Saw the famous low-rent film-noir ‘Detour’ last night. Was astonished by the performance of ‘Ann Savage’ as the hitchhiker with what we would probably call borderline personality disorder these days, who terrorizes the protagonist of the picture. Take a look at the clip of ‘Ann’ below and tell me if if she doesn’t give one of the most amazing performances in cinema:
Anyhew, imagine my delight in finding out she plays Guy Madden’s mom in his new film ‘My Winnipeg’ coming to the Belcourst this month! Whoo-hoo!
(P.S. I’ve decided to become a champion of the low-budget Dear Listener after my experience with the 175 million dollar fiasco that is the Mummy).
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Maybe big budget bubble needs to be burst by a low to mid budget film that does incredible business, and I'm not talking about a summer comedy 'sleeper' hit, but an 'action-packed-adrenalin-fuelled-thrill-ride' for all the family. But big summer event movies are never deliberately made on the cheap are they?
I think it's a shame that here in Britain there's never really any attempt made to compete with the big summer market, which I think is purely because companies here think that you've got to have a mega budget in order to compete.
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Some random further blockbuster thoughts:
Phil - Gone with the Wind is possibly the first blockbuster, I agree, and I was being a little sweeping when asking if there really were any decent mega budget films. Jaws and Star Wars are two such examples, as are the Indy films. And of course we've just had The Dark Knight. But the poor certainly seem to outweigh the good.
Is CGI to blame for these poor big budget films? CGI pushes up production costs (let's have some yetis in this!!!) .Yet we see amazing results from more creative folk with less cash. Sunshine (regardless of what you thought of it) had amazing effects and production design. Terry Gilliam has always worked wonders with (most of the time) tiny budgets.
175 $1 million dollar films would be impractical, you're right Jett. But think of the possibilities of say four $40 million dollar films.
What I find amazing is not only the cost of the big event pictures during the summer, but the number of them too. It's seems normal now to have between 10 and 12 of them. Surely that wasn't always the case. I seem to recall the choice back in the summer of 1984 being Indy 2 or Star Trek 3!
Enough rambling..
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"Transformers" is an example - though I have to admit, I kind of liked this movie, even though I thought the dialogue was generally stupid as are most Michael Bay productions (and I typically hate his movies). So in that example maybe I'm part of the problem.
On the other hand, there are people (like my wife) who say they go to movies so "they don't have to think"...which is the absolute wrong way to go into a movie, because that's why you end up with so many Freddie Prinze, Jr. vehicles (which I constantly kid her is her favorite actor).
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Also, my mother in law once rented a movie strictly because Luke Perry was in it. No, it wasn't '8 seconds' - it an even more obscure movie.
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http://seesmic.com/video/F7bmN9pV5p
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Early CGI was used really well by Spielberg and Cameron - lots of wow moments.
Thought we'd reached a pinnacle last year with Transformers and Pirates 3 where the divide between beautiful effects work and awful scripts/stories had never been greater. mind you i haven't seen Mummy 3!
Maybe the the majority of the cinema going public are of the 'I go so I can switch off' variety, which explains the success of bad films. Are we the minority?
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+ I agree Kiley - one problem of course is that film is 'forgiving', being analog and all - with the moving picture in the gate and the grain/losing a generation etc., whereas if you're watching an all 'digital pipeline' presentation = Spiderman 3 going right from some CGI guy's cubicle to your HD screen = the image is rock steady and the flaws are much more apparent!
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