81 Comments

1. m.g.:

The link for Cathy Young is the same as that for Stefan Kanfer.

?

Jun 20, 2005 - 9:43 am 2. Peg Kaplan:

Roger, when I’m asked to name my favorite movies, I find that the bulk of them were created at least 50 years ago….

It seems that in another era, having superb acting, a fine script, and a message that taught and/or uplifted the audience mattered.

Today, special effects and a couple of “hot” stars seem to suffice. Perhaps today’s filmmakers should be forced to watch the top 100 movies from the ’30’s, ’40’s and ’50’s. Maybe – just maybe – they might learn something.

Jun 20, 2005 - 9:45 am 3. Dave Schuler:

There were a lot of pretty unimaginative and predictable pictures 50 or 60 or 70 years ago and people kept coming anyway. Today we have television (and computer games and the Internet and so on). And today’s stars don’t make nearly enough movies. Look at the oeuvre of Bogart, Cagney, John Wayne or Bette Davis. I think that (although based on illusion) people felt they knew and cared about these stars. Who cares about the stars of today?

Jun 20, 2005 - 9:55 am 4. PJ:

I watched Ollie North’s war show yesterday on women in WWII. (Hey, who else will actually praise the military?) The stars in those days were optimistic and patriotic, not a bunch of self-loathing sad sacks. In a way, the Hwood Communist Party won the battle of hearts and minds, at least of their own, even tho it took a couple generations.

Jun 20, 2005 - 10:04 am 5. Buddy Larsen:

Hollywood for some reason ignores the Coen Brothers–whose work is fully-realized filmic art-and-craft. It must be their deep traditional message of uplift and optimism. Hollywood liked only their darkest exploration of human nature, “Fargo.” Their later “Ladykillers” and “Intolerable Cruelty” so lampooned liberalism and the Hollywood lifestyle that I can see why the deafening silence.

Jun 20, 2005 - 10:05 am 6. David Thomson:

The problem is that movies which lose money like ìKingdom of Heavenî are the exception. No longer is Hollywood dependent on only theater ticket sales. This is only a small piece of the pie. DVDs and foreign distribution can often save a project. The Hollywood moguls have learned that they merely have to play it safe to protect their investment. This is the why I donít expect anything to change. They are satisfied to hit a few doubles and triples instead of swinging for the fences. ìThe Interpreter,î for instance, twenty years ago would have been a money loser. It now seems likely the film will be modestly profitable.

Jun 20, 2005 - 10:06 am 7. Barry Dauphin:

It will be interesting to see whether this is simply a down year or the beginning of a trend that’s been predicted for some time. Computer games will continue to gobble up the entertainment time of more & more younger people. Younger people want the interactivity of the games, and the games have frankly not even come close to reaching their potential yet.

Many television sets are huge and the displays are incredible. How can the motion picture industry compete? What happens when the game industry creates a SIMS in which the visual quality and emotional reactions of the characters are nearly indistinguishable from a motion picture, and you have a huge flat panel display in your home? Writers and directors will have to write and direct for games, and that means leaving much of the saga open ended for the user to fill in as he/she desires or for the viewer to create or choose from a variety of alternative plot lines, endings, etc. It seems that the motion picture industry will have to adapt or suffer a downward spiral with occasional blips (like a really good movie every X number of years). Are the long range prospects for the current model of the industry sustainable? I don’t think so. They better wake up and smell the popcorn.

Jun 20, 2005 - 10:09 am 8. GaryS:

There well could be another reason for the drop in attendance.

Speaking for myself and a few friends, we hate to send more money to the left-wing anti-American bunch in Hollywood. They open their mouths and attack most of our core beliefs, and weíre supposed to shower money on them? For me, at least, it doesnít work that way!

Then there is the old saying, better to keep you mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and prove it.

During the last election, the ìHollywoodî crowd incensed a good many conservatives. Could be that there are consequences to publicly attacking the country that made you rich.

They were also exposed to be anti-religion, for the most part.

Jun 20, 2005 - 10:13 am 9. GreggTheObscure:

I saw Batman Begins this weekend without first knowing that it included some good parallels to the war on terror. Most of the audience will probably miss most of the parallels, but it is a tiny bit of progress that – nearly four years in- we finally have a movie that gingerly approaches the dominant topic of today’s social discourse.

The hero fights against a loosely-connected group of folks that include common criminals, international terrorists and terror-enablers at all levels of society. The enemy uses purloined western technology against the west to instill mass panic. The enemy leadership cadre is motivated by a Talibanesque certainty that it alone is pure in a world that has become overly corrupt and that only through its program may humanity redeem itself. The enemy claims responsibility for the downfall several past cities and nations (all of them of Christian, no less). The enemy even requires new initiates to behead petty crooks as a condition of admission to its leadership cadre.

Since it’s contemporary Hollywood, though, there’s nary a kaffiyah, an “Allah Akbar” nor a fifth-column media figure to be had .

It ain’t much, but it’s a good deal more than I expected.

Jun 20, 2005 - 10:17 am 10. lindenen:

Barry, From what I’ve read, it’s been going on for awhile now. It was masked for awhile by ticket price increases and wasn’t obvious last year because of the success of The Passion of the Christ.

Imo, it’s the moonbat political activities of many actors, the near constant celebrity freakshow (Paris Hilton!) destroys the credibility and believability of actors in movies (I’m talkin to you Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes and Russell Crowe!), the ridiculously high ticket and concessions prices (factor in gas money and it’s probably more than 50$ to take a family of four to the movies! Are you going to spend 50$ or less than five to rent the dvd only 4 months later? I was reading an interview with Speilberg recently and he mentioned that when he was a kid tickets were 35 cents!), the almost half hour of trailers and commercials before the movie, people loudly talking on their cellphones (do cell phone jammers really cost too much to put in the theatres?), idiots making lots of noise during the movie, yelling out weird things during the movie, parking is a pain in the ass, the crowds are so big, etc. Imo the modern multiplex is part of the problem. Or at the very least the way the building is organized is part of the problem. The moviegoing experience has just become more stressful. I used to post on a message board where people relayed the idiotic, obnoxious and heinous things they saw people do in a movie theatre, so I think there’s a sizable minority of people who just make the experience dreadful for a great many people. The subject matter and politics of many of the movies as well. If you want Americans to watch a movie about the Crusades, it’s probably best not to portray the majority of your audience as the problem.

Jun 20, 2005 - 10:34 am 11. Buddy Larsen:

Gregg, thru my daughter at UT/Austin, I’m getting the same report–that the non-red portion of the young-20s crowd is really enjoying the movie. Good straw in the wind.

Jun 20, 2005 - 10:35 am 12. Rick Ballard:

GaryS,

While I’m sure – absolutely sure – that the boycott of Hollywood by conservatives exists and is a portion of the “problem” (solution, actually) I doubt that it accounts for the majority of it. Roger’s observation that Hollywood has been “unable to respond to the world conflagration” carry’s more weight than the conservative boycott. I believe that a fair portion of the reason for the inability (aside from obvious political issues) arises from the “success” by the MSE in the inculcation of moral relativism and/or post modernism over the past thirty years and certainly in the last twenty. The current “creative” people in Hollywood have been shaped just as their predecessors were shaped but the “fire” that warmed their predecessors has gone out.

A film featuring Special Forces chasing and killing Wahabbi/Salafist/Islamofascist headhunters around the world would probably do quite well. Basic good v. evil stories with plenty of action have rarely failed. Stories in which all the characters wear hats of varying shades of gray are a bit more problematic.

The fix isn’t that tough and the fact that Hollywood refuses to act is a very good reason to cheer the current studios into bankruptcy.

Jun 20, 2005 - 10:39 am 13. Lola:

Hollywood needs to understand that there are people, like me (mature woman interested in movies with a good plot and character development). I’m not going to spend my $$$ to watch cars getting smashed up and young guys uttering profanity-laced sentences with short words.

Jun 20, 2005 - 10:57 am 14. ed:

Hmmmm.

Speaking as someone who used to hit the theaters 4-5 times a week most of today’s movies bore me. I might end up going to see War of the Worlds in the theater, but if I do that’ll be the one and only movie I see in a theater all year long. And frankly I don’t rent as many as I used to either.

In part it is because of a concious boycott, but not one based on ideology. It’s a truism that the last thing you get at the movies today is entertained.

Jun 20, 2005 - 10:57 am 15. GaryS:

Rick:

I don’t know if you can call my lack of interest a “boycott”.

It’s just that when my wife and I talk about going to a movie, we remember some airhead actor from the film ranting about his contempt for Republicans, conservatives, Red Staters in general and religion, and interest just seems to leak away.

We still go to the odd movie by producers and actors that are either conservative or have the good sense to keep their mouths shut.

Jun 20, 2005 - 10:58 am 16. Old Dad:

Try Cinderella Man. I’m told that I have the cinematic judgment of a gnat, but I found it uplifting and well done.

Jun 20, 2005 - 11:05 am 17. Steven Mitchell:

No idea of why people overall don’t go, but I know why I don’t go much. Last movies viewed: took kids to see Madagascar, saw all three LotR in theatre once each, saw Arthur (the King Arthur pic), and Star Wars Episode 1. Oh, and we saw the Veggie Tales version of Jonah. That’s all. I hardly ever watch television anymore, either. And I don’t see much on tape or CD–though there have been a couple of rentals that I wouldn’t have felt cheated to see in the theatre. (Nodding Hill and that Steve Martin/Queen Latifah comedy spring to mind.) I’m saving Second Hand Lions for when I really want a good movie.

My “conservative boycott” of the arts is a soft boycott. I don’t try to persuade other people, and I don’t consistently avoid anyone until they get as bad as Michael Moore. But occasionally an actor (or singer or writer or whatnot) becomes so utterly annoying that it impairs their ability to ever entertain me again. I can’t imagine them as the character but instead see them as “that moron that said X”. At that point, they better have a really good story and supporting cast, because otherwise I can’t be bothered.

Throw the above and the more preachy Scientologists out, and you are already working with a thin bench in Hollywood. (The latter prompt a soft boycott the same as the morons, but for slightly different reasons.) You also have movies that are deliberately insulting to anyone left of Nancy Pelosi. Being the type that reads a lot, I’m usually aware of the insult. Paraphrasing Elmer Fudd, “I didn’t come here to be inswulted.”

Next, everyone I know goes to see much less as soon as they have young children. The ratio of G (or relatively decent PG) fair to rougher stuff is well documented. Madagascar was nothing to do back flips over, but we took the kids because my daughter is 5 and hasn’t had a decent chance to see anything since Jonah. (OK, we missed that Christmas train story.) It’s a big hassle for my wife and I to arrange to see a movie. There’s a lot of other things we’d rather do with our time.

The storytelling craft is largely in freefall. The notable exceptions make the rest even more obvious. It doesn’t help that the bulk of modern writers aren’t producing anything worth a flip that could be adapted. Improved technology might actually help here, as there are some good stories that wouldn’t have been considered before LotR.

High prices on top of the above is what hurts. The prices aren’t that unreasonable for something good. A concert would easily cost 2 to 4 times that. Speaking of which, my kids would actually enjoy a classical music concert more than most of the dreck shown right now. Heck, I could spring for Keith Urban tickets and be the hero for months in my house.

My wife backed out of seeing SW Episode III for now because my son didn’t care whether he saw it or not. He is 12 and loves that kind of stuff.

Jun 20, 2005 - 11:05 am 18. someone:

Matt Damon!

Jun 20, 2005 - 11:05 am 19. Lola:

That said, though, I’m very much looking forward to seeing “Lion and the Wardrobe” later in the year. I have a true fondness for the Narnia books that I would read and reread as a child. Guess I should go to the bookstore and buy my own copies . . .

And meanwhile, here’s something refreshing to know – apparently Sir Geldolf has laid down the word to stars appearing in those freebie concerts that there will be no political grandstanding, besides defending Bush on the African aid . . .

http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/004755.php

Jun 20, 2005 - 11:06 am 20. Steven Mitchell:

I see I duplicated a lot of thoughts while typing that long response. On the “everything is gray” point, I think there are two kinds of people:

1. Those that think nothing is smart, sophisticated, thoughtful unless it is *all* gray. Absolutes are simplistic.

2. Those to whom it has occurred that for shades of gray to have any meaning, there has to be some black and white, somewhere–even if no one perfectly understands it.

One of the side effects of being a moral relativist is that you tend to confuse “water just over my head” with “deep”.

Jun 20, 2005 - 11:12 am 21. Brown Line:

My family and I are passionate about the movies (we can’t wait for the Harold Lloyd festival at the Music Box next month!) but we seldom go to a new release these days. The offerings are just not that interesting: comic books, TV, and sequels take up the bulk of the fare. Most of what’s left neglects the one thing that made the movies of past decades so good: the script. The sort of script that made “The Maltese Falcon” or “The Treasure of Sierra Madre” or “Sunset Boulevard” so great just isn’t seen these days.

Mark Steyn pointed out another difference between today’s Hollywood and the Hollywood of the 1940s and 1950s: ethnic diversity. Hollywood in years past attracted talent from around the globe; nowadays, its talent base is much narrower. For example, look at “High Noon”, in which a director from Austria (Fred Zinneman) and a composer born in Ukraine (Dmitri Tiomkin) helped to make one of the classic Westerns. That breadth of talent just isn’t in Hollywood any more.

So, my family goes to the occasional new release (”The War of the Worlds” looks promising), but mostly we stick with DVDs and revivals of the classics.

Jun 20, 2005 - 11:16 am 22. Buddy Larsen:

Sometimes, somehow, cartoons are more human that humans–well, humans draw them, duh–but “The Incredibles” is just the DVD for all yous jaded and bored ex-film buffs. Really. You’ll thank me. Disney did one for the good guys.

Jun 20, 2005 - 11:23 am 23. Kyda Sylvester:

South Park crew more hip than Boomers? Oh no, say it isn’t so.

I’ve read that few movies show a profit until they hit the overseas market and as long as that market remains lucative, Hollywood will continue to produce the same old dreck.

I have a library of well over 300 films, but maybe only a handful that were made in the last 20 years. I used to go to the movies all the time, now hardly ever. Why? Because the product is crap and also what GaryS said.

Jun 20, 2005 - 11:24 am 24. OldManRick:

I think one of the problems you are underestimating is how much Hollywood is competeing with it’s own past. I can easily name over 100 movies that I would watch once every year for the rest of my life. These movies are now available to me for $10 each. I slowly have built up a collection of at least half of them. When it comes to decision time, will I go sit through 20 minutes of obnoxious commericials to see a film with margin merits or pull out a classic? My wife and daughter are taking this week off. Instead of going the the movies, like they used to do as a first week in summer celebration, they are renting “Jaws”, “Alien”, “Die Hard”, and “Terminator”.

I can remember seeing two movies this year. The awful Star Wars RoTS and Howls’ Moving Castle. Howl’s was worth the $45 I paid. I felt like Star Wars rose to the level of someone recording a video game as they were playing. After Star Wars, I had a bad taste in my memory and couldn’t even watch the orginal. It took “the Big Sleep”, “Fort Apache”, “Remains of the Day”, and “Cryano de Bergerac” to clear my anger at Hollywood.

It is going to take very heavy positive word of mouth to get me into a theater again this year. Remaking “the Pink Panther” with Steve Martin will not do it. It only convinces me that Hollywood is bankrupt for ideas. After Star Wars, Rotten Tomatoes is considered unreliable.

Until then, I will save my money for some live entertainment. The circus is headed for LA again, and, this time, the feature clown is Bello. (Who I believe would really delight Rodger, unlike the clown he saw last time he went.) It’s costs three trips to the movies but I feel it’s worth it.

Jun 20, 2005 - 11:29 am 25. TedN:

First of all, don’t forget _The Incredibles_ which combined great story-telling with great acting and positive values.

It seems to me that in _Team America_, the SP guys just _had_ to push the envelope a little bit more. They could have had a big hit with the basic message and puppet sex, but I think the BJ storyline just pushed it a bit further than a mass audience was willing to go.

I actually hadn’t made the connection between Rhas’s followers in Batman and terrorism; I don’t know why looking back at it, as their plot to poision the water supply is one of the classic fears of terrorists. Maybe I was just to busy being incredulous at the idea of a device that would vaporize water in the mains without vaporizing water in the bloodstream. That and the pretty obvious swipes taken at Republicans (though not by name) in the descriptions of Gotham politics.

Jun 20, 2005 - 11:32 am 26. Kevin P:

Roger:

Look how quickly Kanfer wants to change the subject to HUAC and mcCarthy. The Radosh’s for years have said that McCarthy was a Demagogue and set back the intellectual war against communism for decades. McCarthy acted in a undemocratic and un americam fashion against the hollywood ten. But these “victims” of HUAC are not heroes. They supported and followed the directions of one of the worst murderers in the history of the world. They were Americans who wanted to install a Stalinist dictatorship in this country. Follow all the countries where the Comintern and there fellow travelers were succesfull and HUAC and the blacklist would be considered minor violations.And Hollywood has been making saints of these Stalinists and ignoring what they truly believed in for decades.

Consider the movie “Frida.” This is a women who had Stalins picture put in her casket so she could be buried with her idol. I am not a art expert so I will leave that to the people who know better. But I can not imagine a biopic of a artist who was buried with a picture of Hitler in their coffin getting greenlighted if it was a positive portrayal. I am not trying to defend McCarthy. But the Hollywood ten were not just artists who dabbled with strange politics. Their politics were their lives work. They, along with Stalin, believed that the arts were an important tool in bringing about a Moscow led Soviet government in America. They were not ignorant of the terrors of Stalin and they believed that these were unfortunate things that had to be done to tear down a booshy society. Hollywood tries to sluff this off as if it was just a diet fad of the time. Or, as in Frida, they either ignore it, rationalize it, or even worse praise it.

Any remote hint of connection with Hitler is carreer suicide to any American. Which is right. Look how the press took the flimsiest of rumour to try and paint Arnold as a Nazi, which of course was false, and they seriously tried to argue this was a reason to keep him out of office. Yet solid proof that the Hollywood Ten were fervant supporters of Stalin do not keep them from being cannonized by the Hollywood left. And the fact that artists and their freedom to create their work is always repressed in an iron fashion in Communist societies makes their embrace of these ideals even more sick.

Anyone who wears the Swastika is correctly seen as a nutjob and driven to the fringe of society. any proffesor who decided to promote fascism would be fired. Yet the Hammer and the Sycle is still displayed with pride in this country and marxism is still taught in our finest universities. I am not endorsing any law making these symbols illegal. I just find it amazing why both are not considered a sign of a unbalanced mind.

Jun 20, 2005 - 11:40 am 27. Buddy Larsen:

Kyda, “Team America” made funny fun of everything in and out and beyond–except for one thing, there is evil, and whatever fights it is “good”–warts (lots and lots of warts) and all. Crude puppets with all the strings showing, but intolerant to whatever is evil on its face. Strangely sophisticated, cut-the-Gordian-knot message. Mebbe that’s what the host was getting at. Anyhoo, I got more enjoyment out of those two ‘toon flix than anything I’ve seen in the last couple years. And, except for when they appear in a Coen Bros (where the scripts over-ride the stars) film, I too am on lifetime boycott of the Mikey/Babs/Baldwin crowd. 20 or 30 of ‘em have seen my last buck.

Jun 20, 2005 - 11:41 am 28. lindenen:

Some interesting commentary from Jeffrey Wells’ Hollywood Elsewhere blog:

“The hostility levels are rising between celebs and photographers and the public. It may be coincidence, but I’m picking up vibes from that mob riot scene at the end of Nathaniel West’s The Day of the Locust. First, the confrontation levels between celebs and crazily aggressive paparazzi started to lunge way out of control, prompting Us editor Janice Min to pledge that the magazine wouldn’t run photos captured via ruthless methods. At the Bewitched premiere last week Nicole Kidman went up to a New York photographer and called him “very rude” after he booed her. Then Leonardo DiCaprio got cut with a broken beer bottle at a party last Friday…not by a media person but an unbalanced woman who apparently didn’t know him. (The facts aren’t in yet, but it looks like she wanted to hurt him because he was Leonardo DiCaprio.) Then Tom Cruise got squirt-gunned (doused from a fake water-loaded microphone) in London on Sunday by a guy working for a new comedy show for Channel 4 in which celebrities are the targets of practical jokes. Nathaniel West was saying there’s a very thin line between fans worshipping movie stars and hating them and even wanting to hurt them, and that these frenzied emotional states are located on flip sides of the same coin. I think on some kind of weird subliminal level this psychotic atmosphere is heating up and starting to spill over. Something is going on…I can feel it.”

Jun 20, 2005 - 11:46 am 29. Brad:

Hollywood, Democratic leadership, Howard Dean, et al is what happens when historical illiteracy becomes widespread within in a political party. Democrats, after 40 years, falsely assumed perpetual power, seemingly ignorant of the fact that political parties do lose power and sometimes cease to exist. They cannot imagine a America having a religious revival because they are unaware that it has happened before, as in three or four times before. They are also seemingly ignorant that the body politic in America swings in wide arcs from time to time, (what goes left often come right) Living in the eternal present, they conclude their political misfortunes to be the result of conspiracy, fraud, deluded voters, etc. The last bastion of power (mandated edicts) for the left is the courts hence their fierce attacks. The story, for Democrats, isn’t turning out as planned, the US is supposed to become like Canada and/or the EU. Can Dean’s remarks be understood as anything other than ignorance? He seems not only to be ignorant of American history but his own as well, how else could a rich, privileged, white liberal governor from a lily white state (where they really do all look a like) make such statements. The democratic implosion is remarkable to witness.

Jun 20, 2005 - 11:47 am 30. Jamie Irons:

Lola

I’m not going to spend my $$$ to watch cars getting smashed up and young guys uttering profanity-laced sentences with short words.

Lola, you don’t have to spend $$$ to enjoy such a spectacle.

You just have to become the father, as I have, of four red-blooded American boys.

Oh, wait! Did I say you wouldn’t have to spend $$$?

Never mind.

Jamie Irons

Jun 20, 2005 - 12:00 pm 31. vegetius:

I guess “24″ is the only entertainment that tangentially touches on the WOT. I’m addicted to it.

Jun 20, 2005 - 12:06 pm 32. Joshua:

“Hollywood in years past attracted talent from around the globe”

Escaping from a wide assortment of discrimination, Jew-hatred, pogroms and imminent death in Central and Eastern Europe, most of that talent was Jewish. Unfortunately, we can expect no more from that particular direction since the Jewish communities from that part of the world were all but wiped out by the Nazis and their many allies.

Even if a Wilder, a Curtiz, a Lubitsch, a Steiner or a Korngold did turn up today in Hollywood, I doubt very much whether anyone would dream of employing them.

It isn’t just movies either. Virtually everything I listen to, watch or read was produced before 1960. Of course, W.S. Gilbert would have put it all down to age:

“As some day it may happen that a victim must be found,

I’ve got a little list–I’ve got a little list

Of society offenders who might well be underground,

And who never would be missed–who never would be missed!”

“…Then the idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone,

All centuries but this, and every country but his own”

Jun 20, 2005 - 12:20 pm 33. PJ:

David Thomson,

I’ve had producers tell me they’re basically looking for good properties for DVD sales, which means something familiar that jillions will rent although perhaps few will see the first week. They’ve given up trying to figure out that audience.

If you like 24, guys, rent The Grid! I saw parts of the mini-series on TNT and then couldn’t wait for the DVD to come out so I could see what I missed. I highly recommend it!

Jun 20, 2005 - 12:33 pm 34. Doug S.:

The culture wars/politcal angle having been ably covered upthread (as one would expect of the commenters here), I want to touch on some of Roger’s other points:

As someone who has played computer and video games avidly for the last 20 years (and who has worked in the industry, too), I would second Roger’s suspicion that video games are taking time and $ from movies. It’s not just that 17 year-old boys are staying home with the Xbox or PS2, but the video game market is getting older and larger with every passing year as the first generation to grow up with game consoles as a standard part of the home entertainment system get older. For them, gaming is not just for kids; it’s every bit as normal an adult activity as watching TV or going to the movies. If the new Star Wars movie sucks, why leave home when one can play Knights of the Old Republic, a LucasArts Star Wars-themed video game, in the living room and experience a surprisingly compelling interactive story in which you get to do a lot of cool stuff through the characters that you control? Considering how long it takes to play through KOTOR, it’s a much better value than a movie, too.

Which leads me to my second reinforcement of a point by Roger: When standing in line with me to see Revenge of the Sith on opening day, a colleague of mine looked at all the posters in the theater and dismissed the movies they portended thusly: “Remake…. Remake…. Sequel…. That’s obviously gonna suck…. Gonna suck…. Remake…. It’s going to be a long summer.”

Jun 20, 2005 - 12:39 pm 35. erp:

Great movie string.

As good as it is to watch a DVD (we just watched the entire 13 episodes of The Sopranos 5th season) in the comfort of your own home, seeing movies on a large screen in a darkened theater allows you to suspend belief and enter into the world of fantasy on the screen. This was brought home to me when I watched on of my favorite films, Lawrence of Arabia, on DVD. The impact was far less and I was glad to have seen it for the first time on a very large screen in an old fashioned movie palace.

We love going to the movies, but it’s become harder and harder to even go once a month. Previously, when we watched the previews, most of them went into our must-see column. No more.

We did see “Cinderella Man” yesterday. Very gripping and inspiring although a bit too bloody for my taste. The amazing thing about the film is that although the problems caused by the depression aren’t downplayed, neither were the Communist agitators romanticized. Quite a departure from most of Hollywood’s offerings. Ron Howard’s work is impressive and I was surprised to see Penny Marshall’s name among the credits. It’s encouraging that some film makers can see the broader picture.

Russell Crowe for all his histrionics off screen, is an amazing actor and comes across as a really decent guy whose smile lights up the screen. I loved the sets and costumes which seemed pretty authentic to the eye of a person who grew up in NYC in the 40’s. The shots of Madison Square Garden, especially the lobby were perfect. We saw many celebrities in that lobby because we used it as a shortcut to the subway.

In those days nobody bothered us kids when we ran around. Imagine in today’s world allowing twelve year old kids to run around 48th Street and 8th Avenue in Manhattan alone and then take the subway home to Queens. The mind boggles at the thought.

Jun 20, 2005 - 12:41 pm 36. Buddy Larsen:

Joshua, I hear you, and can only nonsensically say that if there is such a thing as having too much memory, then “too much” would be that part which harms one’s future. I know, stupid words.

Jun 20, 2005 - 12:50 pm 37. Jamie Irons:

Roger,

Of course, the other elephant in the room is Hollywood’s lack of response to the world conflagration all around us, especially from a direction that would even hint the US was on the right side…

Yesterday while watching Game 5 of the NBA finals I was struck by the frequency of commercials for films and/ or TV serials about themes of being invaded by “the Undead” or “Martians” and such types.

Fanatical zombies who lust for blood and with whom no one can reason and who understand only force.

Are these films a kind of “anti-sublimation,” a crude and hopeless way of trying not to deal with our real problem?

Jamie Irons

Jun 20, 2005 - 12:56 pm 38. Jamie Irons:

And with the phrase “our real problem” I was referring, of course, to the national Democratic Party…

No, not really, just kidding.

Jamie Irons

Jun 20, 2005 - 12:58 pm 39. Rick Ballard:

Jamie,

You’re comment re the national Democratic Party caused me great pain. I forgot my general rule about swallowing before reading a new comment and now am waiting for the remainder of the coffee to drain from my sinuses.

Jun 20, 2005 - 1:06 pm 40. Knucklehead:

Jamie,

Works on several levels, this battle against the ever resurrected forces of the undead… memebots, journos, Democrats, jihadis…

Jun 20, 2005 - 1:06 pm 41. Jamie Irons:

Rick,

It was a fair comment, if I do say so myself…

I apologize, though, to your sinuses.

Jamie Irons

Jun 20, 2005 - 1:09 pm 42. photoncourier.blogspot.com:

Several thoughts:

1)In an awful lot of today’s movies, none of the characters are well enough developed to make anyone care what happens to them. If you don’t have any idea about someone’s internality, he might as well be a robot.

2)I suspect market segmentation is being overused and misused: that is, movies are made with the conscious intention “let’s appeal to 15-year-old boys” or “lot’s appeal to 30-year-old single women” rather than simply telling a story that wants to be told. This could be blamed in part on market research; however, it’s probably also linked to the liberal idea that people are defined primarily by their race, gender, and class rather than by their common humanity.

3)Lack of artistic imagination. I haven’t seen “Kingdom of Heaven,” but understand that it transports modern religion-is-the-problem attitudes back to in time to the Middle Ages. This is too easy. It would have been much more interesting to bring the audience into a mental world in which religion was the most important thing in a person’s life..very difficult, but worthwhile.

Jun 20, 2005 - 1:16 pm 43. Joshua:

“Joshua, I hear you”

Not on point, I realise, but I think that the deterioration in artistic standards which we are alluding to is quite possibly a result of a lack of discipline, whether that came about because of the relaxation of censorship rules or for some other reason. Take the scene in Casablanca where Rick and Ilsa are up in Rick’s office obviously making out. We don’t see that; all we are shown is a searchlight on a building opposite sweeping the surrounding area. Yet what is in our imagination far exceeds anything we might have felt if we’d have been shown a close-up of them having sex (in the case of a totally naked Ingrid Bergman, on reflection, perhaps not).

It’s the same with all the arts. Anybody who has written even mediocre poetry will tell you that the minute one starts “playing tennis without a net” is the same instant that one’s creative powers shrivel.

Jun 20, 2005 - 1:33 pm 44. Xixi:

Last movie we saw in a theater was Forrest Gump in 1994.

I do buy DVDs but mostly non-mainstream movies in different genre, like La Dolce Vita. We have Directv, watch sports, sometimes catch a movie on it.

There are things I will not support. I refuse to pay money for some ‘movie stars’ because of their political antics and that feeds into tv as well: I’d never watch West Wing because of leftist Martin Sheen.

All in all, with all the choices, who needs to go to a movie theater?

Jun 20, 2005 - 1:34 pm 45. Doug S.:

Good points all, photoncourier, but I suspect that the fetish of market segmentation has less to do with left-wing identity politics than with an institution derided by the left: Madison Avenue. It’s the overuse of market research, but there is some factual validity to it. A friend of mine worked for CBS several years ago doing story coverage, and he once told me, only half-jokingly, that they had learned from their market research that their typical viewer was a middle-aged woman with cats; therefore, that became their target audience.

Otherwise, I agree with you absolutely that compelling stories and characters are virtues that transcend demographic categories.

Jun 20, 2005 - 1:36 pm 46. Fausta:

The quality of new movies is so unworthy of the price of admission, that I recently walked out of a film for the first time in years (the vomitive Sin City)(yech).

As for Kingdom of Heaven, here’s Medievalist Thomas F. Madden’s take on it http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/madden200505270751.asp

GreggTheObscure,

The hero fights against a loosely-connected group of folks that include common criminals, international terrorists and terror-enablers at all levels of society. The enemy uses purloined western technology against the west to instill mass panic. The enemy leadership cadre is motivated by a Talibanesque certainty that it alone is pure in a world that has become overly corrupt and that only through its program may humanity redeem itself. The enemy claims responsibility for the downfall several past cities and nations (all of them of Christian, no less). The enemy even requires new initiates to behead petty crooks as a condition of admission to its leadership cadre.

I came out of Batman Begins wondering if Batman was a Republican. I listed several clues at my blog this morning, but the most telling clue is that Batman believed the bad guys had WMDs, and set out to destroy them.

Jamie Irons,

Yesterday while watching Game 5 of the NBA finals I was struck by the frequency of commercials for films and/ or TV serials about themes of being invaded by “the Undead” or “Martians” and such types.

Fanatical zombies who lust for blood and with whom no one can reason and who understand only force.

You’re exactly right in asking, Are these films a kind of “anti-sublimation,” a crude and hopeless way of trying not to deal with our real problem?. They are, just as the spurious accusations and ridiculous comparisons with murderous regimes are.

Reality is difficult to deal with, especially now during the age of TV confessionals and feel-good sentiment. Coming up with new, good plots must be as hard. It’s no coincidence that so many good films were created during and after the Great Depression and WWII.

As Madden said (see link above), “Lasting peace, though, would be better served by candidly facing the truths of our shared past, however politically incorrect those might be.”

Jun 20, 2005 - 1:36 pm 47. exguru:

Political literacy is probably just as high today among Hollywood writers and directors as it was in the 1940s, and even among the better players. Most people are never interested in politics, it goes without saying. They aren’t now and they weren’t then, but more would take an interest today if innocents were dying on the scale they were dying in the 1940s. You also had a recent economic depression then, which had many devoting great interest to politics… There is, of course, a decline these days in literacy, per se, which you could be confusing with political literacy. In the 1930s and 1940s, at $1,200 per year or so, schoolteachers were truly devoted folks, in many cases maiden ladies who had a cultural background and not much else they could do with it. The same ladies today cannot bear to rub shoulders with their Epigones, a crude lot who are in it for the paycheck and the fringe.

Jun 20, 2005 - 1:45 pm 48. Syl:

I stopped going to movies when they stopped making the good popcorn. Simple as that. Nothing political.

I have a couple of favorite movies of fairly recent vintage. Well, one is from the ’80’s, the other from the ’90’s.

I think you can all understand why someone would love Educating Rita but…

my other really really favorite movie is..

Clueless.

Okay, you can all pelt me now, but, but, I really really loved it.

Jun 20, 2005 - 2:06 pm 49. Jim Rockford:

The problem is just bad storytelling. Dove Foundation did a study of the 3,000 plus films from 1985-2003; G rated films were just 6% but made most of the money and had around $25 million per film profit compared to R rated films which around $7 million. The closer to G the film was the more profitable, the closer to R the less.

To me this suggests G rated films are less reliant on “edge” aka gore, violence, sex, and other storytelling crutches and have to construct good stories. Likeable characters, compelling plots, believable dialogue, and satisfying stories. However this runs counter to Hollywood’s Oscar compulsion, one wag suggested Hollywood wants to make Independent movies that do blockbuster business.

Batman Begins is a good example, an overly-long film that focused too much on audience manipulation, a too long first act designed to show off compelling but irrelevant locations, talky villains (and too many of them), and worst of all an ill-defined hero who wasn’t sympathetic or likeable. Bad craft despite Hollywood veterans involved in all aspects. Too much “edge” which wasn’t warranted in this film.

Yes DVD sales dominate and theatrical release is essentially promotional; last year the industry did 9.1 billion in Box Office, something like 20.5 billion in DVD sales/rentals. Chronicles of Riddick (with much of the same flaws as Batman Begins) did poorly in Box Office but well on DVD and was mildly profitable. However long term DVD sales/rentals are trending towards flattening out; people can buy/rent older cheaper movies and TV series without compelling new stories. Or as noted use Games and other things as entertainment substitutes.

Jun 20, 2005 - 2:08 pm 50. triticale:

Going down the cell phone jammer tangent, I will answer that yes they are too expensive. Most of that expense would be FCC fines for unlicensed broadcast on a communications frequency. Very simply, jammers are illegal in the US.

If I were building a movie theater today, the viewing rooms would have to be Faraday cages – electrically grounded wire mesh in the walls.

Jun 20, 2005 - 2:55 pm 51. Janet from Tucson:

I second many of the comments. I go to the movies very rarely these days. The primary reason is that wrecking cars, explosions, profanity and heavily sexualized “dialogue” and actions do not entice me to spend my hard-earned money.

I did go this weekend to see Cinderella Man. It is a movie in which nothing blows up and everybody keeps their clothes on. Except for the boxers in trunks Excellent movie – good performances all around. Great atmosphere. The treatment of the Depression was excellent -clear, constant, not over-dramatized nor glamorized. Leaving the theater, I heard the following sorts of comments. “Best movie I’ve seen in years.” “Why don’t they make more movies like this one?” “Why isn’t this making more money? It is a fantastic movie!”

I have read some press that in the case of this particular movie, the issue was timing. They released a serious adult movie in the Summer Silly Season. When I was talking to my 79-year-old mother in the remote reaches of northeastern Arkansas about Cinderella Man, she remarked “What on earth were they thinking to put that out in June?” My point is that when somebody like her can make that observation, it underscores how predictable has Hollywood become in the mindlessness of their product.

Jun 20, 2005 - 3:16 pm 52. Dymphna:

Only nine percent down?? That’s surprising –shows how we judge things by our own behavior…I’d have said more like twenty five percent if asked.

Notice that some of the foreign films are good, though. The Indian directors, for example.

A few of the films that perhaps will not stale date in the next five or ten years:

“Sixth Sense”

“Thirteen Conversations” (as good as anything by Ozu)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”

“Nine Queens”

“Waking Ned Divine”

Jun 20, 2005 - 3:28 pm 53. truepeers:

The comments on video games and interactivity caught my imagination (though all the comments are readily seconded): it reminds that there is one sector of the movie industry that seems to be growing very quickly (not for me, but…): porn.

It is not surprising that so much pop culture today mimics the value of porn. But where these values presumably work in favor of the industry’s growth within the interactive environment of the bedroom consumer, they are entertainment only for the least imaginative without. Why more tv/film producers are not avoiding the quick and easy route to industry demise by reproducing the porn esthetic in everything they do is beyond me.

It’s not as if it is impossible to make a great film nowadays. Take a work like Mulholland Dr., for example, which I would rank in the greats of all time. And it has a scene that makes the difference between true and truly motivated eroticism, and porn, as clear as night and day, and yet it is a scene that only our porn-wise age could produce. Why are there not more people motivated by the addiction that is true artistry and in a position to make great films? Film as a creative medium, especially as pop culture, has not played itself out, as have many highbrow disciplines. It may be too easy forget that genius is a limited thing in every generation, but I agree with the sentiment that ours seems particularly short.

Jun 20, 2005 - 3:35 pm 54. Vexorg:

It has been well over two years now since I last went to a movie in the theater, and even at home, I’ll rarely bother to sit down and watch a movie (I’ve skipped Star Wars Episodes 2 and 3 entirely, and I’ve only recently seen any of the LOTR movies (half of Two Towers and Return of the King)… Yet I still call myself a geek. go figure.) To be honest, in my case this is as much due to my notoriously short attention span as it is due to the ongoining banality of the movies in general. I can rarely spend more than a half hour watching anything (I’ll make an exception for Mythbusters, or any other show providing suitable context for their gratuitous explosions.)

Jun 20, 2005 - 3:54 pm 55. Rick Ballard:

I’d like to add my agreement to Old Dad, erp and Janet wrt “Cinderella Man”. I believe that it will be a ’slow build’ movie and probably do quite well at the box office.

It is a fairly unsentimental movie (aside from the “we don’t steal” scene) and the boxing scenes are among the best I’ve ever seen.

There is a political subtext to the movie but I’m not sure that it is the type of nuance to which Roger is referring.

Jun 20, 2005 - 3:59 pm 56. Jamie Irons:

Dymphna

You cited Waking Ned Devine and I agree it’s a delightful movie.

I had dinner once with Fionnula Flanagan, whose husband, Garrett O’Connor, was one of my teachers.

(Fionnula plays the wife of the Ian Bannen character, and she is, as you’ll recall, the moral center of gravity of the film.) Her one-woman show, James Joyce’s Women, was superb.

Jamie Irons

Jun 20, 2005 - 4:11 pm 57. Joe Schmoe:

I look at this in historic terms.

The people making the earliest films in the 20’s came out of the Vaudville tradition. They were used to working with live audiences who would boo them if the material or the acting was bad. This personal interaction really let them know how the average person viewed their work — because there was an actual average person only 10 feet from the stage. The Vaudville companies catered to ordinary working people. There was no “target demographic.” They just needed to fill the house every night. Performing companies toured different cities and performed before all manner of audiences. Performers started out working county fairs, Western mining towns, etc., etc.

From a writing standpoint, this meant that the material had to have universal appeal. The themes had to speak to men and women, young and old, rich and poor; the dialogue had to be crisp and natural; and the characters had to be deeply human or outrageously one-dimensional (mostly the former). From a performing standpoint, it meant that the actors had to be able to relate to the ordinary people in the audience. If you were playing to an audience of coal miners in Scranton, Penna, you simply wouldn’t be credible as an ation hero if you were an effette pretty boy. The audience would eat you alive.

The earliest Hollywood producers, directors, etc. came out of this traditon. Their experiences shaped the earliest movies, and their influence and work habits shaped the industry for several decades.

Then came the Depression. This time, external forces compelled Hollywood to respond to the tastes of the common man. 1/3 of Americans were out of work, most of the others were just hanging on and were afraid they’d be next. This again made it hard to sort people into demographic groups; because most people in the audience were in a similar circumstances, the movies again had to appeal to the tastes of the common man.

This again shaped the industry for several decades. The people who dominated in the 50’s and 60’s got their start in the 30’s and 40’s (and had trained under the industry’s Vaudville founders), and their coming of age during the Depression shaped the way they did films.

Only in the late 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s did the movies begin thier decline. The creative types who wrote, produced, and directed had grown up in Scarsdale and San Francisco and were no longer in longer in touch with folks in Scranton. The behavior and marketing of celebrities was no longer controlled by the studios, and they were free to run wild and become full of themselves. Ratings soon fell, and have only been getting worse, because these conditions have not changed at all.

If they were still making the masterpieces of the 20’s and 30’s, and if we still had actors like Clark Gable and Cary Grant — tough guys and pretty boys who average men actually admired — they’d be making money hand over fist.

Jun 20, 2005 - 6:20 pm 58. ex-democrat:

great thread, agree with just about all of the comments (except the one re popcorn — one of the few aspects of my adopted country that i’ll never be able to fathom or adopt).

last week we went to an actual movie theater to see ‘mr and mrs smith’ — largely to indulge my wife’s obsession with angelina jolie. the experience only reminded us why we don’t go more often: for all its packaging, the movie is unadulterated dreck.

we came home and repaired by watching ‘north by northwest,’ though i would have preferred to watch a real action-movie-dealing-wittily-with-a-husband-and-wife-team: The Getaway (the McQueen/McGraw version, natch).

Other than that, i’m with buddy re Team America and The Incredibles. I’m also with GaryS — i don’t drink French wine and i also don’t support supercilious knee-jerk liberal movie-makers with my hard-earned dollars.

Jun 20, 2005 - 6:24 pm 59. lindenen:

“The behavior and marketing of celebrities was no longer controlled by the studios, and they were free to run wild and become full of themselves.

…mutilate their faces, change races, join cults, sleep with little boys, act like nutters on Oprah’s couch, etc etc.

Jun 20, 2005 - 6:42 pm 60. David Burge:

There have been two theatrical films in the last 20 years that had a semi-realistic portrayals of Islamicism: “Team America” and “Back to the Future.”

Movies of recent vintage that haven’t completely sucked:

The Incredibles

Crash

Scotland, PA

Team America

Ray

Lipstick & Dynamite

Oh Brother Where Art Thou

Jun 20, 2005 - 8:16 pm 61. Buddy Larsen:

Can’t agree more on Ray and all the others except the ones I didn’t see (Crash, Lipstick, and Scotland), but will now, on the basis of your good taste!

Jun 20, 2005 - 8:32 pm 62. Patrick Tyson:

It was the Hollywood blacklist, strangely enough, that rescued Reagan from some of the uncertainties. He got a telephone call from Melvyn LeRoy, the director, who said that a young actress in his current picture was fretting because her name kept turning up on the membership lists of various Communist front organizations. Could it be that there were two Nancy Davises? Could Reagan, as president of the Screen Actors Guild, find out? And perform a sort of clearing? Reagan checked and said she was clear. She asked if he would like to have dinner. They were married in 1952.

Reagan’s career as a movie actor was by now so weather-beaten—”a truly sick industry … had virtually ground to a halt,” as he put it—that his agents proposed he try a nightclub act in Las Vegas. “You must be kidding,” said Reagan. Since he could neither sing nor dance, he could only serve as a sort of master of ceremonies, making a few wry jokes about inabilities and then introducing other performers. The first offer was to play on Christmas. Reagan declined. The second was to introduce as stripper. Reagan declined. He finally teamed up, early in 1954, with a male singing quartet called The Continentals, who, according to Reagan, did some sharp comedy material.” After “a wonderfully successful two weeks,” Reagan was glad enough to get an offer from General Electric to serve as host on a weekly TV series, and to spend ten weeks a year touring GE plants around the country, giving talks, meeting people.

That paid Reagan a starting wage of $125,000 a year, but what finally made him rich was the great land deal. Twentieth Century-Fox paid him $1,931,000 in 1966 for 236 acres of ranchland in the Santa Monica mountains, which he had bought for $85,000 back in 1951. By now, Reagan was running for governor of California and some people said that he had a promising political future.

So ends Otto Friedrich’s great 1986 book about Hollywood, City of Nets: A Portrait of Holly wood in the 1940’s.

And a footnote from the same book…

Mocking the famous line “Come with me to the Casbah,” Murray Kempton observed that this, “next to Odets’ ‘We could make beautiful music together’ (The General Died at Dawn), may be the most permanent cultural contribution by a left-wing scriptwriter during the entire period.”

The writer on Algiers was John Howard Lawson, who “led the chorus that shouted accusations of revisionism” etc. at Albert Maltz after Maltz apparently forgot, when writing What Shall We Ask Of Writers?, that Earl Browder and his ideas had been purged the year before.

Anyway, it’s a great book. As to the current state of the City of Nets, well I don’t think there is anyone here (commenting I mean) who is of more than a very small interest to the people who make movies today. Most are in a demographic that pines more and more for the “good old days” when, well, you know the rest. You’ve heard it from a couple of generations of your elders by now.

Remember this…

I’m no prophet and I don’t know nature’s ways

So I’ll try and see into your eyes right now

And stay right here ’cause these are the good old days…

I thought so.

Jun 20, 2005 - 8:49 pm 63. Buddy Larsen:

And tomorrow is the first day of the rest of our lives. Hope there’s still time to…uhhhh…what?

The 2mm freed RR to work full time in politics. Wonder what life’d be like right now, had he not bought that land in 1951. Would we’ve had another Carter term? Would the Red Star be flying over the White House by now? Nahhh…maybe not.

Incredible how history turns, tho. For want of a nail a Kingdom was lost. And I guess, gained, too, by the other guy, who didn’t need the nail.

Jun 20, 2005 - 9:35 pm 64. Kyda Sylvester:

Most are in a demographic that pines more and more for the “good old days” when, well, you know the rest. You’ve heard it from a couple of generations of your elders by now.

Well, now I do feel old. Mostly I pine for the days when Hollywood’s product, big screen or small, wasn’t crap.

Jun 20, 2005 - 10:28 pm 65. Vexorg:

I’d probably be tempted on occasion to head for the theater for the popcorn too (the microwave here at home seems to have no setting between “leave half the bag unpopped” and “Pure Carbon”. Fortunately, I find it a lot cheaper to just head down to Target, where you can get a big bag of fresh popcorn from the food court for $1.25, and go pick up a DVD while you’re at it.

Jun 21, 2005 - 1:03 am 66. EBrown:

Well, the sad thing about BATMAN BEGINS is that Ra’s Al-Ghul was originally an ARAB (eco)terrorist in the comic books.

Jun 21, 2005 - 5:11 am 67. Hogarth:

While I agree with many of the reasons above, one thing that is a real pet peeve of mine is the over commercialization. It’s bad enough that I’ve been inundated with cross promotions at McDonalds, Burger King, Taco Bell, etc., and seen so many previews that I could tell you the entire plot of the movie before even stepping in the theatre door, but what really sets me off is transparent, blatant product placement in the movie itself.

Enough with the advertising already. Can’t I just watch a darn story without constantly being “sold” on something? My eyes, my eyes. They need a rest from this incessant visual pollution.

Jun 21, 2005 - 7:30 am 68. Nahanni:

Last movie I saw in the theatre was “Chicken Run” I think. I cancelled my cable subscription a year ago.

I have to agree with a variety of posters here as to why I do not attend movies, rarely rent/buy DVD’s of anything made in the last 20 years or watch television.

My reasons are…

1. The stuff they are putting out is CRAP, period. Hollywood doesn’t have a creative bone left in it’s body anymore. They made a movie out of Bewitched and Dukes of Hazard? OMG what is next? A remake of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea?

2. The “actors” and “actresses” for the most part have no talent! My cat is a better actor they 99% of the population of Hollywood. Am not talking about folks like Tom Hanks or Ian McKellan who CAN act.

3. There hasn’t been a network television show that I have been even remotely interested in seeing on a regular basis in about 10 years. “Reality” shows are horrible, network news has turned into a cross of Entertainment tonight and DNC propaganda. Cable is too expensive for what you get-endless reruns or “Pharoah of the hour”. I now know more people who do NOT have a television then those who do. THAT should tell the television industry something!

4. When I shell out money to be entertained I want to be entertained, dammit. I dont give a rat’s azz about some idiot director, actor or singers political views. If you want to voice your political views I can’t stop you-but if those political views and attitudes are highly offensive to me you can be damn well sure of me not wanting to give you any of my hard earned money, period. You can rest assured I will never spend a dime on any movie with Sean Penn in it. I won’t be buying any Green Day, Linda Ronstadt or Pink Floyd CD’s. My “must buy” book list does not contain anything written by Michael Moore or Al Franken, either. I doubt I will ever spend money to see another Spielberg film, too.

Memo to the entertainment industry: You keep on putting out CRAP and offending a sizable chunk of your audience with your opinions eventually people stop watching. Once that becomes a habit it stays that way.

Jun 21, 2005 - 7:30 am 69. Nahanni:

Xixi,

Martin Sheen is one of those I do not have a problem with. He freely admits that many won’t like his views and that is their right to disagree with him. I can accept and respect that, just like I do out of my liberal friends who have almost all “seen the light” as to what the post 9/11 “liberalism” is all about. He is not one of those like Tim Robbins who screeches “Mc Carthyism” and uses keywords like “chilling” and “frightening” when anyone DARES to disagree.

Jun 21, 2005 - 7:47 am 70. Buddy Larsen:

Nahanni sez it good. Spielberg is baffling. Obviously he understands the world (Private Ryan, Schindler, others), but then he falls in love with Fidel freaking Castro. I don’t get, I just do not get it.

Jun 21, 2005 - 7:52 am 71. erp:

Buddy,

It’ll be easier to understand Spielberg and others like him if you keep this in mind: A liberal is one who can hold opposite and opposing opinions at the same time

Jun 21, 2005 - 8:14 am 72. Buddy Larsen:

IOW, you can cultivate open-mindedness until your brain falls out?

Jun 21, 2005 - 8:24 am 73. Fred Z:

Not only are the movies bad, so is the physical experience. Lousy popcorn, fake butter, poor food generally. A local multiplex has a Pizza Hut franchise that manages to make the worst version of Pizza Hut pizza I’ve ever had.

In the theatre iteself, on top of making me pay to watch advertising, they roar it out at me at ear numbing volume and over-bassed enough to shake my seat. The movie comes on at the same volume and I despise it and the operators who are so stupid. It’s like being in a restaurant kept too cold for the customers because it keeps the staff comfortable.

The entertainment industry needs to make up its mind. Aim at 17 year old males and alienate everyone else, or aim at a broad market and include most 17 year old males. I need a clean theatre, proper volumes, decent seats, food, drink etc. Give me that and I might pay a $3.00 per drink margin…but the drink better not be a watered down coke. Without that, by-bye, ciao, sayonara, auf wiedersehen.

Jun 21, 2005 - 8:50 am 74. Steven Mitchell:

Nahanni: “Once that becomes a habit it stays that way.”

Exactly–not least because once forced to find alternatives, you don’t have any reason to go back. I wonder if French wines have regained any market share from the Australians?

Jun 21, 2005 - 9:24 am 75. Brian:

It’s not generational. I’m under thirty and still think movies suck. I still go to theaters though, so I’ve racked up hard evidence for my disdain. Here’s the dreadful fare I’ve seen this year:

***

Sideways – Nice enough but nothing special.

The Incredibles – Noisy and violent, jokes weren’t funny, I walked out.

Downfall – Brilliant! Best take on the Nazi nihilism since Fritz Lang’s Testament of Dr. Mabuse way back in 1932, and the only good film on this list.

Melinda & Melinda – Good but not great, maybe a B+.

Kingdom of Heaven – Nice photography, but submental and boring as hell. Can’t believe I watched it.

Sin City – Not great, but different and stylish, and I liked the Dirty Harry/John Wayne ethos of the thing. (Odd that conservatives all ganged up on the most bluntly right-wing film of the year.)

House of Wax – Paint by numbers, I walked out.

Star Wars – Long and retarded. Not as bad as the previous ones, but then how could it be?

The Interpreter – More nice photography (Darius Khondji!), but its politics were as muddled as its storytelling. Feh.

Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants – Kinda cute but largely routine, chix may like it.

Cinderella Man – Very good, even though we’ve seen it all before.

***

So there you have it. Inspired? No? Neither am I. Few outright turkeys, but only one film that was actually good – good enough to remember a decade from now – and that one (Downfall) came from abroad. The rest of them are little more than filler.

And Joe Schmoe is right – Vaudeville was a much better education than film school. Film school grads are all whiny dorks who still think it’s the height of cool to have blood go “pssssshhhhhhhhhh” in slow motion.

Jun 21, 2005 - 9:44 am 76. Mr. Bingley:

Well this 41 yr-old would much rather be playing my xbox or playstation online versus my friends ( all around my age) than going to see all those awful remakes (and prequels) that Hollywood keeps spitting out.

Jun 21, 2005 - 10:49 am 77. nittypig:

I saw the Lord of the Rings movies, and thought they were quite well done. But having now seen them on DVD I’m amazed at the editorial decisions. The movies were already too long (probably necessary to placate the fanatics) and the DVDs are significantly longer. But in the DVDs the characters are much better drawn and their motives and interactions given much more attention – the movies are simply better this way – in the cinema they were rather two dimensional.

Jackson could easily have removed a half hour of battles and chases, and probably another half hour of ‘ambiance’ and produced much stronger characters. The evidence is right there on the DVD. But that wasn’t the choice he made, and I think that’s a common theme.

And I’m all for repealing the ban on cell phone jammers.

Jun 21, 2005 - 11:28 am 78. richard mcenroe:

Maltz may have been a good little Red, but he was not above playing on Party loyalty to get gigs and screen credits. Hmmm… maybe he was a “premature Chinese commie-capitalist…”

Jun 21, 2005 - 5:16 pm 79. Buddy Larsen:

Moving back to the 90s, two mass-market films that I thought succeeded in their genres are Mann’s “The Last of the Mohicans” (soundtrack sublime) and “The 13th Warrior” (from the Crichton novel).

Jun 22, 2005 - 7:00 am 80. Robert Schwartz:

Ron Radosh became public enemy number one on the left when he published, The Rosenberg File with Joyce Milton, which refuted all of the claims that the Rosenbergs were innocent victims. I am glad to see that he has not backed down.

Jun 22, 2005 - 8:58 am 81. Robert Schwartz:

Bad URL Sorry. The Rosenberg File with Joyce Milton,

Jun 22, 2005 - 9:00 am

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