donmac
Moderator Emeritus
Beedee Beedee Beedee This Sucks!
Posts: 1,290
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Post by donmac on Feb 20, 2006 15:12:03 GMT -5
Do you think newer movies are better than older movies, or vice versa?
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Post by LetGoOfItSlappy on Feb 20, 2006 16:16:51 GMT -5
Definitely worse.
I am not a movie critic by any stretch of the imagination. I know people here and elsewhere think the pinnacle of movie making are movies like "Citizen Kane", "A Clockwork Orange", "2001" etc. Don't get me wrong, I liked all these movies for the simple fact that they entertained me for a couple of hours.... but I am not a person who looks for "deeper meaning" or "artistic value" or whatever.....if the movies entertained me, I liked it, they don't...I don't....I am a simple man.
That being said, most of the crap coming out nowadays is exactly that....CRAP. I'm sorry I don't need a remake of "Herbie", the original was fine, or "Around the World in 80 days" I don't each and every 50's- 70's sitcom remade into a movie....nor do I need every video game I have ever played made into a movie (this means you Uwe Boll). There were some good ones that were made but I realize that it is my taste and my opinion. I don't apologize for that because I know everyone has different tastes. I LIKED al the Star Wars prequels... I am 34 yrs old and saw all the original trilogy movies in the theater and I still love them but I did actually like the prequels....why, because I like Star Wars and the movies helped me escape reality for a couple hours and they entertained me....that is all I want out of a movie....keep me entertained. "Serenity" was a wonderfully made movie, "Batman Begins" I also thought was outstanding.
Some "movie snobs" may condescend a view like that but whatever....watch your artsy flicks or your movies with the not-in-any-way-subtle political message if you like but I don't go to movies to get preached too and I don't think one's enjoyment of a movie is always directly proportional to one "getting it". I'll stick with my classics like Casablanca, Duck Soup, Airplane, the ORIGINAL Pink Panther, Alien, Magnificent Seven, Star Wars (ALL of them) etc.
Wow....I guess I'll get off my soapbox now.... there probably are a few people having a coniption that I would mention Airplane and Casablanca in the same sentence.
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Post by Afgncaap5 on Feb 20, 2006 19:38:39 GMT -5
I think it's not necessarily fair to say that movies get worse based on an average. I mean, out of every new filmmaker who is inspired by Casablanca, there's bound to be ten other filmmakers who are bad at it.
I think that you still see about as many good movies. The difficulty only comes in finding good sources and knowing what types of movies you can trust.
I mean, take M. Night Shyamalon, or however you spell it. He's not necessarily a good director, but you know, it's so obvious that he's at least thinking about the movies that he makes. He's not some hack who just tosses a script together and shoots as soon as he finds some big names to back him. Night is a director who creates movies that are so well thought out that they either succeed tremendously or fail horribly. The only real flaw in his movies is that everyone just assumes that there's going to be a twist, and that hurts their conceptions going in (I mean, take "The Village." There WAS NO PLOT TWIST in that movie! I mean yes, there was a sudden reveal that audience members might not have expected, but the reveal did nothing to change the outcome of the story (unlike all of his previous movies where the reveal actually did "twist" the plot and make the outcome truly different than what it otherwise might have been.))
So I'll give you that the volume of bad movies is increasing. But I don't think that the volume of good movies is diminishing at all.
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Post by Shep on Feb 20, 2006 20:15:27 GMT -5
Way worse. Because the Suits (executives) have all the power. They don't want to take risks. They want tried and true formulas for (hopefully) big profits. So the consumer ends up with a bunch of crap sequels and TV adaptations.
Adding to the problem--most consumers are dumber than a bag of hammers and are willing to shell out to see whatever rubbish is out there/popular.
The 70s was really the last Golden Age of movie-making because the studios were willing to take chances and let some young creative talent make great movies.
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Post by Captain Hygiene on Feb 20, 2006 20:40:25 GMT -5
Certainly I think they are getting worse. 2005 was an odd year in that respect because, while there was an incredible amount of crap, I also had at least two or three movies that could legitimately be on my all time favorite list, as well as a decent number I enjoyed enormously. The bad outweighs the good, though, those were just exceptions.
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Post by vanhagar3000 on Feb 20, 2006 23:47:05 GMT -5
Worse, and what can you do. Every ideas been done. The ideas that don't for the most part haven't been for a reason. Plus like the above poster said the suits have all the power.
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Post by Afgncaap5 on Feb 20, 2006 23:54:15 GMT -5
The fact that every idea has been done isn't an excuse, though. I mean, just because "Cupid & Psyche," "Until We Have Faces," and "The Phantom Of The Opera" are all roughly the same story with a few twists, it doesn't mean that doing one of them well should prevent the other two from being done just as well.
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Post by LetGoOfItSlappy on Feb 21, 2006 10:58:07 GMT -5
This is a very true statement. The movies we tend to remember from the past are the greats but I guess we have to remember that there were more than enough old bad movies to keep our favorite show going for ten years.
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Post by RafaelH on Feb 21, 2006 11:29:16 GMT -5
Of all people, I would think MTS3K fans would at least figure out that old movies weren't necesarily that great. I just find it weird that when people think of old movies they think of Citizen Kane, The Seven Samurai and Taxi Drivers but when they think of new ones, they bring up Herbie Fully Loaded and Deuce Bigalow. MST3K fans should at least now they had their Marooneds and Amazing Transparent Mans too.
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Post by Donna SadCat Lady on Feb 21, 2006 12:41:18 GMT -5
ITA with Slappy and Rafael. Even if you don't watch MST3K, any casual viewer of Turner Classic Movies in its off-times should quickly realize that the heyday of the studio system produced lots of stinkers. The big difference, I think, is that back then they were more professional about it. I mean that all the crew members were studio employees who were used to working together and who knew their jobs backward and forwards. Even the most formulaic cinema sausage was competently lit, shot, and directed. The actors might be made of stiffer cardboard than even the backdrops, while their idea of Acting! was thick-sliced ham. But by gum they knew their lines and blocking, and could handle long takes and lengthy speeches. So to me, the movies of yesteryear and the movies of this year are six dozen of one or the other. A few are completely dreadful, most poor to mediocre, some good, a few classic. What movie-making has lost in competence and professionalism, it's gained in flexibility and naturalism.
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Post by Afgncaap5 on Feb 21, 2006 12:54:22 GMT -5
I think that we're actually allowing ourselves more "great directors" Forrest, but that the ease of self-made films these days may actually prevent them from heading to Hollywood. Their films will be little-known gems shown primarily to family and friends because they don't need a big studio that requires a massive film release to demonstrate their craft.
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Post by Wild Rebel on Feb 21, 2006 13:01:49 GMT -5
The studios are too chicken-poopie to make new stories and maybe lose money. So they remake old movies thinking they have name recognition.
But they're also too chicken-poopie to let the movies make the same point (political or otherwise) that it did when it was first made. So, they de-ball the stories and consequently the new ones suck. Just try to sit through the new versions of Rollerball or Planet of the Apes after you've seen the original.
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Post by Crowfan on Feb 21, 2006 20:35:01 GMT -5
I agree with the opinion that films are getting worse. I mean, now Hollywood is making remakes of crappy TV shows(Bewitched, The Flintstones, Charlie's Angels, etc). I mean doesn't any thought go into making a movie anymore?
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gihdora
Tibby
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Posts: 63
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Post by gihdora on Feb 21, 2006 20:47:12 GMT -5
Worse from the perception of the "in the face" advertising we get from the studios. There are a few diamonds in the crap, it just gets harder for them to be found.
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Post by Emperor Cupcake on Feb 22, 2006 0:49:59 GMT -5
This was sort of hard. My first reaction was to say that yes, movies are getting worse, just like music is. It seems that whenever I see previews or commercials for upcoming films, they all seem idiotic or boring or both. Plus they're remaking EVERYTHING, and I want it to stop (oh, by the way, I saw a preview recently for what appeared to be a remake of "The Omen." NO THEY DIDN'T!!!).
On the other hand, if you steer clear of the stupider movies, there have been a lot of films lately that I thought were great, like Brokeback Mountain and Capote, as well as a bunch of fantastic independent and foreign films I've seen (like Downfall and The Dreamers), as well as some first-rate documentaries. So really, I think the proportion is probably the same as it's always been -- as previous posters have pointed out, there was a startling amount of crap made in every era from the birth of cinema. Stuff seemed better in the "good old days" because time has done some judicious winnowing, making us remember the great stuff and forget the sh*t. So I voted for "about the same."
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