The constraints of not being able to color-grade the whole film with a slider or two, of every cut in the edit taking time to do, and of effects that weren't in-camera being relatively expensive, tended to lead to better and more-interesting filmmaking, even in middling films.
I appreciate what the right people can do with modern tools—I enjoy and even love plenty of newer films, and it's undeniably brought some cool stuff within reach of smaller, cheaper productions—but overall I see it as making cinema worse.
"We did it in a computer" being the answer to every "how'd they do that?" isn't movie magic, it's boring as hell. It's why even a film that tries to avoid that to some degree, like the new Dune duology, is in some important respects—though setting aside overall quality of the film on some other dimensions—just less interesting than broadly similar films like Lawrence of Arabia or Star Wars (or even, if I may be so bold, David Lynch's Dune).
I think this sort of opinion is fairly common among film-fans of all ages, due to interest in film making itself as much as output of the process per se. Not sure most movie watchers care, and they may well prefer the newer stuff because of the ultra-fast editing and tuned-to-be-cotton-candy-appealing color schemes and unconstrained video-game camera of fully CGI scenes and all that.
> I prefer 1970s music. Autotune is for whippersnappers.
Hard agree. I can't friggin' believe the heavy-handed autotune in children's media, especially (Daniel Tiger! Fred Rogers would be so unhappy with it). Let's teach them that natural human singing voices, like their own, sound wrong and bad. WTF.
Anyone who doesn't understand this should listen to a Karen Carpenter song, and compare it with a modern pop singer.
True. I lost all interest in "making of" documentaries due to that.
The practical effects are whimsical but are so close to realistic that it's quite jarring for people who have only seen digital FX, it evokes that wonder of, "how did they do that" when you suddenly realize that it's not perfect but it wasn't done with a computer and you can't clearly identify what isn't perfect about it.
It's charming and it will make you lament the lack of practical special effects in modern movies.
Disney used to be the equivalent of watching a magician perform an amazing stage play live.
Now it's a prerecorded bus stop ad designed to distract you from the burning air and dirty seats until you step onto the next leg of your journey between work and the office.
It was the peak era of practical special effects, and hugely expensive to do something that now can be done with only a couple of people and a cheap computer.
Those movies were real. The stories were made up, scenes were sets, but ... the images are of real people in meat-world locations, standing near other people, speaking things they mostly really spoke, doing things they mostly really did. It's jarring by juxtaposition just how ... fake modern hyperreal CGI appears on screen.
A couple years ago, some friends got me to go along to one of the Spiderman movies. Early on, there's a big fight scene on a bridge, and heroes and villains are flipping around in the air, falling off towers and things, and I realized it wasn't bothering me at all. None of it had any weight, or whatever it is about heights that usually makes me feel sick even when I know it's fake.
Like if there's a coffee shop scene you can look out the window and see like a postman deliver mail or a somebody walk a dog. Stuff that isn't between the main characters happens.
The newer trend of blurring everything that isn't a main character is really annoying to me. Real life isn't blurred ...
Selective memory. Go listen to all the actual Billboard hits from the 70s. Even before autotune, there was no shortage of ways to make terrible music.
I simply find film-craft more interesting and impressive, and the constraints to drive more-fun (and sometimes absolutely brilliant) creative choices, before they were ~all shot and edited digitally. It's not about good or bad, exactly, but about an aspect of older films that's now all but gone in modern ones. I also happen to appreciate silent film, and some things about those that were impressive and fun went away with talkies—it's not that the talkies were necessarily worse in some absolute sense, but some potentially-enjoyable qualities of silents took a back seat once talkies took over. If someone had really been into those aspects of cinema, they might have tended to prefer older silents over newer talkies, without necessarily disliking all talkies. Similar story with film vs. digital.
I happen to like the film-craft side of things enough that, for me, it in general makes film-era movies more appealing. That doesn't mean I don't watch and enjoy three dozen or more digital films per year, but I do lose out on some of that aspect of my enjoyment of film, with those. This is most-pronounced in action and "genre" (e.g. sci fi) movies.
Like, I watch the modern US Godzilla (I happen to think the first one in this US series is pretty good!) and the action's... fine, nothing particularly wrong with it, but I'm marveling at none of it, just zero. I watch 1954 Godzilla, or Return of Godzilla (1984) and sure, the action's mostly less-convincing (though some of those room-collapse shots in the '54 movie...) but it's also far more interesting.
> Even before autotune, there was no shortage of ways to make terrible music.
Did anyone claim there weren't absolute mountains of bad music in any age? Of course there were, most of anything is bad. Disliking autotune and related tech's effects on music (e.g. visual vs. by-ear editing) doesn't mean claiming that music lacking it is necessarily not-bad.
I have the set of Billboard hits CDs.
> hit as hard
I like a lot of music made since the 70's. But one thing is gone - quality singing.
I can’t make a top 20 movies from the last decade without including crap. There’s several years where I can’t even recommend a single movie.
I watch a lot of movies and can't keep up with the likely-to-be-good ones every year.
There are north of 500 US & Canadian films released per year. Add in foreign (edit: I mean, even more foreign than Canada) cinema, and it's solidly in the four figures. How many movies were you aware of last year? Ten? A couple dozen? Maybe as many as fifty? Drop in the bucket, regardless.
I'm sure there hasn't been a year in the 2000s in which there weren't at least 20 movies released that were worth your time (for those with all but the stingiest and harshest take on "worth my time", and probably also coupled with narrow taste to get the list down under 20).
And I write this as the person who has been perceived as disliking modern movies, from my post a couple steps up this thread! (I don't dislike modern movies! They're just almost-all, for reasons of technology-related changes in production processes, missing certain qualities that I appreciated a bunch in film-era movies)
Now I’m sure you’ve looked forward to many movies but off the top of your head list stuff you’ve either seen more than once and or actually recommend to someone that came our in the last 10 years vs…
(78) The Deer Hunter, Superman, National Lampoon's Animal House, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (79) Apocalypse Now, Alien, Life of Brian, Mad Max, Escape from Alcatraz (80) The Shining, Star Wars: Episode V, Airplane!, The Blues Brothers, Caddyshack, The Elephant Man (81) Raiders of the Lost Ark, Das Boot, The Evil Dead, Mad Max 2, Escape from New York, Time Bandits (82) Blade Runner, The Thing, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Poltergeist, Conan the Barbarian, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Tron (83) Scarface, WarGames, Star Wars: Episode VI, Trading Places, The Evil Dead
Obviously not all great movies but that’s ~30 classic movies in just 6 years and I’m sure I’ve missed a few as kids movies are largely missing from that list.
2016: Green Room, The Nice Guys, Hail Caesar!, The Neon Demon, Swiss Army Man, Hunt for the Wilder People, The VVitch, Train to Busan, Shin Godzilla, Moana (hey, I like this one), Arrival. Moonlight's on my to-watch and is supposed to be really good.
2017 (I've done OK on catching up with these!): The Lost City of Z, Dunkirk, Low Life, Good Time, Logan Lucky (absolutely slept on, kills it as a feel-good lightweight small-stakes heist movie), Blade Runner 2049, The Death of Stalin (I liked this less than a lot of folks, but given how widely-loved it was, I'm probably the idiot here), One Cut of the Dead, You Were Never Really Here. The Planet of the Apes movie from that year, plus Phantom Thread, and The Little Hours are to-watch for me and come highly recommended.
2018: Annihilation, Isle of Dogs, Upgrade, Sorry to Bother You, High Life, Eighth Grade, the Suspiria remake. To-watch that I expect to be good include Champion (Korean arm wrestling movie—there's another movie by the same name that year), First Reformed, BlacKkKLansman, The Favourite, The Wolf House, Climax, and some others.
2019: HUGE year for the particular (small) set I'm seeing on my list, including a ton to-watch but a bunch I've seen. Uncut Gems, The Lighthouse, Knives Out, Little Women, JoJo Rabbit, Ready or Not, Parasite, Midsommar, The Art of Self Defense, maybe Marriage Story (but if you've seen one Baumbach movie, you've kinda seen them all, and I'm not sure I'd put it above The Squid and the Whale). Midway's a well-above-average war movie and pairs great with Tora, Tora, Tora! as a crazy-long double feature in a really fun way. To-watch list is nuts and I really need to dedicate a month or so to filling out my watched-list for this year: First Cow, The Irishman, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Bacurau, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Farewell, The Souvenir, Blow the Man Down, The Vast of Night, Her Smell, Funan.
It basically just keeps going like that, year after year, and I've barely even tried to dredge up good movies for most of those years, the bulk of it's just stuff that's risen to my attention one way or another, and I'm terrible at keeping up with foreign film especially. I also left off some that a lot of folks would probably include, like at least one Mission Impossible (aside from MI2, I think these are all pretty good action movies, though quality varies a bit) and Avengers: Endgame which, opinion on the rest of Marvel aside (I think it's mostly kinda lazy crap? But was basically entertained for most of them regardless, so I guess I can't complain too much) was a hell of an event. Also Black Panther, which everyone loved but I was pretty meh on (I hate the entire end fight, and it's looooong)
I remember describing Ex Machina as the worst movie of the year I actually finished watching, but hey everyone likes different things.
At the other end of the spectrum there’s a ton of movies with child actors where the kids are just vastly less talented, so the film simply demands less of them. It’s just as true of Let the Right One In a low budget foreign film as it is high budget films such as Harry Potter or classics like The Shinning. Characters come to life not through great acting but because all the elements line up so you forget you’re looking at puppets at the puppet show.
IMO, Great movies are all about understanding the limitations of the medium, the audience, characters, budget, script, etc. That’s why the snap at the end of Avengers: Infinity War was spectacle but didn’t have the emotional impact of a single deer being shot at the beginning of Bambi.
/soapbox
Again not that you’re wrong, but I was thinking about your response for a while.
> That’s why the snap at the end of Avengers: Infinity War was spectacle but didn’t have the emotional impact of a single deer being shot at the beginning of Bambi.
God, truth, and all the more effective a comparison for me because I happened to re-watch Bambi within the last week.
Marvel movies rarely achieve even that lesser connection, maybe a half-dozen times in the thirty-whatever movies.
There is Greta van Fleet, where the lead singer's voice sounds like Robert Plant's voice, and I could imagine Zep was back in business. Unfortunately, the singer hated being compared with Plant and went off in some loser direction.
Zep is still the greatest band ever.
If you have recommendations for good recent drama, I'm interested to hear your suggestions. Let's limit it to interpersonal conflict, by which I mean a movie that follows multiple persons and multiple viewpoints. Think Closer or Dead Poets Society, not Lady Bird or Juno.
Maybe you're right that my request is quite narrow. I didn't mean it to be, but it occurred to me that many stories seem to fall back on the rather formulaic "one person's struggle against the world", so my intention was to specifically ask for movies outside of that formula. I could probably have phrased it better than I did.
1. The Blue Max
2. Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines
The special effects in them were - they built flying replicas of the airplanes used in the films! Can you imagine that happening today?
Two great and very special movies. Both made in the 1960s.
A special mention for Battle of Britain - they didn't build replicas, but dredged up the last remaining flying Me-109s and Spits and, well, seeing and hearing them fly is glorious.
My other favorite air war movies I've made it to so far are Twelve O'Clock High with its beautiful flying fortresses (they belly landed one of them! For the movie! For real!), extremely well-integrated war footage, and clear action (compare to the muddled, ugly mess that is The Dambusters); and Wings—how, how on Earth did they get such good aerial photography that early? And the miniature work isn't bad, either.
I've somehow heard of neither of your first two mentions, but will be checking them both out soon.
I envy you! I wish I could see them again for the first time!
Based on your remarks, I bet you would love "The War Lover", 1963. They used 3 real B-17s for the movie. Very realistic. I know this because my dad flew 32 missions in a B-17, and was assigned by the Air Force to them as a consultant for accuracy for the movie. He made the mission map used in the briefing.
He was also responsible for the "cutting the grass sequence". The director was just going to use models because it was too dangerous, but my dad showed them how to do it safely. The sequence is just terrific. The AF was mad at him for recommending it, but the sequence was very popular with the critics and he was forgiven.
P.S. How to do it safely: do it at dawn when the air is still. Station people at various locations around the flight path in continuous communication with the pilot telling him his altitude. Fly the route again and again, each time slightly lower.
https://www.amazon.com/Everything-But-Flak-Martin-Caidin/dp/...
Yeah, WTF is up with that. It's autotune everywhere now. It was originally intended for some limited uses and it wasn't supposed to be obvious. And now it's obviously everywhere. I suspect it's going to make it easier for AI vocalists to take over.
I jest but let’s not say “musicians” need to be good looking but maybe in most cases “chart topping” musicians.
I’m lazy and didn’t feel like doing the work myself.
https://chatgpt.com/share/681bf3ea-c650-8010-988d-173af745c8...
But these results were based on using ChatGPT’s web search and Python tools and you can verify the citations and the Python code yourself.
Stats for the top 20 artists
Median age: 30 Mean: 30.55 Range: 22-29
I did the same analysis for 20 years ago for this week and the median and the range was 29.5 years old and the range was 18 to 35.
The top 10 20 years before that had a median of 26, a mean of 29.5 and a range between 21-37.
Those numbers aren’t quite as accurate because “We are the World” was #2 and you had a lot of groups back then
[1] https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2021/06/t-pain-usher-ruined...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIjXUg1s5gc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91ck0vJBygo
The hype train does not allow for imperfection, nor does it stop for anything that isn't better than human.
https://www.reddit.com/r/audioengineering/comments/1bfxj2d/w...
Because there's enough clarity to see set errors, everything important is filmed in the dark.
Examples: just about every fight scene since 2018; Castle first season vs last.
One of the reasons why Shogun was so appealing is they did something different.
• “The highest resolution that the expert assessors could discern in the highest performing movie theater was about 875 L/PH.
• “The horizontal resolution averaged over the six multi-burst groups measured on the screens of the six selected movie theaters was about 715 L/PH.”
L/PH = lines per picture height, i.e. vertical resolution
This was for 35 mm film.
Also, well-mastered DVDs with anamorphic widescreen can look astonishingly good on an output device that doesn’t interpolate its lines.
The point is that even 1080p TV is an improvement in resolution over what you used to see in cinemas with 35 mm prints.
I interpreted the claim as being under non-ideal conditions (which is fair, frankly—it's well-known that the visual and sound quality is better at the beginning of a run than at the end, and film quality doesn't matter if your local theater doesn't ensure it's preserved as best it can be).
Plus, I saw a film viewing of Sinners this past weekend (quite a fun movie, highly recommend it) and some visual artifacts were very noticeable—it was regular enough I figured there was a slice of the film roll that got damaged somehow.
House of Dragon was so filmed in the dark, with poor contrast, and color-corrected to be all blue and orange, is almost painful to watch. I have a hard time even seeing what is happening.
Imagine Wild Strawberries in HD. I think it would seem bleaker. Or Blue Velvet. It would make Blue Velvet creepier. It would also make any Corman film seem classier.
HD didn't ruin cinema. It only ruins beauty.
The music did not get better with age either; that music is now old enough to enter "classics" radio stations, which means those stations now alternate between nostalgia and nausea for me. The only redeeming quality those songs seem to have is that they can get even worse, as judged by recent covers/remakes of earlier failures (really, how barren must your musical taste be choose to cover Liquido by Narcotic?)
That's not to say that nothing good came from that period; it's just that good music from that time was not successful. I had great fun in the 2000s and 2010s discovering the bands and artists that should have been big in the 90s.
I have no problems with the movies nor the cartoons of my youth though, those are still the best cinema ever produced.
Get the old used VHS tapes of it from Ebay, not the DVD. The re-releases of it replaced the music and destroyed it.
The Jetsons is fun to watch, as it predicted a lot of the gadgets we actually have today.
I have negative interest in the superhero movies, so there's that. I don't care for the modern style of shifting the colors to blue/orange. Movies from the 70's have a natural look to the colors.
I prefer 1970s music. Autotune is for whippersnappers.
I yell at clouds a lot, too.