British vs american cinema

 

British cinema competing against American cinema

 

 

 

British cinema has great difficulties competing with the very dominant Hollywood cinema. The Hollywood market offers a much wider audience due to population, culture and money reasons which makes it much more successful than British cinema. British cinema has both advantages and disadvantages over Hollywood which make it unique to Hollywood but also makes it difficult to compete with Hollywood. With Hollywood and British cinema sharing the same language, this causes British cinema to compete with Hollywood were as French or Spanish cinema does not have to compete with an English speaking audience.

Hollywood is known for its state of the art big budget movies which makes it difficult for British cinema to compete due to them commonly having a lower budget. British cinema has different culture issues which commonly does not appeal in America. The inbetweeners movie is a good example of this, the films was a success in the UK but did not appeal to America at all. Hollywood films are aimed at a much wider audience so they can make as much money as possible. This is not always the case for British cinema, The kings speech was a huge success both in The UK and America despite being about British history.

The UK cinema has just experienced a very good 2011. Films like The inbetweeners movie, Harry Potter have been great successes in Britain and Harry Potter is known as a worldwide success. In previous years, British cinema has been having “decent” years while Hollywood has been raking in the cash as usual. Commonly in modern day cinema we see big Hollywood movies staring British movie stars or that are based on British stories or script. Harry Potter is a great example of this were a major Hollywood studio (Warner brothers) have taken a British story and created it into a worldwide success. This is the best way (financially) that British cinema can compete with the strength of Hollywood.

Many Hollywood films based on a British dimension have become huge successes. 6 of the top 7 highest grossing films worldwide have had British dimensions to them. Titanic, The lord of the rings, Pirates of the Caribbean and Harry Potter films are just some of the great trans-Atlantic films created.

British cinema has created many great famous actors and directors which have made it in British and even Hollywood cinema. Notable British actors that have achieved this to increase the British box office in order to compete with America are: Paul Greengrass, Steve McQueen, Ridley Scott and Sam Mendes to name a few. Notable British actors that have appeared in both British and American cinema include: Kate Winslet ( Who stared in the film “Titanic” which is the second highest grossing film in history and is based on a British story/event), Judi Dench, Rowan Atkinson, Catherine Zita-Jones, Daniel Craig and Michael Caine to name a few. These stars appeared in British cinema before appearing in Hollywood and have become household names in both cinemas. British cinema does create many successful actors and directors which have helped boost the box office of British cinema.

It is tough for British cinema competing with Hollywood because of the same language unlike foreign cinema where they are not as competitive as British and American cinema. Hollywood is a worldwide success and is known throughout the world which makes it so tough for British cinema to compete with the massive budget productions it creates. British cinema will never be as big (financially) as American cinema but competes it different ways such as many art house productions and the odd big budget movie. Hollywood makes very few art house films which is a good thing for British cinema to compete with the strength of Hollywood.

Cinema research

Cinemas commonly show mainstream films in there cinemas. The simple reasons for this are that mainstream movies make more money than independent movies. Vue cinema at the light in Leeds primarily shows mainstream Hollywood movies rather than independent films. Vue has recently begun showing “The Artist”. This is an independent film which is tipped for winning Oscars later this year and is also showing “The Iron Lady”. The Vue cinema is showing more independent films at the moment because of the award season. 4 weeks ago the films the cinema was showing was Sherlock Holmes, Alvin and the chipmunks and New Year’s Eve. These 3 films are all mainstream movies which was new to the cinema that week. Vue will show these mainstream movies all the time because of the distribution done by the major studios to get these films into popular cinemas. This cinema has only begun showing films like the artist because of the award season of films, when the film first came out it was not available in mainstream cinemas. The films the cinema has been showing a lot over the last few weeks are films such as the new Mission Impossible, Sherlock Holmes and the new Alvin and the chipmunks’ film. 3 Mainstream films which is common for them becuase of the major studios distribution.

 

The art house picture house in Hyde Park predictably only shows art house films and no mainstream Hollywood productions unlike Vue in Leeds city centre. Despite this the cinema is showing Johnny English: reborn for one showing on Saturday. The cinema is currently showing art house films such as the artist and my week with Marylyn. This cinema is much different to the Vue cinema is the amount of variation of films the cinema shows. This cinema will show art house films before the mainstream cinema will. Currently the Artist is the film this picture house is showing the most.

Graphs of release patterns

the first graph is of the Kings speech. This film won many Oscars in the award season.  The film was on a platform release like many other award films. They do this so their film is still out in the cinema when the nominations are announced so they can market the film better.

The second graph is for the release pattern of Toy Story 3. This film gradually came to a stop after a few weeks of being released. The film had a very successful opening weekend as the chart shows.

the third graph is for the indie film The Illusionist. The film’s opening weekend  out fairly poor but this is because it was on a platform release. This is common for indie films to try and build up word of mouth

Columbia Pictures

 

Columbia pictures

Todays Hollywood has 6 main studios which produce and distribute the films. The Big six major studios, whose movie operations are based in or around Hollywood, are all centred in film studios active during Hollywood’s Golden age of the 1930s and 1940s. In three cases 20^th Century Fox, Warner Brothers and Paramount the studios were one of the Big Five majors during that era as well. In two cases Columbia and Universal the studios were also considered majors, but in the next tier down, part of the “Little Three.” In the sixth case, Walt Disney Studios was an independent production company during the Golden Age; it was an important Hollywood entity, but not a major. The current top six film studios are Columbia pictures, Warner Bros pictures, Paramount pictures, 20^th century fox, Walt Disney pictures and Universal pictures.

Columbia pictures was founded in may 1919 and is today one of the worlds leading film companies and is known as part of the big six. Columbia pictures is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia pictures is currently owned by the company Sony since 1989 but has been owned by coca cola from 1982 to 1987. The main headquarters are located in Culver City, California.

In 1982, the studio was purchased by Coca Cola that same year it launched Tristar Pictures as a joint venture with HBO (home box office) and CBS (Columbia broadcasting system). Five years later, Coca-Cola spun off Columbia, which merged with Tri-Star to create Columbia Pictures Entertainment. After a brief period of independence with Coca-Cola maintaining a financial interest, the combined studio was acquired by Sony in 1989.

The Columbia Pictures empire was sold on September 28, 1989 to electronics giant Sony for the amount of $3.4 billion. The sale netted Coca-Cola a handsome profit from its investment in the studio. Sony then hired two producers, Peter Guber and Jon Peters to serve as co-heads of production when Sony also acquired Guber-Peters Entertainment for $200 million on the 29 of September 1989.

In the 1990s, Columbia announced plans of a rival James Bond franchise, since they owned the rights of Casino Royale and were planning to make a third version of Thunderball. MGM and Danjag LLC, owners of the franchise, Sued Sony pictures in 1997, with the legal dispute ending two years later in an out-of-court settlement. Sony traded the Casino Royale rights for $10 million, and the Spiderman filming rights. The superhero has since become Columbia’s most successful franchise, with the first movie coming out in 2002 and having since gained two sequels, with plans for two more. Ironically, between the releases of the first and second sequels, Sony Corporation led a consortium that purchased MGM giving it distribution rights to the James Bond franchise.

With the company being owned by Sony and owning many other companies like Columbia records, Columbia pictures has access to a lot of music and special effects when it comes to producing movies. This is a big advantage to the company because this means the owner of Columbia (Sony) can use other companies it owns to produce and distribute all areas of the film from the music to the video game made of the film. This is because the owner of Columbia Pictures is Sony which has many other different formats like Sony finance and Sony music entertainment to name a few. Sony is the fifth largest media conglomerate in the world.

Columbia even has a different company section which was made by Sony. In the 2000s, Sony broadened its release schedule by creating Sony picture Classics for arthouse fare, and by backing Revolution studios, the production company headed by Joe Roth.

Columbia has had many successful film franchises and films. In 2002, Columbia broke the record for biggest domestic theatrical gross, with a tally of $1.575 billion, coincidentally breaking its own record of $1.256 billion set in 1997, which was raised by such blockbusters as Spider man, Men in Black 2 and xXx. he studio was also the most lucrative of 2004 with over $1.338 billion dollars in the domestic box office with movies such as Spider man 2, 50 first dates and The Grudge. In the year 2006, Columbia, helped with such blockbusters like The Da Vinci code, The pursuit of happiness and James Bond Casino Royale, not only finished the year in first place over the other 5 studios, but it reached an all time record high sum of $1.711 billion, which was an all-time yearly record for any studio until Warner Bros beat that record in 2009.

Representations of Thatcher’s Britain

 

Representation of Thatcher’s Britain in Riff Raff and Mona Lisa

 

 

 

Riff Raff and Mona Lisa both represent Thatcher’s Britain in negative way. Both the films concentrate on how bad the Country was at this time and this is shown throughout both films. The main narratives in the films are based on Thatcher’s Britain. Despite them showing Thatcher’s Britain in a very negative way, they are different in that they show different sides of Thatcher’s Britain. Mona Lisa shows the dark and dingy side of Thatcher’s Britain with all the prostitutes, drugs and pimps. Riff Raff concentrates more on the struggling working class lives of people in the country at the time.

Riff Raff represents Thatcher’s Britain in a different way to Mona Lisa and uses many different techniques to get the image of Thatcher’s Britain across to the viewer. Riff Raff is a realist film so the image of Thatcher’s Britain is shown in a different way to Mona Lisa. Firstly, the main narrative of the film is based on the lives of ordinary working class people. The characters in the film represent everyone working class person in the country at that time as well as the mouth piece of the director to get the message of Thatcher’s Britain shown. Arguably this happens in Mona Lisa also. We see throughout the Mona Lisa film that the main character (George) is confused and does not understand why Britain has become what it is. George is a character who has been in prison while all these major changes to Britain were happening so when he is released, he is confused by this “new world” and this shows the true extent of how bad things were in Thatcher’s Britain. George plays a similar role to Larry in Riff Raff in terms of him being the mouth piece of the director. Both characters draw the point across the film that Thatcher’s Britain is a bad place.

With Riff Raff being a realist film, it goes about a different way of showing the themes of Thatcher’s Britain than Mona Lisa. Riff Raff has a lot of improvisation scenes in the film where the characters discuss things to do with the current state of the country. Again, this is basically the director using the characters to represent the country. Improvisation is a key element to the film. The characters in Mona Lisa go about a different way in representing Britain. George is a clueless character who doesn’t not know anything about Thatcher’s Britain and has found himself in this new, worse place. The characters represent different things in the films as they use different techniques in the film.

The themes in the films also represent Thatcher’s Britain at the time of the film. Mona Lisa has themes of love and lose of innocence in the film. The lose of innocence theme in the film ties in with the negative points of Thatcher’s Britain shown throughout the film. This lose of innocence refers to the sleazy part of Thatcher’s Britain where in the film we see streets full of hookers. This is a serious way of representing Britain like Riff Raff uses in parts. Riff Raff represents Britain in a different way but also a similar way as well. The differences between the two in terms of representation are some of the themes they use. Riff Raff is a realist film so the themes and representation are different than Mona Lisa. Riff Raff has themes of exploitation and love. These all show Thatcher’s Britain in a negative way. We see the collapse of stevies love life after Susan uses drugs. This shows how bad Britain was at the time with ordinary people getting into drugs. In Mona Lisa love is also a negative theme in the film. We see George who fancies simmone but is hurt when he finds out at the end that he was being used so simmone can find the women she is in love with. Both of these negative love themes in the two films represent the negative aspect of love in Thatcher’s Britain although riff raff shows this in a more realist way. Exploitation is also a theme in both films as George is being used for simmones use like the workers in Riff Raff are being exploited money wise. This again shows the true extent of Thatcher’s Britain.

Both the films use similar techniques as well as varied techniques to create the representation of Thatcher’s Britain the films do, a negative and bad place to live and this is emphasized throughout the films.

Actor Portfolio

Matt Damon acting portfolio

Matt Damon’s breakthrough was in the 1990’s when he and Ben Affleck wrote the screen play for a film that eventually became “Good will Hunting”. This film received 9 academy awards. Damon and Affleck won an Oscar for best original screen play. He was also nominated for academy award for best actor. The film was a great success which netted $225 million at the worldwide box office. This film is known as Matt Damon breakthrough because of the success of the film. To this day is the most successful film he has starred in. The film was a great success and had great reviews for film and for his acting. Another film in which he stared in which was called “The rainmaker” also got him noticed in the world of Hollywood. He was described by the Los Angeles times as “a talented young actor on the brink of stardom”. These two films got him recognised in the world of Hollywood and changed his career from then on.

His persona became apparent with his later and more successful films. The Bourne series are the films that made his persona what it is known as today. He is known for playing in action films and his character is very aggressive and heroic character. His character in films is often aggressive characters with a lot of weapons and punches. He is usually the good guy in the films too.

A film he is really well known for is oceans 11. The film had many Hollywood stars in the cast such as George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Katherine zita Jones, Julia Roberts. Damon played a one of the films in the very successful film which made over 38
million dollars in its opening weekend in the box office. This film secured Damon’s place as a Hollywood star. The film was so successful it had two sequels made after it, Oceans 12 and 13. Oceans 12 had an estimated budget of 110 million dollars and made over 39 million on its opening weekend at the box office. Oceans 13 had an estimated budget of 85 million dollars and made over 36 million dollars on its opening weekend at the box office.

In 2006 Damon stared in The Departed. This is known as another of his successful films. He stared alongside Leonardo DiCaprio. The film is about 2 newly graduated police officers who go undercover to stop an Irish –American gang. The film was produced by Brad Pitt, Brad Grey and Graham King. The film was directed by Martin Scorsese. The films Budget was $90 million dollars and on its opening weekend at the Box office is made $26,887,021 dollars. The film saw small declines in later weeks but stayed in the top 10 for seven weeks, a great achievement. The film grossed a total of $289,835,021 dollars which is great considering its $90 million dollar budget.

Damon on a number of occasions has worked with director Paul greengrass. The Bourne trilogy. A recent film that Damon stared in with Paul Greengrass as director is Green zone. This film is about American soldiers in Baghdad hunting for an Iraqi general Mohammed Al-Rawi. The film unlike the other films where Damon and Greengrass worked together in was not a very good hit at the box office.  The film opened at number 2 at the box office at approximately 3003 cinemas gaining $14,309,295. This was really bad for the film considering it had a 100 million dollar budget along with another 40 million dollars spent on marketing. In the UK, the film was third most popular on its opening weekend. It took £1.55 million on its opening weekend.

The Bourne trilogy is known as one of Damon’s successful and famous films. In this film he plays a former assassin who is being hunted down by a secret organisation in America. He has amnesia from being shot on a failed mission which causes him to forget all his previous life and essentially “turns good”. We see him try to discover who he is while being hunted down by other government assassins and secret government operations. The first in the trilogy (Bourne identity) made $27,118,640 million on its opening weekend with a budget of $60 million dollars. It grossed a total of $121,468,960 dollars. It got good reviews worldwide and IMDB gave it 7.8 out of 10 which is a good score. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD-uQreIwEk This is a trailer for the film. It shows the narrative of the film without giving too much away. It also shows Damon playing the lead role which it is also going trying to sell the film on him. It shows us his well known persona in the film which attracts its key target audience immediantly. This is why Damons persona is what it is, because of the many films such as this.

The second in the trilogy is the Bourne Supremacy. This had a budget $75 million dollars and made $52,521,865 dollars in its opening weekend at the box office. It grossed a total of $176,049,130 dollars.  

http://youtu.be/lmXNYOsJd_A

This trailer builds up tension byshowing the dramatic. In this trailer it shows us all the car crashes and guns
it has in the film to immediately appeal to its target audience. It shows his persona which he is known for (Fighting/action films). Especially in the Bourne films we see his persona well. The trailer shows him fighting people in the fim and shows him using guns which is his known persona of Damon and the film is showing this and is could even beselling the film on this.

The final in the trilogy is the Bourne Ultimatum. The budget $110 million dollars and made
$69,283,690 dollars. It grossed a total $227,225,045 dollars. In the film we see Damon play his usual persona character but we see that Bourne has become more mature and smarter. He plays this role well according to the many successful reviews he and the film got. He shows his persona really well in these films and is probably best known for these films since the slogan of the films are “Matt Damon is Jason Bourne”

Damon has become a well known star because of these very successful films he has done. He has a famous persona and is well liked for his persona in films. He h his own official website which shows us his films ad informaton about him for his large fan base.

Die hard 4 Film Portfolio

Die Hard 4

Die hard 4 is an American film made in 2007. The film was directed by Len Wiseman, produced by Michael Fottrell and starred Bruce Willis. 20^th century fox distributed the film and some of the film was shot at the 20^th century fox studios.

The plot of the film is tat there is a computer hacker who is stopping all computerised products from working and is causing them to do what ever the evil mastermind wants to do. John Mcclane (Bruce Willis) is the main character who works for the fbi. He tries to stop this computer terrorist by finding a guy called Matt Farrell. From there on in they try to stop the hacker and catch him to put an end to the disaster that is happening.

Cast

Bruce Willis as Detective John McClane

Justin Long as Matthew “Matt” Farrell

Timothy Olyphant as Thomas Gabriel.

Jonathan Sadowski as Trey, Gabriel’s main hacker

Mary Elizabeth Winstead as

Lucy Gennero-Mcclain

Maggie Q as Mai Linh

Cliff Curtis as Miguel Bowman, FBI Deputy Director

Box Office

The film made a total of over 383 million dollars at the world wide box office. In its opening weekend it earned over 33 million dollars. The budget of the film was 110 million dollars.

This link has a trailer for the film http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EUJYh32KVw

Film Posters

This poster shows the lead star (Bruce Willis) on the cover andshows the cuts on his face. This shows us it is a action film (not a horror because ofn the way he is stood and looking) and appeals to its target audience. It is also relying on us knowing who the main star is because it does not show his name. Usually Mainstream films will shows the stars name but on this poster it has no name.

 This poster is a simple image of the title of the film. This shows us the franchise of the film and the logo.

Below is a link for the review of the film by the Guardian newspaper

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2007/jun/29/brucewillis.actionandadventure

 

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