Moves have always been crap, same with TV shows. Anything vintage people still watch today is probably 2% of what was created back in the day.

The real difference between 100 years ago and today (in the US anyway) is that minorities started being a larger chunk of the population, so they started being included in productions more and not just in background roles. You can see this with US blockbusters staring black actors that don't as do well in Asian markets that prefer white actors or just are not used to people of color. Personally, I think dressing up white people to portray Asians like John Wayne playing a Mongol is cringe worthy (plus the guy can't act anyway).

As I was thinking before it really depends on the country the movie was written for and was intended to use stories that would be oriented at first to a specific viewer. Just like music there has been some that didn't have success in a big country and did very well in others. But it can't considered a coincidence that the amount of "greatest" movies by most, were done on few decades and most probably not the modern ones. That's the point I was saying, I suppose very few movies of this decade will be remembered as long and as good as the many movies that are considered best of the entire history of Cinema still nowdays.

rmay635703 wrote on 2022-11-28, 21:16:

Is that new though? […]
Show full quote

Anders- wrote on 2022-11-28, 21:03:

STX wrote on 2022-11-28, 20:19:

As a person who is a minority in one way, I'm thankful for the western media's promotion of tolerance because viewers are affected by the media that they consume.

Mankind is in a sad state, when being told what to think (here, by TV) is considered a good thing.

Is that new though?

When did it become haneous to watch something you might disagree with and have an opinion ?

Before tv there was radio and film, before film there was paper. All media presented things from a certain point of view, it’s not new.

Being exposed to how someone else sees the world can be valuable.

There's a difference between "being exposed to the view of someone else" and getting the very same stuff showed down your throat from just about any media, don't you think?
Either way, it mostly seems to be limited to the western world, so for now we can enjoy productions from elsewhere.

Edit: here's an example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe8ptlQ1_FQ

Anders- wrote on 2022-11-28, 21:03:

STX wrote on 2022-11-28, 20:19:

As a person who is a minority in one way, I'm thankful for the western media's promotion of tolerance because viewers are affected by the media that they consume.

Mankind is in a sad state, when being told what to think (here, by TV) is considered a good thing.

I think that I understand your point—people should think for themselves and not be mindless subservient drones.

My counterpoint is that I don't think that the existence of unbiased movies and unbiased TV shows is possible. And if the influence of bias is inevitable, then I prefer a bias towards tolerance.

STX wrote on 2022-11-28, 23:02:

Anders- wrote on 2022-11-28, 21:03:

STX wrote on 2022-11-28, 20:19:

As a person who is a minority in one way, I'm thankful for the western media's promotion of tolerance because viewers are affected by the media that they consume.

Mankind is in a sad state, when being told what to think (here, by TV) is considered a good thing.

I think that I understand your point—people should think for themselves and not be mindless subservient drones.

Yes, that was what I were getting at. Although, generalizing of course, I think there's a whole lot of people who are happy being drones.

STX wrote on 2022-11-28, 23:02:

My counterpoint is that I don't think that the existence of unbiased movies and unbiased TV shows is possible. And if the influence of bias is inevitable, then I prefer a bias towards tolerance.

You may very well be right about that. For my part, I try to avoid whatever I see as content ripe with politics, activism, etc.

Looks likes this hasn't gone unnoticed by the "kids of today" either
https://youtu.be/sf311Mcnfcg

It's only a hot topic in America and some Western societies with a famously peaceful history like the UK, Germany or France. The rest of the world doesn't care nearly as much about race/gender/sexuality in movies. That forced white guilt is obviously working to make sure that you don't get mowed down by the cancel culture if you aren't PC and diverse enough.
I've just read that if you are polyamorous and you don't consider POC an option then you are racist. Like they can just guilt trip others into sex with people they don't find attractive at all. What's next, people are homophobic for not considering gay hookups?
I'll show my übernazi ass out.

chinny22 wrote on 2022-11-29, 10:17:

Looks likes this hasn't gone unnoticed by the "kids of today" either
https://youtu.be/sf311Mcnfcg

That surprised me, an interesting take on the industry.

Unknown_K wrote on 2022-11-28, 21:33:

Moves have always been crap, same with TV shows. Anything vintage people still watch today is probably 2% of what was created back in the day.

The real difference between 100 years ago and today (in the US anyway) is that minorities started being a larger chunk of the population, so they started being included in productions more and not just in background roles. You can see this with US blockbusters staring black actors that don't as do well in Asian markets that prefer white actors or just are not used to people of color. Personally, I think dressing up white people to portray Asians like John Wayne playing a Mongol is cringe worthy (plus the guy can't act anyway).

Well, I disagree that John Wayne can't act but yes portraying him as a "mongol" was huge reach/mistake.

Has anyone seen Wakanda Forever yet? Does it measure up to the hype and expectations? Judging from the reviews the results are mixed.

Mandrew wrote on 2022-11-29, 14:33:

It's only a hot topic in America and some Western societies with a famously peaceful history like the UK, Germany or France. The rest of the world doesn't care nearly as much about race/gender/sexuality in movies. That forced white guilt is obviously working to make sure that you don't get mowed down by the cancel culture if you aren't PC and diverse enough.
I've just read that if you are polyamorous and you don't consider POC an option then you are racist. Like they can just guilt trip others into sex with people they don't find attractive at all. What's next, people are homophobic for not considering gay hookups?
I'll show my übernazi ass out.

Heh, I'm german so maybe I need to show my ass out the door too. I'll take my beer with me thank you very much!

Why the hell does the soundtrack need to be 75% louder than the damn dialogue. Thats what I want to know. My volume is up and down like Super Mario's raccoon tail! Makes me wish modern TVs has sliders and knobs like the 70s.

Why the hell does the soundtrack need to be 75% louder than the damn dialogue. Thats what I want to know. My volume is up and down like Super Mario's raccoon tail! Makes me wish modern TVs has sliders and knobs like the 70s.

creepingnet wrote on 2022-11-29, 21:05:

Why the hell does the soundtrack need to be 75% louder than the damn dialogue. Thats what I want to know. My volume is up and down like Super Mario's raccoon tail! Makes me wish modern TVs has sliders and knobs like the 70s.

This is one of my main issues with modern movies as well. Explosions, music and ambient sounds are all dialed up to eleven, while speech is seemingly always at the lowest possible volume.

Kinda makes me miss the German dubbed (localized) movies that I used to watch in my youth. At least with those, you could hear what people were talking about, without having to read their freaking lips over the blaring soundtrack and explosions.

buckeye wrote on 2022-11-23, 21:49:

...Men routinely depicted as neutered weaklings, especially white men....

Could the media's frequent depiction of men as weaklings be a reflection of a trend in American society? This morning, I listened to this interview with Richard V. Reeves about his new book Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It. Assuming that Reeves' statistics are accurate, nowadays, American men underachieve in school compared to women, earn less money than American men earned in the past, and die from suicides and overdoses 3 times more often than women. If this forum were a philosophy book club and not Very Old Games On New Systems, then I would propose that we read Reeves' book and discuss it, because it seems to me that movies with "men routinely depicted as neutered weaklings, especially white men" is just one aspect of a slow-moving crisis in American society. I'd like to know if Reeves provides a realistic solution to this Gordian knot involving the public education system, automation, cheap foreign labor, the high prison population, the increasing cost of living, the collapse of in-person communities, political polarization, legislative gridlock, a lack of confidence in government, etc.

creepingnet wrote on 2022-11-29, 21:03:

Why the hell does the soundtrack need to be 75% louder than the damn dialogue. Thats what I want to know. My volume is up and down like Super Mario's raccoon tail! Makes me wish modern TVs has sliders and knobs like the 70s.

Agreed, sounds like trying to tell what Mitch Mconnel is saying while welcome to the jungle is playing live behind your head.

For a short time “volume leveling” was illegal.

Every movie/TV show has a political/social 'message', even if it's just something trivial like 'crime does not pay'

I saw 'No Country For Old Men' recently for the first time, and knew right away that the plucky little welder was going to come to a bad end, because when he took the money at the start of the movie he became a thief, and Hollywood movies always end with criminals getting punished in some way.

This is a legacy of the 1930s Hays code. Before that, it wasn't unusual for movies to depict sympathetic criminals getting away with their crimes, especially in the Depression era. Although the Hays code was abandoned by Hollywood in the 1970s, this rule still largely applies.

I'm a fan of older movies and tv shows. One thing that stands out to me in modern shows is the pacing. In older media, they had no problem having a bit of silence and slower parts, but newer directors typically see the need to fill every second with action or dialog. I doubt that we'll see another Lawrence of Arabia for example. I'm not sure if this is entirely on the studios either, as I expect that modern audiences have much shorter attention spans. This is actually something that I'm trying to work on myself, as I'm trying to wean myself off social media and get back to reading more.

To be clear, this trend of newer shows being catered to shorter attention spans goes back a few decades, so it's not an entirely new thing. I really noticed this when I recently watched Star Trek DS9. The pacing really stood out to me because they really filled up every second of the episode with dialog or action. For example, it really stood out to me that when two characters ended a discussion, a new character would immediately walk in and start talking immediately after the first conversation ended. Someday, I'd like to grab some transcripts from DS9 and TOS to see if the amount of dialog differs as much as I think it does.

Modern action scenes also stand out to me. I can't stand action scenes comprised of really short cuts, especially if they are zoomed in on a character. While they look flashy, I find that I can't see what is going on. To be fair, the action scenes were often a weak point from older movies as well. I love the old historical epics from the 60s, but the combat looks like untrained actors playing with cheap plastic swords.

creepingnet wrote on 2022-11-29, 21:05:

Why the hell does the soundtrack need to be 75% louder than the damn dialogue. Thats what I want to know. My volume is up and down like Super Mario's raccoon tail! Makes me wish modern TVs has sliders and knobs like the 70s.

For the same reason there was the loudness war in the music industry, high volume = get attention.
Same goes for extreme changes in brightness, also an attention grabber. Both of these are abused to the maximum.

Turn on subtitles, turn volume way down and put some dark nylon stocking over the tv...

I agree with the loudness issue. I watch movies and tv shows using Kodi. I had to look up audio normalization in order to be able to hear the dialog without cranking up my tv volume. I still need to turn on subtitles for some shows.