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Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

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Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#151

Post by Apocryphon »

fullshark wrote: post #80
mihaic wrote: post #26

What I find exhausting is having any systemic criticism of the movie/music industry met with arguments along the lines of: "It was just different, you're merely nostalgic/you have golden age syndrome", and have a hard time answering back with anything except: "It really was better, sometime things do get substantially worse". While technologically everything has improved, creativity feel like going from the golden ag…

It's hard to refute, cause it really is true that everyone's most instrumental pop culture experiences happened when they were 10-25 years old. I think one thing that is fascinating is how popular iconography and music/films from 20+ years ago still is. Like I see teenagers wearing t-shirts with NOFX or Van Halen on them, instead of Billie Eilish. https://www.hottopic.com/tees/music-tees/?cm_sp=LP-_-TeesGri... Ultima…

> Like I see teenagers wearing t-shirts with NOFX or Van Halen on them, instead of Billie Eilish.

Same as it always was. (SPIN magazine, April 2005):

https://books.google.com/books?id=3ftHVmAonmoC&lpg=PA107&dq=...

> A few days after the Orange Bowl, I saw the video for Simpson's "La La." In one segment, she wears a vintage Adam and the Ants T-shirt; later, she wears a Motley Crue shirt. I suppose it's theoretically possible that Ashlee Simpson honestly likes those bands. But within the context of this video, her identification with them does not feel remotely organic; it feels like somebody put a lot of thought into whom Ashlee should align herself with. All young artists do this, but some are less subtle than others. I once saw singer/songwriter Leona Naess perform in Cleveland wearing a ZZ Top T-shirt. "I don't even know who this band is," she said between songs. "I just like this shirt." Naess played Minneapolis on the same tour, but this time she wore an Aerosmith T-shirt. "I don't even know who this band is," she said between songs. "I just like this shirt." Obviously, this was an attempt at cultural positioning: Leona Naess wanted to appear like the kind of girl who (somehow) had never heard of ZZ Top and Aerosmith, just as Ashlee Simpson wants to appear like the kind of girl who's intimately aware of Motley Crue and Adam Ant. Yet both artists failed in their attempts, and that's because even a child could tell they were trying way too hard. And people hate that.

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#152

Post by gregsadetsky »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #133
syntaxing wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, how does Placer.ai work? Like you need to have some sort of AMC app?

Placer is able to track cell phones that have an app installed that uses their SDK. They currently have their SDK in over 500 mobile apps. The data is anonymized, but it would probably shock people how much information I can get from this system. I just pick a location and I can see how many people walked into that location over any time span in the past 4 years, where they live, how much money they make, where else…

This is also Foursquare’s business.

Their opt-out page is interesting: https://foursquare.com/data-requests/

“The California Consumer Privacy Act gives California residents the right to direct businesses from selling their personal information. If you are a California resident, you have this right. If you are not a California resident, we may, at our discretion, grant you this right.”

(Emphasis mine)

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#153

Post by impendia »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #133
syntaxing wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, how does Placer.ai work? Like you need to have some sort of AMC app?

Placer is able to track cell phones that have an app installed that uses their SDK. They currently have their SDK in over 500 mobile apps. The data is anonymized, but it would probably shock people how much information I can get from this system. I just pick a location and I can see how many people walked into that location over any time span in the past 4 years, where they live, how much money they make, where else…

I'll bite. Where I live and where I shop, I can understand. But how does my cell phone know how much money I make?

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#154

Post by wwweston »

masayune wrote: post #129
handrous wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I won't mourn movie theatres (though I hope places emulate the likes of Alamo Drafthouse and do dinner, drinks and let us make an evening out of watching a movie), but I do worry about things like movie financing. It feels the industry has split in two, either making super-expensive superhero blockbusters or super cheap indie films. I'm informed by my cinemaphile friend that exactly this phenomenon has been much re…

how do you find these good, low budget movies? would love to know your discovery process

Find someone who is more into movies than you are and talk to them regularly. :)

I got introduced to a bunch last year by making the acquaintance of a film grad student who ran a movie club that met via Discord every Saturday night to discuss a film of the week.

I think this could also probably be approximated by finding someone into film on social media, or watching entries accepted into well-regarded film festivals, or if you happen to have an active mom & pop video store in your area, talking with the clerks.

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#155

Post by Apocryphon »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #99

I think this interview that gets at a broader point that I find depressing/scary: that the availability of so much data and analysis has ended up "quantizing" creative endeavors to the point where formulaic output is just much, much easier, and that any truly innovative or "misunderstood" productions become much harder to sustain. I really see this issue everyone nowadays, from movies, TV and music to things like the…

Optimization is eating the world.

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#156

Post by afavour »

mumblemumble wrote: post #145
majormajor wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a broader cultural issue for all sorts of art today, not a movie specific thing. The depressed/angry mood has been building for a couple decades or more, and getting more widespread. Even something intentionally over the top like Fast and Furious or Marvel has more "serious issue" stuff in many of the installments from the last 5 years than previously. It's easier in the news to see all the bad stuff that used…

Tangentially, last night I half-listened to an interesting YouTube video that used the history of Robin Hood movies to describe this trend. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=428ZxrW6jhk It's a slowly escalating 45-minute rant, but I think that this quote from toward the end summarizes it fairly well: "I'm admittedly a little tired of seeing heroes always surrounded by worlds of gray, because, if they're there long enou…

I think the simple answer is that movies tend to reflect the world around them. Not to get too political on HN but I think no matter your political stripes we can agree that the general mood of the country has been not great since at least 2015 or so. You could argue that means we need more escapism, not less, but somehow that doesn't happen.

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#157

Post by gregsadetsky »

bananabiscuit wrote: post #143
IAmGraydon wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Placer is able to track cell phones that have an app installed that uses their SDK. They currently have their SDK in over 500 mobile apps. The data is anonymized, but it would probably shock people how much information I can get from this system. I just pick a location and I can see how many people walked into that location over any time span in the past 4 years, where they live, how much money they make, where else…

Is there a list somewhere of apps that use placer so that I can delete those apps off my phone forever?

There was a flagged submission about a year ago about them

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22704138

I’ll go on a limb and say that apps don’t even have to integrate Placer’s sdk directly. If an app uses any monetization/tracking/ad tracking system, that tracking vendor may collect the geo data and then re-sell it to Placer (i.e. talk to Placer via a server to server API to let them know about the end user)

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#158

Post by kbelder »

toast0 wrote: post #46
_trampeltier wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a cinema guy, go to cinema about once a week. But to be honest, nobody misses movies like Godzilla vs. Kong. I think one of the worst movies ever.

If you think Godzilla vs Kong was one of the worst movies ever, I don't think you've watched very many movies. I'd put The Wickerman (either version), The Fountain, and The Final Countdown (1980, nothing to do with the song, sadly) as easily worse than Godzilla vs Kong, and that's just off the top of my head. It's certainly not a great movie, but it's well in-line with what you would expect from the title; slightly p…

Funny. I've watched quite a few movies, indy and studio, foreign and domestic, and The Fountain is the only movie I ever immediately re-watched the second it ended. I thought it was absolutely a masterpiece.

But that's art for you; affects people differently.

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#159

Post by acituan »

inglor_cz wrote: post #110
js8 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't. I am from Czechia and maybe the culture here was different, but it used to be that movie theaters were somewhat like a normal theater, where you are supposed to be mostly quiet, behave, and not eat and litter during the show. But modern multiplexes have changed that etiquette, and it's hard for me to stand it. And the advertisements...

Yeah, here in CZ we dressed quite well going to the movie theatre in the early 1990s. These days anything will do.

Indeed, I'd argue a good chunk of the experience came from the respect and reverence the audience had to the occasion. Not unlike in a church, or kind of like a primal gathering around the fire, except this time around the projections of the "magic lantern".

But the god of consumption got jealous and demanded we got things (snacks and movies alike) through our system as fast as possible while making him the maximum dime.

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#160

Post by syntaxing »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #133
syntaxing wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, how does Placer.ai work? Like you need to have some sort of AMC app?

Placer is able to track cell phones that have an app installed that uses their SDK. They currently have their SDK in over 500 mobile apps. The data is anonymized, but it would probably shock people how much information I can get from this system. I just pick a location and I can see how many people walked into that location over any time span in the past 4 years, where they live, how much money they make, where else…

Appreciate the response, super interesting! What do you mean how much they make? Like how much the retail makes or how much the people visiting makes?
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