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Comments
It's like 8 seasons of an HBO show. I couldn't even be tempted to go HBO when it was literal Gossip Girl.
I remember when I had an NYT subscription and read way too many comments and it convinced me that NYT readers who comment are very much just adult-flavored edgelords. On some article about Game of Thrones, somebody commented that he hadn't had a TV in 20 years, like this was vital information for people talking about a TV show to know (he hadn't read the books either).
The thing is I think there's this two-pronged problem right now. One thing is that Hollywood has been doing race-swaps for much longer than the period that people seem to be noticing. Many people, who might have seen it before or just grew up in general watching shows where the cast was... let's say "90s Diverse" find it weird when others complain about "diverse" shows, and the only explanation they can come up with is the viewers are racist.
Take, for example, Pretty Little Liars. In the books, all initial six main characters are white. In the TV show, Emily goes from being a reddish-blonde (oh no redhead genocide) to some sort of Pacific Islander (I honestly have no idea what ethnicity Shay Mitchell is but during the BLM stuff she did also claim to be somehow black).
Hilariously enough, since Emily's plot in the books is sort of a heady mix of everything progressives would love today (homophobic family! racist mother! practicing Christians are evil!) they had to change everything about her in order for this to work (ie nobody can be genuinely racist on TV if they aren't white). Basically, the TV show made the series more palatable in a way (ie every episode wasn't some lecture).
Similarly, Mona became (East) Asian (Janel Parrish really rocked the role, just saying, plus she had brownie points from portraying Jade in Bratz the Movie) and for some reason Spencer and Hanna's hair colors were switched (I guess because "blonde=dumb" works too well to not have).
However Melissa's-then-Spencer's boyfriend Wren is mentioned as being half-British, half-Asian, and in the TV series he was just white British instead (which would probably not be allowed today maybe iunno something about East Asian men specifically seems to escape progressive clout).
Anyways, similarly lots of TV shows were retooled to add more ethnicities or do gender swaps. The 90210 reboot made the siblings who moved to Beverly Hills a white girl and her black adopted brother (rather than being two white twins), and added South Asian Navid to the mix (as well as whatever ethnicity Jessica Lowdnes aka Adriana is, which might just be like "faking Latina/Native American", which was big in the late 00s).
Fun Fact; Michael Steger, who played Navid, is in no way Iranian. He's just a convenient mix of Nordic and Central American that looks super Iranian (he got hired to play many Arabic terrorists in other shows, including Criminal Minds, when that was a thing that was allowed).
Basically, when something new is happening in Hollywood, it incubates in TV. Of course many original movies and properties featuring "90s Diverse" casts happened in movies (The Matrix, all those movies starring Dwayne Johnson, other stuff I've never seen), but it's not controversial to say that a movie could, pre-2010, have a cast that was all white and that wouldn't be a problem exactly.
However, now that Hollywood is basically out of idea capital, weird stuff has started to happen. Shows in the Downton Abbey mold now have reality-breaking casts. There's no way to write a show set before 1960 and do a weirdly "90s Diverse" cast. Fresh Off the Boat, a show about an East Asian family in the 80s, spoiled the disbelief for me when it turned out Adam's (like 4 years older than him to start with) girlfriend, was "coming to terms with her sexuality" (hint; it didn't involve him).
So basically these writers/directors/executives have been doing this for a while (IIRC, ABC's Once Upon a Time had a Latina Cinderella, and now Disney+ is doing a Latina Snow White) have been doing this thing, and it wasn't a "problem" before (because non-geek TV watchers tend to be specific kinds of people anyways).
Similarly, a story like Lord of the Rings can't really have a diverse cast because it's supposed to be set in a very specific long lost age. Game of Thrones apparently has in-universe justification but that's still somehow telling a story where the cast is ethnically diverse in Winterland but instead of the other races being Inuit-themed they're black, just because you really want black people in the show.
I guess "just because you really want black (or gay or otherwise) people in the show" captures what's going on very well. No matter what justifications the cast give, or what rationalizations "fans" try to come up with (apparently there are several family members in Nu LOTR who don't even share a race so "it turns out in the LOTR universe, somehow nobody knew this but it turns out skin color is the only thing that doesn't depend on genetics/race). Everybody involved knows why it's happening, everything else is kind of just (virtue-themed) window dressing.
Okay, so that's the first problem, the second is that modern Hollywood writers are kind of bad? After several purity spirals, nobody interesting is really left over (or can really even begin). Similarly, something just seems to have happened to American culture right now where there's a chasing of modern aesthetics (maybe to go with the modern sensibilities?) that's ruining a lot of storytelling. There's also a lot of commercialism going on.
So you have bad storytellers obsessed with "timely" messages. We have writers doing big properties now who would have never even cut it being a script assistant on the original Beverly Hills 90210. What's left to do but insult everybody who points out your mistakes and strange obsession with diversity?
Okay other things;
It seems like Hollywood has recently discovered that this whole race/sex/etc controversy thing helps them do a lot of marketing buzz, and either the people who "care" actually just want to keep getting anger high or generating clicks on YT/twitter or whatever, so it's just feeding itself. A lot of conservatives claimed they would cancel Netflix over Cuties[1] but then after a while I noticed people reviewing things like Don't Look Up or saying they were really enjoying the new Apple TV show (I mean who cancels Netflix and keeps Apple TV? Apple TV is like 3 shows total and they're all extremely progressive).
Disney specifically seems to be trying to leverage the Marvel brand into a more female-oriented market with shows like Ms. Marvel (which, for some reason, was about the Indian/Pakistani partition, like... nobody wants YA like that Ms. Screenwriter) and She-Hulk. The latter wasn't really noticed until the show continued, but now we have Very Serious Geek Man reviewers giving episodes of She-Hulk 3 out of 10 stars not realizing this show is supposed to be the new Selfie. Or maybe they do and just like the clicks. Outrage clicks are very good because you never have to dig deep and find something nice to say.
[1] I considered linking the dance scene from Cuties here, because somehow it's actually on YouTube still (then again, a lot of original content is on YouTube), but wow that's not something I want to be associated with in any way.
Also I really shouldn't have read the comments on that video.
I remember that one argument about Captain Marvel at some point had someone observe that Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is, in contrast, an example of a movie with a racially-diverse cast and good storytelling.
Also, "diversity" isn't the only way or reason that stuff gets rewritten and stories get changed. Hell, I remember being kinda surprised as a kid when I realized that the story of the Pokémon TV series didn't match the story of the Pokémon game I was playing.
Besides, I've seen someone point out that those people who are very annoyed at the idea of black people in LotR for historical inaccuracy reasons should also complain that there are potatoes (which are native to the Americas and were absent from Europe during the Middle Ages).
Yeah I think I mentioned The Matrix (from like, 1999) at some point.
You'll also notice that absolutely no character in Spiderverse was swapped out race or sex wise, which is exceedingly rare in comic book things.
Pedantic. Obviously the races of the characters in the story are important because every single major frame of every episode has at least one character in it. Unless we get LOTR: Potato Famine Arc it doesn't matter at all that they eat potatoes.
It's a good word that describes a real thing. I ran away from that for a long time.
There are many good reasons to change a story.
But it's pointless to change a specific story for diversity versus creating a cohesive narrative out of "okay now I have to go grind for EXP before the next gym". If there was a Pokemon movie and they made Misty black (even my example has redhead genocide) that would be super weird and kind of uncomfortable and everybody would know why it was done.
Even if the movie was good, I just wouldn't be comfortable with it. I won't even dress that up in ideology, I'd know why it was done and it'd probably make me a bit mad (and actually I probably wouldn't see it).
"See, we changed the thing you liked and it was fine!" but it would have also been fine the other way so why did you do it?
Also, incidentally, the world of Pokémon does have a variety of characters with darker skin colors.
There's actually a handful of different words that I just don't like because I think they sound weird or off or something. "Woke" in the political sense just happens to be one of them; others include such words as "based" (in the "very good" sense), "cuck", "cringe" (as an adjective), "af" (as an abbreviation for "as fuck").
It's probably not a political reason.
Sidenote: IIRC at first I confused Aragorn with Boromir, in the LotR trilogy.
The first was Glass Houses, starring Aviva Mongillo from Backstage as well as Bree Turner, who is an actress I've surely seen in things before but imdb seems to think otherwise.
I think this movie was pretty good for being a pseudo-Lifetime piece; everything was pretty fleshed out and the only really odd moment came when Aviva's best friend dies just because this is the sort of movie where somebody has to die.
I think it's worth watching even if you aren't a fan of the genre.
The second, The Estate, is a movie I've wanted to see since it came out sometime in 2020 but I've never gotten around to it. It's kind of like if Ryan Murphy had a solid vision in his head for a campy, murderous story and then he executed it properly (Ryan Murphy can never do this).
Unfortunately the second half of the third act is ridiculously weird (and well, scandalous), not just in the scripting department but in the actual plotting because it turns out the protagonist has been Fatal Attraction-ed by his own half-brother? Like, what? No, come on man. They slept together, on screen, a lot. It really weirded me out but even worse was the outcome from that point because then they have this super Lifetime fight that still ends with Abel giving Cain a sad goodbye sorry-I-killed-you kiss (on the cheek at least but still).
The ending redeems itself somewhat but I feel kind of gross saying that about a movie where the final twist is that immoral. This is a movie I'd have recommended wholesale sans that final twist, even with the somewhat weak and immature (lots of language that belongs squarely in adult video and not actual cinema) script at the start.
Tickets to Paradise is just everything you want to forget about old romantic comedies whilst loudly claiming you want more romantic comedies made. The music in the trailer is also certainly a song I've heard before and used because they're lazy and want to trap you with 2022 muzak.
I think I'll stick to the less-hyped, lower budget movies from now on.
I am confused, but it was funny at least.
I don't get why Simu Liu is doing the Single Ladies dance dressed as a townie but I would like a doll of that.
I usually don't care much about these cliches and stuff but when I saw that Timothee Chalamet (Timothee Chalamet???) was going to star as Willy Wonka in a prequel movie/origin story I knew it couldn't be anything but that.
edit: yes. yes it is.
i totally thought it was some sort of ostentatious weirdo character from something like Persona or someshit lol
So, guys, what's the oldest movie you honestly enjoyed? For me, it was probably Kurosawa's Yojimbo, or barring that one of these old war movies with stock footage and all characters captioned off so you knew which historical personage this is. At the moment I can't think of anything older than these. (Then again, I can't remember watching all that many movies older than these, enjoyed or not.)
For comparison, I've watched Deliverance and Assault on Precinct 13 on the basis of their reputation, but they kind of failed to deliver the kick I expected them to, despite being younger. So I began to think. For someone who is not into history of cinematography, is there some specific period, beyond which movies stop being enjoyable? I mean stuff like acting, pacing, camera work - obviously not special effects, but perhaps there is some boundary between "enjoyably outdated" and "just plain outdated" - in other words, stuff that is more about the intangible practical parts of filmmaking, rather than plain technical issues.
Anyways, Yojimbo had enough action and suspense for me to enjoy, but Assault on Precinct 13 felt just plain awkward, once the effect of Carpenter's intro wore off. As for Deliverance, I guess this is the clearest case - after all these cheesy slasher movies I watched, the memetic parts were pretty much the only ones that didn't bore me to death.
The oldest movie I've ever enjoyed is Ordinary People and that was a pretty solid movie.
I don't think I'm too interested in seeing pre-40s movies just based on technical issues.
I guess it's Citizen Kane (1941) followed closely by Doña Bárbara (1943). The latter was getting close to the limit of datedness I'm willing to put up with.
I also watched some short film about a dude climbing a building, by... I dunno, someone who's famous for practical effects. It was strictly beyond "enjoyed It on its own terms" and well into "watched it for historial interest". There's also the early Japanese animations (anime?) we've posted in the videos thread.
^ Oh, that's a good one. I must have watched and enjoyed it as a child though I can't remember it and instead just remember the million parodies.
I guess Snow White (1937) counts, but I wonder if I'd genuinely enjoy it now as an adult instead of just being interested in the animation.
Basically Disney movies don't count.
1. I'm not actually sure which Disney movies I actually liked. I guess I may have a mild enjoyment of some or all of them, but I liked various supplemental videos that made use of them much more than I actually enjoyed the movies.
2. Fantasia predates most of them anyway, apparently.
I remember I used to find the earliest cartoons awkward, back when I watched the Disney block on TV as a kid, but now that I think of it, I guess it was mostly the fault of the gags. Some of them were some really weird-ass stuff that probably only made sense if you lived in the US in the 1930's, also were gross (lots of spitting).
I am not the right person to ask about animation quality lol.
I guess animation ages better mostly because it's techically feasible to properly remaster it for HD or 4K whereas live-action or even 3DCG is much more difficult to pull off.
Anyhow I said I'm not the right person to ask about animation quality because I have some opinions on how animation should look but it's probably rather heterodox compared to the sorts of things I hear people generally praising.
Specifically, I'm actually not a fan of things looking too "cartoony", so to speak, such as using lots of stretch-and-squash, face faults, and other exaggerations. So, for example, people often praise Studio Trigger for its very expressive animations, which are chock full of such features; I can tell that there's a lot of work put into them, but that doesn't mean they're my thing. In fact, my taste in this regard is one reason why I tend to prefer anime over western animation -- there's more use of exaggeration in the latter, at least in recent times and for a notable subset of works. That said, to some extent this is also related to the types of stories I prefer -- cartoonishly exaggerated things aren't as fit for the more serious stories I tend to be more interested in.
In a similar vein, I also dislike oft-praised dynamic panning shots of things, such as having the camera spin around an action scene. I know this sort of dynamicness is praised in cinematography to at least some extent, but I actually tend to dislike it. (In contrast, cf. this one video commentary I once ran across, which pointed out that action scenes in Jackie Chan movies are often more effective because they're done in continuous shots without hiding details behind camera angle changes.)
To be fair, however, old Disney movies actually don't really go overboard. They do have generally pretty decent animation, which makes the characters fluid, without making them annoying to watch. So, I guess they have good animation. If having lots of smoothly animated detail is better, then I guess then they have very good animation. But this doesn't really feel like my own opinion. And part of this is because animation quality isn't really something I actively think about much, so I tend to notice it most when there's something I dislike, rather than really being able to say what I like.
That said, I probably won't watch it throughout, it's loooooong.
Is this a misnomer on your part or is there an actual opera company called this name?