When movies become great again (MMGA) then we will watch them with rapture attention.
What we have now are filmmakers who are attempting to remake the magic of films from their childhood (when films represented a kind of currency, or surplus value) or else draw us into a retrospective continuation of filmia-as-philosophy. Like scripture vs. apologetics (if one can follow).
Late-medieval and European-rennaissance art was actually reactionary, prescriptive, imitative craftsmanship. What we often conceptualize as masterpiece is actually imitation (Roman classical-cum-Greek, Van Eyk, etc…), which falls far short of the truly revolutionary. We remember film as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle version of painting-as-art, when it was historically nothing more than coding (presentation).
Which means we have an artwork which is imitating an artwork, which was an imitation. Which is boring. And people who want a job in that industry are willing to observe the small number of instances in which true artistic innovation was evident, but don’t actually believe they will be permitted to engage in such exploration. Which is boring and trite.
I think two-hour movies are soon to be a thing of the past. But, will people pay premium prices to watch a one-hour TV episode on the big screen? One hour is all anyone can handle anymore, and then only if they can also look at their phones, they get the shakes if they can’t look at their phones.
When we switch to XR/AR goggles worn every waking moment, that will be the end of movie theaters, and so many other things. Only a few will survive, like drive-ins today.
I don’t think it’s just the old man in me saying we’re heading in a bad direction.
What about three-hour films?
Some modern ones are absolute garbage, but some are worth the bladder pain!
I don’t think he knows about Second Disc, PattyMcB
Of course. Give them a camera. Their natural desire to be in control will take over.
Hey chadGPT, summarize this Fellini for me.
Great question, let’s dig into this! Federico Fellini’s 8½ is a sequel to his previous hit film Se7en, and its protagonists are a group of eight friends. One of the friends becomes a father, and his baby counts as the “½” in the title. The group gets into various crazy adventures, such as being a failed film director, fantasising about hot women, having mommy issues, and hating religion. The overall message may be summarised as: friendship is magic.
Do you have any further questions on French New Wave films?
thumbnail of The Brutalist (4 hrs long) okay perhaps not the best example
I’m not a film student but I assume that long, comparatively difficult films by Tarkovsky, Ozu, etc are a lot of what the film students are watching and I would imagine that the professors are commentating on more recent developments
Tarkovsky films are incredible but are a “watch once in your lifetime” sort of deal.
I asked my grandmother if she had seen STALKER and she said yes, when it came out in theaters, like 40 years ago (in the USSR), and I asked if she was interested in re-watching it with her grandkids
She said: “No. It’s a very difficult film. A very difficult film. You watch it only once because you don’t get the same feeling a second time”
I watched it like thrice and it only got better and more fascinating on every rewatch.
And not exactly 4 hours of easy watching.
It’s not for the Marvel crowd but it’s an amazing movie wIth world class cinematography and it sucks you in.
It didn’t seem like 4 hours at all to me.
yeah i didn’t regard it as a particular difficult film at all.
but people are different and at different levels. tons of people in this thread seem to flip out at the notion some films aren’t for everyone. not everyone reads at the same grade level, but for some reason the idea of films being at different levels is very offensive to folks.
running a marathon is a lot harder than running a mile. and we have people who can’t run a mile telling us marathons are stupid and shouldn’t exist.
Thanks for explaining that different people like different movies. Truly groundbreaking stuff, right up there with the marathon metaphor.
That may be true, but the example in the article, Jules et Jim, is under 2 hours long.
I only ever had Facebook, Twitter and Reddit and just couldn’t get into Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, etc. so this is really perplexing to me. It just can’t be true can it?
I also can’t stand using a phone while watching a TV show (paid streaming, no ads) or a movie. It’s sad to me that people are unwilling to immerse themselves in something for just a while.
Did you have an iPad/phone shoved in front of you during mealtime, or when waiting for a sibling during their sports practice or game, or while waiting at the doctors office, or if your parents had guests or were visiting a friend, or in literally every single potential moment of boredom that could be filled with learning patience, reflection and just enjoying silence?
Because that’s the new normal for a whole generation of kids.
I have young kids in gen alpha, bought them up with quite minimal screen time, and the behavioural differences between them and their peers that have been bought up with heavy screen use iPad as the primary tool of choice is stark and very concerning for those kids’ future.
And lemme tell you, none of the parents I gently tried to encourage the importance of boredom with over the years changed their behaviour much. As soon as it became a regular tool to deal with an child needing attention it became a very hard thing to part with.
It distresses me to see this trend. It’s like some parents have a reflex to stick a tablet in front of their kid, even if the kid doesn’t need it or ask for it.
I work with a 4 year old kid who loves looking out windows. When he has free time, he often goes to look through them, even though there’s nothing particular interesting going on out there. He’s a chill little dude, completely mute, and I’ve never seen him angry. I’ve been told he likes to sit in a big chair on his front porch and watch everything and everyone go by, like a little old man on a summer day.
Yet every morning he comes in, he walks in holding a tablet. It doesn’t make any sense to me. I’m fairly certain this kid would be happy staring out a window for the whole 15 or so minutes it takes to arrive.
I always loved staring out the window in the car - I loved long rides because of it, showing little to no interest in whatever our destination was. It gave my mind the space to wander, to ponder, to go on imaginative flights of fancy that helped me learn to organize my thoughts. It’s upsetting that kids are being deprived of such moments nowadays.
What does “intermission” mean?
You want to re-calibrate from the constant barrage of content? Find a way to watch The Wrath of God its a good movie that opens with a series of 30 second set shots of water flowing. Its like anti-transformers level of stillness
are the movies shit? do you take into account that every movie stands on the shoulder of all the films before it and so rehashes the same shit usually the same way? can you appreciate that the good filmmakers raise the bar on what is acceptable and that a lot of the slop coming out can’t pass it?
I’ve given up on giving a chance to substandard crap. oh it picks up in the 2nd halp or third season or whatever - get fucked. how can pluribus grab me in the first five minutes? how can hell or high water do the same?
Love that people complain about the length of movies while simultaneously happily siting through eight, hour+ long episodes of Stranger Things over two evenings.
Especially when many hours could have easily been left on the cutting room floor of most streaming shows, but they need to streeetch the runtime so that the writers can meet their contractual, or whatever other internal requirements.
I read the other day that Netflix goes out of their way to restate the premises vocally and frequently as possible, and has as much plot duplication as possible so that people can still enjoy it while they’re watching their phones.
Not to completely invalidate your point but streaming shows are pretty formulaic in terms of pacing, with convenient break intervals, and are seldom very deep. Films are harder to break up around a bathroom trip or decide to put on hold until another day.
Not to completely invalidate your point but have you ever noticed the [pause] button when you’re watching a movie?
The exception is for cinema films, and any cinema film over two hours long (which is very rare) will generally have an intermission. Not that we were limiting the discussion to cinema entertainment anyway.
My favorite is when they they say something like “it starts getting good in season 3”. Like I’m going to watch tens of hours of a show that kind of sucks just to see if it actually starts getting good or not?
Of course, the reality is that they aren’t really watching the show like I would - as in, they aren’t sitting down and giving it their undivided attention. The show is on, but they’re also on their phones the entire time, or it’s on in the background and they are doing something else, or whatever. Probably one of the reasons why the show feels like it’s full of filler - they need to make sure that someone that’s only sort of paying attention can still follow what’s going on.
I’m pretty sure that’s actually true.
Doesn’t surprise me at all, really. Seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy too, because if you make a show like that, then someone who sits down and actually tries to watch it is more likely to start getting bored and starts to get out that second screen.
The other issue, particularly with movies, is a lot of this stuff is created with the idea of making it easier to translate to other languages, hence things like the overly simplified dialog.
Love that people complain about the length of movies while simultaneously happily siting through eight, hour+ long episodes of Stranger Things over two evenings.
Because a movie is a constant continuation, where as each episode has a hard end and you can stop and decide if you want to continue or stop.
Except that if you look at the stats, most Netflix viewers binge watch (88% here), and most engage in long binges (70% here reported 5 episodes or more at a time), binge watching is by all accounts ‘the norm’ for streaming service users.
So while you may be able to ‘decide if you want to continue or stop’ the statistics show that the vast majority of people end up watching much, much longer than a movie runtime - which was my point.
People tend to be more willing to do a lot of something if it’s broken up into smaller parts.
As an example, my great-grandmother used to always cut desserts and appetizers into smaller sizes if she noticed they weren’t being eaten. No one would take a large slice of cake but lots of people would take a small slice and then another small slice after. My grandmother took that advice from her and so did my mom, and it really does work very well. Same applies to movies and tv shows.
Yeah that’s a good point. It’s a psychological hurdle.
Doesn’t mean people are attentive throughout though. I think it were Netflix execs that are currently pushing writers to constantly reiterate plot points because people aren’t paying attention.
I read the same, and I feel like that is a negative feedback loop.
Like the more the content is written so that people don’t have to pay attention and plot and scenery is verbally stated by actors, the less people will feel like they need to pay attention… and then they’ll turn to their phone.
Its gonna come back to bite them when they dumb the content down and people realize they don’t actually need to pay for Netflix to run in the background, and can instead just have YouTube videos of people reciting the plot to them while they doodle on their phones.
I also heard math students won’t solve all the maths. What gives??
Understood. You have no identity within reality, and thus everything is suspect to be artificial. Which is the state of Being within reality: non-belief (not merely as reality, but as a potentiality of reality).
One is drawn into a conclusion which is based upon the presupposition of non-reality. Which leads them deeper into their own suspicions, i.e, things and even critiques are not real, which means ‘I am Correct’, perpetually.
It seems complicated. Such a interesting state of being. Continue…
Someone tell me how that’s a problem. Maybe the decades old films are just as interesting as a lecture and having troubles at a lecture at uni isn’t unheard of.
I’ve always considered myself a film buff but even i’m struggling to sit through most of the tripe that’s coming out of hollywood these days. Arts films have always been a challenge but rewarding once their completed.
