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The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

newyorker.com

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Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#141

Post by mejutoco »

pjc50 wrote: post #111
detourdog wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Riffing on your SpongeBob comments. It drives me crazy that all the streaming services seem to only push about 20 different choices from there catalog. Each row of choices contains the same titles as the previous row. It makes no sense to me why should the service care at how popular any single title is as long as we are subscribed to their service. They are hampering discoverability.

> It makes no sense to me why should the service care at how popular any single title is as long as we are subscribed to their service I suspect that, like google's notorious killing of products with "only" tens of millions of users, this is a problem of internal structure. I bet that ranking of who gets into that row is a reflection of the social hierarchy between producers at Netflix whose compensation depends on i…

> At some point Netflix really focused on this, then like google throwing away search, they lost it.

I believe Netflix had a big catalog when people signing their rights thought it was not going to work. Once the model was proven everyone created their platform and stopped licensing to Netflix. Then Netflix had to get closer to making their own shows, and their "discoverability" features centered around hiding how few movies they have.

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#142

Post by timeon »

RickJWagner wrote: post #83
somenameforme wrote: post #17

Fun fact: movie sales, in terms of tickets sold, peaked in 2002. [1] All the 'box office records' since then are the result of charging way more to a continually plummeting audience size. And this is highly relevant for things like this. People often argue that if movies were so bad then people would stop watching them, unaware that people actually have stopped watching them! Even for individual movies. For all the m…

When movies are made for entertainments sake, they can still do well. ( Top Gun 2, for example ). I’m really looking forward to the Space Balls sequel. I have hopes that one will be good.

If movie needs number to be distinguishable then it is probably not good.

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#143

Post by JKCalhoun »

bentt wrote: post #76

I wonder how much of the problem is the massive influx of streaming platform money to occupy talented directors, writers, and other people who make films. Why risk a Hollywood release when you can get prepaid for your work?

Are the streaming films without "Literalism"?

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#145

Post by npteljes »

icecreamscoop wrote: post #23
inky-solver wrote: post #19

Oh nooooooo sincerity bad. Got it. (Counterexample: "Sorry, Baby", which literally just came out.)

What do you mean by "sincerity"?

I think literal meaning here is misinterpreted as sincerity by OP. Which is a misconception, literal things can be untruthful and abstract things can be truthful as well, being abstract, or going in a roundabout way is not necessarily about being dishonest.

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#146

Post by hanlonsrazor »

I have definitely noticed the same occurring in North American cinema, but I do not think this is a new phenomenon. Rather, it's just a symptom of the increased commercialization of indie cinema - commercialization requiring film for all to understand.

If one is to broaden their horizons, overseas cinema is still devoid of this literalism. European cinema, Korean cinema, and the famously show not tell Japanese cinema still produce ambiguous stories that compete for awards - just look at recent pictures in Anatomy of a Fall, Zone of Interest, Drive my Car, Decision to Leave.

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#148

Post by PaulHoule »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #105
pjc50 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> more people in the US like anime than domestic pop culture Difficult to get viewing figures for that, but I find it hard to believe. That does feel like a bubble effect. And possibly a piracy bubble effect too. In fact the difficulty of getting meaningful viewing figures out of streamers is probably a big part of the problem. Nobody knows what's actually popular. Even those supposed to be getting royalties had no i…

Part of the bubble is generational, what my parents watch, what I watch and what my kids watch are all very different. Aka the death of "four quadrant" entertainment. Even just saying "watch" feels off as so much of my kids time is spent with franchises in Roblox or other online games.

I don't tend to like generational analysis because it obscures the Diffusion of innovations analysis:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations

People think of anime as "for young people" and maybe it is -- but I first saw Star Blazers circa 1981 and thought it was the best thing I ever saw on TV, then about ten years later Urusei Yatsura and Ranma 1/2 and Tenchi Muyo and Guyver and I still watch it. Anime is actually the center of a "media mix" that includes manga, light novels, visual novels, video games, web novels. streaming and other channels. In Japan there must be plenty of people my age who had the same experience starting with Gundam or something like that.

Granted I don't talk to a lot of Xers who like anime, but I sure see it in 20-somethings. (To be fair I see a lot of people who have an obvious squick reaction when they say "I don't care for anime")

Another case where generational analysis goes wrong is in the analysis of TikTok vs YouTube. I'd argue that most of the cultural changes (personalization economy, filter bubbles, an environment where Zohran Mandami does well, ...) actually happened with YouTube but we didn't notice it because it had a broad base, happened slowly, and personalization is deceptive since you don't see what I see -- but TikTok seemed to come on so fast and was visible to people because it affected an "other".

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#149

Post by s28l »

I find this article rather underwhelming because it spends so much time calling out bad examples and so little time highlighting examples of subtlety (in any era). Without positive examples, I don’t think they make the case that this is a new phenomenon or even a phenomenon at all: all the author has done is identify a lens to criticize through.

It may be the case that this is a recent phenomenon (though some other commentators disagree), but without providing detail on what movies the author feels avoid this pattern, they make their argument impossible to refute or engage with. (It also insulates the author’s tastes from criticism, which I suspect is part of the motivation)

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#150

Post by JKCalhoun »

bawolff wrote: post #20
AIorNot wrote: post #4

Eh, People on their phones can’t be bothered with following plot lines everything has to be telegraphed

Or, people who want complex plots dont watch blockbuster films; they watch indie movies. The same way that if you want a literary novel, you aren't reading the latest YA best seller. The super mainstream stuff is always going to go for broad appeal. There is nothing wrong with that, but the people who want something different are going to have to step outside the bestseller box the way they always had to.

It's a shame, because in an era when One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and Annie Hall were winning Best Picture the blockbuster film and "indie" film were harder to differentiate.
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