Is the Face of America That of a Green Ogre?
NYTimes.com 2004/Nov/14/
...American films spotlighted at the festival, whose chief purpose, it seemed, was to please the widest possible audience...
...Along with weapons, movies are among our most lucrative exports to a waiting world, and in the last seven years or so, it has become clear that the expected audience for nearly all American-made studio movies, the audience they are designed and created for, has shifted from the 50 states to the global marketplace. This change in perspective has, naturally, resulted in a change in content: nuances of language or the subtleties of comedy do not translate easily between cultures, but action or fantasy or animation is immediately comprehensible, even if you live in, say, Japan, which is the country that most big studios long to reach....
..In the past, cultures would influence one another through film. The sensibility of the French New Wave and the Hong Kong action picture affected countless young Americans. But that sort of broad foreign influence seems to be waning. As I write, the biggest hit in America is "The Grudge," which is a remake of a Tokyo horror film directed by Takashi Shimizu. He has already directed the original and three sequels in Japanese. Although it received poor reviews, "The Grudge" made nearly $40 million on its first weekend and will probably become a global sensation. In the late 60's and 70's, horror films had the scope of "Rosemary's Baby," which raised the genre to a meditation on urban anxiety and rampant ambition. It is doubtful that anyone harbors similar hopes for "The Grudge." If this is the new global cinema, it could give the term "horror film" new meaning.