Ponyo is definitely a Hollywood film.
actually its a japanese film
C’mon, man, there’s already two recent threads about exactly this, the more recent superfluous one is still on the main page.
Use the search box over there before you post a new thread, por favor.
Sekzee, exactly my point.
we should start a thread called stop the threads
That is an ingenious idea but if history has taught us anything, the thread would just instigate more threads.
Not only history, but nature. Fractal geometry will prove this. Think rhizome.
If one Japanese movie and another from Johannyswoodburg are the only hope for original American cinema. Especially because from what I understand, DISTRICT 9 was pretty derivative of ALIEN NATION (I personally thought THE FLY with a smidge of ROBOCOP…if ONLY Verhoeven had directed DISTRICT 9, the world would be a safer place).
ideas!!! Look at Hollywood from 1975 – 1995 (roughly) the amount of classic films that came out in that period all original ideas or built upon exisiting ideas to come up with something truly original!! eg Jaws, Star Wars, Close Encounters, Terminator 1 & 2, Blade Runner, Alien, Aliens, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Top Gun etc etc all good films. Nowadays it’s all remake remake remake
Define original
- isn’t everything sci-fi a remake of Greco-Roman myth?
>>Look at Hollywood from 1975 – 1995 (roughly) the amount of classic films that came out in that period all original ideas or built upon exisiting ideas to come up with something truly original!! eg Jaws, Star Wars, Close Encounters, Terminator 1 & 2, Blade Runner, Alien, Aliens, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Top Gun etc etc all good films.<<
I’m hoping this is a sarcastic post.
JAWS is derived from a novel & the film utilizes a good many CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON quotes (Spielberg has admitted this); STAR WARS is FLASH GORDON with a dash of Scientology; BLADE RUNNER is heavily indebted to METROPOLIS, ALIEN is heavily indebted to PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES (even some of the production design is lifted from bava’s film) and IT! THE TERROR FROM OUTER SPACE (in turn derivative of A. E. van Vogt’s novel VOYAGE OF THE SPACE BEAGLE); RAIDERS is an anthology of Republic chapterplay situations …
Hardly original ideas or even origininal due to re-imagining.
Are these really the best examples from Hollywood during that period that you can come up with? That’s depressing.
Star Wars is more of a sci-fi remake of Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, but your description is rather amusing.
Yes, you’re right, but the word was at one time that Lucas originally wanted to do a film version of FLASH GORDON but couldn’t get the rights & so wrote STAR WARS instead. Anyone who knows the Alex Raymond strip (more than the Buster Crabbe serials) can see the inspirations.
agree with harry long after that time…it’s all about the money and the chutzpah….
And just to baffle those who think I’m an anti-Hollywood Elitist Bastard & to counter Andrew’s post, here are some films from 1975 alone that I do think represent some quality, original films that came from Hollywood (or Hollywood money):
Barry Lyndon
A Boy and his Dog
Breakheart Pass
The Day of the Locust
Death Race 2000
Dog Day Afternoon
Drowning Pool
Farewell, My Lovely
Four Musketeers
Hard Times
Hester Street
Lisztomania
Love and Death
Mahler
The Man Who Would Be King
Nashville
One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest
Rancho Deluxe
Rocky Horror Picture Show
Rollerball
Shampoo
Three Days of the Condor
Tommy
Wind and the Lion
What is the basis of this thread anyway? Does Josh Smith have an inept sense of ignorance? Are you really bereft that not only Hollywood, but all storytellers in general have no sense of originality? Here’s the Fact Jack: In any given year, 90 percent of films that are released will suck! Granted, the cinema of the early 21st century have a short-sighted sensibility, but that can be said when the studios were first bought by corporations in the 1960s, where the magic word is “demographic”, which is still relevent to this day of course. The question that Robert W Peabody asked was to give us your definition of original. I know, I know, the answer is rhetorical in some form or another. Let’s face it: YOU’RE A HACK JOHN SMITH!!!!!! You have absolutley no idea on what you are talking about. The answer that Mikel so elequently put, paraphrased, lets not forget that cinema is an enterprise as well. Studios have to make money in some way or another, there is no denying that.
“The only hope that I can see is Ponyo and District 9…”
I just think it’s amusing that District 9 is cited as the last hope for American cinema …
2010 has probably the most remakes in history, but films like Inception show promise that good films will get made if the studio can be convinced of the risk.
The remakes of Invasion of the Body Snatchers is what confuses me. I mean the original was pretty good and Kaufman’s ’70s remake was great, but then we have 2 more completely unnecessary remakes that are banal …
@Deckard, i agree that is amuzing..i personally think that it’s hilarious..the same way that Inglorious Basterds is held as Miramax last hope before bankrupcy…that one might be sad. Is it only risk management that the studios should care? How to make their 300% of their investment or the quality should give them that and more…no?
Well, to paraphrase a character in one of Wendy Wasserstein’s plays, the whole point of Hollywood is to make terrible films. Every now and then, quite by accident, they make a good one. So of course you have to remake it to mess it up the way it should have been in the first place.
John Smith
Why is it that Hollywood has a lack of original ideas, and the ones that rarely come out come from Pixar? The only hope that I can see is Ponyo and District 9, why can’t those cheap basterds stop making re-makes and same old genre type casts?