For the love of movies: The Past, Present, and Future of Cinema and what makes us fans (2 Viewers)

[Keith Cobby]

Great video, great director. None of my favourite actors are 'method'.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

It is true, the life of Barbie is pure hell.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

Recently, Jerry Seinfeld declared that cinema is dead. Basically, his theory is it no longer plays any sort of roll in people's lives for most of society.

Thoughts?

 

[YANG]

well... whatever makes monies, follow what the trend leads.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

well... whatever makes monies, follow what the trend leads.

Sure, there is that game of follow the leader, but maybe we are slipping into a period where people are not sure who or what the leader is.

 

[YANG]

with the boxoffice success of POPE's EXORCIST and recent successful hits of horror film genres...

...Russell Crowe "is" opened to be "re-possessed" again, but in a different role, without "Italian" accent.​

 

[Walter Kittel]

Recently, Jerry Seinfeld declared that cinema is dead

Old man yells at clouds.

I am of the same generation, so I feel pretty comfortable stating that he is old and perhaps he isn't as relevant as he once was. It is the same every generation with those of a certain age decrying youth.

- Walter.

 

[jayembee]

Recently, Jerry Seinfeld declared that cinema is dead. Basically, his theory is it no longer plays any sort of roll in people's lives for most of society.

Thoughts?

A lot of people have spent the last 20 years waiting for Reality Television to die, but it's still going strong.

I'm not worried about cinema. Even if movie theaters start going extinct, movies will still be made, and streaming -- or whatever thing it is that we can't imagine right now that supercedes streaming -- will become the "new cinema".

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

with the boxoffice success of POPE's EXORCIST and recent successful hits of horror film genres...

...Russell Crowe "is" opened to be "re-possessed" again, but in a different role, without "Italian" accent.​

I am really having this bizarre problem with movie trailers lately, I guess over the last few years, I can't tell if they are for real movies or they are some sort of parody thing and it is just a fake trailer for fun. Does this happen to anybody else?

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

A lot of people have spent the last 20 years waiting for Reality Television to die, but it's still going strong.

I'm not worried about cinema. Even if movie theaters start going extinct, movies will still be made, and streaming -- or whatever thing it is that we can't imagine right now that supercedes streaming -- will become the "new cinema".

I don't know if I am worried about it. I think, because we're not young anymore, Jerry, we should just be thankful we lived through having some truly great cinema. I look at most entertainment things now with the confused puppy head tilt, not really sure what to make of them. I do continue to try to participate and understand, but more and more...I don't really have any clue it seems.

I wondered the other day if we would see a rise in films about toys and games. I really never thought in terms of toys and board games being fodder for motion pictures, probably because those movie made about them I mostly did not see.

I guess, I've always stuck by the idea that if it is being shown in cinema, then it is cinema. If it premieres on TV, then it is TV. I've never watched much reality TV, so that whole thing passed me by. I mean, I've heard plenty about it just never bothered to watch it. A reality TV producer told me at breakfast one morning, the great thing about it is it is cheap to make. You don't have to pay actors, or good writers. You just need a concept and some good people steering the show so that whatever it is you want to happen, happens.

Cinema, to me, is about movies, shown in a theater. Sure, our home theaters are awesome now and I think we build them to try to recreate what we nostalgically remember as the cinema experience. The only thing really missing from that is in a cinema, we were watching the movie with a group of strangers, and for me, that always gave me the chance to engage a stranger about a shared experience we just had. That was cool. Or to me it was.

Maybe it will move in cycles. I mean, maybe people will get sick of just formula films, all the remakes and sequels and franchises, and start to yearn for films that tell original stories. I think Oppenheimer and Barbie kind of showed that people wanted to see something...well...not a franchise or sequel or remake.

I stopped in to Barnes and Noble the other day to pick-up the newest issue of my favorite magazine, Cinema Retro, ha, I know that says a lot about me, but the younger guy behind the counter went off about the magazine and older films. We even had an extensive discussion about Sam Peckinpah and he was the one bringing up the titles, I was shocked as he mentioned stuff like Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, and Cross of Iron.

Then over the weekend I watched this great long interview with Peter Bogdanovich and he said something wonderful. He mentioned how nobody puts the world old in front of books or paintings, or plays. They just say have you seen that Shakespeare play, not that "old" Shakespeare play. Or have you seen that painting by Monet, not that "old" painting by Monet.

He thought movies should be treated the same way, did you see that Howard Hawks picture? Not that "old" Howard Hawks picture. Movies he felt never get old because if you have never seen it, it is a new movie to you.

 

[TravisR]

Old man yells at clouds.

I am of the same generation, so I feel pretty comfortable stating that he is old and perhaps he isn't as relevant as he once was. It is the same every generation with those of a certain age decrying youth.

- Walter.

Yeah, you'd be hard pressed to find a bigger fan of the Seinfeld show than me and Jerry is still a funny man & comedian but that just strikes me as old man griping about the kids today.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Yeah, you'd be hard pressed to find a bigger fan of the Seinfeld show than me and Jerry is still a funny man & comedian but that just strikes me as old man griping about the kids today.

With respect to Seinfeld himself, it must be pretty whiplash inducing going from having one of the most popular TV shows ever to air, something that redefines pop culture for decades to follow, to making a Netflix original movie that simply isn’t going to have the same impact. And that’s not to denigrate Netflix or their film choices or Jerry’s upcoming project, but I just don’t think his new movie was ever gonna be the center of the universe no matter when it was made, and certainly not now.

 

[TravisR]

With respect to Seinfeld himself, it must be pretty whiplash inducing going from having one of the most popular TV shows ever to air, something that redefines pop culture for decades to follow, to making a Netflix original movie that simply isn’t going to have the same impact. And that’s not to denigrate Netflix or their film choices or Jerry’s upcoming project, but I just don’t think his new movie was ever gonna be the center of the universe no matter when it was made, and certainly not now.

That's certainly a possibility but I think that Jerry Seinfeld knew that he'd never hit that level of popularity again so he's just done what has caught his fancy since the show ended. Standup is undoubtedly his life's passion and he's largely done that for the past quarter century with the occasional diversion to other things (Bee Movie, Comedians In Cars Getting and Frosted). Personally, I'm more bummed to hear him- a person that I still find funny- recently crying about "cancel culture" and "PC" like a washed up hack that can't change with the times and blames everyone but himself & his material.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

Here are some direct quotes:

“Film doesn’t occupy the pinnacle in the social, cultural hierarchy that it did for most of our lives. When a movie came out, if it was good, we all went to see it. We all discussed it. We quoted lines and scenes we liked. Now we’re walking through a fire hose of water, just trying to see.”

I think what he is saying is there is now "content" coming at us from so many directions that it is hard to keep up with and people are all watching different things, so there basically is not that shared experience of everybody going to see the big movie that is playing at the cinema. Now people can go to a cinema, or stay home and watch a Blu-ray or something on the vast array of streaming channels which are all pumping out their own content to get your attention. I think that is the fire hose, just spraying loads of content all over the place.

Choice is a great thing but I believe he thinks that so much choice has now destroyed the ability of a movie to capture the public conscience. Maybe in many cases this is true, but the Barbie/Oppenheimer thing seemed to show that this can still happen.

I think a huge problem is that most people do not think that MOST movies are a big deal or anything special because so many of them at this stage are sequels, remakes, and franchises...which means the audience knows they are not getting anything new or special, just some sort of continuation or another version of something they have already seen. Barbie and Oppenheimer were new films, not sequels, remakes, or franchises and people went to see them.

He goes on:

“Disorientation replaced the movie business. Everyone I know in show business, every day, is going, ‘What’s going on? How do you do this? What are we supposed to do now?’”

This is a bit more complex, but I would say, yes, most filmmakers now are essentially employed to churn out product that is like other product, hence the tremendous decline in director driven projects and the decline in an interest in directors. For most of my movie going life, I knew if a certain director was making a film, it would hold a certain allure and I would want to see it based on who was directing. You knew that a Sidney Lumet movie was going to have some tremendous performances in it and tell a riveting story. You knew that before you even saw who was in it. It was a Lumet film, so he was going to bring out the best of whatever actors he was working with and he was going to tell that story in a way that would pull you in. So, if the creative people are not driving how a film is made, what to make the film about, how to tell the story, if they don't have a great passion to tell the story...well...they are going to just wonder "How do I do this? What should this be? What rules am I following? Who am I trying not to upset?"

Now, a director often just oversees the daily schedule, turns the film over to the effects department, and walks away. There are few directors working to oversee a project from birth to completion. There are few films being made with that passion to tell a great story, with great acting, and come directly out of someone's imagination. When we get one now, like for example Poor Things, it seems like a big surprise or something really fresh because...well...most films now are not made with this sort of investment by the artist, they are made instead with the investment of the financing and so, are expected to meet a standard set by the financers. Financers are not artists, that's why they work in finance so we can't expect great things of a movie made to the standards of the people doing the banking.

 

[Capt D McMars]

By rewatching "Idiocracy" tells you so much, with what is currently acceptable as popular media and beyond. You can laugh or cry, what was designed as a comedy sure strikes close to the mark!!!

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

By rewatching "Idiocracy" tells you so much, with what is currently acceptable as popular media and beyond. You can laugh or cry, what was designed as a comedy sure strikes close to the mark!!!

Yeah, I mean, I don't want to say it is about intelligence levels but I do think films have become greatly simplified in the way they tell their stories. I think that has been due to some different things though.

One is that simplifying stories and dialogue so that it is easy to translate them for foreign markets has become a huge deal. Most big budget films are no longer made for just an English speaking audience and the simpler the dialogue and story, the easier to convert it to a variety of languages.

Another thing that seems to have happened, and I have seen this commented on many times is, writers now are mostly not being asked, or are not trying to write about their lives and experiences nor anything real world connected. They primarily are writing about other movies, to copy what has already been successful. So, we are getting loads of movie scenes just based on other movie scenes. It's like copying something on VHS tape over and over and each generation becoming more and more degraded.

This does make things appear dumber because we can recognize that they are just writing about some other movie and that also drains drama from these things and pushes an audience to view the film as just a movie...because we've seen these scenes already and done better.

In terms of the audience though, people did want to see different things and stories about other things because they went to see Barbie and Oppenheimer, neither story being something based off of some other film. Barbie was a weirdly melancholy film about a woman coming to terms with aging and her body changing. Pondering death and her place in the world. Not exactly a lighthearted toy movie. Oppenheimer covered a pivotal event in human history, that in truth, changed our existence forever. Again, not lighthearted or lowbrow stuff.

I just think there are fewer really great films made because the people deciding what to make or how to make them are not the right people. Oddly, we've accepted as a culture that profit trumps everything. So, where once we loved the artists, now we love the accountants.

 

[reel-to-reel]

I rarely go to movie theaters now. I do like to catch special showings of great films from the past that I like. I did go see Oppenheimer at my local theater in a digital presentation. Then a month or two later, I got to see Oppenheimer on film at the IMAX in Dallas.

What I noticed, that made the movie so much better at the IMAX, was the clarity of the sound from the IMAX speaker system. Visually, for that film, there wasn't a great difference, in what I experienced at my local theater.

When Equalizer 3 came out, I went to see it at the AMC Dolby Cinema theater.

After the movie was over, I slipped into the IMAX theater showing E3, for the last 10 minutes of the film.

I enjoyed the IMAX experience more than the Dolby Cinema for picture and sound. I did miss the recliner seating that was in the Dolby Cinema theater. I will be choosing the IMAX over the Dolby Cinema from now on, when there is a choice.

 

[bujaki]

My wife and I watched Oppenheimer in IMAX twice: the first, and best, experience was in the 15/70 presentation at Cinemark 17; the second was at AMC Northpark. I asked my wife which viewing experience had been the best for her, and she concurred, without prompting from me, that the Cinemark had been better. The film was equally excellent in both venues, of course.

 

[reel-to-reel]

My wife and I watched Oppenheimer in IMAX twice: the first, and best, experience was in the 15/70 presentation at Cinemark 17; the second was at AMC Northpark. I asked my wife which viewing experience had been the best for her, and she concurred, without prompting from me, that the Cinemark had been better. The film was equally excellent in both venues, of course.

I haven't been to the new Northpark theaters. I saw many films at the original Northpark I & II, including Annie, The Wall, The Hindenburg, and The Song Remains The Same.

 

[bujaki]

I haven't been to the new Northpark theaters. I saw many films at the original Northpark I & II, including Annie, The Wall, The Hindenburg, and The Song Remains The Same.

The lamented Northpark I & 2. Flawless 70mm projection. The My Fair Lady restoration played there. Spielberg also previewed his Schindler's List there. I was present with my young children, and we were left speechless. Unforgettable.