50 Shades of rotten tomatoes.

Gillvane said:
I think you get the same thing with violence, although the American movie rating system is comfortable with violence in a way they are not when it comes to sex. You could write "He walked into the room and saw the body was mutilated..." and leave it at that. The audience will fill in the blanks with more gore in their imagination than you could probably describe with words. But in a movie, you need to show a mutilated body, which is an entirely different thing to do.
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Most of the films of the Classic Hollywood period, after the Hays Code became the dominant rule for gaining wide theater presentations, did exactly that. The 'rules' limited the amount of 'gore' if any, the type of stories and how characters were portrayed.

The late 60's early 70's there were a spate of films that pushed the envelope, with three so called 'X' films getting Oscar considerations, "Midnight Cowboy"(1970), "A Clockwork Orange"(1972), and "Last Tango in Paris"(1974), but the pendulum swung back, especially, in my opinion, as the Metroplex theater concept grew. As a note, "Midnight Cowboy" and "A Clockwork Orange" have both been rerated at "R", while "Last Tango in Paris" retains "X", "NC-17"... must be the buttering the butt scene...

From what I've read, I don't expect "50 Shades of Grey" to be remotely 'oscar' quality... for whatever quality value that award may have... but the fact that it is sort of in lone wolf country is telling on how things have changed since the 70's...
 
David Jimerson said:
Ummm . . . what?

You said something about doing a movie about Ali which barely touches boxing, which would be a strange thing to do.
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You could do a story on the transition of Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali, with only minor references to the boxing aspect, the 'drama' could be based on the newly minted muslim, claiming conscientious objector status... his conviction for draft evasion, Supreme Court action... it was a very big story in the era, and he did not box during that period as his license was pulled.

In this case 'boxing' would be in the periphery of the story...
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
You could do a story on the transition of Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali, with only minor references to the boxing aspect, the 'drama' could be based on the newly minted muslim, claiming conscientious objector status... his conviction for draft evasion, Supreme Court action... it was a very big story in the era, and he did not box during that period as his license was pulled.

In this case 'boxing' would be in the periphery of the story...
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You could, but it wouldn't be a proper biopic of Ali. It would just tell one chapter of his story.
 
David Jimerson said:
You could, but it wouldn't be a proper biopic of Ali. It would just tell one chapter of his story.
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Yes, I did use a 'chapter' as an example, but I think one could argue that at this point a biopic that depicted elements in Ali's (put in any famous person) outside of boxing (famous person's main event...), may be of more interest than the already pretty well known and publicized 'fight' scenes.

I think 'The Notorious Betty Page"(2006) 'failed' due to not going deep enough into the person "Betty Page", and not due to the lack of 'skin' shown.
 
Batutta said:
The best biopics do that in my opinion. Biopics that attempt to tell the story of the whole of a man's life usually don't work as movies.
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But when they do, they focus on the thing which made them generally noteworthy. Cassius Clay's conversion to Islam, while a story, isn't why he's known.

One of the reasons I thought Lincoln ultimately failed is because it was far too narrowly-focused on a chapter which was really a minor event in Lincoln's timeline.
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
Most of the films of the Classic Hollywood period, after the Hays Code became the dominant rule for gaining wide theater presentations, did exactly that. The 'rules' limited the amount of 'gore' if any, the type of stories and how characters were portrayed.

The late 60's early 70's there were a spate of films that pushed the envelope, with three so called 'X' films getting Oscar considerations, "Midnight Cowboy"(1970), "A Clockwork Orange"(1972), and "Last Tango in Paris"(1974), but the pendulum swung back, especially, in my opinion, as the Metroplex theater concept grew. As a note, "Midnight Cowboy" and "A Clockwork Orange" have both been rerated at "R", while "Last Tango in Paris" retains "X", "NC-17"... must be the buttering the butt scene...

From what I've read, I don't expect "50 Shades of Grey" to be remotely 'oscar' quality... for whatever quality value that award may have... but the fact that it is sort of in lone wolf country is telling on how things have changed since the 70's...
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I'm going to ad all three of those to my movie watch list in the country. I go to a country house now and then with no telephone, no internet, and get together with friends and watch movies and these would be great for that. I'm a huge Stanley Kubrick fan, love the clock work orange, but haven't seen the other two in quite some time.
 
David Jimerson said:
One of the reasons I thought Lincoln ultimately failed is because it was far too narrowly-focused on a chapter which was really a minor event in Lincoln's timeline.
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I think that's unfair. The only failure was calling the movie LINCOLN. Gave the wrong impression about what the film was about. Should have been called The 13th Amendment or something.
 
Batutta said:
I think that's unfair. The only failure was calling the movie LINCOLN. Gave the wrong impression about what the film was about. Should have been called The 13th Amendment or something.
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Well, that was the problem, germane to the discussion.
 
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