Winston T. Boogie
Senior HTF Member
The reason I am starting this thread is I do enjoy discussing cinema from various angles and I feel like these conversations get going in other threads about specific films and can end up derailing the thread for people looking just to talk about that specific film. This thread will be meant more as a place to have those freewheeling discussions about cinema, what we like and don't like, the general state of where it is, where it was, and where it is going and what makes us movie fans.
So, you can talk about whatever you like cinema related and we can go on tangents. Tell stories, talk about how moviemaking has changed, what is good or bad about it, what we miss, what we look forward to. What makes a film a great film to you?
There are no right or wrong answers just really how we feel about it. Obviously, I have had various discussions here about what has changed about the filmmaking landscape. Scorsese has made comments that have made waves about superhero films and what they are and I think people have a lot of different feelings about that.
I'd like to get all of these kinds of discussions cooking here and be able to tell stories, make comments, rave or rant about all things motion pictures.
We just had what I thought was a good year for films in 2021 and so I find this a perfect time to start this thread and get into all this stuff and have a place where we can ramble about what is happening and how we feel about it.
I think at this point motion pictures have been around for about 144 years and obviously there have been various changes and stages that the medium has gone through. We probably all have favorite periods or decades we love and probably a lot of that has to do with when we were born and what part of those 144 years we have experienced. I think anybody that has read anything that I have wrote on these message boards will know I am a big fan of the 1970s, which really begins in the 1960s and goes on well after 1979 as the period has been quite influential on all that came after it.
I think the big thing that the decade has imprinted on me is that I remain director-centric as a film fan. I still mostly look at who is directing a picture in my weighing if I want to see it. I think in this more recent period of filmmaking this has shrunk as a reason why most people go to see a film. I think there are several reasons for this happening but the big thing being that because so many of today's major releases are formula based pictures, this eliminates the need for a director that would be putting a personal stamp on, or attempting to highlight their own artistic vision when making a film. So, directing, as an art, is diminished in the current state of things.
There likely are only a small number of directors now that make any difference in terms of if a picture gets made. The same can be said for actors as in terms of actors that are a big box office draw the number is tiny. I found it really interesting recently when I heard that Don't Look Up was the biggest film of the year. This kind of shocked me and it features Leo DiCaprio who appears to be our last "movie star" whose presence in a picture means it will succeed even though it has nothing to do with a franchise.
This death of actors being a big draw also has diminished the art of acting. In the 1970s the way to get a picture made about whatever you wanted to make it about was to get an actor onboard that they felt was a big draw. Now with there being virtually only a few actors that are a draw, well, that is no longer an option to get a film made.
Only DiCaprio appears able to do this. They don't even have a list of a few people to go down anymore. It's not like the 1970s where they would go down the list - Redford, Newman, Hackman, Pacino, De Niro - until they had a guy to get the film made. Now it is basically Leo and if you can't get him, it is a no go. I mean unless you can get 6 or 10 contributors to an independent production or Netflix, Amazon, or Apple want the content.
The question then becomes though, if it is on one of those streaming services is it cinema? Or is it just TV? Basically, wouldn't cinema be what gets shown in a cinema?
So, you can talk about whatever you like cinema related and we can go on tangents. Tell stories, talk about how moviemaking has changed, what is good or bad about it, what we miss, what we look forward to. What makes a film a great film to you?
There are no right or wrong answers just really how we feel about it. Obviously, I have had various discussions here about what has changed about the filmmaking landscape. Scorsese has made comments that have made waves about superhero films and what they are and I think people have a lot of different feelings about that.
I'd like to get all of these kinds of discussions cooking here and be able to tell stories, make comments, rave or rant about all things motion pictures.
We just had what I thought was a good year for films in 2021 and so I find this a perfect time to start this thread and get into all this stuff and have a place where we can ramble about what is happening and how we feel about it.
I think at this point motion pictures have been around for about 144 years and obviously there have been various changes and stages that the medium has gone through. We probably all have favorite periods or decades we love and probably a lot of that has to do with when we were born and what part of those 144 years we have experienced. I think anybody that has read anything that I have wrote on these message boards will know I am a big fan of the 1970s, which really begins in the 1960s and goes on well after 1979 as the period has been quite influential on all that came after it.
I think the big thing that the decade has imprinted on me is that I remain director-centric as a film fan. I still mostly look at who is directing a picture in my weighing if I want to see it. I think in this more recent period of filmmaking this has shrunk as a reason why most people go to see a film. I think there are several reasons for this happening but the big thing being that because so many of today's major releases are formula based pictures, this eliminates the need for a director that would be putting a personal stamp on, or attempting to highlight their own artistic vision when making a film. So, directing, as an art, is diminished in the current state of things.
There likely are only a small number of directors now that make any difference in terms of if a picture gets made. The same can be said for actors as in terms of actors that are a big box office draw the number is tiny. I found it really interesting recently when I heard that Don't Look Up was the biggest film of the year. This kind of shocked me and it features Leo DiCaprio who appears to be our last "movie star" whose presence in a picture means it will succeed even though it has nothing to do with a franchise.
This death of actors being a big draw also has diminished the art of acting. In the 1970s the way to get a picture made about whatever you wanted to make it about was to get an actor onboard that they felt was a big draw. Now with there being virtually only a few actors that are a draw, well, that is no longer an option to get a film made.
Only DiCaprio appears able to do this. They don't even have a list of a few people to go down anymore. It's not like the 1970s where they would go down the list - Redford, Newman, Hackman, Pacino, De Niro - until they had a guy to get the film made. Now it is basically Leo and if you can't get him, it is a no go. I mean unless you can get 6 or 10 contributors to an independent production or Netflix, Amazon, or Apple want the content.
The question then becomes though, if it is on one of those streaming services is it cinema? Or is it just TV? Basically, wouldn't cinema be what gets shown in a cinema?
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) but I have kind of warmed to the genre over the past decade or so. I had really gotten burned out on the films in the Marvel and DC universes but that is another sub-genre for which I have developed renewed interest. (Second child hood in my advanced age? 
