This year’s box office is not an abject catastrophe, but it’s a strong indication that people aren’t buying what Hollywood’s selling. I mean, SEVEN Indiana Jones movies? I stopped going to them after suffering through the second one. The reason for this state of affairs is that the intergalactic corporate overlords who took over Hollywood in the Nineties never wanted to hear that the Thee Rules of Hollywood are Nobody. Knows. Anything.
This movie lover used to go to the movies; as a girl she was reading or watching late night movies on tv like Sunset Blvd, Singing in the Rain, Rear Window, Ikiru and 12 Angry Men. TC is talking about stories and about singing and dancing, which stirred our hearts and took us to the movies.
Fern, Two movies I just saw streaming on tv you might enjoy too: Shirley Valentine and The Witness. Very different, but good plot structure and entertaining. I saw The Princess Bride last night with my grandson and his girlfriend. I had avoided it for years. Don’t know why. It was delightful.
I’m with you Fern. I feel like movies used to speak to us. Now they just scream at us with violence and noise. The older movies you speak of, and others of that era were able to bring us into the moment and feel the intricate feelings and emotions. Hitchcock was a master of that, and so were many others of that era.
Karen, thank you for your voice. There are a precious few movies that reach our hearts and minds these days, but they exist, We need to find them and support the directors, writers, actors, companies, organizations and people who help make the movies that touch us.
Totally with you on “Greyhound”. I actually signed up to Apple TV in order to watch that movie. Tom Hanks, as Everyman who becomes a naval captain besting a German U-boat against all odds? How could that not be a great movie? And somehow it was underwhelming. I’m not enough of a screenwriter to know what went wrong, but maybe it was a lack of development of the secondary characters?
To me, the biggest evidence of corporate culpability in crapifying a movie was Disney’s take on the last three installments of Star Wars. Walking out of the theater gave me the same feeling as walking out of the Paris Metro and wondering if my wallet was missing.
I watched the first of the last three SW movies, and when I walked out I was asking myself how the girl knew all that stuff, why did Han Solo have to be killed and a lot of other questions you shouldn't have to ask a movie if it was fully developed. I ended up walking out of the second one because it was embarrassing me that such a piece of shit could be made and didn't waste my time on the third one.
the only difference in our reactions to the "Star Wars" franchise is that I actually finished watching the second one of the original three, and I was done forever. one "marriage" that was definitely NOT made in heaven was the one that sorta "happened" when George Lucas read "The Hero With a Thousand Faces," which is itself like a movie based on other, better movies. but I'm generally NOT a fan of Joseph Campbell EVER.
I didn't realize "The Right Stuff" didn't do well...it certainly launched a major bunch of acting careers. I didn't see it when it came out and only watched the whole thing a few years ago...and I thought it was really GOOD. but I'm generally a big Phil Kaufmann fan; he takes movies seriously.
more and more I've been thinking that when the Supreme Court decided that studios couldn't own their own theaters, movies began their inevitable slide into mediocrity. I know about the "renaissance" of the '70s, but the number of really terrific movies that came out isn't anything like as huge as people remember.
I really DID like what happened very recently when Anderson, Scorsese and Spielberg staged their (successful??) intervention with Zaslav over TCM. Zaslav is a major presence in that shitty four-hour puff piece on Max that SUPPOSED to be a history of WB but really is just a commercial for the next retelling of the fucking Batman origin myth. he walks around the empty WB lots and says "we" a lot, just as if he really has anything to do with WB and isn't just another one of those rotating CEOs. I read somewhere that Zaslav got his start making cheap Reality Shows (are there any Reality Shows that AREN't cheap?). I confess that I have a very small weakness for the occasional half-episode of "Below Deck," which is sorta fun because every single person is disgusting. but by and large, I've spent many recent nights trying to find something to watch, and there's nothing except TCM and Criterion (and, occasionally, Ovid when I'm in the mood to be shocked and horrified).
a last confession: my new television (inherited from a friend's daughter, whose room was too small for it) is actually 65". I was embarrassed at first and thought it was hard to watch because everything was so huge, but I got over it in about three days. I still feel a little bit like a troglodyte because of it.
and since I'm here and we're talking about what to watch, if anybody hasn't discovered "Happy Valley" yet, now's the time. and I'm getting restless waiting for Season Three of "Slow Horses."
there HAVE been some decent movies released on Netflix, but if it's something like "The Irishman," or the re-edit of "The Godfather, Part 3" we're not exactly talking about original content creation, are we?
The Right Stuff could have been a terrific hit. Do the movie exactly as it is, but when Gordo Cooper blasts off, screen fades to interior-spaceship, on his final orbit. There's an electrical fire in one panel, he's communicating with Earth on a battery-powered radio on his lap, and the computer to set the spaceship for its return is glitched. So he has to take the controls (that the astronauts fought for) and look out the window (that they fought for) and manually align the spaceship with the horizon - too shallow, he bounces off the atmosphere and dies in space; too deep he burns up in the atmosphere. Then he descends. And makes the closest landing any American spaceship did to its' intended touchdown till the Space Shuttle landed at Edwards in 1981. In other words, he has to be the PILOT they always claimed they were. At the conclusion of that movie, it's stand up and cheer and walk out feeling good about America.
Every movie, every story, has to pay off EVERY IMPORTANT POINT or it doesn't work.
Phil Kaufman is a great director, as his other movies proved, but he was the wrong director for the Right Stuff. And I figured that out the first time I read the script two weeks after I started work. It was a great lesson for me as a screenwriter and author. (You'll notice in all my books, everything has a "payoff.")
When $60.4 million for the opening weekend of a movie is "disappointing" I have to ask why it costs what seems like an obscene $250-300 million to make it--especially when, as you say, so often, there is no "there" there.
I came looking for suggestions only to find everyone is as disappointed as I am. 😂 My tv hasn’t been turned on for months. There was some buzz about “Don’t Look Up” (star studded cast) so when it got to streaming I watched it with high hopes. Nope. I decided I must have officially crossed the threshold of “too old” to “get” current movies.
Do foodies retire? 😂 Were you a participant in the Allrecipes forum before it changed, long ago? That was my best internet/real life experience. Yes. I have found some things I enjoyed on Netflix. I used to watch Bosch on Prime and then they gave it ads, which I detest. So I will never finish it. No matter. I read all the books. They were better.
Foodies sometimes get out of the day-to-day rat race; they don't ever quit playing with their food. I found Allrecipes after I retired and use some of their recipes from time to time. I watched Bosch for a while, then found it very slow moving and stopped watching; I've also heard that the books were better but haven't yet picked them up.
I also watched "Don't Look Up" with some hope based on the buzz it was getting and ended up thinking it was pretty lousy and (as Tom says) there was nothing to "get," since the movie just went on and on dutifully with its "amazing" cast without any kind of payoff. it was one "joke" that kept getting told over and over again.
I thought "Drive My Car" was sensationally good, but it requires time and attention (and a re-viewing of any decent production of "Uncle Vanya" would help--there's a fabulous one you can see on PBD Passport from just after the pandemic) to "get" it.
Whenever I think of Hollywood I remember what Newt Minnow called the world of television back in the day when the going was good: "a vast wasteland." I threw my TV in the dumpster after reading Jerry Mander's great books Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television and In The Absence of the Sacred. One might venture to say that the "absence of the sacred" is the root of all the problems arising across the media landscape today. Except in the case of Substack, of course, where the subject gets lots of air time via the voices of authentic actors who also happen to be citizens with a real stake in the land they live in and tend to speak from the heart rather than from a purely capitalist stance that seeks to commodify everything under the sun. Hey, speaking of which, Under the Sun, now there was a (Swedish) movie that nobody ever heard of that was pretty damn good. Great post, TC, on a really sore subject.
I have noticed the changes on TCM and not happy. I too stopped going to movies, even before Covid. While I was busy with invalid husband, I kept a list of movies I would have seen if I could. Now I search streaming services and can’t find a one. Where did they go. I’m at my limit on streaming, think I’ll settle on BritBox and Acorn. Just killed Hulu and Disney. Sad times
I haven't actually noticed any differences in TCM...YET.
and if anybody really loves movies, Criterion costs a lot (though a lot less than Netflix) but is worth it. it's especially worth it because pretty much every movie comes with all the extras you get when you buy a Criterion edition of the movie you're looking for. I've also noticed that there's a lot of movies that end up playing on both TCM and Criterion at about the same time (the difference being that Criterion gives all the extra stuff).
Ovid is a lot more political and centered more on documentaries. if you're interested in content that's mostly "non-fiction" with a left-wing slant, it's worth checking out.
pretty much ALL these services offer a free week or so and you can see lots of stuff for free IF you're about ten times as "organized" as I am. in fact, it just occurred to me (duh!) that you can set up reminders on your (I shudder every time before I say it) smartphone.
I like this subject, I like it a lot. Entertainment is an attention winning game as much as everything else. There has been an injection of competition called Social Media, tv and movie screens in the palms of hands. Reality shows, sports shows, family shows, comedy, fantasy shows, science, science fiction, love, romance, and now AI deepfake shows. There doesn’t seem to be an end to free creative entertainment. It’s no wonder the film industry is losing and badly. So much is changing so quickly. It’s hard to notice the details when traveling this fast. This disruption is observable in the film industry. Humans love stories, and there is now hyper competition for which ones we will give our attention to. The market is flooded with free stories marketed to our attention spans and billed to advertisers by the micro and nano second. It’s a challenge to the film industry that to pay for 2 hours of entertainment better be damn good.
The good news about the paucity of quality movie entertainment is that there is more time to read really good books like Clean Sweep (just to take a random example). I've seen a few that were tolerable and, like you, am waiting for the conclusion to Dune. One hopes that the pent-up creative energy of the striking writers will result in some outstanding offerings once/if it gets resolved but I'm an eternal optimist.
Both of them have pegged me as an older white male, so I get shown "movies I might like" that all have: Action. Magic. Violence. Lots of fight scenes. Quests. A few stalwart heroes fighting against unjust masters. And sex. More action. Fast cars. Impossible moves. Impossibly fast. Impossible flying through the air. Monsters (quite unlike "A Monster Calls," which I loved).
People discovering that they have magical powers, and that's why they win.
Heroes of few words -- Geralt in The Witcher. I watched the series but there's NOTHING to look back on and savor. Pure distraction.
The streaming service's AI doesn't figure out that I watch most of these things for about 10 minutes then quit. Sometimes I come back and try a few more minutes.
On Netflix, I created a list with a few interesting titles, and titles I might want to look at some time: Victoria & Abdul, Coded Bias, Queen's Gambit, The Dig, Don't Look Up, Black Crab (altho that one was ultimately disappointing).
Maybe there's... nothing else worth watching.
In any case, paying subscribers have no way to really make a change in what they shove at us.
Disgusting. Demeaning. A horrendous waste of time.
This reminds me of how when I picked an ebook up at a thrift shop and loaded it with my own books through a cable but then Once put it online to download a book from a library, I suddenly began getting offerings of books that were gay cowboy (soft) porn. I didn't even know it was such a large niche genre. Of course, everyone in my family thought it was hysterical and of course it meant all of my "you might also like these" were much the same for a long time... and although apparently the powers that be have finally decided I've switched my interests they still try to "tempt me back" with the occasional offering. So much for being pegged.
An interesting thing about it is how very far these things reach. When it's something as identifiable as that, which can only have come from one place, it's surprising how many other media begin "tempting" you with "interests". It's creepy the first time an email comes in clearly related to something from your ebook! Youtube offerings show up, too. It reminds me of how we used to get mail for the dog after using his name on some sign up thing I have no memory of what it was, but obviously not something I valued highly. Clearly he was a great potential customer!
I'm a bit surprised no one has figured out how to get feed back on how long you watch a movie or show. It seems like something important that's been overlooked. Thank goodness.
They just use "total minutes" of all the people who download the whateveritis. I think they know how many people stop watching after a few minutes and don't want to use that metric since it would prove they have their heads up their asses.
I cannot even remember the last time I saw a movie in a theater OR watched one on TV. I prefer to read. At least I can actually SEE (in my imagination) what is happening and I can HEAR (in my head) the characters speak. Sometimes, if the prose is especially good, I'll read aloud and my cats appear to enjoy the shared experience! Not only are current movies unwatchable, the trend to film in almost total darkness and for actors to mutter or swallow their words is, for me at least, a complete turn-off.
Aside from quality issues, the movie theater business was seriously damaged in the pandemic. And unlike airlines, cruises and Broadway, it hasn’t recovered. In one small instance, the theater in Mattituck on Long Island’s North Fork has been converted to axe throwing, which I guess is a thing. It had been active showing tent poles and art house faves for at least half a century. So there are no movies to go to over a 40 mile stretch of the island. There are similar stories all over the country.
I saw a brewery I drive past on the way out to the country advertising axe throwing. Now there is a combination - beer and axe throwing. What could go wrong?
I have some advice: if you're used to reading without strong reading glasses and have been myopic all your life (like me), DON'T let the doctor change that. I speak from experience...I used to be able to read without my glasses and after I had that correction, I couldn't. a really good optometrist explained to me that since I was use to arranging things like someone myopic, the change was (this is just me) not especially desirable and I ultimately needed to get back to progressive lenses, which I handle very well. but it was really great not having that sepia cloud covering everything and getting darker and darker. the surgery itself is a total breeze.
Bob, when I had my surgeries one lens is for reading, the other for distance. I had been a one contact (for distance) wearer before so the transition was smooth. Never need glasses! Good luck!
P.S. Floaters became an issue, have had my reading eye done, distance eye will be end of month. Something to approach with your surgeon.
they offered me that option, but it would have cost me a few thousand bucks out of pocket. the regular operation(s) were completely covered by my UFT Retiree insurance.
I did the same (cataract surgery with corrective lens implants), both eyes but a year apart. Had the distance lens implant first because the biggest cataract was in that eye. This was over 20 years ago. Reading lens still works really well without glasses. Distance lens is less effective in the past year or so, I guess that eye continues to malform. In any case, I can't recommend more highly getting the two different lenses. It's amazing how rapidly the brain adjusts to having two different focal lengths.
I enjoy this subject also. It is probably because before retirement, I worked as an agent for writers and illustrators of children books and felt like I was at the feeder end of the film process always trying to sell a picture book manuscript for a client to an editor who would have a “gut feeling” about the text and buy it. But, then those editors began to vanish and began to be forced to “circulate the submission to their colleagues to “ build support,” before they would make an offer for the manuscript. The process began to get more and more corporate with the “pub committee” then the “marketing committee” as if any publisher had any idea what was going to sell when the illustrator had been selected and then the creative writer and illustrator combo had endured the “vision” alteration of the various editorial, art, marketing, online and publicity directors. Shit...by the time the picture book manuscript was actually a book in a bookstore, the original acquisition editor was gone and maybe the publisher that I sold the manuscript to was gone too. We did this for more than thirty years, had clients whose books won industry awards, had a few bestsellers and one client’s book go through the film option mill and finally get acquired. Nice payday! The book then was assigned a few screenwriters and even a director as the author, illustrator, publisher, and editors all grew old and continued to wonder if the several millions of dollars that had already been spent would ever produce a FILM? It all goes to confirm William Goldman’s famous truism, “Nobody knows anything.” This begins with the agent deciding which writer or illustrator they’ll work on spec to try and sell their work, to editor who buys something, to the publisher that cobbles together the book, then to the film team that acquires to book and creates what everyone in the entertainment food chain hopes will become a film classic. But nobody knows how to make it happen. They just pretend they know, and then they retire and write about it on SubStack.
Yes to all. There's a reason I stick with my British publisher. For one thing, the editors they have (mostly) know their topics and can be really helpful with their comments. They do put a proposal to the marketing meeting before buying, but in my experience those people are looking at what do we have to do here to help this? And they support the books - my early books are still put in ads and pushed and I have a good publicist assigned by them. It probably helps that they're aware that having me and Barrett Tillman as authors means they have cornered the market on guys whose names sell the books.
At this point in my life - I read a LOT! Do watch tv - but the series I watch have been books that I have read or am reading, i.e., Bosch, Lincoln Lawyer etc. Have lists of authors that I look for at the library or online so I can have them reserved. One of the series I loved was The Closer - the actors were great & it was so good. Then the main character moved on & it changed to Major Crimes - which was good for a while but as with many, went downhill towards the end. Like many of the movie sequels - at some point, its time to quit. So where are the NEW ideas? Maybe with far too many of the writers who are asking to be paid for their time? Funny - sort of goes along with the idea that people who EARN their money deserve to be PAID what they are worth, doesnt it?
Well done again, TC! Looking past the subject matter, something you mentioned caught my eye. The involvement of Wall Street. I immediately thought about the airline industry (my husband worked for it for 45 years) and look what Wall Street has done to that industry, among many others. It's all about profit, profit, profit. It seems there are no longer people of vision running corporations anymore. Where are the Walt Disney's, the Howard Hugheses, the Warner Bothers (and their sister, Dot), and that old creep, Louis B. Mayer? Disney employed ARTISTS to draw things like Snow White and Cinderella. The studios had people like Edith Head designing clothes to be worn in the movies they made. We are reaping what we sowed, beginning with St. Ronnie Reagan, the worship of the almighty Dollar. We are forced to put up with dreck they shove at us. Can't remember the last time we went to see a movie.
I confess that while I was somewhat underwhelmed by "Greyhound" (and there is another one coming out apparently), I did like a couple of things about it - one, that Krause was competent, that his training and pre-war exercises practice had prepared him for that escort duty, and I thought the CGI was not bad, considering how hard water is to do. But there wasn't any time for development of characters, and I reread "The Good Shepherd" before I saw the film. Wish I lived near you - we could have some good discussions over a beer or two.....
Streaming is about straining. The film makers, as opposed to movie makers, are straining to turn notions, as opposed to ideas, into something people want to see, something both entertaining and intellectually nourishing. And for heavens' sakes', where oh where are the real actors? (They must all be shuffling off to Broadway in hopes of finding worthy projects before they themselves shuffle off.) If Seth Rogan and Olivia Munn leave a worthy body of work, it will indeed be the End Times. Breaking up the TCM library is the signal to start packing.
This movie lover used to go to the movies; as a girl she was reading or watching late night movies on tv like Sunset Blvd, Singing in the Rain, Rear Window, Ikiru and 12 Angry Men. TC is talking about stories and about singing and dancing, which stirred our hearts and took us to the movies.
Fern, Two movies I just saw streaming on tv you might enjoy too: Shirley Valentine and The Witness. Very different, but good plot structure and entertaining. I saw The Princess Bride last night with my grandson and his girlfriend. I had avoided it for years. Don’t know why. It was delightful.
We find a way...that's not as easy as it used to be. Thank you, MaryB of Pasadena!
I’m with you Fern. I feel like movies used to speak to us. Now they just scream at us with violence and noise. The older movies you speak of, and others of that era were able to bring us into the moment and feel the intricate feelings and emotions. Hitchcock was a master of that, and so were many others of that era.
Karen, thank you for your voice. There are a precious few movies that reach our hearts and minds these days, but they exist, We need to find them and support the directors, writers, actors, companies, organizations and people who help make the movies that touch us.
You are right Fern, but I do have a hard time finding them. Current movie recommendations from you or anyone would be great.
Totally with you on “Greyhound”. I actually signed up to Apple TV in order to watch that movie. Tom Hanks, as Everyman who becomes a naval captain besting a German U-boat against all odds? How could that not be a great movie? And somehow it was underwhelming. I’m not enough of a screenwriter to know what went wrong, but maybe it was a lack of development of the secondary characters?
To me, the biggest evidence of corporate culpability in crapifying a movie was Disney’s take on the last three installments of Star Wars. Walking out of the theater gave me the same feeling as walking out of the Paris Metro and wondering if my wallet was missing.
I watched the first of the last three SW movies, and when I walked out I was asking myself how the girl knew all that stuff, why did Han Solo have to be killed and a lot of other questions you shouldn't have to ask a movie if it was fully developed. I ended up walking out of the second one because it was embarrassing me that such a piece of shit could be made and didn't waste my time on the third one.
the only difference in our reactions to the "Star Wars" franchise is that I actually finished watching the second one of the original three, and I was done forever. one "marriage" that was definitely NOT made in heaven was the one that sorta "happened" when George Lucas read "The Hero With a Thousand Faces," which is itself like a movie based on other, better movies. but I'm generally NOT a fan of Joseph Campbell EVER.
I didn't realize "The Right Stuff" didn't do well...it certainly launched a major bunch of acting careers. I didn't see it when it came out and only watched the whole thing a few years ago...and I thought it was really GOOD. but I'm generally a big Phil Kaufmann fan; he takes movies seriously.
more and more I've been thinking that when the Supreme Court decided that studios couldn't own their own theaters, movies began their inevitable slide into mediocrity. I know about the "renaissance" of the '70s, but the number of really terrific movies that came out isn't anything like as huge as people remember.
I really DID like what happened very recently when Anderson, Scorsese and Spielberg staged their (successful??) intervention with Zaslav over TCM. Zaslav is a major presence in that shitty four-hour puff piece on Max that SUPPOSED to be a history of WB but really is just a commercial for the next retelling of the fucking Batman origin myth. he walks around the empty WB lots and says "we" a lot, just as if he really has anything to do with WB and isn't just another one of those rotating CEOs. I read somewhere that Zaslav got his start making cheap Reality Shows (are there any Reality Shows that AREN't cheap?). I confess that I have a very small weakness for the occasional half-episode of "Below Deck," which is sorta fun because every single person is disgusting. but by and large, I've spent many recent nights trying to find something to watch, and there's nothing except TCM and Criterion (and, occasionally, Ovid when I'm in the mood to be shocked and horrified).
a last confession: my new television (inherited from a friend's daughter, whose room was too small for it) is actually 65". I was embarrassed at first and thought it was hard to watch because everything was so huge, but I got over it in about three days. I still feel a little bit like a troglodyte because of it.
and since I'm here and we're talking about what to watch, if anybody hasn't discovered "Happy Valley" yet, now's the time. and I'm getting restless waiting for Season Three of "Slow Horses."
there HAVE been some decent movies released on Netflix, but if it's something like "The Irishman," or the re-edit of "The Godfather, Part 3" we're not exactly talking about original content creation, are we?
The Right Stuff could have been a terrific hit. Do the movie exactly as it is, but when Gordo Cooper blasts off, screen fades to interior-spaceship, on his final orbit. There's an electrical fire in one panel, he's communicating with Earth on a battery-powered radio on his lap, and the computer to set the spaceship for its return is glitched. So he has to take the controls (that the astronauts fought for) and look out the window (that they fought for) and manually align the spaceship with the horizon - too shallow, he bounces off the atmosphere and dies in space; too deep he burns up in the atmosphere. Then he descends. And makes the closest landing any American spaceship did to its' intended touchdown till the Space Shuttle landed at Edwards in 1981. In other words, he has to be the PILOT they always claimed they were. At the conclusion of that movie, it's stand up and cheer and walk out feeling good about America.
Every movie, every story, has to pay off EVERY IMPORTANT POINT or it doesn't work.
Phil Kaufman is a great director, as his other movies proved, but he was the wrong director for the Right Stuff. And I figured that out the first time I read the script two weeks after I started work. It was a great lesson for me as a screenwriter and author. (You'll notice in all my books, everything has a "payoff.")
When $60.4 million for the opening weekend of a movie is "disappointing" I have to ask why it costs what seems like an obscene $250-300 million to make it--especially when, as you say, so often, there is no "there" there.
I came looking for suggestions only to find everyone is as disappointed as I am. 😂 My tv hasn’t been turned on for months. There was some buzz about “Don’t Look Up” (star studded cast) so when it got to streaming I watched it with high hopes. Nope. I decided I must have officially crossed the threshold of “too old” to “get” current movies.
The problem is, there's nothing to "get."
That’s a bit of a relief, TC. I may be old, but perhaps not too old 😂.
I'm a retired foody so some of the food related stuff is pretty good, and David Attenborough manages to come up with better stuff at 97 than most.
Do foodies retire? 😂 Were you a participant in the Allrecipes forum before it changed, long ago? That was my best internet/real life experience. Yes. I have found some things I enjoyed on Netflix. I used to watch Bosch on Prime and then they gave it ads, which I detest. So I will never finish it. No matter. I read all the books. They were better.
The books certainly were.
Foodies sometimes get out of the day-to-day rat race; they don't ever quit playing with their food. I found Allrecipes after I retired and use some of their recipes from time to time. I watched Bosch for a while, then found it very slow moving and stopped watching; I've also heard that the books were better but haven't yet picked them up.
The books are excellent.
I also watched "Don't Look Up" with some hope based on the buzz it was getting and ended up thinking it was pretty lousy and (as Tom says) there was nothing to "get," since the movie just went on and on dutifully with its "amazing" cast without any kind of payoff. it was one "joke" that kept getting told over and over again.
I thought "Drive My Car" was sensationally good, but it requires time and attention (and a re-viewing of any decent production of "Uncle Vanya" would help--there's a fabulous one you can see on PBD Passport from just after the pandemic) to "get" it.
Whenever I think of Hollywood I remember what Newt Minnow called the world of television back in the day when the going was good: "a vast wasteland." I threw my TV in the dumpster after reading Jerry Mander's great books Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television and In The Absence of the Sacred. One might venture to say that the "absence of the sacred" is the root of all the problems arising across the media landscape today. Except in the case of Substack, of course, where the subject gets lots of air time via the voices of authentic actors who also happen to be citizens with a real stake in the land they live in and tend to speak from the heart rather than from a purely capitalist stance that seeks to commodify everything under the sun. Hey, speaking of which, Under the Sun, now there was a (Swedish) movie that nobody ever heard of that was pretty damn good. Great post, TC, on a really sore subject.
I have noticed the changes on TCM and not happy. I too stopped going to movies, even before Covid. While I was busy with invalid husband, I kept a list of movies I would have seen if I could. Now I search streaming services and can’t find a one. Where did they go. I’m at my limit on streaming, think I’ll settle on BritBox and Acorn. Just killed Hulu and Disney. Sad times
I haven't actually noticed any differences in TCM...YET.
and if anybody really loves movies, Criterion costs a lot (though a lot less than Netflix) but is worth it. it's especially worth it because pretty much every movie comes with all the extras you get when you buy a Criterion edition of the movie you're looking for. I've also noticed that there's a lot of movies that end up playing on both TCM and Criterion at about the same time (the difference being that Criterion gives all the extra stuff).
Ovid is a lot more political and centered more on documentaries. if you're interested in content that's mostly "non-fiction" with a left-wing slant, it's worth checking out.
pretty much ALL these services offer a free week or so and you can see lots of stuff for free IF you're about ten times as "organized" as I am. in fact, it just occurred to me (duh!) that you can set up reminders on your (I shudder every time before I say it) smartphone.
I shudder too. TCM’s ads are for wine, cruises, etc. different but still selling Schitt. Isn’t everybody
They're classier - you cruise with fellow movie fans and watch old movies
I like this subject, I like it a lot. Entertainment is an attention winning game as much as everything else. There has been an injection of competition called Social Media, tv and movie screens in the palms of hands. Reality shows, sports shows, family shows, comedy, fantasy shows, science, science fiction, love, romance, and now AI deepfake shows. There doesn’t seem to be an end to free creative entertainment. It’s no wonder the film industry is losing and badly. So much is changing so quickly. It’s hard to notice the details when traveling this fast. This disruption is observable in the film industry. Humans love stories, and there is now hyper competition for which ones we will give our attention to. The market is flooded with free stories marketed to our attention spans and billed to advertisers by the micro and nano second. It’s a challenge to the film industry that to pay for 2 hours of entertainment better be damn good.
The good news about the paucity of quality movie entertainment is that there is more time to read really good books like Clean Sweep (just to take a random example). I've seen a few that were tolerable and, like you, am waiting for the conclusion to Dune. One hopes that the pent-up creative energy of the striking writers will result in some outstanding offerings once/if it gets resolved but I'm an eternal optimist.
I am so disgusted with Netflix and Amazon Prime.
Both of them have pegged me as an older white male, so I get shown "movies I might like" that all have: Action. Magic. Violence. Lots of fight scenes. Quests. A few stalwart heroes fighting against unjust masters. And sex. More action. Fast cars. Impossible moves. Impossibly fast. Impossible flying through the air. Monsters (quite unlike "A Monster Calls," which I loved).
People discovering that they have magical powers, and that's why they win.
Heroes of few words -- Geralt in The Witcher. I watched the series but there's NOTHING to look back on and savor. Pure distraction.
The streaming service's AI doesn't figure out that I watch most of these things for about 10 minutes then quit. Sometimes I come back and try a few more minutes.
On Netflix, I created a list with a few interesting titles, and titles I might want to look at some time: Victoria & Abdul, Coded Bias, Queen's Gambit, The Dig, Don't Look Up, Black Crab (altho that one was ultimately disappointing).
Maybe there's... nothing else worth watching.
In any case, paying subscribers have no way to really make a change in what they shove at us.
Disgusting. Demeaning. A horrendous waste of time.
I'm going to copy this and send it to the guy who writes The Angler - the strike news for the WGA.
This reminds me of how when I picked an ebook up at a thrift shop and loaded it with my own books through a cable but then Once put it online to download a book from a library, I suddenly began getting offerings of books that were gay cowboy (soft) porn. I didn't even know it was such a large niche genre. Of course, everyone in my family thought it was hysterical and of course it meant all of my "you might also like these" were much the same for a long time... and although apparently the powers that be have finally decided I've switched my interests they still try to "tempt me back" with the occasional offering. So much for being pegged.
An interesting thing about it is how very far these things reach. When it's something as identifiable as that, which can only have come from one place, it's surprising how many other media begin "tempting" you with "interests". It's creepy the first time an email comes in clearly related to something from your ebook! Youtube offerings show up, too. It reminds me of how we used to get mail for the dog after using his name on some sign up thing I have no memory of what it was, but obviously not something I valued highly. Clearly he was a great potential customer!
I'm a bit surprised no one has figured out how to get feed back on how long you watch a movie or show. It seems like something important that's been overlooked. Thank goodness.
They just use "total minutes" of all the people who download the whateveritis. I think they know how many people stop watching after a few minutes and don't want to use that metric since it would prove they have their heads up their asses.
I cannot even remember the last time I saw a movie in a theater OR watched one on TV. I prefer to read. At least I can actually SEE (in my imagination) what is happening and I can HEAR (in my head) the characters speak. Sometimes, if the prose is especially good, I'll read aloud and my cats appear to enjoy the shared experience! Not only are current movies unwatchable, the trend to film in almost total darkness and for actors to mutter or swallow their words is, for me at least, a complete turn-off.
Aside from quality issues, the movie theater business was seriously damaged in the pandemic. And unlike airlines, cruises and Broadway, it hasn’t recovered. In one small instance, the theater in Mattituck on Long Island’s North Fork has been converted to axe throwing, which I guess is a thing. It had been active showing tent poles and art house faves for at least half a century. So there are no movies to go to over a 40 mile stretch of the island. There are similar stories all over the country.
AXE THROWING???? Really? Sure I've heard of it & seen it in a couple tv shows but replacing a theater with it? That takes the cake.
I saw a brewery I drive past on the way out to the country advertising axe throwing. Now there is a combination - beer and axe throwing. What could go wrong?
Yeah - as I recall, the only places I have seen it has always been in a bar! Yup alcohol & axes - wow what a combo!
As Dave Barry would say, it sounds like the name of a band.
I confess I haven't been to the movies in years, because I'm DEAF and there are no options here for CC monitor.
I don't have cable or rabbit ears. I don't stream. I do have a really wonderful collection of DVD'S that I re-visit for my
viewing. What I do more than
that though is read; voraciously.
I hope when I get my cataract surgery that I'll be able to read novels again. More than 2 pages at a time.
You will! After I had mine and got lenses implanted, I could go back to building 1/72 models again and not have to use an Optivisor!
I have some advice: if you're used to reading without strong reading glasses and have been myopic all your life (like me), DON'T let the doctor change that. I speak from experience...I used to be able to read without my glasses and after I had that correction, I couldn't. a really good optometrist explained to me that since I was use to arranging things like someone myopic, the change was (this is just me) not especially desirable and I ultimately needed to get back to progressive lenses, which I handle very well. but it was really great not having that sepia cloud covering everything and getting darker and darker. the surgery itself is a total breeze.
Bob, when I had my surgeries one lens is for reading, the other for distance. I had been a one contact (for distance) wearer before so the transition was smooth. Never need glasses! Good luck!
P.S. Floaters became an issue, have had my reading eye done, distance eye will be end of month. Something to approach with your surgeon.
they offered me that option, but it would have cost me a few thousand bucks out of pocket. the regular operation(s) were completely covered by my UFT Retiree insurance.
Dang. I think mine didn't care about the prescription as long as it wasn't a multi focal. Upcharge there.
I did the same (cataract surgery with corrective lens implants), both eyes but a year apart. Had the distance lens implant first because the biggest cataract was in that eye. This was over 20 years ago. Reading lens still works really well without glasses. Distance lens is less effective in the past year or so, I guess that eye continues to malform. In any case, I can't recommend more highly getting the two different lenses. It's amazing how rapidly the brain adjusts to having two different focal lengths.
Morning Tom,
I enjoy this subject also. It is probably because before retirement, I worked as an agent for writers and illustrators of children books and felt like I was at the feeder end of the film process always trying to sell a picture book manuscript for a client to an editor who would have a “gut feeling” about the text and buy it. But, then those editors began to vanish and began to be forced to “circulate the submission to their colleagues to “ build support,” before they would make an offer for the manuscript. The process began to get more and more corporate with the “pub committee” then the “marketing committee” as if any publisher had any idea what was going to sell when the illustrator had been selected and then the creative writer and illustrator combo had endured the “vision” alteration of the various editorial, art, marketing, online and publicity directors. Shit...by the time the picture book manuscript was actually a book in a bookstore, the original acquisition editor was gone and maybe the publisher that I sold the manuscript to was gone too. We did this for more than thirty years, had clients whose books won industry awards, had a few bestsellers and one client’s book go through the film option mill and finally get acquired. Nice payday! The book then was assigned a few screenwriters and even a director as the author, illustrator, publisher, and editors all grew old and continued to wonder if the several millions of dollars that had already been spent would ever produce a FILM? It all goes to confirm William Goldman’s famous truism, “Nobody knows anything.” This begins with the agent deciding which writer or illustrator they’ll work on spec to try and sell their work, to editor who buys something, to the publisher that cobbles together the book, then to the film team that acquires to book and creates what everyone in the entertainment food chain hopes will become a film classic. But nobody knows how to make it happen. They just pretend they know, and then they retire and write about it on SubStack.
Yes to all. There's a reason I stick with my British publisher. For one thing, the editors they have (mostly) know their topics and can be really helpful with their comments. They do put a proposal to the marketing meeting before buying, but in my experience those people are looking at what do we have to do here to help this? And they support the books - my early books are still put in ads and pushed and I have a good publicist assigned by them. It probably helps that they're aware that having me and Barrett Tillman as authors means they have cornered the market on guys whose names sell the books.
At this point in my life - I read a LOT! Do watch tv - but the series I watch have been books that I have read or am reading, i.e., Bosch, Lincoln Lawyer etc. Have lists of authors that I look for at the library or online so I can have them reserved. One of the series I loved was The Closer - the actors were great & it was so good. Then the main character moved on & it changed to Major Crimes - which was good for a while but as with many, went downhill towards the end. Like many of the movie sequels - at some point, its time to quit. So where are the NEW ideas? Maybe with far too many of the writers who are asking to be paid for their time? Funny - sort of goes along with the idea that people who EARN their money deserve to be PAID what they are worth, doesnt it?
They don't look for new ideas, they look for successful Intellectual Property to re-do again.
Well done again, TC! Looking past the subject matter, something you mentioned caught my eye. The involvement of Wall Street. I immediately thought about the airline industry (my husband worked for it for 45 years) and look what Wall Street has done to that industry, among many others. It's all about profit, profit, profit. It seems there are no longer people of vision running corporations anymore. Where are the Walt Disney's, the Howard Hugheses, the Warner Bothers (and their sister, Dot), and that old creep, Louis B. Mayer? Disney employed ARTISTS to draw things like Snow White and Cinderella. The studios had people like Edith Head designing clothes to be worn in the movies they made. We are reaping what we sowed, beginning with St. Ronnie Reagan, the worship of the almighty Dollar. We are forced to put up with dreck they shove at us. Can't remember the last time we went to see a movie.
I confess that while I was somewhat underwhelmed by "Greyhound" (and there is another one coming out apparently), I did like a couple of things about it - one, that Krause was competent, that his training and pre-war exercises practice had prepared him for that escort duty, and I thought the CGI was not bad, considering how hard water is to do. But there wasn't any time for development of characters, and I reread "The Good Shepherd" before I saw the film. Wish I lived near you - we could have some good discussions over a beer or two.....
We could indeed.
Streaming is about straining. The film makers, as opposed to movie makers, are straining to turn notions, as opposed to ideas, into something people want to see, something both entertaining and intellectually nourishing. And for heavens' sakes', where oh where are the real actors? (They must all be shuffling off to Broadway in hopes of finding worthy projects before they themselves shuffle off.) If Seth Rogan and Olivia Munn leave a worthy body of work, it will indeed be the End Times. Breaking up the TCM library is the signal to start packing.