40 years ago (tony probably says this, can't remember). in england it hasn't changed much in about 25-30 years, so far as i can tell -- there were more repertory cinemas then, but video and tv have replaced them. which is a shame but there we are, and most of them were inly in london anyway.
i have a theory that in this country at any rate (not just a theory, there is evidence, but i haven't got into it enough yet) the reason for the reach bergman et al had was that the cinemas in the late 1950s had a real fight on their hands when tv came along and tried all kinds of things. and foreign films were routinely sold on the basis of (female) nudity, no matter how highbrow. but that was very much a phase.
― history mayne, Monday, 31 January 2011 18:56 (thirteen years ago) link
kind of a lazy post
― Rich Lolwry (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, January 31, 2011 1:51 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark
yeah this is why i'm confused--the sitch hasn't changed in my city for at least the last ten years. i guess a.o. is saying this is a "golden age," i def don't know enough to say whether that might be true.
― call all destroyer, Monday, 31 January 2011 18:58 (thirteen years ago) link
theatrical runs for foreign flicks have definitely declined (a lot) in LA over the last 10 years
― buzza, Monday, 31 January 2011 19:00 (thirteen years ago) link
i guess a.o. is saying this is a "golden age," i def don't know enough to say whether that might be true.― call all destroyer, Monday, January 31, 2011 6:58 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark
― call all destroyer, Monday, January 31, 2011 6:58 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark
this is the real crux, yeah. he's not the only person saying it. i dunno. i don't think the EOD lists for the 2k0s really justify the claim, but i think it's partly the lack of a 'narrative'.
― history mayne, Monday, 31 January 2011 19:10 (thirteen years ago) link
Harris is also Tony Kushner's partner, btw, iirc.
― Tyler/Perry's "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)" (jaymc), Monday, 31 January 2011 19:11 (thirteen years ago) link
it's kind of lol that his example is a film that's five fucking hours long, i don't care how good it is.
― call all destroyer, Monday, 31 January 2011 19:11 (thirteen years ago) link
cad, you watch TV series, don't you?
ppl are less interested in world cinema. it's easier than ever to see most of these films, thanks to Netflix etc, if there was demand.
also I believe foreign films grossed more (adj for inflation) and got nominated for the Best Picture Oscar more often. (The last two years there was what, District 9?)
― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Monday, 31 January 2011 19:12 (thirteen years ago) link
not really morbs, why?
― call all destroyer, Monday, 31 January 2011 19:13 (thirteen years ago) link
it's kind of a trilogy. and given most will see it on dvd anyway the run-time isn't a thing. it's kind of up to you! if you don't want to be interested in modern cinema, no-one is forcing you, it's just a bit of a shame that widely acclaimed movies don't get very much shine.
― history mayne, Monday, 31 January 2011 19:16 (thirteen years ago) link
90-110 minutes each night in 3 parts isn't that tough.
― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Monday, 31 January 2011 19:18 (thirteen years ago) link
yeah i hear ya, it's just that 5-hour movies are a tough sell when they're made here too!
tbf i didn't realize it was split into three parts; it was not really presented that way in reviews i read.
― call all destroyer, Monday, 31 January 2011 19:19 (thirteen years ago) link
There is also a 2:45 theatrical cut.
― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Monday, 31 January 2011 19:31 (thirteen years ago) link
morbs half otm here... I think ppl are actually more willing to watch a "foreign film" on demand because the barrier to entry is so low, just click play and it starts
I'm not the best example cuz I'm big on world cinema, but there are a bunch in my queue I prolly would've never tracked down if it weren't so damn easy to click add/play (e.g. the maid)
― ^ probably more bullshit self-aggrandizement and non-essential info (Edward III), Monday, 31 January 2011 19:43 (thirteen years ago) link
District 9 was mostly in English. If your point is that it was non-American, then there have been no shortage of British films nominated for Best Picture in recent years, too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_foreign_language_films_nominated_for_Academy_Awards
Based on above link, it looks like four of the eight foreign-language (not foreign) films nominated for Best Picture have come within the last 16 years. In several other categories, foreign-language films have actually done better in the past 20 years than they had before (e.g., Best Cinematography and Best Song).
I'd say the one category in which foreign-language films do worse among the Academy now than they used to is screenplay. Between both Original Screenplay and Adapted Screenplay categories, foreign-language films score 37 writing nominations in the 1960s and '70s alone and only 20 since.
― Tyler/Perry's "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)" (jaymc), Monday, 31 January 2011 19:46 (thirteen years ago) link
The one category in which they unequivocally do worse, that is. You could make an argument for a couple other categories, like director, as well.
― Tyler/Perry's "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)" (jaymc), Monday, 31 January 2011 19:49 (thirteen years ago) link
I like this.
― Rich Lolwry (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 31 January 2011 19:55 (thirteen years ago) link
I believe I have seen this theory before and more than once- I believe it is floated in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls for example.
― Never Make Your Moog Too Soon (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 31 January 2011 20:05 (thirteen years ago) link
I'm not gonna say that wasn't a thing, but there's a pretty long stretch of non-erotic bergman films between monika (1953) and the silence (1963), some of his most famous films
― ^ probably more bullshit self-aggrandizement and non-essential info (Edward III), Monday, 31 January 2011 20:25 (thirteen years ago) link
the guy's rep was built on this string of films, not a lot of hot stuff in there... 1963 Winter Light1961 Through a Glass Darkly1960 The Devil's Eye1960 The Virgin Spring1958 The Magician1958 Brink of Life1957 Wild Strawberries1957 The Seventh Seal
― ^ probably more bullshit self-aggrandizement and non-essential info (Edward III), Monday, 31 January 2011 20:30 (thirteen years ago) link
I've always wanted to see brink of life after john waters wrote about it in an essay on his favorite foreign films, he said his local theater would bring it back every time a movie bombed, supposedly it's some hyper-histrionic tale about a maternity ward
― ^ probably more bullshit self-aggrandizement and non-essential info (Edward III), Monday, 31 January 2011 20:33 (thirteen years ago) link
he said his local theater would bring it back every time a movie bombed
ok, so I mixed up brink of life with a cold day in august here
but does this not sound grebt
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/brink_of_life_john_waters.jpg
― ^ probably more bullshit self-aggrandizement and non-essential info (Edward III), Monday, 31 January 2011 20:38 (thirteen years ago) link
clemenza to thread!
nitpicking: It's an essay on his favorite art films which include American films like A Cold Wind in August and Interiors (!). i have a theory that in this country at any rate (not just a theory, there is evidence, but i haven't got into it enough yet) the reason for the reach bergman et al had was that the cinemas in the late 1950s had a real fight on their hands when tv came along and tried all kinds of things. and foreign films were routinely sold on the basis of (female) nudity, no matter how highbrow.
There already is evidence for this. See Mark Betz. “Art, Exploitation, Underground,” in Defining Cult Movies: The Cultural Politics of Oppositional Taste, eds. Mark Jancovich et al. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 202-222.
― Kevin John Bozelka, Monday, 31 January 2011 21:01 (thirteen years ago) link
I believe I have seen this theory before and more than once- I believe it is floated in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls for example.― Never Make Your Moog Too Soon (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, January 31, 2011 8:05 PM (52 minutes ago) Bookmark
― Never Make Your Moog Too Soon (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, January 31, 2011 8:05 PM (52 minutes ago) Bookmark
sorry, yeah, i know it's kind of out there -- i guess i mean 'rigorously proven thesis' not theory, and in the uk-sphere specifically. i've heard it said but not seen it gone into. the smallness of the uk makes it a different question here. you go back to the 30s, though, and like not a single renoir (sound period) got shown till 1937. 'boudu' was not given a run in a british cinema till 1965. so far as i can tell dreyer's 'vampyr' didn't get a cinema release before the 70s (it debuted at a film society in 1935). so this is kind of what i mean wrt the 50s-70s being blippy.
xpost cool will check out, know some of betz's stuff if he's the 'small books' guy
― history mayne, Monday, 31 January 2011 21:04 (thirteen years ago) link
Oh, he wrote Pictures at the Revolution
OT but that book was a brilliant read
― ensuing thread does not enlighten (stevie), Monday, 31 January 2011 21:31 (thirteen years ago) link
Is this the same kind of thing as a 50s version of a 'midnight film'?
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 31 January 2011 21:38 (thirteen years ago) link
the betz chapter is on google books -- it's interesting. depending on your point of view on the value of research in this area, there's more ground to cover.
it's not unrelated to the midnight movie, i'd guess, or to the whole grindhouse phenom, which is, what?, delapidated cinemas showing spicier fare than you get elsewhere, european films included
idk, idk, 'very different in the uk' (wonder where kung-fu, exploitation, etc pix did play here)
― history mayne, Monday, 31 January 2011 21:45 (thirteen years ago) link
here's a thing from an actual distributor about the state of international distribution:
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=448095905772&id=712161205
― marios balls in 3d for 3ds (Princess TamTam), Monday, 31 January 2011 22:50 (thirteen years ago) link
a large number of exploitation pics - particularly from europe - did actually get a release on the british circuit in the 60s and (especially) the 1970s, though they were generally censored, dubbed, retitled and given 'saucy' new soft porn titles. back issues of the monthly film bulletin are prob the best and most reliable guide for this kind of thing. plenty of kung fu flicks got shown over here in the same way, tho the bbfc had a particular aversion to nunchucks, for some reason, so even the classic bruce lee movies had whole sequences snipped by the censor.
again in the uk my guess is that the decline of the university film club, showing 16mm prints of classic arthouse fare, has played a part in all this.
― Ward Fowler, Tuesday, 1 February 2011 01:46 (thirteen years ago) link
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
― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Friday, 18 February 2011 18:33 (thirteen years ago) link
ie, the article J0rdan talked about above is now online
― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Friday, 18 February 2011 18:35 (thirteen years ago) link
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, 18 February 2011 19:06 (thirteen years ago) link
Hollywood has always churned out garbage based on existing properties afaict
― ice cr?m's world of female people (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 18 February 2011 19:08 (thirteen years ago) link
aflack?
― Rich Lolwry (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 18 February 2011 19:08 (thirteen years ago) link
The quality of the garbage has deteriorated. Why else are The Fighter, The Town, and True Grit overpraised?
― Rich Lolwry (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 18 February 2011 19:10 (thirteen years ago) link
As Far As I Can Affleck
― ice cr?m's world of female people (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 18 February 2011 19:10 (thirteen years ago) link
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).
― Rich Lolwry (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 18 February 2011 19:13 (thirteen years ago) link
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
― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Friday, 18 February 2011 19:14 (thirteen years ago) link
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:
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.
― ice cr?m's world of female people (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 18 February 2011 19:17 (thirteen years ago) link
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.
― ice cr?m's world of female people (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 18 February 2011 19:18 (thirteen years ago) link
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.
― Rich Lolwry (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 18 February 2011 19:30 (thirteen years ago) link
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.
― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Friday, 18 February 2011 19:31 (thirteen years ago) link
eh fair enough
― ice cr?m's world of female people (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 18 February 2011 19:34 (thirteen years ago) link
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.
― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Friday, 18 February 2011 19:41 (thirteen years ago) link
'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?
― omar little, Saturday, 19 February 2011 00:42 (thirteen years ago) link
"there were more movies like it cranked out regularly"
― 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
― Princess TamTam, Saturday, 19 February 2011 01:12 (thirteen years ago) link
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.
― omar little, Saturday, 19 February 2011 01:39 (thirteen years ago) link