wouldn't it be great it...

Imagine you were a director working on a worthy drama, tackling an important social issue in a heartfelt, compassionate manner, and that you had the skill to pull this off in an aesthetically assured and impeccably crafted way. In short, imagine you are making a film that would sweep the Academy Awards, the Palme d'Or, the Golden Bear, and whatever other award can be thrown at it.

Now imagine that you film an alternate ending where, say, one of the main characters turns out to be a monstrous alien witch-doctor in disguise, who slaughters the entire cast before raising their corpses as an army of zombies and taking over the world. This is only an example, but you get my drift.

Next, imagine that you distribute the film with the proper, normal ending, but that you put the alternate ending onto one in every, say, two or three hundred prints that goes out to theatres. When you eventually release the film on DVD, you do the same thing with the same proportion of DVDs.

Finally, sit back and wait for people to start wondering why the HELL no-one else seemed to notice that ridiculous ending...and then start to wonder if they imagined seeing that ending when they watch the film again somewhere else and find an entirely different ending...

the definition of "mainstream"

Let us imagine the possibility of a film made to a nine-figure budget, marketed across the globe as a big "event" films, that pulls in enough crowds to be top of the box-office for several weeks, perhaps even ranking among the year's best-performing films in financial terms. Now let us further imagine that such a film, beneath the crowd-pulling lavish production values and spectacle that is de rigeur for a film with a budget of that magnitude, ultimately exhibits a sensibility aimed at a specific, niche audience - that it can be enjoyed on a superficial level by a wide audience, but only actually understood by a much smaller subset of that audience.

This is occasioned by my catching a screening of Robert Zemeckis' Beowulf - I will post a full review shortly, but suffice to say I was pleasantly surprised - a film that fits virtually every practical definition of a mainstream blockbuster. It also happens to virtually demand some considerable knowledge of the Old English poem in order for its full subtleties and intent to be understood, since the film virtually positions itself as a dialogue with its source text.

A "mainstream" audience will come to Beowulf and perhaps enjoy it for the joyously over-the-top action scenes, or perhaps be slightly bored by the long-winded sections between these scenes. A considerable majority of its audience, however, is - and I am really trying hard to avoid sounding elitist here - unable to understand the full impact of its references and the thematic weight behind the film's events and images.

This is similar to a discussion that developed recently in a cultural criticism class I attended, about whether Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill (2003-2004) should be considered cult or mainstream. In terms of production, exposure, marketing. cultural impact and audience reception, there can be little doubt that it is a major mainstream release. In terms of sensibility, the question is more problematic. It is certain that only a small segment of its audience will understand its wide range of cultural references or be aware of the cinematic legacies Tarantino is paying homage to - and, ultimately, Kill Bill was made for these people more than for the wider audience. It is even possible, though perhaps to a lesser extent, to argue a similar case for Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) trilogy, the biggest blockbusters of all.

Does it make sense, then, to call these films mainstream, or commercial? Is "mainstream" defined according to inherent qualities a film possesses, or is it measured purely by the film's media profile and financial success? Is it possible that some (by no means all) of the most-watched, highest-earning films might, in sensibility, and beneath their glossy surface, be as niche at heart as more overtly "cult" hits?

on year-end lists

The first year-end lists for 2007 have started to be released, which presents me with a slight problem. I love reading and writing year-end top tens/twenties/hundreds/whatever, though I do realize they have to be taken with a pinch of salt, and reveal at least as much about the critic's tastes as about any objective overview of the field.

It's ultimately a highly personal endeavour in which the list-maker filters through the year's cultural landscape, selecting the gems from the detritus, making an often heartfelt case for what they, as individuals, loved. It almost represents a process of canon-formation on a personal level, a recognition of what deserves to be remembered and preserved by one's own standards. And it's on this level - as a personal, rather than objective or externally-determined, canon - that I find year-end lists so entertaining.

Which brings me to the aforementioned problem. As someone who a) lives in Malta and b) is an impoverished student without the finances to purchase tons of DVDs, I am never in a position to create a definitive year-end top ten list at the end of any given year, simply because I am unable to watch all the year's films I want to watch by the end of the year. There are still films from 2006 I want to catch up on before writing a list for that year - 2007 is out of the question.

What I shall be doing is to start from the first year of the current decade, producing a top ten list for the year 2000, and working my way up year by year, hopefully, eventually, reaching the present. I cannot promise I will upload a list every few days, or every week, but I will upload one whenever I have some time.

Expect the top ten films of 2000 in a day or two...

i'm not sure if this is...

...the greatest idea in blockbuster entertainment history, or the stupidest.

The dinosaurs in Jurassic Park 4 have been trained by the army to carry guns.

Trained by the army to carry guns.

What the idea clearly is, is insane. I'm not yet sure if it's insane like genius-insane, or insane like the Super Mario Bros. movie-insane.

link

beyond satire

It might sound like a throwaway gag on The Simpsons or Family Guy, but it's entirely real.

A kung-fu version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

I guess anything is possible.

link

what's wrong with long films?

I've lost track of the number of times I've heard, whether it's in reviews or on people's lips, complaints relating to the latest blockbuster than run something along the lines of "But did it really have to be so long?".

I must confess I find myself somewhat baffled by these comments. Surely, when it comes to these entertainment spectacles, the longer I am entertained, the better. If a film can give me three and a half hours of entertainment for my money, then that is better than if it gives me ninety minutes. It's like walking up to a greasy beach-side kiosk and complaining that your 50c buys you an enormous tub of chips, rather than the microscopic little bag you expected.

There's also the fact that you can just do more in three hours than you can do in one-and-a-half. The modern kind of fantasy/adventure blockbuster (Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, etc., but also Star Wars, the Indiana Jones films, and so on) are, on their most basic level, about escaping into a fantastical and wonderful world inhabited by larger-than-life characters and anchored by simple but resonant mythic narratives. For this kind of thing, ninety minutes simply isn't enough to create a coherent sense of the world and feel at home in it. This is why blockbusters have been getting longer and longer, or spilling over into trilogies or even longer series.

If I want a movie to end, then it's probably because I'm not enjoying it, in which case, the length of the movie is not in itself a problem, but becomes one due to the film's other issues. Of course, I cannot deny that some films feel padded out and could benefit from a shorter running time. But when I hear people saying, for instance, that Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End had no right to take up three hours of their time because it's nothing more than a rollercoaster pirate yarn, then I have to throw up my hands in sheer incomprehension. Why the hell did you go to watch it at all if you didn't want it taking up your time?

someone needs to explain this to me

An entertaining two-hour ride? Check. A superior cops-and-robbers thriller? Check. An excellent example of cinematic craft? Check. Scorsese's best film? Um... Better than Taxi Driver, Apocalypse Now, Seven, Paths of Glory, Eternal Sunshine and The Third Man? Well... The 35th greatest film of all time? You've got to be joking.

I realize the IMDb Top 250 list is hardly the pinnacle of erudite cinematic taste, but the continuing praise lavished on The Departed is becoming increasingly baffling.