Hollywood Babylon

The New American ^ | March 21, 2005 | William F. Jasper

[Borges]

I would hardly desribe Milius, Lucas, Spielberg and Scorsese as anti American.

[Siamese Princess]

yep. did you do research papers on the movies in grad school and find those statistics, just like I did, too?

Heck, no. I read a great deal -- books, newspapers, magazines or the internet, or just plain talk to people.

Last year (?), a piece in The Wall St. Journal mentioned that studio execs claim that the "average" movie (however defined) only makes 30% of its take at the boxoffice. About 40% comes from DVDs, 15% from pay TV and the remaining 15% from other sources such as network TV. Just a few days ago I read somewhere that about 80% of Hollywood's revenues comes from DVDs and TV.

The majority of moviegoers are young men, so, not surprisingly, the studios cater to that demographic: they like loud, stupid and violent films. People who are 30+ have lose the habit of going to the movies and simply wait for the DVD or video to be released. I recently read somewhere that DVDs, unlike videos, are priced to sell and not to rent.

[mel]

I forgot I just started watching it on TVLand. It had been a long time since I had watched it

[Overtaxed]

Those Cartwright Boys are the Kiss of Death. LOL!

[Sam the Sham]

I wonder if that take can be broken down to only movies shown theatrically. It should be broken down to theatrically shown movies and straight to Skinemax movies.

[Sam the Sham]

Frankly, Milius completely and totally ripped off "The Battle of Algiers" for "Red Dawn". Even down to the character of the heroic Russian Spetsnaz commander vs the heroic French paratroop commander.

And as for Spielberg, it was he who in a way resurrected Disney. In "ET" he showed how it was possible to base a movie on children without being saccharine and schmaltzy.

[Borges]

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. Lucas is the weakest of those mentioned. He's more of a special effects and production impresario then a director. Star Wars was a mix of Kurosawa, Tolkien, Arthurian Legends and Flash Gordon all reduced to anodyne cinematic wall paper. Though I've long realized that arguing with SW fanboys is a lost cause. :-) As a director Lucas has yet to top THX 1138 (shopworn as those ideas were even then). What is Coppola's 'view of the world'? If there's any constant in his work its nostalgic wistfulness and the primacy of family. What's wrong with that? Spielberg is a genius of pure film making. And his subjects and themes...WW2, the innocence of childhood, missing father figures...have been clear over the years. No one in the last 40 years or so has been able to capture the epiphanies of childhood with the magic that he has.

[Borges]

Aesthetics is ALWAYS a matter of opinion. Many films are lauded as "great" that I would have to be paid to watch. "Great" usually means that a herd of sheeplike critics have concurred that a film is great.

Relativsm! :-) Well of course it's a matter of opinion but there are standards agreed upon by a grat many critics and scholars. What 'overpraised' films would you say fall into this category? Citizen Kane? 8 /12, 2001? Those are some usual suspects. Just curious

[Hildy]

I'm telling you that you have missed alot. How do you know if you haven't seen anything? DUH.

[Borges]

I saw Star Wars as a child and it did nothing for me. I watched it again recently and again it did nothing for me. What new ideas did Lucas present in it? It was entirely shopworn from start to finish. Including the ahem...metaphysics.

The spirtuality of the suburbs is what's new about Spielberg's films. What was once considered plastic and shallow he made seem alive and peotic in films like Close Encounters and E.T. Ray Bradbury has said that CE is one of his favorite films of all time. Schindler's List was a new way of depicting that subject in a non-documentary feature. It was much more complex then some people gave it credit for (which I admit is as much due to the script as to Spielberg). I never much agreed with Kael either.

[Borges]

poetic not 'peotic'. Didn't want to hint at some drug reference!

[editor-surveyor]

"Doesn't mention how the subjects dealt with. Or is it wrong to deal with them in any way?"

This is Hollywood we're talking about, do you have any doubts about how they deal with the things that are dear to them?

[Constantine XIII]

Really? I thought we were winning. The awards show had the crappiest ratings since forever, and box office returns are pathetic.

But I'm an optimist. :P

[Borges]

OK if you're trumpeting the literary artistry of Rand then we have aesthetic chasms dividing us. BTW I heard she disliked that 1930s version of WTL. Ever see King Vidor's film of The Fountainhead? He turned it into a screaming Freudian melodrama. "I wish I'd never seen your skyscraper!"

I don't think great artists deal in fundamentals or general ideas they deal in specifics. I agree with Nabokov who said that the schoolmarm who pronounced that great art is 'simple and honest' should have been drummed out of the business. Everyone knows that great art is complex and deceitful. :-)

If you criticize 'Schindler's List' from a subject matter point of view then it's not worth discussing. It's about what it's about...an adaptation of a book about this particular guy and what he did. From what I've read about him he was actually more heroic then the film displayed...putting his life on the line every day and actively stepping in between Jewish workers and Nazis. It was an enthralling piece of filmmaking.