Wash ,'Ariel'
A place to talk about movies--old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
But filmmaking has always been hugely derivative. Right from the very beginning, people were copying ideas, concepts, even entire movies, especially if they were successful. The first US remake of a French movie was in the 1890s, and vice versa. It's not good or bad, it's just the way the business has always operated.
THIS! It makes me crazy when people talk about remakes as if it were a new, bad thing that's happening and is sign of film making in decline!
I think it's kind of getting insane lately, though. And, what Frank said.
Film adaptation of board games, on the other hand, is an obvious sign of the apocalypse.
I think it's kind of getting insane lately, though.
I really don't think it is. Or at least, it's no more insane than it's been in the past. Part of the problem is that our view of the past is skewed. A lot of the films which have sunk without trace were probably remakes but we have no cultural memory of then.
And then on the other hand, a lot of the films which we think of as classics are remakes, but we have conveniently forgotten the fact, or we sort of know it, but don't think about it. The Wizard of Oz, Ben-Hur (the 1959 film was the second remake), The Thief of Bagdad, Robin Hood, A Star is Born, and The Front Page are only a few examples.
OK, board games and themepark attractions as sources are pushing it, but earlier you would have had songs, advertising, vaudeville acts, you name it.
Edit: by the way, as of today I am officially a freelance lecturer in film history! (And this being Germany it's all very official, I had to register with the tax office and everything).
Filmmaking is in a creative lull right now. Movies are so dependent on opening weekend boxoffice these days, the only way that studios think they can put fannies in the seats is with material that the viewers are already familiar with. That is, sequels and remakes. Anything new and different is a huge crapshoot. The failure of new and different films like Scott Pilgrim reinforce this idea in the minds of the studio.
Hopefully, this will change once the Internet kills off the movie theaters.
People are still doing really good things in independent film, though, which is heartening.
I'm ashamed to admit I did enjoy Clue, though.
On that note, Duncan Jones has just announced his next project on Twitter: [link]
After the incredible reaction to David Fincher's Social Network, & my love of gaming, I'm incredibly excited to be working on Pacman!
On that note, Duncan Jones has just announced his next project on Twitter:
After the incredible reaction to David Fincher's Social Network, & my love of gaming, I'm incredibly excited to be working on Pacman!
Did he twit that on April 1st?
Hopefully, this will change once the Internet kills off the movie theaters.
Digital projection is already changing film distribution, which has until now has been the most financially lucrative branch of the industry as well as the hardest to enter and the slowest to change. So that will be interesting.
I think movie theatres have a bit of life left in them yet.
Independent filmmaking is in decline from its peak in the 1990s. All of the independent distributors have been bought up by the major studios, who run them as subsidiaries, and pay a whole lot more attention to the bottom line. As a result it is much, much harder to get your independent film distributed than it has been in the past.