Your biggest cinema-related frustrations

Which parts of the world of cinema frustrate you the most? Are there any particular events, projects, films or general tragedies that occurred sometime in the past that make you pissed when you think about them? Any injustices that you'll never truly be able to cope with?

I just thought that it might be quite interesting to share those things with eachother here in this thread.

Here's the main reason why I made this thread:

The career of Orson Welles



The fact that one of the greatest cinematic geniuses of all time got completely destroyed by the Hollywood studio system after his first film, Citizen Kane, and continuously lost control over his own projects again and again, is something that bothers me since the day I had knowledge of it.
Later in his career, he did make a few films over which he had complete control again (F For Fake for instance), but there are way too few of them because of Welles' constant quest for money to finance his projects that lead to many of them never getting finished or released.

I still love films like The Lady From Shanghai of course, despite the intervention of the studios, and Touch of Evil was largely restored according to Welles' vision, but unfortunately we can only guess what kind of full-blown masterpieces Welles would've produced if he had had final cut over all his films and enough financial resources to realize his true cinematic ideas and vision...

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I have way more frustrations of course, but I'll withhold for a while as I'm curious to read the main frustrations from some other Mofos first!

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Cobpyth's Movie Log ~ 2019

Cob, your cinema frustration would be mine as well!

The world was derprived of many great films because Orson didn't get to finish them do to a lack of funding. Instead we got a truly great man, a genius and visionary....hawking cheap wine and canned peas on TV, to make enough money so he could finish some of his projects. How tragic is that.

I know he's far from the only one, but the early death of John Belushi is something I've never gotten over.

Welles was his own worst enemy. He was a supremely arrogant SOB, who managed to piss off almost everybody around him. He wanted money from the system, but didn't want the system to have their dubious input. It's sad, because he really was a genius, but he was also a self destructive narcissist. I can recall his last days when I was a kid and he was on daytime talk shows, bloated and otherwise out of work, by then pontificating on the evils of a world that had passed him by. He was also doing effete TV advertising testimonials for jug wine. BTW, a nice, enjoyable movie with Welles as a character is Me and Orson Welles, portrayed excellently by Christian McKay.

A near complete disregard for scientific accuracy.

Besides the very fictionalized movie clip, what makes you think that's who Orson Welles was?

"It's not arrogance, if you're right." I just heard that quote, it's not from Orson but it does apply to him.

That so many great films are still missing or poorly served on home video, in many cases because the rights are held by studios who are not interested in releasing them or producers asking far too much for the licensing.

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@MondoEsoterica - an insight into my world of seriously obscure cinema.

The Academy's problem with Scorsese.

The Academy's problem with gay movies for best picture. (Crash and 12 Years a Slave over Brokeback and Dallas Buyers Club? Really?)

The Academy's problem with Sci Fi movies and Best Picture.


Okay I got a beef with the Academy period.

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Fear and Loathing in MoFo... The Gunslinger 45's Top 50 Favorite Films

In the 10 Ring: Gunslinger45's reviews

But it did lead to some hilarity.

I definitely agree with this.

Also, I agree with this. I have seen many films that never made it to the cinemas here or were limited release (not in my area, and I live in a big city). Its really annoying because it would be a film that was great on the big screen.

I'll concur that Brokeback should've won over Crash, but 12 Years A Slave definitely deserved the win over Dallas Buyers Club.

I also concur in that, of all the movies they could've given Scorsese a sympathy vote for, it had to be the extremely mediocre The Departed.

As for my personal frustration - well, I'm certainly not a big fan of Australia's film distribution system. A lot of films take ages to get here (if they get here) and often go straight to DVD, also there's the fact that we haven't got a widely accessible movie-streaming service equivalent to Netflix because pay-TV companies like Foxtel have a monopoly going. That's without mentioning the relative lack of choice in regards to what movies do come out on DVD here - we're stuck with Region 4 DVDs and not that many films come out on R4.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

As one of the true fan of musicals left on the planet, I was very depressed when musicals practically disappeared from the big screen from the 1960's to the 2000's.


I've always been really aggravated by Hollywood's obsession with "sequel-itis"...every time a movie makes a decent amount of money at the box office, TPTB immediately decide that they HAVE to make a sequel and I can count on one hand the number of sequels that were as good or better than the original film.


I'm really tired of reading on the IMDB and other boards about how films based on books aren't as good as the book and how biopics aren't factually accurate. The book is ALWAYS better than the movie, that is a given and I don't need people telling me that. As for factual accuracy in biopics, sometimes the facts are boring and don't make an entertaining movie. Funny Girl is an extremely entertaining biopic that received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, but had very little to do with the facts of Fanny Brice's life.


And like most people, I definitely have my problems with the Academy. Primarily, I hate the Academy's propensity for giving actors Oscars as consolation prizes or "Body of Work/Lifetime Achievement" awards or just out of sentiment. Elizabeth Taylor for Butterfield 8? Al Pacino for Scent of a Woman? James Stewart for The Philadelphia Story? Each of these actors gave at least half a dozen performances that were more Oscar-worthy. I would get into more specific wins and losses that have bothered me, but that would take too long and anyone who reads my posts or my reviews with any regularity is probably aware of most of them anyway.

Good post Gideon, I agree, especially with the part about movies based on books.

My Number 1 Cinema Grievance:

The sad, sad state of older movie preservation. Something like half of all the silent films ever made are either lost or are disintegrated beyond saving. And 1000s of movies from 1930 to 1960 are in poor shape and in need of saving. Many aren't available on DVD, others are so badly transferred to DVD that there hard to watch.

One of my grievances is when those advertisements come on television for a movie that is released only in January with a critic stating that the film is, "The best movie of the year".

Which I don't get because the year just began and at the time only like 3 new films are released in cinemas.

My grievance is the cliche movie posters with the hero holding a gun. Any schmuck can fire a gun. It's such an obvious crutch.

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Under-the-radar Movie Awesomeness.
http://earlsmoviepicks.blogspot.com/

The fact I will never be able to watch all the films I want!

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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

After searching for more than a year, I still haven't found a digital copy of the 108 minutes version of Robert Altman's California Split.

This frustration could be summed up as:

The ridiculous amounts of money filmmakers have to pay to use certain pieces of music in their work and the fact that they can lose the rights to that music many years after the theatrical release of the film, which results in DVD versions that are cut.

Too much superhero movies.

I'm tired of reboots.

Orson Welles would be the biggest for me. I don't even wanna watch films he directed and get the wrong impression on him. I wish he would have gone "Cassavetes" and just did them completely on his own, including distribution. I've watched Citizen Kane, didn't like Ambersons. Touch of Evil is very good. I think he had control on "The Trial" but it's too claustrophobic and too anxiety-ridden for me.

I agree with Orson's laments, but he surely could have done something about it, I sometimes think that he didn't try hard enough. He did plenty of acting, some bad roles, and should have made films he had total control of - others far less prestigious have done it around the same time, and I know there had to be plenty of people who wanted to see an Orson Welles just out of curiosity. To me, he's more interesting than his movies - I love watching any interview I can find, video or audio.

It's definitely sad seeing him drunk trying to do wine commercials, fighting over peas (youtube)..

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