Worst Movie Year Ever?
online.wsj.com
online.wsj.com
Hollywood has always produced those movies that make me queasy – over the top visuals, artificial sound, mindless story. The solution to the problem is to just not watch them.
Of course opinions are subjective. So let's agree to disagree. :-)
Besides, correct me if I'm wrong, but whereas Toy Story 3 has broad appeal, Scott Pilgrim looks more like something destined to be a cult classic. A lot of "bad movie years" generate a fair crop of movies with cult appeal, we still call them bad movie years by most standards.
As far as I am concerned there are only four or five movies worth watching (in the cinema, anyway) any year, as far as I am concerned there aren’t good movie years and bad movie years, rather just good movies and bad movies.
1) How to Train Your Dragon (it's just magical for some weird reason)
2) Inception (finally something new)
3) Toy Story 3 (don't need to explain)
I mean, I hate to be a Usage Nazi as much as the next guy, but an "installation" is just not the same as an "installment". Those two words just don't mean the same thing.
I do, however, agree with the author's sentiments about Shia LeBeouf, and what DiCaprio should do with his Inception Technology.
The infographic shows what happens every year, some of the highly anticipated movies don't work (Sex and the city, Prince of Persia) , some of them work (Toy story) and then there are a few surprises(Inception, which released 2 weeks back so the $ figure will go up)
Of course not. That would be mindful. This is a mindless nostalgia piece, right out of central casting.
The fun thing to do when one of these articles arrives on the radar is to see which cherry-picked "classics" are being name-checked:
"The Godfather," "Jurassic Park," "Casablanca," "Gone with the Wind," "My Fair Lady" and "The Matrix,"
These lists are always carefully constructed. In this case we have two extremely popular classics from the 1930s, generally regarded as among the best films ever made. That's to establish your street cred as someone who has actually seen some great movies. Then one film each from the 60s, 70s, early 90s, and late 90s, to ensure that every one of your readers over the age of thirty has something to be nostalgic about, and that they believe that the author is sufficiently "hip". (No sense in listing too many films from the 2000s; twentysomethings don't read newspapers.)
Then I got as far as this line:
Where once there was "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves," there is now "Robin Hood," prince of duds.
This line is a dead giveaway, because "Prince of Thieves" was not a good movie, let alone among the best Robin Hood movies; it was redeemed only by the presence of Alan Rickman. Why, then, is the movie praised here? Because the writer really needed to write a cute sentence, reality be damned.
That's about all you need to read. The rest just wrote itself. It can read itself as well.
Just to beat a dead horse, the two films you reference were from the same year; 1939, the best year Hollywood ever had. Ever.
Other films of that year included Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Wizard of Oz, Ninotchka, Dark Victory, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Gunga Din, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Stagecoach, Of Mice and Men, and Young Mr. Lincoln. It was the peak of the "studio system" and Hollywood never again came close to it in terms of the sheer quantity of quality that was produced that year.
In fact, Hollywood movie studios have exactly the same problem as most large companies - how do scale agility and risk-willingness and creativity up to billion-dollar companies?
Is it just because no one is allowed to remake French movies?
Gimmie a break.