The Criterion Collection

[Scottie]

I watched A Poem is a Naked Person a couple of days ago and now it's trending on Facebook that Leon Russell turns 74 today. What a coincidence.

[Arch Stanton]

Originally Posted by mja345

The level of discourse and demand on the intellect in the US has sunk so low unfortunately and the film industry is just a microcosm of it. I really believe social media has turned a great deal of people into anti-intellectual zombies. Not to get political, but we have Donald Effing Trump as the likely presidential candidate for one of our major political parties. People are content to stare mindlessly at photos on their phone as opposed to expanding their minds. It's sad really. Boredom is often a byproduct of a non-curious mind IMO.

You're completely on the money about the anti-intellectualism movement. People actively seek out dumb entertainment and media forms that offer the fastest returns - just see the success of Vine, and even then 6 seconds is often too long for people to hold attention for.

[SkyAntoine]

Watched a couple today...

Burroughs - I've never read anything from Burroughs and haven't seen Naked Lunch. Documentary was good, but I was more impressed that this was nearly lost and found its way to the collection. Definitely an eccentric and interesting guy. I pulled out Naked Lunch to watch tomorrow. 7/10

Burden of Dreams - From one eccentric dude to another. I'm all for going for your dreams, but...dang. This captured one of the most ambitious and irresponsible film endeavors in history. It reminded me a little of Gates of Heaven except Herzog was more looney than the pet cemetery folks. 7/10

[jayembee]

Originally Posted by Snicket

Do you think that older generations always b***h about the way younger generations watch movies/use technology/watch Tv/ walk down the street/talk to people/be alive?

Originally Posted by jw007

jayembee: this question is right up your alley.

Is it just my imagination or do younger generations b#tch less about the older generations than vice versa?

Older generations have always bïtched about younger generations, and always will. I remember back when I was a teen, my mother commented on some record I was playing, saying, "That song makes no sense." And I responded with, "And 'Flat-Foot Floogie with the Floy-Floy' does?" But it's also true that over time, and with exposure, older generations often realize that what they thought was bad wasn't so bad after all. In the 60s, people of my parents' generation thought The Beatles weren't worth listening to. Within 10 years or so, they were an accepted part of the mainstream.

As for movies, I'm disappointed when I hear younger people expressing a dislike for black-&-white and/or "old" films. But I can deal with differing tastes in movies much more than I can with the idea that watching a movie, even a dumb one, on a smartphone is perfectly fine.

I also hate the idea -- becoming more and more prevalent -- that old 4x3 TV shows have to be stretched out to fit 16x9 TV screens to be worth watching. I had hoped that widescreen TVs would put an end to Fullscreen Madness, but that disease has simply mutated.

I don't know if younger generations bïtch about older generations less than the reverse, or even just appreciate the different viewpoint. Quite frankly, when I was a kid, I didn't watch older movies on TV (unless they were SF or monster movies), nor did I listen to older music. It wasn't until I became interested in film as an art form (after seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey twice in the theater back during its original release) that I started looking at films of all kinds. It wasn't long before I began to really appreciate Golden Age Hollywood, and watching a lot of films from the 30s and 40s made me fall in love with Big Band music.

[jayembee]

Originally Posted by adamhopelies

Funnily enough I wrote my undergrad dissertation on Cassavetes, in 2005. Now I teach film studies, and I'd say the most popular filmmaker with our 18 year olds is Tarantino, much to the chagrin of some of my colleagues (I think of him as a great gateway filmmaker to all manner of areas, so use this to my benefit).

Oh, absolutely. QT's appreciation for classic filmmaking isn't in question, even if one thinks (I don't) his own films don't reflect any understanding of it.

[demonknight]

And the 3rd Annual Criterion Bingefest begins... First up is Harold and Maude. Then, The Player. Hoping to get Dressed to Kill in tomorrow.

[blkhrt]

I finally found the time to watch my copy of Mulholland Drive tonight. For much of the movie, especially the first half, there were three white lines in the grain that flickered on and off across the screen. They are incredibly distracting, and I almost stopped watching several times. I'm not sure what was going on, and I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere else. Has anyone else experienced this?

[ThisKid]

Originally Posted by Martin_31

The audience today is not interested in movies like The Godfather or even the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The films are too long and too complex. Audiences now prefer mindless entertainment. They flock to idiotic s**t. Just take a look at all the YouTubers, the guy from snapchat that made Damn Daniel, the Kardashian family, or Alex from Target. And this is my generation. When I say that I buy Blu-ray's, watch old movies (not just old but a variety of movies), read books, and don't listen to the majority of pop music from today, people look at me like I'm crazy or they'll label me as a hipster. A word that I f***ing despise like reviews that use the word pretentious and overrated. I'd preferred they call me a nerd or geek like in middle or high school. Oh well! At least there's a site like this filled with people who like movies.

Well, you're in luck! I posted my outlook on today's films a few pages ago, and if you look at my collection, you can see there is at least one kid who enjoys films as much as you do. My friends and I are in HELL when it comes to films, as we have seen these great films no-one else in our school has seen. I have a music assignment to do, and one of the choices in the assignment was to make a new cover for an album. I joked that I could make the cover all black (a la Spinal Tap), and NOBODY got the joke! Not even the TEACHER knew who or what they were. I always feel alone when it comes to pop-culture, the only one who has seen something like Head, and the only one who is mainly silent when watching films in class, not making the Damn Daniel meme during The Karate Kid.
EDIT: Some films in my collection I completely regret getting, ignore those ones!

[cakefactory]

Originally Posted by Martin_31

The audience today is not interested in movies like The Godfather or even the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The films are too long and too complex. Audiences now prefer mindless entertainment. They flock to idiotic s**t. Just take a look at all the YouTubers, the guy from snapchat that made Damn Daniel, the Kardashian family, or Alex from Target. And this is my generation. When I say that I buy Blu-ray's, watch old movies (not just old but a variety of movies), read books, and don't listen to the majority of pop music from today, people look at me like I'm crazy or they'll label me as a hipster. A word that I f***ing despise like reviews that use the word pretentious and overrated. I'd preferred they call me a nerd or geek like in middle or high school. Oh well! At least there's a site like this filled with people who like movies.

Ridiculous post, that stupid BvS movie that just came out is longer than half the Godfather/LotR movies, and I would definitely argue that the average Marvel movie is no less intelligent than the LOTR movies. They're not "BETTER," but the amount of attention you have to pay to everything going on in them, especially cause they're constantly throwing in passing references to other films and requiring knowledge of various previous entries in the series or sometimes even TV shows, shows that blockbusters today are no dumber than they ever were, and in fact might be LESS braindead. Something like "Inception" is much, much harder to keep track of mentally than any blockbuster I can name from an earlier decade. Or "Inside Out," which throws an incredible amount of information at the viewer in a tiny amount of time and just trusts them to go with it without more exposition as the film goes on.

We may have Transformers 4 today, but they had the Look Who's Talking series and the Smokey and the Bandit series and those movies with Clint Eastwood and the orangutan back in the 80s, and most of the braindead blockbusters from earlier just haven't really even made it to later generations of video. It's not like every movie was a masterpiece back in the 70s and earlier. There was probably a higher noise to quality ratio back in the 50s and earlier than there is today, even. :\ The only really bad trend I see is how mid-budget movies are getting stomped out and there's less variety and more emphasis on massive blockbusters since that's easier for studios to manage than making tons of mid-budget films. But the good movies of today are no worse than the good movies of yesterday, and the bad today are no worse than the bad then.

Pop music today is no worse than pop music of yesterday. "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Polka Dot Bikini" or "Chapel of Love" are easily even worse than the average Katy Perry song.

It's easy to cherry-pick quality stuff from generations before yourself and come up with a totally inaccurate impression of the old times being better.

[jayembee]

Originally Posted by cakefactory

It's easy to cherry-pick quality stuff from generations before yourself and come up with a totally inaccurate impression of the old times being better.

Back in 1990, I was vacationing in England, and one evening, I got together with a guy I knew from some of the Usenet movie newsgroups. At one point, he asked me why Americans seemed to endlessly praise British television when so much of it was absolutely ghastly. I said I suspected that it's because what British programmes make it across the pond tend to be the cream of the crop, and Americans don't get to see the awful stuff.

I think the same is true of movie fans' view of the past. The good stuff tends to survive better than the bad stuff, so a lot of people are familiar with the "A" pictures from the Majors of the 30s and 40s, but have no idea how bad a lot of the films from "Poverty Row" were. On the other hand, I do tend to think that bad films from the 30s-50s are more watchable than bad films from the 70s-90s. But that's me.

[cakefactory]

Originally Posted by jayembee

Back in 1990, I was vacationing in England, and one evening, I got together with a guy I knew from some of the Usenet movie newsgroups. At one point, he asked me why Americans seemed to endlessly praise British television when so much of it was absolutely ghastly. I said I suspected that it's because what British programmes make it across the pond tend to be the cream of the crop, and Americans don't get to see the awful stuff.

I think the same is true of movie fans' view of the past. The good stuff tends to survive better than the bad stuff, so a lot of people are familiar with the "A" pictures from the Majors of the 30s and 40s, but have no idea how bad a lot of the films from "Poverty Row" were. On the other hand, I do tend to think that bad films from the 30s-50s are more watchable than bad films from the 70s-90s. But that's me.

Haha, I used to hear exactly that same thing about English TV. That was a stereotype that certain Americans had that was regularly disproven by anyone from England on forums for a long time. It didn't really go away until shows like The Sopranos, The Wire, Breaking Bad, etc started taking off and no one paid any attention to other countries' TV shows anymore.

"Bad" movies of those times are much more watchable than "average," there's an insane amount of generic kinds of studio movies from back then that hold very little interest for anyone other than film scholars who are focusing on that particular era or genre, and they mostly got lost somewhere between being released and the DVD era. Looking through an old edition of those Leonard Maltin guides reveals hundreds and hundreds of old films that are nowhere to be found today, and those were the ones that had lasted till the 80s/90s! When it comes to average or subpar or outright bad, usually only the real oddities or horror/sci-fi flicks from back then end up on video today. Ex, the skid row psychosis of something like Maniac (1934), or the Ed Wood films, or The Brain that Wouldn't Die, or Reefer Madness or whatever. Or you get garbage like "Dr Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs" due to certain actors or directors having a cult following. If you focus on just blu-rays, the majority of film history is lost and you'll get quite a skewed view of the quality of anything before the last few decades.

[Martin_31]

Originally Posted by cakefactory

Ridiculous post, that stupid BvS movie that just came out is longer than half the Godfather/LotR movies, and I would definitely argue that the average Marvel movie is no less intelligent than the LOTR movies. They're not "BETTER," but the amount of attention you have to pay to everything going on in them, especially cause they're constantly throwing in passing references to other films and requiring knowledge of various previous entries in the series or sometimes even TV shows, shows that blockbusters today are no dumber than they ever were, and in fact might be LESS braindead. Something like "Inception" is much, much harder to keep track of mentally than any blockbuster I can name from an earlier decade. Or "Inside Out," which throws an incredible amount of information at the viewer in a tiny amount of time and just trusts them to go with it without more exposition as the film goes on.

We may have Transformers 4 today, but they had the Look Who's Talking series and the Smokey and the Bandit series and those movies with Clint Eastwood and the orangutan back in the 80s, and most of the braindead blockbusters from earlier just haven't really even made it to later generations of video. It's not like every movie was a masterpiece back in the 70s and earlier. There was probably a higher noise to quality ratio back in the 50s and earlier than there is today, even. :\ The only really bad trend I see is how mid-budget movies are getting stomped out and there's less variety and more emphasis on massive blockbusters since that's easier for studios to manage than making tons of mid-budget films. But the good movies of today are no worse than the good movies of yesterday, and the bad today are no worse than the bad then.

Pop music today is no worse than pop music of yesterday. "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Polka Dot Bikini" or "Chapel of Love" are easily even worse than the average Katy Perry song.

It's easy to cherry-pick quality stuff from generations before yourself and come up with a totally inaccurate impression of the old times being better.

Sarcasm? I'm not sure haha. I wasn't saying the old times were better. I'm saying that people aren't open or interested--in today's age--in something "different" or "old." In one of my classes we watched The Magnificent Ambersons. Only two people liked the movie, including myself. Everyone else didn't. Like someone mentioned before, Quentin Tarantino is the most popular director in today's film classes. He is the MAN. The class I'm taking is Film as Literature. We watch and the next week examine and breakdown the movie. There is one guy though who saw from the list she gave almost every single movie. The list was around 200 movies give or take. A sample she does to see what we have seen. And yeah there's always going to be sh**ty movies doesn't matter what year.

[jedidarrick]

Originally Posted by jayembee

Back in 1990, I was vacationing in England, and one evening, I got together with a guy I knew from some of the Usenet movie newsgroups. At one point, he asked me why Americans seemed to endlessly praise British television when so much of it was absolutely ghastly. I said I suspected that it's because what British programmes make it across the pond tend to be the cream of the crop, and Americans don't get to see the awful stuff.

Have you ever watched Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe? Screenwipe goes out of its way to dispel the myth that British TV is superior to US TV. You can find almost every episode on YouTube.
For every British show like Doctor Who, there are two or three like The Baby Mind Reader. (Yes, that is a thing. Not a hoax, and not an SNL sketch.)

[theater dreamer]

Originally Posted by mja345

The level of discourse and demand on the intellect in the US has sunk so low unfortunately and the film industry is just a microcosm of it. I really believe social media has turned a great deal of people into anti-intellectual zombies. Not to get political, but we have Donald Effing Trump as the likely presidential candidate for one of our major political parties. People are content to stare mindlessly at photos on their phone as opposed to expanding their minds. It's sad really. Boredom is often a byproduct of a non-curious mind IMO.

Where is the "I freaking love this" button?

[pedromvu]

I know this is starting to perhaps become a bit out of topic but since we are on the subject I wanted to share this great video with a few facts about generational perception:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD0x7ho_IYc

I don't really know if the great movies released after 2000 are really better than the great old ones, but I certainly could name more older movies when searching for a quick top 10-20, but I know there are tons of praised newer movies I haven't seen yet.

And also comparing the greatest movies of 1920-1990s with the ones 2000-2016 is not fair, it's almost five times the amount of years in movies.

I just remember the first time I decided to watch something old just based on imdb scores I was blown away, it was either something like The Adventures of Robin Hood, Metropolis or Bringing up Baby, also it could be that my mind was even more impressed that something so old could be so good and different than modern movies.

Edit: If someone isn't interested in the whole of the video, you can skip to 10:36 for the talk most relevant to this discussion.

[theater dreamer]

Originally Posted by adamhopelies

Generally speaking students are pretty good these days. University fees in the UK have rocketed in recent years, so a lot of those that saw it as an easy three years have been put off of studying film, and instead have gone for more vocotional subjects. Back when I was doing my undergrad degree we literally had folk in my class that refused to watch films in their spare time, on account of it "feeling like work" to them! Crazy!

I would assume that serious film students have a natural curiosity (and by extension, patience) that the vast majority of their peers, unfortunately, lack. I'll be interested to read about the reaction your class members have to watching Breathless.

We're seeing the rise of the instant gratification generation. They don't want to wait for a story to develop. They want everything now. A perfect example can be seen with one of my favorite shows, Better Call Saul. For those of you unfamiliar with the series, it's a Breaking Bad prequel, focusing on how attorney Jimmy McGill became the slick, ethically-challenged Saul Goodman. It's masterfully written and shot (as one would expect of a project spearheaded by Vince Gilligan), but the show's pace is, admittedly, slower than the majority of shows on the air. I made the mistake of reading the comments about Saul on imdb, and I wanted to beat my head against the nearest wall. We know what ultimately happens to the principal characters in the show, but the journey is fascinating. It seems, at times, that McGill takes a step towards Saul, and there's this fascinating conflict that's apparent. And, how he deals with that conflict might take up a whole hour long episode. There are other characters and story lines, but when there isn't a definite step taken towards the end, people whine incessantly. Why people are in such a rush to reach the conclusion is beyond me. I just want to shake them, tell them to shut the bleep up, and enjoy the ride. There is comedy, but it's very dark humor. There are little references to Breaking Bad that you only see, and get, if you're really paying attention. It's just brilliant. It's the kind of intelligent, gripping show that you just don't get all that often anymore. Each week, the series gets better. It's on a path to join the truly great series in television history, like The Wire, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, MASH, Homeland, etc.

If you're a youngster going to work in the film industry as a director/producer, or an intellectual, there is a requisite appreciation of what's gone before. You cannot speak intelligently about film history without experiencing the great works from the past. And to be a truly great director, it seems obvious to me that they need to understand how film has evolved. I liken it to becoming a great chef, or a world class musician. You have to have a solid foundation to build upon. There are disciplines that must be learned to take that next step. When you listen to today's great directors interviewed, like Scorsese, for example, they have a reverence for the greats of the past.

[Martin_31]

Originally Posted by theater dreamer

I would assume that serious film students have a natural curiosity (and by extension, patience) that the vast majority of their peers, unfortunately, lack. I'll be interested to read about the reaction your class members have to watching Breathless.

We're seeing the rise of the instant gratification generation. They don't want to wait for a story to develop. They want everything now. A perfect example can be seen with one of my favorite shows, Better Call Saul. For those of you unfamiliar with the series, it's a Breaking Bad prequel, focusing on how attorney Jimmy McGill became the slick, ethically-challenged Saul Goodman. It's masterfully written and shot (as one would expect of a project spearheaded by Vince Gilligan), but the show's pace is, admittedly, slower than the majority of shows on the air. I made the mistake of reading the comments about Saul on imdb, and I wanted to beat my head against the nearest wall. We know what ultimately happens to the principal characters in the show, but the journey is fascinating. It seems, at times, that McGill takes a step towards Saul, and there's this fascinating conflict that's apparent. And, how he deals with that conflict might take up a whole hour long episode. There are other characters and story lines, but when there isn't a definite step taken towards the end, people whine incessantly. Why people are in such a rush to reach the conclusion is beyond me. I just want to shake them, tell them to shut the bleep up, and enjoy the ride. There is comedy, but it's very dark humor. There are little references to Breaking Bad that you only see, and get, if you're really paying attention. It's just brilliant. It's the kind of intelligent, gripping show that you just don't get all that often anymore. Each week, the series gets better. It's on a path to join the truly great series in television history, like The Wire, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, MASH, Homeland, etc.

If you're a youngster going to work in the film industry as a director/producer, or an intellectual, there is a requisite appreciation of what's gone before. You cannot speak intelligently about film history without experiencing the great works from the past. And to be a truly great director, it seems obvious to me that they need to understand how film has evolved. I liken it to becoming a great chef, or a world class musician. You have to have a solid foundation to build upon. There are disciplines that must be learned to take that next step. When you listen to today's great directors interviewed, like Scorsese, for example, they have a reverence for the greats of the past.

Shouldn't someone who majors in English read the classics from yesteryear? Or someone in fashion study the works/designs of Chanel and Laurent? I agree with you on that. A foundation has to be built.

[jayembee]

Originally Posted by jedidarrick

Have you ever watched Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe? Screenwipe goes out of its way to dispel the myth that British TV is superior to US TV. You can find almost every episode on YouTube.
For every British show like Doctor Who, there are two or three like The Baby Mind Reader. (Yes, that is a thing. Not a hoax, and not an SNL sketch.)

No, I haven't seen Screenwipe, though I've heard of it, and I'm familiar with some of Brooker's other stuff.

[nitin]

Originally Posted by blkhrt

I finally found the time to watch my copy of Mulholland Drive tonight. For much of the movie, especially the first half, there were three white lines in the grain that flickered on and off across the screen. They are incredibly distracting, and I almost stopped watching several times. I'm not sure what was going on, and I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere else. Has anyone else experienced this?

someone else experienced this and posted in the MD thread, and for them it was because the sharpness setting on their tv was enabled and too high.

[theater dreamer]

Originally Posted by pedromvu

I don't really know if the great movies released after 2000 are really better than the great old ones, but I certainly could name more older movies when searching for a quick top 10-20, but I know there are tons of praised newer movies I haven't seen yet.

And also comparing the greatest movies of 1920-1990s with the ones 2000-2016 is not fair, it's almost five times the amount of years in movies.

I just remember the first time I decided to watch something old just based on imdb scores I was blown away, it was either something like The Adventures of Robin Hood, Metropolis or Bringing up Baby, also it could be that my mind was even more impressed that something so old could be so good and different than modern movies.

Opinions of movies change over time, often quite dramatically. Roger Ebert referenced this phenomenon throughout his book, Awake in the Dark. One film, in particular, where critics changed their tune was Warren Beatty's Bonnie and Clyde. Ebert hailed it as a historically important film from the very beginning, while other critics of the day panned it for being too overtly violent. If my memory serves me correctly, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner also received rather lukewarm critical reception early on. Today, it's viewed as a science fiction masterwork. Reviews of Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter were so poor that he never directed another film. Now, viewing the film is considered de rigueur by noir enthusiasts. And one of the movies consistently listed among the all-time greats, Hitchcock's Psycho, initially received mixed reviews.

Why does this happen? Some directors are ahead of their time. Social norms also change. Michael Powell's (of "The Archers", Powell and Emeric Pressburger) Peeping Tom so outraged critics and movie goers, it essentially ended his career. Now, however, in an era where we are much more accustomed to content matter like that in Peeping Tom, it's hailed as a great film. Not a single frame of the movie has been changed; we, the viewing public, have gone through a paradigm shift. Imagine if something like Man Bites Dog, or even A Clockwork Orange, had been released in 1950. The filmmakers would have been ostracized. Even today, nearly 25 years after Man Bites Dog was released, there are parts that make viewers uncomfortable. It will never be a mainstream film, but it's less shocking today that it would have been 60 years ago.