*MORE* - Spielberg. The Formula. Busted.

Both of these threads seem to be posted by someone who is oblivious to the intent of the videos. There is no "busting" done in either of these.
 
David Jimerson said:
Hollywood always 99% sucked. There was no glorious age of milk and honey, only the few standouts among the drek, just like today. (Only today's drek is a zillion times better than yesterday's drek.)

And that's just fine.
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The same can be said about independent films. 99% of independent films always sucked. There was no glorious age of milk and honey, only the few standouts among the drek, just like today. (Only today's drek is a zillion times better than yesterday's drek.)

And that's just fine.

I'd like to add too that while most movies made, Hollywood or independent, suck - almost all of them become much better in retrospect because of nostalgia.
CallaghanFilms said:
Was too.
Sure this milk-n-honey age was speckled throughout many decades; but when was the last time we had a 1939 or a 1982?
A 1962, a 1959 or a 1942?
Hell, our last 1994 was damn near twenty years ago...
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I'd add 1968 and 1989 to that list.

Last time we got close was 2008. Over here in Scandinavia, 2008 was definetly one of those years since There Will Be Blood and No Country For Old Men was released that year over here together with Let The Right One In, The Wrestler, Wall-E, Tropic Thunder, Bronson, Martyrs, Frost/Nixon, The Brothers Bloom, Waltz With Bashir, JCVD, Gomorra, Frozen River, Flame and Citron, etc etc.

That was a good year in film.
 
2007 was pretty damn good:

There Will Be Blood
No Country For Old Men
The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Michael Clayton
Atonement
The Savages
The Darjeeling Limited
Zodiac
I'm Not There
Grindhouse
Superbad
Knocked Up
Hot Fuzz
Margot at the Wedding
Sunshine
Hannah Takes the Stairs

I know people will debate a good chunk of those, but I think they're all solid films. What was this thread about again?
 
Billy Pilgrim said:
2007 was pretty damn good:There Will Be BloodNo Country For Old MenThe Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford
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Those 3 are some of the best movies of the last 50 years; the first 2 insofar as they were commercial and artistic successes (the third is sense of its cinematography and music, debatable story to some maybe, and not a commercial success).

What the hell was Grindhouse doing in that list?
 
The argument can be made for most years of the past decade. Usually, the people who complain about a particular year of cinema, are the ones who are looking solely at the box office. I'd be depressed too if I kept seeing crap like Twilight, Alvin & the Chipmuncks, and similar dreck on there month after month. But each year has indeed provided many, many quality films.

That said, 2012 is shaping up to be one of the best years in recent cinema history (if not ever): http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthrea...shaping-up-to-be-an-incredible-year-of-cinema.
 
Batutta said:
In defense of yesterday's dreck...at least you could tell it was dreck from miles away. Hollywood knew it was dreck and marketed it like dreck. Today, they give you absurdly polished turds and try and convince you it's filet mignon. The fact that millions of dollars and expertise and man hours were put into something so terrible makes it all that more offensive.
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I'll disagree with David on this one, and take Batutta's side, because the marketing of films has changed so much. Years ago (and not THAT many years ago) films had "legs". Today, it's all about the opening weekend. You get one or two weekends in the theater, and then you're history, it's on to the DVD.

Years ago, they could market dreck normally, because it'd be weeks before the audience knew how bad something was. I mean, back then, we used to wait for the Roger Ebert review to come out, and that might be a week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, whenever his show got around to it. There was no internet, there was no Twitter, there was no IMDB. You seriously didn't *know*, unless your friends had personally gone to see the film in question. So Hollywood could market something mediocre in a normal fashion, drop it on the theater, and let it stew for a few weeks until the word got out.

Now, not so much. You can get tons of reviews by the time you arrive at the theater for the 7:00 screening on opening night. So the overmarketing for bad films is extremely important now, they pour tons of dollars into the bombs that they've got, in a desperate bid to salvage *something* out of the opening weekend, because they know there won't be a second or third weekend... they try to get the dupes and fools who haven't looked it up and who don't know what kind of a bandsaw of awfulness they're walking straight into. It's rude and offensive.

Back in the "golden age" (if there was such) pictures were marketed at certain tiers. Hence the term "A" picture and "B" picture, just like in music in 45's, you had the "A" side of a record and the "B"-side. The B-side was a throwaway, some junk song to take up space, while the "A" side is what you paid for. In films, it was the same way. They marketed the "A" films with their major stars and their grandiose posters, and they marketed "B" pictures as "B" pictures.

I guess the question is, back in the old days, would they have tried to shovel "Pluto Nash" out as an "A" picture?
 
In terms of distribution tiers, maybe -- though it's so different now it's hard to compare. I'd argue that the true drek, the Cat-Women of the Moon of today, never sees the inside of the theater at all and instead is straight-to-DVD or SyFy Saturday Night. This would be the equivalent of that B- and C-class stuff which ran in Saturday matinees back in the day.

As far as promotion goes, if you check out the trailers in the "Classic Hollywood" thread I posted, I think they're being marketed as spectacular.
 
True, we do have direct-to-SyFy distribution options that we never had back then, they had no choice but to shovel "Plan 9" into theaters, there was simply no other way to see it...
 
Barry_Green said:
they try to get the dupes and fools who haven't looked it up and who don't know what kind of a bandsaw of awfulness they're walking straight into. It's rude and offensive.
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Well... not really. I used to work at a multiplex a few years ago, one of those mainstream 11 theater cinemas in a big shopping mall. I sold tickets and talked to customers all day every day for two years and fact is that almost all people who came to watch a movie actually liked **** movies like MEET THE SPARTANS, or they just went to the mall and wanted to stay an extra two hours hoping it wouldn't still be raining when they left.

I wouldn't call them dupes or fools.
Idiots with bad taste or no interest in storytelling though, maybe.
 
I meant "dupes" and "fools" in the context that the marketing of the film was duping them and fooling them into thinking that they were going to see something of quality. Not a reflection on the audience member's character, more a reflection of the knowing misdirection of the film's marketing people...
 
Barry_Green said:
I meant "dupes" and "fools" in the context that the marketing of the film was duping them and fooling them into thinking that they were going to see something of quality. Not a reflection on the audience member's character, more a reflection of the knowing misdirection of the film's marketing people...
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I realized a few years ago that certain brands of movies have trailers that don't inform the audience about the film, don't create mystery or excitement, and don't give sneak peeks to some humorous moments, but actually manage to cram every good moment in the entire film into the 30 second spot. All four or five good scenes.

And yep - I think a lot of people walk away from that 30 seconds thinking "Wow, that's going to be an absolutely hilarious movie!"

That being said, I'm still waiting to hear Pookie's list of auteurs that are so creative they don't "steal" from anyone in any way.
 
simonpwood said:
Those 3 are some of the best movies of the last 50 years; the first 2 insofar as they were commercial and artistic successes (the third is sense of its cinematography and music, debatable story to some maybe, and not a commercial success).

What the hell was Grindhouse doing in that list?
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Is this baout cpommercial success only? I was talking about a particular year with a lot of quality films. Grindhouse isn't everyone's cup of tea, but for me, it was one of the most enjoyable films that year, and probably even the most fun.
 
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