rght then, how to put it....hollywood product sucks. yeah, obvious insight, i know. but really, with so many talented people capable of so much original work, what the movie-going public has had shoved down our collective throats for some years now has been a spate of remakes and movie-ized tv shows and comic books.
ok, so what't the difference between a movie-version of a novel versus a tv show or comic book? nothing i guess, though a novel typically warrants movie-making if it tells a good story to begin with. shitty novels are rarely made into movies.
but here we have product with no redeemable quality, and made it seems not to tell a story but to further a brand, sell toys, sell mcdonald's food, etc.
my roommate and i have been feasting on a bunch of movies from the 1970s recently -- chinatown, the godfather movies, the conversation, dog day afternoon, midnight cowboy, (yeah, from 1969, I know, but...) and more -- and it begs the question as to why the major studios have all but abandonded good stories for commercialized crap.
yeah, indie filmmakers are the best place to look for "good" films, but why should the market be bifurcated like this? why can't the majors make more of an effort to be original and good...movie audiences will go to see good films if those films are given the chance to find an audience. i am encouraged that box office revenues are down -- it tells me that maybe people are tired of $10 tickets to see shit movies in noisy, dirty mega-plexes. souped-up home theater set-ups are nice, but there's something powerful about seeing a good movie on a big screen with a couple of hundred or so other people. that sense of community that comes from having been witness en masse to something that moved the entire audince in collective and individual ways.
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I wouldn't disagree with any of what you have said except that "The Godfather" movie was a masterpiece, but by all accounts, the novel it was based on was pulp rubbish through and through. I've never read the book so I cannot comment on that.
What makes you think anything Hollywood has spewed at us has ever been anything other than commercialised crap. The gonads running the industry have never cared about anything BUT making money, believe that most people are moronic drones who'll swallow anyhting spoon-fed to them, and have always been more than willing to rape a good story for the sake of profit (and all the attendent propaganda that is required to avoid blacklisting). Witness the Lord of the Rings; but for the character names and place names it had nothing whatsoever to do with Tolkien's trilogy. I called movie #1 the rape, #2 the sodomising, and #3 necrophilia because they had fucked it to death but kept on fucking it anyway. And most of us are more than willing to prove Hollywood's opinion of our mental faculties correct, apparently. So quit yer bitchin' and read a good book; the movies yiu make in your mind will always blow away Hollywood's shit every time.
I think that part of it is a problem of selective memory. We mostly remember and think about the movies that are great from that era, while we forget the ones that are far far more forgettable.
I also think that bad movies from the 60's and 70's now have a certain kitsch appeal that makes them not seem as bad as they actually are (Barbarella, anyone?) and that alters the view as well.
I do think the kind of "good" movies that were made in the early 70's were often in genres that appeal to your (and my) demographic more than those made today, which is a really interesting phenomenon...
For my part, I did read "The Godfather," and it was indeed one of those rare instances where the movie was better than the book; the book rambled and spent a great deal of time on some pretty secondary characters like Johnny Fontaine and Sonny's mistress. I wouldn't call it rubbish, however.
Honestly, I have no idea what people were expecting from "The Lord of the Rings," but one thing is clear: if you hated the movies that much compared to the novels, I doubt that there's any possible way to satisfy your tastes, cinema-wise.
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