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Best Decade For Film?

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  • Mendes4LyfeMendes4Lyfe The long road ahead
    Posts: 8,406
    ClarkDevlin wrote: »
    Mendes4Lyfe wrote: »
    ClarkDevlin wrote: »
    Mendes4Lyfe wrote: »
    But a film doesn't have to be intelligent to be intelligently made. Hitchcock, Carpenter and Tarantino all make/made genre films. They are the true masters. Plus, 'serious films' is a bit of a contradiction. Film is a medium of entertainment. And like Moore once said, "If you have a message to send, I recommend the postoffice. PClonesgo to the cinema to be entertained." (I'm paraphrasing).
    Don't get me wrong, Mendes4Lyfe. I still am and have always been on the side of the escapist films instead of the moody, broody and depressing films as opposed to the majority of today. But, sometimes, some of the cheese and goofs that some films made in the 80s and 90s can't be really on the same league as an intellectual escapist (see Where Eagles Dare, now THAT is an intellectually escapist fun film). And all things aside, the film music of the 80s and 90s are painful to listen to. Come on... Synth Pop?

    I say the 80's because it was the last decade before CGI started making up for poor scripts/ filmmaking. All that went out with Independance day. That was the film that killed cinema. After that we got a slew of disaster films with absolutely on artistry whatsoever. The only draw is the special effects. Things have improved slightly since then, but the same problem remains. If you compare the troopers from the original star wars with those in Attack Of The Clones, or the Orcs from LOTR compared to the CGI ones in the hobbit, there is no comparison. That's the biggest problem with CGI, no matter how good it looks, it'll look terrible in ten years.
    While some of the CGI are quite noticeable in some films, some points that members have made on the use of CGI in general don't catch up with my intellect, to be honest. Would you have preferred if we were to stick in the use of Stop Motion technique? Imagine if that were to make past the 80s...

    And of course, I've never been a fan of LOTR or any of the kind released around the same time or afterwards.

    Of course CGI is a good tool, like any other technique. Jurassic Park is a good example where multiple techniques are combined to complement eachother. However, instead of seeing it as simply another tools with all the others, Hollywood seems to think that every other type of effect is outdated now. The Force Awakens is the only film I have seen recently which understands that mixing the practicle and the digital creates the best results. Not that that film is without its share of terrible CGI.
  • lady_xanaxlady_xanax
    Posts: 22
    bondjames wrote: »
    There is a school of thought that both Jaws and later SW brought that on, by ushering in the mega money era of the blockbuster. From then on, it all became about the moola, once Hollywood smelled what was possible.

    Critical film making was apparently sort of pushed aside from then on.

    Hollywood has always ultimately been about the money.

    I really like the Golden Era of Hollywood, so 40's and 50's would win out for me.
  • dogrowup007dogrowup007
    Posts: 108
    Mendes4Lyfe wrote: »
    Plus, 'serious films' is a bit of a contradiction. Film is a medium of entertainment.

    @Mendes4Lyfe I'm seriously disagreeing with you on this one. Film can be a medium of entertainment, as can novels. But cinema can rise above that and really earn its title of the 7th art. Sorrentino, Kubrick, Hitchcock, Zimmerman, Coppola, Spielberg, Truffaut, De Sica, Antonioni, Tati, Ozon, Welles, Mendes, Inarritu ... make movies that ask questions and not necessarily give answers. Movies that make us think about the world we live in, about humankind. Those movies offer more than entertainment, even if they be disguised as genre films.

    The public for these films may not be as large as for the blockbusters, but that doesn't make them any less valid.
  • Mendes4LyfeMendes4Lyfe The long road ahead
    Posts: 8,406
    dogrowup007 wrote: »
    Mendes4Lyfe wrote: »
    Plus, 'serious films' is a bit of a contradiction. Film is a medium of entertainment.

    @Mendes4Lyfe I'm seriously disagreeing with you on this one. Film can be a medium of entertainment, as can novels. But cinema can rise above that and really earn its title of the 7th art. Sorrentino, Kubrick, Hitchcock, Zimmerman, Coppola, Spielberg, Truffaut, De Sica, Antonioni, Tati, Ozon, Welles, Mendes, Inarritu ... make movies that ask questions and not necessarily give answers. Movies that make us think about the world we live in, about humankind. Those movies offer more than entertainment, even if they be disguised as genre films.

    The public for these films may not be as large as for the blockbusters, but that doesn't make them any less valid.

    I find that no film or piece of media doesn't have a message it is trying to impress on it's viewer/reader. The only films that geniunely don't have any answers are those made by mad art house directors like Lynch. That's because people like Lynch have no idea what they're trying to say to begin with. I mean, seriously, have you ever seen 'Inland Empire' all the way through? It's an absolute clusterf&#k. But we're getting into weird 'conceptual art' territory. Best to steer clear of that particular landmine.
  • dogrowup007dogrowup007
    Posts: 108
    Then I suggest you view 'La Grande Bellezza' ('A Great Beauty') or 'Youth', or any of the Kubrick-movies since 'Paths of Glory', 'L'Avventura', 'La Notte', 'Revolutionary Road', 'Apocalypse Now' ... it's very hard to miss some kind of message in those. And if you know all the answers to all the questions in those, I'm very much impressed. To be clear, I'm not talking about the Lynch-universe. I'm talking about directors who bring us stories that mean connect to who we are and how we live our lives.

    Moreover, I find movies that don't give all the answers stimulating and challenging. It's strange that great literature is appreciated for the fact that it raises more questions than answers (Shakespeare is still being debated), but for movies that's apparently a no-go area.
  • Mendes4LyfeMendes4Lyfe The long road ahead
    edited May 2016 Posts: 8,406
    dogrowup007 wrote: »
    Then I suggest you view 'La Grande Bellezza' ('A Great Beauty') or 'Youth', or any of the Kubrick-movies since 'Paths of Glory', 'L'Avventura', 'La Notte', 'Revolutionary Road', 'Apocalypse Now' ... it's very hard to miss some kind of message in those. And if you know all the answers to all the questions in those, I'm very much impressed. To be clear, I'm not talking about the Lynch-universe. I'm talking about directors who bring us stories that mean connect to who we are and how we live our lives.

    Moreover, I find movies that don't give all the answers stimulating and challenging. It's strange that great literature is appreciated for the fact that it raises more questions than answers (Shakespeare is still being debated), but for movies that's apparently a no-go area.

    I'm saying that there are no films which ask questions without also trying to convince you of an answer. The only way a film can do that is when the film is made solely for the appreciation of the creator. So outside of a Lynchian mindf@%king, they don't exist. Shakespeare had a deliberate message with everything he said that he was attempting to communicate. That means, by definition, he had the answers, or he thought he did, at least. You can't ask a question with art, unless its rhetorical. I don't want to spend my time living in other peoples pysches. I've tried reading Naked Lunch. It's not for me. If you're into that, fine.
  • dogrowup007dogrowup007
    Posts: 108
    Still leaves me wondering why Shakespeare is still being debated after 400 years, if his answers were always there to begin with. It's not a question of living in other peoples psyches - it's a matter of perceiving that directors present us with situations that make us think of our human condition. That by far outreaches other peoples psyches.
  • Mendes4LyfeMendes4Lyfe The long road ahead
    Posts: 8,406
    I'll tell you why. Shakespeare never had an original thought in his life. Shakespeare was a poet/playwright, so it spoke ordinary truths beautifully. That's all he ever did. I mean, he was one of the first artists to resonate with the lower classes, so I highly doubt those poor people were busy discussing complex ideas. No, Shakespeare wrote about innate concepts of humanity, things that people understand intrinsically. Love, Betrayal, Greed that kind of sh%t. The reason people are still reading his sh%t is because he said it best, not because he was the first to think of it.
  • dogrowup007dogrowup007
    Posts: 108
    Shakespeare also wrote for and directed plays at the royal court, where complex ideas may have been more at the order of the day. In any way, the fact that his and other plays, as well as movies talk about the human condition clearly states that movies can do more than merely entertain without having to probe peoples psyches. I think Kubrick wanted to do more with 'Clockwork Orange' than merely entertain - and I don't find the answers he gives in that movie that straightforward. The same applies for 'Full Metal Jacket', 'Barry Lyndon' or 'Eyes Wide Shut'.
  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,804
    Fritz Lang rocked.
  • FoxRoxFoxRox
    Posts: 12,474
    Objectively it's probably the 70s. Absolutely incredible - The French Connection, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, Duel, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Rocky, Taxi Driver, Annie Hall, Star Wars, Halloween, Alien, The Conversation, Chinatown, The Godfather, The Godfather Pt. 2., etc etc. Personally I also love the 80s and 90s for film. Anywhere from 30s to 90s is pretty solid with all the classics that have been made; to me, 2000s is decent, and 2010s has been rough.
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