20s: The 1920s saw a vast expansion of Hollywood film making and worldwide film going. Throughout the decade, film production increasingly focused on the feature film rather than the "short" or "two-reeler." This is a change that had begun with the long D.W. Griffith epics of the mid-1910s. In Hollywood, numerous small studios were taken over and made a part of larger studios, creating the Studio System that would run American film making until the 1960s. MGM (founded in the middle of the decade) and Paramount were the highest-grossing studios during the period, with Fox, Universal, United Artists, and Warner Brothers making up a large part of the remaining market.The 1920s was also the decade of the "Picture Palaces": large urban theaters that could seat 1-2,000 guests at a time, with full orchestral accompaniment and very decorative design (often a mix of Italian, Spanish, and Baroque styles). These picture palaces were often owned by the studios and used to premier and first-run their major films. Key genres such as the swashbuckler, horror, and modern romantic comedy flourished during the decade. Modern:
Thousands of full-length films were produced during the first decade of the 21st Century. Building on developments in the 1990s, computers are used to create effects that would have previously been more expensive, from the subtle erasing of surrounding islands in Cast Away to the vast battle scenes such as those in Gladiator, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Matrix and 300. In addition, film genres not known for their popular appeal in North America became increasingly attractive to filmgoers: films in foreign languages like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Passion of the Christ and Letters from Iwo Jima; and documentary films like An Inconvenient Truth, March of the Penguins, Super Size Me, and Fahrenheit 9/11, became very successful. Also gaining popularity was the use of Computer-generated imagery (CGI) to produce films. These types of films were originally seen in the 1990s with the likes of Toy Story and its sequel Toy Story 2, but CGI films became more popular in 2001 with the release of Shrek. Other popular CGI films include Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Monsters, Inc. andRatatouille. In addition, Up became the second animated feature ever to receive an Oscar nomination for The Best Picture.