I'm sorry, but I just lost respect for your opinion. All of a sudden it has to be a movie you can take your kids to for it to be a good movie?
Oy, that's not what I meant.
I meant that American filmmakers feel they
need to include blood, gore, and sex to make a film emotionally gripping. That's obviously not true at all. While there's a long history of violence and sexuality even in classic literature, many of the most enduring stories feature neither.
I applaud Pixar for showing other studios that you don't need an anti-hero slitting people's throats, baking their remains into pies, and singing about it all the while to make a great film.
(For those of you unfamiliar with recent movie releases and thinking I'm a very, very sick person right now, I feel compelled to share that I was making a reference to Sweeney Todd.)
On the other hand, some films
do require at least violence to deliver their message. I can't imagine Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, or Passion of the Christ having quite the impact they did without showing violent scenes that children have no business watching.
And anyway, yeah, Beverly Hills Chihuahua is a dumb movie idea.
But that's one movie.
By one company.
But the very fact that the movie can be made and that so many dollars are being thrown toward promoting it shows the film industry is in bad shape. Dismissing Beverly Hills Chihuahua as "one movie by one company" is akin to saying, "Well, sure, the canary's dead, but that's just one canary in the coal mine." Beverly Hills Chihuahua isn't so much a movie as it is a symptom of a larger problem.
Think of it this way: Do you think Paris Hilton would be as famous as she is if our culture and society weren't so diseased?
And that's representing the entire industry? No, sorry, it's not. And it's supposed to be a kiddie movie anyway, so why WOULD it make an ounce of sense to begin with? (que your rant about how kids movies by Pixar make lots of sense and are gold movies that can be enjoyed by everyone and not just kids and their parents)
Schlock is schlock, whether it's rated R or rated G. Just because a movie is geared toward children doesn't mean the screenwriters get to check their brains at the door. Even
The Little Engine That Could, as simple as it is, had a point.
Since this thread's already gone way off-topic, for which I take the lion's share of responsibility, I'll try to close the subject by saying: Everyone has their own tastes in film and they're all free to spend their money watching whatever they will. I doubt anything anyone's posted in this thread is going to change anyone's preferences in film.
[...] I'd say with the same logic that the Wii is going down, baby, DOWN. Why?
This.
http://kiwibox.com/article/36822
Oy. As if I needed another painful reminder that the bulk of Wii titles are shovelware or ports. I still hold it's a great system with several excellent titles (e.g. Super Mario Galaxy, Matroid Prime 3: Corruption, LostWinds, etc.), but I cringe every time Ubisoft announces a new Wii title.
I guess people are just as likely to make a lousy game as they are to make a lousy film.