Titanic (Page 1 of 2)

I hain't listened to it yet, 'cause my iTunes just grabbed it — so no spoilers! — but I gotta say. A 202-minute podcast about a 194-minute film? You guys really didn't spend a lot of extra time on this one, huh? Sit down, get serious, 'cause there's a hell of a lot of movie to watch.

You said that already, Teague.

I gotta say, I was so glad to hear you guys give some love to this movie. Cause I'm man enough to admit that I saw "Titanic" seven times in the theater. I'm not kidding, I really did. The first few time was mostly fueled by the trailer, the second time was so I could absorb what blew me away the first time. The third time I got it to see it in 70mm with THX sound in a great theater that doesn't exist any more. And the freakin' fourth through seventh times were just for the sheer joy of it.

I forget who said it. It might've been one of my friends, or it might have been a reviewer or something. But the point made was that the movie was so skillfully made that by the time the iceberg showed up, I was genuinely surprised and horrified. I fell for every cheap trick the movie pulled, and I dug that.

Like you guys pointed out, there are plenty of things to criticize about the movie. But at least for me, the ways the movie works far outweigh the things that don't succeed. Even though it became fashionable to hate on it, I think despite its flaws it's a genuinely good movie.

One thing was pretty funny though, at least to me at the time. I remember back in 95 or 96, some stills from the movie's visual effects made it into some industry magazine or other. I'm pretty sure it wasn't "Cinefex," but it was something in that genre. And we passed them around the shop I was working in at the time, and laughed because they were so cheap-looking. Turns out they were stills from the animated exposition scene at the beginning of the film. When I got to see the whole thing in theaters, I was duly impressed.

You're right that ticket prices aren't directly tied to inflation - the Boxofficemojo list is actually based on a formula that calculates ticket prices in a given year.   And for extra fun you can adjust it to any year - Avatar's 1939-era gross is just over 22 million dollars, Gone With The Wind in 2010 comes to more than 1.5 billion, and that's just in the US.

And it's true that GWTW and other pre-1980's movies ran for longer than modern movies - while Gone With The Wind wasn't in release for 30 years, it didn't even go into what we'd now call "wide" release until 1941.   When I was a kid, the local theater ran The Sound of Music for well over a year - so long that they painted a big mural of Julie Andrews on the side of their building.    And Star Wars was in theaters for more than a year in its first release as well.

But although in the olden days movies stayed in the theaters longer, they also ran on fewer screens in a country with a then-smaller population.     The movie multiplex didn't exist until the '60's, and was still a rarity when Star Wars opened in a whopping 12 theaters nationwide in 1977. 

So it was months before you could just walk up to the one theater in Washington DC where Star Wars was playing and buy a ticket for the next show.  Until then you were lucky to get a ticket two or three shows in advance, if the whole day wasn't sold out already by the time you got there.    And if it was, your only option was to hop on a plane to New York, which was the next closest theater where it was playing.   Believe it or not.

Nowadays movies open on thousands of screens at once, so people have easier access to new releases - but if the movie's not a blockbuster then most of those seats are empty.    So I still think older movies' popularity can be validly compared to modern ones.  In them days we were just accustomed to having to wait a few months to see the latest popular flick, so while they ran longer, they also made their money more slowly.  And they only ran longer if the audiences kept showing up.   

Really, the reason that Gone With the Wind can never be beaten is it didn't have to compete with television and home video and the internet for its audience.   That's a handicap that no modern movie can overcome.

By the way, I'm working on a plan to make a movie and charge a billion dollars per ticket.   Sure, that's high, but I only need to sell one ticket to tie with Avatar for the biggest movie evarrr.

My main memory of Titanic from back when it came out is actually the Star Wars fanfilm, Tie-tanic, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jsvj0TmBlO4

I never knew it was popular to dislike the movie. I just resented it for bumping SW out of the top box office seat. Thanks for bringing it back and reminding me that yeah, it made all that money because it's such a jawdropping film.

I liked this one alot but found myself irrationally thinking I didn't following Cameron's oscar speech and the overwhelming hype.  I haven't seen this in a long, long time, possibly a decade now, but that didn't stop me from enjoying this commentary.

I'd attribute the success of the movie to its universal appeal, managing to get that teenage girl demographic didn't hurt either.

I just wanted to throw in that, the idea of suction pulling someone down is a myth(also confirmed by the bakers account).

http://mythbustersresults.com/episode11

David Warner was in two Titanic movies. A rare credit.

A friend of mine, Neil Gardner, is a radio producer in England and has not only worked with David Warner but is on quite good terms with him. Neil adapted the cult nonsense novel, The Brightonomikon, to an audio book and David Warner played a major character. The Novel is by Robert Rankin, a bit of a legend amongst the steampunk and nonsense community. Neil has also produced several Doctor Who and H.P. Lovecraft audios.

I am getting so fucking sick of that picture.

Exactly, it was just a door, not a specially rigged floatation device. It absolutely would have sunk with more weight on it, it's basic physics, people.

Science!

Last edited by Jimmy B (2012-05-27 08:52:11)