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andrewduckerStudies show that people only get a temporary lift from having more luxuries. After a fairly short period they become used to their current resource levels and their happiness returns to its previous levels. Until, of course, they get another boost.
I didn't much like Citizen Kane. Having been repeatedly told that it was the best film of all time by whole generations of critics, I was somewhat surprised to see a fairly good fake biopic, nicely told, with some decent camerawork and solid performances.
These two facts are, of course, connected.
(I feel the urge at this point to leave you to draw your own conclusions but let's face it, if you didn't all suffer from a deadly combination of boredom, apathy and fascination with my thought patterns you wouldn't be reading this at all.)
When I was a kid I saw the fantastic black and white silent short that showed a trains-eye view from London to Dover in fast forward. The whole trip took maybe 5 minutes and it was a complete delight to me.
When cinema was first invented the public thrilled to such delights as "A train leaving a station" and "A horse eating hay", neither of which are likely to be troubling the box office this year, despite the fact that people were happy to watch them repeatedly when they first appeared.
When you've seen a 300-foot tall monster destroy New York, is there any point seeing a 200-foot tall monster do the same? When you've seen a true master at work behind the camera, it seems a little wasteful to watch someone whose only good. When you've seen all the reverse-pan-dollies and clever cross-cuts that you're likely to have in the past 20 years, why go back and watch the first film to have used them - unless you're a film historian, that is.
Sometimes I wish that I'd started at the beginning of cinema and not been allowed to watch any recent films until I'd seen the earlier ones. Starting at age 10 I could have been shown films from 1900-1905. At age 11, films from 1906-1910. I'd be reaching the present day round about now, only having enjoyed an awful lot of films that I now can't watch with anything but vague intellectual interest.
Which isn't to say that I can't watch any non-recent films (I love many films from all over the place), but I've definitely become dulled to mediocre films, and frequently even to 'pretty good' films. This, presumably, is part of growing up- after a while one is bound to become a tad jaded with things one's seen hundreds of times before. I find myself ignoring films that are only rated at 3 stars, because they aren't likely to contain anything I'm not bored with or don't find predictable.
What I'd give to suffer from voluntary amnesia, to wander into a cinema with a fresh mind and see these things for the first time. Not just to have a childlike sense of the wonder in the world, but to have a childlike ignorance of what's been done before.
I didn't much like Citizen Kane. Having been repeatedly told that it was the best film of all time by whole generations of critics, I was somewhat surprised to see a fairly good fake biopic, nicely told, with some decent camerawork and solid performances.
These two facts are, of course, connected.
(I feel the urge at this point to leave you to draw your own conclusions but let's face it, if you didn't all suffer from a deadly combination of boredom, apathy and fascination with my thought patterns you wouldn't be reading this at all.)
When I was a kid I saw the fantastic black and white silent short that showed a trains-eye view from London to Dover in fast forward. The whole trip took maybe 5 minutes and it was a complete delight to me.
When cinema was first invented the public thrilled to such delights as "A train leaving a station" and "A horse eating hay", neither of which are likely to be troubling the box office this year, despite the fact that people were happy to watch them repeatedly when they first appeared.
When you've seen a 300-foot tall monster destroy New York, is there any point seeing a 200-foot tall monster do the same? When you've seen a true master at work behind the camera, it seems a little wasteful to watch someone whose only good. When you've seen all the reverse-pan-dollies and clever cross-cuts that you're likely to have in the past 20 years, why go back and watch the first film to have used them - unless you're a film historian, that is.
Sometimes I wish that I'd started at the beginning of cinema and not been allowed to watch any recent films until I'd seen the earlier ones. Starting at age 10 I could have been shown films from 1900-1905. At age 11, films from 1906-1910. I'd be reaching the present day round about now, only having enjoyed an awful lot of films that I now can't watch with anything but vague intellectual interest.
Which isn't to say that I can't watch any non-recent films (I love many films from all over the place), but I've definitely become dulled to mediocre films, and frequently even to 'pretty good' films. This, presumably, is part of growing up- after a while one is bound to become a tad jaded with things one's seen hundreds of times before. I find myself ignoring films that are only rated at 3 stars, because they aren't likely to contain anything I'm not bored with or don't find predictable.
What I'd give to suffer from voluntary amnesia, to wander into a cinema with a fresh mind and see these things for the first time. Not just to have a childlike sense of the wonder in the world, but to have a childlike ignorance of what's been done before.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-09 07:52 pm (UTC)even though the special effects are just as good, or even perhaps much better than the original star wars movies, they don't have the same effect on me. all those special effects don't impress me nearly as much any more. whereas back then, watching these things for the first time, they were like, "WOW!!!!" "COOL!!!!"....
and some of the newer character animations, even though they look very real, still end up feeling fake to me. anthony daniels in a metallic suit looked somehow more "real" than the animated version of him. and likewise for artoo and jabba...
nowadays, i think the story told by a movie, and/or the humor in it, is a lot more important than special effects...
although the matrix w/o fx would have been dull. and a jackie chan movie w/o jackie chan fx wouldn't be the same. ahhh... whatever.