Fact is, very little that is a)original, b)well acted, c)profound, d)amusing, e)insightful has come out of Hollywierd in the last 10 years or so. It's all shallow and trite re-makes or slashers and bashers. There have been some brilliant successes, like the Millenial blockbuster, "The Trilogy of the Ring." There have been others. I usually go to two, three movies at the most per year. The rest are just not worth my time.
True.
The only movies in the last few years that have been worth a damn were "The Lord of the Rings." To some lesser extent "Cinderella Man" and "The Islan" were very good movies with conservative overtones, but nothing else has been worth it at all.
You said it. I enjoy and have studied films and consider consider filmmaking an art. At one time, I used to go to films almost every week, many of them indie and foreign films. Now I can hardly be bothered.
I pay for premium cable and have On Demand. Nowadays I often wait until something comes on cable where I can fast forward or mute the garbage if need be. Considering the poor quality of most films, tho, I'm as likely to use On Demand to watch something on Discovery or the decorating channels as I am to watch a movie. That's a sad commentary on the current state of the film industry.
I would agree in general with this. However there are other issues as well... hollywood has done a TERRIBLE job marketing their product as well.
I have seen a few movies recently that based on the marketing I had no desire to see, because they were portrayed very poorly in their marketing, but actually were very good films.
Spanglish was a great movie, marketing almost was right on this one... but not good enough for me to plop down 10 bucks for a ticket. Had they marketed it better, I would have probably seen it in the theaters.
In Good Company - Came out in 04, but was a very good movie, very poorly marketed.
And one I just saw that completely suprised me...
Guess Who - portrayed in marketing as little more than a cheap slapstick rip off of the classic "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" honestly the movie was not nearly as low brow as I expected from the marketing.
The way I see it, Hollywood has put out so much crap, and tried so hard for so long to get people to go to the crap, that when they actually do have a good movie, they don't realize it, their marketing approach is flawed, and their audience who they have insulted the intelligence and values of for years are so cynical that you wind up with the perfect storm of, Nope, not gonna see it, or I'll wait for it on DVD it definatley won't be worth the price of admission.
You guys have no one but yourselves to blame, so much garbage, so much insulting tripe... so much insulting of the values that most of your audience holds dear.. combined with trying to hype that crap as good... when you have a good product, you just don't know what to do with it, because you can't recognize it, and your credibility in presenting something as good is shot.. spent trying to get another person to go see your 200million dollar to create "blockbuster" bomb.
You have lost credibility... with perhaps the exception of PIXAR, who only does a movie every 1-2 years... I cannot think of another studio that consistently spends the time to make sure the STORY that is about to be put on film.. is one worth putting on film.