Cinematic (and TV, What the Hell) Pet Peeves

[Winston*]

THEY'RE COMPLETELY ANNOYING IN AMERICAN CONTEXT.

I agree. All Americans are terrible.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I agree. All Americans are terrible.

Indeed. We even found a way to elect Trump.

[Irish]

It's nice that Ohio and Korea have something in common, though!

[number8]

We've probably had a debate about this before, but...

YOU: Ugh, I wanna see Babe Rubber but it's three and a half hours long. Nobody got time for that.

ALSO YOU: Just finished bingeing all eight hours of Stringy Thongs! I wish it was longer!

Fuck you.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I recognize what you're saying, but don't you figure there's a psychological element to it? Like the way a project at work or school can feel overwhelming until you break it apart into discrete chunks and attack those smaller pieces?

[number8]

I recognize what you're saying, but don't you figure there's a psychological element to it? Like the way a project at work or school can feel overwhelming until you break it apart into discrete chunks and attack those smaller pieces?

Someone should try to release Fanny and Alexander with fake credits inserted every 45 minutes. See if people find it easier to sit through.

[Sycophant]

When I've been very busy (grad school and so on), it's hard sometimes to sit down and say "I'm starting this movie at 7:30pm, when it ends it'll be 10:30pm." That can be a weird hurdle to jump through. But at the same time, I'm not a huge binger of TV these days. I tend to watch at max about 2 or 3 hours of a TV show at a time (and usually actually only one or two eps), and when that does happen, part of that is the knowledge that I can easily abandon ship at any given time, take a break to answer emails or something, or whatever.

But also, I don't like it when people complain about movies being too long (for the most part), unless it's after the fact and is rooted in a substantial critique about what the film actually did as opposed to an issue with how much time the film "took" from them. I think there's an irritating flattening of films and so on into units of content that are consumed by viewers that's going on here. People (like comedians Howard Kremer and Adam Conover) who complain about movies being too long tend to ground things in artless complaints about how they need to be more efficient in delivering "the story" to them, which is a despairingly anti-film thing to say. Wikipedia exists, you cretins.

The trend in Hollywood blockbusters routinely clocking in above two hours is interesting, though. Why's that happening? I'm not sure it's because people want more bang/time for their buck. Or is it?

[Dead & Messed Up]

When I've been very busy (grad school and so on), it's hard sometimes to sit down and say "I'm starting this movie at 7:30pm, when it ends it'll be 10:30pm." That can be a weird hurdle to jump through. But at the same time, I'm not a huge binger of TV these days. I tend to watch at max about 2 or 3 hours of a TV show at a time (and usually actually only one or two eps), and when that does happen, part of that is the knowledge that I can easily abandon ship at any given time, take a break to answer emails or something, or whatever.

This is the case for me too. I think the most I've binged in the past year was watching three episodes of Fargo on a Sunday because I knew I had a busy week. Otherwise it's typically an episode (two max) to a night.

But also, I don't like it when people complain about movies being too long (for the most part), unless it's after the fact and is rooted in a substantial critique about what the film actually did as opposed to an issue with how much time the film "took" from them. I think there's an irritating flattening of films and so on into units of content that are consumed by viewers that's going on here. People (like comedians Howard Kremer and Adam Conover) who complain about movies being too long tend to ground things in artless complaints about how they need to be more efficient in delivering "the story" to them, which is a despairingly anti-film thing to say. Wikipedia exists, you cretins.

Agreed.

The trend in Hollywood blockbusters routinely clocking in above two hours is interesting, though. Why's that happening? I'm not sure it's because people want more bang/time for their buck. Or is it?

I might be wrong, but I remember hearing that part of this is appealing to foreign markets that prefer longer movies.

[Sycophant]

I might be wrong, but I remember hearing that part of this is appealing to foreign markets that prefer longer movies.

This sounds familiar. Almost mentioned it in my post, but I wasn't sure if it was just my brain making it up. Makes a lot of sense, though.

[Irish]

Possibly relevant to your interests:

Roger Ebert in a 1995 interview talking about media, attention spans, and television:

http://siskelandebert.org/video/913B...ne-on-One-1995

(The relevant bit starts around 14:50; the whole interview is 25 minutes)

[Dukefrukem]

We've probably had a debate about this before, but...

YOU: Ugh, I wanna see Babe Rubber but it's three and a half hours long. Nobody got time for that.

ALSO YOU: Just finished bingeing all eight hours of Stringy Thongs! I wish it was longer!

Fuck you.

Fuck you too.

[Skitch]

Agree with 8.

When I say "fuck its 3 hours long" its not because the movie itself is long, its because its probably too long for me to sneak in as a nooner before I have to pick the kids up from school. lol

[Irish]

Media outlets whose definition of "science fiction and fantasy" is so broad that it includes any remote spec fic --- unless it's horror. Eg: "The Punisher" and "The Flash" count but "Gerald's Game" and "It" do not.

FFS, I want to hear about "Star Trek" and "Electric Dreams." I don't wanna hear about CW's superhero shows.

[Spinal]

People who think they're schooling others on Japanese animation, but clearly are only familiar with Miyazaki films.

[D_Davis]

I'm kind of the opposite of those being complained about when it comes to length. These days, if I'm going to devote time to watching a movie, I want it to be a substantial amount of time. I want more movies over two hours. I want to sit and get completely absorbed in something epic.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I'm kind of the opposite of those being complained about when it comes to length. These days, if I'm going to devote time to watching a movie, I want it to be a substantial amount of time. I want more movies over two hours. I want to sit and get completely absorbed in something epic.

I'm not against a long length, I just don't like it when a film feels "stretched out" to accommodate the length. The Pirates movies are a good example, where they pile on the complexity and overall number of characters, but that makes the films feel busy instead of deep/meaningful.

[number8]

I haven't quite made up my mind on how I feel about it. I think usually we can just tell when something is long because of bloat rather than density of content, but that's obviously up for debate for any given movie.

I think one thing that I've been asking, though, is why we even need movies that are purely escapism to last over 2.5 hours. I feel like this is the point that's unsaid in a lot of the complaints, because they're most often directed at superhero/franchise movies.

[Dead & Messed Up]

People who think they're schooling others on Japanese animation, but clearly are only familiar with Miyazaki films.

Small sidebar: do you have others to recommend? Aside from Hiyao Miyazaki, Satoshi Kon, and Mamoru Hosoda (and Akira), I'm not as familiar with the genre.

[Spinal]

Small sidebar: do you have others to recommend? Aside from Hiyao Miyazaki, Satoshi Kon, and Mamoru Hosoda (and Akira), I'm not as familiar with the genre.

There's probably 20 different people who post here more qualified to answer this than I am.

[D_Davis]

Small sidebar: do you have others to recommend? Aside from Hiyao Miyazaki, Satoshi Kon, and Mamoru Hosoda (and Akira), I'm not as familiar with the genre.

Check out Mamoru Oshii's Patlabor films, especially the 2nd one.

[Irish]

I think one thing that I've been asking, though, is why we even need movies that are purely escapism to last over 2.5 hours.

For the perceived value.

Studio movies bloat when the movies are threatened by TV (cf: sword and sandal flicks in the 1950s). They can't really ask somebody to throw down $10-15 for a 90 minute experience. Not when the line between the two mediums gets thinner every year and TV is "free" or at least lower cost.

[Grouchy]

Yeah, I think it's because of what Irish said.

I agree that blockbusters lately feel very bloated. But it's very subjective. I didn't feel the lenght of BR2049 because I loved the experience - others felt it was too long for its plot.

Scorsese's filmography is a good example of movie lenght used for epicness. Casino or Wolf of Wall Street are three hours long and never once feel boring, even if a lot of scenes are just variations on the same scenarios.

[Irish]

James Magold (I think it was him?) said something interesting about this last year -- I wish I had kept the quote -- that blockbusters increasingly rely on elaborate set pieces to sell tickets, and the average blockbuster might have 3 set pieces that last 20-30 minutes each. That eats up at least an hour or more of screentime all by itself.

[number8]

But that's what I'm saying -- emphasis on escapism. I don't think anyone would argue that Blade Runner 2049 was made as a purely escapist exercise. Not in the way, say, Spider-Man was. The reason behind the money, I get. I'm asking why do we as consumers, and wholly as a culture, brook the existence of longer and longer spectacle flicks, almost as if 90 minute good guy vs bad guy fights don't cut it anymore?

I admit this is more of an existential question than anything...

[Irish]

I'm asking why do we as consumers, and wholly as a culture, brook the existence of longer and longer spectacle flicks, almost as if 90 minute good guy vs bad guy fights don't cut it anymore?

Because that's what there. It's not as if there's a lot of variety. The only movies I can think of that are regularly 90 minutes these days are horror films.

There's a whole slew of mid-century genre novels that are thin, maybe 200-250 pages in most print runs, and the only reason they were that length is because published demanded it --- they needed to fit as many books onto drugstore racks as they could.

In the 70s and 80s and beyond, all that stuff became bloated, too, because books weren't sold the same way. So we get 500+ page fantasy novels with plots that run into 3 book series because, again, that's what publishers demanded. Then they moved from cheap paperbacks to trade paperbacks, the price went up, and that changed the value proposition again. Few people are willing to spend $20 for a 150 page science fiction novel.