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Re: Thread for being deeply, non-fatalistically worn out about something
Where is your bar set that only having 5 or 6 different non-MCU movies playing at once is a drastic slight against the system? Even before the MCU blew up most of the theatres around here had maaaaybe 6 or 7 movies playing at once.
And even still unless its like AAA blockbuster extraordinaire, most movies will get the week of release with a ton of screenings and then drop down to 3 maybe 4 a day if theyre lucky. Especially during the summer when theres a new major release every week. Like Endgame has had all the fancy showings for 2 weeks now, but Cap Marvel has maybe 2-3 showings a day, and I garuntee Endgame is going to get knocked out of most of those the second Pikachu gets released.
Re: Thread for being deeply, non-fatalistically worn out about something
Watching the final season of GoT I am reminded that the last episode of The Sopranos ended the way it did, and that in the the final season of The Wire
spoiler Show
the protagonist from the first season invents a serial killer?
like inspector detectors normally do on the streets.
Re: Thread for being deeply, non-fatalistically worn out about something
Faldor wrote:
Abbie wrote:
The issue isn't even how much content they're pumping out, it's that it's completely broken the theatrical distribution model. I checked AMC showtimes near me yesterday and there are literally like five non-MCU movies showing on screens right now, getting three or four screenings a day.
So we're back to Sorcerer flopping cos Star Wars got released?
Damn, Faldor digging into the PRE wayback machine for that one.
Re: Thread for being deeply, non-fatalistically worn out about something
BigDamnArtist wrote:
Where is your bar set that only having 5 or 6 different non-MCU movies playing at once is a drastic slight against the system? Even before the MCU blew up most of the theatres around here had maaaaybe 6 or 7 movies playing at once.
Sorry for the delay in replying—still in the process of moving, which hasn't made for a lot of free evenings.
To use one example, the big AMC near me as recently as 2013 would carry a shit ton of indie dramas on its fourteen screens—now it's down to the latest blockbusters, whatever horror movie is playing, and whatever studio comedies are out there. It'll run smaller dramas for like a week and then they're gone. Nothing ever has a chance to get its legs.
And to be clear, I think the MCU has exacerbated the problem to the breaking point because of its ability to have multiple movies play at once, but it was already happening. The limited-release model just can't compete when every single movie is expected to hit as many screens as possible at once and make at minimum its budget back opening weekend. There's no room for things to find their feet anymore because anything that can't do at minimum a couple dozen million opening week is cut off at the knees. Smaller movies can't afford the advertising blitz necessary to get a bunch of butts in seats and justify their existence opening weekend, but they don't have a chance to get word of mouth anymore because they're immediately subsumed by tentpole flicks.
The one exception is horror movies, because those almost always generate a massive ROI—audiences will go to basically any of them, so you can make Hereditary on a budget of $10 million and get $80 million back no problem. But for most other films, you can forget it. There are isolated successes here and there, but the overall trend is slow death.
And as far as Endgame getting knocked out by Pikachu . . . yay? That's just tentpoles eating at each other, not anything actually positive. Warner Brothers' video game IP knocking out Disney's comics IP isn't some kind of victory for smaller movies (and it hasn't even turned out that way tbh, Endgame still has more screens at my local theatres than Pikachu does.)
- - - - -
In other Disney-related news, the fuck is this shit.
Ignore the absolutely terrible arrangement and the fact that Will Smith isn't even trying. It just looks so goddamn CHEAP and claustrophobic. Congratulations, Disney, you spent hundreds of millions of dollars to make Agrabah look like a costume party in a broom closet.
Re: Thread for being deeply, non-fatalistically worn out about something
I've always lived in smallish towns and never noticed anything but large nationally-released films in theaters. Not that I went looking for smaller films, but I just have always seen the big movies with marketing budgets hit my 6-9 screen theaters I've lived near.
Interestingly, I checked the movie theater I grew up with to see how many screens they have. 9, and I recognize only Endgame, Pikachu and The Hustle in their current lineup. The other five movies (Endgame being the only one showing on two screens) aren't necessarily indie dramas but are the fare I'm used to seeing at theaters. Poms, a comedy; UglyDolls, a ??? who-is-this-marketed-to-and-that's-why-it's-bombing; Long Shot, comedy; The Intruder and Breakthrough, dramas. None of which I've been marketed to, either on social media, streaming ads or in trailers before other films.
I don't know how long they'll be staying in that particular theater (and I'm a bit miffed I don't see Tolkien), but it's hardly screens upon screens of the same tentpoles. Lots of movies are being made, MCU jillion-screen releases or no, and small town theaters only have so many screens, and again to my recollection never had the luxury of being able to let an indie flick sit on a screen for a few weeks.
Boter, formerly of TF.N as Boter and DarthArjuna. I like making movies and playing games, in one order or another.
Re: Thread for being deeply, non-fatalistically worn out about something
Abbie wrote:
To use one example, the big AMC near me as recently as 2013 would carry a shit ton of indie dramas on its fourteen screens..
And I'm in the same boat as Boter here. In my experience, the fact that that ever existed in the first place is an aberration.
The theatre here has 11 screens and only recently has it started branching out from what we'd consider mainstream movies, if you ever wanted to see indie flicks you had to go to Vancouver or Toronto and find one of the little indie theatres that survived by the skin of it's teeth, or find a film festival. (Lately the theater here has been starting to bring in some special event showings like streaming Operas and theatre events, they're starting to experiment with hosting pro gaming tournament streams, and for the past couple summers they've been hosting classic movie nights. Basically just trying to get more people through the doors, because, shockingly, theaters are having a hard time surviving in 2019 even when they can keep seats filled for Avengers for weeks on end, which is another problem in and of itself.)
Re: Thread for being deeply, non-fatalistically worn out about something
Teague wrote:
Abbie wrote:
The "Prince Ali" Scene Show
Also, I just watched this single minute of content for the first time, and now I have like twenty minutes of rant.
Oohh...Teague rant. I love those so much. My daughters ended up with free tickets to this *ahem* film and so I might end up ranting myself, since I grew up with this film, memorized it, and everything. After watching it, I might have to coordinate a group effort to rant.
In other news, I am deeply saddened by the fact that the film Tolkien was only released for 3 weeks in local theaters. Wife and I made a last ditch effort to see it yesterday. Good film. Annoyed at short release.
@Abbi=I support this LA Movement. I will join as well.
Re: Thread for being deeply, non-fatalistically worn out about something
drewjmore wrote:
Littering. Some people see no problem with tossing their used packages on the street. My house is bordered by such a street, which is a no-mans land on an ambiguous municipal boundary. It's thickly bushed which makes sprucing it up a physical pain. There are several regular litterers, I find the same products disposed of in roughly the same location weekly if not daily. Drink cans, glass pint liquor bottles, whole fast-food meals worth of trash wrapped up in the main paper bag. How do you motivate people to knock that shit off?
(Found in Thailand by engrish.com)
So honor the valiant who die 'neath your sword But pity the warrior who slays all his foes...
Re: Thread for being deeply, non-fatalistically worn out about something
Ugh, yeah, that's part of the bigger cultural issue where method acting has become synonymous with "becoming" your character, which leads to stuff like Jared Leto being an absolute asshole to his fellow cast members under the guise of truly "being" the Joker.
It's sorta like Teague's Aurora rant, where by posting Batman-with-black-armband memes you're reducing the shooting victims to Batman fans—the people who insist Ledger died because he "couldn't handle" life after the Joker are reducing his entire being and body of work to the psychotic clown he played once. It's an insult, and it enables abusive nonsense like Leto's behind-the-scenes shtick.
(I have no hopes that any aspects of Joaquin Phoenix's Joker movie will be good outside his performance, but it's so refreshing that he keeps getting annoyed when people ask him about playing the character and says it's just a paycheck like any other. Guy gets it.)
Re: Thread for being deeply, non-fatalistically worn out about something
Am currently copyediting a book on "philosophy" by a former Republican governor, and the gobsmacking hypocrisy of these people re: religion never ceases to amaze. Almost every single time this guy touches on Christianity, he's just completely wrong about what he's saying.
Like, Genesis 1:1. The first verse in the whole damn Bible. Impossible to fuck it up.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Except THIS asshat writes that it says
In the beginning, there was God.
Also claims that the Bible teaches Jesus was the first person to experience an afterlife, which it IN NO WAY says.
But of course this guy ran as the godly/moral candidate, tried to pass incredibly restrictive abortion laws, and was in favor of a same-sex marriage ban in his state, despite evidently not knowing incredibly basic tenets of his "faith," which I, the atheist, am now correcting him on in his copyedit.
Is it really that hard to just . . . google the first verse of the Bible? If you're going to fake it at least put some effort in.
Re: Thread for being deeply, non-fatalistically worn out about something
Oh hey, remember Teague's Disney Cinematic Universe bit from earlier in this thread? From Polygon's review:
SPOILER Show
More disturbing is how, for all the realism, Disney still optimizes the corporate synergy. Timon and Pumbaa’s fourth-wall-breaking shtick (“Every time that I fa—” “Hey, not in front of the kids!”) worked for every age group. Timon and Pumbaa performing 40 seconds of “Be Our Guest” is insidious.
I promise to stop posting about Disney specifically for a while because it's starting to be a broken record, but it's just . . . this is the future of moviemaking. Empty automatons that don't even pretend to be anything more than a corporation whoring out its previous works of art for a buck, that are by any objective measure ugly as sin, that cynically rub it in your face that all they are is exercises in branding . . . and still make a billion dollars. We're approaching the nostalgia event horizon.
