The Collective Shelf: July 2008

David Fincher Facts

Posted on 7/31/2008 No Comments
Labels: Film Industry, Hollywood, Mischievous

If film geeks are to have a hero, it seems fitting that it should be a dorky looking 46 year old who grew up making Nike ads. David Fincher, maker of Fight Club, Seven and Zodiac is definitely our man; the Chuck Norris for people who prefer Criterion Editions to roundhouse kicks. [see my article: why Fight Club is better than Citizen Kane] In this vein, I thought i’d teach you some things about our friend Mr. Fincher:

Erectile Disfunction can be cured by watching the opening credits of Seven.

Doctors have told Michael J. Fox that if he appears in a David Fincher film, his symptoms would decrease by fifty percent.

After seeing the perfection of Fight Club, God developed an inferiority complex.

David Fincher called an actor to tell him he'd been cut out of a movie. The actor dropped the phone and jumped in front of a train.

The First rule of David Fincher: You do not blame David Fincher for Alien 3

You can build a better mousetrap, but you can't shoot better inserts than David Fincher.

The Second rule of David Fincher: You do not blame David Fincher for Alien 3

During halftime of Game 4 of the NBA Finals, Doc Rivers showed his team a rough cut of Benjamin Button. The rest is history.

The sonogram of David Fincher in his mother's womb was nominated for Best Short Film.

David Fincher is a replicant.

David Fincher does not direct "dark films"; the sun is terrified of him.

The Securities and Exchange Commission filed an injunction against his TV advertising clients, citing "unfairly excellent cinematic handywork whose effectiveness would lead to monopolization."

David Fincher's wedding video has 4 commentary tracks (the one recorded for the laserdisc edition was not ported to the DVD).

David Fincher is Tyler Durden, but only in his spare time.

David Fincher's obese cousin's thighs have an excess of celluloid.

It is rumored that David Fincher was in a freak helimotocopter accident in 1996 and directed The Game while in a coma, legally dead.

The actual director's cut of Alien 3 will remain unreleased until Ridley Scott and James Cameron pass away, as they are unwilling to allow its awesomeness to overshadow their comparatively feeble attempts at cinema

Author Chuck Palahniuk has taken to visiting bookstores and libraries, slicing out the ending to Fight Club, and replacing it with a note suggesting the reader watch the movie instead.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button trailer makes Citizen Kane look like Ernest Goes To Camp

David Fincher is developing his own handheld 8K HD digital video camera, comprised of chewing gum, twine, a webcam, and a flashdrive.

David Fincher doesn’t need Helicopters to capture his aerial shots. God films them for him as a personal favour for making Se7en.

Before Fincher, people would say “There are a million ways to shoot a scene”, now there are only two. The way Fincher does it, and the wrong way.

Censorship: Seeing The funny side

Posted on 7/29/2008 comments (2)
Labels: Hollywood, Mischievous, TV

Censorship is a very hot button issue in cinema, whether it be the kind forced upon studios by profit margins or by the MPAA. This is a multifaceted and complicated topic, one which I will enjoy going into in more serious detail in the coming months. However, oddly enough such a serious topic can also be a very amusing one. Particularly when the censoring isn’t done by anyone who had anything to do with the film’s production.

Throughout the 90s in particular, television networks took it upon themselves to remove ‘’offensive’’ language from the films they broadcast so as to ‘’protect young ears’’ and pass the content out before the watershed. Without access to actors or additional footage and with the help of a-not-so-subtle over dub, the results were inevitably catastrophic and hilarious.

The Breakfast Club had the line Eat my shit! replaced with the much more palatable Eat my socks! while You and your whole fucking family in Godfather II was replaced with You and your whole phony family. The fact that his family were a lot of things, but hardly phony, didn’t seem to matter.

The Die Hard Franchise was a great one for such goofs. The famous Yippi-Ki-Yay Mutherfucker! line was replaced with Yippi-Ki-Ay melon farmer! in the UK and Yippi-Ki-Yay Mr. Falcon! in the American network version. The worst part was that the dub wasn’t even anything like Bruce Willis’s voice, sounding more Russian than anything. Not to mention the fact that 'Mr. Falcon' is not the villain’s name, and is by no means an insult. The Australian version meanwhile was something like Yippie-Ki-Yat Kemosabe.

In another Die Hard related incident, in Die Hard: With a Vengeance, the TV version switched the sandwich board sign Bruce Willis was forced to wear in a black ghetto from I hate Niggers to I hate everyone... obviously young black guys have a thing against manic depressives, the emo generation better watch out.

Robocop also has a great TV edit, at one point one of the scientist even proclaims that Robocop will be a bad mother crusher!!. What is a mother crusher? Where can i find one of these machines? Why would anyone want one?

This is of course the same edit where Dick Jones explains (regarding his boss) Once I even called him an airhead (asshole)

Oh well, in the age where any underage kid can get his hands on all kinds of wonderful sleaze and gore we can look back and laugh at those days...

Here’s a nice collection of wonderful obvious ‘changes’ in Die Hard 2 (as if that film could get any worse). I particularly like the huge difference between Bruce Willis and the dubbing guy’s voices

source: some of the above examples were found on this excellent podcast forum

Home Media Part 3: Why Are Digital Movie Downloads So Important?

Posted on 7/25/2008 No Comments
Labels: Film Industry, Film Theory, Media Formats, Trends

*** Parts 1 and 2 can be found here and here***

When it comes down to it, what are we hoping for in terms of movies?. That’s simple, we all want better content, films that we enjoy more. The problem is that unless you’re an adventurous type, the typical anglosaxon is pretty much limited to whatever the big studios give us. These are the cinematic behemoths, they deliver giant, worldwide releases on huge budgets.

The problem is that these kind of things cost a lot of money, so to get something meaningful out of their investment producers have to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Everything is dictated by markets; kids films have to appeal to adults, action movies have to have a love interest for the girls etc, etc. There is little room for the niche markets that make the music industry for example so great and diverse. Not everyone likes the same thing, but if you’re only into free improvisation electronic art music there is a corner of the market ready to satisfy your needs. The same cannot be said for film in most cases.

The technology is there, the investment required to get the necessary equipment is comparitively small. More and more movies are being edited on Final Cut Pro, which i have right here on my laptop, and professional film cameras aren’t that much of a step up from the Canon HV20 i have on my desk. The problem is distribution, hello internet.

If you’re a new band, you make a few songs and put them on myspace. If they’re good a fanbase starts forming, you pick up steam and eventually a big company might take notice and give you a contact, if they don’t you’ve still got a whole load of listeners. But what do you do if you’ve made a movie? Our whole way of thinking needs to change in terms of cinema; from one where filmmaking is very much an industrial exercise, justifying the loss of the ‘art’ index, to where anyone with talent can do it. This is what Francis Ford Coppola was talking about long ago:

"To me the great hope is that now these little 8mm video recorders and stuff have come out, some... just people who normally wouldn't make movies are going to be making them, and - you know - suddenly, one day, some little fat girl in Ohio is going to be the new Mozart - you know - and? make a beautiful film with her little father's camcorder - and for once the so-called professionalism about movies will be destroyed. Forever. And it will really become an art form."

Now we have the cameras and technology, we just have to take the leap into a fair distribution method. Of course what a few people can produce on their own isn’t going to match up to Hollywood. No, my hope is that this will inspire the creation of many more smaller studios, that don’t have to compete with the biggies to get their movies shown. We’re judging on content, not on claught. Just think what this changes. Suddenly you’re multiplying the amount of films produced ten fold. Then we’ve got real choice.

Inevitably it won’t be easy to get your name attached to the rising stars of digital distribution. I’m sure Apple would be reluctant to put your little movie in their store. What i’m talking about is a change in the way we think about getting films where alternate, independant sites start offering downloads and for better value. When people get used to getting their movies from the internet, it won’t be long before they venture further afield than iTunes or Netflix streaming. However far you decide to go is a victory for choice, content and quality, and will finally turn cinema into something more than the stagnant beast it is today. Viva La Revolution.

Home Media Part 2: Collectionism and the Digital Revolution

Posted on 7/23/2008 No Comments
Labels: Film Theory, Media Formats, Movies, Trends

Given that my last article has received a fair amount of attention, I think i should first clarify my position regarding Blu-Ray. There is no doubt Blu-Ray is the ‘best’ format out there in terms of picture quality, that is obvious. However my point is that picture quality beyond DVD does’t really matter. Yes, we can all see the difference and say ‘’that looks better’’, but the added viewing value of Blu-Ray is small, while the cost is extremely high, at least for the foreseeable future. Why is the Wii outselling the PS3 two to one? Because in the gaming market as with movies, picture quality is way down on the list of priorities.

That’s why digital downloads/streaming are the future. They are cheaper, you don’t have to leave your house to get them, they don’t take up any room (except for a backup drive or two) and they’ll never get scratched. Just like MP3s.

This isn’t going to happen overnight; we’ve been trained to have consumerist, collectionist tendancies which won’t fade away until a whole new generation grows up without knowing DVDs (ask a kid today when was the last time he used a cd). A few people commented under my last piece about how they don’t want to switch away from DVD because they are too attached to their collection. For a long time I felt the same way, my 300 DVDs took pride of place on my shelves. But what use are they, really? The shiny boxes and colourful sleeves give us a sense of pride and contentedness, but they’re just pieces of paper. All we’re really looking at are discs, discs that play movies. All the rest doesn’t make sense, but I agree it’s hard to let go, i’m not immune to these irrational feelings. However I recently handbraked my entire collection and started selling off my dvds. It is so much more convienant, and if you make the files big enough (I go for about 2.5GBs per film) the quality loss is virtually unnoticeable. Suddenly, just like with my old CDs, my DVDs are just sitting on the shelf gathering dust, soon enough I won’t miss them at all.

Clearly DVD ripping isn’t for everyone though, it’s time consuming and complicated. Digital movies will only gather pace when it truly enters the average household. This is what companies should be focusing on if they want to be what iTunes is for music, but ten fold. Don’t bring the computer into the living room as the iTunes store has done, this will only get you so far. The Xbox team understands this, so do the Playstation people. Both are trying to bring movies straight to your TV just as with the Apple TV and Netflix’s Roku. Whoever wins this battle will become the next media heavyweight. At the moment these services are under marketed and too expensive.

The company who is prepared to gamble on the temporary monetary hit caused by heavily subsidizing their player will reap the rewards down the line. Forget download speeds and DRM, the future is a single box under your TV that streams or downloads your content. No more looking around for websites and URLs. The Apple TV does this but it remains a niche product. It's much too expensive and no-one out of the tech world knows what it does. It's seen as a relay from your computer to your TV, not as a standalone machine that lets you download and play content out of the box. Companies need to get behind these products in a big way, and DVD will soon become a thing of the past.

Regarding illegal downloads, forget about them. The cat is out of the bag and unless something changes radically in the way the entire internet is organised, this is not going to change. The people who want to download illegally will and you can't stop them. But most people don't want to use bittorent right now. The music industry didn't react quick enough to a changing market and lost an entire generation of consumers. The film business must embrace companies like Apple and Netflix Streaming, not shy away from them. Unfortunately Hollywood is probably the most conservative market place of them all, and will keep pushing for their out of date business model long into the future, while the rest of the world moves on.

Home Media Part 1: Why we don’t care about Blu Ray

Posted on 7/22/2008 comments (44)
Labels: Media Formats, Movies, Trends

The home media market is in a strange place right now. For awhile it seemed like the HD DVD vs Blu Ray battle would decide the future of personal entertainment but Blu Ray’s continuing slow sales figures now give a clearer indication of what consumers want and where the market is heading.

People aren’t switching from DVD to Blu Ray because they think dvd is good enough, the only added value HD DVD really offers is higher picture quality, and not many people seem to care. The precedent was set by the music industry; people are perfectly happy with 128kbps songs from itunes (a CD is 1,411kbps (*fixed*)). Beyond a certain point higher image/sound quality are given diminishing ratios of importance by consumers. Sure we’d be happy to buy into better looking dvds for about £200, but the biggest problem with Blu Ray is that it doesn’t fit its only market.

If we want to ‘’go high-def’’ you’re going to need a Blu-Ray player (about £300) an ‘’HD Ready’’ (what a confusing, un-consumer friendly term) TV costing around £600, a high definition cable subscription plan, because you want your tv to be HD too (Sky HD costs £210 for set up and the box then +£10/month) and that's without considering the added cost of the more expensive discs. In total then over two years going HD will cost you around £1400 or $2800 more than sticking with SD, all that just to have better picture quality.

Unless you’re an audio/visual- ophile nut, or you’re mad rich, you’d actually have to be pretty crazy to spend that kind of money for a few more pixels. As with the CGI backlash, we’re seeing that really how something looks (in terms of pixels not visuals) isn’t that important. Cinema is a means to tell stories; it is primarily a narrative (like literature) and not a visual form of art (like paintings). As mentioned in Style of Gimmicks Part 2, the vast array of visual cues and camera techniques only work when used as the most effective way to convey the intended emotion/message otherwise they’re just showing off.

Blu Ray, at its current price point, is just another expensive gimmick. People want their media delivered easier and cheaper (why is bittorent so popular?) and don’t mind about the slight qualitative hit this entails. This is why digital downloads are the future, and this will form the topic of discussion in part 2 (available here)

The Dark Knight blasts into the IMDB number 1 position

Posted on 7/21/2008 comments (1)
Labels: Film Industry, Hollywood, Previews, Trends

The IMDB Top 250 is an interesting beast to say the least. It tracks the preferences of film goers who are interested enough in the medium to be seeking out directors/actors etc. and be voting regularly, but also has a large enough audience to not become a snobbish AFI-esque list. Citizen Kane's position at 28 reaffirms the idea that the voters are clued in to film art and history, but are also ''normal''; they like an entertaining flick as much as anyone else. There's noway to agree with the list completely, and i don't think anyone serious about film would say Pulp Fiction was the 6th greatest film ever made, but the mix between art/entertainment makes the list a powerful and interesting read.

For the last two years the top four has been entirely consistent:

1. Godfather

2. Shawshank Redemption

3. Godfather II

4. The Good The Bad and The Ugly.

However The Dark Knight, Chris Nolan's new Batman movie has slammed it's way to the number one position, only 3 days after its release. To place a film on the level of The Godfather in the eyes of the general public shows that perhaps we have something special on our hands. It's been 14 years since a director has even come close to breaking up the big 4, and in my opinion Christopher Nolan is a worthy contender, one of the most exciting young directors around today.

Memento is an instant classic; in fact much like with Brian Singer and Superman, I was annoyed when Nolan took the Batman job as it's confines were sure to stifle his more unique and interesting qualities. With Memento, Insomnia and The Prestige, Nolan made 3 excellent films which all pushed the boundaries of film. Making an awesome comic book movie is cool, but i would say it smacks a bit of wasted talent.

What I'm really getting at I think is 1. Go see The Dark Knight asap, then probably go see it again as it has all the makings of something special, something we haven't had for some time (There Will Be Blood came close though).

More interestingly, and perhaps more worryingly I'm starting to wonder what having a comic book adaptation franchise (Dark Knight), a short story adaptation (Shawshank) and a sequel (Godfather II) in the so called ''top 4 movies'' says about cinema.

Let's Glory in Depressing Movies

Posted on 7/12/2008 comments (3)
Labels: Analysis, Cinema, Film Industry, Film Theory, Hollywood, Marketing, Movies

When people talk about Hollywood predictability, its almost always in respect to the inevitable ‘’happy ending’’. The couple always work it out and get married, the attractive young female always survives the shark attack (while the funny black guy dies - sorry that’s just the way it is) and the president always escapes the terrorists.

The idea is that people won’t go to see films with a depressing ending, that we want to be entertained not sadened.

Producers are wrongly correlating emotions that audiences feel within the film with those that they feel for the film itself. These inter-film emotions (‘’Oh no, my favourite character is dead -> sadness, negative feelings) don’t translate to how we then perceive the film when it’s over. People don’t leave the cinema not liking a movie because it made them sad, just as we don’t instantly love every so called ‘’feel-good’’ flick.

No, we feel negatively about a film because it wasn’t good, because it didn’t work as a movie. Often this can be precisely because it didn’t go where it naturally should have, the director artificially created a ‘’happy’’ ending because studios are convinced this is what sells. Frank Darabond was offered twice the money to give his latest film, The Mist a happy ending; in a great show of artistic integrity he turned them down and made the film he wanted to make, delivering what Mark Kermode describes as ‘’the darkest ending in the cinema of the last few years’’

Think of some movies with depressing endings: The Wind That Shakes The Barley, 4 Months 3 Weeks 2 days, Seven, Cloverfield. None of their reputations are tarnished by their sad endings, more often than not they are praised for them.

The enemy of great cinema is predictability, and when the ending of practically every film is so easily foreseeable, anything that dares to throw a curve-ball at the audience certainly earns bonus points, even if it doesn’t pull in big box-office numbers.

TV beats cinema, at least for the moment

Posted on 7/11/2008 No Comments
Labels: Analysis, Cinema, Film Theory, Media Formats, Movies, Trends, TV

It’s a rare and wonderful moment when a new idea simultaneously solves two problems at once. In recent years TV, more specifically TV on DVD, has begun to do just this.

In terms of narrative art, works that tell stories, literature has long since been considered the most dynamic and powerful creative tool. Even if cinephiles are loathe to admit it, the general consensus is that books offer a more complete experience than film, while the theatre - and poetry - have been thoroughly sidelined (in numerical measurements at least). More and more often though a large portion of society, particularly in younger age groups, are rejecting the novel, stating as explanation a general preference for movies coupled with frustrations at the literary form; particularly the length of the time it takes to ‘consume’ a single piece (yes we’re back to the whole impatience problem again).

It is the longer form factor however, that so many people praise and lord over cinema. The additional length means that plots can be more interesting, characters better developped and more engaging, works more diverse and structurally original (films seem restricted to a particularly repetitive set of narrative beats. There needs to be an introduction to both the characters and the plot; then a series of character moments to help the viewer emphasise. Of course we’ll also need a climax and probably a denouement; so really there’s not much space left in between to be ‘different’).

So we have one portion of people saying books are too long, another saying films are too short. That’s where the TV show comes in. With the huge success of TV on DVD, over the last decade creators have gradually started creating shows with just this form factor in mind.

The problem with TV has always been its limitations; stories needed to be even simpler than Movies did, with writor’s working on the basis that the viewer probably hadn’t seen at least most of the preceding episodes, forcing them to make stand alone, monster/villain of the week types of shows. This limitation, added to the fact that shows were intercut with adbreaks every 8minutes, and were probably preceded in the scheduling by a cooking programme and proceded by Big Brother, rightly gave TV the label of ‘’lowest form of art’’ made simply to midly distract and amuse us after a long day at work, as we sit down to eat dinner in front of the Boob-tube. Honestly, when I sit down to watch TV im looking to ‘’switch off’, to watch something distracting and entertaining, certainly not the visual equivalent of Heart of Darkness or Paradise Lost.

This is why the rise of smart, artistic and unique television shows, (The Sopranos, Lost, Alias, Six Feet Under, Prison Break, The West Wing, Rescue Me etc etc) seems to have been more of an accident than a planned strategy. Unlike with movies, where viewers seem happy to have pissy throw away experiences (Kung-Fu Panda has grossed 350M$, and i can tell you from personal experience at least half the audience were not the 0-14 year old crowd) the same cannot be said for TV. If you are going to invest 12 hours into a season (not to mention the high cost of the DVD) people seem to insist on quality, and for once it looks like the shows that are good are the ones not being cancelled (in most cases at least, RIP Firefly, we hardly knew yee).

The popularity of DVD has allowed these shows not to pander to the johnny-come-lately audience, and continually build upon one storyline, making for brilliantly thrilling and engageing ‘’60 hour movies’’. At this point anything goes, the audience truly has no idea what's going to happen, as we can’t see the climax and final resolution approaching in the distance. The only thing that these programs must be is constant high quality, it's word of mouth more than anything that is creating highly engaged, passionate audiences.

In the future we might look at this as the turning point of entertainment, as this becomes the dominant rather than the minority form. With the motion picture industry as stagnant and stuck for ideas as it is, this could well be just what we need because, at the moment at least, ‘’TV’’ (+ TV on DVD) has never been better, while cinema has turned into our parents - they used to be our favourites and we still love them dearly, but there's no doubt they’ve lost their edge.

The market for these shows can surely only get bigger as costs gradually fall and stop pricing so many out off the market. Lets just hope the increased exposure doesn't lead to a decrease in quality as is so strangely often the case. These shows are certainly where it's at for the moment, it's just a shame poor folk like me are forced to resort to illegal methods in order to satisfy our TV addiction.

The Problem With Youtube.

Posted on 7/09/2008 No Comments
Labels: Analysis, Film Industry, Film Theory, Media Formats, Trends

With the advent of Youtube, mass media was finally getting the shock to the system that it has long since deserved. Our content is no longer limited to television companies and movie studios. People are making content for the people, its what web 2.0 is all about.

But what does Youtube, the people's channel, really say about our media and decisions over our free time? It doesn't matter that 90% of it is crap. That’s inevitable, 90% of the world aren’t as creative and intelligent as they think they are, but lets focus on the top percent the videos that make it through and become youtube’s version of ‘’canonical’’.

The most viewed page is full of trashy music videos (don’t people know that music videos are just glorified commercials?), a stupid kid crying, a shameless man dancing; where most of the comments seem to be ''dude, why is this on the front page wtf?'' (lets not talk about the youtube comments system) and admitedly, some pretty awesome guitar skillz [sic].

The point is people see Youtube wrong, especially traditional media companies. Youtube isn’t there to replace content. The quality is rubbish, they're under ten minutes long and production values are well, you get what you deserve.

People won’t come to the site to find their evening's entertainment. You're not going to eat your dinner infront of Tay Zonday or The Numa-Numa Guy. People aren’t going to stop watching tv because they can see two minute clips of The Simpsons on Youtube.

Youtube follows the trend of the internets. It is a place for novelty; constant short sharp hits that make you smile but you won’t remember them tomorrow morning.

This isnt the vehicle through which we'll finally take entertainment back into our own hands. Short film directors aren't plucked from the Youtube sesspool and given real jobs, most people dont even get to the end of an 8 minute video.

So is it worth it? This impatience to have everything now to consume faster faster faster, it’s like a competition. You can’t help checking out how much music you have on your laptop. ‘’What only 15gigs?’’. All music is free and accessible to everyone; so you have 50 gigs of music on your computer. That’s 11770 songs, or a new song every day for the next 32 years. But how many of those do you listen to?

What connection do you have with these 2 minute videos that you see once and never look at again? Continuing the music analogy; it’s the music you hear over and over again that you love; that brings something to you life.

Entertainment is going through the same revolution that the food industry has done. We used to be happy with whatever we could get, now we have to make the choice not to take the junk food everytime, because actually its doing us no good. Sure YTs of fat guys falling over might be funny, but is that how you want to spend your life? Is that all you want from your free time? Mild forgetable amusement?

I think theres a freshhold beyond which unmonetasable content cannot go. Videos will never be super high quality if you're not getting money from them; you're not making a living from them.

All i want, is that we can take a few steps beyond the virals and the pretend porn and my chemical romance. Or maybe we just need a better way of shifting through the mass of junk.

Maybe that is just a catalogue of feelings and emotions, a capture the finer points of the human condition.. [crying, happiness etc) but it certainly isnt this or this.

The Difference Between a Film and a Movie: The Revenge of the Snob

Posted on 7/06/2008 comments (2)
Labels: Film Theory, Marketing, Trends

From what i’ve seen of cinematographic discussion lately, a large portion of enthusiasts seems to be attempting with more and more vigeur to differentiate movies from films, defining them as two different cinematic forms. The heart of the perceived difference lies in the definer’s snobbishness and pretention. They tend to define a ‘film’ as something they consider to have a satisfactory artistic and sincere approach, while a movie is blockbuster fodder; franchises made to furfil Hollywood’s monetary fantasies. Their idea is quite simple on the surface. There Will Be Blood is a film, Weekend at Bernie’s is a movie.

However, this classification present two major difficulties, either of would be enough to rubbish the idea on their own. The first is simply that certain groups of ‘’conaisseurs’’ have come across this idea but it has no basis across the wider scope of things. The Wikipedia entry for ‘’Movie’’ redirects to a page on film. Your definition is worthless and unhelpful if only you and a relatively small group of people know about it. It just creates confusing situations:

‘’no! you can’t call that a movie you idiot, that IS a film!’’

‘’eh?’’

What’s more there doesn't seem to be any need or reason to impose such a division, apart from to classify the proponent’s of the idea as "art critics".

The second problem is that such a distinction requires a subjective appraisal of a work; at this point the noun becomes an adjective. These people are trying to take their opinions and make them a universal law by virtue of a definition. How do you decide what is cinematic art and what is cinematic popcorn? I certainly have my opinion, but some people might look at Micheal Bay’s Transformers and the immense amounts of CGI involved and call it a beautiful art work. I would disagree, but who can argue?

Art remains subjective and appreciative. Of course most people would agree that some works are objectively better than others overall; works like The Godfather and Citizen Kane certainly must be given higher praise than Epic Movie, but there are far too many crossover pieces for any kind of permanent definition to enter into the general consciousness. Is Star Wars a film or a movie? What about Dr. Strangelove? Apocalypse Now? The list is endless. Aren’t the best works of art the ones which manage to combine both the elite and populist forms of the particular genre?

In conclusion, there’s no reason to try and distinguish a film from a movie. The only question is whether a particular piece worked for you or not. By all means lets distinguish our taste into ‘’for art’’ and ‘’for entertainment’’ categories, but lets not force these definitions upon anyone but ourselves.

How Hollywood Skews Box Office Figures, Hides Progressive Decline

Posted on 7/03/2008 comments (1)
Labels: Cinema, Film Industry, Hollywood, Marketing, Trends

Rush Hour 3, Spiderman 3, Pirates of The Caribbean 3, Die Hard 4... i could go on forever. No one would say these films were made because the producers thought they were worthy projects. No, they were made because they'd be profitable, and we've been led to believe that the figures justified their actions; partly to make the studios look better, partly as a marketing ploy. However, after doing a little digging of my own I've been able to pull together this table, which paints a very different picture than that fed to us by Hollywood

The table shows the all time top box-office chart adjusted for inflation. On the left are the top ten most financially successful films ever made; on the right the top ten this century, and their position in the chart as a whole:

As you can see this current decade, so obsessed with lucrative franchises, sequels and remakes, has only one film in the top 30. We're constantly being told how much money movies are making nowadays, how Spiderman 3 and POTC 2 broke all sorts of box-office records, but in reality these figures can be put down to higher inflation rates rather than more people actually going to the cinema; this is why i strongly support the idea of counting attendance rather than box-office, eliminating the confusing and often deceptive counting method.

I find it particularly interesting to note that four out of the top ten were made in the so called ''post- classical'' era (1967-1982) of cinema, generally considered to be the most fruitful in cinema's history in terms of quality (Taxi Driver, The Godfather, Apocalypse Now to name but a few classics), is also the best represented on the financial side. Our interest in cinema was higher because we were being given better entertainment, showing how contrary to popular belief, money and quality can and did go hand in hand.

Now don't be surprised when Wall-E trumps Wanted at the box office this weekend!