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Well given that I saw it for the fifth time on Saturday with my future mother-in-law who wanted to see it because she heard it was good, well then I guess that counts as being dismissive of SF. What I don't do is use word of mouth and reviews to justify my opinion. I don't care what I can glean from critics or the B.O. I form my opinions based on my own experiences and I don't have to justify them to you of all people. The queen of spin.
Totally agree.
Am I getting you right here Germanlady in that you are saying that if a film succeeds in its target market it is a worthy of awards as any other film?
Because if you are down that route madness lies.
I don't think it's any criteria at all to be judging something's artistic merit.
The Fast And The Furious, Crank and Transformers are all pretty successful at appealing to their target audiences but anyone suggesting they might be Oscar worthy is a bona fide moron.
Although you open up a whole can of worms as to how society judges a films artistic merit. Who's to say the opinion of the chav proles who lap up the latest Stath film is any less valid to anyone else's when evaluating artistic worth?
Dr. No and Finding Nemo currently hold a higher percentage on Rotten Tomatoes than The Dark Knight, The Godfather, Fight Club, Gone With the Wind, Inception, etc. Does that mean they're better movies? Critical ratings don't always directly translate, especially outside of the Best Picture category. I love Skyfall for what it is, and I think it deserves a nomination for Best Picture, but in the other categories individually I'm not really sure if it's deserving and that has NOTHING to do with it being a Bond movie. As huge of a Bond fan as I am, it's only fair to go in with an unbiased opinion and I honestly feel it's worthy of nomination for Cinematography, Sound Design/Mixing, Best Picture, because the quality of the film in those categories compared to it's competition holds up well. While Javier and Judi could get noms, they're performances are very good and not spectacular, and they could benifit from relatively weak competition, but I expect it may get tougher when Les Miserables and Django Unchained are released.
@Jim, where do you read dismissive? I meant to say and think I have - that we have 2 different criteria and like I said, for a film like Lincoln 100 or 150 mill counts for as much as a billion for a blockbuster. They are both successful.
But where does art begin?
With so many blockbuster films failing, doesn't that show, that making this sort of film successful is as difficult as making a highly artsy and meaningful film. Is a film with depth really more worthy then a fine made blockbuster? Again - where does art starts for you?
Of course, in most blockbuster, not all though, you won't find Oscar worthy acting, but other ingredients are there, that work. Its a difficult question, but I raise it nevertheless - whether or not you tear me apart or not ;) ..and I am not riding the SF train with this.
In an attempt to be high minded, I think people often become far too restrictive. In some ways, it reminds me of a propaganda poster I saw, and that is coming back into vogue as an art design:
"Obey. Never trust your own eyes. Believe what you are told."
These are all valid points but I would remind you of the Wizards number 1 rule: the general public are retards. Therefore the more of them that like something the more likely it is to be lowest common denominator.
And let us not forget the Oscars are actually voted for by industry peers - ie people who know what they are talking about when it comes to filmmaking so I would say that in general (obviously there have been some shocking travesties at the Oscars) the opinion of such people holds more validity than the population as a whole.
Couldn't agree more. It's pure happenstance if something of cultural or artistic value also becomes a commercial success.
Are you referring to the Academy still?
Well, don't you make all your box office rankings here in US dollars ? :)
If you did it in UK pounds for instance, you'd be quite surprised at some modifications. And btw, here we're talking about a franchise that makes most of his money outside the $ world !
For instance, QOS did about 10/15% less than DAD in France in ticket sales. But when DAD was released, 1Euro = 0.9$. When QOS was released , 1 Euro = 1.4$. Foreign box office for France then gave 30M$ for QOS, 23M$ for DAD (unadjusted for inflation). So thanks to the exchange rate, and thanks to it only, QOS is perceived as far more successfull than DAD in $ in France, while the truth is the opposite if you consider ticket sales, and even Euro sales !
The fact that DAD was released at recent all time high for the $, and QOS at an all time low, is a critical parameter if you want to compare them actually in my opinion... (and my real opinion is that you should not really bother to do such comparisons :) )
The good news for all of you who want merely unadjusted $ comparison, is that the $ keeps on being less and less worthy in China currency . Between 2004 and 2012, the $ lose about 33% in China for instance, and it's a somehow constant trend over time. It means that as time went by, you needed less and less results in China to reach any given results in $...
The bad news is that in five years time, all these unadjusted $ based list may have exploded and all the current hits may loose some rankings (or not, frankly don't listen to anyone who claim to know the future in these fields - or wonder why they are not billionnaire if they're so expert in market trend prediction !)
Or, to conclude, given that it opens in China in quite some time still, it turns out the fiscall cliff debate currently in the US, and its consequences on the dollar value, may have a critical impact in Skyfall being a dollar billionnaire worldwide :)
Indeed. The entire purpose of art is to share it. It thrives on reviews, no matter how negative to exist as a piece of "art".
Ha ha are we discussing Bond as art in a thread about Box Office stats? True Art concerns itself with philosophical and aesthetic values, not commercial ones.
I'm talking about the creative process. That is where art happens. I would argue a lot of technical people on the film provide individual works of 'art' whether it be physical or visual. As a filmic whole though the 'art' is unfortunately perforated with shots of Omega watches and Heineken bottles so it loses the right to call itself art IMO.
Who said Shakespeare was art?
We never got down to excplain, what art really is. At what point can something be called art? When do we call a film artful?
Oh...wait...
"Making money is art and good business is the best art" -- apologies if I may have slightly misquoted, but there you go.