Letters to the Editor
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Dumbing down?
Hollywood has been releasing crap since just after the zoetrope. For every Casablanca or Citizen Kane there were ten movies about wrestlers or cowboys that no one in their right mind would watch now.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
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You'll know Hollywood is Dead...
the first year the Oscars are presented in Dubai. It sounds like what's happening is that Hollywood is trying to imitate Bollywood. But you can't do Bollywood AND have focus group testing on everything from the font used in opening credits to the eye color of your supporting actors. Bollywood makes movies THEN markets them. The thing that's killing Hollywood is that everything starts in the marketting department.
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Long play 78?
You're dating yourself, young man.
There was never a long-play 78. The first long-play, or LP records were the first 33 1/3 rpm releases in the early fifties.
(It's true that in the 78 rpm era, classical music was sometimes released on larger, 12-inch records because of the somewhat longer playing time over the 10-inch records used for most pop music. But I don't think the term "long-play 78" was ever used.)
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@ Virginia Dutch -- Is Salon Also Dumbing Down?
Virginia beat me to it. I was wondering if Salon's copy editors are also dumbing things down for the mass audience here.
Not only were long-playing phonograph records 33 rpm, but for something to reach the widest possible market, it needs the lowest common denominator, not the greatest.
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News flash: Hollywood is getting dumber!!
*yawn*
I've been hearing this all my life. Hollywood films are appealing to the Unwashed Masses, CulCHAH is getting eviscerated, and the sky is falling WOE!! It's old and tired, and frankly, boring.
Anyone who thinks that Hollywood movies are only now becoming dumb has not been paying attention the last, oh, eighty years or so. The majority of Hollywood output has always been trite, simplistic and lowest-denominator. The only reason critics can get away with bemoaning the "golden days" is that nobody remembers the 85% of shit that's been pumped out the Dream Factory on a regular basis through the years. The good stuff gets remembered because it's good. The crap gets forgotten (except by crap enthusiasts, who are their own breed), enabling those who live off their opinions to pretend that things are getting worse when in fact they're pretty much the same as they've always been.
The occasional wave of "serious" (read: about something) films are always to be welcomed, of course. Nobody can live on a diet of cheese puffs and chocolate cupcakes for long. But those waves are cyclical; they've been happening for as long as films have been made here in LaLaLand, and their arrival and departure are always trumped as being indicative of something. They are: they're indicative of the fact that people will get tired of crap and want good stuff for a change. Then, when they've had their nourishing stew and whole wheat bread, they'll go back to chips and Pepsi. That's not some doomsday trend, it's just the way humans are.
Given that, can you blame Hollywood for noticing that pretty much everyone is like that, no matter where you are? The vast majority of people work hard for a living and just want to have a good time when they relax. The movie industry is just doing what is normal for industries: making money off reality. You think the majority of films overseas aren't silly and vapid? Then you haven't watched many Bollywood films.
This Chicken Little stuff is amusing to read about, but it's hardly the disaster that's claimed here. There will always be people making good films for those that want to see good films. And there will always be smart suits who realize that there is a market for good films, albeit a small one. The rest, to paraphrase the Bard, is dreck.
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@ Serai1
you are correct in pointing out that most Hollowood (sic) movies have been utter shite for the past 80 years
but in the following statement you seem to subscribe to the delusional concept of supply & demand -or- nature over nurture which is utter nonsense.
//they'll go back to chips and Pepsi. That's not some doomsday trend, it's just the way humans are.//
'just the way humans are'?!
people are trained by the media to want what they want
they are sold lifestyles and delusions in slick packages of marketing propaganda
one only need read Bernays 'Propaganda' to understand this point:
http://tinyurl.com/ytn9d8
It is easy in a capitalist system to promote escapist entertainment since workers are already alienated from their work as well as their lives.
But there are those of us in the world who appreciate film as an art form and whose media landscape contain more even amounts of Hollowood (sic) crap to cinematic art.
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Crap is a side-issue
While I would not dispute there has always been crap, the problem is not crap, it is formula. The problem is that Hollywood has become so formulaic in how movies are made that films orbit within extremely narrow parameters, so there are few tics or twists anymore.
Conversely, anything just a tad different to the formulaic stuff gets lauded beyond its merits, the against-the-grain kooky genre that usually features identical twins in 70s tracksuits, or a family with a strange name who never go outside and worship Marvin Gaye, or some nerds breakdancing or something. The way-too-kooky rubbish like Little Miss Sunshine and Napoleon Dynamite and Bottle Rocket.
My own beef is not with crap movies that are marketed clearly so you know they are crap, ie: the trailers show Vince Vaughan roller skating or something, but with crap movies that are marketed as decidedly not crap (see above point), or critically lauded as, dare I say it, good, when they aren't good, just not utterly brain dead like everything else.
As I only want to watch good films, this is a severe problem. I watched through all the Best Picture nominees for the last Oscars and only The Departed was any good (and was borrowed from a better movie), the rest were crap films that resembled something good. They may as well have nominated Ghost Rider for best pic.
The other issue re: crap is that it is not how crap is the crap, but how good are the good films today? What compares to Five Easy Pieces or a Brazil or a Porkys II? (That's a joke, people) Go ahead, name the last great Hollywood film?