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Another Perspective
Hollywood, the Sequel
Don’t blame the Oscar show for Tinseltown’s utter lack of creativity.
Why is an industry mired in remakes and sequels aghast that its annual awards show came across as well past its sell-by date?
“The whole night looked like an AARP pep rally,” the New York Times remarked of this year’s Academy Awards broadcast. TMZ’s Harvey Levin dubbed the ceremony “stale.” Television critics panned the movie critics for giving an atavistic silent film the big award. They noted that Billy Crystal had already hosted the show eight times, that 62 is the median age for a member of the academy, and that the theater that hosted the shindig is named for Kodak, a bankrupt film company left behind by digital. John Anderson declared at CNN.com that “someone — producer Brian Grazer, perhaps — should answer for why a show celebrating an industry in so much trouble chose to cast itself as something so profoundly passé.”
Don’t blame the industry awards show. Blame the industry. The Oscars aren’t living in the past. They’re living in Tinseltown, which lives in its past. It’s Hollywood, but even an awards show can’t act as though throwback movies are cutting edge. Such a performance would simply demand too much.
Hollywood is in its Sunset Blvd. years, living off the fumes of its past. Consider the retread rubbish that ruled the box office last year.
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1, the first installment of the fourth Twilight book to hit the big screen, earned more at the box office in 2011 than all but two films. Transformers: Dark of the Moon, the third live-action film based on a toy that had long since spun off a cartoon series, a comic book, and an animated movie, placed second. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2, the latter half of the seventh installment of the film franchise, earned the top spot by grossing $381 million in the United States.
Do you sense the pattern here?
The top ten domestic receipts of 2011 belong exclusively to remakes, sequels, and films based on ancient comic-book characters. Reruns are supposed to be for television.
One has to go all the way down to the 13th spot to The Help, a movie that everybody says they like but nobody really likes, to find something new (and technically, it’s based on a 2009 book, so purists might contend that it’s not totally new). For the first time in the history of motion pictures, the annual cash leaders wholly excluded original movies.
There is a dearth of creativity in a town built on creativity. Marketing rules. People lacking imagination decide what films get green lighted and which films get red lighted. It’s easier to sell the known but weak commodity than it is to sell the unknown but strong commodity. There’s safety in numbers — as in part 3, part 4, and part 6. But doing the “safe” thing isn’t always safe. The best commercial arts are a risky business.
It’s tempting to judge a bestseller list frontloaded with stagnant superheroes and silver-screen second helpings of mediocre television shows as market validation of rerun cinema. But 2011’s sequel-heavy Hollywood closed 4 percent down from 2010, which was down 5 percent from the previous year. Fewer people went to the movies in 2011 than in any year since 1995.
The industry points to a down economy, piracy, and improvements to in-home theaters as handicaps. Those factors certainly haven’t helped. But neither has the recycled content. It’s easier to blame external factors beyond one’s control. It’s more constructive to identify the internal impediments that can be fixed.
Hollywood can make dinosaurs walk the earth again and host visits from cute candy-eating extraterrestrials who befriend children. But can they feed people stale and convince them that it’s fresh?
That’s a problem with this year’s Academy Awards. More importantly, that’s the problem with the movies that the academy had to sift through. At least the Oscars didn’t honor the films with statuettes that the public had honored with cash. Fast Five, Mission: Impossible, Ghost Protocol, and Captain America cleaned up at the box office but left the Kodak Theater empty handed.
But it’s not as though the movie industry has learned its lesson from a dismal few years, especially with rehash reaping cash. March offerings include John Carter, 21 Jump Street, The Lorax, and Wrath of the Titans, a sequel to the remake of Clash of the Titans. We may not have seen these movies before. But we’ve been there, done that.
It’s lamer than you think.
About the Author
Daniel J. Flynn is the author of Blue Collar Intellectuals: When the Enlightened and the Everyman Elevated America. He blogs at www.flynnfiles.com.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (64) | Leave a comment
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Appleby| 3.2.12 @ 7:09AM
The only movie I saw in 2011 was the remastered and re-released Christian extravaganda, Ben-Hur. To the astonishment of the theatre in which it was shown, it packed in an audience that spanned the demographics and everybody stayed for the full four hours.
Hollywood has been trapped in a vortex of filthy cartoons -- the kind of movies they dreamed of in 1968 -- for so long that nobody but us old folks recall the days when going to the movies was an Experience. I was living in Atlanta when the re-mastered Lawrence of Arabia was released, and people began arriving three hours early to be sure of a seat (one couple showed up about 20 minutes from showtime and the Girl threw a purple-faced screaming fit because a man who had been first in the door would not yield his seat so she could sit beside her boyfriend -- they were escorted out to the jeers of the audience) and we women laughingly exchanged memories of our 13-year-old adoration of Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif who were not personifications of elderly pedophile vampires but portrayed Real Men who did Real Things.
I have no plans to see any of the movies currently being advertised for 2012. And I bet I'm not alone.
Alan Brooks| 3.2.12 @ 1:33PM
It isn't Hollywood's fault: the public wants the films Hollywood produces; the Rightist proles you admire (i.e. Joe the plumber) don't want 'A Man For All Seasons', they want 'Animal House', they want 'Porky's Revenge'.
Bob Grant| 3.2.12 @ 2:32PM
Wurzelbacher: I'm getting ready to buy a company that makes 250 to 280 thousand dollars a year. Your new tax plan's going to tax me more, isn't it?
Obama: If you're a small business, which you would qualify, first of all, you would get a 50 percent tax credit so you'd get a cut in taxes for your health care costs. So you would actually get a tax cut on that part. If your revenue is above 250, then from 250 down, your taxes are going to stay the same. It is true that, say for 250 up — from 250 to 300 or so, so for that additional amount, you’d go from 36 to 39 percent, which is what it was under Bill Clinton.
Obama: t's not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they've got a chance at success, too… My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody. If you’ve got a plumbing business, you’re gonna be better off [...] if you’ve got a whole bunch of customers who can afford to hire you, and right now everybody’s so pinched that business is bad for everybody and I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.
These are some of the most idiotic, economically illiterate statements from a soon-to-be or current president I've ever heard. A close second would be Clinton's statements to Godfather's president and CEO of Godfather's Pizza during a town hall meeting; available on YouTube if you want a good laugh.
So yea, count me as one of those Joe the Plumber Admirer's. He's well spoken, right on the issues, and understands basic economics.
Alan Brooks| 3.2.12 @ 3:40PM
But I just told you! Joe the plumber is (or was; today he is well-off and no longer a plumber) the sort of guy who wants lowbrow entertainment!
Hollywood is demand-based, so no one ever goes broke manufacturing bad taste.
As Mary Tyler Moore would say, "geez, Mr. Grant!"
Alan Brooks| 3.2.12 @ 3:50PM
... it is true Hollywood, as everyone, has biases affecting its judgment; but much of what Hollywood produces is based on researching what the majority of Americans want:
1) potty-mouth dialogue
b) sex
3) violence
It is bottom-up from Joe the plumber , NOT top down from Hollywood.
Bob Grant| 3.2.12 @ 4:29PM
Mr. Brooks,
I'm not seeing the connection between Joe The Plumber and this right-wing troglodyte character who loves only low brow movies. You've lost me.
What is it about Joe the Plumber?
* Is it because he's - or was - a plumber?
* Is it because he's a white guy?
* Is it because he stood toe-to-toe to obama and asked the only pertinent question during the campaign, the mainstream media included?
* Is is because you look down on blue collar professions and he had the GALL to call out obama? ..you'd rather have him fix your toilet and NOT think about more cerebral issues?
His type gets under your nerves. Don't they?????
Fill in the dots please. Educate this poor soul if you would.
Bob Grant| 3.2.12 @ 4:35PM
Correction: that would be "...gets under your SKIN...
Forgive my mixing of phrases.
Alan Brooks| 3.2.12 @ 4:42PM
The point is (again):
AS blames Hollywood for America's lowbrow tastes, when the situation is vice versa- America wants bad taste, so Hollywood provides it.
Hollywood can't sell good taste top America if America doesn't want good taste. As for Joe, he is no longer a prole- so his standards may have gone up.
You can't expect plumbers to read Shakespeare and listen to Mozart.
Alan Brooks| 3.2.12 @ 4:43PM
Hollywood can't sell good taste to the majority of Americans if America doesn't usually want good taste.
Stoddard| 3.5.12 @ 11:02AM
Even if Americans aren't buying what Hollywood is selling, the rest of the world is, which is why they keep cranking it out.
Bob Grant| 3.2.12 @ 4:53PM
May your toilet back up and give you cholera or hepatitis C.
Jeamar| 3.2.12 @ 5:07PM
If you want to see the "state" of America's taste, read the comments to almost any AS article any day. Potty mouths are not restricted to Hollywood nor is fuzzy thinking.
Alan Brooks| 3.2.12 @ 5:38PM
Okay, the message is clear--
wont blog again at AS; don't think I've ever read such a disingenuous answer- you are deliberately ignoring the point for no reason save to be a contrarian.
No wonder you guys love Reagan- he was the best deal you ever got or will get.
Brian Mc| 3.3.12 @ 6:15AM
You need to break out the dictionary and look up "indoctrination".
Silvermare| 3.4.12 @ 9:47AM
And who might you be to judge the tastes of American plumbers or the tastes of people whose political idea don't jibe with yours? Liberals seem to be incredibly prissy concerning individuality in people's tastes.
Elle| 3.3.12 @ 11:30AM
"Fewer people went to the movies in 2011 than in any year since 1995." i.e. the lowest numbers in seventeen years.
Obviously ordinary adults, particularly conservative adults, don't want this garbage. It is difficult for out spoken conservatives, with rare exceptions, to even get work in Hollywood. Many have voiced frustration of having to keep silent in order to protect their livelihood. Conservatives are the ones who pay for family fare, often with a patriotic and/or judeo-christian slant like Chronicles of Narnia or Act of Valor. Hollywood creates culture in its own image:pornographic, vulgar, politically correct, left wing. The "serious" films that Hollywood typically raves about-The Artist, Iron Lady, The Descendants etc do not have the audience numbers that would validate the self-congratulatory hoopla. And the others, vampire movies, frat boy movies, even the romantic comedies are not typically supported by conservative adults.
Alan Brooks| 3.4.12 @ 4:22PM
"Conservatives are the ones who pay for family fare, often with a patriotic and/or judeo-christian slant like Chronicles of Narnia or Act of Valor. "
I've never in my life come across such miscomprehension. I do not- repeat, not- mean conservative Christian America- I'm referring to more libertopian types who are:
a) Rightwing (naturally; they are not flaming libs!)
b) vote GOP, or switch back and forth from libertarian to GOP.
What, you think truckers, construction guys.. all the rest.. watch Narnia while they sip their milk and chew their cookies? If they had high taste, they wouldn't spend 40 hours a week as greasemonkeys, construction guys, truckers. A janitor is not going to hum Mozart while scrubs a filthy floor.
C'mon! Get real, you have an idealized view of America.
Seek| 3.2.12 @ 4:21PM
"Filthy cartoons?" What planet are you living on? So the "Toy Story," "Ice Age" and Kung Fu Panda" series, aside from their stunning use of 3-D technology to go along with witty and inventing storytelling, actually was cyber-porno? Get a life. Even Michael Medved would not make such a ridiculous claim.
Alan Brooks| 3.2.12 @ 4:45PM
And the lowbrow fare isn't Hollywood's fault, as I write above.
But just you watch, Seek- Bob Grant still wont get it.
Alan Brooks| 3.2.12 @ 5:39PM
Seek, there's no purpose in commenting at AS, unless one is pro political operative. We ought to stay away and let them argue with each other.
kate| 3.3.12 @ 8:28PM
As former theatre actress in my youth and an avid film goer for years, my husband and I have stopped movie theaters because of the obnoxious politics of the actors and actresses.
Shaming us because we live in a nice home and occasionally enjoy some cake bread wine and crab legs (usually meatloaf and hotdogs), whilst they live a life of luxury!
Just greedy business people, are we?
As a conservative, I never resented the rich lives they lead and even rejoiced vicariously through their successes.
But when they have the nerve to think that they are elite and a strong middle and upper-middle class who has earned and worked for a good life doesn't deserve it. !!!!! Well. well.
Well, F them. I shan't be watching their movies anymore. Most of them are disappointing anyway.
I have a home movie theatre and films like the wizard of oz are still great.
POST American| 3.2.12 @ 7:45AM
The decision was made, about 4 decades ago
in fact, probably during the very year of the
CFR-Rockefeller Nick's ON'-MAO handover
of the US economy to forget 'art' --to even dump
the imperatives of genuine ENTER-tainment'.
The decision was made to go for franchise slum values,
and lavishly funded predictive programming for the now
unfolding Globalism and EUGENICS 'age-enda'.
The 'serious' films we have had, skilful
though they may have been ---one and all fall
into the demoralization op bin.
-----That includes even the finest work of
the long ago promising Scorsese ---AND
the everything by Oliver Stone and Eastwood.
EVERYTHING
------SEE you at the movies! ----------NOT!
Bob Grant| 3.2.12 @ 11:13AM
POST:
I had you pegged as a post-apocalyptic groupie. No?
Mad Max, Logan's Run, Blade Runner, Soylent Green, Omega Man, ....
Come on!! Heh.
Chef Schnauzer| 3.2.12 @ 8:17AM
In the last decade or so well meaning friends have given me dvds of relatively late model films. Most if them sit unopened. How do I justify an hour or two of wasted time given to me by Grace. If I am to invest money and time into something shouldn't it elevate me in some way? Through humor or drama or intellectual spark the films should in some way lift the viewer. It is sad that these people promote their industry, their skills and themselves with wholesale licentiousness, cheep voyeurism and lasciviousness. The only larger cancer on the American soul is the American government.
The American Hitman| 3.2.12 @ 8:28AM
I haven't been to a movie theatre in several years, and rarely watch them on TV. Why? They're an awful waste of time.
The laws of economics will catch up to Hollywood, just as they have caught up to the rest of Socialist America, in the near future. Oh well, no big loss.
Seek| 3.2.12 @ 4:25PM
Actually, the summer of 2011 was the most profitable in Hollywood history. And with films such as "Super 8," "X-Men: First Class," and the final "Harry Potter" film, it's hardly a wonder. A relatively small cadre of grumpy, uninteresting rednecks imagining themselves to be Upholding Tradition aren't any threat to the laws of economics, believe me. You don't need Hollywood? Good, Hollywood doesn't need you.
CincoPeso| 3.2.12 @ 6:49PM
Ahh, yes, let the bigoted putdowns cascade upon all with whom you disagree...
kate| 3.5.12 @ 12:19AM
Hollywood speaks. You elitist jerk.
Janis| 3.2.12 @ 8:32AM
They already remade to great classics...The Women with Meg Ryan as Norma Shearer character and Mildred Pierce (television) with Kate Winslet as the Mildred that Joan Crawford did in the movie. Hollywood lost orignality in the late 50's.
Stuart Koehl| 3.2.12 @ 9:12AM
Don't be an ass, Flynn--Hollywood has been making books into movies since the first roll of celluloid passed through a projector. And remakes are almost as old.
Examples:
Ben Hur, remade at least three times, from a rather bad book by General Lew Wallace.
Wings (winner of the first Oscar), which begat Dawn Patrol and a host of inferior imitations.
Red Badge of Courage, All Quiet on the Western Front--movies made from books remade into movies.
How many westerns were made and remade? How many detective thrillers? How many romances and musicals?
One could go on ad infinitum, but it would be pointless: imitation is the sincerest form of cinema, and always has been. Hollywood is and always has been, a business first, an art form second. Formulaic movies work for the same reason formulaic books, theater, television and music works--because people like the formula, like the familiar and prefer to see things with which they are comfortable. The industry obliges them.
Formulaic movies make money, while those that go out of their way to be "creative" and avant garde almost universally bomb. They only get made because Hollywood types still have pretensions of being artists rather than craftsmen, and take themselves far too seriously. Fortunately, money types usually get to overrule them.
So don't complain about Hollywood. If it doesn't make movies you like, blame the audiences, which shell out eight bucks a pop for tickets. They're the ones who won't go see "good" movies. Hollywood just supplies--it's the audience that demands.
And that's the American way.
PolishKnight| 3.2.12 @ 9:46AM
I went to see Up in the Air and found it to be a great film. Nearly everyone in the audience were adults and few kiddies or teens running around. So they sometimes make a good film.
Also, the blockbusters are often entertaining and deserve our hard earned money. The Terminator films, Conan the Barbarian, and Die Hard won't win a best picture but they made a lot of money and were fun to watch.
That doesn't mean though that "good" films with valuable social insights need to be dead at the box office. The reason they're dead is that most leftists don't need to go watch their own propaganda. I glanced an anti-capitalistic documentary on HBO and the credits revealed that it was sponsored by Acorn. I then noticed that most of the "victims" of capitalism were white and poor. It was clear they were aiming this film at the white poor in order to lure some of them to vote Democrat (good luck with getting help for those guys!)
Grzmlyk| 3.2.12 @ 10:50AM
The reality is that Hollywood is simply a mirror of American society.
We have become so balkanized, cynical and infantilized that we don't want good product; even the pulp fiction of two generations ago is too high-brow for our lobotomized sensibilities. We want adolescent fantasies, puerile humor, cartoon action films and a steady diet of simplistic "message" movies that flatter our egos that we really are superior beings to the benighted, bigoted, evil, terribly unsophisticated people who actually built this country with blood, sweat and tears.
Of course we no longer seek commonality of experience, and we don't share common values. Instead, we worship at the potemkin altar of primitive tribalism whose chief organizing principle is grievance against not the government, which has dissolved our sinew, but the liberty of the individual, which used to be the muscle that made America work.
A director like Frank Capra may have made some corny, proto-liberal hokum, but his movies were nevertheless good-natured, life-affirming and swathed in a homogenous culture with actors we loved, plots that made sense and production values that spoke to our highest aspirations. Even the cynical world of noir and other dystopian efforts paid homage to an irrefutable moral universe in which everyone agreed that "up" was "up" and "down" was "down." Not so any longer.
Today we want none of that. We want to lie in our cribs, steeped in our own bodily waste, depend upon some ostensible grown-up - the Great and Good Government - to attend to our every want and need while we while away our days sucking at the teat, evacuating body fluids or otherwise attending to our own primal urges.
And to the extent we want morality in our movies, it either fans our own moral vanity with sophomoric, new-age, phony pseudo-philosophy that validates our ridiculously high opinion of ourselves or else engages in ritual self-flagellation of the culture as a whole (not Good Liberals, you understand, but those knuckle-dragging conservatives and hicks and anybody who isn't a favored victim) by grinding its arrogant and narcissisitc heel into the sacred cows of White Guilt: American's de facto hegemony, the white males of European descent who built this country and the capitalism-based entrepreneurship that gave us all the comfortable lives we now pretend to denounce.
Good films still get made on occasion. But why bother? Does a diamond sparkle when it's tossed into a sewer?
The liberals have gotten the world they want: They've created hell on earth and pasted it with signs that say "Paradise." Hollywood's output is simply a consequence of the culmination of our systematic destruction of our own humanity.
Fredx| 3.2.12 @ 4:01PM
Wow! Bravo! I'll be saving and sharing this!
PolishKnight| 3.2.12 @ 9:41AM
I'm reminded of George Clooney's acceptance speech where he smugly proclaimed that Hollywood stopped blacks from sitting in the back of a movie theater. It was a hilariously unaware declaration. For starters, it's the front of a movie theater that's the worst place to sit but also nobody is saying today that blacks should be forced to sit in the back of movie theaters or anything else. Their films, such as The Help, rehash white guilt over and over again and not even they want to bother sitting through them. A thousand years from now, leftists will be acting like it's the 1950's in Alabama and handing out Oscars to stop that atrocity from occurring. In the meantime, just try to get them to put out a few films hitting the multiple abuses of leftists (socialist murders in the USSR, reverse discrimination, feminist hypocrisy, etc.)
Michael Douglas made a few such films that I enjoyed: Falling Down, Disclosure and The War of the Roses. Another film I enjoyed was Kramer vs Kramer but they are the exceptions rather than the rule. Hollywood plays it safe and only takes on "cutting edge" social issues that are at least 30 years old and in the orthodoxy already. And that's perhaps why the academy demographic is 62 years old. It's all old money and old ideas. It's like the Chinese Communist party.
Which leads us to piracy harming them. What a laugh. I am so uninterested in ripping off a copy of The Help. I'd need to be be forced into a movie theater seat such as The Clockwork Orange and my eyes pried open in order to watch that turkey. In other words, I doubt they're really losing money since most people probably wouldn't buy such films anyway. I laughed when the first VHS protected movie to come out was The Cotton Club.
Grzmlyk| 3.2.12 @ 12:40PM
Well, you may not want to pirate a copy of The Help, but there are thousands of teenage boys who can and do pirate crap like The X Men.
I lived in NYC in the late 80s through the late 90s - the golden age of the VHS format. You could buy pirated movies on almost any streetcorner.
The truth is, piracy really is a problem. I embrace some libertarian impulses, but the idea that intellectual property should not and cannot exist in a truly free society is hogwash. Not that the music industry has ever been a paragon of virtue, but the revenue that came in from records that really sold helped to fund emerging artists as they found audiences.
Today, thanks to piracy, the music industry is reeling and the result is a lot more one-size-fits-the-most-profitable-demographic crap and less innovation, less flexibility for record companies to offer content that appeals smaller, less profitable audiences.
True, it is also easier to self-publish content, but without marketing and some critical mass of mass appeal behind an artist, the likelihood of finding even a modest audience is greatly diminished.
Like it or not, the economics of the movie business are such that it costs easily $50 million to make even a modest movie these days. Investors line up to the extent they believe they'll make a return on that investment.
Piracy was virtually unheard of before VHS technology changed the economics of the movie business; digital technology in the form of DVD's changed it further, enabling high-quality pirated products. It might be that, with VHS and DVDs prevailing, revenue lost to piracy was acceptable in light of the new, legitimate revenue streams such technology opened up even as the movie-theater distribution model crumbled.
However, now that the delivery mechanism of movies is being entirely relegated to ineffable bits of code residing "in the cloud," it will easier than ever for legions of enterprising hackers to hijack something out of the ether without so much as getting out of their chairs.
Economics dictate that, if product isn't sold because piracy is siphoning off legitimate revenue, investment will dry up.
I don't know about you, but if I put my heart and soul and individual creativity into a product - be it a movie, a song, a novel, a play, a craft item or whatever - and nobody had to pay for it, resulting in no remuneration entering my pockets in exchange for my endeavor, I would have very little incentive to ever do it again.
Movies are no different from any other capitalistic endeavor. If you could get knock-off ipods and iphones and ipads for a fraction of the price of the real McCoy, and they worked just as well, Apple wouldn't have the resources to innovate that it has now.
gearjammer| 3.2.12 @ 9:58AM
They rake in Gazillions and fund the democrats and ACLU and Sierra Club-pretty soon they'll be funding goon sqads to attack regular folks like us. Well what am I saying-they already do that with ACLU and Sierra. Man what a mess.
Bob| 3.2.12 @ 11:31AM
Goon squads that will raid our homes and destroy any used DVDs or DVRs because they're bad for business. Heck, they won't even stop at outright censorship to protect their bottom line.
Renaissance Nerd | 3.2.12 @ 10:42AM
Hollywood was never very creative. They've been stealing ideas from other media and buying them up from the beginning. The very few great movies that are both original and philosophical are the exception to the rule. The rule is: most of their output is, was, and will always be crap.
While it's true that the worst of their output is much worse than it was many years ago, there are still plenty of good movies being made. There are little gems and nuggets of wisdom in many movies, and the craftsmanship is improving in many areas. While there's no doubt that what Hollywood mostly yearns for above all things is to be able to do porn, but you know, with good lighting, that doesn't mean that everything is awful, or that everyone wants to be an actor (or especially an actress) in such a picture. There are plenty of examples, but I'll just use one: Master and Commander. This was based on an amalgamation of several books, but was almost perfectly historically accurate. There were a few anachronisms, and some of the topics and locations were nods to later scientific discoveries, but the characters showed no knowledge of what would come. The shipboard fighting was intense and realistic, as were the wounds, and the only women in the film were a few ladies (or perhaps, 'ladies') who came out in longboats with a Brazilian mayor to see and be seen, but who never set foot on the ship. None of the trite cliches were present. Russell Crowe managed to potray believable leadership--are true rarity--and the attitudes were appropriate for the time. The point is not that this is a must-see movie. Not everyone would enjoy it, not being history nuts particularly interested in the Napoleonic Wars. It is the craftsmanship that impressed me, without the anachronisms particularly of attitude that are so rife in most historical movies. Hollywood right now has all the skills and talent it needs to make truly great movies. Their slavish devotion to the outdated politics of Ramesses and Hammurabi (by which I mean socialism) prevents them from telling good stories. It's not sequels, it's not remakes or rehashes, it's a lack of courage to see and embrace truths. Not Truth, but small, simple, meaningful truths, the sort of thing that fits into a bromide but that hasn't been already done a gazillion times. We all know that we should spend more time with our kids, especially dads. We all know that the sweet girl friends really should be our girlfriend. We all know that war is bad. We all know that we should be ourselves (whatever that means). We all know that we should take off our glasses so we won't be nerds anymore. We all know that our cold, emotionless, inhibited lives would be so much better if we took up with some free-spirited crazy person. I think I've pretty much covered them all.
Hollywood just needs to cease being so narrow-minded, and improvement will follow. But I think the most important factor in Hollywood success is a lack of ability to learn.
capatolistmom| 3.2.12 @ 10:52AM
The problem with Hollywood is the same problem with the US Government. Too many old men, with stale old ideas trying to dictate to we peasants how to live, want to eat , what to drive, what type of fuel to use and now what to watch!!!
Mainstream America, knows what they want to eat and drive. They know how to live their lives. And they know what they like to watch!!! When Hollywood figures out that their audiences don't care about all of their pious positions maybe they will start making not just exciting but stimulating and great movies once again. The Hollywood execs wont have to worry about pirating laws and protecting their investments because the stuff is soooo bad that not only will we not buy it - we wont even pirate it~~ Just like the government, Hollywood needs new leadership!!!
Bob Grant| 3.2.12 @ 11:02AM
In my opinion 1980 was by far the best year in terms of both quality and the quantity entertaining, fun movies.
I measure that year to all other years and find most, if not all, fall far, far short.
Today, it seems, the movie industry relies too much on technical innovation and sequels.
1980
QUALITY:
Raging Bull
Elephant Man
Ordinary People
Breaker Morant
Coal Miner's Daughter
The Great Santini
Resurrection
The Stunt Man
Tess
Honeysuckle Rose
ENTERTAINING:
Empire Strikes Back
The Shining
Friday the 13th
Blues Brothers
Popeye
My Bodyguard
Urban Cowboy
Caddyshack
Altered States
Cheech and Chong 2
Private Benjamin
Stir Crazy
Airplane
Any Which Way But Loose
....
I'm sure I've left a few out. A great year in movies.
Seek| 3.2.12 @ 4:31PM
You're right. 1980 was a fine year. I'll even throw in "Used Cars," starring Kurt Russell, a true guilty pleasure of mine. But consider for 2011:
The Adjustment Bureau
Hanna
Source Code
The Way Home (anti-Soviet, to boot)
Limitless
The Lincoln Lawyer
The Conspirator
The Tree of Life
Midnight in Paris
Super 8
Horrible Bosses
Bridesmaids
The Debt
Moneyball
Killer Elite
Warrior
Hugo
Young Adult
50/50
The Ides of March
The Artist
The Iron Lady
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
There are no doubt a few I left out. I'll take 2011. The RANGE -- technical, thematic and emotive -- is simply far wider today.
Bob Grant| 3.2.12 @ 10:59PM
Wider but shallower.
Bob Grant| 3.3.12 @ 10:14AM
You can scratch off many on your list as typically contrived, formulaic story lines that rely too much on gadgetry and "action scenes" e.g., The Adjustment Bureau and Source Code.
As usual, you get forgettable performances by the male leads - Damon and Gyllenhaal. The performance of the female leads are usually serviceable but always in cookie-cutter mode, never distinguishing themselves from others vis a vis acting or appearance. The current crop of actresses is akin to being in the midst of the indistinguishable young female faces at a large shopping mall. They all kind of blend into one another.
There are a few decent ones on your list - The Ides of March and Moneyball - but as a group, few will be remembered in 5 years.
My contention holds that '80 had the right mix of great serious movies and loads of memorable, fun, ORIGINAL, entertaining movies and performances. Admittedly, many were "guilty" pleasures.
I can't believe I forgot Used Cars!
Bob| 3.2.12 @ 11:27AM
The old folks almost didn't let Sasha Baron Cohen go as his dictator. That wasn't serious enough for them. It's probably why the highlights of the night were Cohen spilling stuff on Seacrest, and Jolie showing leg. I didn't watch it, and I'm glad I didn't, since sitting through hours of boring TV just to watch Seacrest make a fool of himself and Jolie trying anything to be the center of attention again is just a waste of time.
And the whole re-run thing is going to be even worse in 2012. They're making a new Three Stooges movie for crying out loud, AND it has Snooki in it. What is this nonsense?
MikeBee| 3.2.12 @ 11:33AM
Dan,
Good article! The first step in the decline of Hollywood was ultra-liberals taking over the universities. Not long after, the teaching of standards in many fields was decried by the Left as abusive to students and unnecessary, ESPECIALLY in the arts field. Exceptionalism comes from within a person, the Left argued, and teachers should stop teaching standards and forcing their students to uphold to standards in college testing. Arts students became less well-trained, but the Left admired the crap that artists began putting out, anyway.
About ten to twenty years later, those journalists who cover Hollywood began writing articles about how there were no more writers in Hollywood. Hollywood's early writers -- those who came from radio -- were now retiring and dying off, and the new writers, who had been trained in the Universities (without learning any standards), were terrible writers.
The result? After some time being forced to watch the trash that these "writers" put out, people stopped watching. Hollywood has responded by remaking older classics and shows, which had been written well originally. (At least bad writing won't scare people off!)
An excellent example of the above exists in the writing of Comedy today. Today, comedy is all about sex jokes. This gets incredibly boring, after a while. Yesterday's comedies took various structures. The cheapest comedy used a lot of the theatrical tricks of Scaramouche and Moliere, as exemplified in many of the plots of the I Love Lucy show, one of Hollywood's longest-running comedies. But, if one never learns the comedic structures of Scaramouche and Moliere, then one will fail to be able to reproduce these comedic structures.
Add to this Hollywood's desire to "make a difference in society" by teaching the commoners what they should think and believe, and you have a perfect recipe for the decline of Hollywood.
When was the last time my wife and I went to the movies, anyway?
David March| 3.2.12 @ 11:37AM
Hey!
Dont knock John Carter till its out! Its been sitting around trying to be made for 80 years!
Bill| 3.2.12 @ 12:30PM
I think that John Carter has the potential for something new.
Of course, Hollywood could make it a beefcake flick with lots of science fiction equivalents of car chases and explosions, but maybe it will be made better than that. Hollywood is still capable of a quality product; they just haven't spent a lot of time trying to make one in recent years.
Cincinnaticl6| 3.2.12 @ 1:31PM
Hollywood's biggest problem is Turner Classic Movies. Watching well made, well acted, and usually family friendly films is a no brainer when one decides whether to go to the movies or not.
Why pay for sex soaked , filthy language, political correctness and deliberate noise when you can stay at home and watch TV or rent classics on DVD. That's where you will find good writing, producing, acting, etc.
With all the modern production methods, just imagine what those classic films would have been like today.
The problem is that the culture of Hollywood and the people they appeal to has gone drown the drain.
Seek| 3.2.12 @ 4:33PM
I've seen literally hundreds of old American films. Some were good; most weren't. The Europeans back then, at least, had a higher batting average.
Gr0w1er601| 3.2.12 @ 2:46PM
George C. Scott was right; the Academy Awards event is nothing but a " ...two-hour meat market...".
robert derrick| 3.2.12 @ 3:18PM
"It isn't Hollywood's fault: the public wants the films Hollywood produces; the Rightist proles you admire (i.e. Joe the plumber) don't want 'A Man For All Seasons', they want 'Animal House', they want 'Porky's Revenge'."
The problem with being a movie or music critic, is that you always want something juicy to critique, so you can show your flare and suave and intellectual astuteness. I.E. give me another one of those liberal gems that 'challenge' the status quo in the name of art, like Humpback Mountain, or whatever that was. I'm an all-American working man and entrepeneur, and I don't go to the movies or concerts to have my normal moral basis 'challenged' by some ideologue-driven artiste. I want to be enterTAINED with some good old fashioned enterTAINMENT.
I go these news sites and the radios and the political meatings to be challenged, or rather to challenge the others... Movies in America are doing just fine, because tinseltown honors good old fashioned entrepeneurship and Capitalist Free Markets: They ultimately will make what SELLS, and then spend their extra cash on their socially and pollitically pushed agendas.
Hey, I'm more than willing to watch something that's different and with depth and meaning: Shindler's List, so long as it ain't trying to make me different, radically so, in the process. I LIKE being an American and I for one am really GLAD for the good old, newly-made American style action movies coming out. I make time and pay good money to be entertained, whether intellectually or not, but like John Wayne said, I won't be insulted with wanna-be elitist rubbish, intellectually or not.
Gr0w1er601| 3.2.12 @ 3:31PM
I liked "Animal House", but have never seen 'Humpback Mountain' (good one!) nor 'Twilight: Breaking Wind' (my own appellation). For a good 'ole kick-ass American action flick (produced outside of the Hollyweird system) I wholeheartedly recommend "Act of Valor". All those Hollyvoid types can go f*ck themselves.
Brna Skodowska| 3.2.12 @ 5:15PM
Twilight and Potter are based on distinct books in a series. They are not remakes or sequels.
POST American| 3.2.12 @ 9:47PM
----------------------FINAL WORD--------------------------
"Important to remember Hollywood and media
are, and always have been, an ESSENTIAL branch
of government. The 'culture creation
industry' as they're now willing to call it.
Of course, you might ask ---WHY do we
the people NEED a 'culture creation industry'
---if we're the culture? SIMPLE, because
---YOU'RE NOT the culture.
The culture that's given to you is there to engineer
compliance and to advance social takedown
age-endas and promote EUGENICS."
And now, as we await 'King Fu Panda' #4
------ANY QUESTIONS?
As the incoveniently 'EUGENICS relevant'
KOREAN WAR goes into its 6th decade of Hollywood 'overlook'
-------------------ANY QUESTIONS AT ALL?
WE'LL WAIT. . .
Dipesto| 3.2.12 @ 11:16PM
I rented "Rubber" the day of the oscars and watched it before the debacle that night. Rubber is a strange cult flick of complete worthlessness, but (spoiler alert) it is about Robert, a killer car tire who likes to explode the heads of people and animals it does not like and at the end is transformed into a tricycle and with a bunch of other killer tires is rolling down the LA freeway toward the Hollywood sign.) Oh, if Robert could have made it to the kodak theatre! By the way--my favorite movie is Bubba Hotep.
Pecos Pete| 3.3.12 @ 8:31AM
Billy Crystal looks like the Batman's Joker, don't you think?
Crash Bazbo| 3.3.12 @ 12:42PM
The old insider joke is 'why give 'em steak if they'll settle for dog food?'
Rap "music" is dog food. Toilet jokes are real knee slappers. We're a doomed culture, and the termites have won. We're just waiting for the worms.
nathan Reynolds| 3.3.12 @ 1:40PM
Who goes to new movies anymore? Where I live, I have an excellent repertory selection. And I've noticed that these older titles really bring in an audience. I think the studios could pad out their current failures by re-releasing their back-catalogs of classic movies that audiences want to see.
I've also noticed that in this Digital age, 35 MM is now a marketing angle. The distributors need to start striking new prints of their back-catalog and reissue them to cinemas across the world, and this could really, really help the film industry.
POST American| 3.3.12 @ 9:31PM
----------------------FINAL WORD-----------------------
"KOREA ,and NOT the long gone
World Wars, is rapidly emerging
as --the-- defining conflict of the
20th century --viz a viz the 21st."
MEL GIBSON is the man, probably the ONLY
man in Hollywood, capable of taking on the
awesome KOREAN WAR in its full spectrum
(Globalism/ Betrayal/ the RED China
Halocaust/ TREASON and EUGENICS).
MEL GIBSON should direct the epic telling
of the stunningly relevant, yet unfolding
KOREAN WAR.
This MUST happen
albert constantine jr.| 3.4.12 @ 9:58AM
Check out the 1982 release "Inchon" for your collection.
rongordo | 3.3.12 @ 10:22PM
The sequels and re-hashes are just a portion of the problem. Yes, Hollywood has the techies, but not the thinkers/the creatives. Welcome to the caste system! Another major portion of their problem is that they've doubled and trippled down on messages which have been fully outed as lib propaganda, that a majority of Americans disagree withand don't want to be forced fed or support. On TOP of that, Hollywood has doubled and trippled down on actors who readily throw out their own fans; Actors like Matt Damon and Samuel Jackson can't come out as hacks and bigots and expect to sell movies to a nation of people they insult and look down upon. Hollywood may think themselves ABOVE America now; more a part of the "world community; " but in the end, the rest of the world doesn't REALLY care about them back. So, they live in their bubble, and bow to eachother as the intelectual gods they believe themselves to be. Streep to Redford, Redford to hanks, Hanks to Streep. They have the dough to make themselves look and feel huge, so they do. It's life in the land of Make Believe. Just off it's coast is the island of misfit toys.
Floyd Looney | 3.4.12 @ 2:23AM
What we really need is more leftwing pap and PG-13 rated pornography
k962| 3.4.12 @ 1:20PM
There are no more Cecil B Demilles or John Fords to make blockbuster movies! The great stars are also gone Jimmy Stewarts,Henry Fondas, Clark Gables are gone! They make little movies today with little actors!
POST American| 3.4.12 @ 11:54PM
--------------------TRUTH OPENED-------------------
M*A*S*H was written in the 60's,
shot in California, and designed to serve as the
first Viet Nam demoralization op.
Unlike Vietnam, there was NOTHING
ambigious about the cause of the Korean
War (the largest rocket and mortar barrage
in world history followed by blitzkrieg
invasion).
M*A*S*H has served as a superb disinfo
op ---to this day. The average Joe has a
very hard time seperating Korea from the
demoralizing blur with Vietnam.
As for 'INCHON', produced outside
Hollywood, it was a deliberate mess of a film
put out there as a farce, financed by the
ever shady Rev Moon, and delivering a
comical performance by none other than
Laurence Olivier.
It was designed to put Korea in the
can for another century and is
NOT to be taken seriously.
---Globalist BETRAYAL and sellout
of China ---the Cold War ---UN duplicity
---Mind control ---POST modern warfare
---and, even now, long term EUGENICS
age-endas, ---ALLLL come into play in
Little Korea.
Truman/ Stalin and MAO the KEY players.
MacCarther's LAST, and some would say,
GREATEST stand.
---WHAT MORE DO YOU NEED
FOR ----10---- GREAT FILMS?
-------ALLLLL directed by MEL GIBSON!