Where do you think cinema goes from here? (1 Viewer)

[jcroy]

Never heard of him... but opera definitely seems an acquired taste (at least for modern sensibilities/tastes). Took me a long while to really warm to it (at least the European stuff) -- and having a big projection screen at home helps that much more me thinks though I did already warm to the music itself some years before that.

The same can be said of punk rock music.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

The same can be said of punk rock music.

OR metal, techno and rap... I still don't care for those much w/ few exceptions. Interestingly, metal can actually be not quite that far off from some classical music, including opera -- and actually, some of the singing in metal can even resemble Peking/Beijing opera, which isn't my cup o' tea.

Violinist Rachel Barton Pine definitely promotes the connection between classical and metal, and my son seemed to have gotten into metal in somewhat similar fashion (thru his largely classical training/knowledge on violin until middle of high school)...




And some (hard) rock music certainly can sound compelling on the violin me thinks (and I don't mean merely as background kinda accompaniment to a rock band)...




I actually bought the sheet music from him (along w/ a couple others, including his solo version of Stairway, which isn't like typical classical chamber renditions that come off too mellow and classical sounding) for my kids. He and his violist buddy also has a "dueling" rendition of AC/DC's Back to Black (on YouTube), and of course, there are others out there doing such crossovers... Just don't mention Vanessa Mae though -- she's really not that good...

This is not punk either, but I'm always amused thinking about this whenever I hear Pachelbel again... Just glad nobody in the family actually had to play the cello part (although I have a niece and nephew who took up the cello for a while)...




Cheers!

_Man_

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

I'm sure there will be people discussing these comic book adaptations... just as there's long been interest and discussions surrounding the comics where these originated.

Well, yes, it is part of the history of cinema now. Also we now have people that were born and/or grew up at the height of the comic book movie craze. People are nostalgic for what they grew up with so if the comic book thing dies out you will have a generation or two that probably look back with nostalgia on these pictures.

These are today's A pictures. They are today's prestige films. A drama or a thriller or the pictures that were once 'Oscar bait' are now fringe pictures that don't make money. That are for streaming and watching on TV at home. A lot of them that they nominate now hardly anybody has seen.

When there were studios they did want to pour time and money into making pictures to release toward the end of a year that would be specifically for award season. Now, there are these dramas that get released and the Academy nominates them more out of the idea that they want it to look like they are nominating "serious" pictures that make it seem that "Hollywood" or whomever cares about big issues. Problem is many of these pictures are totally ignored.

So, point would be which picture will be forgotten entirely in 80 years, Moonlight or Marvel's Avengers? If you are asking me I would say nobody will remember Nomadland or Moonlight or Roma or whatever...they will remember Marvel films because during this time, Marvel is cinema. We'll all be dead but most pictures that won awards will be forgotten unless there are some film historians working hard to create a cult for those pictures. There are complaints all over the internet now about what gets nominated and the number one complaint is that people have not even seen the films.

Most people that watch movies now have seen Marvel and Star Wars pictures. A small percentage have seen a Paul Thomas Anderson picture or even a Coen Brothers film. What gets passed down, what lives on, will be what people watched...not what a small percentage saw. Those are footnote films.

I don't think people will remember the films that were released streaming, mostly because it just was not an event to sit at home and watch a movie. People remember going out to the cinema. Little children remember that when you take them for years afterwards. If you watch it at home, it is just one more thing you did at home during a day. Not an event. Not an experience most people are going to recall days later never mind years later...or decades later. Just something you watched on TV, a computer, tablet, or phone.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

Or, looking to film, I don’t really care for horror movies and as a result, they all tend to blend together and seem practically identical. I could be a snob and say that they’re all the same and that there’s no artistry, just adherence to a formula repeated again and again, but I don’t believe that’s actually true. I believe I don’t care for the genre which, as a result of my feelings, makes most examples seem the same because my reaction is the same. A lot of people today would say that of westerns, once the dominant genre. Those of us who are fans see a great deal of difference between, say, High Noon and Rio Bravo, but there are plenty of people who aren’t into that genre and will feel that all of the films are essentially the same.

Yes, this is basically true and a fair criticism. When you are looking at genre pictures generally they become a genre because people saw one they liked and so want to see another like it. It does spawn copycat pictures that look to be like a film that was popular in that genre. I mean, loads of Westerns do use the "two old friends that end up on opposite sides of each other" story point. If you watch a whole bunch of Westerns in a short period of time it becomes almost comical. You sort of think "Wow, couldn't they have thought of something else?" but often they are not trying to think of something else they are trying to do what people liked in another picture.

The standout pictures tend to be the ones that work within the genre box but intentionally do something you don't expect or had not yet been done in the genre. Then people copy that in future pictures until again somebody warps the genre "rules" and gives people something different. The pictures where they do that in a genre tend to become the high points in that genre.

I think the huge difference between what they were doing with Westerns or Tarzan movies, or Sherlock Holmes movies, or horror, or even comedy like the Three Stooges, or Abbott and Costello, was they were not A pictures. These were B pictures shown a lot of the time before or after a main feature. Made quickly on a small budget. They did not totally alter the system, take up most of the money and studio facilities and bend the business to a new model.

So, they weren't making sequels really, they were churning out quick little low budget B pictures because when people went to the cinema back then they saw two or three films and they were trying to give people a whole lot for their admission fee.

In a simplistic way you can say 'Hey, look there were 20 Basil Rathbone Sherlock pictures look at all those sequels." but that's really not at all the same thing as making huge budget effects pictures that suck up most of the resources of the people funding movies because they are shooting to make a billion dollars on those films. It is comparing what was a throwaway picture on a movie bill with a giant prestige picture that the entire financial calendar hangs on for a company.

I think you need to be fair when you make that comparison and it is much more than "Look, they made more than one of these pictures back in the 1940s."

Yes, they made Sherlock pictures because the stories were popular and so they churned out a bunch of cheap quickies...which sure we love now and can buy a box set of them...but they were not at all the same as what is going on today with Marvel or Star Wars or whatever big franchise/universe thing they are shooting for.

 

[TravisR]

Most people that watch movies now have seen Marvel and Star Wars pictures. A small percentage have seen a Paul Thomas Anderson picture or even a Coen Brothers film. What gets passed down, what lives on, will be what people watched...not what a small percentage saw. Those are footnote films.

I think you could say that same basic thing at any point in time though. A mainstream audience doesn't really care about anything other than the hits. It's the film fans that pass on the good smaller movies to future fans.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

Here's Ethan expressing basically the same thoughts on this. Primarily revolving around the business side of it...

 

[Bryan^H]

It is true that big budget tent pole pictures I generally find to be not very good to awful. Mostly for two reasons, the writing is generally really bad because it is not considered important on the big effects pictures which they want to play all over the world in every language so they want the writing to be as simplistic as possible, and second that when they give you 200 million or more to make a picture they also give you the formula the picture is to follow and a stopwatch. This generally makes these things seem, to me at least, to be more assembled products than anything else.

I don't follow the making of Marvel pictures or DC films and I can't tell them apart really. Once and a while one will grab my attention. The last one to do so was Doctor Strange, which I guess was in 2016, and I have not watched one since then. I am sort of interested in this new Shang-Chi picture because it looks a bit different and so I may see that. I thought Dr. Strange was a beautiful looking film, really eye popping but in terms of story...fairly awful. I did really enjoy the first Captain America picture with Chris Evans. It was a period piece and I thought the director really did that well. Of course this enticed me to watch the second Captain America film which I just thought was terrible and destroyed everything I liked about the first one. They moved it to a modern setting and it was just a bunch of noise and stuff flying around the frame.

I don't think my bias though is really against Marvel or super heroes, it is mostly that I don't like the formula pictures because they all feel the same to me and I just wish they would hire better writers.

They aren't going to move off of the CGI and the stopwatch so, I accept that, but they could put more effort into better stories. In Doctor Strange I believe the big bad guy was literally a face floating in space. That made me laugh and wonder if it would have been better to have dropped acid before I watched it. I can't recall the details of the whole thing because it all seemed so half assed.

Anyway, they don't need me to be a fan of these pictures for them to be hits. They pretty much open big and crush the competition whenever they come out. I did read about the making of Jungle Cruise and how many things they essentially had to do to make sure the film met the formula and was the least offensive it could possibly be. It seemed literally insane how much the picture was a list of "have to do's" more than something a person actually made. I was going to watch it until I read about it and then I just lost interest.

Sure, I don't hide that super hero pictures are not really my thing but it is more about the idea that I could watch almost any of these Marvel Universe pictures and I feel like I have already seen it.

I'm not at all against turning comics into movies. It is a naturally good idea and you already have the storyboards.

My top comic book pictures would be:

Conan by John Milius - Absolutely brilliant take on it. I was a total idiot for avoiding it for so long.

Superman by Richard Donner - Pretty much absolute perfection in this kind picture. Everything is great, the writing, the acting, the look. Just wonderful.

300 by Zack Snyder - Love it or hate it I think it does exactly what it wanted to do and is a home run. Sure, it is more an adult comic but what is wrong with that?

Captain America by Joe Johnston - How is this guy not the go to director for period genre films? He is flat out awesome at this stuff.

Sin City by Miller, Tarantino, Rodriguez - Fun adult noir comic book picture that is pretty perfectly cast and tries very hard to look like a comic book.

Obviously, my take on these pictures is I like them to be a bit different and they don't happen very often.

I don't need to see another Batman, Superman, or Spiderman film as for me that string is totally played out. So, they can keep rebooting and recasting I doubt I will see another one.

I would ask you this though, do you think they really need ScarJo to make a Black Widow picture? Or Henry Cavill to wear the Superman suit to make a Superman film? Or whomever they stick in the Bat suit to play Batman to attract the audience?

When you watch these pictures do you say "Oh, I can see ________ directed this!" because honestly these things all look like they could be spit out by the same computer to me. I don't see a style I mostly just see the same glossy visual look on every one. I'm not saying that is bad, it just for me is boring.

Conan was very true to the source materiel, and a very good film.

And regarding Frank Miller's '300', and 'Sin City', I thought they were fine, but I'll be scratching my head to the day I die as to why his masterpiece 'The Dark Knight Returns' was never translated to the big screen. It is so cinematic in every sense, has an amazing story, and literally changed the direction of mainstream comic books forever. The direct to BD animated rendition was so painfully bad I just couldn't believe what I was watching (and those 5 star reviews on Amazon...CRAZY!)

As a huge fan of TDKR, the "borrowing" of bits of the series for most of the Batman films (with Frank Miller's kind permission of course) is irritating to say the least.

 

[TravisR]

Here's Ethan expressing basically the same thoughts on this. Primarily revolving around the business side of it...

Every point he makes is right.

 

[jcroy]

I think you could say that same basic thing at any point in time though. A mainstream audience doesn't really care about anything other than the hits. It's the film fans that pass on the good smaller movies to future fans.

(Speaking in terms of hypotheticals).

In the year 2200, will anybody know what The Beatles or the Rolling Stones are?

 

[TravisR]

(Speaking in terms of hypotheticals).

In the year 2200, will anybody know what The Beatles or the Rolling Stones are?

No one besides historians and classical music fans.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

No one besides historians and classical music fans.

I love the joke in Star Trek Beyond when Beastie Boys starts playing and McCoy asks Spock if it’s classical music, to which Spock replies in the affirmative.

 

[Nick*Z]

The fact of the matter is that, regardless of what you or I would wish for in a perfect world scenario, decisions are already being implemented to dismantle the 'theatrical experience', pushing it into the annals of antiquated inventions like the horse and buggy and the bustle. But here's the thing with retiring a classic mode of collective human experience in favor of the more insular derivations of today - staying at home, watching on your tablet or phone, etc. et al.

Nothing compares to the opening night splendor of a vast empty canvas in a cavernous old-time movie palace, waiting in bated anticipation for the house lights to dim and the feature to begin. It's the kinetic exhilaration here that makes the presentation worth while. This of course, assumes there are still worthwhile movies being made and worthy of that pomp and pageantry.

I'm not altogether certain the quality or content of movies being made today, despite their vast technological advantages since, can rival a year like 1939 or seeing a colossus like Ben-Hur or Lawrence of Arabia in 70mm for the first time. Just saying. Remember what Gloria Swanson's Norma Desmond said about her 'being big' while the pictures became small? It's a statement only truer still in the last 30 or so years of the motion picture industry.

In this topsy-turvy world of ours, TV, once the red-headed stepchild, has now become - seemingly - the preferred mode of viewing. What does that spell for the future of 'mass' entertainment? IMO - not much. Ditto for the advanced censorship our PC-friendly cancel-culture everything sect wishes to impose upon the rest of us who do not subscribe to their skewed perspectives.

So, more antiseptic and anemic movies in the hopper, more depressing movies about the cultural decay of the U.S., the disintegration of race relations, stories about the rot and filth of lives not worth living or turning uglier by the moment, and more superhero tripe that really isn't about saving the world anymore, but about warring with one another in an endless display of CGI-motivated mumbo-jumbo, to anesthetize the mind, but do very little for the heart. Stop looking to the movies for your 'feel good' fix. They no longer wish to cater to it.

All of this has, of course, shrunk the market for entertainment considerably. So, the decision to finally put the nails in the coffin of the 'movie-going experience' first touted as a 'coming attraction' in the mid-1970's, has finally come to pass.

While a few 'art house' venues will likely survive the deluge and be able to make a go out of turning their movie houses into mixed media entertainment venues (live concerts, hosting nostalgia cinema events, occasionally showing a 'new release' and doing retrospectives and Q&A styled 'event programming), I think it's time to weep into the handkerchiefs and strike the dirge for a night at the movies - another American institution prematurely retired, not altogether for lack of interest from the audience, but because the industry as a whole would prefer it that way and has been doing everything in their power to bring about the apocalypse post haste. Sad, really. It didn't have to go this way.

 

[Nick*Z]

I think that is true, that there was a dive in the 1980s but to me the 1980s was a period where a lot of things took a dive. Basically during the 1980s I think many things that we enjoy as entertainment became sort of very polluted by money becoming a much bigger focus. Everything from movies to music to sports began to take a turn toward cash is king and finding ways to just make money over really being into whatever you were doing or creating. The problem just continued to grow until where we are now where even the audience no longer really talks about the quality of a picture they generally talk about the box office first.

I don't know why an audience member would give a flying crap about how much money a picture is making while they are sitting there watching it but they do now. When I went to movies in the 1970s, 1980s, and even in the 1990s nobody around me was talking about the box office numbers. The conversations were about how good or lousy the movie was.

If you wanted to make money, make sequels and show them in a box in a shopping mall. That did kind of become a thing in the 1980s.

I don't think any casual participant to the movie going experience is crunching box office receipts and using that as a barometer of whether or not to go and see a movie. It's still the storyline and actors associated with the movie, and the hype of successful PR that pushes some to attend and others to stay away. The real problem here is that Hollywood in general has forgotten how to tell a good story. Instead, we get a lot of mediocrity plumped to an absurd level with not-so-clever marketing in the hopes that the 'flash' will eclipse the reality and draw the public in. The public, alas, is more sophisticated than that, or, at once, more simply informed. If they're not entertained they don't go.

I can't tell you how many times I went to the movies in the 80's and left from the experience thinking "this was awesome" and started recommending what I had just seen to friends and family. I also remember how instrumental the then burgeoning home video market was at extending the life of that experience to my living room after waiting usually about a year for the movie to go from movie screen to 'rental only' VHS cassette and then, finally, in about another year or two, 'sell-through' so I could actually own a copy and add it to my private library. All of this created a ground-swell of interest in collectible movie-land culture.

Today, the opposite is true. The industry has done everything to claw back the sell-through market, taking back ownership of their product, parceled off on streaming services that can indiscriminately add and/or cancel product when they see fit to, without ever the promise to reinstate it in the future. So, collective amnesia sets in. Out of sight, out of mind. How many people today are asking for a movie like Porgy and Bess - interminably delayed due to a rights issue bru-ha-ha? Does anyone even know if a viable OCN or print master exists from which we might one day receive this hidden nugget on home video, or, at the very least, be able to stream it from our favorite on-line provider?

Movies like Porgy and Bess used to be the anomaly in home viewing. Now, such disappearing works of art are evaporating at an alarming rate. So, a movie as recent as the 1980's like Six Weeks is nowhere to be found on home video. Forget the 1920's silents or 1930's golden oldies. The industry cannot even be bothered to push stuff from the latter two decades of the 20th century.

And none of this decision-making has anything to do with 'box office' or even the discussion of how much a movie raked in on its initial theatrical release. The critics still like to tout the figures, same as they do the Oscar wins. One adds cache, the other, prestige to the release. $44 million at the box office and nominated for 10 Oscars including Best Picture....sounds like something that might be worth seeing.

Then again - maybe not. Bottom line: the bean counters like the figures because it makes a movie look good to its shareholders. The general audience - like my mother - couldn't give two hoots whether the movie made $44 mil, $4 mill or $4 bucks, so long as it's a good story and she was royally entertained by it.

 

[Mysto]

I know for me the theater experience has changed in the last decade. We grew dis-enchanted in the mega-theater small screen - heavy on the ads- everybody's got a cell phone - wow how much!

We built our own in home theater and that's where we stay except...

We still go to the boutique theaters. When I was in Detroit it was the Theater Organ Club. Now it's the Tampa theater. Classic old films as a shared experience like in the old days and even better silent film with live organ still bring us back to the theater. Will theater die - I doubt it but it will change. To my tastes - I really don't know but what comes out of the pandemic will be different than before. It happened before and it will happen again. Movie theaters in some form will continue just as live theater still lives because there will always be fans to support it.

 

[TravisR]

...and more superhero tripe that really isn't about saving the world anymore, but about warring with one another in an endless display of CGI-motivated mumbo-jumbo, to anesthetize the mind, but do very little for the heart. Stop looking to the movies for your 'feel good' fix. They no longer wish to cater to it.

You might not be getting anything out of superhero movies but millions of people do. People LOVE those movies, share them with their families, they discuss and rewatch their favorites, and will continue to have memories of them that are as fond as any that you have for your most beloved movie. And I say that as someone who doesn't care about superhero movies.

 

[TravisR]

I love the joke in Star Trek Beyond when Beastie Boys starts playing and McCoy asks Spock if it’s classical music, to which Spock replies in the affirmative.

It's a great joke but it also will likely be true. What else would you call a two hundred year old song?

 

[jcroy]

(This is purely wild speculation).
(Without getting heavily into politics).

In the year 2200, I wouldn't be surprised if the only 20th century film still being semi-regularly "viewed" might be something like "Triumph of the Will". Assuming nazi germany is still being studied by historians and israel still exists in 2200.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

You might not be getting anything out of superhero movies but millions of people do. People LOVE those movies, share them with their families, they discuss and rewatch their favorites, and will continue to have memories of them that are as fond as any that you have for your most beloved movie. And I say that as someone who doesn't care about superhero movies.

I wish the destination of these threads didn’t always take the inevitable detour into the territory of “I don’t care for this movie, therefore movies aren’t good anymore and audiences don’t have taste.”

Not to single you out, but I remain tremendously appreciative that you’re always coming to the discussion with a more objective mindset, and that you can see that things that don’t appeal to you still have value. I enjoy conversations discussing the past, present and future of our collective hobby but it’s always a bit disheartening when that conversation turns into a version of “everything old is better, everything new is terrible”.

“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2” brought me a tremendous amount of comfort and enjoyment when I revisited it in 2019 - that was a turbulent, uncertain year for me that had a lot of obstacles before winding up ending beautifully. That movie, and the emotional journeys it’s characters embark on, were exactly where I was at and I don’t think I’m exaggerating or overselling it to say that the movie helped me understand and embrace the path I was on. And I know not every movie is for every person and I wouldn’t just say to anyone, “you gotta see this, it’ll change your life.” But I’m not going to hide or be ashamed that it changed mine or that it brought me solace when nothing else could.

I would respectfully ask everyone participating in any discussion here to kindly remember that “not appealing to me” ≠ “not good”. It’s entirely possible to celebrate the art we like without putting down the art we don’t. Good art doesn’t need something else to be put down in order to shine.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

I love the joke in Star Trek Beyond when Beastie Boys starts playing and McCoy asks Spock if it’s classical music, to which Spock replies in the affirmative.

It's a great joke but it also will likely be true. What else would you call a two hundred year old song?

Technically, Spock should probably correct that to something else like historical music/artifact.

"Classical" actually has specific meanings and is commonly applied somewhat erroneously to that particularly kind/category of music... and I should think Spock (or Data) would want a more exacting/correct usage, hehheh.

Leonard Bernstein proposed that "classical music" should really be called something like "exact music" (as you can find in his Young People's Concerts episode on that topic). In this kind of music (tradition), "classical" should actually refer to that specific (adherence to) form and era most exemplified by Haydn and Mozart (and I suppose some consider Bach and Vivaldi also) and their contemporaries (largely in the 1700's). What modern day common folk often call "classical music" should actually be categorized into a few different forms/eras beyond "classical" (and there's something called neo-classical as well).

Calling all of them "classical music" would be kinda like calling all movies "westerns", hehheh... and indeed, that's essentially what Chinese (at least in Hong Kong) actually call all movies made in the West -- well, ok, we actually literally call them "western films".

I should think (the original) Spock would be more exacting and not simply agree, hehheh...

_Man_

 

[TravisR]

Not to single you out, but I remain tremendously appreciative that you’re always coming to the discussion with a more objective mindset, and that you can see that things that don’t appeal to you still have value. I enjoy conversations discussing the past, present and future of our collective hobby but it’s always a bit disheartening when that conversation turns into a version of “everything old is better, everything new is terrible”.

I've never been accused of being an optimist but some point in time that someone sees as a golden age was the nadir for someone else so it's an argument that I just don't buy into. That being said, I do think that studios today are so focused on franchises that it's going to result in some potentially great movies ending up with smaller budgets than needed or no promotion or simply never getting made.

“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2” brought me a tremendous amount of comfort and enjoyment when I revisited it in 2019 - that was a turbulent, uncertain year for me that had a lot of obstacles before winding up ending beautifully. That movie, and the emotional journeys it’s characters embark on, were exactly where I was at and I don’t think I’m exaggerating or overselling it to say that the movie helped me understand and embrace the path I was on. And I know not every movie is for every person and I wouldn’t just say to anyone, “you gotta see this, it’ll change your life.” But I’m not going to hide or be ashamed that it changed mine or that it brought me solace when nothing else could.

My buddy's mom died less than a year before the first Guardians came out. He's a huge comic book fan and a fan of those movies but needless to say, that one meant something more to him.

Technically, Spock should probably correct that to something else like historical music/artifact.

"Classical" actually has specific meanings and is commonly applied somewhat erroneously to that particularly kind/category of music... and I should think Spock (or Data) would want a more exacting/correct usage, hehheh.

Leonard Bernstein proposed that "classical music" should really be called something like "exact music" (as you can find in his Young People's Concerts episode on that topic). In this kind of music (tradition), "classical" should actually refer to that specific (adherence to) form and era most exemplified by Haydn and Mozart (and I suppose some consider Bach and Vivaldi also) and their contemporaries (largely in the 1700's). What modern day common folk often call "classical music" should actually be categorized into a few different forms/eras beyond "classical" (and there's something called neo-classical as well).

Calling all of them "classical music" would be kinda like calling all movies "westerns", hehheh... and indeed, that's essentially what Chinese (at least in Hong Kong) actually call all movies made in the West -- well, ok, we actually literally call them "western films".

I should think (the original) Spock would be more exacting and not simply agree, hehheh...

_Man_

The more I think about it, there's no need to wait to call The Beasite Boys' Sabotage classic music today. That song is super sweet.