What's the biggest problem with movies nowadays?
In your opinion...?
shareIMO, I think that one of the biggest problems with movies is that there are too many of them.
This is going to be another "When I was young" posts, but seriously, when I was younger direct to video really wasn't much of a thing. In fact, sometimes you might wait 2 years for a movie to be released on video after leaving the theatre. Actually when I was really young there wasn't even video. Now, so many movies don't even get a theatre release, which puts a bunch more crap out there to weed through to find something good. We now have streaming services that are creating their own content. All of this leads to more competition for the studios to make money. So they aim for the sequels and remakes, which even if they are crap, will likely make money just by name recognition. Original movies don't seem to bring in the box office dollars.
I really think that if we want originality and quality, we need to stop spending money on the crap.
Maybe we should consider the possibility that the age of the movie being the pinnacle of motion entertainment is ending and that video is now at the top of the food chain, or is inexorably moving to the top. The entertainment industry learned quickly, and long ago, that content that was easy for the consumer to access sold MUCH better than content that was high fidelity. VHS beat out BETA-Max, audio tapes outsold vinyl recordings, CDs outsold tapes, streaming outsells everything today. The most reliable theater-going market comprises teen and young adults, so their taste informs the films that are produced. Their are many consumers who don’t share that taste, and they have huge buying power, and may well find going to a theater, even one showing a film that appeals to them, too inconvenient when compared with their other entertainment options. Premium video services like HBO, Netflix, Anazon Prime, Hulu, Showtime etc. are offering lots of praised, high-quality long-form and serial content that I, for one, think is better than most modern movies, and better from the perspectives of narrative design and attention to detail, and at least the equal of big time films in terms of acting, directing and production design. Let’s face it: Game of Thrones looks better than most movies and, if you haven’t noticed that, you haven’t seen it on the kind of system that I can design and put in your home. That is the final piece of my hypothesis: It is entirely possible to have an audio/video experience streamed in your home that equals or even surpasses what you’ll have in a movie theater. Combine the convenience, very wide variety and artistic and content quantity of at-home entertainment, and I think that the movie industry as we have known it has all the future of the horse-and-buggy.
shareI agree that it's the future, and the convenience is awesome. I don't go to the theatre often at all because I can just see it in a few months at home. I'll admit that there is a lot of great content coming out, but for every Game of Thrones, there are hundreds of mediocre or even bad content being released. My issue isn't how the content is released, it's just the amount. I just picked a random year, and in 1981 IMDB lists 3,158 movies being released. Compare that to the 12,180 that were released in 2018. Just percentage wise, the number of bad and mediocre movies will have increased comparatively. I'd rather have less content available if it were all better quality.
I’m afraid that information overload is an established fact of life in a world where the amount of information doubles every 10 years. Ergo, caveat emptor. We create ways to find the pearls among the swine. I depend on my instincts and on reviews, like what we have here on MC. I read between the lines, ignore troll posts, and give the most credibility to those who can think and write. I will watch some things just because of who is in it, or directed it. I may start watching something provisionally and turn it off after a half hour if it’s not going anywhere. Many of the streaming services are offering automated suggestions and ratings based on their AI assessment of our taste. In this regard, I find Netflix useful and Comcast baffling. (At least no service so far has yelled YOUR TASTE SUCKS at me.) I feel that the percentage of good content out of total content remains a constant 7 or 8 percent.
shareThis is quite an in-depth conversation. You have mentioned about having a background in writing. Do you happen to have a blog? This was very insightful.
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Thank you, twin, but, no, I don’t know how to design a website or how to make it pay. All I know is how to provide information that seems to help people.
To that end, would anyone like to share her of his strategies for finding good material and avoiding the bad stuff? My hustory in this area goes back to the 7th grade, when an English teacher assigned the Odyssey as a reading task, and directed us to buy it in the school bookstore. It was a BITCH to read. Then it dawned on me that I was reading a translation, and there might be less dense translations available. My Dad and I went to a bookstore, and found a lively and engaging translation. Henceforward, I never again accepted the first example of written or performed art that presented itself. There are good and bad translations, good and bad recordings, good and bad video transfers, good and bad conducting/directing, good and bad editing/arranging. (Example of great musical arranging: the Bellas’ finale in Pitch Perfect, where some master stitched together a pastiche of throwaway poptunes into a stirring anthemic paen to Top 40. I hope s/he got paid a million bucks for it.) I read album reviews online at musicdirect.com and in The Absolute Sound magazine, because I’ll never stop buying hard media. When I hear or see something I like while streaming, I go to the iPhone notepad and write it down so I remember it come the dawn. I will buy anything that Jimi Hendrix or Eva Cassidy releases.
What do you do?
Honestly have not given it much thought. I prefer hard media as it is quality. Unable to convince my family to get into streaming, so have to keep it short and simple, go to the library, and ask friends I know who share similar tastes and are willing to try things outside their comfort zone in terms of films. I find this greatly weeds out a lot of the flip-flap.
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I think that finding good material is really difficult. A lot of the good movies that I have come across I just stumbled upon them and thought that sounds interesting. Reviews help, but also have to weed through those. I have friends that usually have some great suggestions, so that helps me.
I still buy a lot of hard media as well. I don't have to worry about sound breakdown when it comes to music that has always been a bit of an issue with me with MP3's. I do have digital copies, but I still buy LPs. I also like to buy real books. As much I appreciate the convenience of an e-reader (especially when travelling with 50 books), my brain doesn't remember books as well if I don't have tactile sensations as well as visual.
I also buy hard copies of movies that I really like. I know that even if i buy a digital copy of a movie, there is no guarantee that it will still be available in a few years. I don't buy many movies as I still have a collection of VHS tapes that are somewhat useless.
You will have to pry my hard media from my cold, dead hand! I can’t dog-ear a digital reader, or write notes in its margins, but I can with a book. Like you, I like the feel of paper. I cannot foresee a digital copy of a book appreciating in value over the years! I like things that I can get my hands on, and touch. You might want to consider transferring your VHS to DVD, to prevent the taped content from degrading. I’ve tried using the Comcast remote’s speech recognition to find new material, but with mixed results. If I ask it to find a horror or a science fiction movie—no problem. If I ask for a fantasy movie, the AI melts down. Not that Fantasy is a popular genre, or anything!
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Whoa, Kane! In future please throw in a few paragraph breaks. It will make your post much easier to read.
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