They don't make them like this anymore.

[Total LOLige]

Funny, I watched The Sting last week in my American Cinema class.

Well, some of the films today are quite good (The Grey, Cabin in the Woods) but classics like Mildred Pierce are still quite influential, IMO.

American Cinema Class. A class that revolves around watching movies I need to take that class. I thought The Grey was average, the trailers made it look like it was fucking rambo action. Still good considering it was based on a short story, I love a cliffhanger.

OT: I've never seen a Hitchcock film. I like 60s and 70s films, Planet of The Apes, Dirty Harry, Apocalypse Now, Taxi Driver, Monty Python and The Holy Grail, Life of Brian. All awesome shit.

 

[Hollyday]

I honestly don't think that movies were any better during cinema's 'golden age' than they are now. I'm with the people above who talked about cherry-picking - we all know and love the absolute classics, but the studios were pumping out a huge amount of garbage back then too (as someone who loves old cinema I've bought my fair share of box-sets only to discover that the two films I recognised on the box are the only decent ones in the bunch). Thankfully most of that has been forgotten.

Even indie classics which we now hold up as shining examples of how film-making was 'better' in the good old days (I'm looking at you, Mean Streets) only have the fame they do because their directors have gone on to become Hollywood royalty. Who knows which contemporary directors will gain that kind of fame and have their earlier works looked on with the same reverence. I can think of lots of examples of who it won't be...

 

[Dr Jones]

You should try an' watch The Twilight Zone television series from the 60ies. Each episode is a different story, with something completely random. Could be a story about someone keeping the devil imprisoned, or someone making a million-dollar bet, if he can shut up for a year.

It has barely any effects, and those it do are just fade-transitions that show something else. Usually the locations arent more than 1, 2 or 3 sets. usually just 1 or 2. The episodes are still movie-grade quality, with the story being told, how it's told and so forth.

 

[saoirse13]

I'm in the middle of watching The Sting and have just come to the conclusion that no matter how much Hollywood tries, no amount of glitz and glamour will ever beat older movies like this. They don't need to have special effects to have a great movie.

I just wish they could make more movies like The Sting, The Color of Money and North By North West.

Anyway there was a question behind this. Do any of you escapists agree with me or do you think that the movies that hollwood are making now are better than older movies?

I know its a broad generalisation. But you know what I mean.

People tend to forget that every generation is mostly garbage. Only things of exceptional quality or lasting memory rise above the mediocrity and remain in pop culture.

Statements like "Oh music/hollywood/games are all garbage now, it used to be good back in the day!" just comes off as rather smug and thoughtless to me. No it wasn't better back in your day! Your generation was just as full of garbage movies, crappy music and horrible games! Now shush!

Well I did say it was a broad generalisation. Though I am 23 years old and therefore that was not my generation. It was not a smug or thoughtless remark. I was stating what i saw as crap. Can you honestly say that 90% of the movies that have been released in the last 10 years where better than those that were released 20-40 years ago. The only thing that makes movies today more watchable is the graffics and special effects. Even the premise of most movies today are not original. They are just copies or remakes of movies and stories that were thought up 30 years ago. I'm not denying that there have been the odd good movie to come out of Hollywood every so often.

As for games, the fact that they are better now is done to technology.
And music, well thats a whole other story. That i could argue for a life-time.

 

[wooty]

Well give it 20 or 30 years and some films that were released last month will probably considered classics and we'll be having the same argument over the 14th Spiderman reboot. Time makes most things old classics.

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

You're misremembering (or actually not remembering at all because I doubt you're old enough)

Hollywood used to churn out movies at an astonishing rate, and most of them were shit. There were well over three hundred films released in the 1930s, then probably as many if not more released in the 1940s. Hollywood crashed remember? And it wasn't because they were making endless waves of glorious cinematic genius.

For example, you remember The Wizard of Oz, but do you also remember Torture Ship? Both the same year, both within the 30s, one a classic, one most people will never have heard of because it is terrible. You remember Casablanca, but do you also remember I Accuse My Parents or Jungle Goddess?

So yeah, I'm happy with The Hurt Locker and Avengers and Gladiator and Lord of the Rings and the Matrix and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and the entire Pixar ouevre and The Dark Knight trilogy and I could go on but hopefully I've made my point.

 

[ThePerfectionist]

Well I did say it was a broad generalisation. Though I am 23 years old and therefore that was not my generation. It was not a smug or thoughtless remark. I was stating what i saw as crap. Can you honestly say that 90% of the movies that have been released in the last 10 years where better than those that were released 20-40 years ago. The only thing that makes movies today more watchable is the graffics and special effects. Even the premise of most movies today are not original. They are just copies or remakes of movies and stories that were thought up 30 years ago. I'm not denying that there have been the odd good movie to come out of Hollywood every so often.

As for games, the fact that they are better now is done to technology.
And music, well thats a whole other story. That i could argue for a life-time.

I want so badly to agree with you, but you're just so...wrong. Graphics and special effects are cinematic tools, nothing more. To say that a house built today is better than a house built 50 years ago because we have more advanced power tools would be ridiculous. Do they enhance some movies? Sure. Can they be disastrous and distracting when terribly done? Oh yes.

I will grant you that the rare movie stands out because of its graphical fidelity and nothing else (Avatar comes to mind. VERY pretty, but no soul), and I will also grant you that we have a larger number of things-go-boom movies in summer these days because we now have the tech to do so, but that does not make our generation of films worse. Older generations produced just as much crap, they just failed for different reasons. Hell, a lot of older movies were laughable because they didn't have the graphical tech we have today. I'm sure plenty of ancient monster movies could have been classics if they could have been made with modern CGI. A movie should never be ignored because it is ugly, certainly, but we should still acknowledge that having modern graphics is BETTER than not having them, despite the ability to misuse them.

Finally, to your point that movies these days are unoriginal. That's always been true. The nature of humans is to copy (and improve on) that which came before. I know this example is overused (see, copying!), but Shakespeare was hardly original. We, as a culture, don't normally care how original an idea is, we care how well it's done. I would certainly like to see more originality, but does that mean I'm not going to see the new Spider-man because superhero movies have been done? Hell no.