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Uncle Boogeyman posted:so your usual M.O., then. No; I do not write from the perspective of an imagined future-consensus. In fact, I do the opposite of doing that.
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Feb 4, 2016 02:52
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Basebf555 posted:I'm talking about from a marketing perspective, we're discussing the future of blockbuster movies. Marvel and DC had a very long history already established and a fan-base that already loved pre-existing characters before the first dollar was ever spent on Avengers. That kind of thing is very rare and it happens organically over time, a long time. If they can make the hobbit 3 movies they can make it 6 movies with separate but interlinking narratives moving in and out of a larger main thread. Same with harry potter or twilight or whatever. Most stories in general have always had their side digressions chopped out to make a movie, now they can be put into multi million grossing shared universe side stories.
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Feb 4, 2016 03:06
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I don't think Owlofcreamcheese is all that off the mark, guys, though I think Avengers is part of a much wider trend that I wish I could describe in a more all-encompassing manner. Absolutely one of the biggest changes to mainstream moviemaking since the start of the 2000s was the serialization of blockbusters that got kicked off by the triple-team of the Star Wars prequel trilogy, Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. Then you have the trend of reboots, reboots of reboots, reset buttons and multiple continuities. And then you have the shared universe thing with Marvel and what Disney's trying to do with Star Wars currently. There's a breaking down of the film as this singular entity; for decades (for at least a generation or two) movies were basically seen like novels. I feel like film is becoming more like print: we still movies that follow this kind of stand-alone mentality like novels, but we have these serialized blockbusters and shared universes that have more in common with how comic books are handled.
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Feb 4, 2016 03:55
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lizardman posted:I don't think Owlofcreamcheese is all that off the mark, guys, though I think Avengers is part of a much wider trend that I wish I could describe in a more all-encompassing manner. That would still place Avengers as a evolutionary step, not a massive twist.
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Feb 4, 2016 04:27
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:No; I do not write from the perspective of an imagined future-consensus. U know what he meant...
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Feb 4, 2016 04:45
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Let the Right One In strikes me as classic modern horror, much moreso to me than It Follows or Cabin in the Woods. The Host or Slither for classic modern creature features.
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Feb 4, 2016 05:52
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Yeah but read what you wrote, you loved a dinosaur movie as a kid then grew up and now you can talk about that movie as the apex of a specific director's career. You didn't forget about it or just stay at the same level of "yay! treestars! I loved cera!" baby stuff, you grew up and then now talk about it in terms of a grander thing like it's place in a director's career. The point is that, as a kid, I also loved the hundred goddamn sequels or whatever, and yet now that I can look on them critically, they're flaming dogshit that barely even resembles the first movie. That's where I see opinion on Cars going.
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Feb 4, 2016 07:11
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I think another thing superhero movies (especially The Dark Knight and The Avengers) have done, along with Harry Potter, LotR, Twilight, and Hunger Games, is caused the downfall of the "movie star." Now, people get excited about franchises and adaptations of familiar, beloved works -- seeing characters and stories they love on the big screen. And it matters less who stars in these movies, as long as the casting is "right." Meanwhile, I think the huge stars of the '90s and '00s are somewhat less important to that equation, and less likely to make a movie a huge hit by their presence alone. Johnny Depp, Robert Downey, Jennifer Lawrence, and Christian Bale were smart enough to get involved in franchises. Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Brad Pitt, and Denzel Washington haven't had to. Will Smith may be trying to jump on the franchise bandwagon with Suicide Squad, which shows you how much his star has fallen. Meanwhile, nobody in Star Trek is an A-lister, but it's a big name franchise, the casting is generally excellent, and the movies are big, fun hits. But with the exception of maybe a dozen actors and actresses, I think audiences are less enthusiastic about seeing the latest star than they are about the latest big, mega-hyped blockbuster from a familiar brand.
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Feb 4, 2016 14:50
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Snowman_McK posted:That would still place Avengers as a evolutionary step, not a massive twist. Do non-evolutionary steps even exist in something like this? It seems like it'd be hard to name a single thing in movies (or any art) that formed totally out of no where with absolutely no precedence. Even things like "the first movie with color" and "the first movie with sound" all grew out of earlier achivements. It seems like it'd be nearly impossible to even conceive of a thing to do in a movie that doesn't have SOMETHING similar to some extent done before it. Like as I said before the avengers shared universe is literally the 60 year old model the actual comics use. But at the same time this shared universe thing is pretty drat rare in film and especially at budgets like this.
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Feb 4, 2016 16:19
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Big Bad Voodoo Lou posted:I think another thing superhero movies (especially The Dark Knight and The Avengers) have done, along with Harry Potter, LotR, Twilight, and Hunger Games, is caused the downfall of the "movie star." This isn't universally true. We do still have movie stars, we even have new stars although they're perhaps more niche in comparison to say a Clooney or a Pitt. How many fangirls went wild when Benedict Cumberbatch was announced as Dr. Strange for example? It doesn't really matter who plays Dr. Strange, there's dozens of actors working today who could have done it. But Cumberbatch has star power. I mean, who was Chris Hemsworth before Thor? Now he's a megastar. Who was Jennifer Lawrence before Hunger Games? The thing is that these books adaptations are now serving more as pilots. You make the first film and cast it accordingly, then when it's a success they blow up and everybody reaps the benefits. Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson? Daniel Radcliffe? Chris Evans?
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Feb 4, 2016 16:25
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TrixRabbi posted:Who was Jennifer Lawrence before Hunger Games? A Best Actress nominee, in fairness.
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Feb 4, 2016 16:30
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TrixRabbi posted:This isn't universally true. We do still have movie stars, we even have new stars although they're perhaps more niche in comparison to say a Clooney or a Pitt. How many fangirls went wild when Benedict Cumberbatch was announced as Dr. Strange for example? It doesn't really matter who plays Dr. Strange, there's dozens of actors working today who could have done it. But Cumberbatch has star power. Cumberbatch, Stewart, Pattinson, Radcliffe, and Evans aren't even close to the same level of bankability that stars like Cruise, Smith, Clooney, and Pitt have had in the past. Casting them gives you a boost, sure, but they none of them have carried a major blockbuster on their own that wasn't an already massively successful franchise before. Twilight and Harry Potter were going to be successful no matter who they cast, and like you said, nobody really cares all that much who plays these comic book characters. Jennifer Lawrence maybe is the exception, she was so hot in Hollywood for a while there that she kind of did reach that George Clooney/Julia Roberts level. If she were to star in a bland romantic comedy it would probably still be a huge hit because of her presence. Kristen Stewart has done plenty of work that nobody really paid attention to because the general public doesn't really care about her. Edit: Scarlet Johansson is/was maybe another one.
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Feb 4, 2016 16:36
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TrixRabbi posted:How many fangirls went wild when Benedict Cumberbatch was announced as Dr. Strange for example? Wait, how many did? I don't feel like I saw even one person going wild or even talking about that at all ever even once. I didn't even know that was a thing. Was there really a super strong fan reaction from women somewhere? I barely remember it even getting announced who was playing him. Was it big somewhere at all?
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Feb 4, 2016 17:20
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Wait, how many did? I don't feel like I saw even one person going wild or even talking about that at all ever even once. I didn't even know that was a thing. Was there really a super strong fan reaction from women somewhere? I barely remember it even getting announced who was playing him. Was it big somewhere at all? Yes
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Feb 4, 2016 17:38
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Hey, not being antagonistic but you have to put some bars around this thing. When I talk about Children of Men being a classic, even I don't know exactly what that means, so it might as well be "a movie that is memorable in some way, influential in some way, has some cultural footprint, critically and commercially successful, etc." But even by that metric, 300 is undeniably a classic, but a movie I think is a stone cold favorite film of all time like Lake Mungo is not. You want bars? alrighty *puts you in a playpen with the other babies* have fun[/sarcasm] I guess the question my OP begs is: is there any movie ever where you could go up to any random person with at least a basic knowledge of film, and the majority of people would say that it's a "classic?" You don't really have to have read a detailed, cited essay about cultural linguistics and shared meaning and epistemology to have some idea of a movie that a large amount of people would agree is an important/good/great movie, or is *seen* as an important/good/great movie. Citizen Kane comes to mind; ask any random person with a modicum of film literacy and they're likely to say something along the lines of, "Oh yeah, that's that movie everyone says is the Greatest Movie Ever. A classic. I haven't seen it though." So in a modern context, is there a movie that is so inescapably pervasive, so well-known, so big or influential, that any rando you ask off the street is likely to say, "That was a(n) important/good/great movie" without even thinking about it? That's what I've got. I'm using the word "classic" to encapsulate this feeling, but of course everyone has their own individual definition that might be slightly different.
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Feb 4, 2016 23:18
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Can someone with a good knowledge of film history explain how movies we view as undeniable classics today (Gone With the Wind or The Godfather for example) were viewed in their present time? Or conversely, does anyone know of any big pop culture hit from 40+ years ago that isn't talked about favorably (or at all) today? That might give some good insight on what to look for in recent movies. Of course times and peoples' views change, but it could definitely help. As far as trend-setting movies in my lifetime (I'm 28), the biggest ones I can think of are Toy Story and The Dark Knight. The former was a real paradigm shift in animated movies that was viewed as a huge deal at the time, and the endless stream of movies in that style since have reinforced that. I think it'll be regarded in similar standing as Snow White if nothing else. The latter wasn't the first "blockbuster superhero epic" or whatever you wanna call that style, but it was the first movie of that style to get serious critical acclaim. For that, it's likely to be remembered favorably. Movies that hold up based on critical acclaim alone are probably much harder to predict, but if I had to guess, I'd join the people here that have said There Will Be Blood which already has the ball rolling for building up that type of reputation, plus Daniel Day Lewis is regarded as one of the best actors of the time.
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Feb 5, 2016 01:21
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The Godfather and Gone With the Wind were both massive hits commercially and critically. They were also both adapted from novels that were big hits and had a ton of big names involved.
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Feb 5, 2016 01:32
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Looking at the list of highest grossing movies year by year, for the most part they are regarded as excellent movies today, but the list is still peppered with some stuff we've changed our mind about over time. Love Story made $80 million and was a really big deal in 1970, but nobody likes it now. Some people still think Ghost is pretty good, but they probably wouldn't remember that it made $500 million at the box office. People hated Armageddon like two years after it came out, but somehow it made $500 million and was the highest grossing movie of 1998.
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Feb 5, 2016 03:15
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Critical and audience approval at release is a shortcut to being seen as a classic but is by no means a sure thing. 1973's The Sting made 160 million at the box office, won seven Academy Awards, and I've never heard anyone say a word about it, good, bad, or otherwise. The more interesting story of films becoming classics is about those that were met with a shrug at release and were found later. Blade Runner is a good example of this. It flopped at the box office and got mixed reviews, but was rediscovered in the early 1990s and is now regarded as one of the best sci-fi films ever made.
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Feb 5, 2016 03:26
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Terrorist Fistbump posted:The more interesting story of films becoming classics is about those that were met with a shrug at release and were found later. Blade Runner is a good example of this. It flopped at the box office and got mixed reviews, but was rediscovered in the early 1990s and is now regarded as one of the best sci-fi films ever made. It's a Wonderful Life bombed when it first came out too.
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Feb 5, 2016 03:29
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Terrorist Fistbump posted:Critical and audience approval at release is a shortcut to being seen as a classic but is by no means a sure thing. 1973's The Sting made 160 million at the box office, won seven Academy Awards, and I've never heard anyone say a word about it, good, bad, or otherwise. There was a recent-ish episode of Community based off it, I agree otherwise tho
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Feb 5, 2016 03:45
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The Sting is like Battleship Potemkin or Treasure of the Sierra Madre in that even if someone never heard of it, they've still probably seen it referenced at some point in another work. Whether that actually makes it a classic, I dunno.
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Feb 5, 2016 04:00
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The Sting is a lot of fun, give it a watch sometime.
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Feb 5, 2016 04:10
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SciFiDownBeat posted:I guess the question my OP begs is: is there any movie ever where you could go up to any random person with at least a basic knowledge of film, and the majority of people would say that it's a "classic?" You don't really have to have read a detailed, cited essay about cultural linguistics and shared meaning and epistemology to have some idea of a movie that a large amount of people would agree is an important/good/great movie, or is *seen* as an important/good/great movie. Citizen Kane comes to mind; ask any random person with a modicum of film literacy and they're likely to say something along the lines of, "Oh yeah, that's that movie everyone says is the Greatest Movie Ever. A classic. I haven't seen it though." This description seems rly narrow because I can't think of a ton of movies that are actually like this, like, I think you're overestimating how much most people know about movies.
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Feb 5, 2016 04:14
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As far as I can tell, 'classic' means 'popular and not embarrassing.'
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Feb 5, 2016 04:40
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:It seems like it'd be hard to name a single thing in movies (or any art) that formed totally out of no where with absolutely no precedence. 3/4 angles. The Execution of Mary Stuart. Soviet Montage. Hollywood Montage. The camera turning the wrong way in Taxi Driver. Un Chien Andalou. The fight choreography in The Seven Samurai... TrixRabbi posted:This isn't universally true. We do still have movie stars, we even have new stars although they're perhaps more niche in comparison to say a Clooney or a Pitt. How many fangirls went wild when Benedict Cumberbatch was announced as Dr. Strange for example? It doesn't really matter who plays Dr. Strange, there's dozens of actors working today who could have done it. But Cumberbatch has star power. Most of those people are not successful outside of their franchises. By what measure is Chris Hemsworth a megastar? He's had one non-Marvel hit movie, and a bunch of flops. Ditto Pattinson, (who, to be fair, has little interest in big movies) Evans and Stewart. poo poo, it's weird to think that Clooney hasn't had a proper hit in a really long time. Snowman_McK fucked around with this message at 04:44 on Feb 5, 2016 |
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Feb 5, 2016 04:40
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:As far as I can tell, 'classic' means 'popular and not embarrassing.' What's "not embarrassing" based on?
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Feb 5, 2016 04:45
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Terrorist Fistbump posted:What's "not embarrassing" based on? It's what prevents people from, say, holding up Jack & Jill as a classic comedy.
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Feb 5, 2016 05:12
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:It's what prevents people from, say, holding up Jack & Jill as a classic comedy. There's probably a lot more to it than that, but maybe you're onto something.
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Feb 5, 2016 05:18
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The Dissolve's series on Forgotbusters (movies whose boxoffice returns far outstripped their cultural impact) is pretty fun.Terrorist Fistbump posted:Critical and audience approval at release is a shortcut to being seen as a classic but is by no means a sure thing. 1973's The Sting made 160 million at the box office, won seven Academy Awards, and I've never heard anyone say a word about it, good, bad, or otherwise. It's not Casablanca but it's the kind of thing that gets referenced reasonably often.
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Feb 5, 2016 07:14
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Terrorist Fistbump posted:Critical and audience approval at release is a shortcut to being seen as a classic but is by no means a sure thing. 1973's The Sting made 160 million at the box office, won seven Academy Awards, and I've never heard anyone say a word about it, good, bad, or otherwise. The Sting was one of the first blu-rays I ever bought, it's definitely a classic. I saw just the other day, I can't remember where, but someone pulled a con either in a movie or on a TV show and they used the name Henry Gondorf, and it was almost the exact same con they used at the beginning of The Sting, with the man robbed in the alley. I wish I could remember what show it was. Edit: I was just reading the Better Call Saul thread and then it hit me! Right at the beginning of episode four, the bit in Chicago where they find the "passed out dude" in the alley! I was all "Henry Gondorff? Oh poo poo they're scamming that guy!" Vince Gilligan with the Sting callback. Of course. A visionary writer bound to have his movies be heralded as classics is Charlie Kaufman. So far in the thread I saw one reference to Synechdoche, New York, and another to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but you also have to include Being John Malkovich and Adaptation as well. I mean, you describe BJM to someone "well a guy gets a job in this weird half-office and he discovers a door that takes him inside the mind of John Malkovich for 15 minutes and then dumps him on the shoulder of the Jersey Turnpike. He makes multiple trips and begins charging admission for others to go. They even get John Malkovich to cameo in it and he takes a ride into his own mind." And that's not even really the main plot or theme of the drat movie! It's really about loneliness and identity and defining yourself by how others see you rather than how you see yourself. His stuff is groundbreaking in terms of movies that really dive into trying to show what goes on inside a mind to a viewer, on a screen. Adaptation takes you into the minds of the characters, to the point where the viewer isn't sure if the twin brother character is real or a figment of the main character's imagination. It's a movie about writers' block, where the writer got writers' block and did the most cliche thing possible, wrote about writers' block. And he even included a whole bunch of other bad writer's block cliches throughout the movie, to the point of a character warning him not to use a deus ex machina because it's such a god drat writing copout, and he goes ahead and throws one in anyway. And in the end you still have an incredibly fresh and original story that really reveals the heart of the writer, which should have been impossible given where the movie started out. Eternal Sunshine... is about Memory, so much of the movie takes place inside the protagonist's mind, and then you get to Synechdoche, New York where you can't tell if any particular part of the movie is real or imagined, and it's all this incredible magic surreal space. In the end you don't even really know what gender the main character is. Anyway, I think all of these movies are loved here in CineD but they should be remembered as classics just for the way they use special effects without being "big effects movies". Yeah Avatar was groundbreaking and imaginitive but Synechdoche New York is in an entirely different league of creativity altogether. It really hosed with my head, and I show it to as many people as I can who want their head hosed with. I feel like they're very modern and 21st century, while being a timeless display of creativity and imagination. LloydDobler fucked around with this message at 10:13 on Feb 5, 2016 |
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Feb 5, 2016 08:14
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In Bruges
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Feb 5, 2016 12:03
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bowmore posted:In Bruges I dunno if it has enough of a rep to be a classic, but it's definitely one of the best movies of the past ten years or so, particularly as far as directorial debuts go.
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Feb 5, 2016 12:54
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It'll be a classic in my heart
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Feb 5, 2016 12:55
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LloydDobler posted:A visionary writer bound to have his movies be heralded as classics is Charlie Kaufman. So far in the thread I saw one reference to Synechdoche, New York, and another to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but you also have to include Being John Malkovich and Adaptation as well. Charlie Kaufman reminds me a lot of Alfred Hitchcock in that he always looks so goddamned smug in every picture. I remember Synecdoche, New York as a being a quite soul-crushing experience to watch. If I wasn't eye-rolling at the obnoxious, masturbatory, attention calling wordplay, I was cringing and recoiling at the writer's showy, giddy nihilism and relentless torture of his main character, not to mention that every female character is a laughably cruel misogynistic caricature. I recall thinking it was as if Alan Moore decided to make a non-superhero movie. I did like the surrealism and the subtle motifs like playing with time and the entropic nature of art, I just wish they were in a movie I liked. I think SNY is a "good" movie in the sense that it achieved what it set out to achieve, I just don't agree with its core philosophy or like/relate to any of the characters. That being said, full disclosure, I viewed the movie with a persnickety film student buddy of mine who might have tainted my opinion. I did enjoy Eternal Sunshine and Being. Haven't seen Adaptation. kalel fucked around with this message at 16:56 on Feb 5, 2016 |
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Feb 5, 2016 16:42
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Charlie Kaufman looking smug is pretty funny when you watch an interview with him and he comes across as a man who can't stand himself. The Nic Cage character from Adaptation is straight up just him when Kaufman had the task of writing an adaptation for that flower story.
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Feb 5, 2016 17:13
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SciFiDownBeat posted:not to mention that every female character is a laughably cruel misogynistic caricature. That seems like a weird complaint on that specific movie. Isn't that sort of the point? People in that movie were literally terrible caricatures. Thematically but also In universe in many cases.
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Feb 5, 2016 17:43
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I'd say the biggest problem with what will be Modern Classics is the fact that a whole bunch of movies have just disappeared due to the death of the video store and the rise of streaming services. Unless it's already a classic it seems like it may be impossible for something to transcend to the level where everyone has seen it or even has access to see it much like the pre-home video world.
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Feb 5, 2016 18:42
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:That seems like a weird complaint on that specific movie. Isn't that sort of the point? People in that movie were literally terrible caricatures. Thematically but also In universe in many cases. Yeah, after writing that I acknowledged at the end that I really didn't like any of the characters. But if the point is that they're all unrelatable sociopaths, why should anyone care what happens to them? piratepilates posted:Charlie Kaufman looking smug is pretty funny when you watch an interview with him and he comes across as a man who can't stand himself. The Nic Cage character from Adaptation is straight up just him when Kaufman had the task of writing an adaptation for that flower story. He looks smug. Maybe he just has one of those faces. I'm sure he hates himself (he's a writer) but every writer sees some small light in the tunnel at some point. Synecdoche is, to me, almost vulgar in its oppressive self-loathing. I can appreciate its technical virtues but you can't deny that it is soul-draining to watch.
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Feb 5, 2016 19:00
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:That seems like a weird complaint on that specific movie. Isn't that sort of the point? People in that movie were literally terrible caricatures. Thematically but also In universe in many cases. Ya, the whole thing is just a nightmare about a worst-case reality
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Feb 5, 2016 19:01
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