Lots can be said about mediocre talent in the industry but I think
its always been there.
Movies are a mechanical illusion: anything that disturbs the
illusion loses the audience. Lots of ideas that some director or
producer thought were clever draw attention to themselves and shout "you
are watching a movie". This can be something as simple as the picture
post-card establishing scenes sometimes seen. Anytime you think "Oh, how
beautiful" or "What great photography" you have been jerked away from
the emotional content of the story. God preserve us from directors who
have been influenced by someone with a strong visual style like John
Ford or Alfred Hitchcock and decide they are going to emulate them
without any understanding of what they were doing. Some of these people
manage to make a lot of money but their movies are still dull as rusty
razors.
On 6/13/2016 12:08 PM, Laurence Cuffe wrote:
I think its a matter of the "sensitised Observer", knowing what you do, it stands out like a sore thumb. I'm in my late fifties, but would not have known this. For me, its landscapes in period movies, fields and gardens trimmed using contemporary machinery or sensibilities, which just don't fit in. The converse of this is the insider joke, or the reference to some other item in the cannon. These rely on our sense of superiority, "I got the reference", but are really just a cheap shot, taken at the expense of the less knowledgeable members of the audience.
The problem with these is they rarely age well, and we are then left with a movie which is trying to stand, weighed down by a bunch of irrelevancies.
My 2c.
All the best,
Laurence Cuffe
On 13 Jun 2016, at 16:57, `Richard Knoppow wrote:
