The end is nigh

[Ricky Cook]

Its never amazing that movies like this have box office success. I used to question it, until I had a discussion with a family friend about movies. He had told me his few favorite movies of 2010, it made me vomit....

 

People go to the movies, and they feel comfortable with a movie like this. They had watched the first two, and wanted to see what the cast got themselve into this time.

 

Its sad, and I wouldnt even say that a movie like this is "main stream".

[John Sprung]

Its never amazing that movies like this have box office success. ...

 

Um, to which movie are you referring?

 

 

 

 

-- J.S.

[Guest]

Um, to which movie are you referring?

 

 

 

 

-- J.S.

 

I think he's referring to the original subject on page one, entry one, Little Fockers.

 

This is an easy to follow thread John, makes perfect sense to us all. :)

 

R,

[Guest]

Well Phil the avalanche has been set up:

 

http://www.cnn.com/2011/SHOWBIZ/Movies/01/25/oscar.nominations/index.html?hpt=C1

 

Now, we wait.

 

R,

[Brian Hulnick]

I had a box shipped from a relative in Calgary to me. I paid for and specified airmail expedited. The muppet sent it surface. It took 3 months to arrive. It spent 18 days driving from Calgary to Vancouver. By the time it arrived the contents were absolutely f@cked. Why are these people so inept? To make things worse they point blank refused to compensate me, basically telling me to F- Off. I thought Canadians were meant to be the "nice" Americans?

[Terry Mester]

Cine Plex controls 80% of theatrical releasing in Canada. Currently there are no rules forcing them to carry any Canadian product.

The Producers, Directors and Actors Guilds in Canada should start lobbying the Provincial Governments to get something done. The Federal Government isn't needed. Another option to consider is a class action lawsuit against the Canadian Cinema chains. They must be violating their Business Licence by discriminating against Canadian movies.

[Guest]

They must be violating their Business Licence by discriminating against Canadian movies.

 

Well not really, they are a private company and the theatres are their private property, so they argue they can show what they like.

 

The airwaves on the other hand belong to every one, so the CDN gov't feels they have the right to regulate the amount of Canadian content Canadians see on TV on behalf of the people of Canada.

 

The theatres are much stickier situation. That said, South Korea and France have implemented quota systems on foreign theatrical content, Canada could also do it.

 

R,

[Brian Dzyak]

Well not really, they are a private company and the theatres are their private property, so they argue they can show what they like.

 

The airwaves on the other hand belong to every one, so the CDN gov't feels they have the right to regulate the amount of Canadian content Canadians see on TV on behalf of the people of Canada.

 

The theatres are much stickier situation. That said, South Korea and France have implemented quota systems on foreign theatrical content, Canada could also do it.

 

R,

 

 

As my own awareness and knowledge about economics and politics continues to develop and grow, it appears that the one thing nobody comes right out to say in words is that a nation is nothing more than a business, at least in 2011. In our new Global Fascist world, the government's role, primarily, is to PROTECT, NOT develop, the rights and opportunities of "for profit" Corporations to obtain and maintain wealth.

 

As mentioned before, a government has many various entities to think about, so it might be apt to "give away" profits on one thing (ie, film industry) in order to gain on something else (ie, other commodities), particularly when dealing with globalized international trade policies. So, perhaps Canada is willingly f'ing over the national film industry in order to gain profits from some other industry.

 

Thus is the problem with Globalization and "free market" attitudes, particularly when the "fix is in" that ensures that one industry is set up to fail just so that something else is propped up to prosper.

 

So, for Canadians, the question isn't so much about what Americans (the American motion-picture industry) are doing to "f***" over the Canadian film industry, so much as asking what the Canadian Government has chosen to cut deals on for other industries that results in the f*****g over of the Canadian film industry. In other words, what is Canada GETTING from the USA that makes it worth f'ing over the Canadian film industry and the crew there?

[Guest]

In other words, what is Canada GETTING from the USA that makes it worth f'ing over the Canadian film industry and the crew there?

 

Billions of dollars worth of oil sales to the USA, billions of dollars worth of car and auto part sales to the USA.

 

The Canadian gov't would never upset the apple cart on either of those two industries in order to give Canadian filmmakers access to Canadian screens. Never going to happen.

 

R,

[Markshaw]

Is Canadian cinema that bad?

[Markshaw]

Well let's take the typical Atom Egoyan film, say Ararat. It's a well made movie, from a filmmaking point of view. But it is in no way "commercial." It's the kind of movie the critics will heap praise upon, but you could not force people to go see at gunpoint.

 

Canadians like their American made shoot em' up, blow em' up, blockbusters as well as Americans do. Knowing this, the cinema chains in Canada will be hard pressed to dislodge a movie that will generate ticket sales in favour of a Canadian auteur movie.

 

In short, Canadians do not make commercially viable movies. And the main funding agency in Canada, TeleFILM, is run by a bunch of downtown Toronto pompous elitist fools that will not even consider a "commercial" script. They have a history of only funding content that no one wants to see, and this is the very argument they put forward to justify their existence.

 

R,

 

And I bet they wear cravattes and tweed sports jackets with brown elbow patches. Bunch of sad sacks.

[Brian Hulnick]

I hate those pompous a-holes. Even worse than French enema I mean cinema. Style over substance.

[Markshaw]

It's just amazing how two countries that share the same ethnicity and language (mainly) can be so different culturally.

[Phil Rhodes]

but you could not force people to go see at gunpoint.

On the other hand, I would have said that about The King's Speech (and in fact I did say that about The King's Speech), but it is apparently possible for these things to be sleeper hits.

I suspect that's still not a sufficiently reliable basis for a commercial industry, though.

P

[K Borowski]

Let's think out of the boxx here: Why not make two versions of Canadian moovies? One with art-house scenes added, another American version with MORE EXPLOSIONS?

 

 

If they could photograph movies in flat and scope, present them today in 35mm 2D or digital for $3.75 more, why not for two different genres?

[Pat Murray]

Let's think out of the boxx here: Why not make two versions of Canadian moovies? One with art-house scenes added, another American version with MORE EXPLOSIONS?

 

 

If they could photograph movies in flat and scope, present them today in 35mm 2D or digital for $3.75 more, why not for two different genres?

 

Canadian filmmakers (James Cameron, Norman Jewison, Paul Haggis, the Reitmans etc.) do make American friendly films, they just have to go to America to do it. Telefilm/NFB or whatever would probably gladly give them money to make a commercial Canadian movie now, but are probably in a catch 22. When these gentlemen started, they would probably be ignored in favour of the Atom Egoyan types, now these grant agencies can't afford them.

 

Ireland and Australia are two excellent examples of countries smaller than Canada who managed to nurture a film industry which produced both commercial and criticaly (sometimes both) acclaimed artsie movies. The Canadian film industry should look to them for ideas.

[Pat Murray]

It's just amazing how two countries that share the same ethnicity and language (mainly) can be so different culturally.

 

Not so different, just different when it comes to our respective film industries.

 

What's different is the Quebec culture and their film industry exists in its own little vacuum within that province. The province of Quebec actually does a better job of nurturing a filmmaking culture that is supportive of both artsie and commercially oriented films (action, comedy etc.).

 

For those outside of Quebec who have some kind of understanding of the French Canadian culture, there is a wealth of hidden gems produced in that province that are only hits in Quebec and sometimes France. Their music industry is the same.

 

Actually, you can add Quebec to Ireland and Australia as places where the Canadian film industry can learn a thing or two from.

 

I do wonder if the amount of work from the American film and television industry done in Canada has something to do with our current situation as well. The government and applicable provinces have made a decision to sink their scarce budget resources (tax incentives, grants etc.) into American productions in Canada rather than growing a Canadian film industry.

 

Lastly, there's the fact that most Canadians love Hollywood commercial films as much as Americans and have a very negative POV regarding their own cinema.

[Otis Grapsas]

The purpose of goverment funding in most countries is supposed to be to support films that could not possibly get funding in the open market but would contribute to the art in their own way. They do not see filmmaking as a business, they don't worry about sales, ticket taxes, income tax or export potential. They will happily fund the same director into multiple consecutive commercial failures and refuse funding to a commercially succesful director.

 

The main problem is Europe is that most people write for the critics and not for the audience. It's usually pretentious nonsense, not even targeted to educated and perceptive critics or serious cinema theorists, just to the variety of crossover journalists that get all the publicity. In Europe we usually fail to see the Art in a well executed commercial Hollywood film, so we find a refuge in what we call the Art film.

 

The Art film does need to actually be anything, it can pretend to be something it is not, it just triggers references in the mind of some half-educated fools and almost everybody is happy. If you get yourself into the Art film trip while writing a film, it's extremely liberating. You get all the load of commercial success off your shoulder, you don't have to worry about the audience experience or storytelling. By claiming it's an Art film by applying a certain style (or even directly in an interview!) you are safely secured in the margin of the predictable Art film commercial failure. You decided it would be an Art film so it's not a failure any more. You can actually boost your ego by thinking that the audience is not good enough for your film.

 

Meanwhile european films from the 60s had all the Art we see imitated in modern filmmaking AND commercial success in Europe and the world and are still selling DVDs. They shaped filmmaking as we know it, only to be forgotten by their own children, the european filmmakers.

[Phil Rhodes]

would contribute to the art in their own way

 

Too bloody vague.

 

The higher up you get in government-funded arts, the more you realise that all the meetings and the proposals and the paperwork and the bullshit eventually boil down to vague statements like this. If you worked for Telefilm Canada or the UK Film Council or Insert Equivalent Self-Serving Cavalcade of Nationalised Idiocy Here, you'd be aware that these sorts of phrases mean something like the following:

 

It's so up its own arse it's practically transdimensional. We don't understand it. Possibly nobody does, but we're buggered if we're going to be the first to voice the opinion that it's a piece of meaningless back-slappery that allows you to build an accurate mental image of the writer before you've set eyes on him and his flat cap and his skinny jeans and his £60 artificially-distressed T-shirt from a rock tour that happened ten years before he was born. Therefore, let us throw some money at them and they'll go away, so we can concentrate on writing press releases involving words like "interpretive" and "dissonance" then enjoy a two-hour lunchy, on expenses, and involving a couple of bottle of jolly decent cava and a swift and illicit moment of breathless sweatiness with one of the creative team's immediate family who's impressed with us because we behave like a prime mover in an industry we haven't taken the time to notice doesn't exist.

 

Now that is what that means.

 

P

[Otis Grapsas]

Phil, it's art by committee, that's to be expected:)

[Otis Grapsas]

A 2009 greek film, many international awards and Best Feature according to the newly formed Hellenic Film Academy.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFtDzK64-pk

 

Quite similar to Little Fockers if you think about it, antidiametrically positioned but equally problematic.

[Pat Murray]

I agree 100%. As for Quebec, they get 50% of the TeleFILM budget for being 22% of the population. This situation is an outrage to say the least. But very typical of how Canada works. The French tail wags the English dog.

 

R,

I did not know that, but I am not surprised. As you stated, it's very typical of how Canada works.

[K Borowski]

TeleFILM did their very best to hide this information from English Canada for years. It was uncovered by some journalists and has been well published all over the web.

 

I've actually written to the Heritage Minister expressing my position on this stupidity. He wrote back with some typical dumbass political letter.

 

It's such a joke.

 

R,

 

Richard, parle vous Franc,ais? :)

 

 

If you know how the system works, and you can put up with the Quebecois, why not exploit that? Hire a few token crew there and shoot in Montreal?

[Otis Grapsas]

Richard, I can tell it's european. I can clearly see the guy beating the girl in the head with a VHS player:)

[Pat Murray]

Richard, parle vous Franc,ais? :)

 

 

If you know how the system works, and you can put up with the Quebecois, why not exploit that? Hire a few token crew there and shoot in Montreal?

 

Not a bad idea on the surface and I have a friend of the family who has made a very lucrative career working solely in the Montreal film business. As there's always work to be had if you can speak French.

 

The other side of the coin is Richard will have to make mostly - in the words of my family friend - crummy French movies about Quebec, the Quebecois, Quebecois culture, Quebecois experience in Canada and so on and so forth. Richard will have a hard time getting funding, even in Montreal with a Montreal crew, to produce something like the Dogfather.