StarWarsLegacy.com - The Official Thread — Page 71

He was correcting your grammar, commoner.

The entire post is one big reference. 

Hey Mike, just listened to the podcast.  You obviously run circles around most people because you have the experience to back up your opinions.  I like that.  And that's exactly why I like your comments regarding the sorry state of modern cinema (if you can even call it that).  The sad truth is that most good movies are older movies.  What we're getting today is basically disposable.  I'm sure the new Star Wars will be watchable but not memorable.  That's about the long and the short of it.  Symphonic music scores, good scripts and insightful directors are really becoming a thing of the past.  When we lose the last of the old masters it will be a sad day.  I don't think many of the up and comers even know what a good movie is.  The industry likes it that way because corporations don't need to care much as long as it sells.  You more or less illustrated my exact feelings toward this madness and I really enjoyed your insights.  Thank goodness you took the time to help save something, anything involving the original Star Wars.

Why do they have to paint my schlock teal and orange?  

No.  

Craft is measurable, as is the absence of it.  There are threads which bind the best films of the last 100 years to each other which have recently been severed.  Do not mistake the dwindling options, lack of perspective, and rationalization for progress.  It is a devolution.  Any of today's disposable products could be elevated in the hands of better talent; the aims are not mutually exclusive.  But meanwhile, give people a choice between eating a bowl of shit and a bowl of spit, they'll eat the spit every time; doesn't mean spit is good.  

I prefer a bowl of cobwebs.

There is still some shining examples of the craft out there, and Directors that give a shit and people that work exceptionally hard on films, and that are exceptionally talented. There is also a lot of bowls of both shit and spit produced every year.

This has been true all along though, take a look at the films released the same year as some of the best films of all time, there are plenty of soul-less quick money-grab turkeys out there amongst the gold, and plenty of films decried as crap at the time that 15 years later are now lauded as masterpieces. Remember, there are only ever 200-500 or so 'great films' out of the over 500,000 features that have been made, so there is plenty of crap, even in the best years of movie making.

Some of the craft is definitely disappearing, as is some of the ability to discern great work from good work and good work from poor work. When working for Kennedy Miller, I saw work come back that the people were extremely proud of, that George, quite rightly said outright was shit, (although sometimes he was just tired and called work shit that the next day he said was perfect, and asked why it wasn't done that way the first time... it was the same footage) and they went back and did a better job on it, and developed an eye for what constitutes great work. It was certainly just accepted that anyone could critique your work brutally, and you just got on with making it better. I do see people get 'hurt feelings' more readily now, which tends to lead to less criticism which is not a good thing.

I also think there is less mentoring now and people dive in too fast with too little time spent understanding the basics of the craft, it is certainly true amongst colourists.

Some of the craft has improved immeasurably though, and it is certainly far more accessible, and easier to find great resources and access to knowledge, but I do wish that more one on one mentoring was taking place within the industry.

Speaking of crap, apologies for my typing, my keyboard is failing and there will be letters missing from words in my posts, I try to get them all, but it is pretty random, I need to open up and give the laptop a cleanout.

Films, like anything from the past we remember, is subject to a telescope effect. We remember fewer things the farther back we look, like how oldies stations play the better music of the past, and why we remember The Epic of Gilgamesh but not the other ancient near eastern stories told around that time. 

There is truly no force in the universe more powerful than the human ability to rationalize.

mverta said:

There is truly no force in the universe more powerful than the human ability to rationalize.

 I was going to post a sarcastic remark about us not knowing our collective ass from a Sarlacc pit, but perhaps I should clarify that I don't disagree with you wholesale, but wanted to temper your point about everything modern being bad and older things usually being better.

poita said:

This has been true all along though, take a look at the films released the same year as some of the best films of all time, there are plenty of soul-less quick money-grab turkeys out there amongst the gold, and plenty of films decried as crap at the time that 15 years later are now lauded as masterpieces. Remember, there are only ever 200-500 or so 'great films' out of the over 500,000 features that have been made, so there is plenty of crap, even in the best years of movie making.

Yep. Not a lot of great stuff from the 80's really - yes it has Terminator, Blade Runner and a couple of other exceptions but it also has all kinds of unbearable crap including some of the worst of the James Bond films. Although I think Live and Let Die is the worst and that was 1973. But at least they improved from there - Octopussy and A View To A Kill were sequentially released and are completely terrible.

Yeah, only shitty movies from the 80s like Empire Strikes Back, Indianna Jones, Ghostbusters, Aliens, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Down by Law, Full Metal Jacket, The Shining, Platoon, The Breakfast Club, Back to the Future, Raging Bull, Scarface, E.T. , Princess Bride, Gremlins, Poltergeist, Evil Dead, Stand by me, The Thing, Die Hard, Robocop, and (Insert David Lynch film here).