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Buscemi I Am The Walrus from a log cabin Since: Jul, 2010
I Am The Walrus
#1: Feb 20th 2012 at 4:32:49 PM

I've been thinking about this lately. It seems as if anything that can be seen as being somewhat original or different (The Tree Of Life, The Artist) fails to go mainstream while the top movies are Seen It A Million Times plots and premises.

Here are this year's top movies at the American box office:

And we've also got a Superbad clone with handhelds, a Transformers/Battle Los Angeles ripoff, a few buddy cop movies and a million premises greenlighted by film executives who think it's Still The Eighties coming out. At this point, why do we still care? Are we really that into being slaves, spoon-fed generic bullshit week after week? Why can't we get people to watch something else? And why do we still convince the executives that it's the eighties?

Are people as a whole really that stupid? Or do we as people not see the film medium as an art form but as something that we leave on while doing something else.

Another problem I have with movies today, every era of the 20th century had something unique that signified the era. The last decade and this decade has not yet seen that. The only film that the 2000's could stake as the defining film is Thirteen (which outside of my age group is little-known). Everything else feels like a ripoff of movies from the 1980's (such as Mean Girls basically a Heathers clone and everything either made by Judd Apatow or people ripping him off being obviously inspired by John Hughes). Are studio executives that into the 1980's? It's 2012. The eighties ended a long time ago and they are never coming back (even if the Tea Party or your fratboy mentality tells you otherwise).

I just don't get it.

edited 20th Feb '12 4:43:53 PM by Buscemi

More Buscemi at http://forum.reelsociety.com/
MarkVonLewis Since: Jun, 2010
#2: Feb 20th 2012 at 4:41:56 PM

I know in my case if I'm paying $8 and smuggling food in, I'd rather watch something to be entertained than watch some groundbreaking high-art film about the human condition.

Now, I'm not bashing high art films or films that convey a good message. All I'm saying is I know I prefer to be entertained when I go to the movies. I'd imagine a lot of other people feel the same.

AtomJames I need a drink Since: Apr, 2010
I need a drink
#3: Feb 20th 2012 at 4:49:08 PM

I got to the movies for the experience. There really isn't any better feeling than watching a movie and sharing that same feeling of awe or exhilaration with everybody else in the theatre.

Theres sex and death and human grime in monochrome for one thin dime and at least the trains all run on time but they dont go anywhere.
Prowler I'm here for our date, Rose! Since: Dec, 2010 Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
I'm here for our date, Rose!
#4: Feb 20th 2012 at 5:09:25 PM

[up][up][up] Did you actually see all of those? Considering your comments, I was left with the impression that you hadn't.

Buscemi I Am The Walrus from a log cabin Since: Jul, 2010
I Am The Walrus
#5: Feb 20th 2012 at 5:12:31 PM

Why should I waste my time watching The Devil Inside and The Vow? If you've seen one found footage movie or one Nicholas Sparks-esque romance, you've seen them all.

That's another thing I hate about Hollywood. They latch onto trends instead of trying something different. People want the original and remember it five years from now. The knockoffs are instantly forgettable.

More Buscemi at http://forum.reelsociety.com/
Aondeug Oh My from Our Dreams Since: Jun, 2009
Oh My
#6: Feb 20th 2012 at 5:15:04 PM

Because schlock can be entertaining and seeing things in a theatre is an experience I can't recreate at home. Of course there's the occasional artistic piece of sexy awesome that I go to see, but eh. Stupid shit amuses me enough. I'd be sad without it.

edited 20th Feb '12 5:15:13 PM by Aondeug

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah
Prowler I'm here for our date, Rose! Since: Dec, 2010 Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
I'm here for our date, Rose!
#7: Feb 20th 2012 at 5:19:13 PM

To me, Chronicle indicated there were still new things to be done with the found footage genre. But you didn't see it. You still prattle on about it being about "jerkass superheroes" when that's a completely idiotic conclusion formed by watching a trailer. In fact, you do that with every fucking movie. You don't see it. You just see one trailer, decide you know exactly what it's about(ending up COMPLETELY off-base is typical), and that's that.

Also, it sounds like you make The Grey out to be a killer wolf film...which it was not.

edited 20th Feb '12 5:20:19 PM by Prowler

ThatOneGuyNamedX Since: Aug, 2011 Relationship Status: Drift compatible
#8: Feb 20th 2012 at 5:20:13 PM

I used to go watch dumb action movies wit my friends, because, no matter how horrid the movie is, it was always fun to make fun to it, like Transformers Revenge Of The Fallen. We had a blast, mostly due to how much we were making fun of it.

If I want to watch a more introspective, "smarter" film, I'll do so at the quiet of my home.

Deboss I see the Awesomeness. from Awesomeville Texas Since: Aug, 2009
I see the Awesomeness.
#9: Feb 20th 2012 at 5:23:24 PM

I go for my own amusement and entertainment. If an artist wants to make a statement, they can pay me for my time. You sound like you're deeply out of touch with people who like the current movies and pay to see them.

Fight smart, not fair.
Buscemi I Am The Walrus from a log cabin Since: Jul, 2010
I Am The Walrus
#10: Feb 20th 2012 at 5:24:11 PM

[up][up] When's the last time there hasn't been a trailer that gives the entire plot away? Just yesterday, I saw the trailer for Project X and the trailer was so linear that you now know everything that happens in just a minute and a half (it's a total ripoff of Superbad).

And if Chronicle reinvented the superhero genre, get ready for some really bad superhero movies in the near-future (that could eventually kill that genre once again). Darker and Edgier didn't work for the comic books and it's not going to work on a film like Fantastic Four (the reboot will be from Chronicle's director).

More Buscemi at http://forum.reelsociety.com/
Gvzbgul from Middle Earth Since: Jul, 2010
#11: Feb 20th 2012 at 5:29:17 PM

Because most people don't have a home theater. Other than that, I can't think of any other reason.

Buscemi I Am The Walrus from a log cabin Since: Jul, 2010
I Am The Walrus
#12: Feb 20th 2012 at 5:34:55 PM

[up] You've got a TV and a DVD/Blu Ray player. That's good enough.

More Buscemi at http://forum.reelsociety.com/
Prowler I'm here for our date, Rose! Since: Dec, 2010 Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
I'm here for our date, Rose!
#13: Feb 20th 2012 at 5:35:37 PM

[up][up][up] Who said anything about reinvention?

edited 20th Feb '12 5:36:29 PM by Prowler

SomeSortOfTroper Since: Jan, 2001
#14: Feb 20th 2012 at 5:39:14 PM

[up][up][up][up] Trailer's don't match up plenty of times. Sometimes they just lie and misrepresent, sometimes they try too hard to fit the film into the pattern of something they think the audience will be familiar with, sometimes they just can't fit in all of the plot points so they just go for a mood, sometimes brief moments get over emphasised and sometimes, indeed, they just leave things out for you to find out on your own.

This has not gone unnoticed.

edited 20th Feb '12 5:39:35 PM by SomeSortOfTroper

disruptorfe404 from New Zealand Since: Sep, 2011
#15: Feb 20th 2012 at 5:44:04 PM

Echoing statements made before: I go to the movies to be entertained. Hitting up the cinema with a group of friends to watch a cookie-cutter actionsuspensescifithriller is very entertaining. If I want to watch something with loftier, more cerebral goals, I do that at home. Yes, I realise that means I'm not doing what I should to support the 'better' movies that I watch at home and am in fact encouraging mediocre popcorn-fare.

feotakahari Fuzzy Orange Doomsayer from Looking out at the city Since: Sep, 2009
Fuzzy Orange Doomsayer
#16: Feb 20th 2012 at 6:29:24 PM

I just don't normally watch movies. The last one I went to go see was Hugo.

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful
SomeSortOfTroper Since: Jan, 2001
#17: Feb 20th 2012 at 6:37:32 PM

The reasons for the critical and audience gap have been discussed and well dissected elsewhere, some time ago and really I find it hard to participate in a thread where I find the really appropriate thing to say is "Google it". The answer is out there, it's been done, you should know this if you really do take your analysis of films and their production seriously and I'd expect an awareness of this in the OP.

No, really, the problem comes down to a guy who seems to make lots of bizarre and incongruous statements but proclaims them in a superior and dismissive tone. Buscemi, while never actually recorded as saying something deeper than "Seen it!", still attempts to pass himself off as a great defender of intellectual analysis. While real reviewers with degrees and doctorates from ivory towers in film studies will happily go into the aspects of something like Chronicle, this internet critic will merely drone out lines that feel like they were written for the Comic Book Guy and then pose himself as being so much deeper than the world.

The question for anyone in this thread should not be "Why Do We Still Go See Movies?" but "What to do when stuck between the self-indulgent "I just don't get it" and the proudly moronic "If an artist wants to make a statement, they can pay me for my time"."

I personally still struggle for an answer but my feelings are that when fringe nutters on the internet start talking absolute crap, in a place that is not devoted to such crap, you must not try to engage it on its own terms. If this was reality, social behaviour would penalise people randomly taking up extreme positions that make normal people feel uncomfortable. On the internet you must replicate the same effect. So for the statement "If an artist wants to make a statement, they can pay me for my time", do not bother to debate the actual merits of artistic quality of the person. Remind them of how their views are normally that associated with people who suffer childhood abuse in preparation for a life of menial labour. Point out the flaws not in the statement but in the mindset that must accompany them. After all, if you're debating with a crazy person, logic and reason wouldn't help you anyway, so first try to ascertain whether they are in fact crazy.

In the real world, you normally wouldn't have to do that but this is the internet. We don't have the social structure to stop people from unloading issues from their warped psychologies so you'll have to do it for yourself.

Buscemi I Am The Walrus from a log cabin Since: Jul, 2010
I Am The Walrus
#18: Feb 20th 2012 at 7:04:27 PM

What is this about "paying me for my time"? I'm talking about that cinemagoers are suffering from a lack of taste and we are encouraging the studios to make more of it. Why did is take thirty years to make The Adventures Of Tintin? Or twenty-five years for Red Tails? Or eighty years for John Carter? Because people would rather been be spoonfed shit like The Vow or The Devil Inside.

Back in the Golden Age of Hollywood, you didn't make the same concept again and again. You took chances (in the same time you had the Andy Hardy and Bowery Boys movies, you had people taking chances of films like Citizen Kane and M). Nowadays, studio executives just think of three things: money, trends and licensed properties. You created these philistines and now you should stop it. Fuck money, make good movies again.

And please, stop crying piracy. If anything piracy is helping your shitty movies.

edited 20th Feb '12 7:04:40 PM by Buscemi

More Buscemi at http://forum.reelsociety.com/
MarkVonLewis Since: Jun, 2010
#19: Feb 20th 2012 at 7:22:20 PM

Buscemi: however, though, "taste" is subjective. The only vibe I'm getting from this thread is you are upset that the movies you like aren't getting made, which doesn't mean automatically that other people have bad taste.

jewelleddragon Also known as Katz from Pasadena, CA Since: Apr, 2009
Also known as Katz
#20: Feb 20th 2012 at 8:12:43 PM

Why anyone goes to see movies in February is indeed a question for the ages.

AtomJames I need a drink Since: Apr, 2010
I need a drink
#21: Feb 20th 2012 at 8:41:02 PM

Buscemi, you do know there were Tintin movie made before the Spielberg film, right?

Theres sex and death and human grime in monochrome for one thin dime and at least the trains all run on time but they dont go anywhere.
Deboss I see the Awesomeness. from Awesomeville Texas Since: Aug, 2009
I see the Awesomeness.
#22: Feb 20th 2012 at 9:04:38 PM

You created these philistines and now you should stop it. Fuck money, make good movies again.

They're making the movies the public wants to see. They know because that's what the public pays them for. Complaining that the public at large is getting what they want because you aren't seems like you're just going to be upset over time.

Fight smart, not fair.
metaphysician Since: Oct, 2010
#23: Feb 20th 2012 at 9:17:48 PM

Um, the reason Hollywood didn't make as many "cookie cutter" movies in the golden age was because Hollywood *didn't yet know what it was doing*. They did random stuff because they didn't know any better.

What you call "repetitive and unoriginal", Hollywood calls "a proven formula that the audience wants."

Home of CBR Rumbles-in-Exile: rumbles.fr.yuku.com
Gray64 Since: Dec, 1969
#24: Feb 20th 2012 at 10:11:31 PM

[up] Hollywood made tons of "Cookie Cutter" films in the Golden Age. Most of them haven't been preserved. Loads more movies have been made than survive on DVD or tape today. Oh, and some of the other cookie cutter films were called "movie serials".

The fact that these repetitive films make money should tell you something about why Hollywood continues to make them. Is it really so hard to fathom that other people like stuff that you don't? For reasons that, given you aren't them, you don't really understand? Hell, a lot of folks go to the movies to have something to do that gets them out of the house.

edited 20th Feb '12 10:14:33 PM by Gray64

Gvzbgul from Middle Earth Since: Jul, 2010
#25: Feb 20th 2012 at 10:26:28 PM

Movies tend to look like they were really good in the past because no one remembers all the run of the mill stuff that was being put out. It's the same for music and pretty much anything, stuff that we think made a decade really good were no where near the top of the charts.


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