Make better, not fancier, movies

Two recent articles and a talk with my buddy have me thinking lately about what’s up with Hollywood.

My buddy says he just won’t cough up $8.75 or more for every film that comes along the way he would last year and before. The tipping point for him were films like Pearl Harbor and The Score that came with big press and expectations but bored him silly. And beyond the basic quality issue is cost: it’s gotten too expensive with tiny bags of popcorn costing $3 on top of the high ticket price. For the most part he’s willing to wait and rent a DVD or see it on a cable movie channel. What’s the rush, he asks?

Joe Baltake, movie critic for the Sacramento Bee, complains standards are declining, that critics (and viewers) are being forced “by the entertainment industry to systematically lower our standards.” Baltake says the problem applies to TV shows as well, pointing to putdowns and sex jokes as “the only laugh-getters that writers can come up with nowadays.”

Stuart Maschwitz, speaking at the Ars Electronica festival, says that the tools are becoming available to allow independents to make major studio quality films and this will only get easier. This might be a solution to the quality and price issue in a few years. In the meantime, though, he says the studios are so enamored of the possibilities digital effects allow that the films are being overwhelmed. Maschwitz, who worked on Star Wars: Phantom Menace supervising the space battle scenes, cites this as an example and says the original film even with its much poorer f/x was far superior as a movie.

But I am willing to still believe in the magic. I can’t wait to see such effects-laden films as Jet Li’s The One, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and especially Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring