Random Play: Welcome to this world
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I would be interested in how many films other folk get to in a year.
48 -- but three quarters of that was Film Society and festival shows. But in the same year, I brought or hired almost sixty DVDs.
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Ummmm - two? (Harry Potter and Avatar) and maybe a further 10 (if that) randomly on Sky throughout the year.
* slinks away in complete non-film-geek embarrassment *
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I don't go to the cinema often, and when I do it's with my mother, and they are always Rialto/Lido/Bridgeway filums. Just watched a great film that I taped the other night In America. Beautiful.
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48 -- but three quarters of that was Film Society and festival shows
That is great. We have Film Society screening at the local Victoria cinema (tea and toasted sandwiches delivered to your seat).
I guess the next question I would ask of everyone: How many of the films you watched this year (at the cinema + DVD) were New Zealand films? I am thinking about this because I have to write (by early Jan) an intro on the state of NZ cinema, for the NZ volume of the Directory of World Cinema.
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I'd enthusiastically agree, if other things were equal. But seeing as this was the decade of superhero movies and prequels (and prequels of superhero movies) it's hard not to see a direct relationship between the increase in spectacle and the infantilisation of taste.
Yes adults will put up with a lot less spectacle. But I think that the contrary is the case, that rather than tastes infantilizing, I think children's movies have simply got a lot better. Which of course puts them into the big money mainstream because it means adults will put up with them. In my day, there weren't movies like this, except in a blue moon. There were superhero movies, and they were definitely waaay more juvenile than the current lot.
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it's hard not to see a direct relationship between the increase in spectacle and the infantilisation of taste.
ORLY? Does beg the question why Gone With The Wind is still the inflation-adjusted box office champ after seventy years. The Wizard of Oz not exactly a miracle of understatement either. But for some strange reason 1939 is still widely considered the high water mark of "Old Hollywood".
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Geoff - only 3 (all dvd): "Sione's Wedding" (for the first time); "Bro Town" season 3 (because I was slack about buying it when it came out
and so was really late catching up - ur, does an animated series count even?) and a private copy of Deidre McCartin's tv series "Some of my best friends are women" (because she died, and I knew her, and really appreciated her work...that probably doesnt count either. Nemmind.)D'y'know, I've never yet watched the film version of LOTR?
a)because I truly deeply madly etc. loved the books from when I was 14 until 18; drew the characters, explored their possible ongoing lives, etc etc etc - all the embarassing things fans do- and
b)saw a trailer for TFOTR and thought - "Fuck! Hobbits just dont look like that!" In my head, anyway -Dated Giovanni? Yep - several of my bracketted mates now only watch extracts, and they are the action scenes-
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Surely it's okay to not like this film on spec? I saw the trailers and thought they were awful
What? No.
A trailer is an ad for the film. It is not a summary of the film. It is not art. It is a commercial designed to entice mainstream audiences to see the film.
You can no more judge a film on its trailer than you can judge a car from an ad for the car. You've got to test-drive it, at least.
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I would be interested in how many films other folk get to in a year.
OMG, probably 100, at least. And that's not counting all the shorts I saw in the Wellington heats for 48Hours.
I would encourage anyone who doesn't see films at the movies any more to find their local boutiquey cinema.
Wellington is blessed with lovely suburban cinemas like the Light House, the Empire, and the Penthouse, where you can enjoy (usually) good films in nice surroundings with grown-up audiences.
While a big ol' mutiplex can be good for event films (particularly comedies), seeing an excellent film in a more intimate space can turn film-going back into that lovely sensual experience.
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Robyn (enjoying your blog by the way) finding a local boutiquey cinema where is an impossibility ( well, if you like to drive 4 hours, you can find one in Wanaka. I am told.)
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Yeah, unfortunately they tend to be mainly found in cities, and in the sort of places where people go for weekends away.
I reckon if you're miles from even a multiplex, it's quite alright to wait for DVD - one of my favourite things is curling up in bed with a good film on my laptop.
(Also, thanks!)
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You can no more judge a film on its trailer than you can judge a car from an ad for the car. You've got to test-drive it, at least.
Still beg to differ. In a film which is aggressively marketed for how it looks (see also: Where the Wild Things Are) if I don't like the look (and the trailer makes it abundantly clear) I'm just not going to bother. If I hated a minute and a half of it I'm unlikely to enjoy two hours and forty minutes of it.
Some of us don't get to see 100 films a year, you know ;-)
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Yes adults will put up with a lot less spectacle. But I think that the contrary is the case, that rather than tastes infantilizing, I think children's movies have simply got a lot better.
I meant infantilising the taste of adults. Children's film have got better and better, and rarely insult anybody's intelligence. But, say X-Men, or LOTR, or the Star Wars prequels, aren't marketed for children. They are supposed to be for a general audience.
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ORLY? Does beg the question why Gone With The Wind is still the inflation-adjusted box office champ after seventy years.
Since you're talking top grossing, I'll take Gone is the Wind - and by a considerable margin - over each and every top grossing film of the noughties.
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But, say X-Men, or LOTR, or the Star Wars prequels, aren't marketed for children. They are supposed to be for a general audience.
Yes, and a general audience includes children and teenagers. If you want to make a movie that appeals at those levels it has to be spectactular. Some subtle comedy of manners, the understanding of which relies heavily upon having seen 100 years of cinema and read widely, is just not appealing to kids, and a lot of adults too. It's no surprise that the kidult genre has aced the box office.
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Still doesn't explain why the film for the actual kids are so much more intelligent, experimental, nuanced and complex. Surely that's what you'd expect from the films that try to appeal to adult viewers as well.
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I liked Where the Wild Things Are, for example, because it is not a children's film, but an adult discourse about childhood. It is also rather sad, and without a pat resolution.
I just wanted to agree with this, because I just saw WTWTA on Saturday and came out of it thinking 'you'd have to be a very particular type of kid to enjoy that'. I felt as if it was more made for me than it was for the littlies in the audience. (Then again, I'm not sure why I assume that children's things have to be simple and brightly coloured and wrapped up with a storytelling bow at the end.)
My film-per-year numbers vary wildly (and I imagine 2010 will be pretty low, given my condition). I've probably gone as high as 100 in Film Society/heavy-Festival years, but sometimes life intervenes. Our recent Fatso membership is a concession to 'sometimes-I-can't-be-arsed'-ism, I suppose.
I will be seeing Avatar in 3D, because I am down with Big Spectacle.
ETA: Jeez, RIP Brittany Murphy. You will live on in my heart as the voice of Luanne Platter on King of the Hill...
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Still doesn't explain why the film for the actual kids are so much more intelligent, experimental, nuanced and complex.
They are and they are not. Having sat through trailers for the Chipmunks: The Squequel twice, there still is garbage being made for the child audience. I have tried sleeping through such movies when I have taken my children, but they (the movies) are much too relentlessly noisy to allow that.
I think there could be a correlation in respect of the aging-up of 'family' movies with the adult sensibility in TV animation for children, from The Simpsons to SpongeBob Squarepants.
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They are and they are not. Having sat through trailers for the Chipmunks: The Squequel twice, there still is garbage being made for the child audience.
Of course, including some of the supposedly ironic ones.
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Still doesn't explain why the film for the actual kids are so much more intelligent, experimental, nuanced and complex.
Might need some examples of that. If they are, then I'd expect they are kidult films pitching at the adults who have to sit through the films, and then discuss them with the kids after. But as Geoff says, there's still a superabundance of the highly purile.
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Might need some examples of that.
WALL-E.
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I would be interested in how many films other folk get to in a year.
I once read that the average New Zealander sees, on average, seven films a year. [Citation required].
Whenever I tell this to people, their reaction it either "Is that all?!" or "Oh, I wish I had the time to see that many!"
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(Then again, I'm not sure why I assume that children's things have to be simple and brightly coloured and wrapped up with a storytelling bow at the end.)
Certainly not -- my epic Big Gay Uncle win is turning on David's grand nephew to Hayao Miyazaki so such an extent that Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, My Neighbour Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service (!) are his Favourite. DVDs. Ever. One of Miyazaki's greatest strengths, IMO, is that he doesn't "talk down" to the kiddies.
But as Geoff says, there's still a superabundance of the highly purile.
When has it ever been any different, seriously? 1939 wasn't all Gone With The Wind, Wizard of Oz, Ninotchka and Mr Smith Goes to Washington. But that's what is remembered, just as I have my doubts anyone in 2079 s going to be watching the newly restored interactive holodeck transfer of Couples Retreat with any enthusiasm.
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Well, I liked WALL-E, but on that count I'd put it in the kidult section. There were a whole lot jokes I don't think young children would get, like the humans talking to each other via their screens despite the fact that they're sitting side by side, or WALL-E's bizarre collection of nostalgia, or even the uber-context, that relying on too many servants/servos can make you atrophy to physical and mental weakness.
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When has it ever been any different, seriously?
Never, never, ever, I'd say. I can imagine even in the stone age, there would have been adult and children stories. And the most popular and lasting stories are still the kidult ones, because adults had to relay them to children.
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