TV/Movies Megathread

[The Minsky Moment]

  My temptation is generally to treat 67-76 as something of a dark age, when everything that is considered great is actually dull or worse, but then Spielberg (and soon Lucas) made everything okay in a kind of renaissance, where the highly-touted movies were once again about cool things like sharks and spaceships.

Self successfully indicted.

[Eddie Teach]

While there were great films in every age, I thought there was a significant upturn around '67, mainly due to the reduction in traditional Hollywood moralizing.

Also, who the fuck dislikes The Godfather? 

[Ideologue]

Hey, I'm withholding judgment.

JR hates the Golden Age of Hollywood, and the Blockbuster Era, so he doesn't have many options I guess. The snob.

[mongers]

Not that it has much critical aclaim, but one of my favourite films of that accursed era is 'Thunderbolt and Lightfoot'.

[Savonarola]

Not that it has much critical aclaim, but one of my favourite films of that accursed era is 'Thunderbolt and Lightfoot'.

I think that's a great picture; it's about midway between a Spaghetti Western and a French heist film.  "The Deer Hunter" is much more well known, but I think Michael Cimino's wandering style of storytelling works much better in this film.

[Berkut]

X Men, Days of Future Past- Well, that was awesome. The scene with the fast guy doing his thing was particularly brilliant (did they have walkmens then though?...I don't think so...). The typical mid movie lag that superhero films seem to especially suffer from was kept to a low. All worked pretty well. One of the best superhero films.

Have to agree - watched it on the plane and it was thoroughly enjoyable.

The French language film about the cyclist was pretty good too, though I didn't get to finish it. The actress who played the cyclist was super cute at least.

[The Minsky Moment]

JR hates the Golden Age of Hollywood, and the Blockbuster Era

I'm not the one here writing off an entire decade.

[The Brain]

I whacked off an entire decade once.

[Sheilbh]

I thought Network was contrived pap.

It's fun. But it's a play made into a movie, and a Brechtian play at that.

Edit: Also what comes after neo-classicism? The high camp Hollywood of the 80s?

[Ideologue]

JR hates the Golden Age of Hollywood, and the Blockbuster Era

I'm not the one here writing off an entire decade.

I didn't either.  If nothing else, New Hollywood did break down some barriers--in terms of subject matter and content--and that revolution has had a lasting impact, even if the actual style didn't.

Also, I was extrapolating as to what you like and don't.  I really have no idea what your positive tastes are--perhaps you like Shaw Bros. films, who's to say?--I just know you hate production and set design in particular and seem to have a kind of antipathy for stage and backlot shooting in general.  This suggests that you have a problem with movies made before location shooting became common, an evolutionary advance that does indeed coincide with the New Hollywood era.  (For my part, I prefer stagebound productions for their control of lighting, control of physical objects within the shot, and for their heightened, especially-constructed reality.  This is one of the key differences between our aesthetic tastes.)

Anyway, reading that Wiki article, they quote Todd Berliner, a UNC prof, on what he finds to be the salient features of New Hollywood-style filmmaking:

1. Seventies films show a perverse tendency to integrate, in narratively incidental ways, story information and stylistic devices counterproductive to the films' overt and essential narrative purposes.
    2. Hollywood filmmakers of the 1970s often situate their filmmaking practices in between those of classical Hollywood and those of European and Asian art cinema.
    3. Seventies films prompt spectator responses more uncertain and discomforting than those of more typical Hollywood cinema.
    4. Seventies narratives place an uncommon emphasis on irresolution, particularly at the moment of climax or in epilogues, when more conventional Hollywood movies busy themselves tying up loose ends.
    5. Seventies cinema hinders narrative linearity and momentum and scuttles its potential to generate suspense and excitement.

Sounds correct.  I'm not sure if he was trying to make these features sound bad, as well, though they do.  All of those things (except 3) are less sure to produce good results than classicism, which for all its constraints still guided hacks to make really entertaining movies and permitted many great directors to make great ones.  The kind of filmmaking style outlined by Berliner really has to be used with the utmost caution, especially narrative tangents and lack of resolution.  They can of course generate good and great movies, but they're prone to misfire, even in careful hands.

5, particularly, can pretty much only be framed as a flaw; laypeople would simply call that "being boring."  It works very occasionally, e.g. in Vanishing Point, and indeed it works in The Conversation, mostly because of those films' last-moment twists.  It doesn't work at all in, e.g., The Graduate or Bullitt.  It does not appear in Marathon Man or Carrie or Soylent Green, which are stylistically classicist works that reflect the times and operate within the wider boundaries New Hollywood opened in terms of sex and violence, but are quick-paced storytelling vehicles rather than moody failures.  See also the high-conceived and gore-driven plot-and-idea machines of John Carpenter and David Cronenberg, which are informed almost totally by the Golden Age of Hollywood filmmaking rather than New Hollywood.  The only big difference between John Carpenter and Jack Arnold is that the latter was subject to a Production Code.

The point is--TL;DR--is that when I say "New Hollywood style," you need to not inwardly translate that into "movies made in the 1970s" or otherwise we'll never understand each other.  I'm talking about movies that take their cues from narrativeless crap like Blow-Up and Week End and The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde, rather than good, normal movies like Dr. Zhivago or good, weird movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey.

[Ideologue]

I thought Network was contrived pap.

It's fun. But it's a play made into a movie, and a Brechtian play at that.

Edit: Also what comes after neo-classicism? The high camp Hollywood of the 80s?

I don't think it's ended.

And I dunno, I think Network is pretty filmic (the scene with Ned Beatty is just the tops), but I can see what you mean.  It's a talk opera.  I think play-like cinematic objects might be my favorite form, after science fiction spectacle.  I mean, Rope, for starters; Design For Living; Dial M For Murder; Mindwalk; Tape; The Counselor; Locke.  Shit, when you get down to it, Rashoman, Harakiri, and Samurai Rebellion are pretty static--I'd be surprised if no one has ever adapted Harakiri into a one-location, monlogue-driven play.  If they haven't, they should.  Anyway, they're all great flicks.  (I'd include Rear Window, which is a superior movie, but it kind of fucks up by just playing out its premise; I'd include Waking Life, but its animation provides the dynamism its script does not; I'd include My Dinner With Andre, but I haven't seen it since I was like twelve, and unsurprisingly couldn't get into it.  Unlike The Godfather, I am enthusiastic about getting back to that one day.)

[The Minsky Moment]

I just know you hate production and set design in particular and seem to have a kind of antipathy for stage and backlot shooting in general. 

Really that is a silly thing to say.  You are simply positing a negative image of certain attributes that interest you and ascribing it to me.  Of course I don't "hate" production or set design; I just don't think good production and set design can rescue what otherwise is crap.  Backlot shoots are fine but so are location shoots. Not everything has to follow the same formula. 

they quote Todd Berliner, a UNC prof,

And  a fan of the French Connection . . .

The point is--TL;DR--is that when I say "New Hollywood style," you need to not inwardly translate that into "movies made in the 1970s" or otherwise we'll never understand each other.  I'm talking about movies that take their cues from narrativeless crap like Blow-Up and Week End and The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde, rather than good, normal movies like Dr. Zhivago or good, weird movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I know what you are talking about. But I disagree.  Not because I dislike Zhivago, or 2001 (not a model of narrative coherence but whatever), or Jaws, or John Wayne, or Hepburn & Tracy, or even Brian De Palma.  It is because liking those things doesn't entail disliking other things.  Just because you can make a good movie out of a Pasternak novel doesn't mean every movie REQUIRES a clear, tight linear narrative.

[mongers]

X Men, Days of Future Past- Well, that was awesome. The scene with the fast guy doing his thing was particularly brilliant (did they have walkmens then though?...I don't think so...). The typical mid movie lag that superhero films seem to especially suffer from was kept to a low. All worked pretty well. One of the best superhero films.

Have to agree - watched it on the plane and it was thoroughly enjoyable.

The French language film about the cyclist was pretty good too, though I didn't get to finish it. The actress who played the cyclist was super cute at least.

Oh, perks up interest, on several levels. 

[Ideologue]

I know what you are talking about. But I disagree.  Not because I dislike Zhivago, or 2001 (not a model of narrative coherence but whatever), or Jaws, or John Wayne, or Hepburn & Tracy, or even Brian De Palma.  It is because liking those things doesn't entail disliking other things.  Just because you can make a good movie out of a Pasternak novel doesn't mean every movie REQUIRES a clear, tight linear narrative.

I don't think that, though.  It's just that in the absence of engaging elements like likeable characters, or compelling plotting, or radical production design ( ), there is a very real danger of being boring, which is the single worst thing any work of art can be.

I was imputing your hatred of sets from your curt dismissal of Ken Adam, and some things you said in that conversation about how you disliked overwrought sets.

[Ed Anger]

My temptation is generally to treat 67-76 as something of a dark age,

Godfather 1+2, Clockwork Orange, Deliverance, Exorcist, The Sting, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Midnight Cowboy ... total black hole.

I like the Money Pit.