movies

[lukethedrifter]

Seems to me that complaints about the length of the LoTR/Hobbit movies are fair. Mostly the Hobbit. Too faithful to the original. Re watched the first Hobbit film last night with my Tolkien crazed daughter and we both agreed that the initial gathering at Bilbo's house went on about 25 minutes too long.

Are there other examples of a filmmaker being too faithful to the original? It's nearly always the opposite issue it seems.

[go birds]

Finally got a chance to see Joe last night and I thought it was pretty damn good but...

[SHOW]

the bad guy kind of a little b¡tch and the ending was somewhat anticlimactic

Other than that, what a gripping, almost haunting movie.

After that I watched Cyrus starring John c Reilly and Jonah hill and it was a surprisingly nice little dramedy.

[lukethedrifter]

Speaking of long movies. We saw Unbroken last night. While it was a good movie, one of the few where people clapped at the end, it was very long. There were a number of scenes that could have been cut, and certainly parts that should have been shortened. Still it was good, but maybe a watch on your couch good, vs the theater.

Sometimes I need the theater experience to keep me going on a long movie like that. I have no idea how long Thin Red Line is but I fell asleep all four times I tried to watch it at home.

[JL21]

Here's the thing, and trust me- I'm speaking from experience. It took me several years to get here, and I'll never let go of my vitriol for Crash. And obviously, I'm speaking only for myself- your results may vary.

You can turn cinema and the business of film into bloodsport and harp on every perceived slight if you want. But that's so pointless. Life's too short for that, especially when there's such a better alternative readily available. The world of film, 120 years strong spanning the globe, is so deep and unending that you can find something enjoyable at every single turn.

Instead of actively trying to find what movies do wrong and then pick it apart, I'd much rather enjoy the craftsmanship of it and find what they do right. You get so much more out of movies if you try to enjoy them and understand where they're coming from- why filmmakers (from directors all the way down) make the choices they make. Why screenwriters wrote their dialogue the way they did, why editors edit the way they do, why foley artists add splashes here and there, how a film fits into its genre (or bends it, or melds genres, or tips its cap to what came before), the giant world of cinematography and, yes, effects... I think Avatar was one of the worst films of recent memory but I can at least appreciate that the effects were groundbreaking. At the end of the day, at least acknowledge (and hopefully appreciate) that a lot of time and effort went into whatever movie you just saw, from a lot of people who wanted nothing more than to create some form of art and entertain you.

Some of my favorite scenes are in mediocre movies where someone behind the scenes added a flourish to a scene to elevate it to something special. The tracking shot at the end of Electra Glide in Blue. The night nurse scene in Exorcist III. Countless choreographed fight scenes in action movies. The foley work in early Lynch (not mediocre films by any stretch but it's amazing how much the foley work adds).

[lukethedrifter]

Your comment reminds me of something I've wondered- maybe here- in the past. Why isn't there an award for best scene?
Or forget about awards, just great scenes in otherwise so-so movies. Is there a list out there somewhere?

[JL21]

There are some lists out there, but they're almost all lists of poorly-received comic book movies with a cool fight scene.

They don't really acknowledge best scene, per se, but a lot of those unknown categories at the awards ceremonies tend to award the behind the scenes folks. Costume Design, Editing, and the like. It's really the best those unknown crew members can hope for. And given how much most of them get paid, they take a great deal of pride in that stuff.

[33anda3rd]

Wait, why do we care who's producing the films if they're getting produced?

Because it effects how it's getting distributed!!!!

Check out this, which was written by my favorite American film critic, a guy so fiercely cranky he makes me look tame.

I don't know exactly where you are or how you see what you see, and there is a leveling effect with all the online stuff that's available, to the point where you can almost--almost get everything in some horrible culture-less place that you can get in NYC or LA. But. The experience of seeing a movie in a crowded audience trumps watching stuff at home by a very large margin. When I was 22 and moved to Chicago you'd go to opening night of Dead Man at the Music Box then hang out in the lobby or the little coffee shop across the street and talk about Dead Man. You'd go see The Thin Red Line and then sit at Clark's Diner and talk about the movie. There was a culture around seeing movies. You can still get that, but not like you used to. Screen space has dwindled. In Chicago alone, the theaters off the top of my head that have shuttered since I moved here: Three Penny, Biograph, Fine Arts, Esquire, Village, the one at like Chestnut/LaSalle, the one that was near Navy Pier and had like 4 screens...and there are certainly 5-6 more I'm forgetting. They've disappeared and a lot of them showed arthouse stuff. Replaced by Megaplexes that show mainstream stuff. Slightly fewer screens, showing a smaller number of films. More IMAX, more spectacle, more blockbusters. Less thoughtful stuff. 20 years ago I saw Chungking Express twice in the span of 4 weeks in a theater owned by Sony on Michigan Avenue. When 2046 came out it got a week at the Music Box and was gone.

Who makes it and distributes it determines largely what we get the opportunity to see. The Nightcrawler example sticks. It's showing one time today in all of Chicagoland, at 7601 S Cicero, a place that you need a car to get to. It's a film for educated, bougie, hip urbanites and no one will bother to go see it because it's way the hell out in the middle of nowhere. It might as well not be an option. That's distribution.

[ghostrunner]

I eventually saw all three of them. After the third one won Best Picture and people were still salivating over how awesome they were. I was bored for the majority of the time.

Let's let them get older and we'll see what the critical consensus is. L'Avventura was really high on the Sight & Sound poll in the 70s. Debuted at #2 in 1962. Then #5 in 1972. Then #7 in 1982. Now it's #21. There are only 2 movies in the top 10 now that were made later--2001 and 8 1/2--so it's not like new stuff bumped it down, just people's excitement over the modernizing impact L'Avventura had died down. People's excitement over a classic fantasy tale being told in epic overblown proportions by a hack director will die down too.

Ultimately (and I say this without having read the book) what's probably the best parts of LOTR is what came from the book, not from Peter Jackson.

There might be a handful of scenes in LOTR that aren't straight out of the book. Some are lengthened and embellished for sure but knowing the book and the movies I'd say anything embellished is out of necessity. Helm's Deep for example. While it's too longin the movie it wouldn't work to just go on what is described in the book.

The Hobbit movies again are a different story. Lots of stuff he either invented or pulls from other sources and embellishes. Though the battle in the one which is out now that u haven't seen - Bilbo is knocked out for most all of it, so it's not described at all.

[JL21]

The Nightcrawler example sticks. It's showing one time today in all of Chicagoland, at 7601 S Cicero, a place that you need a car to get to. It's a film for educated, bougie, hip urbanites and no one will bother to go see it because it's way the hell out in the middle of nowhere. It might as well not be an option. That's distribution.

That movie was released 2 months ago. That's hardly a valid example. [expletive], Interstellar isn't even playing at my megaplex now and it was released more recently than Nightcrawler.

[33anda3rd]

Like, yeah, the middle-budget film is getting squeezed out these days but it ain't permanent. And it's not because studios are any more or less concerned with money. They just happen to be more concerned with safety because that's what happens to be profitable right now. It'll change. Spielberg has been calling for the bursting of the blockbuster franchise bubble for a while now, and if anybody would know it's him.

Yet he's producing Indiana Jones 5 and another Jurassic Park and Transformers 5 and a Gremlins re-boot, so there's a money-where-your-mouth-is thing at play here that's delightfully ironic.