I don’t go to many movies anymore but I sat in premium seats for John Wick 4 at a fancy theater and paid like $11 for the ticket, i was shocked at how cheap it was.
it feels like in the early 2000s ticket prices skyrocketed but they’ve definitely been on a relative plateau for a long time recently
I guess I’ve been going to senior day (Tuesday), but I haven’t seen anything since D&D and so was Shocked by $30.
B- on the TopGun nostalgia scale. Would be fine to stream instead of going to the theater.
1 Like
I haven’t been to the theater since Covid and don’t think I’ll be going back. My first career was in theater so I know what a live audience experience is and never cared that much for it in movies because the performers can’t hear you. I have a big enough TV and next year may have Apples googles to watch movies on an even bigger screen. I only have to watch 364 movies to have the googles pay for themselves!
If they didn’t make it so easy to stream I would go to theaters way more. I used to go to like 30 movies a year in the theater, now maybe 1 or 2 that aren’t for my kids.
Pumped for Oppenheim though.
1 Like
I’m starting a petition to wipe the last two movies from existence and treat the one episode of Young Indy that starred Harrison Ford as the fourth and final movie.
In most episodes, the elder Indiana Jones was played by George Hall, but in “Mystery of the Blues,” Harrison Ford himself came back. Someone compiled just his scenes into a series of clips on YouTube, and you can of course watch the whole episode on Disney+.
1 Like
IJ5 spoilers
Can someone fix these tags. Cannot get them to work.
[spoiler]Whole movie was just there.
Goddaughter character didn’t really make sense. All over the map. Never bought her as a rogue. That said PWB had fun with the role. Just no gravitas.
Homages were familiar, but not remarkable.
Indy Set pieces look just like ROTA which is not a compliment. Just seemed choreographed. Awesome 40 years ago.
Syracuse war laughable CGI. Looked like the TV ads for one of those cartoonish smartphone app games.
Time travel needed to have direct family implications for Indy. Didn’t feel like anything was at stake.
Plan to kill Hitler twist was way too telegraphed.
Kid and Indy’s goodwill kept it to a veneer of entertainment. Otherwise mark would be lower.[/spoiler]
Yeah, I can’t fathom buying candy at a theater. Just smuggle stuff in, it’s an American tradition.
2 Likes
Working my way through a Mad Men rewatch and holy shit does Matt Wiener’s kid suck at acting.
1 Like
Film Crit Hulk wrote 30k words on The Bear:
I really like his commentary on movie & games, and as he details he’s super into cooking & fine dining, I’m kinda shocked he got this far without having seen it yet. Anyway, it’s fun to watch him gush over The Bear.
Weeks later I still find myself thinking about Richie’s episode every now and then (and sometimes get “Love Story” stuck in my head as a result). It’s haunting in how good it is.
1 Like
SAG-AFTRA (the actors union) is set to join the writers on strike in Hollywood. I hope this is good news and the combined pressure results in better deals for both of them.
1 Like
Only Union President to become POTUS
Ronnie Reagan.
Fran Drescher is positioned to be the next!!! She actually considered running for Senate when Hillary was first running for POTUS in 2008.
She said in this 2017 interview that she is explicitly anti-capitalist, so like, I gotta think a bunch of folks ITT would slam dunk a vote for her (if they thought she’d get elected lol Green Party etc etc).
2 Likes
Good article:
In certain ways, “Orange” was an early indicator of how lopsided the streaming economy would be, and a number of cast members are now conflicted: they’re proud to have been on such a progressive, influential show, but feel shortchanged out of the wealth that it created. “We all took a risk together,” Alysia Reiner, who played the corrupt warden Natalie (Fig) Figueroa, said. “And the reward for Netflix does not seem in line with the reward for all of us who took that risk. I can go anywhere in the world and I’m recognized, and I’m so deeply grateful for that recognition. Many people say they’ve watched the series multiple times, and they quote me my lines. But was I paid in a commensurate way? I don’t think so.”
“Orange” was distributed by Netflix but produced by Lionsgate, which determined the cast’s up-front payments. Myles was paid scale, sag’s minimum rate, which was under nine hundred dollars per day. “They could and would pay us the absolute bare minimum, and there was really no wiggle room,” she recalled. Her contract was appended with sag’s 2012 New Media Agreement, which covered projects “produced for initial exhibition via the Internet, mobile devices, or any other platform known or which hereafter may be adopted” (now known as half of TV). sag had originally codified the agreement in 2009, after a yearlong standoff with the studios. At the time, streaming TV was mostly theoretical, except for the under-five-minute “Webisodes” that “Lost” ran on abc.com. The contractual terms were—and remain—much worse for actors than those of “linear” TV. (This is a major source of contention in the actors’ current standoff with the studios.) Traditional broadcast series pay residuals for each re-airing, calculated as a percentage of the actor’s salary. The 2012 New Media Agreement entitled Myles to residuals only after the first fifty-two weeks the show was on the platform; the amount was based not on how many times each episode was watched but on a percentage of the licensing fee that Netflix paid Lionsgate to distribute the show. (If this sounds confusing, don’t worry—the actors also find it baffling.) Myles still gets around six hundred dollars a year for a handful of guest spots on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” stretching back to 2004, but her residuals this year for “Orange” have come to around twenty bucks.
That last sentence, wow. Per IMDB, she was on four episodes of SVU and fifty four episodes of Orange.
Before one sag Awards ceremony, the cast attended a house party thrown by Ted Sarandos, then Netflix’s chief content officer and now its co-C.E.O. Several actors remember that Sarandos gave a toast bragging that more people watched “Orange” than “Game of Thrones”—a rare sliver of transparency about the ratings. (One actor called it a “whoops” moment.) But the cast found the line less uplifting than galling; if the show was really more popular than “Game of Thrones”—whose top cast members have been said to make more than a million per episode by the end—why were the salaries for “Orange” so paltry? DeLaria told me, “I remember all of us thinking, ‘Give us the money!’ But we were always saying, ‘Give us the money.’ We were keenly aware that we weren’t being paid.” She added, referring to her residuals, “I get twenty dollars! I would love to know: How much money did Ted make last year?” (Twenty-two million in salary, plus stock options.)
1 Like
It’s all pretty bleak, hopefully creative people take a stand because the future is definitely moving toward AI cranking out endless streams of disposable Marvel/Star Wars crap.
honestly modern audiences deserve it
AI might even do better than half the crap that’s churned out now, and a lot of the creatives realize it.
Pretty surprised SAG joined as well though.
Honestly if I was the studio’s I’d mainly be worried about accidentally starving the talent to the point where they decide to cut the studios out.
Here’s the thing: the technology to make movies has literally never been cheaper. Iphone camera’s are pretty close to the same quality as any camera ever made, and this AI generated background tech is going to make stuff less expensive not more.
Louis CK making some of his specials independently and making a fuckton of money basically set what streaming services had to pay for standup specials, and it’s a lot. Blumhouse has done really well financially making movies as cheaply as humanly possible but cutting in the talent heavily on the resulting revenue.
There’s no shortage of money in making content in 2023. What there is a shortage of is reasons why talented people who already have money need a movie studio. To take the risk? Make a smaller movie and let the cast/crew/writer/director keep pretty much all the money.
TV is already being made for nearly nothing for the streamers. If you’ve demonstrated it costs nothing to make content you’ve made it much less risky for the talent to just do it themselves and cut you out.
Orange is the New Black could have been made by an independent operation pretty easily given what they were paying for talent. It’s not like the set/costumes were super expensive either.
You don’t even have to self fund if you have a bankable star/director/etc like the studios would have required anyway. Try and tell me there are no rich people who want an excuse to rub shoulders with famous people for a few months and then probably make money at the end.
The studios/streamers sell bundled business development at a very steep price. In 2023 raising some money, handling the technical aspect of running a streaming site, and producing a movie/tv show don’t actually make sense bundled. Producing and raising the money together make sense bundled, but you don’t need a big corporate parent to do that… it’s just what made sense when making movies was significantly more capital intensive than it is now.
3 Likes
Direct action gets the goods
3 Likes