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The Slow Death of Hollywood

mattstoller.substack.com

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Re: The Slow Death of Hollywood

#241

Post by pfranz »

magduf wrote: post #235
pfranz wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of agree with you on that. People don't seem to have much sympathy about multiple subscriptions services. The mantra is to cancel subscriptions to whatever you're not watching ATM, but with young children that's untenable (I'd prefer to just outright buy, but discoverability and availability doesn't always work like that). It does suck when Comcast is fighting with ESPN and you don't care because your kid just…

>The mantra is to cancel subscriptions to whatever you're not watching ATM, but with young children that's untenable Young children don't need to watch TV, in fact it'd be better if they didn't watch any at all. Maybe have some DVDs they can watch when they want; that's certainly a lot cheaper than any kind of subscription.

Adults don't need to watch TV, either. I think society at large undervalues appropriate use of TV for kids. Kids crave structure, repetition, and music. With proper restrictions, TV offers all of that without requiring adults to put on the same dog and pony show every day. While studies show it doesn't help with speech, it can help reinforce concepts they are learning in other mediums; animals, objects, movement, emotions. As an adult, there's so much collective culture from TV and movies I consumed as a teenager that come up when interacting with other people.

I already mentioned I would much prefer to purchase outright, but kids tend to get into very specific things and a lot of things available for streaming aren't sold on DVDs; discoverability and availability. Another problem with DVDs is that they're fragile and difficult for young kids to operate themselves--not to mention I don't have a DVD player. I've heard a lot of parents get very angry that expensive Disney DVDs got scratched or broken, whereas VHS was a lot more durable and straightforward for kids to operate themselves.

Kids, young adults, or even having more than a few people in a house it's hard to say, "You can't watch Sesame Street like you did yesterday because Game of Thrones is over."

Re: The Slow Death of Hollywood

#242

Post by davesmith1983 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #238
davesmith1983 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is partly due to new media however lets consider some other things which are really important. 1) The problem is that a lot of the remakes/sequels and reboots are quite frankly crap. I don't care too much about Disney. But other remakes and sequels are generally awful. So lets take some case studies: * Robocop (2013). The movie except for on 2 minute scene was dire. It was a PG-13 remake of what was at the time a…

> Just under half of the Country voted for the current president Less than 30% of eligible voters (and an even smaller percentage of the country) did, actually.

Well it was just under 50% (what was it 47%-48%) of all the votes cast. The point I was trying to convey. Is that a very large amount of people (by your numbers 80-100 million people) that you don't respect the outcome of a legitimate democratic process.

It is fine to say "I wish the outcome was different", but trying to undermine it is something else entirely. That sort of thing isn't forgotten about.

Re: The Slow Death of Hollywood

#243

Post by AnthonyMouse »

dredmorbius wrote: post #240
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> even nationalizing it if necessary (this is, after all, the basic rstionale for why many public services are provided by the government) Note that those public services generally aren't nationalized . The local water utility is typically operated by the city, not the feds.

s/nationalised/deprivatised/ Or, you know, socialised .

There's a pretty big difference between the local town and the entire nation. If a municipal gas company provides poor service in your town, a mayor who doesn't address it is going to have trouble in the next election. If a nationalized gas company provides poor service in your town, good luck making that the issue a US presidential election turns on.

And socialized isn't really right either. There is a significant difference between e.g. "socialized medicine" meaning taxpayer-funded healthcare vs. municipal utilities that you pay for as a customer thereby covering the service cost, and may not even require you to patronize them if you don't want service, even if they happen to be operated by the government.

I wish they would actually formalize the latter arrangement as something that anyone could set up on their own, i.e. something similar to a 501(c)(3) nonprofit which is established to provide a subscription service and whose directors are required to be elected by the long-term subscribers. Then you might operate an ISP that way, but also potentially things like news reporting and software development.

Re: The Slow Death of Hollywood

#244

Post by dredmorbius »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #243
dredmorbius wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

s/nationalised/deprivatised/ Or, you know, socialised .

There's a pretty big difference between the local town and the entire nation. If a municipal gas company provides poor service in your town, a mayor who doesn't address it is going to have trouble in the next election. If a nationalized gas company provides poor service in your town, good luck making that the issue a US presidential election turns on. And socialized isn't really right either. There is a significant d…

Socialism, as with capitalism refers to ownership, not payment mechanism:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/socialism

Ad-funded media is indirectly paid just as tax-funded healthcare is, though side effects differ.

I agree that scale affects accountability, but again, that's orthogonal to ownership. And locally owned (or operated) services can be extraordinarily unresponsive to (at least some) local needs:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/10/1...

Re: The Slow Death of Hollywood

#245

Post by robomartin »

ravenstine wrote: post #51

Hollywood is hanging itself by its own velvet rope. Remakes are seen as an excellent investment because, so long as they are properly stylized and full of dazzle, they are low-risk and have reasonable returns. Usually. This won't work for them forever, and I think everyday people are catching on to the fact that they're just being resold the same stuff they've already bought. The other day, my cousin's 11 year old so…

Yup. My kids are sick of what Disney has done to the Star Wars franchise. They, we, have less than zero interest of seeing any new contrived episodes and even less interest in going to Disneyland to see Star Wars land.

Re: The Slow Death of Hollywood

#248

Post by AnthonyMouse »

dredmorbius wrote: post #244
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a pretty big difference between the local town and the entire nation. If a municipal gas company provides poor service in your town, a mayor who doesn't address it is going to have trouble in the next election. If a nationalized gas company provides poor service in your town, good luck making that the issue a US presidential election turns on. And socialized isn't really right either. There is a significant d…

Socialism, as with capitalism refers to ownership, not payment mechanism: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/socialism Ad-funded media is indirectly paid just as tax-funded healthcare is, though side effects differ. I agree that scale affects accountability, but again, that's orthogonal to ownership. And locally owned (or operated) services can be extraordinarily unresponsive to (at least some) local needs: h…

> Socialism, as with capitalism refers to ownership, not payment mechanism:

From your link:

> any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods

The distinction in this case being the distribution of goods. When you have the ability to say that you don't want something and you're not going to pay for it (and then go buy as much as you want from someone else), it's not socialism.

> Ad-funded media is indirectly paid just as tax-funded healthcare is, though side effects differ.

The difference again being that you have a choice. You're not trading cash for access to YouTube, but you're trading something, and if you prefer not to make that trade then there is no law requiring you to make it.

> I agree that scale affects accountability, but again, that's orthogonal to ownership.

Nobody said otherwise. The point wasn't that nationalizing an industry doesn't imply government ownership, it was that it does imply national rather than local control, which is generally neither necessary nor beneficial.

> And locally owned (or operated) services can be extraordinarily unresponsive to (at least some) local needs:

Even in that case, the local government was responsive to the local majority, the problem was that what the local majority wanted was dastardly.

But even that case proves why local control is better -- if one locality wants something you don't, you patronize another one. You buy from the Sears catalog instead of local racists, or move to the North.

What do you do in prior years when the national government is overtly protecting slavery and passing things like the Fugitive Slave Act?

The best case for nationalizing is a little better but the worst case is much worse.

Re: The Slow Death of Hollywood

#249

Post by goto11 »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #239
goto11 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think older movies were better because of the time filter - we remember the classics and forget the crap. You think movies you saw in your youth were great because they were original to you - you hadn't seen all the previous movies and plays they were inspired by or remakes of. This is the same for everybody, which is why people was saying the exact same thing as you do 10, 20, 30 years ago. > Too much chasing wh…

> You think older movies were better because of the time filter - we remember the classics and forget the crap. No you're making excuses. I don't think they were always better, but that they took from a FAR wider selection of production styles. Hollywood has been afraid of variety for decades, inserting the cliche "family values" ending in every movie, or even demanding the neat happy end every time, or some cliche c…

As for happy endings etc., this have always been a mainstay of Hollywood. In the Hollywood satire "The Player" from 1992 it is actually a plot point how a script without a happy ending cannot get produced. (And that movie itself have an improbable tacked-on happy-end to drive the point home.)

For fun I looked up the term "Hollywood Ending" ("a film ending of a conventional type, characterized as sentimental, simplistic, or melodramatic, and often featuring an improbably positive outcome; frequently in extended use."). The first example of this usage is from...1929.

So not exactly a recent development.

As for every movie being a "super-hero martial arts movie." - well this genre is certainly big at the moment, but by far isnt the only type of movie. If you look at the most recent Oscar awards, you will see movies like Roma, Vice, The Favourite, BlacKkKlansman, Bohemian Rhapsody, Green Book. These are mainstream Hollywood movies (almost by definition, this is what the Oscars awards) but there is still a span of genres and narrative styles. I don't see this as notably more homogenized than any other year.

And despite the hand-wringing over superheroes, I would like to point out that the "Marcel Cinematic Universe" is actually a pretty original concept in itself. Never before have such a complex shared universe and storyline unfolded over so many coordinated movies. I don't know if this is particularly worse than bygone Hollywood fads like westerns, sword-and-sandal epics, musicals etc.

But if you don't like superheroes there is still plenty of movies to choose from, since the overall number of movies released is steadily growing.

Re: The Slow Death of Hollywood

#250

Post by Buetol »

icebraining wrote: post #223
[deleted] wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

How is the US in peak poverty? That graph clearly shows the poverty rate being way lower than in '59-65, and lower than at many points since then.

Sorry, I mixed up raw number of people in poverty and percentage, so I removed my comment. Here's the graph for context (for other people reading): https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Number_i...
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