We literally watch everything with subtitles (even if it’s in English) and we get a bit annoyed if we get a DVD without any subtitling…
D’oh! I actually searched for “moviegoer” instead of “filmgoer” and when I couldn’t find this thread I posted the following article in the Whatcha Watching thread instead:
Given I’m a huge film lover and all I should be able to help you out but unfortunately… there are reasons I am not. I don’t watch a lot of Irish film, and there isn’t really a lot of it. There isn’t a huge tradition of cinema in Ireland. I mean the first film shown here was three months after the first public projection in Paris (I guess they worked the equipment on the way to the boat to exhibit in the US), James Joyce had a commercial cinema here in the teens of the last century. Called the Volta - he had connections with Italian cinema. There were films made here back then, pretty much all disappeared as far as I know but in recent years there has been a dedicated archive set up.
As pointed out there is an Irish language TV channel TG4 and it does produce drama but rarely feature films. I’m not sure if any of their documentaries get theatrical releases. Feature films in Ireland need to sell and be financed abroad. There’s no sustainable market here. You cannot get your money back from exhibition. Most feature films made in Ireland have been one offs by people who don’t really get to make them again, very few people get sustained careers. There is some government seed money available, but not that much. Famously John Boorman was in charge of it at one stage and gave the entire budget to Neill Jordan and he made the no budget short feature Angel with it which annoyed a lot of people but I guess he was right.
It is changing as time goes on and more people who have worked abroad do projects here and as the industry grows. People have mentioned the recent an Cailín Ciún and there was Arracht a few years ago (I didn’t see it and it’s not a tempting watch for me). When I’m on site in work I’ll have a glance at Kevin Rockett’s Irish Filmography: Fiction Films 1896-1996 but I would be surprised if there is a trove of forgotten gems out there.
There was, and I can’t stress this too much, no money for such luxuries.
Yeah, that’s understandable from the era prior to the Celtic Tiger… I did notice a film I watched recently, which was not an Irish film, that had gotten some funding from the Irish Film board. It does seem that film is getting more support there, so hopefully, we’ll be seeing more films in Irish in the coming years…
I finally got around to seeing Belfast… what a lovely film…
The new Brendan Fraser vehicle sounds awful.
“The Cruel Spectacle of ‘The Whale’”
Roxane Gay
NY Times
She’s not the only one who argued that, either…
I guess it’s not too surprising, giving his previous films… Aronofsky, I mean, not Fraser…
Yeah. Schlocky shockfests, I’ve always thought.
Yeah, I guess guess there can be depth in such types of film, but more often than not, it’s just (as Gay said in her review) cruelty for cruelty’s sake…
Aronofsky is really turning more and more into a Lars Von Trier with each new film he makes (and I do not mean that in a good way).
I hope that this doesn’t put a damper in the Brendan Fraser revival though…
I don’t think that could possibly be interpreted in a good way!
He’s still killing it on Doom Patrol. So that helps.
One of my favorite Godards:
Burgess Meredith!
I finally watched Nomadland. I guess I hesitated because i love Frances McDormand, and I imagined the story might not do her justice.
(I have no idea why my blur thing below doesn’t work.)
Turns out, IMO, that I was [spoiler] right. I think it romanticizes life on the road and those who by golly, just seem to have an inherent wanderlust. The movie glances along the way at some people scraping to get by in what rhe movie pretty much does not acknowledge as neoliberal America, often played by actual road-loving folks, and it all too lightly touches on their travails. McDormand works sometimes at an Amazon warehouse, where “the money’s good.” Say what?! I wonder if the script had to get Amazon’s approval before they’d let cameras in.
People often HAVE to live without a house in the increasingly heartless USA. Most can’t just pop in on their wealthy sister for some cash when the going gets too tough, like this character can.
McDormand was excellent, as I’d hoped, but the story just made me angry.[/spoiler]
Yeah, I can’t see why that wouldn’t work.
Maybe put a line break just before the beginning [spoiler]?
Thanks, but that didn’t work either. 
