OMFG, what is wrong with Hollywood? Let me tell you:
1 No class
2 No imagination
3 Too PC
4 No room for artistic talent
5 Money matters most
It might not matter to most people, but I really feel it's time for Hollywood to do something about it. Who can name any actors from today's talent-pool that can match Gable, Bogart, Brando, Eastwood or Stewart?
In today's money-centric Hollywood I bet your answer is "I can't". It might be because I have spent the last few weeks watching a lot of 30s -70s films, in fact I have now managed to get my top 1000 films bucket list almost completed!, but it might be a more fundamental issue that has caused the demise of European cinema.
I, for one, am sick and tired of all the crappy comic-based films that have become the latest trend - they are getting more and more ridiculous, it's akin to the 50s fascination for cowboy films. I realise that the audience drives the market, but when the audience pays over a billion US$ to see an "avengers" film, something has to be done. Maybe Hollywood will realise that if they make films that aren't explosions every five minutes, or chock full of comic-book characters, they will still have an audience - drive your audiences to strive for more.
The recent spate of remakes surely showed that worldwide audiences might have the attention span of hamsters or goldfish, after all if they have to read subtitles they might drop their popcorn in their lap, but the horrendous remakes of Män som hatar kvinnor into The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Infernal Affairs into The Departed, really illustrate how superb films are remade after only a couple of years for Hollywood to make money out of. In those two cases the Hollywood versions are definitely inferior.
There have been some really good remakes, most notably for me The Last Man on Earth to I Am Legend, Yojimbo to A Fistful of Dollars, Death Takes a Holiday to Meet Joe Black and even Mr. Deeds. Unfortunately remakes such as Assault on Precinct 13, The Italian Job and D.O.A. leave something missing, something perhaps intangible to today's movie-goers: Atmosphere!
With the demise of other countries' cinema we are left with; the USA and their chock-full-of-explosions, China and their actor-on-wires myths, and Indian musicals. To be fair, I am not saying that we should start churning out black & white Swedish films, but I cannot help but think that Europe needs to put more effort into it. So many good European films are not making it to mainstream, most probably due to subtitles, perhaps we need to look at that more thoroughly.
I realise the whole of Europe doesn't speak one common language, but so many speak English I think it is time to adopt it. There are many great actors out there who already span dual languages; Jean Reno, Joaquim de Almeida, Daniela Ruah, Carice van Houten, Mila Kunis ... if only there were more I could think of right now.
I realise the whole of Europe doesn't speak one common language, but so many speak English I think it is time to adopt it. There are many great actors out there who already span dual languages; Jean Reno, Joaquim de Almeida, Daniela Ruah, Carice van Houten, Mila Kunis ... if only there were more I could think of right now.
Ah well - today's rant over, lets examine some fixes:
1 More money into European cinema
2 Develop talent by convincing youngsters it's ok to act or write scripts
3 Encourage children to spend more time in-front of cameras
4 Keep talent in Europe by paying them more
