Movie pacing: one person's "boring" is another per

[deer of the dawn]

When I read reviews for films sometimes I find I really liked movies others called "boring". I guess I just get sick of the standard pace of American films. Which may explain why B horror films have gained a certain appeal to me, though I've NEVER been a horror fan (never seen any Saw, Friday the 13th, Halloween, any of those and not really interested).

Don't get me wrong. I love an expensive blockbuster now and again, where large things blow up spectacularly, especially if the hero/ine escapes just in time with singed eyebrows, etc. And I am not a bid chick-flick fan, either.

I remember watching The Spy Who Came In From The Cold with my parents, and how disappointed they were; being used to James Bond and all that. Yet, though I was a kid, I bonded with Richard Burton's character and was truly heartbroken by the ending. Whereas I was creeped out by Roger Moore (and perhaps by Sean Connery in that orange romper!!).

Some movies move too fast-- watching Eragon, we all felt like it was a highlight film, it didn't work at all.

Where do you draw the line between boring and understated, or restrained, or measured? Is it really so subjective, or are there any objective markers?

[Cagliostro]

This is a good discussion point. I used to love "boring" films. Ones that you have to pay attention to, and don't have a galloping pace. I used to have the patience for movies like this. Now that I'm in my 40's, I find I can't sit still and focus with two kids around like I used to. I used to be such a film snob, but now if the movie's pace is a bit too slow, I can't focus on it and I get bored. I can't watch the same movies I used to love. It's weird. I've become one of the people I used to scoff at. Woe is me.

[lucimay]

I remember watching The Spy Who Came In From The Cold with my parents, and how disappointed they were; being used to James Bond and all that. Yet, though I was a kid, I bonded with Richard Burton's character and was truly heartbroken by the ending. Whereas I was creeped out by Roger Moore (and perhaps by Sean Connery in that orange romper!!).

yeah i loved ANYthing with richard burton in it when i was a kid, including the period pieces (Becket, Anne of a Thousand Days, Taming of the Shrew) all of which could be considered slower paced films and fit in your "boring" category. but spy was the BEST of all those (and who's afraid of virginia woolf)

i'm still in the "ones that you have to pay attention to" category myself. i'm a big fan of christopher nolan who makes films you really have to pay attention to. in fact, the ones i REALLY get bored with are the action flicks where it's chase scene, kick butt scene, more chase, explosions, more kick butt, more chase, etc.

i figured Cowboys & Aliens was gonna be one of those boring action films but i wanted to see it anyway (cause i'll pretty much see anything that daniel craig is in) but i was pleasantly surprised that although there was a lot of kick butt action and chasing around, there was a lot of emotional content too and layers in the film. good job, mr. favreau. (john favreau directed)

i don't think my tastes in storytelling of any kind (film, movies, plays, etc) has changed much since i was a kid.
when i go looking for films to watch online late at night it's difficult for me to find stuff to watch that satisfies me. one film that comes to mind that i've seen recently (besides the lates christopher nolan film, Inception) was Rabbit Hole.

i think i really love "the human condition" films. i WANT to think about things.

[Cail]

Pacing's a funny thing.

I absolutely love The Postman and Open Range, two films that are excruciatingly slow-paced. But both films offer spectacular exposition and characterization (particularly Open Range).

Now with that said, I think that Terminator 2 is a slow, dull, preachy mess that's nearly unwatchable. Sure, there are a couple of great action sequences, but the film as a whole is a disaster.

The Terminator, on the other hand, is about the best-paced film I've ever seen. There literally isn't a wasted frame of film there. Every bit of exposition and characterization is done while something else is happening (gunfight, chase, etc). The only time the film slows down is during the sex scene, which is vital to the movie's conceit.

[danlo]

Cag makes a great point about lifestyle I recently discredited a flick (XMen First Class) partly because my kids were running around and too many distractions were going on. Lifestyle, mood, accommodations and expectations are some of the main factors that can prejudice one's viewing. You certainly don't want to watch Lost In Translation after Transformers. (The ending of Open Range is incredible, it's like a heavyweight boxing match with guns...)

[Orlion]

Now with that said, I think that Terminator 2 is a slow, dull, preachy mess that's nearly unwatchable. Sure, there are a couple of great action sequences, but the film as a whole is a disaster.

The Terminator, on the other hand, is about the best-paced film I've ever seen. There literally isn't a wasted frame of film there. Every bit of exposition and characterization is done while something else is happening (gunfight, chase, etc). The only time the film slows down is during the sex scene, which is vital to the movie's conceit.

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! I had seen Terminator 2 first on USA and thought I liked it. Years later I re-watched the whole thing and was spending most of the movie looking at my watch and wandering when the damn thing would end.

I find pacing tends not to be a problem if I'm really interested in the story (i.e. Legend of Hell House, though from the era of 'slow horror' along with Carpenter's 'The Thing' were amazing). Likewise, if I'm not interested, it doesn't matter how much action is in it. (Wanted comes to mind in this category... Also, Carpenter's Halloween bored me to tears... I just wasn't interested in any of them).

[Cail]

Oh Hell yes, The Thing is beautifully paced.

[Damelon]

yeah i loved ANYthing with richard burton in it when i was a kid, including the period pieces (Becket, Anne of a Thousand Days, Taming of the Shrew) all of which could be considered slower paced films and fit in your "boring" category. but spy was the BEST of all those (and who's afraid of virginia woolf)

Every time I run across Cleopatra on tv I have to watch at least a portion of it. The last movie I got involved in watching was The Remains of the Day, with Anthony Hopkins in the lead as as a manservant in pre-WWII England. Slow paced it was but I thought it was good. Pirates of the Caribbean, I rented and watched a full 10 minutes of before returning.

[dANdeLION]

Movie pacing: one person's "boring" is another per.....

.....what? I need to know, the suspense is killing me!

[Shaun das Schaf]

.....The last movie I got involved in watching was The Remains of the Day, with Anthony Hopkins in the lead as as a manservant in pre-WWII England. Slow paced it was but I thought it was good.

I had to watch this recently for work and was surprised at how much more I enjoyed it the second time around (had seen it when it first came out and liked it then.) You're right that it would traditionally be defined as slow-paced, but I think it's a great example of how a performance - when it's a good as Hopkins' is here - can be its own pace; and or do away with the need for pace altogether. I think TRotD is one of Anthony Hopkins' best performances, the way he imparts so much emotion by expressing so little. Not to mention the chemistry between his and Thompson's characters is VERY believable.

[Shaun das Schaf]

Movie pacing: one person's "boring" is another per.....

.....what? I need to know, the suspense is killing me!

[deer of the dawn]

Movie pacing: one person's "boring" is another per.....

.....what? I need to know, the suspense is killing me!

I ran out of letters. It was supposed to be "one person's boring is another person's..." You fill in the blank.

As much as I admire both Hopkins and Thompson, Remains of the Day didn't measure up to the book, which blew me away. In fact the book's pacing was similar to the film A Scanner Darkly, where you're going "is this going anywhere? and then all of a sudden...

[Zarathustra]

There has been a big shift in pacing over the past few decades, I think. It seems to really have started in the 80s, and picked up steam ever since. Maybe it has something to do with the notion of "the blockbuster," which many consider to have begun with Jaws (1975, I think).

I zeroed in on this when my youngest son was five or six and I wanted to introduce him to Star Wars when it came out on DVD. But I didn't start at the beginning, with the Prequels. I started right were I started in 1976 when I was around five: Star Wars. (Also known as "A New Hope," though it wasn't known that way to me.)

My son hated it. Thought it was slow and boring. And you know what? I thought it was slow, too. I remember being mesmerized as a kid, and thrilled at what I was seeing. But this was just robots in the sand, for like 20 minutes. You could definitely tell this was a 70s movie from the pacing alone, completely ignoring the effects and haircuts. [Of course, he didn't like the Prequel trilogy, either, but that was because it was so stupid, not the pacing.]

Luckily, with the recent Blu-ray release of the Holy Trilogy, he's now old enough to have a bit more patience, and he loved it this time around. But for many years after that experience, whenever I'd pop in a slow movie, he'd ask me, "Dad, is this another crappy 70s movie?"

So movies are getting faster paced with time, not necessarily with genre or country of origin. It's not an American thing as much as it is a an iPad, Youtube, texting, multi-tasking, fragmented-attention-of-the-21st-century, thing.

On a related tangent ... did you all know that music is getting louder? It's true. Apparently, engineers are pressured by the music industry to master a recording as loud as possible, in order to compete with other music on the radio (do people still listen to the radio?). This is why music sounds like crap nowadays. (Well, one reason ...) In order to make music louder, they have to use compression on the loudest peaks in the the audio waveform, so that the difference between the lows and the highs is almost completely eliminated. This robs the music of almost all its dynamics, and sounds like someone is scraping your speakers as the music plays. Most people can't tell because they listen on cheap earbuds to an MP3 which is itself merely an inferior version of the original CD track, anyway. The effect is music on steroids. EVERYTHING SOUNDS EQUALLY LOUD AND YOUR EARS EVENTUALLY START TO TIRE, JUST LIKE YOUR EYES WOULD TIRE IF WE WROTE EVERYTHING IN ALL-CAPS. For example.

All this to feed a new kind of consumer, whose attention is shorter and more fragmented. Everything in popular culture is louder and faster.

Except for AATE. Heh, maybe I was too hard on that book.

[Shaun das Schaf]

As much as I admire both Hopkins and Thompson, Remains of the Day didn't measure up to the book, which blew me away. In fact the book's pacing was similar to the film A Scanner Darkly, where you're going "is this going anywhere? and then all of a sudden...

I always put The Remains of the Day on my list of favourite books, so I agree it was never going to be an easy standard for the film to reach. I guess my approach to film adaptations has changed a bit over time. Maybe I've got a bad case of Stockholm Syndrome working for the dark side , but I pretty much go into adaptations expecting them to be completely different beasts from their book parents, with certain restrictions of form and certain freedoms of expressions not permitted the printed word. <--- That wordy sentence in mind, I stand by my view of TRotD being both a good film and good example of maintaining tension without 'blockbuster' pace.

[Shaun das Schaf]

....So movies are getting faster paced with time, not necessarily with genre or country of origin. It's not an American thing as much as it is a an iPad, Youtube, texting, multi-tasking, fragmented-attention-of-the-21st-century, thing.

This is very true. There are many Hindu myths about acceleration that explore this aren't there? I have to admit my ignorance of the details in this area, but unfortunatley that didn't stop it coming to mind
Anyway, I'm certainly aware of this fragmenting, shortening attention span in myself and it does take a bit of conscious effort to step out of the information current and SLOW down. Seems also to be a matter of what our bodies and minds adapt to; that we almost need to feed them a slower pace of information food to get them craving and appreciating a slower pace. None of which changes the unarguable fact that, yes, The Phantom Menace and Co are truly shit films!

On a related tangent ... did you all know that music is getting louder? It's true. Apparently, engineers are pressured by the music industry to master a recording as loud as possible, in order to compete with other music on the radio (do people still listen to the radio?). The effect is music on steroids. EVERYTHING SOUNDS EQUALLY LOUD AND YOUR EARS EVENTUALLY START TO TIRE, JUST LIKE YOUR EYES WOULD TIRE IF WE WROTE EVERYTHING IN ALL-CAPS.

This is also very true. Audio engineers, (who aren't the chirpiest of peeps to begin with!), constantly and understandably complain about producers asking them to 'make it louder!' And yes I agree with the effect on our sensory organs, kind of like google implications for long-term memory.

[deer of the dawn]

As much as I admire both Hopkins and Thompson, Remains of the Day didn't measure up to the book, which blew me away. In fact the book's pacing was similar to the film A Scanner Darkly, where you're going "is this going anywhere? and then all of a sudden...

I always put The Remains of the Day on my list of favourite books, so I agree it was never going to be an easy standard for the film to reach. I guess my approach to film adaptations has changed a bit over time. Maybe I've got a bad case of Stockholm Syndrome working for the dark side , but I pretty much go into adaptations expecting them to be completely different beasts from their book parents, with certain restrictions of form and certain freedoms of expressions not permitted the printed word. <--- That wordy sentence in mind, I stand by my view of TRotD being both a good film and good example of maintaining tension without 'blockbuster' pace.

I agree it was a good film, but I "liked" Hopkins' character too much from the beginning whereas in the book he was "above my likes and dislikes" (as Sam says of the Elves in FoTR), so when he finally revealed his breaking heart in the book it was devastating-- I literally burst into tears. Few films could possible compare in the kind of emotional shock value, although there have been moments.

I like fast, expensive blockbusters too, don't get me wrong-- even (dare I say it?) all the Star Wars films. But they're like candy bars. I don't want to eat candy bars all day, just once in a while. I get bored with the compressed pace. I want a salad or an apple or a piece of toast once in a while, in the form of a "film" as opposed to a movie.

[Vraith]

....So movies are getting faster paced with time, not necessarily with genre or country of origin. It's not an American thing as much as it is a an iPad, Youtube, texting, multi-tasking, fragmented-attention-of-the-21st-century, thing.

This is very true. There are many Hindu myths about acceleration that explore this aren't there? I have to admit my ignorance of the details in this area, but unfortunatley that didn't stop it coming to mind
Anyway, I'm certainly aware of this fragmenting, shortening attention span in myself and it does take a bit of conscious effort to step out of the information current and SLOW down. Seems also to be a matter of what our bodies and minds adapt to; that we almost need to feed them a slower pace of information food to get them craving and appreciating a slower pace. None of which changes the unarguable fact that, yes, The Phantom Menace and Co are truly shit films!

On a related tangent ... did you all know that music is getting louder? It's true. Apparently, engineers are pressured by the music industry to master a recording as loud as possible, in order to compete with other music on the radio (do people still listen to the radio?). The effect is music on steroids. EVERYTHING SOUNDS EQUALLY LOUD AND YOUR EARS EVENTUALLY START TO TIRE, JUST LIKE YOUR EYES WOULD TIRE IF WE WROTE EVERYTHING IN ALL-CAPS.

This is also very true. Audio engineers, (who aren't the chirpiest of peeps to begin with!), constantly and understandably complain about producers asking them to 'make it louder!' And yes I agree with the effect on our sensory organs, kind of like google implications for long-term memory.

A serious tangent, but related to pace [and IMO, can be extended in another direction to speak on volume]:
Paul Virilio...despite some problems in his thought...has a lot of interesting things to say on speed. Here's a very short teaser [or anti-teaser since some might find it immediately not worth their time to go further with it].
www.daaq.net/folio/bibliography/b_virilio.html

Edited to fix formatting

[Shaun das Schaf]

I agree it was a good film, but I "liked" Hopkins' character too much from the beginning whereas in the book he was "above my likes and dislikes" (as Sam says of the Elves in FoTR), so when he finally revealed his breaking heart in the book it was devastating-- I literally burst into tears. Few films could possible compare in the kind of emotional shock value, although there have been moments.

That's actually a really good point to make and I know what you mean. I think you're right, in that respect the book is more powerful, and in may other respects too, though it still comes to mind as an example of how character and acting and indeed cinematography, if done well, can hold our attention (and act as a kind of 'pace') without the need to keep protagonists on the run or blow things up. Not that I mind explosive adventures!

[Shaun das Schaf]

A serious tangent, but related to pace [and IMO, can be extended in another direction to speak on volume]:
Paul Virilio...despite some problems in his thought...has a lot of interesting things to say on speed. Here's a very short teaser [or anti-teaser since some might find it immediately not worth their time to go further with it].
www.daaq.net/folio/bibliography/b_virilio.html

Thanks for the link Vraith, looks like an interesting read. Particularly like Peter's comments re: a perpetual state of crisis:

The hazard of this fixation on speed is that has structured the world to function in a constant state of crisis, an unending cold war of environmental and economic exploitation.

The culture that develops out of this permenant state of crisis is a culture that is fixated on security; security and speed: who can protect theselves best and fastest. The result is a war waged in time instead of in distance. The physical world ceases to be the battle field and instead the battle becomes one of ideologies and economics and speed

and from the book itself:

... the more speed increases, the faster freedom decreases.

[sgt.null]

the Station Agent can be described as languid. I love the movie and enjoy the time I spend watching, wishing I could stay just a bit longer...