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Saw "North by Northwest" again last night. Damn! it never fails to impress. One of my favorite films. It has action, suspense, sex (at least implied). And it's damn good! Why can't Hollywood do a big film like this anymore? People wouldn't watch it? We don't have actors like Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Martin Landau (although he's still around)? Dearth of directors? I don't know, but it's depressing. Oh well, we still have video to watch the old gems like these.Another somewhat related note - Isn't it about time that we let Foreign Films compete for Best Picture? I mean do away with the "Foreign Film" category and consider the Oscars a global event. Let's see - "A Beautiful Mind" or "Amelie" - a tough choice, NOT!
Rant over, blood pressure lowering.....
I gave at the office!
Follow Ups:
Kids. Kids have disposable "income" are dying to get out of the house and go somewhere every weekend. Look at the films. Are they not aimed there? Actully, some films made for adults show up in specialty houses and/or speciality TV networks or go straight to video release and never have a general release.To be honest, I and people like me are partially to blame. With a good home theatre (including 100" wide front projector) and an excellent popcorn maker . . . why put up with the Middle school kids at the local theatre?
Maybe directors are biting of more than they can chew, when deciding how to approach a picture. It makes their pictures sensationalistic, and harder to connect to-a spectacle. Maybe it's typical of this Bigger is better Americana. Grand explosions, slap you in the face comedy--forget irony or subtlety. I think a discerning movie goer needs character development--but for that to happen, the movie has to be scaled back a bit-to allow for it.mp
take the film "flight of the innocent". i think it is an excellent film. it's like they took the action genre from the americans and did it italian cinema style with great sensitivity to family and emotion.so you have a great action film with what italian cinema has always been good at. emotions, poignancy for one. fellini was a master of making the most out of facial expression.
american filmmakers just can't do it. and they have gotten extemely one-dimensional with their protrayal of 'characters'.
take a movie like 'in the bedroom' where the parents only offspring is murdered. sure they brood, and the characterers are locked into their reactions, and personalities. and of course they have to 'act'. but it's also somewhat one dimensional.
'changing lanes', characters are extemely one-dimensional. what is the sense of that!!! are we all really that one dimensional now? monsters ball, predictable, one-dimensional characters.
we have cardboard figures in our films. cardboard heroes and champions.
It's your fault folks, maybe not the specific people at this forum, but the audiences pay for action, not story. The perception is that you guys won't come without plenty of CGI, violence and or sex. So far the perception appears accurate. When the audience stops flocking to the crap it will stop getting made. Not a very complex issue.Steve
You know those who spend several thousand dollar on home theater and all they watch, special effects movies: Star War, Jurassic Park, Gladiator...
if newspapers are written on a 5th grade level, movies are now made on a 3rd grade level.
It is the same audience that used to flock at the thoughful Hollywood films, so something HAD gone wrong all of a sudden.I think the public and the movie industry had entered the degenerative oscillation, self-sustained, that trully took two to tango. The same trend is noticeable in the European cinema too, but to a far lesser extent.
I think we get what we deserve, goes for films, fashion, cars, government. I am not by the remotest stretch a film expert or historian, but as I recall it the Hollywood machine went arwy somewhere around Star Wars and Raiders of Lost Ark and MTV. Both great films for their uniqueness, size, and fun. Somewhere around there, big, loud, fast, flashy took priority over clever thoughtful writing. We are still sinking into the abyss.Audiences made it quite clear what they wanted, and Hollywood kept making it. Hollywood is not about art, Hollywood is about money. Goal #1 MAKE MONEY. If they are forced to make trash to make big bucks they will make big trash, if forced to make art to make big bucks they will do that. Do not attend the next big trashy film, don't watch Cops, Survivor, Big Brother, American Idol. Write letters and name names of types of films you want to see. Force them to find a new Hitchcock, or Walt Disney, or Billy Wilder. Tell them writers over 22 are not washed up.
Steve
i always noticed the following. i don't know when it began. but i noticed in american film that action was the way it operated. now it's full of killings, which are action death/mortality issues. it's a cheap hook in terms of holding an audience's attention.i do marvel at how good hollywood has taken the action genre. it's quite remarkable really and these films are of interest in their own right. the action never ends in 'collateral damage'. explosions, fires, i just love the scene where arnold plunges into the water, going down a large waterfall. as as he goes under water, my subwoofer kicks in with a great underwater sound effect.
so i'm there with the action. i got the surround sound and the hdtv. it's alot of fun.
i also notice how pumped up i feel after a movie like this. watching my superheroes, i am almost ready for battle.
my complaints here are poor movies like changing lanes in which the social dramas are pathetic. everything is cardboard.
where is this going to go? i envision movies like mtv music videos, where brief sexual images are played for a whole movie and the mind can't fully grasp what it wants to attend to before the image is changed.
i think we are already at the point where it doesn't matter who the director is. they will basically follow the same formula and come out with the same movie. seeing the recent woody allen movie reminded me that he is an individualistic director, that his movie would not be the same as another director.
i saw a movie recently that i thought was okay but the next day i had absolutely no recollection of what the movie was about!!!!!! i completely forgot the whole content of the movie, that's how insignificant it was. and since it was a dvd rental, i could not use the cover to help me remember the movie.
actually if you want to go back to the seventies, remember how unreliable american cars were getting then? how bad it was getting until the japanese cars surged onto the market.
at the time, Star Wars appeared to be a watershed event. I still remember the LINES as I have never seen them before around the theatres. Hell, I liked it myself, and I still do. But it marked the beginning of the end.In fact, I attribute the decline and fall of the entire world on Star Wars. Hollywood got a taste of BIG MONEY, and their rush to create eye candy style movies totally overwhelmed any efforts towards art or deeper entertainment.
This mindset spills over into world-wide distributed media, and pretty soon there are Osama Bin Laden's hating the USA and wanting to kill it.
So, were I to invent a time machine, I would go back in time and prevent Star Wars from ever happening. I would place good money that the World Trade Center would still be standing.
Randy
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye. - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
By the time it came out the water has already been tested by 2001.In terms of demonstrating the public's willingness to swallow big white elephant, it was already clear by the time the SW was rolled out.
What the Star Wars did was to show that once you adapt that simplistic mentality, no high art is required anymore. There is no need for Kubrick and his search for new forms - a simple cookie cutter will work. While the 2001 was - OK, arguably! - a thought provoking film, the SW was nothing but visual kaka, a chemical, with the viewer's brain now simply sending the data (notice - DATA, not even information) from the eyes into the arms and legs, the stomach and bladder - time to get more popcorn, time to pee....
From that point it all accelerated, and today we see the prolifiration of dreck in that format produced every month - all those idiotic shooting creatures abound. Today it probably takes just a few month to "assemble" another Star Trooper, or Lost in Space, or whatever the name of that crap is.
Victor,I respectfully, but totally, disagree with your assesment of Star Wars. Not high art, but hardly empty. A film as empty as the one you portray - a filmic video game - would not have brought me back to the theater over 25 times to see it (when I was young and it first came out). The legions of Star Wars fans the series inspired are hardly mindless (they think a little TOO much, methinks).
Despite cynical wisdom, Special Effects in of themselves are rarely enough to give a film legs. There are countless films that have been special effects heavy, but which have been abandoned by audiences for lack of compelling characters or plot. For many viewers, Star Wars had heart...characters they wanted to see again and again, and a coherent, cogent fantasy world in which to escape.
A lot of people blame Jaws for the same reasons they pile on Star Wars. But I saw Jaws more times than I can count because, long after the scares and gore had lost their impact, the characters, locations and story remained vital and compelling.
Many people have theories about the decline of hollywood, and usually these theories start with a completely subjective reaction to a film.
"I hated this popular film....therefore it's responsible for everything bad that has come since..."I don't buy it.
Rich H.
writers. They're gone. There are lots of "great" directors around. But the well written picture has all but disappeared. The last one I can recall is Altman's last effort, "Gosford Park."
Frankly, I don't think Hollywood has recovered from the bloody writers' strike of years ago. A director without a good writer is like a chef trying to make a souffle out of a turd.
i've only seen a couple of films that had hollywood remakes. when i did see both versions of the film, the original and the remake, what amazed me was how good the original was, and how bad the remake was.it defies logic that someone would take something and make it worse. so that in itself says alot. it is history for us to understand.
an example would be the movie "cape fear".
the original cape fear was a truly exciting and frightening picture. there is no more frightening screen individual than robert mitchum. he was natural for the role.
the later version, almost 30 years later, was a pathetic film. robert de niro had to "do" things, to try to make the character appear dangerous, and it was a complete failure by comparison.
i know this simple truth. not everything is improving in our society. not everything is evolving. alot is lost also as our society develops.
there are also certain time periods in which certain achievements can not be duplicated. it just cannot be done, no matter what. energy and whatever other factors are involved.
an example of this to me is the miles davis era jazz of the 50's, with "kind of blue" and other stuff at the time. even at a later time in his life, miles could not do what he previously had done.
The Out-of-towners (Dennis and Lemmon) Why on earth did anyone think that Hawn and Martin could carry that crappy remake? It does defy logic. Planet of the Apes was MUCH WORSE that it's mediocre predicesor.mp
Man, they come out of woodwork...But the unforgettable Knife in the Water deserves special mention, as the remake was so utterly ridiculous, so incredibly American-atrocious (Nicole Kidman, nuff said...)
Only a complete idiot would remake the locally well known film - witness the Out-of-Towners. Smart idiots remake the films that are generally not known to the local public, but been a success in some "underdeveloped" part of the world, therefore getting more chance to look original.Scent of a Woman... Three Men and an Cradle... and who could forget the pinnacle of the horrible, horrible remakes, the atrocicous "The Return of Richard Gere".
scent of a woman-- that's the other movie i was trying to think of the name. i was incorrectly thinking 'postman'.the italian original is really a great film, and the remake is a joke.
and you would not realize how bad the remakes are if you haven't seen the originals. that's the key. a point of reference.
the problem here too is art versus technology. technological advancement may advance things a bit, but technology cannot make better art.
for example. say that crime and punishment is the greatest novel ever written, which i believe it is considered. no amount of technology is going to give an author a chance to make a better novel.
film is the same way.
you did not have to see the original to know "Scent of a Woman" was a bad movie. Al Pacino is one of the worst overactors around unless the director reigns him in (Coppola in "Godfather" for example).
I gave at the office!
I would not call the original Scent a great movie - it was Vittorio's vehicle, very enjoyable, but with some weak moments. But his presence was incredible and there is no way in Hell Al Pacino could match his charisma.I was never able to finish the Crime, but the Russians had made a pretty good film based on it with one of the Russian great actors - Smoktunovsky.
you are right. not a great film, but very, very enjoyable. if i can remember, beautiful. and the actor was remarkable.and if i remember the remake with al pacino, he was more frantic and trying it seemed to be like the other actor, but he was only able to pick up one piece, one aspect of how the original actor was, and he exaggerated it cause that's all he had.
You are right. I have seen many beautiful French films mangled by American directors.mp
And ABM would probably still have won. Hollywood seems to love generic, safe directors like Opie. And the music swells as our hero's arm is impregnated with a radiation counter, or whatever. I saw North By Northwest for the first time the other day, and loved it. It was the first time in too long that I left the house to do mundane everyday things with a smile on my face, thinking about a film I had just seen. There are things to look forward to, like Gangs of New York, and Punch Drunk Love, but I don't get my hopes high in anticipation like I used to. The gaps of time between the releases of really special films seems to get longer and longer.
***The gaps of time between the releases of really special films seems to get longer and longer.David, movies don't just exist at the theater - there are thousands of good films waiting to be watched on the dusty shelf. My concern is I will bever have enough time to cover them all.
I agree with you Victor. I've been reading Halliwell's Film Guide for years, and it has led me to films I might never have bothered to see otherwise. I know that I will probably not have the time to see everything worth seeing either. I haven't been to a movie theatre in many years.
It has taken the "cutsie" music sequence in EVERY Hollywood picture and beat it into the ground. I actually get angry, if I see a cutsie music sequence. It has become mandatory--and what the hell does it serve? Break in the middle of the movie to show how light-hearted and "real" the main characters are when they are prancing around singing (or looking in their clothes closet-putting on make-up or cooking) and the situation is completely contrived. Hey hollywood, how about a "cutsie" musical sequence in a urinal--down to earth gritty realism!Oh the worst "cutsie" musical sequences, are when they are reflective in nature. Someone in a movie THINKING about a musical sequence they have had, either off or on camera!
mp
like the one in Zoolander where they get into the gas fight...
I gave at the office!
What happen to movie lovers? they praise 2 films that I found ultra boring, i'm talking about Amelie and Moulin Rouge.
It is crap.
I'm not inspired at all to see it-thanks for the confirmation!I did waste 2 hours of my life watching eyes wide shut--sensual, yeah OK, if I was a teenager and sneaking up late to watch it on Showtime.
I was expecting an SK flick at it's best--and I found it to be very rich, visually, but completely lacking in character development and a piecemeal plot--and the weirdness wasn't "cultish" or moody--just weird (but not Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas weird) kind of "who cares" weird. Did I miss something?mp
You didn't miss anything. It is quite sad that his brilliant career had to end like that. The film was the definition of "boring", with dated silly plot given too much importance it didn't deserve, and the director too absorbed in that plot to notice things were going completely wrong.I can't defend a single thing about that mess, including his choice of two bimbo "stars" - one male, one female... sell wort of.
Things like that defy any explanation.
He shall still remain one of the great ones - with his Barry Lyndon forever on my VERY short list.
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