Posted on 07/26/2005 8:52:10 AM PDT by holymoly
The standard entertainment industry reaction to Hollywood's box office slump reveals the same shallow, materialistic mindset that helped create the problem in the first place. The left-leaning thinking that dominates the movie business follows a common liberal instinct to deny the spiritual dimension to every problem, thereby profoundly compounding the difficulties.
Tinseltown's recent setbacks suggest a crisis of major proportions, with a May USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll showing 48% of adults going to movies less often than in 2000. For 19 consecutive weeks, motion picture releases earned less (despite higher ticket prices) than the year before. Projected ticket sales for all of 2005 indicate a disastrous drop of at least 8% - at a time of population growth and a generally robust economy.
USA TODAY ran a headline, "Where have all the moviegoers gone?" under which insiders discussed their desperate attempts to rebuild the shattered audience: "The lures include providing high-tech eye candy through 3-D digital projection and IMAX versions of movies. ... Stadium seating, which improves views, is just now becoming standard. Other theaters are opting for screenings that serve alcohol to patrons 21 and older."
More balance needed
Revealingly, none of the studio honchos talked about reconnecting with the public by adjusting the values conveyed by feature films, and replacing the industry's shrill liberal posturing with a more balanced ideological perspective.
Something clearly changed between 2004 and 2005 to cause an abrupt drop-off at the box office, and the most obvious alteration involved Hollywood's role in the bitterly fought presidential election. The entertainment establishment embraced John Kerry with near unanimity - and bashed George W. Bush with unprecedented ferocity.
Michael Moore became an industry hero and the most visible symbol of the Hollywood left. Innumerable callers to my radio show expressed resentment at the strident partisanship of top stars; no one ever complained about the lack of 3-D digital projection or alcoholic beverages at concession stands.
Despite efforts by entertainer activists, a majority of voters cast their ballots for Bush. If even a minority of those 62 million GOP voters - say, 20% - reacted to Hollywood's electioneering by shunning the multiplex, it could easily account for the sharp decline in ticket sales after Bush's re-election.
Another values-oriented phenomenon of last year similarly contributed to missing moviegoers: The Passion of the Christ earned $370 million by drawing religious-minded patrons who had long avoided movies altogether. Amazingly, no major release in the 17 months since the opening of The Passion attempted to appeal to that huge, wary churchgoing audience. Walt Disney Co. hopes that the faithful will flock to theaters during Christmas season to see the adaptation of the Christian allegory by C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but that promised deliverance is still five months away - an eternity in show business time.
Meanwhile, conventional wisdom ignores all ideological considerations in explaining the sudden box office collapse, concentrating instead on purely material excuses (high ticket prices, availability of DVDs) that have, frankly, applied for years. This knee-jerk tendency to offer direct, physical solutions to deep-seated problems constitutes an unmistakable element in the liberal outlook that remains Hollywood's reigning faith.
Liberal tendencies
To combat threats to the family from out-of-wedlock births, for instance, the left offers birth control and abortion - though illegitimacy soared as "reproductive choice" became widely available. On crime, liberals stress gun control - despite statistics showing states with widespread gun ownership producing less criminal violence. To fight poverty, progressives want more funding for welfare and public housing - ignoring the destructive impact of a culture of dependency and the failure of government projects in every big city. On the core question of terrorism, liberals blame economic deprivation, suggesting foreign aid to dry up anti-Americanism - downplaying the depravity at the heart of Muslim militancy that draws its murderous leadership from the Middle East's most privileged classes.
This same habitual blindness to spiritual, substantive dimensions of every significant challenge continues to handicap Hollywood. Paramount Pictures recently announced that the first major thriller dramatizing 9/11, with Nicholas Cage as a rescuer attempting to escape the wreckage, will be directed by notorious conspiracist Oliver Stone. Aside from his recent drug busts and box office bombs (the gay-themed Alexander and his documentary paean to Fidel Castro, Commandante), Stone has compiled a vast collection of anti-American statements, including his 1987 declaration: "I think America has to bleed. I think the corpses have to pile up. ... Let the mothers weep and mourn."
Meanwhile, Tinseltown will continue to weep and mourn as long as its bosses depend on the likes of Stone to portray the worst terrorist attacks in our history. Americans aren't stupid, and we're not all apolitical; many (at least a third) are even self-consciously conservative in both politics and values.
In Bill Clinton's successful 1992 presidential campaign, his staff kept focused with the help of a sign: "It's the economy, stupid." In their campaign to bring back disillusioned moviegoers, Hollywood's honchos ought to consider similar signs, reminding themselves, "It's the values, stupid."
It's the depiction of violence that turns people off. It used to be someone got shot, the body went down, and that's all you saw. Now you get the spurting blood, the intestines falling out, etc ...
So is the idea of keeping food out of the theaters. It's a totally disgusting experience having to wade through sludge on the way in and having your shoes sticking to everything on the way out. I went to a theater in Europe once and it was a pleasure - carpeted floor, nice cushiony chairs, very clean, smelled nice - and no food allowed inside the movie room.
relax Binky just an honorable mention from Robbins is all to give you the whole picture of why it stunk on many levels.
Ok so in your opinion watching Tom Cruise run around and bond with his kids is what does it for you in films fine - have SPielberg entitle it "Tom Cruise bonds with kids while pesky aliens get in the way" and release it to lifetime.
you want to make War of the worlds and make it gee i dont know about war of the fricking worlds then do it correctly and move the focus to that ;)
so to sum up, it was not true to the book, did not integrate the best elements of the book and the original movie was better. :)
have a nice day
How about any of these films from the past:
Shane; Maltese Falcon; Lord of the Rings (three movies); A Man for All Seasons; Remains of the Day; Bridge on the River Kwai; On the Waterfront; The Searchers; Grapes of Wrath; and so on and so on -- there are hundreds of similar examples...
Not a cartoon in the bunch. My point was not "make children's movies" -- my point was this: a director/producer can make a moving, memorable film without the gratuitous elements, IF HE CHOOSES TO. Today's Hollywood elites choose NOT to; they use the gratuitous elements to (A) hide their lack of talent and (B) promote "the Hollywood agenda." And then they moan and whine when no one goes to the movies any more.
"Diary of a Mad Black Woman" seems to meet your six characteristics. The movie even portrays people falling in love and NOT having sex before marriage because they're Christian.
Same here!
Never saw Duel i know it was Speilberg but that is about all. Well again coming from the perspective in terms of what the focus should have been on the movie failed big time. I cannot stress that enough and the fact that there were way too many plot holes made me aggravated. Again these ships "buried for millenia" lol give me a break. The military needing Tom to tell them the shields were down. Geez. ah well I also tend to take my scifi seriously and get annoyed when they lose focus on the really great elements of this stuff ;)
I quit going to the movies when the cowboys started carrying guitars and kissing girls instead of six shooters and kissing horses!
What only a flack could have liked it? I dislike lots of movies...just not this one. Most film buffs I know loved it. As for not connecting with an audience it's made more money then any movie this year except Sith. Its reputation will only go up in years to come.
Lindsay Lohan did exactly that about a year ago: she refused to discuss politics, saying half her audience was Republican.
Perhaps. I'd have to see her actual statement. But unless she framed it as "half my audience is Republican, and half is Democrat" then she made a clear political statement.
Peter Jackson did it. The reason Hollywood doesn't is because they just don't want to.
The LOTR movies were Hollywood. Time Warner.
Batman's done pretty solid in the box office too, but it's not putting up Spiderman numbers. And that should be expected, this is the return of the Dark Night concept of Batman which is innately not as marketable, and it's got the baggage of the previous movies (which mostly stunk) to try to shake.
Even though BB came out two weeks before WOTW it has been passed in grosses which restores my faith in people's good taste.
They tried that back in the videotape days. It didn't work.
I don't think it's that blanket a statement. LOTR, Spidey and Incredibles shows they're willing to make those kind of movies, and none of them are children's movies (don't let the fact that Incredibles is animated fool you, the constant references to golden age comics makes the intended audience obviously adult, it's kid friendly to be sure but they were mostly gunning for the over 30 crowd). And that's 6 movies just off the top of my head in the last 5 years, the others in your list came out over a span of DECADES.
Most movies aren't intended to be memorable, even back to the early days of Hollywood, most are intended to make some money and then get out of the way for the next batch. This is why you get a lot of sex and violence, sex and violence sell.
I don't hear a lot of whining coming out of Hollywood, I hear a lot of crowing coming from the anti-Hollywood crowd but from inside Hollywood they seem to be taking a slump in stride. I think everybody knew late last year when this year's movie schedule started coming together this was going to be kind of a weak year. They just didn't have the blockbuster festival going this year. I'm a summer blockbuster movie kind of guy, most Julys I'm in the theater every weekend sometimes both Saturday and Sunday, this July I've seen two movies and there isn't anything opening this weekend I intend to go see. They just didn't put together a blockbuster summer and the gate is showing it (in a normal summer there's no way a movie like Bewitched would have opened in July, that was a May or September movie... which seems to be the real problem they're having this summer, LOTS of spring and fall movies, too many for spring and fall to handle actually, and very few true summer movies). Shouldn't come as a suprise to anyone and there shouldn't be a lot of reading into it. Next year X-Men 3 comes out and the year after that comes Spiderman 3, now that's not enough to make either of the next two summers go back to normal but it does mean they'll both have solid cornerstones to build from.
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