15-and-Unders vs. Traditional Cinema

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A little more than three years ago N.Y. Times reporter Kyle Buchanan posted an intensively researched piece about the future (if any) of movies, especially in the minds of Millennials and Zoomers. The piece was called “How Will the Movies (As We Know Them) Survive the Next 10 Years?“.

The basic answer was that movie loyalty is a thing of the past and that cinema culture as most of us know it isn’t likely to survive.

The keeper quote was from Kumail Nanjiani. The basic thrust was about 20somethings not being into movies as a rule, and watching them sporadically at best. The quote is pasted below. It would seem that Nanjiani’s “friend who directs big movies” was on to something.

Today the youngest Zoomers are ten years old, and anyone younger is Gen Alpha. For years the running joke with Millennials and Zoomers is that ADD isn’t a bug but a feature. I’m presuming that the Kumail observation goes double or triple when it comes to 15-and-unders.

Ask a typical tween or young teen what their favorite films are and a good percentage, I’m guessing, will give you a slightly quizzical look. Focusing on anything longer than a TikTok video is a challenge. Phone screen and streaming content, sure, but I would be hugely surprised to hear that even a small percentage watch “films.”

We all understand that attention spans, at least as far as scripted stand-alone dramas and comedies lasting 90 minutes or longer are concerned, have been diminishing among younger people since the ‘80s.

When I was a tween and young teen, I was watching actual films made by name-brand filmmakers. I saw King Kong and The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms when I was eight or nine. I saw and loved Red River when I was ten. I knew who Julie Christie, Terrence Stamp, David Hemmings, Olivia Hussey, Paul Newman, John Wayne, Cary Grant, Kirk Douglas and Kenneth Tobey were. I watched adventures, comedies. My mother used to go to Ingmar Bergman films and come home and rave about them.

What do I actually know about where young Zoomers and Generation Alpha are at in terms of cinema? Not much but I can guess.

Present-tense despair: If there was ever a demographic whose taste in films represents a blend of Dante’s Inferno (or my idea of it) and a metaphor for the ruination and death of cinema as you and I and people like David Fincher, Ari Aster, Todd Field, Peter Farrelly, Luca Guadagnino and Chris Nolan know it, it’s almost certainly tweens and young teens of 2022.

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Hilarious Smile Drop

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In no way, shape or form is HE criticizing Ben Affleck for his abrupt mirth abandonment in this video clip. I’m applauding him, in fact. We all do this at parties, but Affleck does it better. The laugh and the smile disappear in the space of one-third of a second. You can’t say it’s not funny. It’s like a rehearsed bit in a comedy.

@faux.celeb.love Jennifer Lopez & Ben Affleck. His smile drops so fast 😳 ⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣ #jlo #jenniferlopez #benaffleck #batman #celebgossip #teenagedirtbagbaby #foryoupage #yourfyp #popculture #celebrities ♬ original sound – faux.celeb.love

Looks Like D.C. Comics Villain

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Those glaring dark eyes. That butch-boss Marine haircut. The garish rouge splotch on her cheeks. Those thick red lips. Those dangling earrings. All she needs is a big fat lighted cigar, the kind that Edward G. Robinson smoked in Key Largo.

Wyoming Republican House candidate Harriet Hageman, who defeated Liz Cheney in Tuesday’s Republican Wyoming primary, looks like an ally (or perhaps a nemesis) of Colin Farrell‘s Oswald “Oz” Cobblepot. She has the grotesque super-villain look down cold.

Queerty‘s Graham Gremore: “Despite appearing to draw her makeup inspiration from Tina Burner’s makeover of Rosé on RuPaul’s Drag Race, Hageman actually hates LGBTQ people.”

Rats (Jones, Ingraham) Leaving Sinking Trump Ship

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Lunatic rightie Alex Jones has bailed on Donald Trump as a Presidential contender. Florida governor Ron DeSantis, he says, is “way better than Trump.” Yesterday Fox News headliner Laura Ingraham, a longtime Trump friend and political ally, said that exhausted Republican voters might be deciding that “it’s time to turn the page” on Orange Plague.

HE to Netflix: Stream 300-Minute Version of “Das Boot”?

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As a tribute to the recently passed Wolfgang Petersen, perhaps Netflix would consider streaming the extra-long version of Das Boot (’81), which runs around 300 minutes? Or, failing that, Petersen’s 209-minute “Director’s Cut”?

Wiki Excerpt: “Das Boot was partially financed by German television broadcasters WDR and the SDR, and more footage was filmed than was shown in the theatrical version.

“A version of six 50-minute episodes was transmitted on BBC2 in the United Kingdom in October 1984, and again during the 1999 Christmas season. In February 1985 three 100-minute episodes were broadcast in Germany.

“Peterson then edited a 209-minute version, Das Boot: The Director’s Cut, combining the action sequences from the feature-length version with the character development scenes from the miniseries released to cinemas worldwide in 1997, also improving audio quality.”

“I Do Like Stabbing”

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Wednesday is being called a comedy-horror series, except it’s not a horror thing at all — it’s dry social satire. Jenna Ortega as Wednesday Addams, the latest in a long line but this time with Tim Burton-level production values and a Burtonesque sense of humor.

Suddenly My “Beer Run” Blood Is Up

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Peter Farrelly‘s The Greatest Beer Run Ever (Apple+, 9.30) will have its big debut at the Toronto Film Festival, probably sometime between 9.8 and 9.14, I’m guessing. The trailer is excellent and so is the poster, and I’m suddenly I’m thinking “hey, wait…this might be something.”

We all know that wokester critics are going to be gunning for Farrelly in order to punish him for Green Book having won the 2018 Best Picture Oscar. Somewhere between 96% and 97% of the moviegoing world loved that film (me too) but the wokesters did everything they could to kill it, and so they’re determined to pay Farrelly back. (They’ll deny this, of course.)

We also understand that a film about a New York working-class paleface with a meathead accent travelling thousands of miles to bring beer to his Vietnam War-serving bruhs in ’67 and ’68 is going to be attacked six ways from Sunday…too white, too apolitical and not guilty enough for starters. Or so it would seem, I should say, based on the trailer and to some extent John “Chick” Donohue and Joanna Molloy’s 2020 book.

But you can also tell Farrelly’s film is a grade-A thing — first-rate writing, acting, cinematography, atmosphere, the works — and that slivers of moral ambiguity have been slipped between the story beats.

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Remember “Power of the Dog”?

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No, seriously…kidding. Nobody liked it then, and nobody but nobody wants to remember it now. It was force-fed through an elite critic pipeline — you had to watch and respect and damn well vote for Jane Campion as Best Director, and if you weren’t down with this…well, who knew? Perhaps you or your career needed to be reevaluated and perhaps not. But it was safer to go along.

Only now are people allowed to speak candidly.

“Das Boot” Forever

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Regrets and condolences over the passing of Wolfgang Petersen, but when I heard earlier today I nodded and thought a bit about his career accomplishments, but nothing erupted. First-rate fellow, efficient action and thriller chops, respected and admired. I had a good time with In The Line of Fire and portions of The Perfect Storm, but the only Petersen film that really knocked me flat…

Hatfield v. McCoys

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Before 2017 I felt a fairly profound social kinship with 95% of film critics out there. Socially, I mean. Parties, lunches, late-night cafe hangs at film festivals, etc. Except for the dicks, phonies and elitists, which you’ll run into in any profession.

But since ‘17 a new breed of critic has come into being — SJWs, virtue signalers, representationals, safeties. Radicals with a woke axe to grind. I see them at screenings and mutter, “Oh, Jesus…keep your head down.” No talking to them, no trust or relaxation, no respect…fuck that noise. They’re almost the enemy. They certainly aren’t true-blue movie Catholics — they’re like the McCoys to my own crew, the Hatfields. Or something like that.