Hollywood has lost it

You're right, that is the way you have to look at things, or you're going to be miserable.

Movies aren't so bad, there are usually good mainstream movies coming out. I mean, I saw The Girl Next Door, Dawn of the Dead, and Welcome to Mooseport recently. The first two were worth the price of admission, and the third only cost me 2 bucks. It goes in cycles, and currently, entertainment is in a recession. Movies aren't quite as good, musicians are quite as good, novelists aren't quite as good, but it will come back around.

At no point in history (meaning recorded history) has there been a considerable amount of time in which cultural decline lasted over a couple of decades. Before 2011, we should have some sort of upswing started, especially because of all the malcontent in the nation currently brewing over politics. That usually breeds creativity.

 

That may well be true.

But I'm kinda cheap and I wouldn't pay $12 for good sex so I am most likely not one who will spend $12 to see something that I probably feel is/was not worth my $$$.

I just find much of what passes for entertainment as crap. And I totally relate to what Nut said - although I don't look at it as expecting Hollywood to cater to me. I simply look at it as surveying the landscape - and then telling most of that landscape to get bent instead of supporting it with my $$$. So he's right that it's simply about my choices based on what I deem valuable.

I look at sports in much the same way. No way I'm paying anyone a couple of thousand bucks to go see a season's worth of football.

 

True, bad times usually breeds good art.

 

With all these republicans in office, there should be a rise in punk rock some time soon.

 

At least they don't laugh at me. Oh wait, you're friends never laugh at you. Oh wait, you ain't got no friends.

 

Friends who hate to talk to you aren't really friends, you know.

 

No, I don't see them "getting the point eventually." There'll always be "kids"/a young audience that hasn't seen their bullshit, a "new" audience; kids have money and are a huge segment of the market that perpetuates the bullshit.


[(Don't mean to belabor the point, but, this shit hits close to home for me, not just from an audience standpoint.) As far as the music industry goes, if you wanna get "pissed off," imagine it from the perspective of a jazz musician, and/or creative artists in general.]

 

That's true, the mainstream will always be mainstream whatever new influences they manage to pick up and run with. The analogy to music is accurate as well. But that's why I don't go see Britney Spears or whatever bullshit mass-produced, mass-marketed concerts expecting to see something unique or creative or artistic in it (in fact I don't go at all). If I want good music I go explore the fringes of the scene where art is being made. Similarly, if I want to see a good film, I go to the smaller "artsy" theaters that show foreign and independent films, not to the latest Julia Roberts movie.

It's very rare that anything truly creative will come out of the mainstream. They just take what was creative and water it down to become palatable to the masses. Music and film can either be deep but narrow in appeal or be shallow but broad in appeal. Hollywood has always been of the latter. Make a shallow movie that has a little appeal to everyone but no real meaning or feeling in it.

If you don't like Hollywood's productions, don't go watch them. That's all I was trying to say. But I agree, it sucks to see crappy, trendy "performers" making huge amounts of money when real artists are ignored. But if they drew in the money like celebrities they would probably stop being creative and just stick with what makes the most money.

 

gosh all we need is jug of chianti dope and a cable spool for a table and this could be 1969.