Something about thinking became dangerous. That aspect I blame on the 1980s

Stop it, you're making me blush Papi!

http://www.celebritynetworth.com/ric...rch-net-worth/

I know some people like that. When the Friday the 13th films were getting close to double digits : I know the last one sucked but it's Jason man, I gotta see it!!! People go crazy over name brands that they feel safe with. This is how people get deceived by studios into watching crap.

Maybe Sarah Palin knows?

I'm not angry at the studios for killing the Die Hard(or any other recently shitty) franchise, I'm disappointed with the audience members who keep spending money on this lazy crap, securing the future of more lazy crap.

McMovies to go along with your McDonalds.

I ask because i believe The Good, the Bad and the Ugly to be the apex of the cinematic art form which has existed 1888-present 2013 (yes greater than stuff like Godfather, because even GF can be made into a theatrical production nicely, GBU exists essentially corporeal in pure cinematic form), and i was wondering how much the industry that affected it being created -- if it is not auteur theory (because leone could have been superhuman in some senses in manly terms), but other forces affecting it moreso.

Oh. Okay.

"Today's movies suck compared to the good ol' days" said every generation of the last hundred years.

Yeah, well the movies had it coming to them.
Video killed the radio star.

Movies were way better in my day when we had to trudge 25 miles through 10 feet of snow to get to the local "movie house."

Theres good stuff occuring. For one superhero genre has never existed since, the only other boom was the italian superhero boom of the late 60s.

When I was ten years old I walked to and from the theater--in the snow!--to see EL CID--by myself. That same season I'd already seen MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY, THE LONGEST DAY, THE GREAT ESCAPE, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA and WEST SIDE STORY--not to mention BEACH PARTY and X-THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES. So yeah, movies were better.

West Side Story - Oct 1961
El Cid - Dec 1961
Longest Day - Oct 1962
Mutiny on the Bounty - Nov 1962
Lawrence of Arabia - Dec 1962
Great Escape - Jul 1963
Beach Party - Jul 1963
X - Sept 1963

You may have seen them in the same season, but they didn't all come out at the same time.

Well, he had to trudge through the snow, so between the time he left for the theater and returned from the theater, two years had passed.

But, that is one of the issues with cinema today post-Godfather and home video, short release windows. Films open wide, play for a couple of months max and then it is on to home video/streaming.

It causes the studios to go for only the most bankable properties. And it is funny when a film like My Big Fat Greek Wedding or Magic Mike comes along and grows slowly b/c the studio doesn't respect that type of success and it is hard to blame them really if they can opt instead for something like The Dark Knight that opens huge and stay huge to earn a billion or more.

Put down the crack pipe. It's not doing you any favors. Besides, For A Few Dollars More is better than TGTBATU.

And there were plenty of crappy movies back then, too. You might not have trudged through the snow to see them, but they were being made and being released.

Cinema's main enemy, imho, is actually the recently increasing quality of other media forms and their accessibility (ie-streaming). I don't think there has been much from the film industry in recent years that's as dramatic as "Breaking Bad" or as funny as "Duck Dynasty" or spooky as "The Walking Dead" or exciting as a round of "Call of Duty: Black Ops", etc. . Sitting through a movie just seems like a chore compared to these exercises. Plus, movies have just become economically inefficient. If you take a family of four to the movies nowadays it'll cost $50+ guaranteed. It just doesn't make sense anymore.

That's a good point about release windows. So did big movies really run for a year back in those days? I suppose it made sense since there was no home video option.

Holy shit, I thought I was the only one who thought For a Few Dollars More is the best in the trilogy.

Don't know if it was a year but they did run for a long time. Back in the day (1970's for me) there were no multiplexes so it was one film - one theater. In some cases it was two or three films - one theater. My local theater gave two films, one newer and one older. In between the movies they would give a Three Stooges short.

The difference being the target audience. There is a big difference between who the studios market to today than who they did 40 or 50 years ago. There is simply a dearth of Hollywood films aimed at adults in the movie theaters...which is understandable as the main movie going audience today are teenagers and young adults.

Take a look at the top 10 films at the box office 40 years ago, then compare it to the last few years...the difference is quite telling:


The Exorcist
The Sting
American Graffiti
Papillon
The Way We Were
Magnum Force
Last Tango in Paris
Live and Let Die
Robin Hood
Paper Moon

Yeah, my parents used to complain because the one theater here played "Orca, the Killer Whale" all through the summer of 1977. And nothing else.

I think they might've missed out on a big cultural moment.

Also I could pretty easily make a theatrical production of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. it would be expensive, but it cold be done. Not sure you could say the same about 2001: A Space Odyssey, or Duck Amuck.

The bigger films played "road show" engagements when they opened, which means they were at Broadway theaters for over a year. 1962 had a lot of them, so when they finally came to my neighborhood theaters, they'd all show up within a few weeks of each other. BEACH PARTY and X were lower-budgeted films from AIP, so they came to the neighborhood theaters quicker. EL CID was re-released for the Xmas season that year, so I saw that in December, later than the others, hence the snow. WEST SIDE STORY would come back to neighborhood theaters on a regular basis over the years.

One of my favorite movies of all time, IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD, was released that season, but it didn't come to my neighborhood until Feb. 1965. We had to wait a long time for movies back then. It was not the era of instant gratification. In my economic circle, we couldn't see movies downtown unless it was on a class trip (HOW THE WEST WAS WON, LORD JIM). So we had to wait.