[HN Gopher] Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finish...
___________________________________________________________________
Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will
never come back
Author : danso
Score : 187 points
Date : 2021-07-09 12:08 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| werber wrote:
| The "movie business" is far from dead, there's an insane amount
| of production now and the breadth of those productions is far
| wider. The only death is the exclusivity of the industry, stories
| like the movie Tangerine (shot on iphones) or the recent release
| Zola (based on a twitter feed) are reaching audiences along with
| a ton of others that never would have seen them. Contrary to
| that, the highest grossing films of all time are mostly within
| this century and past decade now. There is more representation
| and choice in video content now than ever before, even if the
| movie theater industry might not ever go back to it's heyday. I
| personally am fine with more tailored content, tv or film, beamed
| into my home on demand over going to a theater
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Also, the Indian movie scene appears to be exploding. Prime
| knows I'm into Indian movies, and so I've noticed a huge uptick
| in year 2021 Indian movies in my Prime feed. Must be like 5 or
| 10 new ones added per week. And they look like good quality
| movies. Indian cinema has really come a long way, and Netflix
| and Prime are really the catalysts for that and are spurring
| that industry along.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| >or the recent release Zola (based on a twitter feed) are
| reaching audiences along with a ton of others that never would
| have seen them.
|
| This is just an anecdote but my local AMC theater in upper NJ
| is playing Zola and on Saturday night the theater was empty. I
| was the only one in the room. Are these movies actually making
| money? It seems like the demand is not really there for
| anything other than Superhero movies.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| I've moved from watching movies and TV shows without end to
| watching limited series/anthology shows. The format hits the
| sweet spot between watching a self contained story and the
| anticipation of a TV show. I don't think the format gets the
| love it deserves, but networks like Disney+ (most of Marvel's
| recent outings), Netflix (Godless, Russian Doll, Alias Grace,
| The Queen's Gambit, The Haunting of Hill House), and HBO (The
| Night Of, Watchmen, The Outsider) certainly understand the
| benefits and have been amassing a quiet army of content.
| QuesnayJr wrote:
| I liked every limited run TV show you mentioned that I've
| seen (Russian Doll, The Queen's Gambit, Watchmen), so I think
| maybe I should watch the rest.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Have you caught Mare of Easttown with Kate Winslet on HBO?
| Tremendous.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| It's at the top of my list.
|
| Incidentally I went look for the best limited series shows,
| but aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes do a poor job
| separating them from other TV shows. Right now I see
| "Watchmen: Season 1" and "Unbelievable: Season 1" which as
| far as I know were only meant to be one season. Yet
| Chernobyl and Mare of Easttown are labeled as Miniseries
| and Limited Series, respectively. What's the difference
| between the two labels? Why hasn't someone went back and
| updated the database? Why can't I filter by ongoing versus
| limited?
| indigodaddy wrote:
| And because Mare was so well received and loved by
| audiences, there is now a ton of pressure on the
| producers/creator for a S2. So I guess if that happens it
| would get relabeled?
| cwp wrote:
| I hate this kind of article. It's an opinion from a knowledgeable
| person, but it offers no insight at all. The only difference
| between what Diller said and my uninformed curmudgeonly grumpy
| opinion is that he used to run a studio.
| mullingitover wrote:
| We're arguably repeating history, where 100 years ago film was
| the upstart (but rapidly growing) business and vaudeville was the
| established incumbent. Film offered far more creative
| possibilities and were dramatically more immersive than the
| entertainment it replaced.
|
| Today the film industry is the incumbent - profits have peaked,
| and the upstart video game business has already eclipsed it. Once
| again, video games have far more creative possibilities and are
| dramatically more immersive than the films they're replacing.
| outlawBand wrote:
| ...but there is a huge percentage of the population that
| doesn't like / play video games.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| the "gaming" industry includes mobile games and things like
| slot machines, in addition to the big consoles that most
| people think of.
|
| I think there are more "gamers" than you might think.
| mullingitover wrote:
| It's true, and yet even with a lot of people not being
| gamers[1]:
|
| > Global videogame revenue is expected to surge 20% to $179.7
| billion in 2020, according to IDC data, making the videogame
| industry a bigger moneymaker than the global movie and North
| American sports industries combined.
|
| So the fact that there are still lots of people who aren't
| gamers just means that the video game industry has plenty of
| room for growth.
|
| [1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/videogames-are-a-
| bigger-in...
| merlincorey wrote:
| Plenty of them are willing to watch people play video games,
| even if they don't want to play them.
| watwut wrote:
| Those consider themswlves games and report themselves as
| gamers. They claim to like games.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| I'm an avid gamer, but video games are in no position to
| replace films. The mediums are fundamentally different. A film
| is a story being told. A videogame is a template to explore
| your own story, some more filled out than others.
|
| If you want to merely argue that video games will win the
| battle for people's time I could see that. My guess is movies
| will be like books; maybe not the biggest kid on the block, but
| eternally popular. You can't say that for vaudeville.
| Flatcircle wrote:
| Video Games are still priced extremely high, like home video
| cassettes were in the 80's.
| hujun wrote:
| movie theaters should become smaller, a place with many smaller
| rooms, a room for only ten people with top video/audio
| equipments, with good drink, food; make it more like going to a
| party with friends
| sammalloy wrote:
| Just as the rise of the internet changed the way people read and
| pay attention to information, so too did the advent of streaming
| change the way audiences engage with entertainment.
|
| I can barely sit still through anything that's more than an hour
| long now, and I can't imagine how I used to sit through entire
| films back in the day.
|
| I've also noticed that I prefer the series arc format over the
| superficial cinematic, one and done story, making standard film
| releases less entertaining for me.
| BTCOG wrote:
| Good deal. Maybe they'll have to go back to the drawing board and
| quit making spinoffs of remakes, of remakes. And these lame duck
| "superhero" movies. Puke.
| nathias wrote:
| popular culture was always intolerable, you're just old enough to
| notice
| flybrand wrote:
| We've got a family love of the Fast and Furious movies - we got a
| big group to go see it yesterday. The movie is awful, it could be
| my last experience ever in a theatre.
| jollybean wrote:
| He's right and it's sad.
|
| One positive note though is that 2 hours is very short - often
| not long enough to explore a story.
|
| Series formats mean they can take the time they need.
|
| That said, often they end up being filler.
| afavour wrote:
| The actual quote (with my emphasis added):
|
| > "The movie business *as before* is finished and will never come
| back."
|
| And I think that's correct. Superhero blockbusters taking over
| all box office receipts was one thing, but now those blockbusters
| are becoming deeply tied to streaming services like Disney+
| that's bringing content into people's homes and away from movie
| theatres.
|
| I won't mourn movie theatres (though I hope places emulate the
| likes of Alamo Drafthouse and do dinner, drinks and let us make
| an evening out of watching a movie), but I do worry about things
| like movie financing. It feels the industry has split in two,
| either making super-expensive superhero blockbusters or super
| cheap indie films.
|
| It makes me feel like a grouch to complain about the uber-
| popular, widely loved thing but this intertwined superhero
| universe exhausts me. I don't want to have to watch three
| previous movies and two TV shows to fully enjoy the movie that's
| in front of me. So I watch a lot more limited series TV
| instead... and maybe that's just fine?
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I soured on the superhero franchise business due to a
| combination of factors (the out of character _Man of Steel_ ,
| that first boilerplate _Thor_ film, the ghastly _Green Lantern_
| , and finally reading _Worm_ made everything else seem shallow
| by comparison) and have stepped back to look at it as an
| industry in a kind of spiral of intolerance to risk.
|
| They want product, they want it on a pipeline, they want
| guaranteed returns and they do not want to gamble about it.
| This has been true for a long time but we're seeing a
| difference of degree here. Movie production is not merely
| evolving but speciating -- and I think the new species is going
| to look like a subscription streaming service (with tie-in
| product) that releases dopamine-tweaking algorithmic product on
| the kind of tick-tock schedule for which Intel longs.
| ping_pong wrote:
| > they want guaranteed returns and they do not want to gamble
| about it
|
| This is how Hollywood is. It's the same as Silicon Valley.
| They don't want to gamble if they don't have to, they both
| just want as much money as possible.
| ping_pong wrote:
| When was the last great comedy movie you've seen in the movie
| theatres? I posed this question to my buddies and we were
| genuinely stumped. For me it was probably early 2000s, but
| nothing in the last 15 years that's for sure.
| coolspot wrote:
| "Parasite", right before COVID.
|
| Earlier - "Nice Guys".
| tshaddox wrote:
| When's the last time your "list of great comedy movies" got a
| new entry, regardless of whether you saw the new entry in the
| cinema or even if it was a new film at the time you saw it?
| ping_pong wrote:
| Every couple of years? But I do think the frequency of
| straight up comedies being produced is dwindling, and
| aren't popular enough to go to a movie theatre for.
| tshaddox wrote:
| For me, comedies are so much a matter of personal taste
| that I'm generally not interested in seeing them in the
| theater unless it's with a group of friends or I feel
| like I have reasonable expectations that I will like the
| movie a lot. They're not really like superhero or action
| movies where I can be pretty good at guessing whether
| I'll like the film.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| > It makes me feel like a grouch to complain about the uber-
| popular, widely loved thing but this intertwined superhero
| universe exhausts me. I don't want to have to watch three
| previous movies and two TV shows to fully enjoy the movie
| that's in front of me. So I watch a lot more limited series TV
| instead... and maybe that's just fine?
|
| To me, this is like complaining that you don't want to have to
| read the Fellowship of the Ring to fully enjoy the Return of
| the King.
| sidlls wrote:
| Almost nobody expects their "cotton candy" entertainment to
| require that level of effort regularly. It's fine if a small
| handful of things based on prior art ("Return of the King")
| are around; healthy even. When that's all there is, though,
| that seems like a problem.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| > Almost nobody expects their "cotton candy" entertainment
| to require that level of effort regularly.
|
| Most people love continuations of prior art. The vast
| majority of people have no problem watching a few films per
| year, and consider it a luxury, not an effort. People love
| seeing their favorite characters reappear and have done so
| long before film.
|
| > When that's all there is, though, that seems like a
| problem.
|
| Well... it's not all there is, so that's good.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Movie serials were also literally at the beginning of the
| medium
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_film
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Also quote:
|
| > "These streaming services have been making something that
| they call 'movies,' " he said. "They ain't movies. They are
| some weird algorithmic process that has created things that
| last 100 minutes or so."
|
| Funny. That would be my description of the block buster action
| films since "Raiders of the Lost Ark".
| sigzero wrote:
| I will mourn movie theaters. Some shows are just 100% better in
| that environment.
| dijit wrote:
| There's a cinema in Malmo, Sweden called "Spegeln" (meaning:
| Mirror in Swedish) which exemplifies the cinema experience
| for me. I would hate to lose it.
|
| https://www.tripadvisor.se/LocationPhotoDirectLink-g189839-d.
| ..
| js8 wrote:
| I won't. I am from Czechia and maybe the culture here was
| different, but it used to be that movie theaters were
| somewhat like a normal theater, where you are supposed to be
| mostly quiet, behave, and not eat and litter during the show.
|
| But modern multiplexes have changed that etiquette, and it's
| hard for me to stand it. And the advertisements...
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Yeah, here in CZ we dressed quite well going to the movie
| theatre in the early 1990s. These days anything will do.
| acituan wrote:
| Indeed, I'd argue a good chunk of the experience came
| from the respect and reverence the audience had to the
| occasion. Not unlike in a church, or kind of like a
| primal gathering around the fire, except this time around
| the projections of the "magic lantern".
|
| But the god of consumption got jealous and demanded we
| got things (snacks and movies alike) through our system
| as fast as possible while making him the maximum dime.
| throwaaskjdfh wrote:
| > ...not eat and litter during the show.
|
| Historically in US movie theaters, there's so much popcorn
| grease and spilled soda on the floor that your shoes
| actually get stuck to it while you're watching the movie.
|
| EDIT: Wow downvotes? It's true! Maybe they mop them now but
| back when Diller was in the movie business, your shoes
| actually did get stuck to the floor because of all the
| spilled snacks. I haven't been to a movie theater in many
| years, but the grime was an essential part of the
| experience. Someone should open a throwback 80s theater.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Hollywood's biggest film have always been adaptations of
| existing material. Some of the most regarded films of all time,
| like the Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, the Godfather,
| Lawrence of Arabia, and Chinatown, are themselves merely
| adaptations of books.
| ffggvv wrote:
| what if i told you that you can just ignore them. just like you
| probably don't listen to taylor swift despite her being popular
| elliekelly wrote:
| > I don't want to have to watch three previous movies and two
| TV shows to fully enjoy the movie that's in front of me.
|
| I feel like I "missed" the beginning of all the super hero
| franchises and, even though I'm sure I'd enjoy them, I'm just
| not interested because getting caught up enough to understand
| what's going on in the newer films feels like such a daunting
| undertaking.
|
| At the start of the pandemic I thought maybe I'd finally watch
| them all only to find out there isn't even really an agreed
| upon _order_ they should be watched!
|
| It's an odd and (I think) new phenomenon: that someone can lack
| the prerequisites to watch a movie. Even worse: no one can
| quite agree on what exactly those prerequisites _are_.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > It's an odd and (I think) new phenomenon: that someone can
| lack the prerequisites to watch a movie.
|
| There's nothing new about sequels and movie series. The only
| difference with Marvel movies might be that they are a lot of
| films and they tend to be some of the most popular films.
|
| > Even worse: no one can quite agree on what exactly those
| prerequisites are.
|
| Fans might enjoy discussing nuances of different viewing
| orders, but I think it's pretty undeniable that you can't go
| too wrong watching them in the order they were released.
| elmers-glue wrote:
| > I don't want to have to watch three previous movies and two
| TV shows to fully enjoy the movie that's in front of me.
|
| And then you still won't enjoy it, I promise you.
| spoonjim wrote:
| > It feels the industry has split in two, either making super-
| expensive superhero blockbusters or super cheap indie films.
|
| The great mid-budget content is now in Streaming TV, but if
| you're wedded to the feature film format, try watching anything
| from A24 films.
|
| > It makes me feel like a grouch to complain about the uber-
| popular, widely loved thing but this intertwined superhero
| universe exhausts me.
|
| I haven't seen a superhero movie since 1999's Star Wars: The
| Phantom Menace. Just stop watching them, you won't become
| culturally isolated.
| vincentmarle wrote:
| > I don't want to have to watch three previous movies and two
| TV shows to fully enjoy the movie that's in front of me.
|
| I recently started watched Loki on Disney+, 3 episodes in, I
| still have no idea who Loki is, where he comes from, what his
| intentions are and what he is capable of...
|
| Same problem with WandaVision. I agree, it's exhausting.
| romanhn wrote:
| Those shows most definitely assume prior knowledge of the
| universe. That said, having avoided "superhero movies" for
| years (due to not being impressed with random one-offs that I
| watched), I finally bit the bullet and watched the whole set
| in order with my kids and it made a huge difference, with
| enormous payoff in Infinity War and Endgame. FWIW, I think
| both WandaVision and Loki are fantastic.
| klodolph wrote:
| TV shows have also gotten more prestigious, and so the people
| who would have been telling their stories as movies may be
| making TV shows instead. The article compares traditional
| movies to movies from streaming services, and I just think
| that's avoiding the elephant in the room.
|
| The change started happening slowly in the late 1990s, but at
| this point I'd say that the change has _happened_ and we're in
| a golden age of television. In the 1990s, TV was seen as a step
| down from movies in terms of cultural prestige, but nowadays we
| have A-list actors starring in TV shows with budgets over $10M
| per episode. The formats for TV shows have changed, too, and
| you're much more likely to see TV shows written as six-episode
| or eight-episode seasons. They can be much more like a big,
| long movie, rather than a short TV show.
|
| (Of course, the UK has produced six-episode TV series since
| forever.)
|
| Still, I recently rewatched a few episodes of _Siskel and
| Ebert,_ and it made me a bit sad to think about just how many
| movies were coming out every year during the 1990s, and
| remember being excited to go to the theater. Rewatching some
| 1990s movies, there are shots that just don't have the right
| impact in typical home theaters.
| res0nat0r wrote:
| There are more amazing high budget TV series out now than I
| have time to keep up with. Many of them are foreign also. It
| went into overdrive after The Sopranos, so has been going
| steady for 20+ years.
|
| Anyone complaining "nothing good" anymore just either have
| terrible taste, or don't know how to do simple searching for
| new content. Same for movies IMO. There are good films
| everywhere on almost all the streaming platforms too if you
| just look for them.
| edgyquant wrote:
| I think Breaking Bad really set the stage for TV shows being
| good film. Whether you like the show or not it had a clear
| and defined story and ended after 5 seasons where most shows
| before would just run until their ratings dropped.
| ping_pong wrote:
| Better Call Saul at its best is as good, if not better,
| than 99% of Breaking Bad. Of course, the best episodes of
| BB are among the best in TV history.
| jfengel wrote:
| HBO had been doing it for a few years, with shows like The
| Wire and Deadwood. But Breaking Bad helped bring it to a
| wider audience, since AMC is basic cable rather than
| premium. (AMC had launched into that a year before with Mad
| Men, which was similarly TV as good film.)
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I think the turn of the century start of the prestige
| drama cable age was _The Sopranos_ , with _The West Wing_
| doing something similar on network TV.
| SeanBoocock wrote:
| I'd add Rome as perhaps a closer model to the sort of
| high budget, prestige television we're afforded now.
| First season had a budget in excess of $100 million
| dollars, a major increase over anything comparable
| (compare this to The Wire that was filming
| contemporaneously).
| raydev wrote:
| WW was still quite formulaic. ER, NYPD Blue, etc were all
| shows that maybe pushed for more consistent storylines
| but they were still boxed in by old school network
| expectations, and they got their starts in the mid-90s.
|
| Sopranos was a very clear break in writing style. People
| like to slot in The Wire next to it, but The Wire was
| more episodic/restricted and honestly felt like an
| R-rated network tv show to me.
| jfengel wrote:
| That seems a really good starting point. Oz preceded it,
| but was never the breakout hit that The Sopranos became.
| [deleted]
| mbg721 wrote:
| Roots in the 1970s (and The Thorn Birds afterwards) was
| notable for being a widely-viewed blockbuster miniseries, so
| the concept was there; without streaming, it was just hard to
| get an audience to watch every episode at the right time.
| ghaff wrote:
| Also Winds of War and others. Yeah, the miniseries had its
| day but, especially pre-widespread VCR, depending on an
| audience to watch every episode at a scheduled time was a
| high bar. It obviously could work but it depended on having
| a sufficiently big "event" for people to schedule a week or
| nights on successive weeks around it--in a way few would do
| today.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| > It makes me feel like a grouch to complain about the uber-
| popular, widely loved thing but this intertwined superhero
| universe exhausts me. I don't want to have to watch three
| previous movies and two TV shows to fully enjoy the movie
| that's in front of me.
|
| They've also just become quite formulaic and as a result,
| boring.
| ghaff wrote:
| Reputedly at least in part because of the increased
| importance of non-English speaking markets, even the better
| action movies are so dominated by long action sequences that
| they really detract for me.
|
| And to the parent point, on top of that, I'm now expected to
| understand at least some of the intricacies of a complex
| movie/TV universe that I don't really care that deeply about.
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| > And I think that's correct. Superhero blockbusters taking
| over all box office receipts was one thing, but now those
| blockbusters are becoming deeply tied to streaming services
| like Disney+ that's bringing content into people's homes and
| away from movie theatres.
|
| What's interesting is that the industry has repeatedly been
| broken up due to antitrust & anti-competition issues. It will
| be interesting to see how things stand in 10-15 years; will
| consolidation eventually bring government action or do we now
| accept 3-4 major players as being sufficient competition.
| handrous wrote:
| > I won't mourn movie theatres (though I hope places emulate
| the likes of Alamo Drafthouse and do dinner, drinks and let us
| make an evening out of watching a movie), but I do worry about
| things like movie financing. It feels the industry has split in
| two, either making super-expensive superhero blockbusters or
| super cheap indie films.
|
| I'm informed by my cinemaphile friend that exactly this
| phenomenon has been much remarked upon in the last 15-20 years.
| Mid-budget films, which used to be very common, are mostly
| dead, leaving a couple kinds of low-budget film (the startup-
| model where you put out a ton of cheap movies and hope one is
| the next Blair Witch--and yes, most of this is horror--and the
| "indie" film kind) and the mega-budget ones that are basically
| investment vehicles. So, two kinds of films that exist because
| those models are the best ROI, and then indie films, and that's
| about it.
|
| Meanwhile, there are still tons of good films coming out, but
| most are (broadly) in the "indie" bucket. People who complain
| that nothing good is made anymore[0] must just be looking at
| what's advertised heavily, is all I can figure. Dozens of good-
| to-great movies come out every year, including a whole bunch
| from the US.
|
| [0] Then there's "it's all remakes now"--but 1) it's not, and
| 2) Hollywood started churning out tons of remakes about as
| early in their history as they possibly could, and never
| stopped.
| majormajor wrote:
| The good news is that an indie film on zero budget from the
| 90s was much more technologically limited than it is today,
| so access to fancy cameras matters less than it did then, and
| it lets talent shine more.
| masayune wrote:
| how do you find these good, low budget movies? would love to
| know your discovery process
| wwweston wrote:
| Find someone who is more into movies than you are and talk
| to them regularly. :)
|
| I got introduced to a bunch last year by making the
| acquaintance of a film grad student who ran a movie club
| that met via Discord every Saturday night to discuss a film
| of the week.
|
| I think this could also probably be approximated by finding
| someone into film on social media, or watching entries
| accepted into well-regarded film festivals, or if you
| happen to have an active mom & pop video store in your
| area, talking with the clerks.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Personnaly I regularly check out the sundance festival
| entries and anything produced by annapurna and
| https://a24films.com/
| bloat wrote:
| I use Letterboxd. Its pretty easy to get started, look up a
| bunch of movies you know you like, read some of the
| reviews, follow some people who seem like they know movies
| and would be into interesting stuff, and then see what
| comes your way.
| roymurdock wrote:
| Can you recommend some good movies from last/this year? Have
| been digging into old movies to get my fix recently thinking
| there wasn't anything good out.
| DullBlueDot wrote:
| I highly recommend the In/Frame/Out YouTube channel for
| dissections of good indie and older classic movies. His
| year-end lists are always satisfying. The Scottish accent
| is the cherry on top.
| handrous wrote:
| If you watched the film "Happy Death Day" (if not the
| lesser sequel) and enjoyed its exploration of a kind-of
| goofy mashup (Ground Hog Day x Teen Slasher), the same
| director made a film built on, roughly, a similar concept,
| just called "Freaky". If you already suspect you might like
| it, don't read anything and just watch, though you may be
| able to guess the mash-up from the one-word title. It's
| fun, and well-made.
|
| I'm struggling to think of much else that I've personally
| seen, from last year, that wasn't a little _too_ indie or
| "genre" for me to recommend it to someone whose tastes I
| don't know--I didn't get much new watched, and mostly
| caught up on some reputedly-great stuff I'd missed from the
| prior five years or so (I keep up with a mix of pop junk
| food films, which I do like, and the "good" stuff, but
| usually don't have time to watch anywhere near all of
| either) aside from some fairly taste-specific newer
| material I watched.
|
| Some other titles I'm seeing, from people I know and trust,
| for 2020, include: First Cow; The Old Guard; Portrait of a
| Lady on Fire (technically a 2019 film, but widely available
| in 2020); Wolfwalkers (animated); Spontaneous; Bacurau;
| Blow the Man Down. There are lots more, that's just a
| varied sampling.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Happy Death Day was a great, and unique, idea I loved it.
| I even thought the second was not bad even if I don't
| think they needed to try and explain what was happening
| scientifically. I forgot about Freaky and will have to
| watch that.
|
| I actually think TV shows are where good film comes from
| these days, especially with them not being made for
| syndication so we now can get 6 episode seasons. Mare of
| East Town was a great mystery that just came out. It is
| true that the superhero genre has hijacked a lot of
| talent.
| bloat wrote:
| From what I've seen released from 2020 onwards I've
| particularly liked:
|
| Black Bear, Possessor, Palm Springs, Love And Monsters,
| Psycho Goreman, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, White Tiger,
| Moxie, The Mitchells Vs The Machines
|
| Going back a bit further:
|
| Saint Maud, Color Out Of Space, Once Upon A Time... In
| Hollywood, Midsommar, The Lighthouse, Crawl, The Personal
| History Of David Copperfield
| munificent wrote:
| _> Then there 's "it's all remakes now"--but 1) it's not,_
|
| It really is, if by "remake" you mean all ways of leveraging
| existing IP. Here are the top ten box office films of 2020:
| * Bad Boys for Life (sequel) * Sonic the Hedgehog
| (videogame) * Birds of Prey (comic book) *
| Dolittle (book) * The Invisible Man (book) *
| The Call of the Wild (book) * Onward (original)
| * The Croods: A New Age (sequel) * Tenet (original)
| * Wonder Woman 1984 (sequal, comic book)
|
| Two originals. Now go back 20 years: *
| Mission: Impossible 2 (sequel) * Gladiator (book)
| * Cast Away (original) * What Women Want (original)
| * Dinosaur (original) * How the Grinch Stole
| Christmas (book) * Meet the Parents (remake)
| * The Perfect Storm (book) * X-Men (comic book)
| * What Lies Beneath (original)
|
| Four originals. Go back another 10 years: *
| Ghost (original) * Home Alone (original) *
| Pretty Woman (original) * Dances with Wolves (book)
| * Total Recall (short story) * Back to the Future
| Part III (sequel) * Die Hard 2 (sequel) *
| Presumed Innocent (book) * Teenage Mutant Ninja
| Turtles (comic book) * Kindergarten Cop (original)
|
| Five originals. Another ten years to 1980:
| * The Empire Strikes Back (sequel) * 9 to 5
| (original) * Stir Crazy (original) *
| Airplane! (original) * Any Which Way You Can (sequel)
| * Private Benjamin (original) * Coal Miner's Daughter
| (original) * Smokey and the Bandit II (sequel)
| * The Blue Lagoon (book) * The Blues Brothers (SNL
| sketch)
|
| Five originals again. I'm going by top box-office gross here
| because I think that's a good proxy for what is successful.
| You can look at other years, but there is a very clear (but
| not overwhelming) trend towards movies based on familiar
| content. It's not clear whether studios are leading audiences
| or vice versa. Probably some iterative process of both.
|
| There's also a clear trend away from dramas. I think that's
| because drama (and non-slapstick comedies) tend to rely
| heavily on specific cultural norms for their effect which
| makes them translate poorly. There is a very clear trend
| especially in the last decade or so of Hollywood focusing on
| movies that will also do well in China in particular.
| ttmb wrote:
| > Here are the top ten box office films of 2020
|
| But see, 2020 was an aberration. You have to look at 2019.
|
| Sequel, remake, sequel, sequel, comic, sequel,
| sequel/comic, remake, comic, sequel/remake,
|
| Oh. Oh no. Let's keep going for top 20, yeah?
|
| Sequel/remake, ORIGINAL, sequel, sequel, sequel, sequel,
| video game, ORIGINAL, comic, comic. (from boxofficemojo)
|
| 2 in the top 20.
|
| Let's keep going?
|
| ORIGINAL, remake, sequel-ish? sequel, sequel, (US) remake,
| ORIGINAL, sequel, ORIGINAL, remake, tv-to-film, ORIGINAL,
| comic, ORIGINAL, sequel, sequel, sequel, ORIGINAL, sequel,
| sequel, ...
|
| Let's stop there, but don't assume for a second that all
| the remakes and sequels are top-loaded - they may dominate
| the top of the chart but they go pretty far down it too.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Looks to be a different source from the OP, but let's go
| down the chart for 1980 past the top ten:
|
| https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/1980/
|
| Kramer vs. Kramer (book)
|
| Ordinary People (book)
|
| Popeye (comic)
|
| The Shining (book)
|
| Cheech and Chong's Next Movie (sequel)
|
| Caddyshack (original - franchise starter)
|
| Friday the 13th (original - franchise starter)
|
| Brubaker (book)
|
| The Jazz Singer (remake)
|
| Flash Gordon (sequel/remake)
|
| Bronco Billy (original)
|
| Raging Bull (book - biopic)
|
| Maybe you should go back a few decades until you can find
| a time when the top 20 were mostly originals. Would have
| to be before the _Star Wars_ / _Jaws_ blockbuster era,
| probably.
| OJFord wrote:
| Dolittle is not the first time it's been adapted to film
| either. '67, '98, '01 (sequel), '06 (sequel).
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Airplane was not strictly an original, it was a
| remake/spoof of _Zero Hour_ from 1957 and more broadly
| spoofing the "disaster" film concept.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| You could also argue it was spoofing the _Airport_ films
| which were based on books.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| There are a significant number of scenes in Airplane that
| are directly lifted from Zero Hour. I haven't checked
| recently, but I think it's almost a scene-for-scene
| remake in many respects.
| newsclues wrote:
| Spoofs are derivative works but original works compared
| to remakes or sequels.
| roland35 wrote:
| Interesting lists, although I think maybe books based
| movies are more towards original side if we map this as a
| spectrum instead of a binary value :)
|
| New books with great stories are written every year, and I
| would rather watch that than spider man reboot #4 honestly.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| On the other hand, would you want to watch another big-
| budget Harry Potter side story spin-off ( _Fantastic
| Beasts_ ), an adaptation of bad or forgettable YA novel
| franchises ( _Twilight_ , _Divergent_ , _Percy Jackson_
| ), _Fifty Shades of Grey_ , or the umpteenth adaptation
| of some Jane Austen novel?
|
| Book adaptations themselves are a spectrum of originality
| and quality.
| munificent wrote:
| _> I think maybe books based movies are more towards
| original side_
|
| I agree totally. I'd also score remakes as more original
| if the film being remade is significantly older.
| watwut wrote:
| > People who complain that nothing good is made anymore[0]
| must just be looking at what's advertised heavily, is all I
| can figure.
|
| That would be me. I am utterly uninterested in superheroes
| and found movies I seen last years somewhere between boring
| repetitive and annoying. Tho I liked parazite and some of
| other international splash making movies. At minimum they
| used different tropes.
|
| I have no idea where those fun indie movies are nor how to
| find them. Like, where should I go to be able to find some I
| might like?
| handrous wrote:
| 1) Try film festival schedules or lists-of-what-showed from
| previous years. Not _just_ Sundance and Cannes and such
| (though lots of the films shown at those _are_ , in fact,
| good, so don't _not_ look at those)--if you have any
| special genre or topic interests, there may be some
| festivals for them, so look up a few big ones and start
| browsing. Why previous years? Because those films usually
| aren 't widely available the same year they're in
| festivals, _and_ you 'll get the benefit of reviews, if you
| don't want to just start blindly watching anything that
| looks interesting.
|
| 2) There are niche streaming services that specialize in
| genres, or in indie + international, films, which are great
| for finding all kinds of wonderful things you'd never have
| known about otherwise. mubi.com, for instance, features
| those sorts of films from all years, including recent ones.
| Shudder is a streaming service for horror films (horror is
| downright _rich_ these days--I can provide lots of strong,
| varied recommendations from the last few years, if you 're
| into that kind of thing). Stuff like that. Really, just
| look up lists of video streaming services and take a glance
| at the catalogues of any you've not heard of.
| mywacaday wrote:
| What would have been considered a mid budget film?
| prpl wrote:
| Probably many movies you can think of from the 90s/00s that
| were not blockbusters, especially romcoms.
| xnyan wrote:
| Moreso than it's production cost (though that's a big part
| of it) a mid-budget is a hollywood-level (full production
| and cast) movie that does not attempt to be all things to
| all people. This could be something like a romantic comedy,
| a medium-scale character study or a high-concept scifi -
| something that costs say 40 million to make, returns 80
| million and is never intended to be a blockbuster.
|
| Lots of reasons why they are less common. One is absolutely
| that more and more, TV is able to serve as well or better
| in the mid-budget role, the quality of TV has vastly
| improved in the last 20 years. Studios are less interested
| in investing 40 million to double their money and would
| rather risk hundreds of millions on the chance to make
| billions.
| handrous wrote:
| Not a great link, but this covers the gist of it:
|
| https://www.flavorwire.com/492985/how-the-death-of-mid-
| budge...
|
| It quotes a (clearly a bit exaggerated for effect, at the
| low end) range of $500,000-$80,000,000 as "mid budget", and
| gives examples of the category including Blue Velvet, The
| Godfather, and Hairspray.
|
| It's not that _no_ films are made in that range anymore,
| just that it 's much harder to find financing for a project
| in that range for a film intended for wide release and any
| amount of promotion. The money guys want a nothing-budget
| movie that might become a hit (the startup model), or huge
| can't-lose projects with likely outcomes that don't include
| a loss, or not much of one (the formulaic international-
| friendly [by which I mean China-friendly] action
| blockbuster that everyone seems to hate, but that
| nonetheless consistently make piles of money)
|
| It quotes a bunch of mid-budget directors complaining about
| this, some leaving filmmaking entirely because their
| options seem to be to go back to making shoestring-budget
| movies like they did when they were starting out, or start
| working on projects they don't like (huge-budget films),
| aside from self-financing. They seem to be concerned about
| how the next generations of directors will develop their
| careers, without stable financing for directors who've
| "made it" but don't want to make Marvel movies and such--
| IMO we're probably heading back to something resembling the
| studio system, largely, so the era of lots of Important
| Directors who Really Matter may be on its way out, anyway,
| at least for a while.
|
| [EDIT] Also, searching things like "the death of the mid-
| budget film" turns up tons of material like this.
| chalst wrote:
| Being John Malkovich had a budget of $13 million in 1999 -
| I'm guessing that's mid-range.
| iNane9000 wrote:
| How do I find these movies? Amazon has some old, mostly low
| quality movies, but nothing good or recent. They got rid of
| the criterion collection years ago. Sincere question: How
| does one even find or acquire films today? I'd love to watch
| a movie, but literally don't know how to go about it anymore.
| Netflix is not an answer as most of their content are not
| movies and basically spam to me.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| I pay for Spotify and Steam Games and HBO Max, but pirate
| movies since Hollywood isn't interested in making films
| available to be watched.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| Your local library probably has tons of DVD and Blu-Ray
| discs (and librarians who can provide recommendations), and
| maybe free access to an app like Hoopla with
| classic/highbrow movies.
| graeme wrote:
| Criterion channel is a great streaming service for old
| classics.
| esperent wrote:
| If it's an old film and it's not easily available on a
| streaming service, I torrent it.
| ghaff wrote:
| Amazon has tons of movies but many of them you have to
| buy/rent a la carte. At least in the US, there's Red Box
| for mostly recent films. You can also subscribe to Netflix'
| DVD service--although their back catalog isn't as good as
| it used to be.
| weeblewobble wrote:
| I never understood this complaint. There are dozens and
| dozens of recent, popular (good is subjective) movies on
| the front page of Amazon, Netflix and HBO Max right now.
| heurist wrote:
| Check out the Criterion Channel:
| https://www.criterionchannel.com/
| Arainach wrote:
| justwatch.com lets you search and discover what services
| have what movies.
|
| Alternatively, DIY. As streaming became more popular,
| optical media and hard drives became far more cheap. Over
| the last 10-15 years I've ended up with more than 500
| movies, all of which I own legally and most of which cost
| me $5 or less. They get to all of my devices through Plex
| (I used to use Kodi, which is fine over a LAN if that's all
| you care about).
|
| A significant number of them aren't available for streaming
| anywhere at the moment, and plenty more would require
| obscure services I don't feel a need to pay for. It was a
| gradual upfront cost, but not that extravagent compared to
| the cost of paying for a couple of streaming services over
| that time - to say nothing of the 6-10 I'd have to
| subscribe to to actually have access to all of it.
| marnett wrote:
| Friendly plug for kanopy.com. Amazing, changing collection
| and likely free signup and streaming (monthly-refreshing
| limit) with your local library card (:
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Also/or, your library may give you access to a similar
| service called Hoopla. I have access to both via my local
| library, and I find Kanopy's selection (and picture
| quality) somewhat better, especially for foreign (non--
| USA) content.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The TCM channel does a good job of organizing films into
| categories. I've been watching their Film Noir picks every
| Saturday night. Lots of fun movies I never knew existed.
| handrous wrote:
| HBO's streaming service rotates a decent selection of TCM
| material, too, complete with the intros.
| hallarempt wrote:
| My wife and I used to buy a DVD in the second-hand
| books/new dvd's shop round the corner every Friday for a
| Friday-night movie viewing. He knew our tastes -- it must
| be sweet, funny with a happy ending and no adultery or rape
| -- but the shop closed.
|
| We regularly ask each other "Where's Roman Holiday but with
| a cute girl instead of Gregory Peck. Audrey Hepburn can
| stay."? Why all the drama in movies these days? We just
| wanna see two girls kiss and walk away in the twilight,
| hand-in-hand. But all we get is drama like Ammonite.
|
| Why isn't there yet a Poser or
| Daz3D/Blender/MakeHuman/$GAME_ENGINE that combined makes it
| easy for people to tell tales as movies yet? It should be
| possible to put everything together in an interface that
| even a movie producer could understand, which would make it
| a doddle for ordinary people.
| blooalien wrote:
| > Why isn't there yet a Poser or
| Daz3D/Blender/MakeHuman/$GAME_ENGINE that combined makes
| it easy for people to tell tales as movies yet? It should
| be possible to put everything together in an interface
| that even a movie producer could understand, which would
| make it a doddle for ordinary people.
|
| Okay, seriously? That's a _really good_ idea right there.
| I personally would lean towards Blender + Godot game
| engine for such a project, but I 'm just hugely in favor
| of open source in general, so... The thing to make such a
| tool useful though would be an easily accessible library
| of actors (character models), animation/movement
| presets/prefab library, scenery and set dressing, and an
| interface to tie it all together in a way "which would
| make it a doddle for ordinary people" as you say. I could
| see something like that bein' a _huge boon_ for
| "storyteller" types to get a good start in the media
| creation arena though.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Why all the drama in movies these days? We just wanna
| see two girls kiss and walk away in the twilight, hand-
| in-hand.
|
| I don't see how that's enough to support a film? No
| challenge to overcome or issue to resolve? That's a basic
| of storytelling. What's left without it?
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| > Why isn't there yet a Poser or
| Daz3D/Blender/MakeHuman/$GAME_ENGINE that combined makes
| it easy for people to tell tales as movies yet?
|
| This is happening right now and it is mostly an update of
| the film techniques used in schlock, b films, but the
| results are much better.
| vo2maxer wrote:
| In addition to the criterion channel, already mentioned,
| try MUBI [1]. It's a cinephile's dream: a film discovery
| nearly everyday while also curating the great directors.
|
| [1] https://mubi.com/
| paganel wrote:
| +1 for MUBI, really great cinephile resource.
|
| One can also find very interesting stuff on YouTube,
| depending on how good your search skills are, I know that
| at the start of the pandemic I had discovered a user who
| was uploading Italian western spaghetti movies in HD
| format. I think I might also have found something similar
| for Hong Kong wuxia movies from the 1960s and 1970s but
| I'm not sure.
| sosborn wrote:
| Netflix has a tab to browse only movies.
|
| Amazon does too. They usually have a handful of quality old
| movies (lots of junk too), but some of their originals are
| very good.
| telesilla wrote:
| This is my go-to when I want to browse Netflix
|
| https://www.finder.com/uk/netflix-around-the-world/genre-
| lis...
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Hollywood started churning out tons of remakes about as
| early in their history as they possibly could, and never
| stopped._
|
| Very true. From the 1930's until now, the percentage of
| Hollywood films that aren't recreations of an earlier film, a
| book, or a play is vanishingly small.
|
| To be sure, there is still a good number of original films,
| even big-name ones, but those are very few and far between.
| trynewideas wrote:
| Broadway celebrates revivals, but Hollywood is almost
| ashamed of remakes. There's a Tony award for best revival,
| but only a Raspberry for worst remake.
|
| Both are a form of unoriginal profiteering, on at least a
| business level. Maybe it's the permanence of a film
| compared to the ephemerality of a live performance, but the
| vast difference in how they're received has always bugged
| me.
| nineplay wrote:
| > People who complain that nothing good is made anymore must
| just be looking at what's advertised heavily
|
| I can't speak for everyone but I think it's hard to find
| anything 'fun'. The indie films inevitably seem to be deadly
| serious, whether it's terrible crimes or failing
| relationships or the inevitably of death. If a viewer wants
| 'fun' then they're stuck with formulaic superhero
| blockbusters.
|
| It feels different. Spielberg was fun, Lucas was fun,
| Hitchcock was fun. Perhaps they were the outliers even during
| their times, but it seems like all that sense of adventure
| has been sucked into the big franchises and mangled into
| these lowest-common-dementor films. The international market
| wants big explosions and 'clever' comebacks.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| >lowest-common-dementor
|
| Don't give them any ideas about more Potter films, even if
| Rowling has been canceled
| delecti wrote:
| It's a bit late for that. There are already 3 more
| Fantastic Beasts movies in various stages of development.
| ryandrake wrote:
| There was a thread[1] earlier in the week lamenting how
| tough it is to make modern comedies. Between the Twitter
| mobs scrutinizing anything for insensitivity and the need
| to appeal to international markets, it's really hard to
| come up with a universally funny and PC-acceptable comedy
| anymore. You can't do slapstick or silliness. You can't
| (even gently) poke fun at "groups" anymore. Best you can do
| is a cynical "dark comedy" that provides awkward discomfort
| and doesn't actually make you laugh.
|
| 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27750565
| redisman wrote:
| If you cater to the international market ("make everyone
| happy"). The you'll inevitably end up with cookie cutter
| inoffensive garbage like we're spewing out now. Get a few
| reliable IPs and milk them for all they're worth.
|
| If I think about some indie blockbuster comedies none of
| them really did anything that would get the Twitter crowd
| going crazy. Napoleon Dynamite and Super Troopers for
| example I could see being hits today
| smogcutter wrote:
| This is bizarre, willfully blind take in a world where
| _Always Sunny_ is one of the longest running comedy
| series of all time.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| If anything, their point is somewhat made because someone
| made the decision to remove IASIP episodes from legal
| streaming options.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/IASIP/comments/hgbrs8/hulu_has_r
| emo...
|
| And if you are familiar with the show, they are not
| prejudiced at all. But whoever chose to remove them is
| doing the "cover your ass" move, so I can certainly see
| some merit in what ryandrake is saying.
|
| 30 rock episodes were removed too:
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/23/entertainment/30-rock-
| episode...
| OJFord wrote:
| Thanks for that, I've been watching through the whole lot
| while indoor cycling (I started to see what the fuss was
| about, so I have to finish now, but it's not really my
| sort of thing so I watch it when I can't pay full
| attention to whatever I watch) on Netflix and noticed
| some gaps compared to my tracker app. One of them was
| that 'takes out the trash' episode, so must be the same
| (link is about Hulu).
|
| I really don't like this trend. Honestly, satire or not.
| Rate it appropriately, and let me decide what I'm
| comfortable viewing? It just seems petty and
| mollycoddling to prevent me watching something because at
| some point within it something that may or may not be
| offensive to me or others happens.
|
| I actually don't even understand the reasoning? Do the
| producers request it to protect the reputation of the
| programme, perceiving it as a risk?
| jandrese wrote:
| Comedies are supposed to be mid-low budget affairs. They
| are supposed to be able to ignore the international
| market because they can make a profit on just the
| domestic audience.
|
| This sort of ties in with what a previous poster was
| saying about the mid-budget movies disappearing because
| the money flows to the top and the bottom end is full of
| recently graduated art students trying to out-serious one
| another.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| 2019 (pre-covid) movies:
|
| Men In Black, Shazam, Charlie's Angels, Jumanji, Murder
| Mystery, Big Time Adolescence, Scary Stories To Tell In The
| Dark, Good Boys, Weathering With You, Doom Annihilation...
| majormajor wrote:
| That's a broader cultural issue for all sorts of art today,
| not a movie specific thing.
|
| The depressed/angry mood has been building for a couple
| decades or more, and getting more widespread. Even
| something intentionally over the top like Fast and Furious
| or Marvel has more "serious issue" stuff in many of the
| installments from the last 5 years than previously.
|
| It's easier in the news to see all the bad stuff that used
| to get hidden behind the scenes, so until something happens
| about that or people just tired of seeing it both in the
| news and in art, I imagine it'll be here for a little
| longer.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _The depressed /angry mood has been building for a couple
| decades or more, and getting more widespread._
|
| You can see this a lot in comedy. Comedy used to be
| mostly about humor, with occasional social commentary.
| Now it's largely about anger and shock value. "Comedians"
| are targeting the same brain patterns as social media.
|
| I think that's a reason that people like Jim Gaffigan
| find such a strong following. There's a good number of
| people who are just burned out on the outrage industry
| treadmill.
| nkohari wrote:
| This has always been a thing, though: George Carlin,
| Richard Pryor, etc.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Which is why I stated "mostly."
|
| Carlin, Pryor, Foxx, Bruce and others were rarities.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| Tangentially, last night I half-listened to an
| interesting YouTube video that used the history of Robin
| Hood movies to describe this trend.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=428ZxrW6jhk
|
| It's a slowly escalating 45-minute rant, but I think that
| this quote from toward the end summarizes it fairly well:
| "I'm admittedly a little tired of seeing heroes always
| surrounded by worlds of gray, because, if they're there
| long enough, they start to feel kind of gray, too."
|
| I haven't ever seen the Errol Flynn version of Robin
| Hood, but I suppose my equivalent is that, as far as I'm
| concerned, Batman peaked with the TV show in the 1960s.
| It wasn't just colorful, it was legitimately fun. To the
| point where even the bad episodes were good. The Tim
| Burton movies were also a bit like that. They were
| visually dark, sure, but that was Tim Burton's
| aesthetics, and it was a package deal that came together
| with at least a few glimmerings of that same twisted
| sense of humor that got him fired from Disney for making
| _Frankenweenie._
|
| Since then, though? It's a bunch of increasingly sad
| movies by apparently sad people whose creative drive
| seems to primarily come from the desire to demonstrate to
| themselves and everyone else that they are Grown Ups, and
| who are too busy Taking Their Jobs Seriously to have any
| fun at work. And so they're working so hard that, even
| though what they're producing is technically classified
| as entertainment, the end result is so joyless that
| watching it ends up feeling, at least to me, like work.
| afavour wrote:
| I think the simple answer is that movies tend to reflect
| the world around them. Not to get too political on HN but
| I think no matter your political stripes we can agree
| that the general mood of the country has been _not great_
| since at least 2015 or so. You could argue that means we
| need more escapism, not less, but somehow that doesn 't
| happen.
| kmonsen wrote:
| That is actually not true, Gallup says right know we feel
| the best we have done in 13 years:
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/351932/americans-life-
| ratings-r...
|
| I think there is something to what you are saying, and
| Americans are not feeling as well as the (average) GDP
| data should indicate compared to the Nordics, but in
| general data shows we feel fine.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| I think it goes both ways. The stories we tell reflect
| our thinking, and our thinking is shaped by the stories
| we tell.
|
| The cynic in me thinks that another problem is that fun
| is bad for business. Fun makes people feel good, and
| people who feel good aren't as likely to engage in retail
| therapy, and modern movies make a whole lot of money off
| of merchandising.
| Y_Y wrote:
| > The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What
| is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the
| desperate city you go into the desperate country, and
| have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and
| muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is
| concealed even under what are called the games and
| amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this
| comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom
| not to do desperate things.
|
| - Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)
| irrational wrote:
| I've felt tremendously better since Biden was elected
| and, as an introvert, the lockdown for the past year and
| a half has done wonders for my mental health. I'm happy
| now than I've ever been (at least for the past four
| decades).
| jandrese wrote:
| IMHO this what Thor: Ragnarok got right.
|
| It was one of the few Marvel movies that seemed to
| remember its comic book origins. Quick pace--individual
| comic issues are _short_ , snappy (not necessarily
| quippy) dialog--because there isn't space on a comic
| panel for walls of text, colorful and interesting
| character designs, and a good dose of humor sprinkled in.
|
| It would probably get old if every Marvel movie were like
| that, but all in all I think the formula works. Guardians
| of the Galaxy also did pretty well in this regard, but
| making most of the characters assholes in one way or
| another undercut the theme somewhat.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> They were visually dark, sure, but that was Tim
| Burton's aesthetics, and it was a package deal that came
| together with at least a few glimmerings of that same
| twisted sense of humor that got him fired from Disney for
| making Frankenweenie.
|
| Heh. Like in Batman Returns were the Penguin yells at
| Batman: "You're jealous, because I'm a genuine freak and
| you have to wear a mask!". I loved that bit :)
|
| Danny DeVito, man. A comedian playing a deformed super-
| villain. That was cinema, once. That was even superhero
| movies, once.
| Retric wrote:
| It's really difficult to make a successful movie nowadays
| when you need to appeal to multiple different cultures at
| the same time. The depressed/angry mood is simply easier
| on the artist because it's universal by default.
|
| It sticks around until people get bored of it and studios
| move on for a while. Only to circle back in a few year
| and try again.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| It's so weird to have people say Marvel is getting "so
| serious" now, when the movies are all using stories from
| decades old comic series.
| jedberg wrote:
| They use the old stories and then add walls of serious
| text and sadness and darkness that weren't there in the
| original comics.
| nineplay wrote:
| That's an interesting point. Certainly the zeitgeist
| among the millennials seems to be that things are bad and
| they are only going to get worse. Maybe Star Wars seems
| hopelessly optimistic since civilizations will implode
| well before they invent hyperdrives.
| Flatcircle wrote:
| it's so true. These days a "fun" movie will be super dark
| and violent, or insanely cheesy. There's no slick, fun,
| adventure films anymore.
| handrous wrote:
| > I can't speak for everyone but I think it's hard to find
| anything 'fun'. The indie films inevitably seem to be
| deadly serious, whether it's terrible crimes or failing
| relationships or the inevitably of death. If a viewer wants
| 'fun' then they're stuck with formulaic superhero
| blockbusters.
|
| Yeah, good point. Fun films from the more indie side exist,
| but they aren't the norm, that's true.
| devonkim wrote:
| Psycho Goreman is a great example of a mid-budget movie
| that's 100% about the fun. The issue really appears to be
| about movie investors being unwilling to take risks like
| they used to, which makes sense given investor sentiments
| as a whole across the past several decades leaning more
| and more conservative as wealth loss protection is a
| requirement, which removes a lot of creative room for new
| IPs.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Go back and watch films from the early 70s - the comedies
| are farcically stupid and the serious films are violent and
| paranoid, because between Vietnam, Watergate, and other
| political issues, its was a tough time and people were
| angry, disillusioned, and pessimistic. Spielberg's first
| commercial film _Duel_ is a very fine piece of cinema but
| it 's far from being 'fun.' Likewise Lucas' early work like
| _THX1138_ or _American Graffiti_ is shot through with
| anxiety about the future and lost innocence. Hitchcock
| could do great screwball comedies but he alternated them
| with nightmarish vortexes on taboo subjects.
|
| What you want are optimistic films where people get into
| trouble but keep their sense of humor and eventually bounce
| back. That requires a social and cultural environment, and
| a showbusiness industry, in which people can do the same.
| Have you heard many stories lately where a talented
| director goes way over budget or even bombs but makes a
| great comeback because people are forgiving and want to
| support a real artist? You have not, because the arts are
| heavily professionalized these days and computers have made
| accountants very powerful.
| wozniacki wrote:
| The last good American indie film I've watched was
| Hereditary (2018) [1] and before that 'Blue Ruin' (2013)
| [2].
|
| They weren't exceptional but when you're awash in 'swords &
| sandals', 'comic book' crap and Adam Sandler formula-thons,
| even middling fare seem great.
|
| On the TV front, True Detective Season 2 [3] is sorely
| underrated. Though fictional, it gives you a glimpse into
| the many possible dimensions of California graft and
| corruption that are all too close to real life developments
| surrounding the recent California High-Speed Rail
| mismanagement junket [4].
|
| I agree with the sentiment expressed in this thread that
| well-financed, movies for adults with good casting and
| talented filmmakers have become very scarce.
|
| [1] Hereditary
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hereditary_(film)
|
| [2] Blue Ruin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ruin
|
| [3] True Detective (season 2)
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Detective_(season_2)
|
| [4] California High-Speed Rail
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail
| watwut wrote:
| I remember seeing indie comedies and horrors. I dont think
| indy implies serious, altrough there are also sad indie
| movies.
|
| > . If a viewer wants 'fun' then they're stuck with
| formulaic superhero blockbusters.
|
| I dont think this is true either. The industry producing
| formulaic is not because it is only way to have fun. If you
| look at series that came out lately (Money Heist, Westworld
| ... ) they are not formulaic and are fun.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| I only watched the first season of Westworld and I found
| it very formulaic and full of common trope but it's been
| too long now for me to discuss it.
|
| Last serie I really appreciated: the OA.
| jandrese wrote:
| Westworld tied itself in knots trying to "gotcha" the
| audience. At the end of the day I think a more
| straightforward storytelling method probably would have
| worked better.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Westworld was also more or less my serie fatigue point. I
| was not a big consumer of TV shows and certainly didn't
| ever binge but nonetheless it was a tipping point.
| zo1 wrote:
| Take this with a grain of salt and bias on my part. But
| indie movies from my perspective seem to be stuck on the
| "weird". They have to be "weird" (or "different")
| otherwise they're not "indie" but rather low-budget
| "b-movies" that I think everyone despises to some degree.
| Unless of course they end up being a hit in which case
| they're cult-classics.
| OJFord wrote:
| Agreed. 'Indie' = low budget and weird/niche/slightly
| pretentious/not for me but grudging respect for it; 'B' =
| low budget and I think it's bad; 'cult' = low budget and
| I think it's good.
|
| It's not obvious that one would rather apply 'cult' than
| 'independent' to something one likes, but there we go,
| language!
| zambal wrote:
| Interesting observation! I think it's the same with
| music. I love all kinds of music, from the very
| weird/experimental to big budget larger than life
| sounding mainstream productions. Being also a bedroom
| music producer with limited time, I would love to match
| these big budget productions, but I don't have the
| ability to get to that level. So instead of trying to
| make a weak imitation, it's more fun and rewarding to
| create something different or weird.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Seems inevitable that streaming services would
| cannibalize some of that low-invest fun media. The format
| is just more relaxed and if I want to see something kinda
| silly and fun, I'd rather just pop on my TV.
| mrec wrote:
| For anyone looking for a fun and surprisingly
| heartwarming indie gem, I can highly recommend 2017's
| _One Cut of the Dead_ [1]. Budget: $25,000. Worldwide box
| office: $31,200,000.
|
| [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7914416/
| lstodd wrote:
| Haha yes, this one is great.
|
| Anyone up for laughs can check out Timo Vuorensola works.
|
| Or the whole Troma Entertainment corpus.
|
| Srsrly, cinema isn't limited to just the cali crap that
| gets on the networks.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| > It makes me feel like a grouch to complain about the uber-
| popular, widely loved thing but this intertwined superhero
| universe exhausts me.
|
| I feel the same way and here is how I approached it: buy a
| bunch of DIS stock, don't watch superhero movies.
| jtwaleson wrote:
| Ok, here's my problem with the movie theatre industry. There's
| 100+ years of fantastic historical content and we're not doing
| anything with it. 99% of what's shown in theaters is new
| releases. I understand we don't want to "go stale" as a society
| and that movie producers also need to make a living, but the
| balance is just way off.
|
| I would pay good money to see "the good the bad and the ugly"
| with my kids in a couple of years. If you compare movie theatres
| to classical music we seem to play only 10% new content at
| concert halls, the rest are the 100+ year old classics.
| cbanek wrote:
| Totally agree here. Especially since a lot of the newer
| projectors and movies I think are digital formats. There's a
| local art theater here that is excellent that does a lot of
| older movies and movie marathons. But I think also getting the
| rights can be a trick too.
|
| I just want to say being able to see Wrath of Khan in a theater
| was really worth it!
| imranq wrote:
| You could also say that 99% of the internet is stale and that
| we are typically consuming content created over the last few
| days. Maybe we need some all purpose content curation system
| that gets us the movies, articles, books that would be most
| relevant to us regardless of when they were created.
| GormanFletcher wrote:
| Before everything shut down last year, my local theaters played
| a showing of a classic film each month, often Hitchcock. The
| few I went to had plenty of attendees.
|
| Another local theater took the lockdown as an opportunity to do
| outdoor socially-distanced showings of previous blockbusters,
| like _The Dark Knight_. Plenty of attendees there, too.
|
| I'd be happy to have more showings like that.
| jtwaleson wrote:
| Interesting! Where is this? In Amsterdam I know one theater
| that's showing old films and that's the 1% I was talking
| about ;)
| eatonphil wrote:
| Sharing from somewhere totally different: NYC has a number
| of theaters that show (mostly or half-half) not-new kids
| films, art films, and cult classics like Miyazaki or
| Blaxploitation films.
|
| These theaters are typically small businesses owned by
| locals who have been in the business for decades. But there
| are also some US chains like Alamo Drafthouse that do this
| too.
|
| On a slight tangent, in the suburbs of Lancaster, PA the
| chain theaters ran free re-runs of children's movies in the
| summer each Wednesday morning.
| GormanFletcher wrote:
| I'm in Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina, USA.
| clydethefrog wrote:
| Which theatre in Amsterdam? Lab111?
| blooalien wrote:
| We have a neat theater in the town I live in called
| "Brewvies" (it's a pub/theater) that on weekends often shows
| classic old cinema matinees for _free_. There 's also a group
| that shows "classic" movies in the parks for free, too. Much
| fun!
| jack2222 wrote:
| You're completely right and obviously many many people would
| want to go and see something like the good the bad and the ugly
| in theatres - probably enough to fill the theatre for a showing
| or two - but the problem is how would they know it's on? A lot
| of people look up what movies are on that week, but most people
| are aware that the big movies are ok a the moment because
| they're marketed and obviously that marketing costs money. What
| studio or theatre chain is going to spend millions (or even
| thousands) on marketing a 30+ year old movie that might take in
| a couple of hundred k at the box office.
|
| There's a reason cinemas don't play old movies and it's not
| because they think there's no one who wants to see them, sadly
| the logistics of it are too costly (in all sorts of ways beyond
| just base line finances too).
| enchiridion wrote:
| I'm not too sure about that. I'm also trying to decide if a
| movie is worth seeing when watching an ad. Clearly the
| classics are worth seeing, so they would just need to let
| people know. Is that enough to make up the difference? I'm
| not sure...
| kbenson wrote:
| Often movie theaters run special programs for periods of the
| year (or continuously), where they take a showing or two a
| week on a less busy night, and dedicate it to a series of
| movies they advertise through fliers. Since it's all planned
| out in advance for a few months, it's easy to see what's
| coming whenever you're at that theater. For example, they
| might to a horror themed series of movies, and you get
| Nightmare on Elm Street, Hellraiser, Halloween, etc, each
| their own week and advertised together on a flier or poster
| months in advance with the date of each.
| karmelapple wrote:
| Event calendars in cities I've lived in typically have
| "special midnight movie" or "classic film screening" events
| listed, alongside things like "art in the park" or "July 4th
| fireworks." I think event calendars like that can be pretty
| big drivers of traffic, and they should be relatively easy to
| setup almost anywhere.
|
| Meetup.com could even be used to get the word out, though use
| of that might be limited in many places.
| rmah wrote:
| What you want is done in many cities across America. And
| probably across the world. Both by businesses and by the
| municipalities themselves. Typically, movie theaters that show
| "classics" tend to exist in larger cities, of course. Because
| smaller towns cannot support them economically. But many small
| towns also show classic movies, often for free, on a regular
| basis. Just look for it.
| [deleted]
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| Movie theaters have a financial incentive to show old films if
| audiences are interested in watching, because the theaters get
| to keep a larger cut of the box office revenue compared to new
| releases. If the theaters aren't showing old movies, I don't
| think it's because of a lack of imagination on their part.
| twoodfin wrote:
| As I understand it, though, studios won't release many of
| their more valuable library titles for theatrical exhibition
| at any price, presumably to marginally enhance their cachet
| on streaming services.
| stragio wrote:
| In Europe this is different though. In Amsterdam we have 10+
| cinemas showing a lot of classics too, unlimited for 20 euros a
| month in amazing theatres. I rarely go to these large cinemas
| anymore.
| jelling wrote:
| Every top comment on HN is someone with an unprofitable use
| case complaining that no one serves them. Change my mind.
| kbenson wrote:
| There are theaters that are dedicated to playing older
| movies, and they apparently turn enough profit to subsist in
| some locations. I think that makes this a top comment on HN
| with a _profitable_ use case complaining that there 's not
| enough around.
|
| Also, I would watch the shit out of the Good the Bad and the
| Ugly in a theater. Same with original Star Wars (which I
| think happened during extra trilogy releases occasionally),
| The Matrix, the Princess Bride, and anything in that vein
| which either has a cult following, is a different/better
| experience to watch in a theater, or both.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| You can watch all these anytime on streaming - why do you
| need a cinema to see them?
| logical_proof wrote:
| There is a remarkably different experience between seeing
| Clint Eastwood 20 feet tall versus 25 inches tall
| 542458 wrote:
| Anecdotally, there are two in my town. One seems to go
| bankrupt every few years. I've been told (by somebody who
| would know) that the other basically survives thanks to the
| Rocky Horror Picture Show, the Room, and Troll 2.
| Everything else loses money according to that fellow.
| frainfreeze wrote:
| Don't confuse profitable with making millions based on hype.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| GP isn't planing a business, they're wishing for a different
| reality. That reality could be realized in a number of ways -
| a nonprofit sponsoring art films is one example.
|
| The Pacific Film Archive[1] is example of such a non-profit.
| With sufficient interest we could considerably more of these
| things.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Art_Museum_and_Pac
| ifi...
| renewiltord wrote:
| Interestingly, SF's Fort Mason Drive-in during the pandemic
| was all old movies https://www.eventbrite.com/o/fort-mason-
| center-for-arts-amp-...
|
| I think I watched like Monsters Inc there. That's two decades
| old haha!
| blhack wrote:
| Alamo draft house does this as a core part of their business
| model. They even usually give you souvenirs and have a themed
| menu around it.
| MivLives wrote:
| The smaller independent theaters near me tend to do more of
| this sort of thing. The one near me is doing an entire month of
| a Samurai movies. Also Month Python and the Holy Grail, and War
| of the Worlds (2005). All their first run movies tend to be
| independent ones.
|
| Not saying that chains shouldn't rerun old movies, just saying
| those types of theaters do exist. It's the only way I can
| truely get a movie theater experience for things made before I
| was born.
| albatross13 wrote:
| > an entire month of samurai movies
|
| Man, that is awesome. When my wife and I first started
| dating, our date nights consisted of going and seeing all of
| the harry potter movies as they were being re-shown in a
| local theater. We bought the expensive seats and this theater
| served food/beer with the movie, which made it that much more
| fun. I wish more theaters would adapt their business model do
| to stuff like this- I'd LOVE to see the LOTR trilogy
| (extended) in theaters again.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Did you know you can hire a cinema and show whatever you
| want? Probably cheap during quiet hours.
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| London is full of independent cinemas that show a fun mix of
| new releases and older films. Plus they're usually much nicer
| theatres than the big chains like Odeon and Vue, and the
| tickets are usually cheaper too.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I think this interview that gets at a broader point that I find
| depressing/scary: that the availability of so much data and
| analysis has ended up "quantizing" creative endeavors to the
| point where formulaic output is just much, much easier, and that
| any truly innovative or "misunderstood" productions become much
| harder to sustain.
|
| I really see this issue everyone nowadays, from movies, TV and
| music to things like the Olympics. Two good examples: to fix
| problems with subjectivity and unfairness (which were definitely
| problems) both gymnastics and ice skating moved from 'fuzzier'
| 10.0 or 6.0 scales to a 'code of points' model where every
| element has a fixed value. The result has been that the types of
| competitors that can win in this model are only the ones that can
| do the most impressive spins/turns/jumps etc. I mean, I'd be
| willing to be that you will never again see a 2x "women's"
| olympic figure skating champion, because you have these young
| teenagers doing quads now (who almost always lose this ability as
| they age and develop), but who retire from the sport before they
| hit 20. These feats are surely impressive, but they also crowd
| out other types of competitors.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Optimization is eating the world.
| [deleted]
| dillondoyle wrote:
| What would the other type of competitor be?
|
| Those sports you mention like figuring skating and gymnastics
| already have execution scores 'style' if you will built in.
|
| Personally, I have the opposite opinion. I prefer sports that
| are more quantified on difficulty alone (and the obvious 1st to
| finish). Looking at execution is one thing, like taking a step
| is clearly not as skilled as sticking it no debate there. But
| judging how pretty something is just doesn't seem fair to me
| nor personally as interesting as throwing hard skills.
|
| Gymnastics in particular grinds me in that they have a lot of
| silly rules AND they actively decrement leading edge hard
| skills point value!
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I mean, I don't totally disagree with you when it comes to
| sports, but e.g. then they should just get rid of the name
| "artistic gymnastics", get rid of the silly music, and just
| call it tumbling. Figure skating is probably more difficult
| to fix, but even there I'd prefer the simple fix of having
| "girl's" figure skating (say 18 and under) and women's figure
| skating separated. The current rulebook makes it nearly
| impossible to be competitive at a top level once someone
| develops breasts and hips.
| edflsafoiewq wrote:
| The reign of quantity and the sign of the times.
| sanj wrote:
| I spent a while in London and the cinema theater experience there
| was worth going out:
|
| - couches
|
| - beer
|
| - good food
|
| Sure it was expensive, but it was a far far cry from my
| experience in the US.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| It seems like the current movie business is mostly just a
| parasite on the back of 50 year old content (Marvel Silver age,
| Star Wars universe, Disney catalogs, Netflix 3rd party licensed
| content, et al.)
|
| The long tail of _good_ content is very long. I wouldn 't be
| surprised if Casablanca still generates annual royalties in
| excess of it's entire original cost, 80 years later. A great
| movie is a piece of artwork and like the Mona Lisa centuries
| later, has a timeless aspect to it.
|
| I don't disagree with Diller per se. In fact, _" They ain't
| movies. They are some weird algorithmic process that has created
| things that last 100 minutes or so."_ is one of the best
| descriptions of modern film I've ever seen.
|
| May it is just because of the limits of the article length, but I
| think it's far more about short form content and limits of human
| attention. I'd rather watch several 10-20 minute videos from
| niche Youtube creators in a week than one two hour movie most of
| the time, and I can't do both.
|
| In that sense, Katzenberg /Quibli were probably onto something.
| You have to remember Diller created the anonymous content
| conglomerate of IAC and is commenting on Quibli from that
| perspective. He admits himself, at the end, that he's working on
| backing Broadway productions so he's not satisfied with the
| content landscape, either. Maybe someone will figure out what it
| means to make something that squares good content with the
| time/format demands of a modern viewer.
|
| TL;DR: I'm sick of Fast & Furious and Marvel franchise spin offs.
| Feels like someone made the film analogue of discovering that
| kids like candy and will preferentially take it over healthier
| food when offered.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I believe that you ain't seen nothing yet. Superhero comic
| films are king but like, say, zombie media in the 2000s, it is
| a mammoth fad that will eventually be overthrown by another
| one. Once Hollywood finally figures out how to make a good
| video game movie adaptation, expect the _true_ licensing deluge
| to begin. Marvel and DC are but two companies. Imagine the
| amount of IP adaptations that an entire _industry_ will yield.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| I watched Captain Lou Albano play Mario in the 80s.
|
| Resident Evil? Pokemon? Mortal Kombat? It's already here. I
| actually don't care, as long as they are good. Not all MCU is
| bad (and I might even say little/none of it is bad).
|
| Maybe a different comparison: a lot of movies now feel like
| processed food. Consistent and made-to-please, but limits to
| how great it can be. It is not ideal to live only on
| processed food.
| smolder wrote:
| I think video game adaptations are almost universally bad,
| when they don't always have to be. We used to get pretty
| bad superhero movies, too, from directors that didn't seem
| to understand or respect what they were adapting.
|
| Video games seem difficult to adapt generally --they often
| don't provide the building blocks for a good narrative.
| Potentially studios can do like what Detective Pikachu did,
| get a bit crazy, and still make something decent. Going in
| the other direction and making something which treats the
| source seriously hasn't generally worked well, even when it
| could have with better writing and direction.
|
| It seems to me like Hollywood looks down on video games as
| an inferior medium, so their hearts (and budgets) are never
| in it fully. An "Iron Man moment" is possible, I think,
| where they put out something high quality that's faithful
| to the source, and its success leads to other high quality
| adaptations.
| Animats wrote:
| Barry Diller is just having a "get off my lawn" moment.
|
| It's like Bob Lutz saying the car business is over, which he did
| a few years back.
|
| Some things have changed. The difference between "movies" and
| "TV" has narrowed considerably. Production values for TV are up,
| and there's not the big distinction between "film work" and "TV
| work" that there used to be. After all, today "film" is just 2K
| or 4K video projection.
|
| Another thing that's changed is a few huge franchises sucking up
| the attention supply. This seems to reflect the Disney mindset of
| getting a franchise going and milking it for half a century or
| more. (A Mickey Mouse live-action movie is scheduled for 2022.
| Really.)
| mdoms wrote:
| What's ruining cinema is the utter dreck that most people are
| gagging to watch. I look at my local cinema today and every
| single movie, save for The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard, is either
| lazy nostalgia bait, generic marvel film #4715, yet another
| sequel to a summer blockbuster franchise or a kid's movie. And
| you people just eat this garbage up.
| rglover wrote:
| Studios should create "backlot" theaters where you can come to
| the set, do Q&A/photos with actors/crew, and see the movie (or,
| similar to kickstarter, see the dailies/weeklies in progress)
| with regular screenings and events.
|
| Charge a premium for it, minimal cost to operate, and fans would
| love it. Would revitalize the role of the actor while generating
| a unique revenue stream. If multiple studios did it, you could
| have a meta business around doing "backlot screening" tours.
| xnx wrote:
| And yet a lot of people think that AMC stock is worth 4x what it
| was last year.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| Don't take the naive position that stock prices are (or should
| be) directly reflective of the value of a company's business.
| They aren't. Stock prices are defined by what people are
| willing to pay for them. In the case of AMC, the price is
| higher because some retail investors are willing to invest in
| the hope that they will be able to squeeze the shorts.
|
| Fundamentals are great, but as the old saying goes: the market
| can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
| sisk wrote:
| Sure, the _amount_ of content has grown given the lowered
| technological barrier for entry and the ease of distribution but
| content quality isn't some finite resource that is spread out
| within some limit. If anything, more content means more
| opportunities for truly great stories to come from corners of the
| world that might not have previously had that opportunity due to
| any number of reasons.
|
| Plus, these channels have opened up more categories of film to
| wider audiences. Big budget, full length films and multi-season
| tv series aren't the only viable options anymore--some of the
| most talked about media in my circles over the last couple of
| years have been limited series. Try dragging a brilliant 8 hour
| limited series across an entire 23 episode season or trimmed down
| to a two hour film and it's a completely different story.
|
| Brilliant film makers are still brilliant film makers and the
| number of studios willing to take a chance and fund them has
| never been greater. The traditional movie-watching experience is
| still here, it's just no longer the only option. I don't think
| declaring the movie business as dead is accurate, it has simply
| evolved and adapted. But from where I sit, this evolution has
| just given us more stories and more ways to hear them.
|
| Just because you can distribute a story without a year-long PR
| blitz doesn't mean you can't tell a good story.
| ilamont wrote:
| _"I used to be in the movie business where you made something
| really because you cared about it, " he said, noting that popular
| reception mattered more than anything else._
|
| What arrogance.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| Also its such horse shit. Surprised someone like him said
| something like that. Nothing much has come from this "l'art
| pour l'art" approach, because as it turns out you need to make
| money from films to keep the industry running, first and
| foremost. When you have a large industry, ideally locally
| concentrated, you also have a large talent pool of the best of
| the best actors, directors, writers etc. Sometimes this then
| results in art, but usually not.
|
| If you don't have a large talent pool fuelled by financial
| prosperity, you lack the prerequisites to create works of the
| highest quality.
| howaboutnope wrote:
| > Sometimes this then results in art, but usually not.
|
| In other words, nothing much comes from it.
| dbsmith83 wrote:
| I think you missed the point. He's saying that now things are
| made with other purposes in mind (like Amazon Prime). Obviously
| the people on the ground creating the thing care about it, but
| at the top things probably look different than they used to.
|
| > "The system is not necessarily to please anybody," Diller
| said, suggesting Prime Video's primary purpose is to get more
| customers to sign up for Amazon Prime.
| rajin444 wrote:
| Really? At least in the US, most movies are either remakes or
| oscar grabs (which while novel somehow manage to be predictable
| and dull).
| howaboutnope wrote:
| How is that arrogant?
| [deleted]
| georgeecollins wrote:
| I think the OP means that this is a person-- late in a
| storied career-- saying in effect: "We used to care about
| art, now they only care about money."
|
| Memory is kind. Barry Diller's Paramount made Orca, Bad News
| Bears Go to Japan, etc. Art and commerce were always mixed.
| The arrogance is in being able to convince yourself it was
| different in the old days without risk of being contradicted.
|
| Still, you have to admire Barry Diller.
| howaboutnope wrote:
| At no time in history has there been so much "art" as a
| result of about measuring the audience and seeking please
| it, or at least extract money from it. We're now already at
| the point where fans think in term of "franchises" and
| applaud "smart moves" made by "brands", i.e. even large
| swaths of consumers are now marketing drones, too.
|
| Of course that doesn't mean it was ever "pure" at any point
| in time, just that it got worse. I've seen so much
| regression and dumbing down in just the last 20 years, that
| I don't care if that guy is a hypocrite, I think he happens
| to be correct anyway. I see what I see, and I can only
| imagine how it would seem if I had overview of 50 years of
| that shit.
|
| > When books or pictures in reproduction are thrown on the
| market cheaply and attain huge sales, this does not affect
| the nature of the objects in question. But their nature is
| affected when these objects themselves are changed
| rewritten, condensed, digested, reduced to kitsch in
| reproduction, or in preparation for the movies. This does
| not mean that culture spreads to the masses, but that
| culture is being destroyed in order to yield entertainment.
|
| > The result of this is not disintegration but decay, and
| those who actively promote it are not the Tin Pan Alley
| composers but a special kind of intellectuals, often well
| read and well informed, whose sole function is to organize,
| disseminate, and change cultural objects in order to
| persuade the masses that Hamlet can be as entertaining as
| My Fair Lady, and perhaps educational as well. There are
| many great authors of the past who have survived centuries
| of oblivion and neglect, but it is still an open question
| whether they will be able to survive an entertaining
| version of what they have to say.
|
| -- Hannah Arendt
|
| ^ Good luck making movies (with a budget, and an audience)
| that are not entertaining, because they have something
| serious to say that doesn't happen to be funny. They do
| exist, and in absolute numbers I bet there's more of them
| made each year than ever before, just because of
| accessibility of the technology. But it would be dishonest
| to focus on those and ignore the fact that, say, three The
| Hobbit movies exist, or how people break out in tears over
| Star Wars movies -- and all that insane, infantile,
| extremely commercialized utter crap.
|
| Again, Barry Diller may have been just as guilty of that
| stuff. I don't know and I don't care, because he doesn't
| matter. The world matters, the human species matters. How
| cool a specific individual is or isn't doesn't matter, they
| and anyone who remembered anyone who remembered them will
| be gone in a few centuries.
|
| > The arrogance is in being able to convince yourself it
| was different in the old days without risk of being
| contradicted.
|
| That would be nostalgia. And I'm not even convinced the
| assessment is wrong. And calling someone "arrogant" isn't
| contradicting them anyway, it's avoiding the argument if
| anything.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Barry: Call me. I'll show you where you can find great art in
| movies, an order of magnitude more than what was available
| before.
|
| I'm a big believer in data and not personal anecdotes, but if I
| can do it, Barry can (and you can). I never imagined so much
| incredible art existed on video as what I've seen in the last 5+
| years on streaming. The standard for what I will watch has risen
| dramatically - I don't have to compromise; I don't have the time
| and energy to see everything incredible thing I want to.
|
| I rarely go to movie theaters because what is available on
| streaming is _so much better_ , it's not a close call. Partly
| that's due to the availability of old stuff - what is the chance
| that the movie in this theater this weekend is at the level of
| the best movies in history? What is the chance that it's close
| enough to be worth the extra money and time for the better video
| and audio?
|
| But the new quality stuff has exploded in volume too, and yes
| some is structured episodically (i.e., like TV) but why should
| the director be restricted in form? And I have access to new
| stuff from all over the world, from small to large productions.
| And I can take a risk on something new and change my mind, which
| isn't really practical at the movie theater.
|
| I live in cinephile heaven. I'm not sure where Barry is?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| There is indeed lots of great art about at all levels, but what
| Diller is complaining about is the business of balancing
| mediocre productions that ae sure to be popular and make money
| with stuff that almost certainly won't be popular in the short
| term but deserves to be financed and produced so people can
| catch up to it later (which might be decades).
|
| Diller worked in a business where studios banked on a
| combination of taste and business skill. What we have now is
| algorithmically curated entertainment product. That's why it's
| so easy to and amusing to make up imaginary Netflix categories
| like 'comedic survival-horror' or 'superficially profound
| movies you can quote at dinner parties while chasing a
| promotion.'
|
| I agree with you in one way, but in another you're having your
| existing tastes affirmed within safe boundaries, and
| StreamCorp's goal is to be better at doing that than your
| friends or circumstances. You'll get lots of great viewing
| material that meets your aesthetic preferences, but not
| anything that really surprises or shakes you; you won't ever
| have a movie experience that causes you to walk around for 3
| hours in the rain because _you_ changed.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Where's the data? Let's have some references to all this high
| quality stuff.
| hughrr wrote:
| Well The Expanse quite frankly teabags to death 20 years of
| science fiction moves. I can't watch anything else now.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| The quality of genre work has increased mightily but it
| really does feel like the budget has fallen out of more
| high minded stuff like "MOON" and "GATTACA". Maybe this
| isn't real. After all, we've had some pretty good snooty
| stuff. Ex Machina, Interstellar, Arrival, etc.
|
| Very much could be just how much Avengers flicks have
| absolutely dominated the marketing. I think it's akin to
| how music seems to have died of you listen to the radio
| because the decline in listenership has resulted in more
| pop stations playing the absolutely most widely appealing
| stuff. But there is a thriving ecosystem off to the side
| that's way fuller and more varied than anything we had in
| the 90s.
| crooked-v wrote:
| One also can't forget the power of survivorship bias. 'Old
| [thing] was better' tends to go along with most of the the
| low-quality instances of [thing] being lost and forgotten
| about because nobody cares about them.
| ctdonath wrote:
| The local cinemas have at most a dozen movies available at
| any one time, maybe one of which is interesting. One viewing
| requires $10-50 in assorted expenses.
|
| For $10-50 monthly, I have available approximately every
| movie ever made - and I don't have to leave this chair.
|
| That is, at any given moment, one good movie vs _all movies
| ever_. Data sufficient.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Certainly not. Even the most torpid of us doesn't find the
| time or interest to watch _all movies ever_. Must likely
| the major cost here isn't your subscription fee, but the
| amount of limited leisure time and energy you can allocate.
| I'd be doing well too watch one movie a week if I was
| trying and I'd say that's not much to worse than average.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > I rarely go to movie theaters because what is available on
| streaming is so much better, it's not a close call.
|
| Better seats, better sound (for me this means not being
| deafened), better food, better drinks, better price (and no
| dick moves to get a few more $), no parking issues, less
| annoying lights/sounds etc from other patrons. I also haven't
| seen a theatre with a wood burner.
|
| It misses is the feeling of it being an occasion, but as a plus
| it also misses any Covid anxiety.
|
| I completely agree with you.
| hughrr wrote:
| The real killer of the streaming for is that there is a pause
| button. I missed out a whole 5 minutes of Avengers Endgame
| thanks to my bladder.
| thanhhaimai wrote:
| The pause button is just one part of the "complete control"
| package the in-home experience is.
|
| Missed a sentence? Rewind it. Watch some international
| movie? Turn on the subtitles. Enjoy some explosion scenes?
| Turn up the bass? Wanna relax with a drink and chat? Lower
| the volume. Watch a food scene and suddenly feel hungry?
| Put a pack of popcorn in the microwave.
|
| I'd only go to theater for social events, not for the movie
| itself anymore. I'm way too spoiled by the freedom at home.
| crooked-v wrote:
| I want intermissions back.
| ahmedalsudani wrote:
| Some would argue that your bladder was doing you a service
| ;)
| hughrr wrote:
| I think the films were fairly enjoyable as long as you
| don't turn up with a film critic's hat on. But yes,
| missing 5 minutes probably wasn't a big deal at the end
| of the day.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| It's gerting harder to be less of a snob. Years ago I
| decided to stop turning my nose up at "dumb" movies and
| just enjoy them but it feels almost as if the industry
| saw it as a challenge to make people like me scoff. The
| fandom and fauning is just endless and inescapable to the
| point tbat it is very hard to ignore.
|
| It was also easier when we were getting big budget art
| pieces like "No Country" and "The Master" but those seem
| to have all but disappeared.
| hughrr wrote:
| The trick I find is to drink enough alcohol before you
| get there not to give a shit any more. Whether or not
| that's a good or a bad idea I haven't established yet.
| sleavey wrote:
| No adverts.
| zarq wrote:
| Subtitles!
| ftio wrote:
| The open-mouthed chewing, soda slurping, and bag rustling is
| unbearable for me. It completely takes me out of the film,
| particularly during quiet scenes.
| hoten wrote:
| I once endured A Quiet Place (wonderful movie) while some
| teenaged kids behind us spent the movie loudly making out.
| Of all the movies to do that in!
| kace91 wrote:
| Perhaps it's a bit off topic, but do you mind sharing some
| recommendations?
|
| I'm always in the lookup for new stuff, but the one thing I
| think has become worse for me is finding sources of
| recommendations. The age of old forums is gone and mainstream
| sites like IMDb are very hit or miss for me.
|
| I'll take both movies/shows, and the places where you discover
| them :)
| tootie wrote:
| He's basically saying he doesn't like it anymore and it's not
| fun. Not that it's not active or making money.
| mihaic wrote:
| What I find exhausting is having any systemic criticism of the
| movie/music industry met with arguments along the lines of: "It
| was just different, you're merely nostalgic/you have golden age
| syndrome", and have a hard time answering back with anything
| except: "It really was better, sometime things do get
| substantially worse".
|
| While technologically everything has improved, creativity feel
| like going from the golden age of the greco-roman world to 8th
| century Europe, where indie bands/movies are like the churches
| that preserved some measure of past glories. What argument can
| one make when the burden of proof is to show cultural regression?
| scandox wrote:
| I find the cure to this frustration is to accept that
| everything I love is obsolete and that it's OK. As you say
| there are historical periods we now look back upon and say
| objectively they took a step backwards in terms of skill and
| artistry in many areas. But we don't know if this is that
| period, because maybe the creativity is shifting into something
| we can't yet observe clearly.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| It's more like, the spotlight has shifted away from the medium
| and creative people have left. Old movies, like old books, are
| by definition more important. Looking at the highest grossing
| movies of the past 2 decades almost all are based on older
| stories/franchises, from star wars to marvel , to LOTR, to
| harry potter (newest one).
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| They're wrong, and the reason they believe it is because
| they're stuck on older mediums. In music, the radio and the
| record store defined the market. You had a small window so you
| invested big and mainstream stuff tended to be pretty good. Now
| music access is decentralized and you can chase a long tail of
| niche personal tastes. Music is incredibly healthy right now.
| There's so much great content going in myriad different
| directions, but you'd think otherwise if you're only listening
| to the radio which has tripled down on non-differentiating
| hyper mainstream blandness.
|
| Movies are largely the same with streaming. The movie theater
| model is rough. Even before streaming the vast majority of
| movie tickets go unsold, and to many people there's a sort of
| social group requirement to justify going there. So you get
| mass appeal as a requirement. But the actual space of film has
| more richness than ever before. People who say the only films
| are marvel films just don't know about the other films being
| released.
| fullshark wrote:
| I'm with you on music, but movies? These streaming services
| are all making the same type of content, and browsing any
| streaming service for content just feels like looking at a
| wall of direct to video films at your local video store from
| 20 years ago + cable TV shows.
|
| Maybe it's because trying new music is so costless compared
| to new movies/tv shows and I'm ignorant? Maybe it's because
| good music can be made for a lot less money? IDK but this
| hardly feels like the beginning of a golden age of long tail
| movies.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I think both you and the GP are conflating the movie and
| music industries a little too much, but I agree with your
| points more. Music is indeed going through a renaissance, and
| tech has very much helped with discoverability of indie
| artists. Movies I feel are a different medium as they are
| more capital and resource-constrained. It's more difficult to
| cultivate a long tail of indie films that can match those of
| the blockbusters (whereas music quality between major label
| and indie is far more fungible).
|
| On the other hand, if one was to lower the definition of
| "movie" to moving pictures entertainment, there is a bonanza
| of content on YouTube and other video streaming services. But
| they are not in the same format of traditional movies.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > What argument can one make when the burden of proof is to
| show cultural regression?
|
| Maturing industries lose diversity as they trend towards
| optimization. This is something that is bound to happen
| regardless of industry. America has far fewer automotive
| manufactures than it 100 years ago and diversity has suffered;
| same goes for soda manufactures, etc.
|
| With about any industry, you can gauge how mature it is by the
| diversity it has achieved. It starts with one or two who
| demonstrate the viability of the market, then there is an
| explosion of interest as many people break in, trying different
| strategies to gain market share, then the few winners
| consolidate the industry. Sometimes, the big players rest on
| their laurels and an upstart takes hold, but they are usually
| acquired by the establishment or their strategy is emulated
| then they are crushed by the inherent resource imbalance.
|
| The big movie studios know what works and they are going to
| stick to that. Occasionally a Pixar will come along and disrupt
| the market, but when that happens, a Disney is going to step in
| and acquire them and change or adapt their formula to prevent
| another upstart.
| fullshark wrote:
| It's hard to refute, cause it really is true that everyone's
| most instrumental pop culture experiences happened when they
| were 10-25 years old. I think one thing that is fascinating is
| how popular iconography and music/films from 20+ years ago
| still is. Like I see teenagers wearing t-shirts with NOFX or
| Van Halen on them, instead of Billie Eilish.
|
| https://www.hottopic.com/tees/music-tees/?cm_sp=LP-_-TeesGri...
|
| Ultimately the post WW2 period was the birth of mass media
| youth culture, this was a truly revolutionary thing culturally
| speaking, and everything else has been a series of
| progressively less meaningful waves as we have 75 years of
| music/films artfully expressing what it means to be young.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| > Like I see teenagers wearing t-shirts with NOFX or Van
| Halen on them, instead of Billie Eilish.
|
| Same as it always was. (SPIN magazine, April 2005):
|
| https://books.google.com/books?id=3ftHVmAonmoC&lpg=PA107&dq=.
| ..
|
| > A few days after the Orange Bowl, I saw the video for
| Simpson's "La La." In one segment, she wears a vintage Adam
| and the Ants T-shirt; later, she wears a Motley Crue shirt. I
| suppose it's theoretically possible that Ashlee Simpson
| honestly likes those bands. But within the context of this
| video, her identification with them does not feel remotely
| organic; it feels like somebody put a lot of thought into
| whom Ashlee should align herself with. All young artists do
| this, but some are less subtle than others. I once saw
| singer/songwriter Leona Naess perform in Cleveland wearing a
| ZZ Top T-shirt. "I don't even know who this band is," she
| said between songs. "I just like this shirt." Naess played
| Minneapolis on the same tour, but this time she wore an
| Aerosmith T-shirt. "I don't even know who this band is," she
| said between songs. "I just like this shirt." Obviously, this
| was an attempt at cultural positioning: Leona Naess wanted to
| appear like the kind of girl who (somehow) had never heard of
| ZZ Top and Aerosmith, just as Ashlee Simpson wants to appear
| like the kind of girl who's intimately aware of Motley Crue
| and Adam Ant. Yet both artists failed in their attempts, and
| that's because even a child could tell they were trying way
| too hard. And people hate that.
| danbolt wrote:
| Throughout the COVID-19 restrictions, I've been writing
| little games that run on the Nintendo 64. I was born in the
| early 1990s and liked to play video games as a child, so the
| platform has some nostalgia now that I'm older.
|
| What's surprised me though is the amount of times I've
| received questions from teenagers about how to make Nintendo
| 64 games. Given their ages, I would have thought something
| like the Nintendo DS might have been more interesting to
| them.
|
| It reminded me of when Nintendo was marketing repackaged
| 1980s NES games to me as a child. [1] I remember being
| interested in them partially because of being exposed to
| nostalgia from others online. Part of me wonders if a bit of
| institutional momentum can help give a brand more of an edge
| for some audiences.
|
| [1] https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Classic_NES_Series
| ElViajero wrote:
| > What argument can one make when the burden of proof is to
| show cultural regression?
|
| First, you will need to give examples of what kind of movies
| you find "creative" that were done in the past and there is no
| current equivalent for that level of creativity.
|
| "Jojo Rabbit", "Parasite", "Blade Runner 2049", "Coco", "Lady
| Bird", "Arrival", "The Nice Guys", ... that is the past 5 years
| with one almost missing because the pandemic. Is any of that
| any good for you?
|
| What do you think that it was so creative in the past and has
| no comparation today?
| [deleted]
| socialist_coder wrote:
| I think "Movies", as we remember them from the decades of yore,
| will have a resurgence in the near future due to 2 things:
|
| 1) The demand for movies outside of what the streaming services
| are making.
|
| 2) Most aspects of movie production go completely digital to
| bring costs down astronomically.
|
| The easiest way to embrace digital is to just make an animated
| movie that looks animated with some interesting cool art style /
| rendering techniques. Maybe the boomer generation doesn't respond
| well to animation, but Gen X and Millennials are fine with it.
|
| Otherwise, just look at The Mandalorian for an example of what
| they've been able to do digitally. A huge huge huge Unreal Engine
| powered screen, instead of your typical green screen. It is
| linked to the camera so you get proper depth and angles as the
| camera moves. The lighting is realistic since the screen is
| actually shooting light onto the actors and props. And the
| director can see the composition of the shot in real time.
|
| As more aspects of production will go digital like this, costs
| will go way down. And hopefully we can have our "movies" again =)
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| I have a home theater. I love watching high-production quality
| shows like The Mandalorian on it - but I also like getting out
| of the house.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| Which will impact the QUANTITY of movies produced, but not
| necessarily the QUALITY. Granted, there's always been B-movies
| (and D-list actors), but surfacing interesting storytelling is
| going to be harder, the more we create.
| toofy wrote:
| > Which will impact the QUANTITY of movies produced, but not
| necessarily the QUALITY.
|
| Absolutely.
|
| We have a signal/noise issue. We need to figure out how to
| find the signal.
|
| I think one of the issues we really need to come to terms
| with is our absolute overReliance on algorithmic
| recommendations when it comes to completely subjective areas
| like film, music, fashion, food, art, etc... We're just
| unable to reduce these things to algorithmic recommendations
| without the content being... algorithmic.
|
| When discussing this I have to often repeat to people, I'm
| absolutely not a luddite-I work, live, and breathe-in
| technology. I firmly believe science and technology are
| _part_ of the key fundamentals to carry us forward. However,
| one area where I consistently get much better results is when
| these things are recommended by other humans. It really is no
| contest in how much better human curation is when it comes to
| recommendations.
|
| Obviously untested and obviously just pulling numbers out,
| but for me, I think algorithmic recommendations are just
| plain _wrong_ about 95% of the time. Friend's recommendations
| are close /spot-on about 75+% of the time. And human curation
| (from online reviews, real life DJs, critics, etc...) are
| decent maybe 60+% of the time. Far better results from
| humans.
|
| I think you're correct that we'll have a lot more quantity
| and we're going to need human curation in there if we have
| any hope for the quality to gain footholds, to find the
| signal in the ever growing noise.
| socialist_coder wrote:
| What I'm saying is that A list people will use these same
| techniques to make QUALITY movies at a budget that makes it
| economically viable to release to a smaller streaming
| audience.
| Flatcircle wrote:
| Also just the novelty of it, in a world where it went away for
| a bit.
|
| If vinyl records can come back, Boutique films in a movie
| theater and maybe even rental stores can too.
| fullshark wrote:
| Blurays / physical media are making a comeback, like Vinyl I
| think part of it is a collection impulse among the top 1% of
| fans.
| okareaman wrote:
| I don't work in the movie industry, but it seems to me the
| superhero and fast and furious type movies are designed to appeal
| to young people in America, China, India and Europe. A movie like
| that offers an incredibly large potential audience.
|
| Three films I watched recently that might have a hard time
| getting made today are Broken Flowers by Jim Jarmusch starring
| Bill Murray, After Hours by Martin Scorsese and The Muse by
| Albert Brooks. I know Martin Scorsese and others have been
| complaining about the death of cinema, but I don't understand why
| the two types of movies can't coexist on streaming media. The
| audience for the latter type is nowhere near as big as the
| former, but it's not nothing. The world still wants thought
| provoking art.
| truthwhisperer wrote:
| And too much woke content
| master_yoda_1 wrote:
| Totally agree on this "They ain't movies. They are some weird
| algorithmic process that has created things that last 100 minutes
| or so." look at "The Tomorrow War"
| croes wrote:
| "The Tomorrow War" is not an Amazon movie, they only bought the
| distribution rights. It's a Paramount Pictures film.
| sharken wrote:
| The business of running movie theatres is what he is talking
| about and it's certainly changing.
|
| In Denmark the movies Godzilla vs. Kong, Nomadland and Black
| Widow will not be shown in major cinemas.
|
| The reason is that Warner Bros. and Disney (Marvel) have either
| shortened the exclusivity period (Warner Bros) or set the
| streaming premiere at the same day the movie airs in cinemas
| (Disney).
|
| The core of the issue is that the cinemas have to pay the same
| amount although the terms are clearly worse.
|
| I can't help but think that the loss in sales of merchandise will
| take a hit, but i could be wrong and things will continue as they
| are now.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| I'm a cinema guy, go to cinema about once a week. But to be
| honest, nobody misses movies like Godzilla vs. Kong. I think
| one of the worst movies ever.
| iab wrote:
| Now now, let's not be too hasty to make that determination
| until we've seen what fast & furious 9 has to offer
| adventured wrote:
| No need to wait. It's really bad.
|
| The last King Kong (vs Godzilla) was at least silly amusing
| to watch (once). F9 is just bad across the board, there was
| nothing enjoyable about it, the formula has now jumped the
| shark twice (the last Fast movie was the first jumping of
| the shark). The Fast franchise is in the guard rail, the
| race is over.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| > the formula has now jumped the shark twice
|
| Maybe we can rename the trope to some sort of car-based
| hijinxs? I want to say "launched a car into space", but
| that's probably going to annoy Tesla fans.
| silon42 wrote:
| Hopefully a new Riddick.
| toast0 wrote:
| If you think Godzilla vs Kong was one of the worst movies
| ever, I don't think you've watched very many movies.
|
| I'd put The Wickerman (either version), The Fountain, and The
| Final Countdown (1980, nothing to do with the song, sadly) as
| easily worse than Godzilla vs Kong, and that's just off the
| top of my head.
|
| It's certainly not a great movie, but it's well in-line with
| what you would expect from the title; slightly plausible
| plot, big monsters fighting in cities, trademark roar.
| Nowhere near the best movies, but strongly in the middle.
| kbelder wrote:
| Funny. I've watched quite a few movies, indy and studio,
| foreign and domestic, and The Fountain is the only movie I
| ever immediately re-watched the second it ended. I thought
| it was absolutely a masterpiece.
|
| But that's art for you; affects people differently.
| sharken wrote:
| Might want to give The Fountain a go then, sounds
| interesting.
|
| To me the movie Memento is special, both the plot itself
| but also the question, what if it happened to me.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid would be excellent in theatres
| okareaman wrote:
| I can understand most of Dillers complains but not this one:
|
| _" These streaming services have been making something that they
| call 'movies,' " he said. "They ain't movies. They are some weird
| algorithmic process that has created things that last 100 minutes
| or so."_
|
| I'd like to know why he disparages writers and directors who work
| on streaming movies this way and if it has any validity
| grawprog wrote:
| Possibly this?
|
| https://blog.richardvanhooijdonk.com/en/the-entertainment-in...
|
| https://tecreview.tec.mx/2021/04/26/en/how-to-make-a-blockbu...
|
| >A team of scientists from the Spanish universities of Granada
| (UGR) and Cadiz (UCA) has designed the first computer system to
| help screenwriters write movie scripts that will do better at
| the box office, a model that makes use of artificial
| intelligence techniques to analyze the most successful cliches
| or tropes.
| okareaman wrote:
| Interesting. I thought something like this was going on. I
| remember remarking to a friend that I got the feeling from
| some shows that the screenwriters had help from AI. The plots
| of some were at the same time more complex but had weird
| twists the people normally wouldn't think of. I am also not
| surprised the AI is mining TV Tropes. Now I think Diller is
| right that there is some "They are some weird algorithmic
| process" going on, but I rather like it. It's less formulaic.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| These services have made some truely great movies possible and
| surely they offer a lot more opportunities for the arts. People
| like to complain that every netflix production is like the
| other when in reality they just refuse to make an effort to
| find the good stuff and take some minor risk of failure along
| the way.
| onelastjob wrote:
| Before streaming, a movie studio actually had to convince an
| audience to leave their houses and buy a ticket to make money
| from a movie. This meant the studio had to pour a lot of money
| into marketing for each movie. The cost to market a movie could
| be up $30M to $50M range for a blockbuster movie. For a mid-
| budget drama like Meet Joe Black or A River Runs Through It, you
| could be looking at a marketing budget that matches the
| production budget ($30M production + $30M marketing). These big
| marketing costs for every movie meant that the quality of those
| movies needed to be pretty high to justify the marketing costs.
| Streamers don't have to convince people to go out and buy a
| ticket for every movie they release. They just have to keep the
| existing subscribers paying and get more people signing up. So
| the marketing cost per title goes way down. This takes some
| pressure off to make quality content because the risk per title
| is lower. Also quality movies on streamers don't necessarily get
| the marketing and fanfare they would have before streaming.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| I think this is why I've been struggling with finding good
| films to watch nowadays. Shows are doing great but movies have
| been suffering. Take the movie "Nobody" for instance. How the
| hell that movie got the ratings it did I will never know. Not
| only is it not good, but it was nothing what it was marketed
| as.
|
| My solution to this is to watch actual films that are made with
| artistic intent or to see certain things that are submitted
| into festivals instead of just the main films shown to
| everyone. It's helped tremendously but it becomes a chore quick
| when there are a lot of "artsy" movies that tell the exact same
| story you've seen a million times.
| rmah wrote:
| Isn't it said that there are only seven actual stories? That
| every story is a variation of those seven plots with
| different names, places, times, etc?
| xarope wrote:
| I guess you are referring to this?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots
|
| This, for example, is a perennial favourite:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey
|
| However, I'd like to think it's not just the plot, but the
| acting and the interpersonal relationships, that makes
| things interesting.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| At their root core, sure we could generalize that. But I
| would say like any art, the expression of the story is what
| matters. I have a hard time connecting films like The Lives
| of Others, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Les Innocentes,
| Star Wars, and Austin Powers as "just the same story." In
| essence all films are either a comedy or tragedy if you
| really want to get down to it.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| It takes off the pressure to make _popular_ content. Quality
| content can be unpopular, niche, wonderful content. Popular
| content needs to be _tolerable_ by as many people as possible,
| which means taking fewer risks on high-quality slightly
| controversial or intellectual or unfamiliar material.
| blooalien wrote:
| > Quality content can be unpopular, niche, wonderful content.
|
| I was about to say this _exact_ thing. I 've seen some
| _amazing_ content on various streaming services that would
| have simply not even _existed_ in prior decades. Even some of
| the "big boys" of media have been able to produce _some_
| shockingly good content these days thanks to the lowered
| risks and costs of available outlet channels for their more
| "experimental" media offerings.
| agumonkey wrote:
| It's funny, I keep seeing this era the same way. There used to
| be such a different structure behind things. Everything was
| more expensive but we went to grab them because they were so
| superb. Also it imposed some kind of order.. those who managed
| to fabricate large things in front of the random nature of
| workgroups, social trends and audience desires got to grab the
| hero / fame status (for better or worse).
|
| Today, available means flattens the whole landscape, you can
| indeed do everything at a fraction of the cost but so the goal
| vanished because there's nothing of greatness now ? (and many
| groups are in the "availability is key for .. whatever" .. I
| find the idea too naive)
|
| This weird tension, or contrast, is interesting.
| foolfoolz wrote:
| think of it as "leveling the playing field" in which it over
| time asymptotically approaches shit
| wodenokoto wrote:
| Those numbers seems incredibly low for a blockbuster.
|
| I see the google info box saying the average movie marketing
| spend matches your quote, but they are talking about
| productions averaging only 60 millions in costs.
|
| Blockbusters like transformers or large marvel movies are much
| more expensive to produce and market.
|
| Hollywood reports sets the marketing costs of summer
| blockbusters at 200 million worldwide - in 2014!
|
| https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/200-mill...
| sida wrote:
| As a quick tangent, has anyone tried watching movies in VR?
|
| If you haven't, try it. I have been watching stuff in my oculus
| quest 2 and it is pretty darn awesome. I think this is the
| future, most definitely.
|
| Oculus quest 2 still is not perfect. But I cannot imagine going
| to the theater with a few more generations of VR. (Oculus quest 5
| maybe???)
| moralestapia wrote:
| Ugh, I love watching movies on my 2D screen while talking to
| other people and having some snacks.
|
| I can't imagine myself (EVER!) changing that experience to one
| that isolates me and requires me to have a crappy headset
| squeezing my temples for two hours or so.
|
| Just, no. NOOOOO!
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Trying to shoehorn a meaningful story into 1.5 hours is not great
| for storytelling. The production costs for 8 hours of streaming
| television isn't that much different from 2 hours of movie
| filming when filming for the same genre in the same manner.
|
| Try to get 1.5 hours of meaningful story out of the recent
| Netflix production of Shadow and Bone, or any of the Game of
| Thrones books, without sacrificing major parts of the story (that
| weren't already being sacrificed in their expanded versions).
| Flatcircle wrote:
| I love how he ends the article by saying, "I'm gonna produce
| plays on Broadway"
| arkitaip wrote:
| My understanding is that musicals have the exact problem of
| being way too commerical and basically adaptations of already,
| mediocre, work. The difference is that the indie scene is even
| smaller due to the relative costs of creating musicals.
| ghaff wrote:
| There's certainly a fairly steady diet of musicals/plays on
| Broadway/West End that are adapted from popular films. And,
| while many are well done, they also just feel utterly
| unnecessary in most cases. (There are exceptions--Network for
| example.)
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| It's unfortunate, but I think he's probably right. Some movies
| are just better in theater. The experience of watching Mad Max:
| Fury Road in theater vs at home is a night and day difference.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Depends on your home setup, a big screen and some big speakers
| go a long way
| jbay808 wrote:
| Living in an expensive area like Vancouver, a home theater
| might not be an option. Most of my friends rent a room in a
| sharehouse where they're not allowed to have guests, or where
| the TV is a communal area. Others live in basement suites
| with noise rules and can watch TV by themselves but not with
| friends. The theatre is much better for watching a movie with
| a group, unless you're very wealthy.
| exo-pla-net wrote:
| I managed a pretty good theater setup in a _dorm room_ ,
| using a projector, mounted speakers, and a pull down
| projection screen.
| yepthatsreality wrote:
| I agree. No sticky floor, no person behind me that decided to
| take off their giant winter coat when the movie started
| (instead of previews), no people ruining my immersion because
| they have to pull out their pocket PC to address their
| attention deficit, no large groups of people clapping at
| every character reveal during a film or audibly cheering on
| the protagonists, no untrusted heavily farted-in seating, no
| reduced premium of the experience because big corp decided to
| save a few bucks by cleaning less, no overpriced concessions,
| no lines.
|
| What I do miss is "going out" to see a movie. Alamo
| Drafthouse has a good model that entices "going out" but most
| chains couldn't shift to adapt to a similar model. Auto-
| managed streaming quality is something I don't really like
| either, let me buffer my own selection.
| adventured wrote:
| Not having to listen to people eat like pigs during the
| movie while I'm trying to enjoy being immersed in the audio
| of the movie (while some guy nearby very loudly assaults a
| giant bucket of popcorn over the next two hours). Because
| if they didn't consume two thousand calories during the
| movie, they might starve, seeing as the US has no other
| available food options.
|
| The only way a movie theater experience can be consistently
| great is if you banish all food. Too many people lack even
| basic manners & consideration for others, they can't be
| trusted to not be inconsiderate idiots.
| yepthatsreality wrote:
| I feel like the easier solution is to contain the seating
| so the noise doesn't leave the viewers booth. Instead of
| just a bunch of empty chairs in an auditorium. Then
| people can be inconsiderate all they want.
| ghaff wrote:
| I have somewhat mixed feelings about the Alamo Drafthouse
| type of experience. On the rare occasions I go to a movie
| theater it's because I want the big immersive experience.
| If I want food and beer while I watch a film I can do that
| at home.
| croes wrote:
| How big is your screen? I bet cinema screen is bigger.
| mentos wrote:
| I have no clue how they're making money on these movies that are
| going straight to streaming platforms?
|
| With a movie releasing in theatres there was a sense of urgency
| to see it on the big screen with big sound and big lights.
|
| Being able to stream it whenever you want from home now means you
| never will.
|
| Not sure if any platforms do it already but they should try to
| create a sense of scarcity by offering only a limited number of
| opening weekend tickets that you can reserve.
| nmz wrote:
| That's how you get piracy.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Fast and Furious Marvel
|
| So what other movies are there ???.
| OzzyB wrote:
| Fast and Furious Marvel - Jack Snyder Cut
| k12sosse wrote:
| It broke new ground subverting all those expectations!
| johnohara wrote:
| The Allen and Co. Sun Valley Conference is winding down.
|
| The pandemic forced a lot of reaction to, realignment of, and
| reflection on, all of the current paradigms. But nobody was able
| to meet last year and many conversations that needed to happen
| were left hanging in abeyance.
|
| As the many attendees represent organizations that pull heavy
| carts as it is, there is no doubt an eagerness to get the wheels
| turning again. The sooner the better. But they have also had a
| year to completely evaluate what was causing them to be so laden
| prior to February 1st, 2020.
|
| This year's conference will be remembered as a watershed moment.
| Great food and real-world golf scores notwithstanding.
| moomin wrote:
| I mean, I don't disagree with him, but he dates back to the birth
| of the blockbuster, which was the 70s version of "algorithmic
| things that last 100 minutes".
|
| The movie industry has had seismic shifts every couple of decades
| and has been shrinking since the 1950s.
| specialist wrote:
| That interview was rough.
|
| TLDR: The studio and distributor's chokehold on movies is dead.
|
| Hallelujah, good riddance, piss off.
|
| For some historical perspective, 99% had a nice episode about
| movie theaters. The Megaplex!
| https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-megaplex/
|
| TLDR: The movie theater biz has always been in flux, now is no
| different.
|
| PS- After the dust settles, I'm sure new gatekeepers will arise.
| Same as it ever was.
| clouddrover wrote:
| > _The studio 's chokehold on movies is dead._
|
| No, the reality is studios are consolidating control over their
| content. For example, Disney controls distribution and access
| more than ever before with their Disney+ streaming service.
| Disney produces the content and directly distributes it to the
| end user:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney%2B
|
| https://www.disneyplus.com
| specialist wrote:
| > _No, the reality is studios are consolidating control over
| their content._
|
| Ya, it sure seems like everyone's pulling their own content
| in tighter.
|
| I couldn't quickly find out how many movies, shows, etc are
| published every year. If anything, it seems like the
| entertainment industry is in a free-for-all. I'm almost
| curious how it shakes out.
|
| Can we agree that the prior _theatrical distribution_ system,
| so near and dear to Barry Diller 's heart, got mooted?
| k__ wrote:
| _" I used to be in the movie business where you made something
| really because you cared about it,"_
|
| I had the impression,the movie business was a shit show for at
| least half a century now.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yeah, the big studios for sure. It's like he's describing indie
| films.
| historyloop wrote:
| Black Widow is destroying opening expectations in cinemas as we
| speak.
|
| Barry Diller is clearly disillusioned with the process, this
| happens a lot with veterans. But there's a constant supply of
| wide-eyed youngsters to fill-in those positions with new energy.
|
| I'd say it's a bit premature to declare permanent changes.
| Streaming will play a stronger role over time, but none of this
| is new or unexpected. And cinemas will continue to thrive.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| Through my work, I have access to Placer.ai, which allows me to
| track foot traffic to any retail location or chain via visitors'
| cellphone GPS. Here's AMC's nationwide foot traffic from January
| 2017 through July 4, 2021.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/s3H7EYj.png
| syntaxing wrote:
| Wait, how does Placer.ai work? Like you need to have some sort
| of AMC app?
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| Placer is able to track cell phones that have an app
| installed that uses their SDK. They currently have their SDK
| in over 500 mobile apps. The data is anonymized, but it would
| probably shock people how much information I can get from
| this system. I just pick a location and I can see how many
| people walked into that location over any time span in the
| past 4 years, where they live, how much money they make,
| where else they like to shop, etc. I work in commercial real
| estate, BTW. We use this software to analyze retail
| properties.
| gregsadetsky wrote:
| This is also Foursquare's business.
|
| Their opt-out page is interesting:
| https://foursquare.com/data-requests/
|
| "The California Consumer Privacy Act gives California
| residents the right to direct businesses from selling their
| personal information. If you are a California resident, you
| have this right. _If you are not a California resident, we
| may, at our discretion, grant you this right._ "
|
| (Emphasis mine)
| impendia wrote:
| I'll bite. Where I live and where I shop, I can understand.
| But how does my cell phone know how much money I make?
| gregsadetsky wrote:
| It might correlate it with other vendors and signals
| (e.g., your trail of visited web sites, completed
| purchases, etc.) and also deduce it by monitoring your
| geo position to find where your "home" is (wherever you
| spend most nights / wherever you use your apps late or
| early in the day) and then use zip code area demographics
| to get the average income for that area.
|
| Oh... and, credit card companies selling data (to these
| same data aggregators) on their members' buying habits
| and most probably demographics as well (age, income,
| etc.)
| autoexec wrote:
| It's crazy how much just having your location tracked
| 24/7 shows about you. It can give a pretty good idea of
| if you're in a relationship and sexually active (where
| you spend your nights and when/how often), if your
| parents are dead and if you're married or divorced (where
| you go for holidays and when you stop going there), what
| your life expectancy is (your zip code), if you have
| children (when and how often you visit schools, day care
| centers and play grounds/chucky cheese), what you do for
| a living (harder now that more folks work from home), how
| healthy you are (time spent at doctors/hospitals/fast
| food restaurants/gyms), etc.
|
| Tracking one person's location history is invasive
| enough, but if they're also tracking the people around
| you it gets a whole lot easier. Phones spend time talking
| to and tracking other phones around them (even when those
| devices are offline or have location services disabled)
| along with being tracked by Bluetooth beacons and
| collecting info about nearby wifi connections.
| syntaxing wrote:
| Appreciate the response, super interesting! What do you
| mean how much they make? Like how much the retail makes or
| how much the people visiting makes?
| arcturus17 wrote:
| I don't want to live on this planet anymore.
| cdstyh wrote:
| Well one of the first things we do on Mars will be to
| deploy a GPS constellation so our robots are able to
| locate themselves.
| kbenson wrote:
| As I understand it, this is also how proxy services that
| offer "mobile IPs" with millions available function as
| well. Kinda makes me pine for the good old days where they
| just annoyed the crap out of me with ads.
| ipaddr wrote:
| My cellphone doesn't leave my home. Makes location
| tracking much harder.
| kbenson wrote:
| To clarify, I wasn't talking about them tracking you, I
| was talking about the SDKs used proxying connections
| unbeknownst to you using your mobile (or wifi?) data,
| which the SDK provider sells as a business.
| umeshunni wrote:
| Also beats the point of having a cell phone.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Isn't the point to play games and being able to login to
| most sites these days?
|
| It also gives you backup internet..
| dvdkon wrote:
| Not really, not for me and many others anyway. I would
| just get an LTE modem for backup internet, my PC is
| better at everything else. I'm not sure about which sites
| you're talking about, but you can also do 2FA without a
| phone.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| There are a ton of big companies and even governments
| that only do SMS 2FA. The US social security website is
| one of them.
| nodesocket wrote:
| Wow, this seems like incredibly valuable information for
| traders and hedge funds. There is a well known retail
| analyst (Mathew Boss) who famously said they take aerial
| photos of mall parking lots to estimate traffic and sales.
| This data is even more granular.
| gregsadetsky wrote:
| Yeah, commercial Satellite data "intelligence" is a big
| thing. (This is clearly the "civilian" version of what
| has been going on in the military world for a very long
| time)
|
| I wanted to send this example as it's exactly what you're
| talking about -- monitoring of retail locations (as a
| data service):
|
| https://learn.rsmetrics.com/trafficsignals/retail/monitor
| ing...
|
| ... but I found this from the same company which is
| crazier:
|
| https://learn.rsmetrics.com/cedm/boeing-tracker
|
| "RS Metrics Boeing Tracker is a custom event driven
| monitoring product which focuses on the activity and
| production at Boeing factory sites. Insights generated
| from Boeing Tracker help investors and PMs' to optimize
| their investment strategies."
|
| Among other things, they're counting cars at the Boeing
| Employee Parking Lot:
|
| https://learn.rsmetrics.com/hubfs/BA_2_Boeing%20Renton%20
| Fac...
|
| Yeah, ok. Wow.
| bananabiscuit wrote:
| Is there a list somewhere of apps that use placer so that I
| can delete those apps off my phone forever?
| gregsadetsky wrote:
| There was a flagged submission about a year ago about
| them
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22704138
|
| I'll go on a limb and say that apps don't even have to
| integrate Placer's sdk directly. If an app uses any
| monetization/tracking/ad tracking system, that tracking
| vendor may collect the geo data and then re-sell it to
| Placer (i.e. talk to Placer via a server to server API to
| let them know about the end user)
| tolbish wrote:
| How much geo data can they obtain if my location is
| disabled for almost all of my apps?
| gregsadetsky wrote:
| 1) A device's location can be guessed with your IP
| address at the very least.
|
| 2) Wifi networks.
|
| On iOS, I'm almost sure that apps cannot access the list
| of wifi networks that the device sees. As you may know,
| the list of wifi access point MAC addresses can be used
| to triangulate a device's geolocation (there was a
| related case with Google Streets View cars gobbling up
| that info[0])
|
| On Android, wifi network MAC addresses may be available
| to apps? Is there a special permission that apps need
| from the user?
|
| [0] https://www.wired.com/2012/05/google-wifi-fcc-
| investigation/
| kevinventullo wrote:
| Android requires location services enabled to do ambient
| WiFi scans: https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/co
| nnectivity/wifi...
|
| However, I believe _connected_ WiFi information can be
| obtained on Android without location services enabled.
|
| On iOS, I believe an app needs special permission even to
| fetch connected WiFi, and I believe you are correct that
| there is no way to access ambient WiFi scans.
| gregsadetsky wrote:
| Super interesting, thanks!
| xriddle wrote:
| Placer is one of many, many platforms that do this.
| Assume any app that requests location permissions is
| selling your data. Hopefully anonymized.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| A few months ago I chose a random set of iOS apps to
| decompile and view their included libraries. Its amazing
| how much tracking is going on. One interesting that I
| recall was a Bluetooth library in a convenience store
| app. Seems like they had Bluetooth beacons around there
| store and it would use the phone to track you as you
| walked through the store.
| hhh wrote:
| Doesn't Walmart do this?
| deadbolt wrote:
| I recall the CVS app requesting Bluetooth permissions
| when I installed it. I can imagine them implementing
| something like this, but couldn't they just passively
| listen for Bluetooth beacons from people's phones using
| the devices in the store, without needing the app to be
| installed on a customers phone?
|
| I suppose I'm not familiar enough with Bluetooth - I
| figured phones with Bluetooth enabled are constantly
| sending out some kind of "hello" beacon.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| The beacons in the store are pretty dumb, so they can be
| cheap (on the order of a few dollars each) and plentiful,
| moving the real logic of tracking to the app.
|
| You're correct in that it could be reversed and the BLE
| radios in the store could track the phones instead, but
| then they'd need far more intelligence and network
| connectivity, which would make them more expensive and in
| turn they'd be fewer of them deployed.
|
| Source: spent the last few years writing code for
| wireless devices, including BLE beacons.
| nomel wrote:
| If you're on iOS, leave location services to "while using
| app" to prevent this. I take the extra step of turning
| background services off.
| mataug wrote:
| Looks kinda similar to the google search trends
| https://imgur.com/a/bbTjUkf
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| Yep. That's because people use Google to get directions to
| the nearest theater.
| demadog wrote:
| Good validation that Google Trends gets the quick and dirty
| job done for some queries for free.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Wow, this is virtually identical. If I were paying for placer
| I'd stop after seeing that you can get effectively the same
| data for free, assuming you just need the trend.
| roland35 wrote:
| I took the liberty of overlaying the stock price over the foot
| traffic :)
|
| https://imgur.com/a/jTkXhtx
| david927 wrote:
| Of course it looks strange -- the stock price reflects a
| short squeeze on naked shorts, not value or growth.
| jjcon wrote:
| > short squeeze on naked shorts
|
| Trading is getting really graphic these days
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Those terms are decades old.
|
| "short squeeze" (1960s or earlier): https://books.google.
| com/ngrams/graph?content=short+squeeze&...
|
| "naked shorts" (1970s): https://books.google.com/ngrams/g
| raph?content=naked+shorts&y...
| ant6n wrote:
| I thought the short squeeze was in jan/feb, what's that
| late spring jump?
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| > https://imgur.com/a/jTkXhtx
|
| The thesis that appears to be correct with AMC and GME is
| that the shorts never really covered, they simply kicked
| the can through some creative vehicles.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| How do we know that? Is it possible that substantially
| all the active funds with a thesis on AMC/GME got out, so
| now the price is driven by retail meme buyers who have no
| price target?
| Traster wrote:
| Honestly, I feel that we're way past the point of
| productively engaging with the wallstreetbets crowd, the
| "Naked short squeeze" eternal narative is about as
| substantial as the people claiming Trump will be
| inaugurated again later this year. There's no evidence
| threshold that can be met - on an infinite timeline, the
| fact that these hedge funds haven't lost money is just
| more evidence of dirty tricks rather than the most likely
| scenario - they dumped the stock long ago, and either
| have a strategy to get back in or have a strategy to
| avoid being burned again.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| 20% of the AMC float is short, and could cover in less
| than 2 days. 25% of the GME float is sold short, but it
| would take a bit longer for shorts to cover, looks like
| 5-7 days based on avg 10d volume.
|
| The thesis you posted is Wrong.
| post_break wrote:
| For kicks can we see home depot and cabelas? If not no worries.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| Sure. Here's Home Depot: https://i.imgur.com/bqoV3LI.png
|
| Here's Cabela's: https://i.imgur.com/SLsba42.png
|
| BTW, I should note that this is showing weekly visits (and
| the same is true for the AMC chart). Again, this is Jan 2017
| through July 4, 2021.
| nodesocket wrote:
| Can you aggregate multiple locations? I am interested in
| Apple stores.
| renewiltord wrote:
| You can buy this data on a per-store basis on a per-month
| basis from SafeGraph. It'll cost you $40 for YTD data,
| and it should include information about time of day and
| nonsense like that if you're curious.
| post_break wrote:
| Thanks!
| cecilpl2 wrote:
| Clearly, people do renovations in the spring and their
| Christmas shopping at Cabela's.
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| Movie industry is largely driven by massive advertisement
| campaigns. My guess that all of those spikes before 2020 were
| driven by massive AAA releases with big of ad budgets. Nothing
| like that happened during 2020. I think it's too early to ring
| the funeral bell, let's see a few massive releases first.
| kbenson wrote:
| If that's true, we might not see it getting back to pre-covid
| levels for another year or so if it's going to happen. I
| think most the stuff we've seen over 2020 and now are things
| that were already in the pipeline or delayed. The lack of new
| projects during 2020 and early 2021 will likely affect the
| industry until mid to late 2022 at least, from what I've read
| that seems accurate.
| BadCookie wrote:
| Interesting data. What's holding me back from going to the
| theater is that my child is not vaccinated (too young),
| although I suppose the delta variant is also a small concern. I
| wonder how much difference it will make when the under 12s can
| get vaccinated. I'd love to go to the theater again if it felt
| safe for my whole family, but it doesn't yet.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| I was just starting to get a bit comfortable in my county.
| (Marin County)
|
| I just heard an acquaintance is in the ICU with blood clots
| in his lungs due to Covid. Young fit guy, but didn't get
| vaccinated.
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