General Film News

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Raid
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Re: General Film News

Post by Raid » Tue Nov 16, 2021 10:57 am

Because the property owner is hopeful someone will eventually make a second good Predator film?

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Re: General Film News

Post by Alan » Tue Nov 16, 2021 11:04 am

Hey! In the context of Predators and whatever that horrendous 4th one was called Predator 2 is good!
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Re: General Film News

Post by Wrathbone » Wed Nov 24, 2021 8:16 am

Ridley Scott's thrown his dummy out the pram because his latest film, The Last Duel, has flopped at the box office.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movie ... 235051736/
“Disney did a fantastic promotion job,” Scott said on the podcast.
No they didn't. I subscribe to Disney+ and keep a vague eye on upcoming films and I hadn't even heard of The Last Duel until now.
Scott’s explanation for the horrible box office performance? Apathetic millennials.

“I think what it boils down to — what we’ve got today [are] the audiences who were brought up on these fucking cellphones. The millennian [sic] do not ever want to be taught anything unless you’re told it on a cellphone,” Scott said.

“This is a broad stroke, but I think we’re dealing with it right now with Facebook,” Scott added. “This is a misdirection that has happened where it’s given the wrong kind of confidence to this latest generation, I think.”
As a "millennian" (born in 1984, so not exactly the latest generation), clearly it was my phone stopping me from going to the cinema. Couldn't be anything to do with it releasing with zero fanfare at the tail end of a global pandemic, or that people are less enthused about going to the cinema for reasons beyond their waning attention spans and fragile bladders.

I think he's finally gone off the deep end. I don't even understand what he's talking about in that last paragraph.

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Re: General Film News

Post by Maturin » Wed Nov 24, 2021 8:39 am

He's become such a grouch in his old age. :lol:

I think he was railing against superhero films the other week.

Regarding the Last Duel, in the UK the 18 rating probably didn't help. It's a bit of a box office killer that rating, you only get so many punters going unless it's a really talked about film - plus in a middle of a pandemic where a lot of older people are still hesitant about sitting in cinemas.

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Re: General Film News

Post by Wrathbone » Wed Nov 24, 2021 8:56 am

Maturin wrote:
Wed Nov 24, 2021 8:39 am
I think he was railing against superhero films the other week.
Yeah, as with Martin Scorsese's and Francis Ford Coppola's rants about the MCU, I'm not convinced any of them have watched more than a couple of superhero films in the last decade with any level of attention. Maybe they were distracted by their phones?

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Re: General Film News

Post by Achtung Englander » Wed Nov 24, 2021 10:11 am

I read the book some time ago and its good it was made into a film, but this sort of film does not need 3 mega stars and a massive budget. Its case of he said / she said. Also the film is about rape. I believe the essence of the problem is that we are coming out from one of the most difficult times in the last decade and so I think most of us crave escapism. As someone who was not too keen to head back to the cinema due to Covid and now price, I went to see Dune because is going to offer me escapism that will not preach to me, talk down to me or question the behaviour of my gender. In the last 2 years I feel I have been at Sunday Church every time I switch on the telly. Do this, don't do that, recycle this, say this, don't say that. You know what - give me ornithopters and people riding Sandworms.

Scott has always been outspoken and in most occasions when he says something controversial its usually a pile of shite. I remember he said he could not get financing unless he had huge mega stars in his films, but after the massive flops of his recent output, I think we can safely put that theory to bed. So blaming mobiles and Facebook as the reason why no one wanted to see his film about rape. Hmmm....let me think about that for a nanosecond...er...no. :lol:
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Re: General Film News

Post by Raid » Wed Nov 24, 2021 10:22 am

I haven't heard of The Last Duel either, but then I'm not sure where I was going to get it from. Disney+ only promote content that's watchable on Disney+ (so Disney-published cinema stuff isn't shown), I don't watch any regular TV so won't see any trailers there, and frankly, I hate the cinema, so see neither posters nor pre-show trailers (and the one film I have been to see in the last two years didn't have a trailer for this). So Mr Scott, kindly fuck off and ask your film's marketing team why the people you're insulting haven't even bloody heard of the thing you're blaming them for.

And I went and watched the trailer for it; two men fighting with honour over a woman. If I'm still apathetic after watching the trailer, maybe consider that your film just doesn't interest said demographic because the concept is tired.

Edit: Oh and it's using rape as a plot device too? Wow, I didn't realise we were still in the 1980s.

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Re: General Film News

Post by Achtung Englander » Wed Nov 24, 2021 10:28 am

it is a true story about rape. A guy is alleged to have raped the wife of the man he saved in battle - the court decides it cannot find the truth, so they fight a duel to the death for honour = truth (for some bizarre reason. As if winning a fistfight automatically puts you in the right!) Apparantely it is the last duel ever fought in France (you know before the geto gangs brought it back with guns).
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Re: General Film News

Post by Raid » Wed Nov 24, 2021 10:36 am

I missed the "true story" part, which perhaps makes it a little more defendable, but it doesn't change the fact that the entertainment industry has used a seriously traumatic crime (largely affecting women) as a framing device for male protagonists for decades, and doing it in 2021 just feels rather gross.

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Re: General Film News

Post by Wrathbone » Wed Nov 24, 2021 10:48 am

Achtung Englander wrote:
Wed Nov 24, 2021 10:11 am
I believe the essence of the problem is that we are coming out from one of the most difficult times in the last decade and so I think most of us crave escapism.
Good point. If I had heard of the film before now, I probably wouldn't have gone to any lengths to see it due to the grim subject matter. I daresay I'll see it eventually, but right now I agree that most of us want some cinematic fluff or comfortable familiarity. I tried watching Minority Report the other day, which I've seen several times before and think is decent, but I stopped it after half an hour because it was just too miserable for me to tolerate at the moment.

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Re: General Film News

Post by ManBearSquid » Wed Nov 24, 2021 10:57 am

I'd heard of it, but didn't really fancy it for reasons already stated, but I watched a Chris Stuckman video on it and he praised it quite a bit; not that his word is law or anything.

Apparently its strength is that it deals with the three different perspectives, the accused, the accuser, and the husband, and how they all perceived the events which led to the duel. That makes it sound much more interesting to me.

But aye, more interested in escapism at the moment.

*Edited for daft auto correct...

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Re: General Film News

Post by Achtung Englander » Wed Nov 24, 2021 11:36 am

Stuckman is good but like every person's opinion it will differ from yours, so I have agreed with his pov about the same number of times I have disagreed.

When film makers get upset with people for not wanting to see their film, that says more about them than the people. They made the art but we don't owe them a favour or a living. We vote with our wallets. At the end of the day Ridley Scott is far far more wealthier than me, so...er...fuck him if I do not want to pay to see your work. I would rather give my money to Denis Villeneuve.
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Re: General Film News

Post by Achtung Englander » Wed Nov 24, 2021 7:02 pm

This from the Telegraph:

Ridley Scott blames mobile phones – not Disney’s marketing, not the grimness of the material, not rival attractions such as Halloween Kills – for the calamitous box office failure of The Last Duel, his dour historical epic about a French noblewoman’s rape and her husband’s revenge. The film has taken $28m from a $100m budget, and there, in a stroke, go its awards hopes, even though it is Scott’s best-reviewed picture since The Martian in 2015.

Perhaps millennials – or “the millennian”, per Scott’s otherworldly solecism – were too busy watching The Martian on their iPhones? (It’s on Disney+, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, and all the rest.) Every film is reduced to streamable content sooner or later, but Scott’s pronouncement specifically rails against the formats in which a younger generation prefer to absorb things – those “who do not ever want to be taught anything unless you’re told it on a cell phone.”

I think it’s Scott’s choice of the word “taught”, rather than the phone argument per se, which exposes the true reasons why The Last Duel was an off-putting commercial proposition. With its three angles on sexual assault, not to mention the careful hiring of a female screenwriter, Nicole Holofcener, to explore the victim’s point of view, it looked like a teachable moment retold in triplicate; it had a whiff of work.

AE = My point exactly

We wait to see whether Scott’s House of Gucci, opening this week, falls foul of the same curse.


Personally I would rather see House of Gucci to The Last Duel

I love this last part

If Scott thinks one tradition has been lost, he may be partly right, but only because old-school cinephilia can seem particularly snobbish and fusty when it’s expressed in such a combative way. His argument becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because nothing will keep millennials away from your films faster than telling them their stupid phone use is to blame for your lousy box office. The Last Duel may have been designed to teach all those pesky kids a lesson, but Scott’s the one who’s been schooled.
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Re: General Film News

Post by Rossell » Wed Nov 24, 2021 8:05 pm

=D>

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Re: General Film News

Post by Animalmother » Thu Nov 25, 2021 3:19 pm

The Martian was probably the last enjoyable film he made, for me anyway.

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