Moana Thompson comments: > I can't be completely scientific in terms of a statistical inquiry as to > percentages of length increases, but there certainly has been a trend in > terms of 3 hour lengths for blockbusters in the last few years, and even in > 3 recent films I saw--Black Hawk Down, In the Bedroom and Gosford Park, all > of which I believe were 2 hours 20 minutes (and which varied according to > genre, budget and "prestige value"). In terms of what accounts for > it--since at least the seventies, and accelerating in the eighties and > nineties, the big-budget, high production value blockbuster (often a special > effects-laden, science fiction film) has driven the marketing and economic > strategies of Hollywood. Gladiator was a new innovation, in terms of a > reprise of the old blockbuster genre of the fifties--the Roman epic. Long > films offer spectacle, and epic scale (think back to the Godfather cycle) > and are marketed as 'special-event pictures' thus justifying their often > unwieldy narrative scale. The nuances of very recent contemporary > increases are yet unclear, and remain to be researched, but compared to the > Classical Hollywood period (1929-1960) there is a definite change from the > previously standard 90 minute feature American film. I don't have specific citations, but there have been articles over the last couple of decades about the trend in the 1980s-1990s(?) toward films that could conveniently fit into 2-hour blocks, both to maximize multiplex scheduling (and concession sales) and to fit 2-hour blocks for network broadcast with commercial breaks. I'd suspect that VARIETY and other trade publications, as well as some journalistic sources, might comment on the counter-trend (which, if it is not an abberation, I'd suspect of being fueled by the new prominence of cable and satellite, as well as of DVDs). Don Larsson ----------------------------------------------------------- Donald F. Larsson, English Department, AH 230 Minnesota State University Mankato, MN 56001 ---- To sign off Screen-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF Screen-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]