tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post4573427025303053708..comments2024-03-28T21:56:51.675-04:00Comments on Face to Face: What killed New Hollywood, what took its place, and why?agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-86878556465886032642014-06-15T13:22:54.621-04:002014-06-15T13:22:54.621-04:00The crime rate basically plateaued in the 80s, but...The crime rate basically plateaued in the 80s, but it didn't really decline until 94 or so.TGGPhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11017651009634767649noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-70308627537937784412014-06-15T12:21:31.280-04:002014-06-15T12:21:31.280-04:00By the late 70s and 80s, the crime rate had slowed...By the late 70s and 80s, the crime rate had slowed down. The world was still dangerous, but the good guys had gotten their act together. Things weren't as confusing. You couldn't make a movie like the Parallax View, where the common man was portrayed as powerless against hidden, enigmatic forces.Curtisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-75494593622541607922014-06-13T16:12:08.081-04:002014-06-13T16:12:08.081-04:00Sorcerer is one of my ALL TIME favorite films!!!!!...Sorcerer is one of my ALL TIME favorite films!!!!!! watch it now!danahttp://minarchyblog.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-91229829769226350982014-06-13T15:04:47.356-04:002014-06-13T15:04:47.356-04:00Yeah, sure, I'd only say the late 1970s-1980s ...Yeah, sure, I'd only say the late 1970s-1980s was formative for this kind of cinema, as the absolute most successful individual movies / series of the period. They didn't dominate the top ten in any given year and weren't the most popular genre.<br /><br />Comedies do look popular during the 80s. I would say that although they don't tend to be among the top ten very frequently, they still capture about a 20%-25% of the gross in any given year, in the 1995-2013 era (where www.thenumbers.com has data).<br /><br />http://imgur.com/R1P1myc<br /><br />In the gross data, the comedies don't seem to decrease in popularity with violence, rather they seem to broadly peak up from 1995 - 2008, then fall sharply with the recession years. They're the most popular individual genre, if you use thenumbers genre breakdown. It's a shame there isn't gross data by genre going back to the early 1980s. Comedies might have gone over 30-50%?<br /><br />The difference here might be due to lots of small, cheap movies with narrow appeal, playing for a short amount of time (which might be less profitable for cinema companies, but the only way that comedies can work in the cinema these days).Mnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-33236983722025741032014-06-13T11:57:55.602-04:002014-06-13T11:57:55.602-04:00One reason "Sorcerer" failed because of ...One reason "Sorcerer" failed because of its misleading title. When the director of "The Exorcist" produced it, people were expecting another supernatural thriller. But the death knell of New Hollywood was "Heaven's Gate," a box office flop of such proportions, it single-handedly sank United Artists as well as ruining the career of its prolifigate director, Michael Cinimo. Incidentally, "Heaven's Gate" also had a bummer ending.MTnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-13333009596895676662014-06-13T10:56:13.238-04:002014-06-13T10:56:13.238-04:00When the crime rate began rising rapidly, it disor...When the crime rate began rising rapidly, it disoriented people so much that life may have seemed hopeless. In this way, the "New Hollywood" was a product of the times. In Taxi Driver, for instance, Travis believes the world is being overrun by vermin; the Godfather portrays a dangerous world in which only criminals can protect themselves and their families.<br />Curtisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-61633129871042663882014-06-13T10:49:38.289-04:002014-06-13T10:49:38.289-04:00Comedy movies rise in popularity in outgoing times...Comedy movies rise in popularity in outgoing times, and fall in cocooning times. Data from 1915 to 2011:<br /><br />http://akinokure.blogspot.com/2012/11/popularity-of-comedy-movies-1915-2011.html<br /><br />I just checked the data for '12 and '13, and the picture is unchanged. Among the top 10, there was only one non-animated comedy in '12 (Men in Black 3), and zero in '13.agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-72779667825422615382014-06-13T10:44:28.321-04:002014-06-13T10:44:28.321-04:00Bombastic, galactic-scale epics are part of the Mi...Bombastic, galactic-scale epics are part of the Midcentury and Millennial eras, not the '80s. Type in "YYYY in film" at Wikipedia with a year at the beginning, and it'll give you a list of the top 10 box office movies for that year, with links to other years in a convenient table.<br /><br />(You can see longer lists at Box Office Mojo, but you have to re-enter each year, and they don't give you much info about the movies, where Wikipedia has links to their entries.)<br /><br />Let's check in with the year that produced Return of the Jedi, #1 at the box office for 1983. In order, the other top-ranking movies were such bombastic galactic-scale epics as:<br /><br />Terms of Endearment<br />Flashdance<br />Trading Places<br />WarGames<br />Octopussy<br />Sudden Impact<br />Staying Alive<br />Mr. Mom<br />Risky Business<br /><br />How about five years later, when Die Hard perfected the kickass summer action blockbuster? It was not even #1 in 1988, but #7. Here are the others in order:<br /><br />Rain Man<br />Who Framed Roger Rabbit<br />Coming to America<br />Big<br />Twins<br />Crocodile Dundee II<br />Naked Gun<br />Cocktail<br />Beetlejuice<br /><br />Even as late as '93, where Jurassic Park ranked at the top, Schindler's List took #4, and Cliffhanger #7, the rest were:<br /><br />Mrs. Doubtfire<br />The Fugitive<br />The Firm<br />Indecent Proposal<br />Sleepless in Seattle<br />Philadelphia<br />The Pelican Briefagnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-47720488206050645242014-06-13T06:20:49.488-04:002014-06-13T06:20:49.488-04:00It's seems undeniable that the 1980s and the l...It's seems undeniable that the 1980s and the late 1970s really did change the picture at the top of the film charts in favor of bombastic, epic scaled adventure and action, and trend has only increased since then.<br /><br />However, in the 1960s and early 1970s, those chart topping positions weren't held by anxious thrillers made by art cinema influenced new film makers, instead more by comedies, cartoons, smaller scaled action films, romantic epics and musicals.<br /><br />The post-Spielberg blockbuster period *does* show the emergence of a new style of film. Was this style of film really in competition with the experimental and thriller themed movie New Hollywood had to offer? To me it doesn't seem so. That does depend on whether we actually class the non-thriller chart toppers of the 1960s and 1970s as "New Hollywood".<br /><br />I think you could actually make a stronger argument that the sci-fi thrillers of the 1980s, which you've described as descendants of the New Hollywood thrillers, were killed off by blockbusters - for a example, from The Terminator to Terminator 2, from Alien to Aliens to Alien 3 to Alien 4, etc. Thus the resurgence of iconic contemporary crime and noir themed films in the 1990s.<br /><br /><i>What represented the next step forward from the fate’s-a-bitch blockbusters of the New Hollywood period was the sci-fi thriller, whether dystopian or at least in the tradition of “Oh shit, mankind doesn’t belong in this hostile environment.”</i><br /><br />The Mad Max series is a fun example here in that you can actually see the transition in progress here, as the series morphs from lightly sci-fi 1970s brutalism, through full on, hostile environment post apocalyptic dystopia with a larger than life anti-hero then into a more formulaic, feel good ending blockbuster.<br /><br /><i>when Total Recall styled itself as the sci-fi thriller to end all sci-fi thrillers</i><br /><br />Total Recall also fits interestingly. It is both a zenith or close in the dark humor laden sci-fi thriller trend, an attempt at synthesising this with the post-Spielberg and Lucas blockbusters and a satire of the same blockbuster trend (the overblown, blockbuster line of the plot with its rebels, villainous corporations and ancient Mahtians is arguably all in Quaid's head, escapism for a mundane construction worker... and if not he as the squeaky clean hero is arguably a totally fake person made in a lab, etc.).Mnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-74498364866973182692014-06-13T02:33:07.928-04:002014-06-13T02:33:07.928-04:00When I think "New Hollywood" I tend to t...When I think "New Hollywood" I tend to think more Coppola, Scorsese, Kubrick. I guess Peckinpah too*.<br />*I wrote that before getting to the bit of Sawhill's post where he mentions Wild Bunch. I was also thinking of Aguirre as similar to Sorceror, but Herzog is too weird to be representative of anything, and I have no idea how he got the money to drag a boat through the jungle in Fitzcaraldo.<br /><br />I'd heard great things about Sorceror, but I think I preferred Apocalypse Now. And I think the latter is probably overrated. Still a fan of Friedkin though (who is apparently <a href="http://www.avclub.com/article/william-friedkin-adapting-killer-joe-and-live-and--205628" rel="nofollow">forsaking movies for TV</a>).TGGPhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11017651009634767649noreply@blogger.com