Not tonight. My wife and I are having discussions about when to see it. She wants to see it while it's still in theaters (though she also wanted to see The Martian, and that hasn't happened). I'm feeling burned by the prequel trilogy and am content to wait for it to show up on some streaming universe in a year or two.
The prequels cured me of any lingering Star Wars nostalgia. I'll catch it when it shows up on cable.
Nope. I'm already all booked up for Finnish Christmas music singing.
I want to see it but I don't want to see it with the people who want to be the first to see it.
Nobody wants to see it this weekend, it's going to be too crowded.
Not this weekend, but I'm considering trying to see it in the theaters (which is notable because I see almost no movies in the theater, but it could be fun to go sometime during the week between Christmas and New Years).
I have tickets for the IMax 3d version on Saturday. Initial reviews have been good, so I'm kind of hopeful. I'd prefer to see it baked out of my skull but I'm going with squares so that's not an option. Also I have no pot.
I have to pick my friend up at the airport. Sorry.
I'm just swamped with work right now. I'll call you, don't call me.
I think I'm coming down with a cold, and am feeling a bit ill. Maybe some other time.
I want to see that Tarantino film in 70mm, but more for the format than the content.
NERDS!!!!
(I have tickets for Tuesday.)
My son wants to, but he hasn't seen any of the earlier movies. (He knows the characters from Lego, video games, and a few cartoons). We are going to watch 4, 5,and 6 this weekend at home and see the new one next week if he's still interested.
So no one tip him off about the big twist in episode 5.
I think my brothers have tickets for tonight and again tomorrow afternoon.
I'll probably catch a matinee on Wednesday. Its either that, or go to work.
We might take the kids on Xmas day, tbh.
18: If you make it 1, 2 and 3 you could probably save money on tickets.
Nope. I'm already all booked up for Finnish Christmas music singing.
The very humblest of all brags.
So no one tip him off about the big twist in episode 5.
Darth Vader is people! Tell the world!
Finnish Christmas music singing
"Children, I'm very sorry but there aren't enough prepositions to go around this year."
I'm finished with Christmas music singing.
There's something to be said for seeing some movies in the theater. I just watched Mad Max Fury Road at home, and found myself wishing I'd seen it on a big screen with the sound turned up louder than I would turn it up myself.
But Star Wars, meh, the reviews are good and I'm sure it's fine, but maybe, maybe not.
Every review I've read of it, good or not-so-good, make it sound like the kind of movie that everyone is really, really excited about for a while and then it sinks in that it's actually kind of.. just the same. And any real magic that it feels like it has is just because it's reminding you of something from the original trilogy that made you excited or happy, and not something that belongs to it because really deep down. And that it's more like one of those weird European attempts to cash in on the popularity of Star Wars where they imitate bits that were awesome but don't really add anything to them or at best when they do it's just a generic sort of science fiction thing that could have just been Guardians of the Galaxy 2 if they'd replaced the robot with a giant sentient tree or something. I predict that Star Wars nerds will love it until the end of time, though, if only because it isn't actually physically painful to watch (probably).
I have no firm plans, but intend to do so. I'd been planning on going to see Spectre on the big screen, because I thought the previous one was fun, but the reviews were so crappy I bagged out. Reviews for this are good, and I've enjoyed the trailers, so why not?
I doubt I'll bring the kids.
I'm at the bar and called the guy with tickets to the midnight show a nerd.
He probably shouldn't be in a bar, then.
No. My son's going with his Dad and brother and sister.
Not tonight, dear.
(I'll see it when the crowds thin out.)
Jammies just got invited to a midnight 3D showing.
Not me, no. My son is going with his dad this weekend; they've had their tickets for a week.
I'd been planning on going to see Spectre on the big screen, because I thought the previous one was fun, but the reviews were so crappy I bagged out.
Kind of relieved to hear this. I was going to go see it one morning during the film festival because most of the films screening for it didn't start till 2 or even 4 (!) and I wanted a day or two of watching 4 films a day but I just couldn't drag myself out of bed early enough to do it.
Saw many excellent films at the festival (The Assassin, Arabian Nights, Cemetery of Splendor, The Clan, Rams, Embrace of the Serpent, Dheepan, The High Sun, Land of Mine were all really good and some of those were truly great) but if I had to recommend one that I think most people here would like I'd say go and see Mustang. Just a great film, wonderfully acted, great script, perfectly paced, and just really moving story with a lot of heart.
+ a
Now time to pack and head back to Arrakis, alas.
Star Wars came out in 1977. How have you all not seen it already?
We are going for Jewish Christmas. Jewish Christmas movies should be big and dumb or maybe a musical. There are rules.
Finnish Christmas singing suitable for year round use.
f.a.: Do you want to do that in Oakland with, say, me? Anybody else interested?
Re Star Wars: Of course I'm not seeing it tonight. I'm old. I do have plans to see it some time next week. I am not overly hopeful.
I have a prediction: once the initial rush of getting a new Star Wars movie that more-or-less gives the people what they always thought they wanted from a Star Wars sequel wears off, and after two more of these come out, and two or three of the spinoffs, folks will become just as jaded about these movies as they now are about the prequels, and maybe they'll even re-evaluate the prequels as somehow artistically pure and interestingly idiosyncratic vs. written-by-committee Disney bullshit. Or... maybe they'll be really good and everybody will be happy forever.
To get into the holiday spirit, enjoy one of the peppier Finnish Christmas songs.
45.1: I would, but I'm going to be out of the Bay Area until after New Year's. I'm hoping I'll be able to catch it somewhere else because it looks like most of the theaters are playing the film print for only a week or so.
Also, it's kind of bullshit that places are referring to the 70mm release playing for "two weeks" when it seems no one's playing it after December 31, at least according to the schedules where you can buy advance tickets.
I've already seen it. It wasn't bad, though the reviews make it sound better than it is.
I was surprised when Greedo came back from the dead to try to eat Han Solo's brains, though. At very least, it confirms that Han shot first.
if you don't click any other links just click this one
Tatsu is on a social media fast to avoid the possibility of spoilers before he sees it with five of his friends on Monday afternoon. They are all coming to our house on Sunday morning, and will sleep over while binge-watching Episodes I-VI by Monday lunchtime in preparation. I'm getting tickets for Hitsuji and his friends in a different cinema at the same time, to prevent either kid crowing over spoilers and thus ruining Christmas for the entire family.
And that it's more like one of those weird European attempts to cash in on the popularity of Star Wars where they imitate bits that were awesome but don't really add anything to them or at best when they do it's just a generic sort of science fiction thing that could have just been Guardians of the Galaxy 2 if they'd replaced the robot with a giant sentient tree or something
Say what now?
45: I'm interested in seeing it there. Will email.
Oh, looks like I don't have a way to contact you. Can you email me at nani/wablog/ger, care of Messrs. Alphabet?
In 1977, when the first Star Wars came out, I was 9. Today I will be seeing episode 7 with my son, who is 10, and one of his friends aiden. This aiden is an aiden-with-a-y, who is a very sweet child. The movie only has to be adequate for the day to be excellent.
I'll probably take my son, who is nine, to see the movie before it leaves the theater. He's sort of annoying to watch movies with at home. If he gets scared or annoyed, he fast forwards. We watched "Lost World" in about 35 minutes.
I'm looking forward to it but don't have any specific plans. It'll be a lot easier once we have 3-5 babysitters within yelling distance and I've caught up on my sleep. I'm looking forward to taking a 5-month-old on a cross-country flight. I expect it to be relaxing. That isn't sarcasm.
No, not seeing it in cinema. My theory is that buying tickets will just encourage Hollywood to produce more ip-harvesting retreads. Marvel hasn't seen any of my money for the same reason.
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Just came very close to writing that concrete would "suck the head right out of" their heating system. -d +t.
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We are going for Jewish Christmas.
Local hipster theater* is going to have Chinese food delivered directly to your seat at Xmas screenings.
*there's nothing really annoying about it, but it's absolutely a hipster thing, with kale chips at the concession stand, an attached bottle shop with fancy beers, etc. Last night we saw Totoro with subtitles, which I'd never seen before.
I've seen lots of movies with subtitles.
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61 - (Commenting here because I don't want blogger to know this pseud)
Ajay, did you work out a whole alternate history, or are you just randomly changing details for effect?
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f.a.: Do you want to do that in Oakland with, say, me? Anybody else interested?
I have tix for 3:45.
65: Originality was a twentieth-century phenomenon. It's gone, and it's not coming back. The twentieth-century was second Axial Age (a la Jaspers). Then we got Jesus and Confucius. This time we got Spock and Batman, but it's over.
This is the one prediction of the future that the Star Trek TV shows got right: whenever characters indulge in nostalgia, it's nostalgia for twentieth century. That's because that's the last time culture was new.
WRT originality - I basically agree with you, but you get degrees of unoriginality. With Star Wars, Trek and comic movies we are literally watching (authorised) fanfiction. And the original SW was so unoriginal we're seeing essentially fanfic of fanfic.
Whereas , eg., Dune, one of Lucas's sources, really mashed up its sources into something far more interesting.
WRT the axial age - not sure I understand. Why do you say the 20c was the age of originality? And surely it's too soon to know it's a second axial age?
"Dune" went downhill pretty fast if you go much past the first book.
71.2: At least in TNG, Star Trek tended to observe the rule of 3 when the characters talked about artworks of the past: Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and Tsoon; Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Xzsertiv.
So there's apparently one famous artist in the future for each 2 in the past.
My wife and I are seeing it tonight with a high school friend we've been in the habit of see The Big Nerd Films together with, going back to the first Lord of the Rings movie. In three dimensions, for some reason.
I was really disappointed by the first Lord of the Rings movie. And the second. I don't think I saw the third. I saw the last Hobbit movie while on an airplane. I think maybe the 6" screen took away some of the visual impact.
He's sort of annoying to watch movies with at home. If he gets scared or annoyed, he fast forwards.
Ooooh. I totally sympathize with that impulse, but that would drive me way, way crazy.
Usually, I try to put a limit on it, but "You're going to sit here and watch the dinosaur eat every one of those nameless troopers" seemed to run counter to my main goal as a parent (to be the parent he talks about least to his therapist when he's an adult).
but "You're going to sit here and watch the dinosaur eat every one of those nameless troopers" seemed to run counter to my main goal as a parent (to be the parent he talks about least to his therapist when he's an adult).
Solid.
72
WRT the axial age - not sure I understand. Why do you say the 20c was the age of originality? And surely it's too soon to know it's a second axial age?
I'm not sure if Walt was being completely serious, and I'm not sure what "axial age" means, but I assume the part about the end of originality is because of copyright. The 20th century is when technology became advanced enough and society became stable and interconnected enough for IP owners to get big enough to write copyright law to suit their needs. Gotta protect Disney's right to Mickey Mouse and all that.
70: I was talking about The Hateful Eight, which opens on Christmas Day. I assume you're talking about Start Wars today?
Next time I'll try, for the first time in my life.
It won't pass me by. Procrastinate, it can wait, I put it off.
Let's Start Wars today.
80.1 makes sense.
The axial age concept refers to the world-civilisation shaping ideologies that appeared ~400BC-1BC. So yes, maybe walt wasn't seriously comparing Batman to Confucius.
83: Because Batman would totally kick Confucius's ass.
I'm assuming Walt wasn't being serious, but the Axial Age was Karl Jaspers' term for a "pivotal age" in the ancient world that produced a bunch of important and influential culture and philosophy along an axis from China in the east to Greece in the west. It lasts five centuries, so if you really want to compare something to the "Axial Age" I'd say it would have to be the entire modern era from the 18th century 'til now (and probably well beyond now).
American culture's probably going to be cannibalizing the Twentieth Century and blind to the virtues of its newer cultural products and trends for a long time (lost age of glory and all that). But culture hasn't stopped being "new." We're witnessing the Third Golden Age of television right now. Game of Thrones and The Hunger Games and House of Cards (admittedly an adaptation of 20th-century British parliamentary drama, but its American iteration is distinctly 21st-century) and Harry Potter and most of the output of Pixar Studios are basic need-to-knows for cultural literacy.
Oh, and yes I'll go see the new Star Wars flick. I lucked into some free movie passes through Secret Santa at work. I probably wouldn't have paid for it in the theatre, but it will be nice to see a fun Star Wars flick again, derivative or not.
81: Oh, I did think you meant Star Wars. Can't make today tho.
69: I do have an alternate history worked out in broad terms but most of it probably isn't going to appear in the essay...
70: I was talking about The Hateful Eight, which opens on Christmas Day. I assume you're talking about Start Wars today?
Why on earth would you assume that of me? I have a ticket for the H8teful at 3:45 on xmas.
I think 71.2 is a really great explanation of that phenomenon. Though, I suppose, in at least a lot of the older fake-Star-Trek-history it's almost literally true because by this point we were going to have a near apocalyptic series of wars that led to the almost-complete fall of civilization. So in a way the 20th century stuff wouldn't have been the equivalent of the 1700's for them, it would have taken the role that the classical Greek/Roman stuff had in the 1500's or so, except they'd managed to keep and advance all the technology and science so that stuff wasn't as prized.
85
But culture hasn't stopped being "new." We're witnessing the Third Golden Age of television right now.
I can guess that the first Golden Age of Television was some time in the 50s or 60s when it was popularized and a dozen or so shows we all still know of were on the air, but I have no clue what the second one would be. Also, the idea of multiple golden ages of anything seems weird. Gold, silver, bronze, and more obscure metals after that if necessary or eras named after things other than metals, but only one of each.
I don't even have cable, so I haven't noticed.
91: Participation medal generation. Everyone gets a Golden Age now. (I think it's the "Third" if you reckon the emergence of network dramas in the Eighties as the "Second." Or it just be "the Golden Age.")
I wasn't really being serious, but I think there's a bit of truth to it. For centuries retelling or referencing certain stories (frequently religious) was central to culture. Then starting roughly with Tarzan and Sherlock Holmes you have a fertile period of creativity where the old stories were supplanted by new ones. That period sure seems like it has ended.
Batman being a Holmes/Tarzan mashup.
Literary scholars may have more to say about it, but alternative narrative stories, not referring to or building on existing ones as e.g. Dante or Milton did but really alternative narratives emerged in the 18thC. Ossian is the classic example, and had a huge following among the nerds of the era. Napoleon was enamored of it, and so was Mendelssohn, who wrote program music which is still performed based on scenes from Ossian.
96: Although ironically Ossian needed to pretend to be old to be treated as legit. Maybe they weren't yet ready for something new.
Why on earth would you assume that of me? I have a ticket for the H8teful at 3:45 on xmas.
I honestly was a bit surprised you would be an opening-day Star Wars guy, but who am I to judge?
I'm busy on Christmas because reasons. I was thinking about a weekday night in the Christmas-New Year's interregnum.
94: Yeah, sure, who gives a shit about Harry Potter or The Hunger Games?
I have no clue what the second one would be.
Probably the 70's, heyday of Norman Lear and MTM. Sitcoms got decidedly less interesting in the 80's, setting aside The Cosby Show (may it rest in peace) and Roseanne (which had a Lear-ish vibe).
Harry Potter was '97, and The Hunger Games was just a retread of Battle Royale '99 (but written earlier). So almost, but still 20th Century by a hair.
And we're already getting a Harry Potter prequel, and a Hunger Games prequel is being bandied about. We're also getting a new Tarzan movie, and there are two Sherlock Holmes TV series that came out shortly after two Sherlock Holmes movies.
I've always said the machine in the Matrix we're right. 1999 was the peak of Human (American) civilization.
I read 100 backwards and thought it was implying Roseanne had a King Lear-ish vibe. That would be a mashup worth seeing.
I've always said the machine in the Matrix we're right. 1999 was the peak of Human (American) civilization.
I don't know. This reminds me of a conversation in which I said that pop music seemed to really go downhill sometime in the 90s and that both the number significant artists, and the degree of of achievement were both reduced compared to previous decades and the person that I was talking to pointed out that this was only true if I was ignoring hip-hop as part of pop music (which I had been).
I think it's worth asking, if pop culture feels like it's just offering up re-makes and sequels, if there's some part of pop culture that we're sub-consciously ignoring and omitting (and, heck, maybe that's youtube bloggers and podcasts, I don't know, I just think we might not be looking in the right place).
Blog comments have become much better since 1999.
It's okay to be old and out of touch, so long as you acknowledge it and move on.
Video games for one have both iterated upon the past and changed revolutionarily since 1999--which happened to be a very good year for them. Ironically two of the biggest games of that year (or maybe '98?) were Metal Gear Solid and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, both of which took a very old formula, reworked it in a new way, and gave life to genres only tangentially tied to the original ideas.
I saw the new Star Wars last night and enjoyed it. My wife really appreciated the handling of the female characters.
I wouldn't be surprised if it winds up getting revised down after another viewing, more sequels, or whatever, but it did a good job of feeling like Star Wars. (Maybe too good, per some of the "it'll be derivative" predictions.)
105.3: No doubt there are interesting things happening on the margins, but at no point in history did you have half a dozen "writer's rooms" managing franchises comprising 5+ movies over 5+ years as we do now (i.e., Marvel, DC, Star Wars, Transformers, old-school monsters, 80's toys FFS...). The old studio system cranked out sequels, sure, but I think they were a bit more ad hoc about it.
I have a friend who's nerding out about the new movie, so the other night he and I watched Return of the Jedi in anticipation of this new film. Except he couldn't get the original cut of the movie, so we watched one of the versions where George Lucas went back and CGI'd in a bunch of stuff.
I had heard about Lucas re-visiting the films, but I hadn't actually seen one of them. Holy shit, does it look stupid. Everything's just coasting along, looking like a movie shot in 1983, and then BLAM! some wacky CGI cartoon alien is on the screen.
It's really jarring, and I can't imagine what the fuck Lucas was thinking. It's like listening to Beethoven's Ninth with a keytar solo awkwardly smuggled in.
They made serials back then. My dad saw Star Wars and said it was the same as the serials he grew up with.
No doubt there are interesting things happening on the margins, but at no point in history did you have half a dozen "writer's rooms" managing franchises comprising 5+ movies over 5+ years as we do now
That's true, and I understand why cinema buffs would feel like this was a bad era for movies. But I think dalriata's mention of video games is a good one. Considering that in 2009 video games, as a class, were making more money than movies, they can't be described as "on the margins."
Was Luke's "plan" for rescuing Han and Leia et al. as obviously nonexistent/idiotic in 1983 as it was when I recently re-watched that movie?
Taking stock of the past twenty to twenty-five years (and sans hairsplitting about this vs. that century), 94 isn't even true for white male Anglophone protagonists (Tony Stark -- technically a version of a Sixties character but largely the latter-day creation of Robert Downey Jr. -- Don Draper, Homer Simpson, Gregory House, Tyler Durden, Tony Soprano, Jack Bauer, Dexter Gordon, The Dude), let alone characters generally. Go broader than that and Denzel Washington alone has played enough original and compelling characters to fill out the entire careers of a dozen lesser actors. And that's not even getting into female and other POC protagonists.
112: Admittedly the most interesting stuff in video games is happening on the margins--AAA development has become too expensive to take risks. But that's universal in art; hoping that the biggest commercial art is going to be the most interestingly experimental is silly. You might get a few hits if you're lucky but it's a poor bet. You have to go to the indies for thought-provoking stuff like this year's Undertale, which is part of a conversation that is probably meaningless outside video games, long for the form but recent compared to the other timescales we're talking about.
113: What exactly was the plan anyway? It never really made any sense.
It was all just an excuse to introduce slave princess Leia to the world wasn't it.
A good version of the original cut is pretty much unavailable, right? (Or, I mean, officially unavailable.) It's out there on VHS (and maybe a low quality DVD version?) but anything else is going to be some version of CGI-ed crap.
Considering that in 2009 video games, as a class, were making more money than movies, they can't be described as "on the margins."
I meant on the margins of the film industry. I concede that other things also make money.
Uh, "Dexter Gordon" in 114 s/b "Dexter Morgan."
117: Right. One hopes that in Disney's infinite greed they'll have the bright idea to re-release the un-f-ed-with versions. (One problem might be that the original elements no longer exist, since they were restored at the same time Lucas was f-ing with them. Disney might have to license Harmy's versions.)
I'm not sure what we're talking about, exactly, but if it's innovation in pop-culture commercial fantasy things like Tarzan or Ben-Hur or Star Wars and how they get filmed, then ... It's certainly true that these days to have a tentpole movie franchise you need a brand and an ability to cross-market and own IP in a bunch of different areas. This encourages sequels over and above the traditional (accurate) thinking that people will pay to see again something they liked before. And the barriers to entry for the world of tentpole pictures are high and getting ever higher. Also the B movie market that was the training center/story generator/employer for a lot of people who worked on this stuff and was a well of creativity is all but dead. Finally, and unfortunately for my personal tastes, studios realized that comic books provide almost everything they want to create tentpole movies -- built in fan bases, IP you can get by licensing (or now, mostly, owning) the comic book publisher, a huge surge in creativity 30-80 years ago to draw from, a veneer of respectability from the 30-60 yr old white guy crowd that grew up with comic books, etc. But they're definitely scraping the bottom of the barrel of that catalog these days.
And IF you can come up with a new and original pop culture series or franchise that you own or license, that's the best of all. Summit built itself entirely on Twilight; Lionsgate saved itself with the Hunger Games.
My own view is that the problem isn't in the kid-adolescent story world, but in decent movies for adults, which are largely noncommercial these days and where the action has moved to television. As always, money explains at least 80% of whatever generalization you want to make about culture.
Tony Stark -- technically a version of a Sixties character but largely the latter-day creation of Robert Downey Jr...
I'm not sure this is true at all - the comic book version of Tony Stark isn't that different from the movie version, or at least not different enough to call it a serious change.* Like all of the comic book characters the character shifts around a bit over time, depending on the kind of stories involved. But Tony Stark from the movies is pretty easy to recognize as Tony Stark in the comic books.
*He talks faster, or is more sarcastic maybe, but not necessarily that much. They downplay the alcoholism, but the arrogance is pretty standard though. The basic 'weapons manufacturer midlife crisis' stuff is standard in a lot of the stories too.
Also, there's tons of investment in, and great creativity in, movies that are for kids under 12, because those guys still go to the movies and are more open than their parents to totally new franchises.
Admittedly the most interesting stuff in video games is happening on the margins--AAA development has become too expensive to take risks. But that's universal in art; hoping that the biggest commercial art is going to be the most interestingly experimental is silly
I think AAA games are a lot more risk-taky, at least in some senses, than AAA movies. This year possibly isn't the best example, MGSV aside, but it's hard to imagine an $80m+ budget movie tackling some of the issues that, say, the Witcher 3 does in quite the way it does. And while franchise flogging abounds in recent years you still see, for instance, EA reviving a commercial flop like Mirror's Edge.
But, especially on the thematic side, I'll grant that indies are an awful lot more creative.
I'll see the new Star Wars if my friends go, but I probably won't be bothered to organize people myself. I was a huge fan from birth of the original three (I saw it young enough to not realize how shitty VI was), but I got really burned on I. I didn't see II, and I saw III on TV and thought it was the best of the new three. That process sort of crushed my nostalgia-shrouded love of Star Wars, like it did for most people, probably. If they split the final movie into two parts, I will actively boycott it.*
I think we're seeing the rise of the long-form narrative in the TV miniseries, which are TV shows with a a pre-planned 4-6/7 season narrative arc, e.g. The Wire, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, possibly Sherlock, etc. These are shows that are designed to be binge watched, unlike earlier shows, like the X-Files, which feels more coherent when you watch it once a week than it does when you watch it all at once. They also tend to be excellent, original, and attract really top talent, and at this point are far surpassing movies in all of that. I would argue that now is the golden age of television, and if you rewatch earlier shows with a critical eye, they're not going to hold up.
*To me, that's the worst, most cynical ploy to get more money. Peter Jackson didn't split Return of the King into two parts, and it was much heftier of a book than either the final Hunger Games or the last Harry Potter.
Video games are amazing but don't feel like "art" to me. But as I mentioned here before, I literally can't handle them. My wife had to hide the Playstation when we were housesitting in a place with one because I was staying up until 5:30 am stealing cars and killing dudes. They feel more like cocaine than like a Beethoven symphony.
The old studio system cranked out sequels, sure, but I think they were a bit more ad hoc about it.
30s and 40s studio product thrived on sequels and franchises mostly for the bottom half of twin bills:Andy Hardy, Thin Man, Laurel & Hardy, Tarzan, The Saint
No, won't be seeing Star Wars, like ever
Video games are amazing but don't feel like "art" to me.
Eh, some do, some don't. I don't really see how you can call something like Gone Home anything else, but I'm not going to argue for a huge amount of artistic merit in, say, Nidhogg.
I have no idea what those things are and am totally willing to agree that video games can be art (they certainly should be, given the talent and energy and money and creativity that go into them these days). Just talking about my own limited E, which I need to keep limited to stay married and/or employed.
I just read the Star Wars plot summary on wikipedia. What do you y'all need to know?
I don't really see how you can call something like Gone Home anything else
Tragically, all I really wound up being able to call Gone Home was "terrible motion-sickness fodder". I hear it's lovely if you manage to play it through.
126/8/9 brings to mind a long-standing and asinine argument between Roger Ebert and his readers. Of course video games can be art.* And of course most of them are garbage. Next.
* Or just "are art" since, obviously, art can be art and also be garbage.
130: Is Chewbacca a Wookiee? Does it make sense?
Mostly agree with 128. The interactivity of video games lets them fulfill a much larger set of roles than other media tend to. Some are high art, some are low art, some are instructional, some are competitive. In some the art is in the rules that let you create your own play, and so they type more like a sport. Some are about worlds and finding yourself in them. (You may find yourself to be a carjacker. You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automoible.) Some are more traditionally narrative-based--to the point that some people complained that the Mass Effect series should have a button to skip all game play, since they cared about the story but weren't very good at the playing part and so found it a distraction.
Some have said that the level of control given to the player makes it not art by usurping authorial intent, but I don't think that argument is even worth considering. (On preview, what 132 said.)
I agree completely with Gone Home, and while I own Nidhogg (Steam sales, yeahhh) I haven't had a chance to play it. But I feel that as a well honed competitive game, there's art in creating those rules for player to test themselves against each other.
121: The B-movie market isn't dead at all. What do you mean?
Oh, and play Nidhogg. It's one of the greatest two-player split-screen* games ever.
*Not technically split-screen but you take my point. Couch competitive, if you like.
Creativity died when Lon Chaney remade the movie where he pretended to be a woman and impersonated a parrot.
122: What I mean is that the original was sufficiently obscure that Downey's version is basically the Prime Version in pop culture terms. His performance is the baseline of the character for the vast majority of his audience.
Robert Downey, Jr. is Tony Stark's Basil Rathbone.
103: AMERICAN CIVILIZATION PEAKED IN THE 70's
He had two different television shows!
I mean, if you don't know any comic book characters that aren't Batman, Superman, or maybe (maybe) Spider-Man* then maybe. But that doesn't make him obscure.
*Though I think pre-famous movies Spider-Man probably would have been in a similar boat, along with the probably a bit better known but not too much X-Men.
Mainstream films really are in kind of a creative dead zone these days. Remakes! Comic books! Giant robots!
On the other hand, recent years have been a great time for horror movies, even though most of them never get a theatrical release.
Wrong. As of 1980, before the reboot of comics and the creation of the comic book movies, the order of general fame of superheros went:
Superman
Batman
Spiderman
Maybe Aquaman or Green Lantern?
Plastic Man
The Wonder Twins
Shazaam
A bunch of things only comic book dudes knew about
121: The B-movie market isn't dead at all. What do you mean?
I don't really understand this as a response to 121.
Oh, I guess the Hulk goes right after Spiderman. But I've never been clear if the Hulk is a hero or not. "You won't like me when I'm angry."
"Please don't get me angry. I don't like myself when I'm angry."
The Hulk is not a hero (e.g., very few puppies saved) but we don't have a common term for super-powered antiheroes, so he's "a Marvel superhero."
Shazaam
His superpower was never beginning a sentence with the word "well".
145 has it right. (And I mean, I loved Iron Man and ROM: Space Knight when I was a kid. Admitting they were obscure doesn't come easy, but it's true.)
146: I should have quoted the specific sentence from 121: "Also the B movie market that was the training center/story generator/employer for a lot of people who worked on this stuff and was a well of creativity is all but dead."
It's like listening to Beethoven's Ninth with a keytar solo awkwardly smuggled in.
Mahler changed up Beethoven's Ninth, but he forgot to add keytar to the orchestration.
136: What do you mean? Is this some kind of Canadian thing? I mean, bad movies linger on (recently had a lunch with the guy who owns the P/irhana franchise) but the general world of fictional B-movie production is all but dead, as indicated by the fact that the phrase "B-Movie" hasn't had any meaningful referent for decades and there's no distribution infrastructure for them.
Iron Man is definitely B-list, as Marvel superheroes go. I thought it was generally understood that Marvel did an amazing job turning chaff into wheat after they had licensed out all their A-listers (Spider-Man, X-Men, even The Fantastic Four (who have a terrible track record in movies but practically defined Marvel)) to other studios.
They're all B-movies now in terms of plot, just with A-move budgets.
"As of 1980" is nearly thirty years before the Iron Man movie and the Marvel movies generally, and thirty five years ago right now. That's, what, half the people in the country? I think it's ok to add in a few decades there, what with the number of comic book television shows during that time period that people actually did watch. (Did the X-Men movie come out of nowhere too?)
(Also, "reboot of comic books"? I'm not sure if that's a thing.)
Ebert used to say nowadays they make B-movies on A-movie budgets. I would think that Sharknado et al. qualify as B-movies, but maybe they're at a sub-B level?
You heard it hear first: Moby Hick is Roger Ebert.
I have had it with these motherfucking commenters on this motherfucking blog.
(Also, "reboot of comic books"? I'm not sure if that's a thing.)
You must have managed to not read a DC comic in the past thirty years then.
I mean, when the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl movie comes out then maybe they'll be working down into the obscure stuff, though at this point I think Marvel has (rightly) concluded that the audiences can mostly be divided into people who know about, say, She-Hulk, and people who didn't know about the X-Men until the movie showed up, and that the latter group will still be willing to show up and watch a She-Hulk movie* anyway now that Marvel Studios has established itself as a machine for making money. Iron Man is only obscure in the sense of "people who don't know any superheroes don't know about Iron Man", but not in any really big way.
*pleasepleasepleaseplease
Maybe I heard it from Ebert? Anyway, the action movies (including comic book movies) have basically gone back to the serial model. Same characters in multiple movies, high concept, etc.
(Full disclosure: I haven't seen any of the movies I'm talking about.)
162: You mean, what, Crisis on Infinite Earths or whatever that was? I don't think that really counted as changing anything, or at least if that's what it takes to count as a reboot it's a minimal enough thing that it doesn't really matter as far as this stuff goes.
Sharknado never had a theatrical release, it's a television program. The Asylum staggers on, but it's not a market generating a lot of work.
Maybe the issue is that "B movie" implicates a lot of other things beyond just plot and production involving e.g. (as mentioned above) distribution as well as a general understanding of classes of movies? I dunno. Snakes on a Plane was shown in just any old random movie theater just as if it were a real movie, right?
167 -- from memory, Snakes on a Plane was either going to have a super-limited release or not be theatrically released at all, and then the internet took it on and people got $$ in their eyes and wide-released it, and then it lost money. Now off to Wikipedia to see if any of that is true.
Crisis (almost) completely flushed 50 years of continuity and reintroduced Superman as a hero just starting out. How is that not a "reboot"? (I think it may actually be the the original pop culture reboot.) They've also done it five or six more times since then, too, each time with brand "new" origin stories.
153: Of course there's a distribution infrastructure for them. It's called the Internet and digital streaming. That B-movies don't get much theatrical play any more doesn't mean they're "dead," similar content has just migrated to new platforms. (The "tentpole franchise" is very probably the death rattle of the traditional cinema, but when most of that content migrates elsewhere we'll still call them "movies" too.)
"Please don't get me angry. I don't like myself when I'm angry."
This is what the Ang Lee Hulk movie should have been, by the way. A psychological drama about a man so alienated from his negative emotions, or possibly merely from the thought of himself as a person who can express them, that he refers them to an alternative identity, which, when he inhabits it, he cannot control. Since the activation of the psychological mechanism has gross physical correlates, he can do a lot of harm in this state, to himself, his loved ones, and (yes) the occasional legit villain or petty crook, whom he gives vicious hidings. His awareness of the process is not enough for him to stop it (hence his catchphrase), and when he returns to what he recognizes as himself he is invariably wracked with grief and self-loathing.*
* Lurid or (more) Freudian elements (perhaps he secretly likes it and that's what he can't admit to himself!) may be added with discretion.
I'm sure one of the dorks will tell me that 172 has already been perfectly realized in someone or other's run on the Hulk comics.
171 -- it's not the "theatrical release" per se that matters (though that does matter for a bunch of technical reasons) but the amount of money such things can be expected to produce. You could have a very nice living as a B-movie producer, writer, actor, cameraman, whatever in the 1970s, or, if you were Roger Corman, you could get rich. Nothing made for digital streaming has close to that kind of infrastructure, though maybe Amazon or Netflix will move on from TV shows and finance a boom in mid-budget shlock content (I doubt it).
That sounds like a pretty accurate description of the Ang Lee Hulk, actually.
166: I guess if you want to be persnickety about it, B-movies these days are mostly digital (if anyone cares enough about the distinction to keep using that term, which I don't think they do). This has nothing to do with the market for them being "dead."
Huh. Sounds like a good movie to me! I thought people didn't like his Hulk.
(176 before seeing 174 -- yes I'm sure the economics are different and still very much evolving with digital releases.)
Can a reasonable path be drawn from "canonical" B movie production through to current direct to video?
Wait, I saw the first one when it came out. That was the first Star War ergo was Star Wars I. Wha t is all this IV, V, VI shit? Nerds can't count straight.
Who is the Roger Corman of the current generation?
maybe Amazon or Netflix will move on from TV shows and finance a boom in mid-budget shlock content (I doubt it)
Isn't Netflix already attempting this with Sandler's The Ridiculous Six?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUp7Qgimn38
179 -- absolutely, yes, but there's not much modern-day "direct to video" left.
SyFy's stuff would have been direct-to-video in the 90's.
Isn't "SciFy Original Movie" the new word for "Direct to Video"?
I'm not entirely sure what a B-movie is anymore - the setup where movie theaters would just toss in some extra movie for free when you bought a ticket died a long time ago so as far as that goes there haven't been B-movies in a long time (because there are no B-showings). If it means a movie that has the general feel of the old B-movies, cost about as much as they did to make, and get shoveled out by the hundreds as filler then they're still around, because you don't need to sell many tickets for everyone involved to make money on them and it gives people something to do/is a way to check out new potential talent/etc. Slasher movies were (are?) a good example of that: there were thousands of them because all you really needed was film stock, a dumb costume (maybe) and a few actors who were willing to take their shirts off. Also a lot of the cheaper action movies and romantic comedies, probably.
Netflix is already doing "original movies" too, aren't they?
Movie theaters were great babysitters. Newsreels, cartoons, serial episodes, all around a B movie and an A movie. Kids could spend an entire Saturday there out of parental hair.
172: Peter David, I'd say. I liked Ang Lee Hulk, but I was also in my Hulk-liking stage. I'm not sure if I'm still there, although of course I am. Hulk just wants to be left alone!
I was going to say I was used to seeing various clear B-movies in the Netflix SF section, but looking them up I was surprised to see the majority were foreign, despite the overt schlockiness (Robot Overlords, Iron Sky, Ragnarok, Iceman, Monsters: Dark Continent). There were also Death Race: Inferno and Bounty Killer, but maybe those were just flops.
This is what the Ang Lee Hulk movie should have been, by the way. A psychological drama about a man so alienated from his negative emotions, or possibly merely from the thought of himself as a person who can express them, that he refers them to an alternative identity, which, when he inhabits it, he cannot control.
Seems related to Model Minority Rage: Why the Hulk Should Be an Asian Guy
And the whole point of the Hulk is that Bruce Banner isn't a scary, seething cauldron of rage, at least not most of the time. The transformation into the Hulk only has any power if it comes out of nowhere, if that big green rage monster emerges from the last man in the world you'd expect to raise a hand in anger to anyone.
The ideal Bruce Banner is a cuddly teddy bear, likable in a wussy kind of way. An adorkable loser. Totally harmless...until the moment when he isn't. And there's no better actor to portray such a character than scruffy hipster heartthrob Mark Ruffalo.
With one caveat--he's a white guy. And he should be Asian.
Hey Bob, did you see this: Setsuko Hara in the NYRB.
I think post-processing effects getting cheaper and the fact that you don't have to worry about how much film you're buying with digital cameras have also affected B-movie type movies. They just don't look as shoddy as they used to, because it's a lot easier to make them look polished.* But among Extraction, Krampus, The Transporter: Refueled, Hitman: Agent 47, and The Perfect Guy there have got to be a few genuine B-movies, even though I don't know which ones.
*And why Direct-to-Video/Television-Movie movies now feel a lot better as well, even though that was the tier below B-movies for a while.
Isn't "SciFy Original Movie" the new word for "Direct to Video"?
Yes, for sure. But it's a fraction of the old market.
I was surprised to see the majority were foreign
This is true, the production market for these things is still OK abroad, for a variety of reasons, including markets, subsidies, and use of production on them as part of complicated tax credit deals.
How much of the old "direct to video" market was deliberately made as such? I thought a considerable portion of it was made with the intention of a wide, theatrical release and not sucking, but DtV after they released that not sucking isn't always an option.
So, if there are no B movies, what do you call Birdemic?
I was watching something crappy recently and found myself thinking that a decade or so ago the picture quality would also have looked poorer than you get from big movies, but thanks to digital that part of it was pretty good.
197 -- Hard to say. In the video rental era the studios would start work on lowish budget movies and see how they turned out, knowing that if they were terrible they could go DTV to recoup something, and if they were OK they might turn a hefty profit. Much much less of that now than 20 or 10 years ago, though not none.
I suppose even if they did set out to make a DTV movie, they probably didn't put it like that when anybody asked them about it. But there has to be a proxy measure. Maybe having Eric Roberts in the cast is a reasonable indicator?
193: Read a lot of obits, but not that one. And Kurosawa's The Idiot was slashed by the studio and Masayuki Mori wasn't quite right for Mishkin but that sucker is very very much worth watching once.
How much of the old "direct to video" market was deliberately made as such?
In the VHS tape era, a whole lot. Not counting pron, the DTV horror (genre, cult) market was big, much of it sold by mail and backs of fan magazines. Very low budget, with a break-even of like 10k copies. In the 80s and 90s, a lot of anime was also original-video-animation, sometimes as a sort of pilot, often for artistic independence, nudity and violence. Even now, pilots are made, and an extra episode or 2 is produced to add value to most DVD releases of series.
My wife knows a guy who was in an independent film that was in like six theaters. We went to see the thing and then went out to a bar with him and the director. The director said his business model was launch a small movie ---> get it on Netflix and Amazon Prime and whatnot. The returns from being in theaters was negligible, but he was expecting enough money from those other sources to make it worthwhile.
TFA (confusing acronym) was very enjoyable. Exactly what it should have been, and the politics were good.
Tyler Cowen on race in SW:TFA. Name in link to be avoided if you like, and not meant as an endorsement. I am a little inspired.
Since, as you know Bob, Japan and Japanification is all our future, the Magical Girl, not to be confused with the MPDG, is the important concept in the feminization of labor and culture. The movie linked above is brilliant, globally oriented, very important if brutal and very difficult. Loaded with triggers.
The Magical Girl (or Maiden Warrior), as explored in Japanese/global culture is very strong, very powerful, embedded in her social roles, nurturing and social for example, definitely wants to protect, save, rescue, fight for justice, but does not want to hurt anybody.
The Magical Girl's ultimate virtue is in self-sacrifice, choosing to become a victim because virtue is found in victimhood, and selflessness turns power against itself. So the story, so useful to Capitalism and Patriarchy, so the story goes.
The thread is dead, but it's the thread for TFA and I saw it last night, so...
Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 95 percent last time I checked, but the AV Club gave it a B, and I agree with that rating more. It was funny, and fun, but to the extent it had a plot, it followed that of episode IV way too much. And VI and while we're at it, episode I too.
There are a couple things I'd like to grade it on only after seeing the next two movies. A couple plot points made no sense to me, and I'm not talking about the usual soft sci-fi action movie plot holes but stuff that contradicts the rules in this series and this movie itself. (To avoid spoilers: why Finn defected, and and why both him and Rey are suspiciously competent.) If it turns out that it was deliberate and there's a reason for that stuff, I'd think more highly of this movie in hindsight. On the other hand, if it's just because the main characters are that awesome, a B would be generous.
I saw it yesterday, too! It was a nice movie.
209: I'm pretty sure there's a reason for all that.
Rey [i] suspiciously competent.
The main fan theory is that she was part of [spoiler]'s academy as young girl (and that she reverse engineers whatever she sees Kylo doing).
At some point we should have a spoilerific thread. Maybe next week?
I'm glad to see activity on this thread, I wanted to share Brad DeLong's geeking out about Star Wars:
Essence of Decision: Understanding the Real History of the Imperial and Succession Wars:
The fall of the Empire, and the failure of its successor states to re-establish order in the galaxy, is usually mistold in the history books. Popular, semi-academic, and even academic authors write it as a combination of tabloid soap opera and personal heroics: villains, Jedi Knights, stunning double crosses, the Palpatine succession, and--of course--the bizarre and incomprehensible repeated cross-generational psychodramas of the Skywalker family.
...
[FWIW, still planning on seeing the movie sometime next week.]
Started a spoilers thread. I mean, now that I'VE seen it.