Dustin Hoffman says the cinema is at it's worst.

In a recent interview, good ol' Hoffman admitted that, during the 50 years he's been in the film industry, it has reached it's lowest point. He expressed his distaste for the shorter shooting time for films as of late and he even thinks that television is doing better. Yes, there have been many, many stinkers lately but I think there's still a good amount of enjoyable good films. For example, the Marvel films. I think they're the best action entertainment out there now. We have interesting and smart sci-fi films like last year's Interstellar. Disney has gotten back on track with films like Tangled and Frozen. Also, I'm hearing many good things about Pixar's recent hit, Inside Out. I've yet to see that one but hopefully I will soon. We still have our good films and bad films and, more than usual, the major stinkers do get all the glory. *CoughTransformersCough* However, I personally think it's not completely awful. I don't expect cinema to be "dead" anytime soon. Yet, it is just an opinion so you can go ahead and share your own opinions and thoughts.

 

Quartet didn't exactly help either.

 

When you disagree with Hoffman's assessment, but use "the Marvel films" as your first counterpoint, you've lost me already.

 

And the latest Pixar.

 

Whew....

I'm not the only one who enjoys older movies better !

Come to think of it....

 

I'm sorry that we have different opinions on films.

 

The mega-budget, effects-driven blockbusters typified by the Marvel franchise are about as far away from the small-scale, emotionally complex, formally adventurous, and most of all, adult films that Hoffman made his reputation with (The Graduate, Little Big Man, Midnight Cowboy, Straw Dogs, Lenny, to name a few). I tend to share his view that mainstream Hollywood has pretty much become a sequel-driven CGI wasteland. Fortunately, there's plenty of interesting stuff going on in independent features and on television to compensate.

 

Oh c'mon, let's all lambast Dustin Hoffman for being a senile old fool who doesn't know what he's talking about.
Movie industry troll saying that there are 1000s of great movies being made independently in 5...4....3....2.....

 

If you're not a fan of sci-fi, super heroes or Disney that doesn't leave much in the realm of "cinema."

 

I'd trust his opinion, if I didn't have my own...a lot more than someone who hasn't lived thru it to know.

Experience is key here....experience !

 

Is this the same Dustin Hoffman who's appeared in three "Kung Fu Panda" movies as well as two "Fockers" films, "Dick Tracy" and "Hook"?

 

I just read there is a Cujo remake coming but it will be called C.U.J.O. “Canine Unit Joint Operations".

So I would say he is on to something.

 

Yes, indie films are superior as they tend to have more creative freedom.

 

And for the most part....those are


newer films.

He never said he wasn't in any lousy ones.

 

And I neither said that he claimed he made no lousy movies nor that the ones I mentioned were lousy.

My point is that if Hoffman's gonna bitch about the state of modern cinema, maybe he shouldn't contribute to what he supposedly despises.

If you don't like sequels or movies based on comics/fantasy, Dustin, then don't act in them.

Otherwise you look like a hypocrite...

 

Hypocrite's can still be right though ! Sometime one DOES bite the hand that feeds them.

 

Television Rocks!!!

 

Well a bit one dimesional isn't it? Genre films can be as good or bad as any other sort of film. All this does is demonstrate a bias against good filmmaking based on what sort of,film it is not based on the quality of the films themselves.

Hollywood isnt making the films that they made before--that happens and it's nothing unusual. For the smaller scale films that Hoffman wants to make, they are there they just can't afford him and they are every bit as rich as before.

One could make the same argument but substitute "Hitchcock" or western or other genre films that weren't considered to be anything more than b-movies or entertainment from other time frames.

 

This has been a very good year for movies.

 

Name some...
Please...

 

He takes mediocre roles in mediocre movies to keep working, and at his age he doesn't have the kind of choices he had as a young leading man. I don't think that means he can't have an opinion about films in general. If anything, I think acting in crappy movies would confirm one's feelings about the state of the movie business.

 

A good year for movies but a bad year for films. [/SNOB]

Seriously, I enjoy popcorn movies well enough and the best of them stand proudly as works of cinematic craft, but I can see where Hoffman's coming from. To the extent that the kind of adult cinema ochsfan describes above is still being produced at all in America, it tends to be obscure, woefully under-budgeted, poorly distributed (especially theatrically), and "niche" in a way that it wasn't even a decade ago. And that sucks.

 

The only thing I find more frustrating than the current state of mainstream film is the fact that audiences can't seem to understand what differentiates "classic cinema" from a relatively predictable outcropping of the same general movie month after month with a few genuine crowd-pleasers tossed into the bunch. A little over a decade ago, I remember walking out of a movie like Seven feeling shell-shocked because I didn't see it coming--on the level of story and style it was a completely refreshing (albeit gloomy) experience and it was the kind of movie that reminded you why films were such powerful statements in the first place.

Movies today are generally more like overly long roller coasters--more concerned with making your pulse race through spectacle rather than substance, generally careless about having strong characters or even strong acting, wearing themselves thin about 3/4 of the way through and 99% of the time ending exactly the way you expect them to. Of course there are still some modern day classics that emerge from the bunch (namely from Pixar), but frankly I don't see too many films from the last decade being hailed as landmarks on the level of certain films from previous decades. Meanwhile, studios rake in billions of dollars and audiences don't seem to mind the non-stop parade of zombies and vampires and superheroes and remakes and sequels and CGI-fests with predictable outcomes. Even the independent films don't seem to bring much to the table (aside from a few exceptions that still don't really reach broad audiences or make much impact). The art of film might not be gone entirely, but it's hard to take the medium seriously as an "art form" these days.

TV, of course, is a different story.

 

I agree it's pretty bad, but it's still not as bad as American cinema in the '60s. Now, that was a freaking wasteland (at least before 1967).