Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

theculturenewspaper.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

501–510 of 565 posts

Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

#501

Post by echelon »

ikr678 wrote: post #493
echelon wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Theatrical releases are how movies make most of their money, not giving them away for free on streaming. Box office margins are huge, but renting licenses to streamers is limited and fungible with all the other mountains of content they license. - Box office optimizes for novelty, streamers optimize for "don't churn" - very different criteria for investment. - Disney cannibalized the box office with Marvel Star War…

What Hollywood considers most attractive (blinding white veneers, botox, fillers, blephs, steroid use etc) is not necessarily what the rest of the world finds attractive, and for some audiences can be distracting and immersion breaking.

> what the rest of the world finds attractive

People want to watch local. Local people, places, settings, and situations that have meaning to them. Hollywood could never deliver this.

Content and distribution used to be hard and capital intensive.

Netflix and YouTube solved distribution, but content still took millions to make.

That's changing rapidly now. There's no more need for Hollywood.

Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

#502

Post by jrjeksjd8d »

spacechild1 wrote: post #308
jrjeksjd8d wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theatres don't just show new movies. There's something very special about being locked in a dark room with a big screen to watch Alien or Barry Lyndon. Older movies especially look great in a theatre and some of the magic is lost on a smaller screen. 90% of any content is crap but you're missing out if you like movies and you haven't seen Sinners, The Bone Temple, or NOPE (to name a few recent great theatre watches).

I regularly go to a nearby cinema that also shows older movies. Watching a movie like "Ran" (Akira Kurosawa) in a restored 4k version on a big screen is quite an experience. (Tickets are 10€ btw.) Often I go with a friend, but occasionally I also go alone. There's something about spending 2 or 3 hours in a dark room entirely focussing on a piece of art.

Ran is such a good movie to watch in a theatre. I saw Rashomon for the first time in a theatre and it was a life-altering experience

Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

#503

Post by the_af »

shiroiuma wrote: post #478
the_af wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I thought of this too: the industry was full of slop way before AI. We spoke of "Netflix's algorithm", but even before Netflix blockbuster movies were done with a cookie cutter. Transformers (to pick one example) existed way before this brand of AI. Movies like it are perfect candidates to be prompted and built by an AI, since they were almost there anyway. I can't help but think this "AI empowerment" will make…

Well, I guess one nice thing about that last part is that we'd be able to just enjoy AI "actors" as they are, instead of being conflicted because in real life, they're not cult promoters, rapists/groomers, etc. Moviemakers wouldn't have to worry that their star isn't going to suddenly be embroiled in some scandal, requiring them to hire another actor and re-shoot all their scenes quickly.

That's little consolation. The future you describe seems like a corporate dystopia to me. We want actors to be human.

Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

#504

Post by mapotofu »

Rover222 wrote: post #196
rimbo789 wrote: post #140

Good riddance. It won’t be missed. Very little of Hollywood benefited humanity - it was mostly a tool of the rich and governments to propagandize. It was just an another opiate for masses. It was built on ruthless exploitation of labour and consumers.

This is such a college freshman worldview take, IMO.

That’s great. Your opinions are important, regardless of how well formed they are. What grade level should we assign your worldview?

Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

#505

Post by the_af »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #225
the_af wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The optimistic viewpoint is that maybe new AI production tools will trigger a re-democratization of creative movies I don't think so. Part of the downfall of movies -- blockbusters movies anyway, the kind where being a box office hit matters -- is that they have seemed produced like AI slop even before AI. Making it easier to produce more slop isn't going to fix this. Then there's one thing making noise in my brain…

Democratization is a specious argument. The artistry in an AI assisted work is the part that the human contributes as opposed to the the part that the AI contributes. If the human contribution is negligible, the artistry is negligible and there is no meaningful democratization because there was only token artistic intent in the first place. And what's actually happening with AI? Someone mentioned in another submissio…

Yes, I agree. I didn't want to sound too much like an old guy telling kids to get off my lawn, but I agree with what you're saying.

"More stuff" at all costs is not a good thing.

Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

#506

Post by arrrg »

chuckadams wrote: post #3

I put more stock in the the Sundance and Cannes jury prizes: even if they're comprised of the elites who can afford to go to these festivals, they've still got far more artistic sense than the ossified corporate board that the Academy has always been.

Berlinale screenings are open to the public and tickets cost between 15 € and 20 €. You have to be quick when ticket sales open every day but when I did that one year I watched about four films every day and could get tickets for nearly all the films I wanted, even if some were in large but truly soulless venues (“Uber Eats Music Hall“, the name alone is disgustingly dystopian). Though I also attended some film premieres with Q&As and all at the great Zoo Palast cinema. There is also an audience award and you can vote for your favorites – but also obviously a jury prize. But juries can be hit and miss and also always idiosyncratic. Unpredictable. And I think that’s beautiful. Including being annoyed about your favorite film not winning.

As always with any kind of film festival you are exposed to the bleeding edge - so yeah, you are going to see some bad films. That’s part of it. Though I noticed that even bad films – especially well made ones that I think are totally misguided in the ideas they express – help me broaden my horizons, understand myself better and maybe also understand the world better.

So yeah, long story short, I don’t think film as an art form is dead and it also won’t be in the next century or so. Maybe certain films won’t be made in the future – I’m currently mostly sad about practically no mid-budget films being made – but I’m totally certain that there will always be great films.

Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

#507

Post by ethbr1 »

evrenesat wrote: post #357
mschuster91 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't need "sound experience" to enjoy a movie. Unfortunately, most cinema movies are not properly remastered in their audio tracks, but keep the original cinema mix. That results in very silent dialogue (which is not a problem in a cinema, at least as long as people behave and don't yap around all the time) and very loud sequences particularly in action shots. When you now give such a movie to your usual home th…

Thanks for clarifying that. I always thinking it was due to my bad hearing or lack of fluency! English is my second language, and without subtitles, I'm having trouble to understand the dialogues without increasing the volume until I reach a level where I also got disturbed from the sound effects, bg music etc. It's a bigger issue with movies, not only due to what you explained about sound mixing, but also error corr…

It's not you; it's media (including TV).

Post-1990s, directors forgot how to mix audio for stereo.

And streaming services assumed you had at least a 5.1 system with a dedicated center channel.

Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

#508

Post by delecti »

righthand wrote: post #280
delecti wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more about being unwilling to pay so much when a free version is just a few months away. Streaming is too good and too cheap compared to the theatrical release.

“Free” but you pay a monthly subscription. No one seems to know what free means anymore.

Watching a movie using a service the parents were likely already paying for has no marginal cost.

Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

#509

Post by wombat-man »

uncletammy wrote: post #353
wombat-man wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more relevant to talk about theaters showing current new movies because that's kind of what Hollywood is focused on. I'm in a more expensive city where a weeknight non-matinee will run $20 a pop for a current release. Comfort is average but food is pretty solid. Not Alamo, but similar service level. Not unusual for a couple to leave paying more like 80 after concessions.

Alamo food and service have absolutely tanked over the last year. They no longer prohibit phones during the film. In fact, now they require one to order food. They have completely undermined their entire value proposition. Alamo Drafthouse is a walking corpse.

Yeah I don't go to the actual Alamo near me anymore. But another local one that copies the parts I like.

Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

#510

Post by gspetr »

BrenBarn wrote: post #450
bloomingeek wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort of off topic, but almost the same can be said for music concerts. During slower or softer songs, people can be heard talking and laughing loudly. I get it, they paid their money, same as us, but we didn't pay to hear them.

Curious if you have a sense of how long this has been going on. My perception is that various sorts of rudeness and inconsiderateness have been on the rise for a while, but really jumped post-COVID. Some of it is minor but just suggests to me that many people lack any sense that they should be aware of others around them. Just today I was walking down the street and a woman was stopped, in the middle of the sidewalk,…

> many people lack any sense that they should be aware of others around them.

It's not "people". One half of all people grows up playing contact sports or at least have some form of rough-and-tumble with their homies in schoolyards. This half also knows that you can get punched if things get too rowdy.

The other does not. Almost all of the entitled road blockers are in this category.

Post reply on HN